Curse

Jeydra · Apr 04, 2011, 04:04 PM // 16:04

I think the conclusion I'll draw from this thread is that supporters of (B)DSM are never going to admit they're wrong, regardless of what happens. Everything will get mentioned: Raisu Palace being an unrepresentative area, BDSM being stable (as though other teambuilds aren't stable), BDSM can be run by every primary profession while other teambuilds cannot (as though that's true), etc etc etc. This denial's at the point where nothing will ever be sufficient proof. Like, VoR never gets triggered because of Panic, even though monsters in Raisu Palace have Song of the Mists ... ? Who cares then, I suppose. I don't. Run BDSM for all I care, just don't claim that it's the best teambuild around.

Quote:

6. What was quite surprising though, to me at least, was that spirit+mesmer teams are as fast as they are. They have a lot of mitigation (mostly in the form of decoys and shutdown), but they really do not pack a lot of offense -- spirits are solid, but single-target damage; minion bombing is relatively low DPS; mesmers are high damage on long recharges that results in low DPS; etc. And yet, they are fast. This basically turns on its head the mantra of "bring just enough defense to survive, everything else should be offense." I have to admit that I haven't quite figured out why this works like it does. If you're looking for the big development here, reread this paragraph. Sooner or later it will prove important.

The question is, what else is there to run? Across Necros, Mesmers, Elementalists, Ritualists, Paragons, Rangers - all of them. What else is there that can deal higher DPS? If you have an answer, I'm all ears. Every now and then I've looked for a generic hero damage bar, but I haven't found anything particularly outstanding.

@Foxbat - ESurge does 99 damage (11 energy lost, 9 damage per point). Problem is, at that amount of damage, Invoke Lightning under EBSoH often does more, especially after Cracked Armour support. Which leads to:

Invoke Lightning has lower recharge (6s >> 15s)
Invoke Lightning hits only 3 targets, ESurge can hit more (but not always the case)
Air Magic has more consistent damage spells than Domination (Chain Lightning / Lightning Orb > Mistrust / Shatter Hex / Unnatural Signet, of which only Unnatural Signet is always reliable).
Both skills can use wards - EBSoW and EBSoH
Mesmers naturally come with utility, e.g. Mistrust has defensive uses, Shatter Hex removes a hex, Shatter Enchant removes an enchantment. Elementalists can also bring utility, but of a different sort, e.g. Fall Back, Stand Your Ground, etc.
Elementalist energy management is largely passive. Mesmer energy management is active, but has other uses (they interrupt).

This doesn't look like a very convincing case that Mesmers are better. However, of course, theory always pales in comparison to experiment. I haven't run 5 Mesmer builds, so I can't seriously comment on them.

@Kunder - if you're convinced that's the case why not provide some evidence to back it up? Isn't that the point of this thread?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

I commend you for admitting defeat. Now retool and improve. These threads are useless of they're 100% ego stroking and 0% learning.

To be honest, I learned a lot from this thread. It showed once again just how powerful spirits are in PvE right now. Some results coming from it are too exciting to write about right now - besides, EFGJack did most of the pioneering, so he deserves to post them first. Hint hint

Gabs88 · Apr 04, 2011, 06:18 PM // 18:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

This doesn't look like a very convincing case that Mesmers are better. However, of course, theory always pales in comparison to experiment. I haven't run 5 Mesmer builds, so I can't seriously comment on them.

Well, I have to a large degree tried it and anything past 4 is pretty pointless unless one of them is player character. Mesmer spikes CAN be amazingly smooth, it's not exactly uncommon to see everything wiped in 6-8 seconds, but it's not exactly uncommon to have things go the other way around either and have it take 15 sec to wipe. Also EBSOH is great, but you don't bring it for just 2 characters. So what class would really benefit enough from EBSOH to bring it for himself along with the 2 air elementalists you have?

EBSOW would be a way better choice with multiple mesmers along with a primary mes. And with 5 mesmers that would definitely work to their advantage in every conceivable way.

You also didn't factor in Fast Cast in those numbers, because any mesmer build is gonna have at least 9 or 10 in it (including rune) Reducing the cool downs on all mesmer skills by 30% which is calculated outside of HSR, in other words esurge \ panic is closer to 10 sec then 15. And EBSOW would bring that down to 5 sec.

It's also not a big problem to bring Fall back \ STG in mes bars.

Finally a question before I leave this thread for good:
How much did you micro your characters? Especially AoTL \ Spirits but I see you also micro Fall Back.

And as a sidenote, if you wanna test mesmers feel free to PM me ingame anytime for a hero drop. I can bring as many as you could possibly want with whatever builds you wanna test

FoxBat · Apr 04, 2011, 07:29 PM // 19:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Invoke Lightning hits only 3 targets, ESurge can hit more (but not always the case)

If you can't hit more than 3 nearby targets in raisu's mobs most of the time, you're doing something very wrong, and this coming from a player that does not have the patience to carefully ball stuff and just charges in. Everything else you say falls on that. It doesn't matter if invoke is somehow doing a little more damage (doubtful unless you crack all of them) when it's hitting half the targets or less. Cry and mistrust aren't tripping 100%, but even half of them firing is again going to cover a much larger area than chain lightning and certainly lightning orb or shock arrow. I'd think searing flames even doing 2/3rd the damage of invoke would be better suited for this mission. Then there's the fact that I have 5 mesmers instead of 3 eles, because I can afford to drop some passive defense with all that shutdown going on. (You pick either MM or communer for example, not both.)

Over the period of many encounters, reliability frankly isn't that important. You won't hit every cry and mistrust on recharge and some groups will gum up and take a little longer. That's more than made up for by the ones you did manage to blast past. Even if you only hit everyone in the nearby AoE half the time in your encounters, you're still far ahead. I also use unnatural signet and the debateable spiritual pain for fast direct damage to finish things off.

Long term energy management is somewhat problematic. Most of the time it doesn't matter because the forward spikes leaves very little cleanup to be done; in other words in spite of the problems, mesmers vastly outperform everything. If the build can be tooled to manage energy better, mesmers can only go up from there. Currently I am having some success with BiP on an n/rt, this does leave you somewhat vulnerable as the healer will BiP down to 20% sometimes, but have yet to take a death that way.

Gabs88 · Apr 04, 2011, 08:39 PM // 20:39

Uhm, what kind of drugs did you take in order to write that post? Have you even played with 5 mesmers?... Seriously? That's just painful to read, and it certainly doesn't speak well for the case of using mesmers over elementalists ;p

Perhaps you should do a little more build testing? Cut the BiP (WTF?) and rework your mesmer bars (remove spiritual pain for instance)..

1. Reliability is importaint, and achieved both with mesmers and air elementalists.
2. Energy management is a bit complicated, but nothing you cant work out.
3. If you're gonna say you can beat Jeydra using 5 mesmers and your BiP, feel free to do a 9 min 30 sec run on first try.. Or do a few more and do a 8 min something run?
4. Air elementalists do to some degree gain power in numbers, and hence a class that isent a primary elementalist would not be able to use his build as proficiently as an elementalist.

Other then that, it's pretty clear that for an elementalist Jeydra's current build is beyond anything else posted on this forum and is working on par or better then anything currently made up using mesmers. I'm not saying I'm convinced that a variant of mesmer spike cant beat his team build, but right now he's definitely more then proven theyre perfectly on par with mesmers. Though again, mesmer builds are complicated and tiny changes can have huge impacts due to the team synergy, so if you find the right balance, I still believe you can go as low down as 8 min to 8 min 30 sec using a S\D\M based build.

FoxBat · Apr 04, 2011, 09:23 PM // 21:23

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Originally Posted by Gabs88

3. If you're gonna say you can beat Jeydra using 5 mesmers and your BiP, feel free to do a 9 min 30 sec run on first try.. Or do a few more and do a 8 min something run?

9:30 is not based on a ton of retries. I did a handful and got these times:

10:10
9:30
9:40
9:12

A far better player with some micro, effort and retries should be able to beat that. Is that spiritual pain + bip talking? I'm not sure, probably not, but if you think 9:30 is hard to get on the first time for an admittedly low skilled player, I have to wonder what level of experience you have with what kind of mesmer builds. It might also help if I skipped as many mobs as possible and just killed the bosses, which is all you need for this mission but I didn't do that most of the time, and I have no way of knowing how much Jedrya did that.

I don't suggest I can beat Jedrya's time because I'm not as strong a player nor do I desire to even learn how to micro carefully. A big problem with this whole challenge is that it does not separate skill from build, although the two are related in that some builds have a higher skill cap, unless you can get people who care to be skilled/fast at general PvE (as opposed to speedclear/farming) to represent all builds, your build results will be biased. However you can go look at Pom Pom doing DoA HM in just a little over an hour with mesmer speedclear, and I will say there's no way in hell that will be pulled off with invoke eles. Mesmers have the higher raw ability and potential, its visible with bad players and it can be extracted and put to use with good players, that's why any team-based speedclear (as opposed to "everyone split up" speedclear) with human players is currently based on mesmer nuking.

Jeydra · Apr 04, 2011, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

If you can't hit more than 3 nearby targets in raisu's mobs most of the time, you're doing something very wrong, and this coming from a player that does not have the patience to carefully ball stuff and just charges in.

That's Raisu. What about GoM and Hell's Precipice?

Clearly DoA SCs cannot be pulled off with Invoke Eles because of the sheer amount of monsters there ...

Frozen Ele · Apr 05, 2011, 12:24 AM // 00:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

However, of course, theory always pales in comparison to experiment.

I know you're not a big fan of theory and I'm not here to start a theory vs. experiment discussion, but I just wanted to point out that theorizing can save massive amounts of resources and time.

I know you're not a big supporter of the Symbolic and Graphical Investigation of the Efficiency of Water Magic Snares, but using it as an example, if you wanted to experimentally derive the "convergence" efficiency percentages and be 99% confident that all of the experimental efficiencies were within 0.01% of the true efficiencies, you'd have to perform about 166 million trials for each snare combination. Doing this for all 54 total combinations (an average trial time of 200-300 seconds - since you have to perform each combination ~10 times sequentially to reach the "convergence" efficiency), it would take about 56.8 to 85.2 millenniums.

Daesu · Apr 05, 2011, 12:44 AM // 00:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gabs88

So congratulations to whoever did fantastic times here, but you haven't actually presented viable options to what S\D\M is. This is almost like going back pre-patch and arguing over whether "Human Rit Spiritway" is better then "Spiritway" when the reality is it's a 4 man team vs 3 man team + random nub.

I see lots of viable options to S\D\M here, with no micro, and with better timing, so I don't know what you are takling about.

If you have a godly S\D\M build in mind that can beat the meta, present it here and we will test it.

FoxBat · Apr 05, 2011, 07:17 AM // 07:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

That's Raisu. What about GoM and Hell's Precipice?

Hells has piles of imps and a huge open portal area full of titans that there is no reason to aggro just one at a time. GoM with its small, balanced teams admittedly does not show as well for AoE.

FoxBat · Apr 06, 2011, 03:12 AM // 03:12

I ran this build many times and was getting in the 9:15ish range on average, with the occasional 8:45. Then I tried a different strategy to pull this time off.

1) run up the right ramp. Panic the 2 mes/1 monk group while flagging heroes up to the top (so spirits have line of sight). Blow stuff up, hit AotL and move on.

2) flag heroes at the very base of the ramp down. Panic the group and let heroes fight it, walk along the side of the southern wall to aggro the warrior boss and another ele group, pulling them down to my heroes position, kill everything but a monk/rit or two.

3) Run up to the center of the central ramp, pull the last ele group to ball with some monks/mesmers already hanging on the ramp, explode them. Then clean up all stragglers so I have minions in tow.

4) In next room (Necro Boss), run heroes all the way to the base of the ramp and flag them there. I continue running up past the 1st group of warriors to aggro the second to come down the ramp, then let them all collect to get AoEd. Once the warriors are dead (but their necro buds are still alive), flag my heroes at the top of the ramp, throw a few hexes on the necro boss, and I let them fight it out while running into the next room, pulling the slow NPCs behind.

5) In the next room I head to the left while heroes are still finishing the necro. I aggro the first group up on the ramp and back off, also waking up the ranger boss group in the center. Bring my heroes over and kill all warriors/rangers in a ball. I leave the necros and run my party up towards the ele boss. I pull the ele boss without waking up the ranger hordes, and let my heroes fight it while I sneak up the ramp, running for the gate. After that I trip the two cutscenes and everyone teleports with.

6) Run myself and heroes up to the top of the left stairs, then summon spirits and kill the nearby rangers/assassin blocking the path. Once those are dead, I run past the remaining necro/ranger mobs letting spirits entertain them, and keep running all the way down the trapped corridor, not stopping until I'm literally on top of the ritualist boss. Once he's dead, run and trigger the cutscene, finish as normal.

So that's the kind of speedclear-esque bullshit that can shave a minute+ off your time. Someone who could actually micro their heroes could likely improve further, proper 40/40s on everything could help as well, but I don't think we are even discussing build efficiency anymore... nor does whatever we are discussing matter if you're TDL to micro or do this crazy balling in an average PvE situation.

Morte66 · Apr 06, 2011, 09:42 AM // 09:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

So that's the kind of speedclear-esque bullshit that can shave a minute+ off your time. [....] if you're TDL to micro or do this crazy balling in an average PvE situation

I wonder how many people do this sort of thing sight-unseen in normal PvE (e.g. zm/zq or vanquishing for titles), rather than repetitive clears of well known areas. And I wonder if I could be doing it better than I do.

My experience with balling in sight-unseen PvE is that the game is usually not worth the candle. It can be pretty hard to ball up mixed ranged groups in less time than it would take to just kill them scattered. My baller can also die a lot, if they're staying out ahead to keep aggro while their pre-prots expire.

So... if I'm on my warrior I'll maybe get aggro from some melee foes and then drag them onto some ranged foes. Apart from that it's mostly a matter of pulling foes towards minions and spirits, and hoping most of them and up reasonably bunched. More than that isn't usually worth it.

It's different on a repeat area like Mt Quinkai, where I know that the first bunch of yetis won't ball for anyone, the second will if you do a short pull to the corner, the third do two miniballs easily, the fourth just ball on their own, etc. Also, I imagine I might have a different view of this if I played an Assassin.

Are other people balling foes as a matter of course, on areas they don't know well? If so, how?

Is anybody using bonders and/or prot spirits to let a lone tank operate out of aggro range to gather foes?

Is anybody finding it easy, or is it taking lots of delicate timing and quick fingered micro?

Daesu · Apr 06, 2011, 04:27 PM // 16:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morte66

Are other people balling foes as a matter of course, on areas they don't know well? If so, how?

Is anybody using bonders and/or prot spirits to let a lone tank operate out of aggro range to gather foes?

Is anybody finding it easy, or is it taking lots of delicate timing and quick fingered micro?

This is why I don't care to micro even though I know I can cut down my timing significantly if I do. For example, casting PS on myself while running to the next cut scene around the corner is going to save me significant amount of time.

Azazello · Apr 07, 2011, 07:28 PM // 19:28

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Originally Posted by HigherMinion

I'd like somone to try the Raisu run using a physical hero based team. Faster than dcord?

@above; "Gimped" is anything that isn't optimal. They're right in calling it that.

I just ran it with grenth derv, balth derv, and earthshaker. Got 12:28, which seems pretty slow compared to some of the builds in here. No micro, not even flags, no fall back etc, no cons, cynn and danika, no celestial, skipped nothing, didn't ball my pulls, just ran through and pinged everything.

Inspired me to work on the build, I'm certain physicals could go faster, considering all that.

AndrewSX · Apr 07, 2011, 08:24 PM // 20:24

So, after all this(and others) discussion and words spent about it, we came to a result that almost everyone know.

If you're and experienced/skilled player, doing team builds by your own has the best results.
If you're a casual/newbie/notsoskilled player, D/M/S is a quite universal,standard and (why not?) reliable teambuild.

It was true using 3 heroes, it's true using 7.

Daesu · Apr 08, 2011, 06:06 AM // 06:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Azazello

I just ran it with grenth derv, balth derv, and earthshaker. Got 12:28, which seems pretty slow compared to some of the builds in here. No micro, not even flags, no fall back etc, no cons, cynn and danika, no celestial, skipped nothing, didn't ball my pulls, just ran through and pinged everything.

Inspired me to work on the build, I'm certain physicals could go faster, considering all that.

From my attempts, FB does make a difference, having 2 FB would give you an advantage.

From experimentations of the successful builds presented here, certain skills seem to work great in Raisu HM, for example RoJ, Invoke Lightning, and EBSoH. EBSoH, a common damage boosting pve skill for physicals, seems to be underrated for boosting the damage of casters.

Knowing what we know now, there are already many 7H builds that are superior to SMD even without taking micro into account.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewSX

It was true using 3 heroes, it's true using 7.

Not really, with 7 heroes you don't need to rely as much on discordway to cramp your skill bars, so you can have the freedom to create a more damage oriented hero team.

Azazello · Apr 08, 2011, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daesu

From my attempts, FB does make a difference, having 2 FB would give you an advantage.

Yeah just ran through again, added a copy of fall back, 11:08. Pretty good for three melee heroes.

greenough · Apr 10, 2011, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Outerworld

Thom/Rand 22 mins, non-discord. Invent shown at beggining and the end shows no cons were used. Would be nice too see if someone could do faster.

must of hit insert instead of print screen at the end but ended with 22 min's. will try again later, see if i can get 21, bad place to test tho, spawns are always different.

Edit: this was the first time i've ever put any effort into a discord build, i thought a 1 target skill like discord was useless and always went with aoe builds. after seeing what discord can actually do i don't think i can ever go back to 3-4 Mes's.

22 minute run, would of easly been 21 if hero's didn't get stuck on a spirit on the bridge. i ran ahead and didn't' notice and got ko'd.

Edit 2:

Jeydra · Jul 17, 2011, 01:19 AM // 01:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Just so I don't miss the deadline if we are continuing for some reason ...

I REALLY don't think I can get it down much more, although just scraping past the 8-minute mark is a possibility.

http://img151.imageshack.us/i/gw098i.jpg/
http://img846.imageshack.us/i/gw099.jpg/
http://img861.imageshack.us/f/gw100.jpg/
http://img846.imageshack.us/i/gw101.jpg/

**** yeah Raisu

I did not take all the relevant screenshots, so you'll have to trust me that I did use Cynn + Danika and didn't use the celestial skill.

I was originally planning on doing a trial where I drop one hero at a time, just to see how much of an impact the hero has, but it became obvious that trying to do the mission 7-man without the MM takes a lot more time (>1 minute) that I didn't finish through with the experiment. Losing the MM makes many of the former tactics no longer viable, and I bet the same applies to losing any of the Rits. I can still finish, it just takes a lot longer. Haven't bothered with the Mesmers and Ele, though.

Shrimz · Jul 18, 2011, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

**** yeah Raisu

I did not take all the relevant screenshots, so you'll have to trust me that I did use Cynn + Danika and didn't use the celestial skill.

I was originally planning on doing a trial where I drop one hero at a time, just to see how much of an impact the hero has, but it became obvious that trying to do the mission 7-man without the MM takes a lot more time (>1 minute) that I didn't finish through with the experiment. Losing the MM makes many of the former tactics no longer viable, and I bet the same applies to losing any of the Rits. I can still finish, it just takes a lot longer. Haven't bothered with the Mesmers and Ele, though.

You started off dissing S/D/M but you use 2 Rts and 2 Mes and a Nec. me so confuse.

Xenomortis · Jul 18, 2011, 11:44 AM // 11:44

I see a distinct lack of Discord.