Curse

I Jonas I · Mar 02, 2010, 04:03 AM // 04:03

It's clear that top guilds don't run hexway as much as the lower tier guilds do. So there must be something that top guilds do to beat hexway that lower guilds fail to do. I'm wondering what that is.

So I instead want to transform this thread from a complaining thread, which I think that this forum has enough of, to a constructive thread. What do you do to not die versus a lot of hexes? What do you do to kill with hexes on you? etc etc

FoxBat · Mar 02, 2010, 04:54 AM // 04:54

Run that yumy Rit Lord flagger, the amount of party healing it pumps out is phenomenal. And/or look into a smite midliner.

jaximus · Mar 02, 2010, 06:36 AM // 06:36

well i agree with some of what has been said, ive always been taught when facing hexways to keep a veil on the frontliners and make sure they are always clean. clean frontliners can tear through the squishies that power hexway without the hex net to provide them defense. its then on your ranger/mez to shut down diversion and shame because the monks wont be holding a veil on themselves. dont let either of these get off! your monks will be making sure they are on the proper casting sets (40/40 for cure, staff for veil, etc) so you dont want to oops lets something get off and have a hct proc into a diversion or eat a shame on an energy set. this is very bad. also try to keep the dervish stripped of enchants so you dont get the dw from wounding strike. if your mez is feeling lucky, have him throw some diversions his way and make take WS out of the game for a while. or have your ranger keep and eye on him and throw a d shot as he gets close to a target.

*lemming* · Mar 02, 2010, 11:46 AM // 11:46

The single most important thing is to keep your physicals clean. If your cleaning can outpace the other team's melee hate, you'll be able to pressure them, score kills, get up on flags - the stuff that puts you in a position to win. Your prot should be holding veils on warriors, not to pull hexes with, but to increase cast time - it'll decrease the volume of incoming hexes both through lengthened cast time and through increased vulnerability to disruption.

The second thing you need to do is to maximize the amount of time your rit stays at stand. Most of the time, you will need your runner to be in party healing range in order to survive. For the most part, this entails running flags with warriors and keeping the flagger around for party healing. If the hex build is one that parks a split character in your base, do not mirror it with your runner unless, again, you're wiping them.

One tactic you may want to consider is to double run the first flag. Capping immediately and having your flagger hold the second flag lets you push with both warriors and your party healing for a couple of minutes, which may be enough to win you the game.

Many hex builds have a Signet of Binding, usually on a ranger; your stand team should be doing its best to stop him from binding Life. Your rit should know the range on spirits so that he can put it up as far back as possible.

If you'd like to spec against hexes, for whatever reason (either you absolutely know that you're going against it in an AT, or you're expecting to play a hex team on ladder), you can try to bring Pnh, although you're almost guaranteed a loss against a nonhex build, and it's not much better if you're competent at cleaning. Staying with RC is much safer.

Three hex removals (Cure, Spotless, Veil) are usually enough; four (Cure, Spotless, Veil, DS/Deny) is more than sufficient. Five (Empathic/Expel/Convert on midline; Remove/Veil on ranger for Mend Touch) is overkill. Do not compromise killing power to bring more hex removal.

At least one party healing spirit is necessary. The Ritual Lord bar with Rejuvenation and Life works wonders.

Corporeal Ghost · Mar 02, 2010, 03:00 PM // 15:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by lemming

The single most important thing is to keep your physicals clean. If your cleaning can outpace the other team's melee hate, you'll be able to pressure them, score kills, get up on flags - the stuff that puts you in a position to win.

Note that this only works if your team's offense is normally able to pressure through backline + runner (including any kind of trading guys for runner or monks you normally perform). It sounds kind of goofy, since this almost seems like you're unable to win against anything else, but there it is. There are so many mid-to-bad range guilds we played against that were equipped to stay alive until the tiebreak happened, but just did not have enough damage to out lord-damage us or get us out of their boat. It's even more important against hexway. Your monks will not be able to maintain veils forever, so you do need to actually kill some people within a minute or two for this plan to be effective. None of this stall until ~24 and then go get lord damage stuff.

Still Number One · Mar 02, 2010, 03:43 PM // 15:43

I don't know if this strategy will work against the current hex builds, but whenever I played against hexes in mid range guilds, splitting them always seemed to work.

And by splitting I don't mean today's bullcrap of sending a fire ele to spam the lord for damage. I mean real actual splitting where your objective is to actually kill the lord and win the game.

Normally mid range guilds will try to counter any split by sending back their runner. Your split (although it depends on the build) should really consist of your two more offensively minded midliners and one of your frontline (I prefer hammer warrior cause KD lock on a runner is GG). You should keep your hard res with your monks and flagger and have the warrior run flags and your defensive midliner do his job.

The stand teams job isn't really to kill, it is to maintain position, keep running flags and warn the split team who is falling back on them. The split teams job is obviously to kill the guild lord, which means take out any NPCS that are in your way of getting the lord and may hurt you if you need to retreat out of the base. If the other team sends back a monk and a runner, you'll need to collapse on the stand team. If they are sending back a damage dealer like a ranger and their runner is still up, you should probably fall out unless you think your midline has substantial healing to deal with a ranger (probably not likely unless you were built for split in the first place).

The main thing is communication between the two teams. The stand team must call out every single player from the opposing team falling into their base to deal with your split. And they need to be as specific as possible. Instead of saying just warrior, say hammer warrior, or axe warrior. Instead of saying just monk, say prot or heal.

Your goal is to just keep collapsing and splitting the whole game until they either make a mistake and you wipe them or you get to 28. As long as your stand team plays ultra defensively and they can hold out long enough for your split to do work, you should be fine. If you have absolutely no experience with splitting however, I don't recommend this tactic because your stand team will probably wipe before your split team even kills a knight.

If this tactic wont work for you then just do what Lemming said.

91ntucker · Mar 02, 2010, 03:59 PM // 15:59

I would advise having your midline shut down the players who have AoE degen. From my expirence hexway gains momentum when degen gets through.

Shutting down the LC or Apply psn or taint will give your monks more time to focus on cleaning warriors.

And also, if possible dont send ranger on split if they are countering it with a hexer.

Hexway, if run properly, has anti melee on more than one midliner, and anyone of these can be sent to keep a ranger or warrior out of the base. If you send a pblock with the warrior he can keep hexes off his back.

I Jonas I · Mar 03, 2010, 04:18 AM // 04:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by 91ntucker

I would advise having your midline shut down the players who have AoE degen. From my expirence hexway gains momentum when degen gets through.

Shutting down the LC or Apply psn or taint will give your monks more time to focus on cleaning warriors.

you're wrong. the AoE degen can be easily countered by party heals. The shames/diversions can't be countered by anything except interrupts, so you need to make them your priority

FoxBat · Mar 03, 2010, 04:30 AM // 04:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Jonas I

the AoE degen can be easily countered by party heals.

Then why would any team bother running degen? Especially when shame/diversion won't do a thing to stop party healing. I'm not even saying what you should be interrupting, but this statement makes no sense.

I Jonas I · Mar 03, 2010, 06:36 AM // 06:36

Life = 140 HP to everyone every 23 seconds (including cast time)
PwK = 80 HP to everyone every 25 seconds (not including 40/40's)

220 HP per 25 seconds (rounding) = counters 9 damage per second on the whole party, which is basically just negating poison pressure. So to answer your question: people run degen because it prevents party heals from pushing the whole team up to safety levels, and makes the other hexes such as VoR, empathy, backfire, and warrior damage hurt that much more.

But please don't derail this thread, it's supposed to be about countering hexway, not about "why do people run hexway?"

*lemming* · Mar 03, 2010, 11:13 AM // 11:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

Note that this only works if your team's offense is normally able to pressure through backline + runner (including any kind of trading guys for runner or monks you normally perform).

Assuming your monks are competent at cleaning your frontline and that there's no incredible disparity in skill level, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do so. Keeping opposing physicals hexed up is their only defense - beyond that, they're a team full of squishies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Jonas I

you're wrong. the AoE degen can be easily countered by party heals. The shames/diversions can't be countered by anything except interrupts, so you need to make them your priority

If you're trying to stay alive without killing, interrupting defensively is a good policy. Otherwise, you should be prioritizing disrupting the physical hate for reasons stated previously.

Also, hex builds tend to be very bad at winning matches that go to 28 minutes. If you can't kill them but can manage to not wipe for that long, you should be able to win the lord damage race at the end. In that situation, the only thing you really need to look out for is Empathy/VoR on the lord; be sure to try to interrupt those two hexes somehow, or remove them before they get covered.

Corporeal Ghost · Mar 03, 2010, 03:11 PM // 15:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by lemming

Assuming your monks are competent at cleaning your frontline and that there's no incredible disparity in skill level, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do so. Keeping opposing physicals hexed up is their only defense - beyond that, they're a team full of squishies.

The people that will actually get something out of this thread are the ones that are not necessarily capable of wiping a hexway 8v8. Though I agree there is no reason they shouldn't be able to wipe them 8v8 given the circumstances described, it is often the case below a certain level of play.

edit: At mid-to-low levels, there are frequently not enough good players to fill up the guild, and unless your offense is superb, you need to dilute it even further by running one of your good guys on monk. This often leads to 8v8 non-hexway mirrors in which no one dies, no one splits, and generally, the game would end in a draw with no deaths except for the 25 minute zergrush.

There are also the guys that are good enough to do the job themselves, but for whatever reason, find themselves microing five or six bad players every game, and 8v8-->wipe is simply not an option here (from experience). I find the best way to hide these guys against hexway is to just split your good players and essentially use the lesser players as decoys backed up by monks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Still Number One

(split) offensively minded midliners and one of your frontline

Mostly agree. Basically, you should know who is competent away from monks in your guild--players, not templates--and who knows how to kill people without spiking. Send those guys. If they have anything to contribute offensively at all, even just a BSurge, a Lightning Bolt, and a Gale, they're probably going to do a better job than whoever you tried to hide on paragon. Offensive-minded arena players often fit this bill--codex and TA (and on occasion, RA) are/were pretty good skirmish simulators in a lot of ways. Just be aware that if your goal is to kill things, you can't let their runner into the boat.

Robster Lobster · Mar 03, 2010, 04:05 PM // 16:05

One thing not mentioned is that you can exploit the fact that hex builds are usually pretty momentum based by pulling back earlier than you maybe would against other builds to reduce pressure even more and by using NPC's, which can't be easily spiked down, and can allow you to chain kills and push them back out of your base.

I Angra I · Mar 09, 2010, 05:11 PM // 17:11

make sure your hex removals are being used to clean your frontline to let them kill, not to just remove random hexes from midliners/monks (only exception might be vor/backfire on casters). that's what the party healing is for. interrupting apply is always useful as well. when you get ahead on flags and your runner can stay for an extended period of time is when you should be pushing hard to try and score kills. play a bit more defensively when he is away from stand.

lutz · Mar 10, 2010, 03:56 AM // 03:56

If pure hex builds don't win early, they lose.

In other words, hexes are on the offense. They have to push out enough pressure to push into the base and get NPCs and chain kills quickly. If they don't accomplish this before 28 minutes, they lose the game.

Higher end games tend to play more conservatively, and this type of conservative play really breaks apart hex builds. By playing defensively with interrupts and linebacking, you can effectively counter hexes until the tiebreaker. By playing offensively and removing/countering melee-hate hexes, you can effectively kill hexes before they kill you. However, hexes are still strong. They just require a lot of precision and shutdown or just simply a LOT of damage to work effectively in high-end builds.

Div · Mar 11, 2010, 03:48 AM // 03:48

Some key things to reduce deaths:
Dshot apply
Have adequate party heals
Protect your energy from edenial

Some key things to kill:
Remove defensive hexes (faint, empathy, snares etc.) from frontline and/or ranger
Push flaggers and be aggressive when their flagger isn't at stand

The thing about hexes is that if your frontline is clean, they essentially have no defense outside of their 2 monks (and a rit). You need to take advantage of those openings and land kills or force a boost.

Killed u man · Mar 11, 2010, 01:27 PM // 13:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Div

Some key things to reduce deaths:
Dshot apply
Have adequate party heals
Protect your energy from edenial

Some key things to kill:
Remove defensive hexes (faint, empathy, snares etc.) from frontline and/or ranger
Push flaggers and be aggressive when their flagger isn't at stand

The thing about hexes is that if your frontline is clean, they essentially have no defense outside of their 2 monks (and a rit). You need to take advantage of those openings and land kills or force a boost.

This seems a very logical move. Hexway usually have no real spike spike dmg (If you wanna count sins, lulz) aswell a high single target dmg. Your warriors should be able to push for their flagger alot, preferably as early on as possible.