Curse

Trinity Fire Angel · Jun 17, 2009, 12:54 AM // 00:54

Is there anyone out there who can help me pick the spike patterns for different type spike builds in HA and to a lesser extent GvG?

what i am looking for is any insight on how certain builds work up to their spike? eg. Bloodspike will cast skill X on this character and then this will happen... then spike will come.

what are the cues that i can look for on the field rather than on the red bar? are there any particular sounds i can listen for?

chgeers

Zodiac Meteor · Jun 17, 2009, 01:49 AM // 01:49

Two things, watch enemies, watch your red bars.

When the foes turn at once, aka, a spike. The red bars can go down as much as you want but when you see two or three foes switch targets, get your finger on the infuse key.

As soon as that happens, watch the red bars, as soon as you see one lose 10-20% health, infuse it. Because 99% of the time, that's the spike.

Sounds don't work, because mostly (should) be on vent. Listen for, "Watch 2" or "Watch 7" as your allies should give tips on who is the target.

i farm baddies · Jun 17, 2009, 02:43 AM // 02:43

if you play against balanced, watch the war, probably the the axe or if a palm strike and watch where they go. your prot should have already protted where they go but some dmg will get through dont infuse if you dont have to, you will get used to this the more you play.

against bspike, stay at the back on your 40 40 and woh ppl under 50% health and patient others. this will only last till you run out of energy so pray your team can kill them fast enough.

other gimmicks, make sure you have appropriate shield on and rspike watch where they turn? look for hexes and or deepwound.

TheHaxor · Jun 17, 2009, 03:49 AM // 03:49

Well patterns can also be based on spike timing and frequency, as well as target selection. You must be aware of recharges for the major skills involved, as well as their energy costs. From this you can determine approximately how often and when the opposing team will spike. You also have to take into account how much pressure your team is dealing to theirs. This will decrease the spike frequency because it will require an increase in the amount of utility skills (defense) being used.

It is important to be aware of the time on certain maps (priest, cap points, relic run, etc.) and every 2 minutes in GvG because spike teams are going to try to kill stuff after time or make it base res. They are generally going to try to do this to a priority spike target in order to turn the tide of the match.

The priority spike targets are going to be monks, hard res, or anything that has been death pacted or has DP. These targets are generally going to be hit more often than anything else.

You could honestly write about this subject all day and I haven't even begun to give it justice. I think it would be better if you prod with specific examples.

Zzes Tyan · Jun 17, 2009, 03:59 AM // 03:59

list builds and we can give you counters. there are LOTS of spike builds out there

Archress Shayleigh · Jun 17, 2009, 04:10 AM // 04:10

pretty much look where they turn their faces to.

Killed u man · Jun 17, 2009, 06:42 AM // 06:42

As a prot, you have to redbar conditions, and watch the caller of the enemy team.
As a heal, you have to redbar heals and watch the caller for infuse health.

99% of the HA Monks have problems with combining those 2. They can't focus on the battlefield, without completely forgetting about the fact they still have to removed conditions and heals.

This is also one of the reasons every shitty HA HBMonk brings Auspicious Incantation over PDrain. Pdrain clearly is the better skill. (On about EVERY aspect possible)
Yet heal monks can't interrupt a 2 second cast Rodgorts Invocation whilst not letting someone die in the team.

So what you, and 99%of HA monks need to learn, is how to redbar PROPORLY. (Mainly talking about heals here) Redbarring = use 1% of your brain to use your skill bar for what it was designed to do, purely on information comming from the party window.
A heal Monk should NEVER "stop" healing in order to find the caller, look where the mesmer is, or look for an interrupt for Pdrain.
Or in your case, look for a spike to happen.

Redbar healing needs to be become an automatism. Only then you can effectivly keep the health bars up, whilst at the same time being FULLY AWARE of the battlefield aroud you, catching all spikes with infuse health aswell as interrupting keyskills with Pdrain.

A good HB Monk (WoH sucks in HA, anyone telling otherwise lacks experience) manages to find good channelballs, interrupt alot of diversions/shames on the enemy mesmer, catches 99% of the spikes out there and can keep health bars above 80%.

House Silvermoon · Jun 17, 2009, 07:27 AM // 07:27

interesting advice borat. could u explain in more detail about the dynamic of woh vs hb plz. i've heard this argument before and i just wish to understand it better.

Killed u man · Jun 17, 2009, 01:21 PM // 13:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by House Silvermoon

interesting advice borat. could u explain in more detail about the dynamic of woh vs hb plz. i've heard this argument before and i just wish to understand it better.

It's not that complcated really: Hall of Heroes...

TL;DR: Skip to bottom;

Whilst WoH is, offcorse, a nice skill, the problem is the skillbar set-up does not allow to pump party heals. I agree that it is a "golden" skill, because if you look at it purely mathematical, you get a 200 heal for only 5 energy.
Patient Spirit under HB is only a 170 heal, aswell as the 3 second delay (Which doesn't hurt that bad, tough I have had party members die due to the delay) and the fact that you need HB to power it.

So people need to realize that the WoH vs HB arguement does NOT refer to the skills, but rather to the skill bars.
And when I say skill bars, I mean 1 skill: Heal Party.

Heal Party makes or breaks teams. If you're in HoH, or even a regular map (To HoH), and you ball up, that's a potential 1000+ damage party-wide which you'll have to clean up. (Prots don't work against AoE)
And that's where HB Heal Party comes in. 1 HP can heal every party member for 108 Health. Times 8, and you got yourself a 864 Heal, for "only" 15 energy.

A WoH simply can NOT do this as fast, or as cheap as a HB can for multiple reasons.
HB can use Heal Party, and that's it... A WoH on the other hand will have to sit there, and spam WoH on recharge on every party member. (Aswell as patient offcourse)
Now that wouldn't be a problem, if it wasn't for the fact that the enemy team KEEPS ON PRESSURING. So whilst your WoH Monk has finally cleaned up all the AoE damage, the enemy fire ele has already casted 2 more spells...
This becomes crystal clear if you observe a WoH monk in HoH on a cap points map. Unless they manage to shutdown every single AoE spell in the match, you'll find their team collapse under Aoe in a matter of seconds.

Even the most experienced Monks can't negate the tons and tons of damage Fire Eles, or any kind of AoE, pushes out in HoH.
If you then observe a HB Monk on the other hand, a good one that is, he should have NO PROBLEMS keeping the team up against multiple fire eles.

Back to the mathematical equations:

In 10 seconds (About the time it takes for the enemy fire ele to fully unload), a WoH Monk can push out about 3 WoH's and 3 Patient Spirit's. All in all, that's about 1000 healing. That's barely enough to keep 2 people alive...
A HB monk can push out about 3 Patient Spirits, a Dwana's kiss and 4 Heal Parties. All in all, that's about 4100 healing.

The difference between a WoH Monk and a HB Monk in HoH is simply so big, I am willing to risk my HB getting rended in every map to HoH, just so he can pump those party heals in HoH. (And that's what most teams aim for, to hold the HoH)

And before anyone says so:

"Yeah but the WoH Monk uses way lesser energy", that's where Channeling comes in. Channeling ALLOWS a Monk to spam HP on recharge. (HP -> Patient -> HP -> Dwayna's -> HP -> Patient, repeat)
This is also the same reason why people don't run HB in GvG. It's not the enchant removal that hurts so bad, it's the fact that unless you have Channeling, HB is kinda useless. And in GvG, channeling is a near-useless skills, hence why WoH is the elite of choice.

TL;DR:

HB can spam Heal Party, which allows for 400 HP/Second healing, compared to the 100 HP/Second healing from WoH...

Dpagona83 · Jun 17, 2009, 06:01 PM // 18:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheHaxor

Well patterns can also be based on spike timing and frequency, as well as target selection. You must be aware of recharges for the major skills involved

So true...especially when their spike is based off adren. (i.e. caller is an Earth-Shaker war, or if it's completely caster based), roughly ES will be built every 10-15 seconds (average saying he doesnt hit everytime and needs to chase) and with casters just know the recharge. Use the game clock or if you're steady, count in your head to get the patterns down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

blah blah blah

1 skill: Heal Party.

Heal Party makes or breaks teams. If you're in HoH, or even a regular map (To HoH), and you ball up, that's a potential 1000+ damage party-wide which you'll have to clean up. (Prots don't work against AoE)
And that's where HB Heal Party comes in. 1 HP can heal every party member for 108 Health. Times 8, and you got yourself a 864 Heal, for "only" 15 energy.

A WoH simply can NOT do this as fast, or as cheap as a HB can for multiple reasons.
HB can use Heal Party, and that's it... A WoH on the other hand will have to sit there, and spam WoH on recharge on every party member. (Aswell as patient offcourse)
Now that wouldn't be a problem, if it wasn't for the fact that the enemy team KEEPS ON PRESSURING. So whilst your WoH Monk has finally cleaned up all the AoE damage, the enemy fire ele has already casted 2 more spells...
This becomes crystal clear if you observe a WoH monk in HoH on a cap points map. Unless they manage to shutdown every single AoE spell in the match, you'll find their team collapse under Aoe in a matter of seconds.

Even the most experienced Monks can't negate the tons and tons of damage Fire Eles, or any kind of AoE, pushes out in HoH.
If you then observe a HB Monk on the other hand, a good one that is, he should have NO PROBLEMS keeping the team up against multiple fire eles.

blah blah blah

~and anyone who disputes this is a buttface

Elemental Mio · Jun 17, 2009, 06:29 PM // 18:29

What I have been doing as a prot:

Balanced : Camp the warrior ( Usually 1)
Rspike : Camp 1, before they spike they usually call. When they call they have to fire at someone and cancel it and then spike the called target.
U can usually see at who he cancelled the called attack and that person is mostly gonna be spiked ... Spirit Bond FTW i say
Bspike: Bullshit and only for idiots. Goes foes the infuse ...

i farm baddies · Jun 17, 2009, 07:48 PM // 19:48

if you need hb to redbar you are a bad monk

Elemental Mio · Jun 17, 2009, 09:42 PM // 21:42

Tbh HB >>>> WoH

Trinity Fire Angel · Jun 18, 2009, 03:08 AM // 03:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elemental Mio

What I have been doing as a prot:

Balanced : Camp the warrior ( Usually 1)
Rspike : Camp 1, before they spike they usually call. When they call they have to fire at someone and cancel it and then spike the called target.
U can usually see at who he cancelled the called attack and that person is mostly gonna be spiked ... Spirit Bond FTW i say
Bspike: Bullshit and only for idiots. Goes foes the infuse ...

By camping you mean basically clicking on them and following them around? this makes me feel nervous,,,, too much RA / AB / FA where people have blindfolds on and only go for the monk...

good advice Borat.... i still think the HB bar for HA is superior to WoH. WoH only works in GvG and RA / TA. HB for everything else... even PVE dammit (people think i am stupid for bringing HB to hard mode until i spam out the Heal Party and Infuses while channel tanking Raging Natoukas).

Haxor, cheers for the good info. gives me more of an insight. until now i have only red-barred infuse...

viscus · Jun 18, 2009, 10:22 AM // 10:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elemental Mio

What I have been doing as a prot:

Balanced : Camp the warrior ( Usually 1)
Rspike : Camp 1, before they spike they usually call. When they call they have to fire at someone and cancel it and then spike the called target.
U can usually see at who he cancelled the called attack and that person is mostly gonna be spiked ... Spirit Bond FTW i say
Bspike: Bullshit and only for idiots. Goes foes the infuse ...

i agree with mio on balanced, its fairly easy, just watch the main frontliner and guardian whoever they are attacking or just LS/RoF them if you think he is just building adren. usually the biggest giveaway to a warrior calling for spike is (if you have them targeted this is) they either hit a speed buff OR hit frenzy.

in the case of a hammer war or sin, dont wait for any sign of spike, just prot asap because usually you will have someone distracting your infuser with interupts/shame/diversion etc (also of note, nearly every single sin spike can be caught by watching the party window as 99% of them involve bleeding+deepwound ^^)

as for rspike, if you think you can handle watching the rangers direction when they spike, thats good, otherwise, you have to know who on your team is going to be the most annoying to them and keep them protted. then just spread your prots out a bit, guardian one person, SoA another, spirit bond another etc. most of the time this strategy works for me because you cant always see what is exactly going on around you, especially in UW where ppl like to hide under the bridges etc.

bloodspike, oh how i LOATHE it.... back to the point, as a prot, theres not much you can do other than spam your 5e prots on whoever is being trained, it doesnt sound like much but your infuser will <3 you when he casts dwaynas and all your enchants boost his healing power by a lot.

ok what else do we have.... IWAY! ok theres a trick to protting against it, and its definetly NOT easy, first thing you MUST DO is remove deepwounds constantly, and guardian constantly, but in order to do this, you have to rely on your team to keep spirits down, or you will run out of energy FAST or get you bar dchopped to hell. you absolutely HAVE to channel tank like crazy and avoid casting guardian when natures renewal is up. if you need to switch to shield set and kite like hell or even channel tank on your shield set if you get a good position, and only cast when you think you have a break. it may not be the best way, i dont know, but most of the time when i lose to iway, its always around the 10min mark, so my way works out ok for me.

mathway - aura of stab on infuser constantly, SoA on anyone knocked down in AoE, not much more to it really, i suppose you can spirit bond people under 50% health just in case they get meteored to death.

hexway - the hardest build to prot against unless you have a pnh monk.
spirit bond as much as your energy allows to mitigate damage from VoR/Soulbind/backfire. if you are in HA and you know for sure you will be facing hexway, i suggest running RC (well i suggest running RC anyway, LS is crap imo). most hexways have a taint necro, and various other conditions, RC is the most powerful heal in this case.

im too tired to think any more. and yeh, just my 2cents for the day. hope it helps somewhat

Dpagona83 · Jun 18, 2009, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Quote: