Curse

ElevenBravo · Jun 04, 2005, 04:53 AM // 04:53

This is what the new soon to be FOTM HOH build is going to be. Have your rangers spam Spirits all over the place. We went up against a team that had no kidding, about 10-15 spirits, just spammed everywhere. Not a very skillful tactic but effective. Be on the look out for it cause it sucks to go up against.

Tellani Artini · Jun 04, 2005, 05:03 AM // 05:03

I'm in the guild that uses this strategy, The Kansas City Hotsteppers. And yes, we did win HoH once after three tries. The whole point of the strategy is that it's a perfect counter to the popular air elementalist spike build floating around these days. Fertile season provides a huge buffer for healers to WoH the aggroed target. Nature's renewal strips elemental attunements. Quickening zephyr drives up the cost of nukes. Most teams we beat don't even know what's going on; they think we're using necro skills or something (when we don't even have necros..) and asking what the hell happened to all their precious protection enchants. Occasionally they actually target the spirits, but we have so many it takes a lot of fighting time away from real targets. I guess anything but 5 elementalists and 3 monks is too confusing for folks in the tombs.

Also, please explain how this is not a skillful tactic. How many teams win HoH with 2 monks and 3+ rangers?

Radagast de Brun · Jun 04, 2005, 05:16 AM // 05:16

Any team that can take advantage of and coordinate the use of nature rituals to that extent is worthy of respect. It actually takes a great amount of teamwork to use the rituals effectively. 10-15 seems like it would be excessive based on sheer cast times, but if it works, go for it.

Tellani, if you are spamming that many spirits why not get some necros? If you cast some low level spirits they'll start getting a much needed energy boost and corpse pool, if a battle gets extended.

Kishin · Jun 04, 2005, 05:34 AM // 05:34

Spirits don't leave corpses, they just kinda fold in on themselves and poof.

This is beautiful. I love when people prove the "If you aren't spiking, tanking, or healing you ain't worth it" mentality that is running rampant in tombs right now wrong.

RandomEngy · Jun 04, 2005, 05:35 AM // 05:35

Well for one, when spirits die they don't leave corpses. Also, getting minons is pretty expensive and is made worse by Quickening Zepher. Oh and one of our rangers was basically a full time spirit ranger with 6 of them, so all he would do is run around casting spirits, and you get the full complement in a hurry, plus they stick around for 1-3 minutes after casting.

However I have to admit, that the tactic is pretty darn hard to counter, short of doing the exact same thing. But I don't feel bad about using it because our guild invented it.

Samuel · Jun 04, 2005, 03:29 PM // 15:29

Teehee.

ElevenBravo · Jun 04, 2005, 03:53 PM // 15:53

Our guild came up with a name for your build, it’s called the "Diarrhea" build because all you do is have your ranger crap out spirits. Its not skillful because you’re just taking advantage of a skill that requires no "player skill" to use. You just spam spirits and that’s it. I wouldn’t get too used to that build because I imagine the dev team never intended that many spirit’s to be on a map at 1 time. I can understand 1 of each spirit maybe per team but 4 frozen soils in the same area sounds like an exploit to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tellani Artini

I'm in the guild that uses this strategy, The Kansas City Hotsteppers. And yes, we did win HoH once after three tries. The whole point of the strategy is that it's a perfect counter to the popular air elementalist spike build floating around these days. Fertile season provides a huge buffer for healers to WoH the aggroed target. Nature's renewal strips elemental attunements. Quickening zephyr drives up the cost of nukes. Most teams we beat don't even know what's going on; they think we're using necro skills or something (when we don't even have necros..) and asking what the hell happened to all their precious protection enchants. Occasionally they actually target the spirits, but we have so many it takes a lot of fighting time away from real targets. I guess anything but 5 elementalists and 3 monks is too confusing for folks in the tombs.

Also, please explain how this is not a skillful tactic. How many teams win HoH with 2 monks and 3+ rangers?

Tellani Artini · Jun 04, 2005, 04:07 PM // 16:07

Have some imagination, will you? It's not a terribly difficult build to counter if you use your head. It's a lot harder than pressing the chain lightning button, though.

RandomEngy · Jun 04, 2005, 04:23 PM // 16:23

You're looking at the build in a really shallow manner. The point isn't to have lots of spirits around, it's to craft a team that those spirits will benefit. Every single one of those effects benefits our team (Except sometimes edge of extinction). Sure one could argue that the one spirit-laying guy doesn't take too much skill (other than staying alive) but the rest of the team still has to play at their best and communicate well to get to and win the HoH.

ElevenBravo · Jun 04, 2005, 04:29 PM // 16:29

Obviously you guys are in that guild. If not, just wait until you come across it. And, just wait until it becomes the FOTM and every team has 10-15 spirits spammed across the map. Yea, that will make pvp really interesting.

JYX · Jun 04, 2005, 04:36 PM // 16:36

I really don't think thats what he's talking about here. I think the issue is fertile season abuse. I remember tektonik talking a while back about Blood Eagles trying out the fertile season abuse, they had one e/n and 7 mo/r. Each of the seven people were able to easily put out three fertile seasons and keep them running.

Since they stack. This meant everyone had 10,980 health and at least 690 armour. Since nature rituals affect the spirits too, the spirits had about this much health and armour. Then they just healed until everyone got bored and went home. Apparently LotD quit after just looking at what they were doing.

The thread is here its an old thread so some of the issues may have already been fixed, I don't play ranger though and didn't pay much attention. Although I don't remember seing any announcements.

Eight Rooks · Jun 04, 2005, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElevenBravo

I wouldn’t get too used to that build because I imagine the dev team never intended that many spirit’s to be on a map at 1 time. I can understand 1 of each spirit maybe per team but 4 frozen soils in the same area sounds like an exploit to me.

The "no skill" bit is bull, but I will agree with you on this one, possibly. We have been wondering if/when/how ArenaNet will react; we're not stupid. Although it always puzzles me when stuff like this happens; if they never intended to give people no upper limit on spirits, how the hell did no-one catch this in beta? From my experience playing videogames - all sorts over nearly 20 years - if you give people an ability or a thing they can do that benefits them and that's multiple use, there will always be people who sooner or later start using it as many times as they can. It doesn't seem like that hard a thing to realise; "okay, we've put this thing in; is it too powerful to ensure balanced competitive play? right, we've allowed people to use it as many times as is practically possible; is it going to become too powerful if people use it a thousand times at once?" Not exactly rocket science.

That's partly a nudge at ArenaNet and partly at players like you; stop assuming these flavour of the week builds like aeromancers up the yin-yang are all there is to the game and have a think about what people might do to counter you without just going "meh, spirits=teh crap, no REAL MAN would ever do such a thing". Our opponents in the HoH were supposed to be the people in the game who'd played it to death, could take on anything and would be hell to beat - they didn't have a clue what was going on at first. Obviously they are a lot better than us in many respects

but it's still a bit of a surprise to find out you're shocking people that badly.

And it DOES take skill to employ, and there ARE ways around it. Quit whining, realise no build is Godlike, no build or profession is gimped or useless, and take a little time next run to actually think about what you might come up against instead of just going down the "ME CRUSH YOU WIT LIGHTNING DMG" route or whatever's replaced it.

EDIT: Oh, and if both teams used the build, all it does is level the playing field; take away hexes, buffs and enchants and you're down to raw damage, really. A team of mostly heavy damage Warriors would have given us a very hard time. Plus you can still USE enchants; they just don't stick around for long and take twice as long to cast.

Crazy Carl · Jun 04, 2005, 04:45 PM // 16:45

I'm confused, though... Spirits effect both teams, right? So all advantages and disadvantages are equally distributed.

The way I see it, casting a spirit is a way of basically forcing your opponent to fight on 'your turf'. Be it 'Winter' for cold damage, or frozen soil for a team of stalwarts. I suppose then yo ubank on the assumption that the other team isn't used to playing on your conditions and is thrown off by the changes.

Eight Rooks · Jun 04, 2005, 04:47 PM // 16:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crazy Carl

I'm confused, though... Spirits effect both teams, right? So all advantages and disadvantages are equally distributed.

The way I see it, casting a spirit is a way of basically forcing your opponent to fight on 'your turf'. Be it 'Winter' for cold damage, or frozen soil for a team of stalwarts. I suppose then yo ubank on the assumption that the other team isn't used to playing on your conditions and is thrown off by the changes.

That was a large part of it, yes. See my edit.

Tellani Artini · Jun 04, 2005, 04:49 PM // 16:49

Fertile season doesn't stack. Only one can be in effect at a time. It's just a buffer against spikers, and isn't an enchantment (like life bond) that can be removed easily. We've never had trouble killing anything with fertile season up, for various reasons.

JYX · Jun 04, 2005, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Wow, they actually fixed the thing huh? I'm rather impressed.

Eight Rooks · Jun 04, 2005, 04:56 PM // 16:56

Oh, and it was more that we were counting that other team builds would mean they were unable to adapt to the situation even if they did work out what was going on. Which turned out to be the case, in part; everyone relies so heavily on enchants lots of people kept trying them over and over, unable to deal without having them up almost permanently, and we just hacked them up while they were running around trying to escape. Several people did put up a good fight, though. Some of the most fun we had with the build was when people worked out what we were doing and quickly tried to work out a decent strategy to counter it on the spot.

Studio Ghibli · Jun 04, 2005, 05:05 PM // 17:05

Kudos on both the name of the guild (my guild was laughing when we saw you take the HoH) and the strategy (we were also discussing how to counter those ele spikes).

Eight Rooks · Jun 04, 2005, 05:14 PM // 17:14

Thanks. We definitely weren't the first people to try it as a counter; some of us saw people making some small-scale use of it in the arenas. But we didn't see anyone using rituals much in Tombs/HoH, and definitely not on this scale. I think it was Tellani thought of seriously going for it, another of us thought of going mad with it, and we just practised with it for an evening to get our tactics up to scratch for it.

Now let's all think of another weird strategy.

Mumblyfish · Jun 04, 2005, 05:17 PM // 17:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eight Rooks

Some of the most fun we had with the build was when people worked out what we were doing and quickly tried to work out a decent strategy to counter it on the spot.

And, might I add, most Guilds that caught on to this actually won. It's by no means an imbalanced build, you just need to look at what's in play and what you have to counter it. We only had one ritualist, myself, and said ritualist had no healing abilities, no stances, and had Superior Rune health hits out of the wazoo. Now, which team is the skilless one? The team putting out rituals faster than the enemy can destroy them, or the team letting the ritualist run around with nothing to fear?

There's plenty of skills out there to counter this. You know what would have decimated us? Using Edge of Extinction (which we did play when it was beneficial) to chain-kill all the rituals. Using a ritual to kill rituals, maybe even... gasp, losing an Air Elementalist in favour of a Ranger. That's not imbalance. That's teams being ill-prepared to take on any situation, then whinging because their one-trick pony can't cut it against various original builds.