Curse

Tenebrae · Dec 08, 2009, 10:38 AM // 10:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by traversc

Which is basically what I said earlier. CA is only better in HM for very early PvE.

Translation : "very early pve" = non elite areas , wich is about 85% of the game .

HigherMinion · Dec 08, 2009, 10:59 AM // 10:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenebrae

Translation : "very early pve" = non elite areas , wich is about 85% of the game .

Tell me, what do you consider to be an Elite Area?

Carinae · Dec 08, 2009, 05:13 PM // 17:13

I would very much recommend Enfeebling Blood over CA any day. Even in a physway team, most of the damage comes from buffs/skills. There's little reason to waste a skill slot for a minimal effect, especially on tight bars.

EB is the best reactive 'hex' for a necro.`

AtomicMew · Dec 08, 2009, 05:16 PM // 17:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenebrae

Translation : "very early pve" = non elite areas , wich is about 85% of the game .

Yeah, if you consider Mirror of Lyss an "elite area" sure.

Why can't people just admit they are wrong. Xeno corrected your thinking that CA intrinsically works better on higher AL targets. The math is completely undisputable.

There is absolutely NOTHING left to discuss here.

snaek · Dec 08, 2009, 06:52 PM // 18:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenomortis

No I'm not. Even in a caster ball AP-Sin spam beats SS.
If we don't want that, I consider FD to be far superior.

we're not questioning the ap build...it is obviously imba, we're questioning barbs; are you saying that the damage barbs will produce if only a single evas powers it will be more than ss or necrosis? that is laughable when the evas has no ias, and its lead attack does not even do physical dmg. plus, your comparing 3 skills (ap+barbs+evas) to 1 skill (ss or necrosis--i never said using both at the same time, even though it is possible).

lets forget bout barbs for a min, since its a bit unfair to compare a normal skill to a pve/elite skill. and make some more fair comparisons, elite to elite, pve to pve.

ap to ss: ap wins obviously
evas to necrosis: necrosis wins unless evas' recharge is exploited by ap.

the point im trying to make here is that the template is strong not because of barbs, but because of the skills around it. barbs is definitely a decent addition to the template, but not exactly the make-or-break skill of the build, and on its own cannot compete with ss unless used under (previously stated) specific instances (lets not forget that it can even be used on an ss build for such instances).

Quote:

It's [fd] more than viable. It's very useful and powerful.
When I run it as H/H, the only two conditions my team provides that I don't, are burning and poison - and that's only when I bring my RoJ smite and MB.

AoE Deep Wound, Weakness, repeated Dazed, Cripple and Cracked Armour all come from me alone.

i never doubted that it was viable--i even stated so myself. is it more viable than ss though?--you did not answer this. imo, in certain cases yes, but not in randomway pugs and in most cases. sure for certain areas and for using h/h you can build synergy with it to perhaps exceed ss in some situations, but generally speaking overall ss outperforms fd. there is no denying that fd has incredible amounts of shutdown, but the dps ss provides is unmatched by fd. i remember a long time ago, shutdown was considered unimportant in pve (mesmers as an entire class being shunned for a long time in pve); while this viewpoint has changed over the years, i still do believe that dmg is still priority.

one last note: im not sure how viable those normal mode screenshots are in this discussion.

Konker2020 · Dec 08, 2009, 07:01 PM // 19:01

Barbs + Minion Wall = Win!

Just my 2 cents.

Xenomortis · Dec 08, 2009, 07:17 PM // 19:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by snaek

i never doubted that it was viable--i even stated so myself. is it more viable than ss though?--you did not answer this. imo, in certain cases yes, but not in randomway pugs and in most cases. sure for certain areas and for using h/h you can build synergy with it to perhaps exceed ss in some situations, but generally speaking overall ss outperforms fd. there is no denying that fd has incredible amounts of shutdown, but the dps ss provides is unmatched by fd. i remember a long time ago, shutdown was considered unimportant in pve (mesmers as an entire class being shunned for a long time in pve); while this viewpoint has changed over the years, i still do believe that dmg is still priority.

You missed my point. I didn't say FD builds provided more damage than SS, but I wanted to get the point across that it was more useful.
Neither build requires any coordination from your team for near maximum effect (unless you count Barbs and/or MoP, potentially on the SS build).

The crucial issue PUGs typically suffer from is not a lack of damage (they usually have enough), but the fact that their technique, backline and general survival skills are all crap. SS will probably outdamage FD, but FD will help prevent your team being ripped apart when your monk's energy is gone and it will help stop the enemy healer's mopping up the damage done by your Defy Pain warrior who's armed with Healing Breeze.

Only a handful of mobs in a few areas are actually capable of mopping up the damage done by a largely human team.

Tenebrae · Dec 08, 2009, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by traversc

Yeah, if you consider Mirror of Lyss an "elite area" sure.

Why can't people just admit they are wrong. Xeno corrected your thinking that CA intrinsically works better on higher AL targets. The math is completely undisputable.

There is absolutely NOTHING left to discuss here.

Are you on crack ? you said that weaken armor is "less bad" in NM than HM , you are wrong because as i showed , in NM CA has almost no effect. Yes , theres nothing to discuss there , bb.

NM foe <25 =\= Early PvE , fact.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Konker2020

Barbs + Minion Wall = Win!

Just my 2 cents.

+1

For the FD or SS discussion , im a SS fan but tbh , FD offers good utility with little team help , its a very very good option. In fact , next time im going to a dungeon with my necro im using that skill next time ( before capping it

). Daze time should be buffed to 4-5 secs thou ....

Chthon · Dec 08, 2009, 10:47 PM // 22:47

1. I do think it would have been better to leave this thread closed. A majority of what's been added is utter garbage or refutations of utter garabge.

2. Re: Barbs vs. Necrosis

A. Something of a false comparison because necrosis costs a PvE slot.

B. Anyone who gets all hot and bothered for Discord sure as hell ought to think Necrosis is great, since it's a superior version of Discord. (Those of us who don't think much of Discord can continue to question it's value...)

C. Necrosis is straight DPS. Barbs is leveraged. The potential ranges anywhere from zero to infinity and what you get depends on how long it sticks and how well your party does at delivering triggers. Obviously, Barbs has superior potential. Getting that potential realized in practice is going to require a few things:

EITHER
- Necro is good enough to stay 2 sec ahead of physicals and be casting on the next target while physicals are tearing apart current target, OR
- Physicals are so bad that current target still has plenty of life left after 2 sec beating, OR
- Monsters resist dying (high hp or healer) well enough that current target still has plenty of life left after 2 sec beating by physicals.
Party is able to generate a fair number of physical damage packets quickly.

If you have things things, Barbs will outperform Necrosis, and vice versa.

3. Re: Fevered Dreams

A. Fevered Dreams is essentially a defensive build. Running FD instead of damaging curses to keep a PUG or H+H group alive is like running an ER ele instead of a nuker to keep a PUG or H+H group alive. Perhaps a wise move, but what does it have to do with reactive hexes?

B. I like FD on a primary mesmer more. You get more damage from Frag - which is your only real hope of damage. And you get blind from an ele secondary instead of weakness.

4. RE: Cracked armor.
traversc is dead right. Tenebrae is... apparently retarded. Cracked armor IS a straight sqrt(2) multiplier for any AL value >=80. The amount of damage added on account of cracked armor DECREASES as armor increases above 80AL. Good teams rely mostly on armor-ignoring damage anyway, so most of their damage is UNAFFECTED by cracked armor. Trying to argue that verifiable game mechanics are anything other than what they are is futile and stupid. It's like... well... arguing that 1.8 * 3 = 6.

5. Re: SS in Vloxen.

Back to the main point of the thread. All reactive hexes have a basically fixed DPS point set by the monster's action frequency. It's possible for a well-designed team to far exceed that fixed DPS point with proactive direct damage hexes. That's why reactive hexing sucks. It's also possible to fail to exceed that fixed DPS point for a number of reasons -- henchmen and PUGs have bad builds that don't synergize with proactive hexes and don't generate meaningful DPS on their own; PUGs fail to follow calls for the hexed target and instead attack a bunch of different unhexed targets at once; heroes and henchmen go into Benny Hill AI mode and don't attack anything at all.

If you're failing to exceed the fixed DPS point on SS with your proactive hexes, and you're unwilling/unable to go get a better team, and damage is still the best contribution you can make to the team, then using SS isn't a bad idea. Just remember that you've brought yourself down to the level of the PUG/H+H AI and made a locally optimal choice. You have NOT made a globally optimal choice.

Tenebrae · Dec 08, 2009, 11:08 PM // 23:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

1. I do think it would have been better to leave this thread closed. A majority of what's been added is utter garbage or refutations of utter garabge.

Yeah or with ppl like you that just come in all threads to drop BS instead of making a constructive comment. You cant close a thread so deal with it , get over it and if you have nothing to say and think this all is "garbage" leave , no one asked for you here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

4. RE: Cracked armor.
traversc is dead right. Tenebrae is... apparently retarded. Cracked armor IS a straight sqrt(2) multiplier for any AL value >=80. The amount of damage added on account of cracked armor DECREASES as armor increases above 80AL. Good teams rely mostly on armor-ignoring damage anyway, so most of their damage is UNAFFECTED by cracked armor. Trying to argue that verifiable game mechanics are anything other than what they are is futile and stupid. It's like... well... arguing that 1.8 * 3 = 6.

Apparently you dont even know what the hell you are saying , you know like , "someone hits 1.8 times" , or that "everytime i open a chest i retain 0.68 lockpicks" , that kind of maths that are so far from reality that are almost a lie and are only worth for cheap talking .
Drop all the BS you want but saying CA is better in NM than HM when it CANT lower armor beyond 60 and A LOT of NM content have <24 foe lvl is nonsense because the skill doesnt even have HALF of its effect.

Read what you say troll "Cracked armor IS a straight sqrt(2) multiplier for any AL value >=80" . The bolded part DOESNT HAPPEN IN NM most of the time so you cant use that 1.41 dmg multiplier on thrash talk to CA in NM.

You only come here when you are bored to drop some sht and leave , your post is nothing more than that and some "i dont like this so close it mods" wich no one needs . We all know your "non optimal builds suck" posts , thanks for nothing.

AtomicMew · Dec 09, 2009, 12:29 AM // 00:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by cthon

5. Re: SS in Vloxen.
Back to the main point of the thread. All reactive hexes have a basically fixed DPS point set by the monster's action frequency. It's possible for a well-designed team to far exceed that fixed DPS point with proactive direct damage hexes. That's why reactive hexing sucks. It's also possible to fail to exceed that fixed DPS point for a number of reasons -- henchmen and PUGs have bad builds that don't synergize with proactive hexes and don't generate meaningful DPS on their own; PUGs fail to follow calls for the hexed target and instead attack a bunch of different unhexed targets at once; heroes and henchmen go into Benny Hill AI mode and don't attack anything at all.

I have been able to go through HM vloxen H/H with SS, FD and AP nuker (not based on MoP). I have NOT been able to (easily) get through with a build based around MoP nuking and physical H/H. Based on my experiences, I feel that AP-MoP nuking is not strictly better than SS.

If you disagree, please post your H/H build you used to get through vloxen, and I will try it out. I am fully prepared to admit that I just haven't found the right hero combination to "leverage" MoP as you say.

Chthon · Dec 09, 2009, 01:47 AM // 01:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by traversc

I have been able to go through HM vloxen H/H with SS, FD and AP nuker (not based on MoP). I have NOT been able to (easily) get through with a build based around MoP nuking and physical H/H. Based on my experiences, I feel that AP-MoP nuking is not strictly better than SS.

If you disagree, please post your H/H build you used to get through vloxen, and I will try it out. I am fully prepared to admit that I just haven't found the right hero combination to "leverage" MoP as you say.

I'm not sure there is one. The hench builds are just too weak and the Stone Summit are just too effective at kicking the H+H AI into worthless Benny Hill mode. Now, if you allowed me to design 8 player builds (or even a combination of player and hero builds), I'm sure that you'd agree AP-MoP is strictly superior. To paraphrase what I said before: MoP has much, much higher potential than SS, but you need your team's help to realize that potential. If you've got a team that can't help with that, you can either get a better team or get a "better" build for the context of a bad team.

I'm primarily concerned with the global optimum -- designing a TEAM build that works best. H+H is necessarily a different animal, since the 4 henchmen are taking fixed awful builds and the hero AI has fixed points of idiocy and you need to work around that. For me, the question of "how do I beat this given that my team is severely gimped by shortcomings X, Y, and Z" isn't a very interesting one. Usually the solution is easy in 1 player + 3 hero builds; when it's not, recruiting friends is easier than beating my head against artificial shortcomings on my team.

For the record, MoP is usually superior in a H+H setting. Give yourself a spear; bring a minion bomber hero; if you've got room, bring a physical hero suited to the area (melee or paragon or ranger depending); bring 2 or 3 physical hench (a melee or two and a ranged). That's enough to give you ample triggers to outpace SS's damage... so long as the H+H don't decided to run around like chickens with their heads cut off like they do in Vloxen HM.

Cuilan · Dec 09, 2009, 03:10 AM // 03:10

Mark of Pain is a reactive hex that will not do any damage until its requirement is met. In my view that makes it reactive. There are many ways of making reactive hexes deal more damage (fast casting, knowing who to target, damage buffs, etc). Like some other reactive hexes, it looses potential damage its requirement is already triggering without it being up. I say some because I'm not an over-generalizing prick.

With that said. Mark of Pain deals insane damage overall and doesn't require much "technique" like the majority of the things in Guild Wars and gaming overall.

Pain Inverter I also disagree with. It deals very impressive damage for a single skill. Not everyone is going to be bonded by two ER infuse elementalists and there are generally minions or spirits. Many skills deal mild AoE damage, which in that case deals a lot more to the enemy. Really isn't the "worst" or that far restrictive based on area with a player who knows what's going on and what skills foes have.

I generally don't use Necrosis, but it can be clean up in a spike based team or simply used between other skills with it's low recharge.

Cracked armor is cracked armor. Mark of Pain uses physical damage and surely the melee wouldn't mind having someone have it. Do phyway-ish team builds require cracked armor? No, but they don't require Moebius Strike either.

AtomicMew · Dec 09, 2009, 03:58 AM // 03:58

Quote:

Mark of Pain is a reactive hex that will not do any damage until its requirement is met.

That's simply not what reactive means. A reactive hex is one whose effectiveness depends on the response of the enemy. Now granted, this isn't perfectly black and white (for example, an enemy healer can "react" to remove MoP) but there's still a pretty clear distinction between SS/VoR/empathy and barbs/MoP.

What ultimately matters is the ability to synergize and create leverage. A few proactive hexes like barbs and MoP have this ability while reactive hexes do not. PI is a funny exception, because it is reactive, yet has built in leverage against bosses and AoE spammers.

Of course, there are quite a few proactive hexes that can't be leveraged either. Like suffering and shatterstone. But "reactive hexing sucks" makes a cute little mantra, and so it sticks.

Quote:

For the record, MoP is usually superior in a H+H setting.

Even better than discord???

Carinae · Dec 09, 2009, 05:02 AM // 05:02

You're gonna make us bring you on a run aren't you traversc?

Chthon · Dec 09, 2009, 05:57 AM // 05:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

You're gonna make us bring you on a run aren't you traversc?

Yes, traversc has been acting oddly recently. He's been... making sense... It's weird. Who are you and what have you done with the old traversc?

tuna-fish_sushi · Dec 09, 2009, 06:10 AM // 06:10

Reactive Hexes do suck, just got perma-empathy for a whole round in RA with no hex removal. Wasn't very fun, its more of a defensive skill then an offensive skill. I agree it sucks, but that is only because it was used against me.

Konker2020 · Dec 09, 2009, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenebrae

Apparently you dont even know what the hell you are saying , you know like , "someone hits 1.8 times" , or that "everytime i open a chest i retain 0.68 lockpicks" , that kind of maths that are so far from reality that are almost a lie and are only worth for cheap talking .

Unfortunately, I'm going to have disagree with you on this even though everything else that you have stated has remained true (in my eyes anyways). You can't ignore small numbers or percentiles in anything because they always add up later. If you look at the 1.8 hits example, basically if you hit 1.8 times over a certain period of time, and then double that time you would hit 3.6 times, which would essentially round up to 4 hits either way. But, when multiplied into larger variables, it becomes inconsistent. You are taking away 10% with every hit, which if you ignore, becomes a much larger variable in itself. 10% ignored 10 times is 100% which then accounts for a noticeable mass.

In simpler terms, if you hit 1.8 times over a period of time, when you multiply that period of time by 10, you essentially would hit 18 times, not 20. If the math is necessary, then all parts MUST be carried through and remain consistent.

snaek · Dec 10, 2009, 10:45 PM // 22:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenomortis

The crucial issue PUGs typically suffer from is not a lack of damage (they usually have enough), but the fact that their technique, backline and general survival skills are all crap. SS will probably outdamage FD, but FD will help prevent your team being ripped apart when your monk's energy is gone and it will help stop the enemy healer's mopping up the damage done by your Defy Pain warrior who's armed with Healing Breeze.

how often do you pug? seriously? have you not seen todays pug pve metas? spiritspammers, mm's, imbagons, er-infusers.... i think we have enough defense. honestly, when i play monk in pugs, i usually just auto-follow because there is so much damage-mitigation on the midline already. if you want to blind-invite 5 warriors into your team, that could be the reason your dying so fast.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chthon

If you're failing to exceed the fixed DPS point on SS with your proactive hexes, and you're unwilling/unable to go get a better team, and damage is still the best contribution you can make to the team, then using SS isn't a bad idea. Just remember that you've brought yourself down to the level of the PUG/H+H AI and made a locally optimal choice. You have NOT made a globally optimal choice.

wow is that elitist... are you saying that if my friends/guildies are offline, rather than pugging or h/h'ing i should just not play at all? because if i do go the pugging or h/h route, then i am "bringing myself down [to a low] level"? how about ss as a farming skill? it should rate as at least a mid-high tier (sf being god-tier). or am i again not making a "globally optimal choice" because farming is for lamers? even if i ran a full 8 human team and ran ss, it would still be a decent run and clear the area. i can think of at least 9999 builds that are worse than an ss build in an 8-man team.

i think a lot of the arguments in this thread stem from the negativity towards reactive hexing. sure it may not be as good as proactive hexing, but it is faaar from horrible. who takes pve so seriously nowadays anyways? go back to gvg maybe?

Chthon · Dec 11, 2009, 12:16 AM // 00:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by snaek

how often do you pug? seriously? have you not seen todays pug pve metas? spiritspammers, mm's, imbagons, er-infusers....

Where do you find your PUG people? I've never seen an ER Infuser in a PUG. I rarely see imbagons in PUGs, and when I do they're bad variants. I see a lot of spirit spammers and MM's in PUG's, but, again, they tend to be very bad variants. (The bad spirit spammers are particularly impressive because it should be a very hard build to mess up...)

Quote:

wow is that elitist... are you saying that if my friends/guildies are offline, rather than pugging or h/h'ing i should just not play at all? because if i do go the pugging or h/h route, then i am "bringing myself down [to a low] level"?

I am not saying anything of the sort. I am trying to make clear the distinction between locally optimal (the best choice for the context of a bad team) and globally optimal (the best choice). I am NOT making a value judgment about who you choose to play with.