Curse

Grazan · Nov 21, 2005, 01:30 AM // 01:30

Ever gotten a jump to the Hall? Do you get really excited and then there are more than three teams in which you have to fight one team before you even get to the middle chamber? That's happened to me several times and it's getting really annoying. We're always wasting our time fighting the other team and we don't even get a chance to get to the center before the time runs out. The allotted time is usually enough if the teams start out at first, but both teams stood still for a while. On more than 3 teams in HoH, should the timer be increased? Should it just be restricted to 3 teams? What do you guys think?

CAT · Nov 21, 2005, 02:07 AM // 02:07

Well... having the 2 extra teams give people more options to get into halls, so more ppl can actually get in. Also it SOMEWHAT prevents omgleet holding builds with 7 monks and a ranger that somehow beat the ghosts. Increasing the timer maybe by just 2 minutes would be enough I think(i mean, courtyard is the same timer but 3 ppl).

One thing I DONT like is how the holding team can place fertile season and symbiosis to make your fight take longer so you cant go fight in the middle. As if fertile wasnt a big enough advantage in halls.

I never really thought about it, but I think it should maybe just add 2 minutes or so. Many experienced players use builds that are somewhat slowkilling, energy denail or things that are build to hold but can still kill. In hall of heroes its a real bummer because 90% of the teams are half decent so if your running a slow kill build its gonna be a 6+ minute fight.

Rey Lentless · Nov 21, 2005, 02:15 AM // 02:15

I don't mind the timer or that 5 teams can be there.

What bothers me too is the holding team can spam fertile and symbiosis within range of the teams fighting. The stairs leading up to the fighting teams should be closed until the teams are done to prevent this.

If you can't beat a team quickly enough to have a chance to take out the holding team.. that's ok, it's a balance issue as he said. Like relic runs and other altar maps, it's to ensure that your team is capable of doing more than just holding, it has to be able to do a few things on the way to get there.

I would like to see skipping changed too so teams have to actually go through at least half of the maps first before taking the hall so teams can't bypass those with a better than normal holding build that they're able to use by skipping.

Entropius · Nov 21, 2005, 05:08 AM // 05:08

I've run into fertile - symbiosis teams with a bonder quite a bit lately. Last night I was in a bloodspike team (7x N/Mo with vamp gaze and shadowstrike; 1x E/Me with oflame) that had major issues with one of these; the night before I was in a pressure build (2x axe W/R, 1x pyro, 1x interrupt ranger, 1x shutdown mesmer with lingering, heal heal prot) that beat one without too much trouble.

The fertile/symbiosis/QZ team has a huge advantage holding against spike.

A spike team's offense is brutal but clumsy, and has difficulty taking down spirits et al. It's also an all-or-nothing endeavor; you typically do damage slowly enough that, if you don't kill a target, you've achieved nothing because their monks will just heal whatever damage you did before you're ready to spike again, and most spikes are slow enough that you can't overpressure monks with them.

So you have to kill the spirits first, then kill them again because the spammer recast them, then kill the spammer himself, then (assuming you still have energy left because of QZ) spike a value target such as the ghost. But you can't spike the ghost, because the bonder spellbreakered him as soon as the spammer dropped. So you go spike someone else, and by the time breaker drops they've got their spammer and spirits back up.

This probably isn't a problem for balanced damage groups, since the holding team typically doesn't have all that much healing over time, and you can just wear them down gradually in a standard battle. Granted, anything they can do to slow the pace of combat benefits the holding team (since they get their signets back periodically and you don't, plus the clock is on their side), but you've still got a chance at least, and it comes down to the standard uphill battle that taking the altar usually is.

Hopefully this annoying tactic is just a response to the spike-heavy metagame -- which I'm getting a bit tired of, personally.

If your only opponents are iway (which doesn't run enchantment removal, so lifebond = amazing) and spike, then running the symbiosis + fertile + qz + bonder build makes sense.

Against, say, a shutdown hex spamming build, or a just a balanced pressure build (like the one mentioned above with the fire ele), it's significantly less good.

I think it will bring enchantment removal back, though -- people have gotten lax about running rends since the emo smiters went away. Now chilblains, lingering, rend, etc., are going to get more popular.

glenn_rolfe · Nov 21, 2005, 07:18 AM // 07:18

I don't see the issue. Kill the spirits and interrupt the spirit spammer. That's something that you need to consider in your build. The more challenges offered on the way to halls, and taking and holding halls, to me, brings about more balanced ideas in builds
You've got to think - is my build a good fight build, relic build, capping build, and holding build.

I like the balance.

Entropius · Nov 21, 2005, 08:06 AM // 08:06

You can't interrupt the spirit spammer. He runs resolve.

I agree, though -- these spirit builds are in some way a reaction to the spike-heavy metagame.

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 21, 2005, 08:19 AM // 08:19

In my experience, taking out the spirits usually isn't a really feasable strategy. The spammer will always plant them somewhere out of the way, and with Oath Shot + QZ up he can drop new spirits every 10 seconds. If you can manage to take out the spammer and keep him down that will work, but this is assuming a pretty poor set of monks - remember, the spammer is affected by his own spirits, so you have to drop him through nearly double health.

On the other hand, its been my experience that spreading damage on several targets followed by a quick focus-fire on one can drop people through the spirits. Choose a target that's already at fairly low health, then hit him with a Shatter and pile damage. Remember that with this build Shatter Enchantment is equal to Shatter Damage + Symbiosis Enchantment, and Rend likewise becomes a nice sudden damager. If your Monks are good at focus swapping and generally holding up then you should be able to survive long enough to take them out.

In the end though, it's just another holding build that is only really good for one thing. If the Hall of Heros map wasn't so poorly constructed this sort of build wouldn't be nearly as effective.

On Topic: I barely ever see 5-way matches in the Hall these days, but when I have seen them they're usually not a big issue. If we can't drop the opposing team in less than 8 minutes I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be able to drop the team sitting on the altar. The altar team is getting a morale boost every 2 minutes and is almost certainly set up for holding to boot.

Xasew · Nov 21, 2005, 12:43 PM // 12:43

Make the hall 1v1 and make tha hero cap the altar instantly. If there's 3 teams, make it so that 2 teams fight each other and the winner gets to fight the holding team, HoH is so retarded atm. Also, interrupts really RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO it up(hero starts capping at 40 seconds left and couldn't make it even though he had Guardian on him). Surprise, surprise, we were beating a ranger team, but we didn't have time to kill all the rangers in 40 seconds(really hard with a warrior heavy team).

a cadet · Nov 21, 2005, 01:47 PM // 13:47

The new update, where the hero starts capping at any place on the altar (not the center) is a huge change. Before, the teams would ball up on the altar and prevent (or at least delay) the ghost from capping. Now, literally the second you kill the ghostly both are capping. It is significantly harder to interupt now because you dont have those 5 seconds where you can say "ok lets start interupting"... by the time you figure out your ghost is dead the ghost is already half way through capping.

Multiple times in the halls (post update), what would happen is something that really couldnt have happened before: people doing last minute spiking on the hero. Before this was completely impossible because by the time your hero actually reaches the center (past virtually the entire other team), it would be interupted forever. Now something like this happens.

Blue is holding, yellow and red run in. Yellow is superior and quickly throws blue and red off the altar, they retreat and yellow caps. at 2:00, blue and red run in, kill the hero and suddenly blue caps already, even though yellow could probably easily beat red and bluein a 1v1. Ive played almost all positions in this scenario - the blue (defending team) doing that last second come back, and the yellow team where we kicked everyone off the altar only to fall to a quick spike. The capping mechanism has been improved in that update, possibly more than one might think.

Spellbrealer and Guardian are excellant, when we were capping we would slap both on the Ghostly Hero and he would get interupted maybe once, usually he would simply cap. There was far less of that interupt spam - and we faced a ranger spike.

As to the original point, if your team cant kill the other team in 10 minutes, what chances do you really have to win/hold the HoH? These kinds of strategies prevent 8 monk builds from working.

yangster · Nov 21, 2005, 10:12 PM // 22:12

It's just like before when spirit spamming was not nerfed. You can get one nuker and have it devoting to kill all of the spirits when you start fighting a team with a spammer. I've done it before the update and my team went to halls after 3 matches or so. Energy denial would also be effective against the spammer.

glenn_rolfe · Nov 22, 2005, 04:39 AM // 04:39

I think claim resource should be a 1 second quicker spell because it's just too easy to interrupt. A ranger or shock warrior will just stop the claim everytime in that frantic last 40 seconds.

Sir Aurik · Nov 22, 2005, 04:58 AM // 04:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by glenn_rolfe

I think claim resource should be a 1 second quicker spell because it's just too easy to interrupt. A ranger or shock warrior will just stop the claim everytime in that frantic last 40 seconds.

spellbreaker, guardian omg he capped!

Rey Lentless · Nov 22, 2005, 05:15 AM // 05:15

guardian eh

yah, gl with that

NightOwl · Nov 22, 2005, 05:32 AM // 05:32

Wasn't the claim resource time just reduced a few days ago?

Entropius · Nov 22, 2005, 05:58 AM // 05:58

Anyone who's tried to use guardian to prevent a ghost from being interrupted by ranger spammers knows that it doesn't work.

Sephir Demange · Nov 22, 2005, 12:49 PM // 12:49

It does when you cover it with spell breaker. Come on now, can't drain him if he's immune to spells. And even at it's lowest spec, I'm pretty sure it'll last long enough for the hero to cap. Capping isn't the issue, it's fighting through QZ if a competent team is running it. By competent I mean QZ will ALWAYS be down until you kill the spirit spammer. Also even a really good monk will have problems healing through QZ if he isn't already set up for it, if only because he doesn't work picture perfectly with the other monk. To be honest, echo+sig of weariness+QZ is starting to smell a bit like a FoTM. But, like any build, the crappy teams imitating it will always pale in comparison to the real thing.

a cadet · Nov 22, 2005, 02:47 PM // 14:47

guardian actually does work. ~50% chance of blocking an interupt. If the interupt is blocked and the ranger spams every interupt he has, hes not going to interupt the next one, and if he doesnt, the ghost caps.

Clearly if there are 4 or more rangers it wont work, but you can always gale the rangers (3 second knockdown, 3 second capping time), and then just hope whichever ranger you missed doesnt get lucky? From experience, we were able to cap multiple times because of guardian.

Vermilion Okeanos · Nov 23, 2005, 09:40 PM // 21:40

An old saying "To conquer the world; one must have man (talented people), land (secured/resourceful/reliable start point), and heaven's timing (luck)". [forgot where I read this... I think it was suntzu bin fa: art of war]

So this translate to...
to win HoH you need
talented players
a good build
luck

Personally I hate the luck department, I just got none of it.

Hannibel · Nov 23, 2005, 10:41 PM // 22:41

i think the hall is fine, i just thinkg people are complaining that they can't win it, it's not supposed to be an easy thing to do, since it is a strategy game your strategy should also incorparate how much time you have to kill the other team, it's pointless to complain about the timing because you don't know what team your gonna run into or what they're running you having bad luck on the team you run into is just coincidence and this thread should just be closed.

yangster · Nov 25, 2005, 03:12 PM // 15:12

I never won HoH but been there before. It's just that the teams I'm with either jumped into HoH w/o trying to or we get people DC and having to go cuz of emergency. Although, we almost won once when we jumped into HoH but the timing was off.