Curse

xDementia · Jun 03, 2009, 11:16 AM // 11:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

So, back on topic:

Why is Distortion bad for the game?
Why is it Distortion and not Mind Blast and Aura of Restoration?
Why are E/D Mind Blast templates also good, even though they don't have Distortion?
Why are direct damage caster templates on par with the power creep of hex and melee damage bad for the game?

Energy lost on distortion is supposed to effectively decrease the frequency at which it can be used in the long term. Practicaly, it is almost equivalent to a longer recharge and it is what balances its energy cost+recharge. However, a character with superior energy management potential can upkeep it a lot more and the frequency remains as high as energy is available. On such templates, it doesn't only serve as a personal protection against physical characters to save yourself when spiked like most defensive stances would but it is abused because it allows some form of immunity and because it acts as an anti interrupt skill.

Mind blast, AoR and attunement are good examples of skills that make skills that are limited by energy cost imba because the frequency can match the recharge of those skills. Low recharge on expensive spells/skills becomes part of the problem because those emanagement skills break them.

E/D: meta/map adaptation *cough* fire isles *cough* cripshot. It is strong in a different way but not as brainless.

Caster damage is bad for the game because:

-They hardly need cleaning (condition/hex removal) like physical classes do
-Removes positioning from the game
-Mantra of Resolve/Concentration, block stances and to some extent wards (stability/melee) allow them to be resilient to skills/tactics that counter them and make soft counters like interrupts or knockdown useless
-Physical classes don't make hard counters a necessity to be dealt with because good position + preprot + redbarsgoup are already soft counters that you have to bring.
-Can kill NPCs more safely
...

Regarding E/Me in particular, people who say they can be dealt with easily by switching targets, ignoring them as if they have guardian on them, stripping their enchants, interrupting key skills, using crap like VoR, Backfire, diversion or powerblock don't get it. All of those things have minor effect on them because they either already have the tools to counter the counters (e.g. recasting AoR to cover strips) or can simply ignore shutdown by using their mobility and their resilience to bring their damage in a place where shutdown can't go.

Krill · Jun 03, 2009, 02:40 PM // 14:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

5s recharge on MB, 10s recharge on Immolate, 15/20s recharge on Rodgorts and we're set.

You don't have to destroy 3 skills to tone down 1 build...of course this what will probably happen based on Linsey's precedent for skill balancing.

Remove the +1 energy gain from Aura of Restoration and bump Immolate up to 5s or 7s. There goes the Mind Blaster that just cycles skills without completely wrecking one of the few viable ele builds.

Neo-LD · Jun 03, 2009, 02:44 PM // 14:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

Desirable doesn't exist. Undesirable is what exists. Desirable is the name that gets called for what removes the undesirable. What is undesirable are necessities: hunger, thirst, etc. Everything that does exist is just another thing that a different person considers undesirable. You produce enough universal undesirables and you get a universal desirable. In order to make a desirable build, you make undesirable builds; and the desirable build is what comes out to beat them.

Note that this is based on universal desire, and if you didn't want that to happen, you wouldn't ask for a desirable build. People will complain about the undesirables and threaten to leave because of them. But in the end, a build will be named desirable because it removes them.

You remove both desire and undesirable if you remove necessities. When you add necessities, you create desire and undesirable.

While thats all very interesting, you don't give any reasons supporting why things are the way that you say. Thus I have no grounds to argue with you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dreamwind

You're claiming that desirable is a build with small set of skills required, and if there are other things involved it is no longer desirable. What about the game as a whole? If there is only one desirable build I am claiming that the GAME is not desirable.

I disagree, for reasons stated earlier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dreamwind

Lets assume that every build in the current meta is undesirable for the sake of argument. Having this many undesirable builds is still better than having just one undesirable build.

But its also worse than having just one desirable build. You will disagree, but I can't help your inexplicable emphasis on variety.

Having multiple desirable builds would be even better, because variety isn't a bad thing, it just tends to get in the way of more important things. If things were up to me I would redesign GvG from the ground up and start off ensuring that there was only one viable, desirable team build. Once that solid foundation was laid, I'd add in more desirable team builds gradually and make sure to balance them against eachother.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dreamwind

They are interesting, but I don't think its good for the game to only have those if you need to sacrifice everything else to do it. It goes back to my Street Fighter example. If Ryu is the most skill intensive and best character in the game, and everybody picks him, the game is still boring because none of the other options are playable.

Boring is better than meaningless.

Yue · Jun 03, 2009, 04:54 PM // 16:54

Quote:

Boring is better than meaningless.

It doesn't even have to be boring. I can't recall a single balanced vs balanced game that wasn't more fun to watch than spike or elesplit. Being able to play one build dynamically is more fun both to play and to watch than to play multiple builds in a one-sided manner.

lutz · Jun 03, 2009, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by xDementia

Energy lost on distortion is supposed to effectively decrease the frequency at which it can be used in the long term. Practicaly, it is almost equivalent to a longer recharge and it is what balances its energy cost+recharge. However, a character with superior energy management potential can upkeep it a lot more and the frequency remains as high as energy is available. On such templates, it doesn't only serve as a personal protection against physical characters to save yourself when spiked like most defensive stances would but it is abused because it allows some form of immunity and because it acts as an anti interrupt skill.

So basically, what you're saying is:

Anything with good energy management can abuse skills balanced by high energy costs.

This applies to a lot of skills. Which one do you want me to pick?

Set A: Good energy management
Ether Prism, Ether Prodigy, Mind Blast, Blood is Power, Offering of Blood, etc.

Set B: Good skills balanced with a high energy cost
Distortion, Heal Party, Healing Breeze, Recuperation, Resilient Weapon, Rodgort's Invocation, Divine Boon, Power Attack, Protector's Strike, Mirage Cloak, the list goes on.

Skills with a high energy cost are not the problem. Distortion has been around for a long time, and, since its rebalance to change the scaling to duration, it's been pretty balanced.

It's really a high-energy engine that begins to abuse a lot of these skills that nobody has ever considered imbalanced before. Look at Power Attack and Protector's Strike - with a super energy engine like Warrior's Endurance, of course you could abuse these skills. They're balanced by the fact that warriors don't have a lot of energy, and these skills cost alot of energy in comparison to the energy pool of a warrior.

The only reason why Distortion is being targeted now is because it's present in a community unwilling to change. People know that the other team is going to bring E/Mes, yet they're unwilling to do small specs like bringing Rend Enchantments, Rigor Mortis (which doesn't even require a primary necromancer - you can bring it on a warrior, ranger, mesmer, elementalist, etc.) or some kind of stance removal (which finds utility in several other areas as well, such as balanced stance monks). You don't need to change your entire build around beating these things, which is what a lot of people are making it seem like. You just have to add one or two skills and you'll make the matchup infinitely more successful for you.

If you've ever played Magic: the Gathering, that's what a "sideboard" is about. You can't change your entire deck around for an opponent, but you can make small modifications that really hurt your opponent's playstyle. That's why some people prefer "balanced" builds. You can't make modifications to really hurt balanced builds - you have to run an entirely different build most of the time to do it. However, "balanced" in this past mAT wasn't too successful because people refused to do what balanced does best - spec.

xDementia · Jun 03, 2009, 08:16 PM // 20:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

So basically, what you're saying is:

Anything with good energy management can abuse skills balanced by high energy costs.

This applies to a lot of skills. Which one do you want me to pick?

Set A: Good energy management
Ether Prism, Ether Prodigy, Mind Blast, Blood is Power, Offering of Blood, etc.

Set B: Good skills balanced with a high energy cost
Distortion, Heal Party, Healing Breeze, Recuperation, Resilient Weapon, Rodgort's Invocation, Divine Boon, Power Attack, Protector's Strike, Mirage Cloak, the list goes on.

Skills with a high energy cost are not the problem. Distortion has been around for a long time, and, since its rebalance to change the scaling to duration, it's been pretty balanced.

It's really a high-energy engine that begins to abuse a lot of these skills that nobody has ever considered imbalanced before. Look at Power Attack and Protector's Strike - with a super energy engine like Warrior's Endurance, of course you could abuse these skills. They're balanced by the fact that warriors don't have a lot of energy, and these skills cost alot of energy in comparison to the energy pool of a warrior.

All I'm saying is:

-Distortion is balanced on pretty much everything else but not on this template
-Emanagement is the problem and I agree with you. It needs to be toned down.
-Furthermore, I'd increase the recharge of all those high energy cost skills you mentionned (only a bit) because they are waiting or have already been abused in the past when used in combination with super emanagement unless you want to kill every single energy engine in the game.

Quote:

The only reason why Distortion is being targeted now is because it's present in a community unwilling to change. People know that the other team is going to bring E/Mes, yet they're unwilling to do small specs like bringing Rend Enchantments, Rigor Mortis (which doesn't even require a primary necromancer - you can bring it on a warrior, ranger, mesmer, elementalist, etc.) or some kind of stance removal (which finds utility in several other areas as well, such as balanced stance monks). You don't need to change your entire build around beating these things, which is what a lot of people are making it seem like. You just have to add one or two skills and you'll make the matchup infinitely more successful for you.

If you've ever played Magic: the Gathering, that's what a "sideboard" is about. You can't change your entire deck around for an opponent, but you can make small modifications that really hurt your opponent's playstyle. That's why some people prefer "balanced" builds. You can't make modifications to really hurt balanced builds - you have to run an entirely different build most of the time to do it. However, "balanced" in this past mAT wasn't too successful because people refused to do what balanced does best - spec.

I see your point but you can't really compare a game where you know pretty much everything you opponent plays with certainty after game 1. Both players can switch 15 out of 60 cards but they know most of the time that only around 5-7 cards are effectively going to be changed because other slots are needed to fight other matchups. It doesn't mean you can't be surprised by the small spec. To summarize, changes are usually small, based on something that doesn't change much, predictable at some point.

Back to GW, changes can be huge, up to 64 skill slots at once and sometimes hard to predict. I agree with you people should spec but having to guess in a situation where there is so much more randomness is not satisfying for a competitive game. Small changes as you said, things like soft counters, that is to say skills that have multiple uses and work in a lot of ways, in other words flexible skills are preferable than hard counters. Kriegar taking CoF against EW is a perfect example.

Caster damage and hexes being onpar with physical damage might lead to a meta that requires more than soft counters and that's a shame. How do you expect people to play balanced and spec multiple builds taking the risk of having 5-10 dead skills in their team build? They can change everything as well but their opponents can do the same -> buildwars. Sad example is Shat vs Rawr.

Master Fuhon · Jun 03, 2009, 09:14 PM // 21:14

This would be a crude fix: Add an effect to Fire Attunement that you cannot move faster than normal. That would make all Fire builds have to choose between the ability to split better or have more energy for dealing damage. This would probably break Burning Speed more than it already is.

The other problem to look at is related to the fact that people still believe 'balanced' is a state of the game where heavy physical counters are taken and offenses are entirely dependent on physical things to kill.

xDementia · Jun 03, 2009, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

The other problem to look at is related to the fact that people still believe 'balanced' is a state of the game where heavy physical counters are taken and offenses are entirely dependent on physical things to kill.

It all depends on how you define what balanced is.

I'm just going to ask a simple question:

In a state of the game where powercreep has brought damage to a level where prot/shutdown, and to some extent armor, matter less than spot healing or party healing and where caster damage/hexes are as effective as physical damage, why would you bring position dependant, predictable damage source that require heavy cleaning?

In my opinion, balance(d) can hardly exist in an environment where bringing physicals is an inherent disadvantage on every single aspect.

lutz · Jun 03, 2009, 10:07 PM // 22:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by xDementia

Back to GW, changes can be huge, up to 64 skill slots at once and sometimes hard to predict. I agree with you people should spec but having to guess in a situation where there is so much more randomness is not satisfying for a competitive game. Small changes as you said, things like soft counters, that is to say skills that have multiple uses and work in a lot of ways, in other words flexible skills are preferable than hard counters. Kriegar taking CoF against EW is a perfect example.

Caster damage and hexes being onpar with physical damage might lead to a meta that requires more than soft counters and that's a shame. How do you expect people to play balanced and spec multiple builds taking the risk of having 5-10 dead skills in their team build? They can change everything as well but their opponents can do the same -> buildwars. Sad example is Shat vs Rawr.

That's why Guild Wars encourages build variety. If you can only play one build, then obviously you're going to get specced hard. That's what happened to Shat.

There aren't a lot of soft counters that exist in the game anymore. The tools just don't exist for these matters anymore. My favourite example is the Sinsplit, especially Me's sinsplit. To beat it, it required an insane counter by [dR] - Dwayna dervs, HEV Mesmer, and a monk runner with a ton of hex removal.

However, Rigor Mortis is not a hard counter, at least not in this meta. It's not useless, ever. Maybe it's less desirable against some matchups than others, but it's still usable all the time. You'll never face a team where "anti-blocking" isn't useful (unless you aren't running any physical damage yourself, in which case Distortion doesn't matter anyway).

I'm sorry you don't like pre-game strategies, but you don't get to decide what Guild Wars is supposed to be. It was designed from the start as a game where Build Wars is a very big element. If this wasn't the case, [iQ] would have never done so well in GWFC. If they didn't want Guild Wars to ever be in the Build Wars direction, then after GWFC, they would have made it so. But no, they introduced a variety of new skills and strategies.

I'm sorry you have to be flexible and understand the game elements such as builds and maps to win. I'm sorry you can't just play one build all the time and expect to play Euro honor vs. Euro honor and just spend all game Guardianing the right targets, landing Diversions, and hitting BSurge on spikes. The game is about variety and understanding of the deeper game mechanics. You dismantle another team's build with your own insights and skill choices. Unfortunately, nobody does that anymore, because there aren't tools to do so. What you're used to now is 1 meta build, and everyone 8v8 honor at stand.

Master Fuhon · Jun 03, 2009, 10:18 PM // 22:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by xDementia

It all depends on how you define what balanced is.

I'm just going to ask a simple question:

In a state of the game where powercreep has brought damage to a level where prot/shutdown, and to some extent armor, matter less than spot healing or party healing and where caster damage/hexes are as effective as physical damage, why would you bring position dependant, predictable damage source that require heavy cleaning?

In my opinion, balance(d) can hardly exist in an environment where bringing physicals is an inherent disadvantage on every single aspect.

Physicals are an inherent disadvantage because there is an inherent strategic disadvantage in telling your opponent exactly what you are going to do in a strategy contest. Your casters need to be effective and threatening enough to prevent the opposing team from being able to load up on physical shutdown. The problem is that everyone still wants to run non-threatending casters (those who spend a majority of time defending and kiting). If your caster builds are designed to spend more time running away/defending, the other team can just load up on anti-physical defenses. I don't have statistics in front of me, but from watching, I believe current Mesmers are using Diversion/Shame less and instead using interrupts more.

The reason why people continue to run ineffective casters and ranged support, is because they continue to rely on things like interrupts to shut down healing to push a kill through in a mediocre offensive build. You can't rely on interrupts when your opponent shifts his build away from having a completely collapsable stress point (Aegis).

The strategy that people call 'balanced' is actually just a simplified strategy of sending a Ranger after the flagger to try to deny party heals, and then having another stand character to hit something like WoH/RC/PnH to allow your offense to push through. But then again, you have people who run builds designed to try to do this, who don't even bother doing it, and they can still win.

Even despite a drastic meta shift, people are still running things like Ether Prism flaggers (having all of the party healing on a character that they are willing to strategically isolate) which only widens the strategy advantage of harrasing the base. People aren't playing strategically. In fact, some of them are clearly overmatched strategically; but they think that they should win anyway.

Skill does not overmatch strategy in any contest. It's extremely difficult to manipulate things so that a disorganized bunch a good players can defeat a group of average players who have a superior strategist. But that's exactly what people continue to push for. Generals win wars, not footsoldiers.

DreamWind · Jun 04, 2009, 12:03 AM // 00:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

But its also worse than having just one desirable build. You will disagree, but I can't help your inexplicable emphasis on variety.

The game was not built to only have one competitive build, desirable or not. It was built on the MTG system not the Chess system. In MTG if a meta only has one competitive build, it is considered a HUGE problem in terms of balance. I don't see why it isn't a huge problem in GW as well. But we agree to disagree.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo LD

If things were up to me I would redesign GvG from the ground up and start off ensuring that there was only one viable, desirable team build. Once that solid foundation was laid, I'd add in more desirable team builds gradually and make sure to balance them against eachother.

The problem with this is that your one viable desirable build would always be the most powerful competitive build because you would make sure to balance so everything "less desirable" (regardless of how desirable the other builds are they can not be as desirable as the most desirable build) could not beat it given roughly equal player skill levels. This is the one build meta you prefer. I would not call it balanced.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo LD

Boring is better than meaningless.

I think we'd both prefer neither. If its either we shouldn't be doing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

I'm sorry you have to be flexible and understand the game elements such as builds and maps to win. I'm sorry you can't just play one build all the time and expect to play Euro honor vs. Euro honor and just spend all game Guardianing the right targets, landing Diversions, and hitting BSurge on spikes. The game is about variety and understanding of the deeper game mechanics. You dismantle another team's build with your own insights and skill choices. Unfortunately, nobody does that anymore, because there aren't tools to do so. What you're used to now is 1 meta build, and everyone 8v8 honor at stand.

Ooo thats good. Damn this thread has gone way off topic hasn't it? On a side note I went into RA the other day and theres an E/Me distortionist in nearly every game. Its kind of funny.

Owik Gall · Jun 04, 2009, 12:08 AM // 00:08

It's not all that great if you look into it more. The Ele blocks most of the time, but it still susceptible to interrupts. There's plenty of spellcasting interrupters in PvP. On a side note, melee and other physical attackers aren't the dominant players in most matches. Mesmers are a pain and necromancers can degen the heck out of anyone, and then some.

Any team or build with a great set up can conquer over this one. Especially when met with a good player. No need to degrade this build for the players who are of low ranking.

Jeydra · Jun 04, 2009, 01:17 AM // 01:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

It doesn't even have to be boring. I can't recall a single balanced vs balanced game that wasn't more fun to watch than spike or elesplit. Being able to play one build dynamically is more fun both to play and to watch than to play multiple builds in a one-sided manner.

The 8v8 "balanced" meta was so boring to watch (just as boring as spike vs. spike, I might add), I don't get what you mean. Not so boring to play, maybe, but definitely not to watch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

I'm sorry you have to be flexible and understand the game elements such as builds and maps to win. I'm sorry you can't just play one build all the time and expect to play Euro honor vs. Euro honor and just spend all game Guardianing the right targets, landing Diversions, and hitting BSurge on spikes. The game is about variety and understanding of the deeper game mechanics. You dismantle another team's build with your own insights and skill choices. Unfortunately, nobody does that anymore, because there aren't tools to do so. What you're used to now is 1 meta build, and everyone 8v8 honor at stand.

Agree. Euro honor for the win (not)!

Quote:

Originally Posted by xDementia

I see your point but you can't really compare a game where you know pretty much everything you opponent plays with certainty after game 1. Both players can switch 15 out of 60 cards but they know most of the time that only around 5-7 cards are effectively going to be changed because other slots are needed to fight other matchups. It doesn't mean you can't be surprised by the small spec. To summarize, changes are usually small, based on something that doesn't change much, predictable at some point.

Back to GW, changes can be huge, up to 64 skill slots at once and sometimes hard to predict. I agree with you people should spec but having to guess in a situation where there is so much more randomness is not satisfying for a competitive game. Small changes as you said, things like soft counters, that is to say skills that have multiple uses and work in a lot of ways, in other words flexible skills are preferable than hard counters. Kriegar taking CoF against EW is a perfect example.

I don't know how Magic tournaments work. But I can guess from what you've said. You go into a tournament with a deck of 60 cards and a sideboard of 15 cards. In between games you can switch cards between deck and sideboard. Right?

If that's the case then buildwars (deckwars) would be an absolute crucial factor in the game. If you go into a tournament where one particular deck type dominates, then you can easily spec hard against it. Even though your opponents can lessen the impact of your buildwarsing by using their sideboard, they cannot change their deck wholesale: 45 / 60 cards must remain the same, at least. This fixes a lot of its strategy.

Of course Magic and Guild Wars has one big difference: you can change builds wholesale in Guild Wars. This gives you more flexibility, but it also gives your opponents more flexibility. You end up with buildwars on a smaller scale: in MTG, it is invidivual vs. the world whenever you enter a tournament, and in GW it is individual guild vs. guild every time you play an AT match.

It doesn't change much however. In the end it's still buildwars (deckwars), and metagaming is a crucial part of strategy. That's what balanced is too right? You have a build that can reasonably hope to play against any build, so regardless of what your opponent brings you have a chance. Might not be a very good chance, but still a chance. Compare Bloodspike: if you go in with Bloodspike and your opponent is Searing Flames, it's game.

EDIT: @Vanq -

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanquisher

The template is problematic because it has easy access to all the things that make a split template work, that all work so effectively together it surpasses everything else.

Elaborate on this. What is it that makes a split template work? Of the top of my head for example I can think of some obvious things the E/Me template does not have: condition removal (for Cripple), hex removal (for Freezing Gust) and heals for teammates (eg. Healing Breeze).

Also I'm not so sure that E/Me is overpowered as it is that every other template is underpowered. If E/Me is nerfed, will there still be splits, and what makes you think so? Personally I feel that if E/Me should be nerfed, then so too should most other templates in a general power level reduction.

Ensign · Jun 04, 2009, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by xDementia

Energy lost on distortion is supposed to effectively decrease the frequency at which it can be used in the long term. Practicaly, it is almost equivalent to a longer recharge and it is what balances its energy cost+recharge.

It doesn't actually work that way in practice.

Duration of the stance is largely irrelevant in a larger scale fight, because it only matters until Prot arrives. At that point the cost of Distortion immediately becomes irrelevant because it gets the physicals off of you and onto other targets. There's no need to pump it continuously.

Most stances are fought by getting the character to use their stance, then punishing them during the downtime. Distortion never suffers from this. It will always be there when you converge, and will always get flashed in your face. So in practice, that character becomes untouchable without stance removal, and you simply stop attacking him unless it is very convenient to do so.

The fast recharge becomes relevant on splits. However the drawback there is mitigated by the fact that you largely don't care that it costs a ton. You simply want to stay alive long enough to get away, and if it costs you all your energy you don't care. The fact that you can pump all your energy into it to stay alive is a good trade, and you're often putting your full energy regen into it.

In practice Distortion has been a problem whenever it's been playable; it breaks the rules of stances and it's not something that can be played around reasonably in practical situations. It's certainly not he most broken skill in this metagame; it fits in with quite a few crazy skills. Nor is it uncounterable, and solutions have found their way into the metagame. But it is a strong skill that breaks a lot of rules of the game and of how stances work, and Distortion really isn't the kind of skill that people should have to plan on countering.

Greedy Gus · Jun 04, 2009, 07:17 AM // 07:17

I still support a distortion re-re-work, back to a 5s duration with a range of energy lost. But you'd nerf from the old values, to where you hit -3e per block at a small attribute investment, and -2e only at high levels that an illusion mesmer hits. I like how distortion was a unique stance, being more reliable that could slow down gameplay at the cost of attrition. But that's just a general preference to see, not really a response to the mindblast bar effectiveness.

Yichi · Jun 04, 2009, 05:33 PM // 17:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Elaborate on this. What is it that makes a split template work? Of the top of my head for example I can think of some obvious things the E/Me template does not have: condition removal (for Cripple), hex removal (for Freezing Gust) and heals for teammates (eg. Healing Breeze).

It has enough damage to overpower the hexer sent back unless that hexer is a specific counter to only that template, it has enough defense in distortion to essentially nullify any real threat from pin down/cripple or any physical for that matter in a 1v1 fight, has enough healing to sustain what damage will go through in order to either eliminate the thread or arrive back to the safety of a monk, or allow enough time for a collapse/push...

So again how is it not easily the better of the split templates in the current meta?

lutz · Jun 04, 2009, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yichi

It has enough damage to overpower the hexer sent back unless that hexer is a specific counter to only that template, it has enough defense in distortion to essentially nullify any real threat from pin down/cripple or any physical for that matter in a 1v1 fight, has enough healing to sustain what damage will go through in order to either eliminate the thread or arrive back to the safety of a monk, or allow enough time for a collapse/push...

So again how is it not easily the better of the split templates in the current meta?

A (good) VoR template with Wastrel's will push out the fire ele very easily. A split hexer will just spam 4 hexes on the ele and Dash away and laugh as the fire ele degens out. A R/N Melshot with Rigor Mortis will easily overpower it. A hammer warrior with Warrior's Cunning is basically "k, you're dead".

And no, Aura of Restoration, when you're being collapsed on, is not good healing.

urania · Jun 04, 2009, 09:58 PM // 21:58

aren't there usually 2 eles spamming the enemy base with their Mindless Blasts?
so, let me give u an example of what will happen to hexers: rush in ->get meteored->half dead by time u get up->hex up 1 target->die to the other. Sounds awfully mighty~

And seriously, stop advising counters like warrs cunning and rigor - its ridiculous to read it. Let's bring tripple purge sig and divert hexes with deny and spotless too while we're at it, for those nasty hexways, right?
Might as well say "its np, u can divert or magebane mindblast"

on a side note, why would cripple matter if they dont have to nor need to kite from physicals to start with?

IMMORTAlMITCH · Jun 04, 2009, 10:03 PM // 22:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

aren't there usually 2 eles spamming the enemy base with their Mindless Blasts?
so, let me give u an example of what will happen to hexers: rush in ->get meteored->half dead by time u get up->hex up 1 target->die to the other. Sounds awfully mighty~

If you get meteored while you have dash on your bar I feel sorry for you :|

Xyon the Greatest · Jun 04, 2009, 10:26 PM // 22:26

E/Me are not a problem, GLF VoR Mesmer?