Curse

Lebdan · Sep 05, 2005, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Man With No Name

Clearly 90% of the people who responded can't read...

This isn't about Smiting or the armor-ignoring holy damage.

This is about an Enchantment that gives a limitless supply of energy and healing, when used correctly by stacking other enchantments

Smiting just happens to be the weapon of choice since it doesn't cause exhaustion -- like a number of spells on the Elementalist lines...

Rend Enchantments and Lingering Curse are average counters at best -- with the former having a health hit and a long recharge time and the latter having a high energy cost and tieing up an Elite slot

Inspired Enchantment seems to be a better alternative ( instant recharge, no energy cost with high inspiration ), although you have to remove each enchantment 1 by 1....

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/skill/3...ed-enchantment

With the number of people flocking to Ether Renewal -- I don't think we have to cry for nerfing -- A-Net can see the trends -- your gonna get it nerfed all by yourselves =)

Ether Renewal has a recharge time of 30s. Rend Enchantments have a recharge time of 30s. Is it hard to see a coincidence here? You don't even have to wait to cast Rend Enchantments as it's obvious the Elementalist WILL use Ether Renewal as soon as it recharges. And by the time it's recharged so is Rend Enchantments. What's so hard to figure out in here?
Also, Inspired Enchantment is replaced by the enchantment you removed for 20 seconds. That means the recharge time is replaced by the time you get to use the Enchantment yourself.

Maxiemonster · Sep 05, 2005, 01:57 PM // 13:57

Nerfing is pointless. Why nerf something, if it's open for everyone? If you look at the way you do, everything could be nerfed untill everything was exactly the same.

Both Ether Renewal and Balthazar's Aura are not invisible and in some builds even easy to fight against, so nerfing isn't needed. And by the way.. Is Ether Renewal still played? I don't see anyone use it.

Syno Nym · Sep 05, 2005, 08:59 PM // 20:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxiemonster

And by the way.. Is Ether Renewal still played? I don't see anyone use it.

Are you sure you're playing Guild Wars ?

Timoz · Sep 05, 2005, 11:05 PM // 23:05

I don't think he is no.

There is always going to be one strategy that most people use, the most simple one which people can use easily and get builds from forums etc. easily, its just which build its gonna be... they nerf one and people move onto another.. did you not see this coming ppl, surely you saw this was gonna happen when you complained about NR and now ppl complain about smite

EmperorTippy · Sep 05, 2005, 11:54 PM // 23:54

Um.. I prolly shouldn't be saying this but I have a real easy way to hold the alter against any numebr of smite teams with no problem what so ever. It requires 2 sucide Necros with Well of Profane and an E/Mo with Glyph of Renewal and Vengance. The first necro sucides the second one uses Well of Profane followed by Glyph of Renewal+Vengance (If Ne/Mo only use Vengance). Repeat the process and if you alternate between Necros you can keep all enchants down indefinatly.

Its quite fun to watch the other team be like WTH when they lose as most of them are to stupid to stay out of the Well of Profane. This defeats Spellbreaker and Obsidian Flesh also. You do die very easily if you face a spike team that isnt depedant upon encahnts. But then you should know to let Well of Profane drop and use anti spike skills like Protective Spirit. What can really get you is a three way battle with 1 team being a smite team and the other being a spike team as you cant use well of profane as effectivly. You should also have a wards Elemtalist because the wards are about the same size as the Well and you can make it very bad for the other team to get within your ward/well area.

Ok now why did I just place this here. It has worked for me and my friends 95% of the time we face a smite team in tombs. IN GvG we use a different build but with the same idea and in GvG its about 85% effective.

Thomasuwoo · Sep 08, 2005, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by EmperorTippy

Um.. I prolly shouldn't be saying this but I have a real easy way to hold the alter against any numebr of smite teams with no problem what so ever. It requires 2 sucide Necros with Well of Profane and an E/Mo with Glyph of Renewal and Vengance. The first necro sucides the second one uses Well of Profane followed by Glyph of Renewal+Vengance (If Ne/Mo only use Vengance). Repeat the process and if you alternate between Necros you can keep all enchants down indefinatly.

Its quite fun to watch the other team be like WTH when they lose as most of them are to stupid to stay out of the Well of Profane. This defeats Spellbreaker and Obsidian Flesh also. You do die very easily if you face a spike team that isnt depedant upon encahnts. But then you should know to let Well of Profane drop and use anti spike skills like Protective Spirit. What can really get you is a three way battle with 1 team being a smite team and the other being a spike team as you cant use well of profane as effectivly. You should also have a wards Elemtalist because the wards are about the same size as the Well and you can make it very bad for the other team to get within your ward/well area.

Ok now why did I just place this here. It has worked for me and my friends 95% of the time we face a smite team in tombs. IN GvG we use a different build but with the same idea and in GvG its about 85% effective.

Very good idea there mate. Ether Renewal is still overpowered but it's nice to see someone offering a resonable solution.

CAT · Sep 09, 2005, 01:31 AM // 01:31

Too add to the bashing of the boy that cries nerf, if smiting is really that much of a problem, and in halls your getting 2v1 smiting teams. bring an anti smiting build! 2 shutdown mesmers is all you need, and you have the enemy team down to two warriors and three monks. Bring shutdown/inspiration mesmers that can keep the emos from smiting while keeping spirit of failure or empathy on the warrior, shutting down their entire offense.

Bring 3 monks, 2 mesmers for antismite, then whatever you want. You'll get beat down by other teams more often then you thought non smiting occurs.

Divine Elemental · Sep 09, 2005, 01:33 AM // 01:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by CAT

Too add to the bashing of the boy that cries nerf, if smiting is really that much of a problem, and in halls your getting 2v1 smiting teams. bring an anti smiting build! 2 shutdown mesmers is all you need, and you have the enemy team down to two warriors and three monks. Bring shutdown/inspiration mesmers that can keep the emos from smiting while keeping spirit of failure or empathy on the warrior, shutting down their entire offense.

Bring 3 monks, 2 mesmers for antismite, then whatever you want. You'll get beat down by other teams more often then you thought non smiting occurs.

the anti smite build is exactly what nublar was working on we tested it against Ki's build whihc was the best build yet IMO and we lost tho on a 12:00 min i was with 2 rank 9's too and a few IVEx/sB's wootage Peps

audioaxes · Sep 09, 2005, 02:44 AM // 02:44

nothing wrong with balth aura. If you cant find a way around a smiter then god bless. Just slightly increase the casting time (2 seconds is good enough). Ether Renewell does deserve a nice nerfing though.

ak347 · Sep 09, 2005, 12:56 PM // 12:56

Balthazar's aura vs. meteor shower....
Let's see: Meteor Shower does about 100 fire dmg at lvl 15 every 2 seconds with knockdown capabilities. Has long cast time.
Balthazar's Aura does 24 (i think) dmg at lvl 15 every second, dmg is irresistible. Short cast time, but there are ridiculous numbers of spells to deal with it - enchant breakers, slowing hexes (iron mist sounds about right, or deep freeze).
It's SUPPOSED to be comparable to meteor shower. What other attack skills do monks have? Or are you of the mentality "Every monk should be my healer bitch, and if he tries anything else, it should be nerfed nerfed nerfed!". It's not better than meteor shower, its just as easily countered, just in a different way. You can't expect to counter everything the same way and make that your main argument.
Ether renewal however is a tad overpowered - maybe lengthn the recharge time. Though, it can be enchant shattered, spammable spells diverted, and backfire works wonders.
There are more than 200 skills. Use them.

Shadow Devil · Sep 09, 2005, 06:58 PM // 18:58

When questioning if a skill should be balanced out or not, the first thing you should do is comparing them with other skills in the game.

Lets start with ether renewal. Because its an elite, I shal compare it with a few other elites.

Ether prodigy: the main effect is that it gives you +4 energy regen for 10-25 seconds. 4 extra energy regenration will give you 40 extra energy in a time of 30 seconds. The disadvantages are that if you cast it, you will lose all enchantments, it causes exhaustion, and when you are unable to keep it up or it get removed, you will receive 2 damage for every point of energy you have left.
A confusing skill at first, because of the many disadvantages, it looks useless at first glance. For it to be effective you have to get experience in using this skill, use it again to soon and your energy suply will exhaust too soon, use it too late and you will get an unneeded damage penalty.
in 30 seconds, it gains you 40 energy, wich is less than ether renewal (in the best case, from about 30 to 100 energy, 15 to get enchantments ready(unless you have any one ells give you enchantments) 10 needed to activate ER, and 5 for the first skill).
However, dont exclude the advantage that ether prodigy has over ether renewal. You wont be forced to take enchantments with you (again, unless you get them from some one ells), saving a few slots on both enchantments and a spammable skill. And you wont have a large period where you dont gain any energy at all. Also, because energy renewal will get you back to full energy in whatever case, the 4 basic energy regen an ele has will go to a waste and will probably be replaced by a +15/-1 rod/artifact, So you could say they both gain about 80 energy in 30 seconds.
ER still has the advantage though, since EP will give exhaustion, you can't use a lot of other exhaustion causing spells without draining your energy for a longer period of time, and when EP will take health some times, ER will give health. EP is still recomended for spike air elementalist instead of ER though.

Elemental attunement: You can think of this skill as having twice as much energy , along with twice as much energy regen. However, if a spell fails for whatever reason, or the spell isn't an elemental spell, you wont get any energy back. From what I know, it can be stacked with other attunement spells, getting 80% of the cost back. It also leaves you without any kind of energy bonus for 15 seconds, every minute. 6 seconds every minute with the "enchanments last 20% longer" staff upgrade. A big advantage is that it doesn't use a atribute, thus making it fully usable for any ele second class. when you combine it with glyph of lesser energy, you will probably actually gain 2/3 energy for 15 energy ele skills (not tested). Again, this skill wont require you to spam enchantments and low costing skills.

I should probably explain glyph of energy now but I'm to lazy. Any ways Energy renewal only works when you maintain enchantments on you and spam a low(5/10 energy, depending on how much enchantments you are planning on keeping on you) -costing skill for 10 seconds. That would probably be a waste if you where not planning to do so to start with (low-costing healing spell, flare, water trident, echo, ect). Elementalist primary's are known for casting spells without fearing to run out of energy, so elite energy enchantments that make sure you wont run out of energy was to be expected. I think instead of nerfing ER they should take at least one disadvantage of EP or lengten the time.

Balthazar Aura:

This spell is unique in a lot of ways. but in short, the damage it causes is higher than most elemental AoE spells. Even meteor shower only does more damage when there is no elemental defence. Shortly, because it ignores armor against elemental damage, it is the most damaging AoE spell in the game. Because the AoE is around a player, it wont be as easy to simply step away from it as the other AoE spells, since the player will simply move with you. It has faster casting speed and less recasting time than the other comparable AoE spells (meteor shower, fire storm, eruption, mealstrom, searing heat), doesn't cause exhaustion, last 10 seconds and hits 10 times (instead of 5 seconds like eruption and searing heat and hit 3 times in meteor shower), does around the same amount of damage per hit (22 at lvl12) as most AoE spells, but ignores armor (beginning to understand while it is called overpowered a little?). Because its an enchantment, it can be removed by either a spell or killing the one who has the enchantment, and the aura's can't be stacked. Comparing those few disadvantages with all the advantages it has over the other AoE spells, I repeat that it can be called the most damaging AoE spell of the game... at the moment anyways...

When Chain Lightning was nerfed, Anet explained that they wanted fire to be good against groups, and air to be good against single opponents.
Monks smiting spells are probably used to let the enemy take damage because THEY are attacking. Zealots fire and Balthazars aura are meant to keep mellee fighters scared of getting to close to certain enemies, to keep them from rushing to monk, not for being a replacement of fire magic for AoE spells. That is probably why Anet will balance those smiting spells out, to get them for countering attacks and keep them from being a replacement of fire magic, if not by making BA weaker, by making Fire stronger.

Symbol · Sep 09, 2005, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Renewal becomes abusive when you start getting above three enchantments, combined with a fast cast/low recharge spell that actually does something useful. Note that you can't abuse this using elementalist skills. Flare and stone daggers require 1.75 seconds per cast and do crap damage. You can fit five of them into ER's duration, but you'll won't be doing anything useful during that time.

Compare to elemental attunement I feel that ether renewal is relatively balanced (at least with a cap on the number of enchantments). You can potentially get more energy back but it's more vulnerable to enchant removal and requires you to base your build around fast casting spells, as well as using up a couple of slots for enchants.

ER becomes ugly when you have .25 second spammable spells (like draw conditions/divine boon) that trigger effects like zealot's fire.

Quote:

I think instead of nerfing ER they should take at least one disadvantage of EP or lengten the time.

I too would like to see a better prodigy, but I think that ER should have a cap on the number of enchantments it takes into account, say 3 or 4. After a certain point the energy gain is just gravy, but the big self heal per cast can get a little silly.

MoldyRiceFrenzy · Sep 10, 2005, 06:02 AM // 06:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tactical-Dillusions

Why does everyone seek to get every skill nerfed just because it gives them a challenge when they face it in combat?
Carry on folks and all we will have is a set of boring skills which are all the same. One sword attack, one axe attack, one smiting spell, one healing spell... do you really want that?
If you don't like Balthazars aura, hamstring them and run away.

exactly there are always ways to counter it anyways u just will have to find it =) and i leave all that dedication up to you guys

Shadow Devil · Sep 10, 2005, 11:07 AM // 11:07

moldy: Every skill can get countered (every skill can be interupted), thats just the way the created made the game. But because you can counter every skill doesn't mean every skill is balanced. I agree people don't always ask for nerfes for the right reason, but not weakening or strengthning unbalanced skills or skill builds, won't make the game better.

I belief that certain skill or skill builds should be weakened because the result is too powerfull than it was meant to be. Like the fragility build will always be powerfull because it will do big damage in a short time and leaves a lot of conditions afterwards, but I dont think it should quickly kill a person in a couple of seconds using only a few hexes like it does now. And BA should create a lot of damage for the mellee attackers that are bashing the enchanted ally, but not create an offencive by getting the warrior do a lot of extra damage almost un-avoidable damage with it.

Symbol: I think that ER is meant for E/Monks, because the monk skills are known for low costing, fast recharging spells and their enchantments. You can rely on your maintainance enchantments where it doesn't matter if you rape the recharge time if you can get all your energy back(ER is meant to do that) every 30 seconds. Because Zealots fire is fire damage, it wont do much more damage (less damage actually) than spamming flare and now divine boon and draw conditions have a 1 sec recharge time, so I think flare is about as spammable(if not more) as those two. Even while spamming other monk skills, you wont heal more than a normal protecion/healing monk simply because of the divine favour boost and skills. The reason I think why E/Mo are so succesfull in pvp atm is because of balthazars aura, wich still IMO is a bit unbalanced compared with other offencive AoE skills.

seekiiboy · Sep 10, 2005, 04:25 PM // 16:25

if you gonna nerf Balhazar's Aura...
i think all mages should have a 10-20 decrease in energy base.
since we're on the subject...or better yet...
lets have bonnettis defence give 20 energy per successful evade and
change the recharge time on "i will survive" down to 2 seconds.

Charcoal Ann · Sep 10, 2005, 04:32 PM // 16:32

Balthazars Aura doesn't do all that much more dmg than Symbol of Wrath.
you pay another 20 energy for a short cast time and longer DoT.

personally i like Balthazars Aura. and in no way is it comparable to Meteor Shower. Balths does a max of 250 dmg to non undead while meteor shower does over 300 dmg and 3 knockdowns.

what does need changed is Holy dmg ignoring armor.
and Ether.

PicardSunstar · Sep 10, 2005, 05:44 PM // 17:44

Renewal was already nerfed once.....

Shadow Devil · Sep 10, 2005, 06:03 PM // 18:03

seekiiboy: try to explain a bit why you are thinking that, I can't immediatly lay the connection between weakening BA and decreasing max energy of mages and strenghtening bonneties defence and I will survive.

Charcoal Ann: Symbol of Wrath has very different effects than BA. SoW can only used on yourself, that with the long casting time makes chasing the enemy for full damage very difficult, especially because you have only 5 chanses (1 every second) to get close to the enemy to put damage. SoW is better used to scare mellee enemies away, for it to be put into offencive you need some one knocking and slowing the enemy down.
Meteor shower has a recharge time of 60 seconds, BA 15 seconds, so over the whol battle BA does much more damage. Meteor shower causes exhaustion has 4 seconds longer casting time. When you notice a meteor shower over your head, you have 3 seconds to get out of there before you get any damage and are knocked down, wich is easely done. And of course, holy damage ignores armor. Because of those reasons BA does a lot more damage than meteor shower through the whole battle in avrage conditions.