Curse

Cursed Cobain · Feb 28, 2012, 07:28 PM // 19:28

Hi I have been playing GW for one and a half months now and am trying to get the HoM. I have almost wrapped up my pvp titles and want to start back where i left off in pve. I have been trying out tons of metas to get a high dps output team. I am an imbagon and did most of the testing on the master of damage. What i found was that my pve dagger spammers did some of the highest dmg over 2 mins next to my rits. However everywhere i look people say that the hero sins are horrible for end game. I haven't played the end game yet so i don't understand why.

First i want to give you some specifics:
I tested

Way of the assassin+(meta dagger spam skills)+ crit eye+ go for the eyes
<Same as above but with Shields up instead of gfte>
Expert's dexterity+(meta dagger spam skills)+comfort animal+ call of prot

They each do about 50-60 dps over 2 mins and when i give them burning refrain and battle standard the of 3 them combine can go as far as 200 dps

I have tried meta hero builds like pve fire ele and enduring axe but at best they do 40 dps.

So why are hero dagger spammers not used for end game and I apologize if all of this sounds noobish and appriecate any help i am given, thank you.

Olle · Feb 28, 2012, 07:41 PM // 19:41

Simply put:

Melee AI (still ) Sucks.
they dont use their chains well, they dont look for clumped foes for aoeskills,they will spend half battle running around switching targets...

Anaraky · Feb 28, 2012, 07:44 PM // 19:44

Hi and welcome to GW.

I haven't had time to play GW much at all the last couple of months so they might have changed it (they promised a melee AI update, that might be it), but when I used to play the Assassin heroes where held back due to a couple of reasons.

The first one is that they are melee. Melee heroes would constantly run around not doing much at all for a large part of the fight compared to ranged heroes. The Master of Damage doesn't take that into account, so keep that in mind.
The second is something that is tied to reason number one: melee characters are much more susceptible to debuffs. Crippling, Blind, slowing hexes and so forth. There are a boatload of debuffs to counter physical characters in general and melee characters in particular. It is harder to shut down a caster, which made Mesmer/Ritualist etc heroes more reliable.
The third reason is that they couldn't use dagger chains. They would just use the skills in any random order which made dagger skills largely useless.

My recommendation is that you take them out for a test run and if you like them just go for it. Whatever works for you.

Best of luck.

Olle · Feb 28, 2012, 07:46 PM // 19:46

the Heroes got an AI update, but me and a lot of other players are experiencing them worse than before.

And the update simply was "we made heroes use skills better, but we dont tell you which,gl&hf!"

It didnt help melee anything anyways..

Anaraky · Feb 28, 2012, 07:57 PM // 19:57

Oh wow, really? Worse then before? That's pretty harsh. Well that is good to know, thanks for curing my ignorance in the issue!

Cursed Cobain · Feb 28, 2012, 08:07 PM // 20:07

Thank you for the replies I really apprieciate them and now that i think about it my heroes did glitch on a few occasions where they would just sit there and lag until i manually made them use a different skill.

But if melle aren't good with alots of targets then are there any casters that can do 50-60 dps. I know mesmers can do alot of aoe dmg but in my experience i found that they have some upkeep problems. Com rits are perfect but they're to limited with the one spirit per party. And I've heard some people like to use a pve smiter monk but i don't know how well that would work. But generally i want to try and get a team where everyone can do dmg.

Xiner · Feb 28, 2012, 08:36 PM // 20:36

They updated melee hero AI, but are they planning to improve it "even more"? Or this is it? IMO hero AI could be fixed in many other ways and not only melee.

Anaraky · Feb 28, 2012, 08:39 PM // 20:39

Well, as you noted the casters are generally more oriented towards AoE damage. That goes for the Elementalist, Mesmer and Necromancer. So if you want more reliable single target pressure/spike damage you could always try some sort of Physway (which just means you take a bunch of physical damage dealers and buff them). Ranger heroes are quite underrated in my opinion as well as Paragons. That is especially true since you are a Paragon as well since they have good synergy with physicals in general and other Paragons in particular.

The core in a ranged hero based physway is the Order hero. Generally a Necromancer but an Elementalist or a Dervish works as well. A Curse Necro is good as well for skills such as Mark of Pain, Barbs, Weaken Armor as well as enchantment removal. The rest of the group is fairly flexible, just take as many defensive heroes as you are comfortable with and then fill out the rest of the party with Paragons and/or Rangers. Paragons have better party support and Rangers have better spiking potential. Mix and match as you please. If you tend to favour Minion Masters/Bombers they can be pretty good in that kind of group since a) they proc MoP/Barbs a lot and b) they add bodies to your team since you probably won't have many spirits to keep the mobs occupied. But it is up to you. I generally don't take one, since I don't like them but it is a matter of taste.

Just give it a whirl and see if it is to your taste.

Olle · Feb 28, 2012, 08:40 PM // 20:40

the AI didnt help at all (imo) and yes, they could update the AI way way more.

AndrewSX · Feb 28, 2012, 08:44 PM // 20:44

Point also is that even if meele (and sin chain in particular) AI could be fixed, midline heroes (mes, rits, necs -and a bit less- monks, eles) are so GOREDENGINEGOREDENGINEGOREDENGINEing overpowered that anything else falls in shadows anyway.

Kunder · Feb 28, 2012, 09:51 PM // 21:51

Sins are all about combos.

Player sins finish the Death Blossom combo in ~2s. Sustained on a single target the cycle time is 3s, due to recharge times.

Sin heroes take closer to 6-8s on average to finish the combo. Given that sin damage is 95% about using the last skill in the chain as much as possible, that means sustained hero DPS is at best 50% of a players and burst DPS (which is the most important for non-boss mobs) is at worst only 25% of the player's burst DPS.

So yeah, bad. This is separate from the normal poor melee AI, which makes Derv/Warrior undesirable (though still plenty powerful with proper builds and in the right area).

Aside from that, heroes not being able to take PvE skills gimps physicals and sins in particular horribly compared to caster heroes. Critical agility is practically designed to make sins not suck in PvE, but hero sins have to suffer without a 50% faster attack rate and +25 armor. Nevermind the more general use PvE skills that all melee need to have in certain areas not to be as good as useless.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewSX

Point also is that even if meele (and sin chain in particular) AI could be fixed, midline heroes (mes, rits, necs -and a bit less- monks, eles) are so GOREDENGINEGOREDENGINEGOREDENGINEing overpowered that anything else falls in shadows anyway.

No, if melee AI got fixed we would be running around with 4x dervs supported by 2x Rt/Mos, each of the dervs dishing out ~60 single target DPS and massively more vs mobs. Midline is great support but physicals have always held the damage crown of GW (notable exception of AP letting player casters win in a number of instances).

Cursed Cobain · Feb 28, 2012, 11:12 PM // 23:12

thanks for all the out put guys but i think i might have found the solution to my problems. Since everyone's saying sin sucks becuase of combos I decided to try out a fast cast melle fire ele build. After over 2 minutes the build did 65-70 dps which is twice that of the meta build

I don't know how well this would do in pve since mobs might run away from vekk but i am really satisfied with the damage.

Flame Burst Ele: Elemental Attunement+ Fire attunement+ Glowing Gaze+ Flame Dijin Haste+ Pheonix+ Inferno + Flame burst + Mark of Rodgort

Anaraky · Feb 29, 2012, 12:25 AM // 00:25

Defiantly a cool idea, but you have to keep in mind that the Elementalists are quite frail. Prot Spirit or/and Shelter takes care of that in a way, but if they get focused and they aren't protected they are going to get swatted. I think a more standard variant of an EA fire build might be more forgiving.

Just my 2c though, it is certainly worth giving a shot though if you feel like it.

Cursed Cobain · Feb 29, 2012, 12:29 AM // 00:29

What if i had "There on fire", "Save youselves" and "Bladeturn refrain" on them 89% dmg reduction and 15% block

_Aphotic_ · Feb 29, 2012, 12:49 AM // 00:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cursed Cobain

What if i had "Save youselves"

Sounds good.

"ToF!"/"TNTF!" is fine... but, SY alone solves 90% of cases.

You can't maintain Bladeturn Refrain is just.... eww... it negates very little damage, and any time spent casting it is time that could be spent charging SY.
If you really, really want single-target block you're better off putting Guardian on a hero, no joke (even then, Aegis and Displacement far exceed both of these in efficiency/usefulness).

Kunder · Feb 29, 2012, 12:56 AM // 00:56

PBAoE eles are bad ideas for a number of reasons, but if you want to run them you HAVE to abuse Star Burst.

Now, if you want an actually good damage build, turn yourself into a P/W using something like Backbreaker, Dragon Slash, or Hundred Blades, + the usual support heroes.

Azazello · Feb 29, 2012, 02:47 AM // 02:47

Melee has some issues but it also has some strengths. The two best are fairly spammable deep wounds, and being good splinter weapon targets. Scythes with splinter weapon blow shit up, I could see assassins with fast activating attacks being almost as good. With a fast recharging shadowstep there should be no problem getting enemies fairly clumped, especially with assassins low AL/HP and high damage output.

If you don't want to screw around waiting for minions, and/or you want to compress your splinter weapon damage a bit, they're worth considering. The AI on attack chains, especially unorthodox ones, was terrible last time I tried an assassin hero, but otherwise the case is dramatically overstated. You can have occasional issues with them getting bodyblocked if you ping the back guy in a clump on a corner, but generally the AI is fine.

Some of the 'AI problems' I see listed here, like 'they spend half the battle doing nothing', 'they won't seek out groups to use aoe attacks on', or 'they spend too much time running back and forth' originate between seat and keyboard. Melee heroes do exactly what they're told to do. If you ping random guy over this way followed by random guy over that way they're going to spend a lot of time running between random guys.

Personally I think dervs have all the advantages assassins provide and more (better aoe damage and conditions), so I use them instead.

A couple of these advantages (easier balling of enemies and spammable deep wound) are negated by player AP builds, so for people running that I can definitely see that melee would be unappealing, but since you're playing imba I wouldn't rule them out without a bit of testing. Of course since you're an imbagon you're already a fairly ok target for one copy of splinter weapon and have the potential to do your own deep wound, although one deep wound every 8s on a whole team isn't amazing, and neither is one copy of splinter weapon. If I could figure out a build that carried eight I would. 795 armor ignoring for 5 energy at 5 recharge is... good.

DiogoSilva · Mar 01, 2012, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Sin Chain was fixed today.

Kunder · Mar 01, 2012, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Indeed, now Anet just needs to let heroes get Critical Agility.

DiogoSilva · Mar 01, 2012, 11:31 PM // 23:31

Let's see...

1. Sin chain: fixed.
2. Wasting time running back and forth each time you change targets: if you ping target and then focus on another foe, the melee hero will not switch targets until called target is dead, or you call another foe, so: fixed as long as you can properly ping.
3. Poor usage of AoE: fixed as long as you can properly ping, but without pinging, ???

Am I missing something, or can we start having effective melee-oriented hero teams as long as we ping targets?