Curse

furby · Aug 23, 2005, 04:00 AM // 04:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Spirit spam. In particular, tactical use of well positioned spirits to clog up the battlefield to their advantage.

wtf? where did this come from? Tactical placement of Spirts on the map? LOL, I'm in EP and that's definitely news to me. especially considering we haven't had the honor of GvGing the good folks at IQ yet...

i'll give you the benefit of the doubt however, and admit that "tactical" is a very general word, so I'll try to guess at what you were saying with this...

either by tactical you mean we are exploiting spirit collision and blocking the flag tower with spirts. Out of principle we rarely do this, and if ever, we only do it once the other team has begun this tactic (which hopefully will be resolved soon once collision coding of spirits is changed).

or we are putting our spirits in select points of the map to in essence control and dictate the game flow. This I unflinchingly admit we do... which is what I think the whole philosophy of spirts was when they were created.

They allow you to alter the environment in a way that puts another wrinkle of strategy into the metagame. ie: with primal echoes, Do you stay here and let your signets burn your energy, or do you step back and fight from a weaker position but with a little less e-denial.

oh and on a side note, Nature's Renewal, the so-called most broken skill in the game, is NOWHERE in EP's build. is that giving away too much?

at the end of the day, i don't believe spirts dominate our build. we've had our ranger err=7 from GvG matches and still won the match against top 40 guilds. i would chalk it up to teamwork, playing together for a LONG time now, and having the sum of the team be greater than the individual players.

... i guess the test for us is how we adapt to the PvP balance changes right?

Quebec Osti · Aug 23, 2005, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Still looking for a counter to spirit spamming?
How about a Hammer war with:

devastating hammmer
heavy blow
Irresistible blow
gryphon sweep

90% of the spirit spammer use either dryder's defense, lightning reflex or whirlwind defense to either evade or block attacks... If he is evading, use gryphon... if hes blocking, use irresistible. Either way you can know him down and interupt him. He will then probably stop using his stance and you should have full adrenaline. You can then knockhim down again to interupt spirit cast using devastating/heavy blow.

Also, a mesmer with

mantra inscription
signet of humility
leech sig

do a pretty good job preventing spirit spamming... Keep signet of humility on him all the time (possible cause of mantra) without oat shot he cant spam them... Then interupt some of the spirit cast he will do every 60sec with leech sig.

PaulOtt · Aug 23, 2005, 05:23 AM // 05:23

All it takes is one skill to shutdown a single spammer: Blackout.

Quebec Osti · Aug 23, 2005, 05:41 AM // 05:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaulOtt

All it takes is one skill to shutdown a single spammer: Blackout.

Yea, arcane echo/blackout work kinda well... but require you to basicly babysit the spirit spammer without doing much else.

Iras K · Aug 23, 2005, 06:48 AM // 06:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Algren Cole

my "Walking Bomb" build has little to do with sacrificing health as it does with committing suicide for a reason...

I can read a whoel thread and go along with truth/knowledge/stupidity/rant/ignorance/etc. But when I see people ganking others ideas and calling them as their own, that´s really miserable and pisses me off.

banishd · Aug 23, 2005, 07:04 AM // 07:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by asdar

Not the skill the guild. They must have won 87 HoH's this weekend.

They've gotta be doing something right.

Corrected

Ensign · Aug 23, 2005, 07:48 AM // 07:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by furby

either by tactical you mean we are exploiting spirit collision and blocking the flag tower with spirts. Out of principle we rarely do this, and if ever, we only do it once the other team has begun this tactic (which hopefully will be resolved soon once collision coding of spirits is changed).

That's the specific instance that people talk about. I personally don't see any problem doing this as it's a great tactic that more people should take advantage of, if given the opportunity. Perhaps it's an embellishment of what actually goes on in the match, but that's the part that sticks with people.

I hope that I will have enough of a guild at some point in the future to see firsthand what you're doing, since it's obviously working.

Quote:

Originally Posted by furby

or we are putting our spirits in select points of the map to in essence control and dictate the game flow. This I unflinchingly admit we do... which is what I think the whole philosophy of spirts was when they were created.

Well that's the tactical ends of the spirit mechanic, even if it wasn't intended that way. Just dropping important spirits right in the middle of the battle has never been wise - particularly in GvG it has been about positioning, at the very least to protect your spirits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by furby

oh and on a side note, Nature's Renewal, the so-called most broken skill in the game, is NOWHERE in EP's build. is that giving away too much?

Yes, no, maybe. At some point Nature's Renewal stops being as relevant because everyone's prepared for it - dropping it is unlikely to have much of an impact, and the other team knows that too, so then you start trying to figure out how much you can get away with without getting owned by the skill - symmetrical effects are a ton of fun like that.

That you're not running it means two things to me. One, that the opponents that you're concerned about are running builds that are sufficiently hardened against Nature's Renewal that you don't expect the spirit to have much of an effect. Second, that your build is using more enchantments and hexes than the opponents that you care about, so using that skill would be disadvantageous more often than not. Given that you're on top of the ladder this doesn't really surprise me, as I don't think that any guild with a rating that high is going to be running a build that gets smashed by that ritual.

Quote:

Originally Posted by furby

i would chalk it up to teamwork, playing together for a LONG time now, and having the sum of the team be greater than the individual players.

Ultimately that's what wins in this game. It's the reason I continue to play it, because despite all the problems, the core of this game is still brilliant.

Peace,
-CxE

Mitsu Bishi · Aug 23, 2005, 08:04 AM // 08:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timoz

<<Staying on topic..Hehe, The Guild Natures Renewal are a newly formed guild of people who all recently left The Esoteric Warrriors.

I believe after playing them their build consists of 1 trapper, 1 spirit spammer, 3 monks, 1 axe warrior, 1 interrupt ranger and another ranger damage dealer.

The trapper, I can confirm that one. He was a major pain in the rear because he trapped the whole altar. Once we had their ghostly killed, our own ghostly slowly hobbled towards the altar because he was constantly running into barbed traps.

I don't think they got that build off EW, because when I played against EW, they were using a smite build without any spirits.

banishd · Aug 23, 2005, 08:05 AM // 08:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mitsu Bishi

The trapper, I can confirm that one. He was a major pain in the rear because he trapped the whole altar. Once we had their ghostly killed, our own ghostly slowly hobbled towards the altar because he was constantly running into barbed traps.

I don't think they got that build off EW, because when I played against EW, they were using a smite build without any spirits.

NR = EW
EW = DEAD

Asrial · Aug 23, 2005, 08:34 AM // 08:34

What about....

2 N/R's
3 N/Mo's
2 Me/Mo's
1 55/105 Mo/X

.

This is just a quick.. "hey, that sounds cool" idea. It requires an advanced team of number crunchers.

In the beginning, the 55/105 monk gets set up and runs off.

The rest of the group swarm the group of spirits and clustering spammers. The 2 N/R's drop Edge of Extinction (the 2nd is to protect against disruption). The 3 N/Mo's start preparing Death Nova and start sacrificing health to allow for suicide. The moment the first N drops, the Me/Mo's with max fast casting toss Vengeance onto the dead N's. The N's then use Contemplation of Purity (took a while to find this) at which point they die again (Vengeance is an enchantment and CoP removes all enchantments from you.. so you die again). By now, you SHOULD have a pretty massive chain reaction as there's been 6 deaths pretty damn quick.. which is most likely going to be 10 deaths in quick succession (the N/R's and Me/Mo's). The 55/105 monk is just to insure that your team wins, in case they're caught in range of an Edge of Extinction. Their damage is nullified to 5.

Thoughts?

Maagus · Aug 23, 2005, 10:49 AM // 10:49

We have recently (yesterday) discovered that even slight change in our build can help us defeat some kinds of spirit spammers. However this is only succesful against those weaker spammers (however we have managed to beat some guilds that aren´t so bad). And I think the same about other builds that they won´t be much succesful against more experienced ranger build. Because if they were, nobody will see these top guilds and teams (AeC, Grim, MS, NR, Highlords, Corpse Scavenger´s team...) using spirit spam but they will use the counter to get and hold HoH. So why don´t they do that ?
To me it seems that only way to counter those spams is to spam even more or use the spam with other combination (wards for example). But I will rather keep losing than run the boring spirit spam build which is designed only for fame and not for fun.

asdar · Aug 23, 2005, 11:11 AM // 11:11

Well if NR had 87 wins this weekend it's a good thing NR (the skill) is so easy to counter or they'd be over 200. (/sarcasm)

One smart team finally shut them down hard I bet on their 88th. Those dumb morons that were playing the first 87 times should go back to pong.

Grindwarrior · Aug 23, 2005, 11:34 AM // 11:34

"Counter" to NR = exactly the same build but use your extra skill slot to give you the edge? Why not bring natures renewal yourself since your team does so well in it? Having 1 slot more is sooo valuable? LOL! You can't counter a NR build with anything but another NR build.

Nash · Aug 23, 2005, 12:06 PM // 12:06

Which isn't a counter...

Hippie Crack · Aug 23, 2005, 12:15 PM // 12:15

I've won the hall, and held it with an E/Mo smite based team. I play warrior(W/R) and when we run into spirit I gun right for the spammer, no teams runs more than 1 oath shot guy, and disrupting chop is your friend. Once the NR every 10 seconds is taken care of, our smiter is good enough to smite around the NR every 30 seconds(usually 2 other people on spirit teams carry NR for backup). Its not that hard folks, intelligent play > NR spam. As soon as their spammer is disabled from dropping NR, the other people on the team are gonna start dropping NR, effectively taking them out of the battle also since it has such a long cast time. They're dedicating 3 people on their team to disable just 1 person on our team. Judges insight on my W/R lets me hack at the rangers petty armor for 120+ damager per strike, under tiger's fury i drop them like flies. We also run a lvl16 EoE, having a 16BM ranger isn't a problem, we also run symbiosis so it works out well since we're an enchant heavy team.

NR isn't overpowered AT ALL right now, making it elite is the most i would do to it.

Nash · Aug 23, 2005, 12:37 PM // 12:37

...Another ignorant post defending broken skills, drawing conclusions from limited experience, and posting pseudo-counters. Just what we need.

asdar · Aug 23, 2005, 12:42 PM // 12:42

Smiting teams are good in Tombs and great at HoH once they get through Tombs but they don't win 87 times in a row since they balanced out Balth aura.

I didn't mean to start an NR the skill thread. I was trying to scam some info about a good team.

Even if W/R combo was an effective counter to NR that's even easier to counter. Slows, knockdowns and blinds rip them. Even if you have someone helping you on conditions and hexes your team has to come to the NR team.

Smiters can be powerful, there's no doubt of that. But they can be countered. I'd say a Smiter build vs. an NR team loses 9 out of 10 if there's equal skill on both teams.

banishd · Aug 23, 2005, 12:50 PM // 12:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by asdar

Smiting teams are good in Tombs and great at HoH once they get through Tombs but they don't win 87 times in a row since they balanced out Balth aura.

I didn't mean to start an NR the skill thread. I was trying to scam some info about a good team.

Even if W/R combo was an effective counter to NR that's even easier to counter. Slows, knockdowns and blinds rip them. Even if you have someone helping you on conditions and hexes your team has to come to the NR team.

Smiters can be powerful, there's no doubt of that. But they can be countered. I'd say a Smiter build vs. an NR team loses 9 out of 10 if there's equal skill on both teams.

smite teams are a joke.
NR is a good guild, made by ex-EW members who got kicked lol, and dragged some EW members with them, then recruited a bunch of rank 9+ people.

they run a trapper build with massive degen, and it just owns spirit groups, and is good at holding.

Sambjo · Aug 23, 2005, 01:56 PM // 13:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hippie Crack

I've won the hall, and held it with an E/Mo smite based team. I play warrior(W/R) and when we run into spirit I gun right for the spammer, no teams runs more than 1 oath shot guy, and disrupting chop is your friend. Once the NR every 10 seconds is taken care of, our smiter is good enough to smite around the NR every 30 seconds(usually 2 other people on spirit teams carry NR for backup). Its not that hard folks, intelligent play > NR spam. As soon as their spammer is disabled from dropping NR, the other people on the team are gonna start dropping NR, effectively taking them out of the battle also since it has such a long cast time. They're dedicating 3 people on their team to disable just 1 person on our team. Judges insight on my W/R lets me hack at the rangers petty armor for 120+ damager per strike, under tiger's fury i drop them like flies. We also run a lvl16 EoE, having a 16BM ranger isn't a problem, we also run symbiosis so it works out well since we're an enchant heavy team.

NR isn't overpowered AT ALL right now, making it elite is the most i would do to it.

First of all, W/R with tiger's fury is stupid. Way to waste 5 energy, ruin any chance you had of cunning spiking, and generally screwing your versatility while wasting a secondary class and attributes.

Ok, now that I have that out of the way: Only a stupid spirit spammer wouldn't bring a defensive stance. You got lucky, there's no competition in tombs anymore anyway.

About your last comment: I don't know why I bothered replying in the first place. You go on beleiving that a skill that counters 1/4 of the games other skills isn't overpowered. While you're at it, lets buff energy drain and signet of humility. Thumbs up to you, smart guy.

furby · Aug 23, 2005, 04:42 PM // 16:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I hope that I will have enough of a guild at some point in the future to see firsthand what you're doing, since it's obviously working.

Go Go Observor Mode!