Curse

Revelations · May 15, 2009, 07:57 PM // 19:57

Why is it that it is still possible to just load up a whole ton of purple squares on someone's screen and completely shut them down? Aside from running the paper, scissors, rock approach - ie. PnH - what other options do you have to deal with hex stacks on a monk bar?

Purge sig is nice, but it screams to be interrupted, and it's recharge is less than ideal. Deny - again not awful, but requires you to take a crappy skill (or PnH) to get best benefit from it. Dual removals (usually veil and cure, sometimes spotless for cure) usually don't cut it, often causing a loss to the clearly superior team.

Is it fair that the sort of idiots who stack empathy or faint up on a monk in addition to the rest of their VoR/Backfire/Wastrel's/LC/Defile crap should win against a player who has a lot of experience on monk? I watch the field, preprot with veil and guardian, swap my sets efficiently for most - if not all - spells, use terrain and obstructions to my advantage, cover my veil, prioritize hexes for removal, and generally play an effective monk. Yet I will often lose to teams that simply carry more hexes than I do removals. Having a decent ranger definitely helps, but this is not always possible in TA, or indeed probable in RA.

I know the current state of balance is terrible right now, especially so in lower arenas, but what are everyone's thoughts on hex stacks? As retardedly overpowered as I've made them out to be? Or just another annoyance to have to chug through?

Zzes Tyan · May 15, 2009, 08:23 PM // 20:23

if they have experiance they dont have problems with hexes. thats what preveiling is for.

I D E L E T E D I · May 15, 2009, 08:54 PM // 20:54

[Holy Veil][Divine Spirit][Deny Hexes]

veil key targets, remove said hex with deny before cover goes up. Veil makes most hexes magebane food.

You are not meant to remove every hex just key hexes like LC/VoR

Oh and this is for TA.

Massive Impulsa · May 15, 2009, 10:09 PM // 22:09

Well, you pretty much have to hope the enemies doesnt run Mantra of Resolve + Pious Concentration.. IF they do you pretty much have to gangbang their monk.

Things to help around - LC/VoR doesnt kill if you face a team running Pious Conentration + Resolve (means ranger cant interrupt the hexes) simply send him on monk AND on r/p

Let him Dshot barbed spear + apply poison

- they shouldnt be able to kill you then..

Anyways you cant really do anything against hexstacks, just keep war clean and hope they die faster

Wish Swiftdeath · May 16, 2009, 07:50 AM // 07:50

You just have to remove the vital stuff.

If you're watching the field, it shouldn't be hard.

Arena's have ridiculous amounts of bar compression so there's always going to be some form of build wars.

On a side note i tend to just use dark escape if i have VoR on me and remove more important hexes.

urania · May 16, 2009, 08:01 AM // 08:01

the problem is mantra on mesmers - before it became the meta in TA hexways, it rly was rewarding to preveil ca. 3 ppl and remove hexes with deny while keeping veils up still and it rly did matter whether u had a good ranger or not vs a hexway, esp a good one.
Now, u either take a stance removal like wild blow or whirling axe or wild throw or try dealing with the mesmer's mantra the hard way~shocking him on vital skills like humility and shame, deb shotting him on recharge and trying to make his mantra end cuz of lack of energy, hoping he wont before that divert a vital skil on the monk or rupt too much of their hex removal (yes, good ones camp u for deny/veils). Yet, it gets trickier if theyve got guadian too, so need to get that first, but before that the mes can get plenty of shutdown spells off without any worry of being interrupted.
Also, sometimes the hex teams even take pious conc on necs, so yeah...looking at those 2 skills (mantra of resolve and pious conc) would be nice, but is, unfortunately, very unlikely to actually happen.

at Wish, the problem is that 90% of their hexes is vital ~ faint on ranger, lc on target an enraged bm is bashing on, bf and vor stack, shame, insidi and so on. I think the only really non vital spells are defile defenses (if there's no major block stances/skills in ur team) and insidious or empathy, as long as they're not stacked - vig spirit can reduce their effect to a certain extent if they're the only hex on ur warr. But when stacked, they become vital very fast.
Also, getting apply poison on the enraged lunge bm is very vital too.

Moloch Vein · May 16, 2009, 08:42 AM // 08:42

I stack Empathy and Faint on monks if I have to. Unfortunately with this retarded skill that begins with P and ends with Y around, there's no point.

If your team allows the necro or mesmer to successfully spend 50e worth of hexes on you, you deserve to lose. The real question is why you should be allowed to remove everything with a skill that costs 5e and casts in 1/4 second.

Wish Swiftdeath · May 16, 2009, 03:18 PM // 15:18

Lingering is far far more broken than PaH.

As for faintheartedness:

1. Ranger should interrupt
2. I always preveil ranger anyway (patient cover when nec uses rip)

But yes i really hate otyugh's cry, just encourages brainless button mashing.

Revelations · May 16, 2009, 04:11 PM // 16:11

Perhaps I was unclear in my original post, but I was not asking for advice on how to monk against it, simply what everyone thought of hex stacks and how mindless they are/aren't. The monking ramble was just an example to demonstrate roughly the level of play that I am at - ie. a significant level above most people you would find in RA/TA. (which isn't saying much.)

As far as things go, I agree that a good ranger makes hexgay much easier to beat, but it still takes ridiculously more skill than players of said gimmick need expend. On top of that if they manage to land a covered faint on your ranger and you have no deep removal then he's gonna have a bitch of a time keeping the rest down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zzes Tyan

if they have experiance they dont have problems with hexes. thats what preveiling is for.

Yes, because veil is useful for removing a whole stack of LC->VoR->Backfire->Defile->Wastrel's->Whatever else they unload on you. Honestly, read the thread title. Veil is mediocre at best against stacks, and just plain shit if your ranger is bad/nonexistent. Which I have absolutely no problem with because it encourages coordination, it's the stacks that are retarded.

Currently there is only a single viable skill to deal with hex stacks, and it is the cause of just as much retarded paper, scissors, rock as the hexes themselves.

EDIT: Also

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

at Wish, the problem is that 90% of their hexes is vital ~ faint on ranger, lc on target an enraged bm is bashing on, bf and vor stack, shame, insidi and so on. I think the only really non vital spells are defile defenses (if there's no major block stances/skills in ur team) and insidious or empathy, as long as they're not stacked - vig spirit can reduce their effect to a certain extent if they're the only hex on ur warr. But when stacked, they become vital very fast.

This.

Backfire, Faint, LC or Soul Bind, Defile, VoR, Empathy, Insidious, Shame, and to top it off sig Humil on your WoH/PnH. Even with a good Magebane, and dual removals this is not easy to keep up with, considering the recharges and shut down power that those can cause.

FoxBat · May 16, 2009, 05:06 PM // 17:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

Currently there is only a single viable skill to deal with hex stacks, and it is the cause of just as much retarded paper, scissors, rock as the hexes themselves.

Welcome to 4v4? As balanced as the format could ever get is actually having a rock to beat scissors, which it didn't in the past.

That said, I'd stop complaining overly about mesmers and take a look at the same necros that make up your "balanced" team - rightly nerfed but still completely overpowered support, played in just about every build (balanced, hexes, MBlasters) now that smiteway was destroyed. They're the ones with the cheap yet dangeorus cover hexes and complete condition control.

Greedy Gus · May 16, 2009, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Yeah it's a persistent balance issue. Hexes were reasonably well balanced early on in the game because they just weren't very good (along with not very good hex removal). It's an innately strong game mechanic relative to conditions (being able to stack up hexes and make them stick) and simply increasing the power of narrow removals along with powering up a lot of individual hexes only makes it more of a R/P/S issue.

Vanquisher · May 16, 2009, 06:06 PM // 18:06

This is the problem with 4v4 in general. Overuse of one thing in this game should always outclass the removal of that thing, but in arenas with low number parties it becomes a much bigger problem. It's not helped at all by the fact there are so many ridiculously good hexes floating about at the moment, and fast cast/recharge sets only serves to compound the issue.

Revelations · May 17, 2009, 04:50 PM // 16:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

They're the ones with the cheap yet dangeorus cover hexes and complete condition control.

I agree on ff being stupid, even in it's nerfed state, but since when do necromancer's have a 1/4c 1r cover that does 100 damage? Defile comes close, but doesn't have completely overpowered synergy with any other skills on the same bar. You have to actually coordinate - albeit only very slightly - for it to become more threat than just a cover. Hell, wastrel's can even soak up a preveil against a monk with crappy reflexes or ping.

And in case you completely missed the point - it's not the mesmers I'm complaining about - I have no problem getting wtfpwnd by a good dom. It's the pitiful VoR/Backfire/Empathy plus wastrel's spam that I have a problem with. It takes virtually zero skill, yet it gives you a pretty substantial reward.

Telkandore · May 17, 2009, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Protective spirit > all the hexes you're crying about

Revelations · May 17, 2009, 10:19 PM // 22:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telkandore

Protective spirit > all the hexes you're crying about

Last I checked, prot spirit didn't do a thing against empathy, insidious, shame, faint, or LC. Defile is used primarily as a cover - prot spirit does not mitigate it's ability to do that. And it's the last three that are especially shitting up the arena.

On top of that it's a 15 energy skill if you don't want it ripped. While I don't doubt that prot spirit is an amazing skill it's a pretty bad counter to hexway.

Please realize that it's not individual hexes or their effects that I'm talking about - it's the retarded issue of a stack completely shutting someone down.

Zil · May 17, 2009, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Nothing you can do. Sit it out. Try to catch the hexes next time, if you survive that long.

Thats Too Bad · May 18, 2009, 12:32 AM // 00:32

the above post is correct. Hammer war + LC goes on mes, ranger goes on necro + monk, and you kite the elunge pet with ur [return]. you save [dark escape] incase you are hexspiked with 30e+ worth of hexes, in which case you gtfo that area.

Guardian can afford to get diverted... cover veil with patient spirit before ench killing spell hits (pro).

Drop not attempt to remove hex stacks with veil+another hex removal combo, not worth it. Also cancel casting immediately when on [diversion].