Curse

Killed u man · Apr 21, 2008, 03:47 PM // 15:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divinus Stella

The builds vary so much its hard to give a solid plan of action, against the usual build its best to keep the Rt/E shutdown since it has the warrior shutdown and weapons but im not sure about the dual DA build.

The 2 monk backline in the dual DA version seems to be the weak part since its a similar setup to lego, treating it like paragon spike and training the monks repeatedly isnt so bad if you have a mesmer to screw with the prot monk.

And I once again fully agree. But it's the same problem again, surviving the first few spikes seems to be INCREDIBLY hard, unless you seem to have hard-counters. Builds such as ritspike and bspike had counters which could be implemented in ANY build. (Which obviously were your monks, and maybe a WardvElements)
However with Rspike, you're pretyy much forced to run something as gimmicky as a Paragon. "Shields Up" can't even live up to the Shadow of what it used to be... Bsurge is nice, yet it isn't to hard for the Rspike to time a draw, and spike... Also running a Bsurge means you're going to dedicated 1 guy to babysit a ranger (Esp with recent nerfs to it), so you're an extra guy down, which with rspike is something you often can't afford.

The build can be brought down, heck, I've beaten tons of it. Yet I have the feeling we're walking a thin line, because the slightest mistake we make -or bad luck we get- (Miss 1 Bsurge, get Dshot on 1 DA/Diversion you name it)they spike us down like rabbits during hunter's season...

Read my initial page for everyone who got this far. I'm merely asking to tome some of the redicilous buff-stacking down. (E.G. with the Dual arrow skills + follow up, EVERY buff you put on a ranger counts triple. No need to explain what happens if you put Brutal, glass arrow, ...)

EDIT: to what Krazy said:
Yes, Rspike now is more prominent than ever. With these, I do include the A/D variation of Rspike. Fertile Season USED to be a good anti spike, but it had to go. "Shields Up!" had to do. Aegis recently said bye bye to monk bars. BlindBot had to take it up the A because of GvG issues. (BBot was never that effective in HA because taking a blindbot means you will have to focus on spiking, and on splitting BBot isn't to usefull)

Divinus Stella · Apr 21, 2008, 03:56 PM // 15:56

The buff stacking is the core problem with all the builds, i remember against iA you could infuse the spike if you had a shield set and disrupted the orders but now its just insta-gib even if your in a shield set standing in harm with DA up.

Ate of DK · Apr 21, 2008, 04:02 PM // 16:02

Simple reason why I think that was possible: [iA] didn't have cracked armor.

Skyros · Apr 21, 2008, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Some of the suggestions seems a lil overboard.

Like for Savage, instead of gimping the recharge on savage shot, why not just say that it deals no damage if target is under 50% health. that way it can still be a viable fast recharge interrupt but the threat it does in r-spike is eliminated.
Put it more in line with distracting blow.

bitchbar player · Apr 21, 2008, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Borat if you want to know how to beat r-spike observe the match between Hawk Smash and The Shake's team in underworld and see a r-spike get rolled in 1 minute by pressure

Killed u man · Apr 21, 2008, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crom Bocca

Borat if you want to know how to beat r-spike observe the match between Hawk Smash and The Shake's team in underworld and see a r-spike get rolled in 1 minute by pressure

Doesn't really contribute to the thread, if you want to proove rspike non-broken, make a new thread (Or pm holy to unlock mine).
This thread is about finding ways to fix it, without hurting any other builds.

Lorekeeper · Apr 22, 2008, 12:58 AM // 00:58

My Attempt at Figuring out Ranger spike Damage Numbers for teams with Ward Against Harm

[Ward against Harm] only adds 23 armour (at 14 water), which becomes +3 with cracked armour. Defensive sets will add +25 to that for a max total of +25 armour (which is the maximum armour stack you can achieve using multiple buffs.

Whats the full potential damage from a typical rspike on a 60 + 25 base armour target?

Using the following online damage calculator and using critical hit damage figures (max damage).

http://www.oildrip.com/calc/index.php

1) 3x Vampiric Hornbow with [Forked Arrow] at 15 marksmanship with [Brutal Weapon] at 15 communing and [Favorable Winds] and [Glass Arrows] at 13 Expertise

50.6x2 + 18x2 + 15x2 + 6x2 = 179.2x3 = 537.6

2) 1x Vampiric Spear at 15 spear mastery with [Sundering Weapon] at 15 communing

46.9

3) Deep wound on a 600 health target = 120 dmg

Total perfect initial spike damage (A1) = 704.5

4) Follow up damage from 3x [Savage Shot] at 15 marksmanship with [Brutal weapon] at 15 communing and [Favorable Winds] (using non-critical average damage figure from damage calculator) with Glass Arrows

29.8 + 18+ 15 + 6 = 68.8x3 = 206.4

5) Maximum possible Dmg from Spike including follow up damage (B1) = 910.9

Damage Numbers if Various Parts of Spike is Shutdown

Dont forget these numbers are the highest they will achieve with critical hits on the initial spike, the follow up damage is calculated at the average. Rspike damage while using [Anthem of Guidance] and [Anthem of Envy] without [''Go for the Eyes!''] is significantly lower.

A1 perfect spike initial damage = 704.5 (Kill)
B1 perfect spike total damage with follow up = 910.9

A2 1 ranger miss initial spike damage = 525.3
B2 1 ranger miss total spike damage = 662.9 (Kill)

A3 1 ranger without brutal weapon initial spike damage = 674.5 (Kill)
B3 1 ranger without brutal weapon total spike damage with follow up = 865.9

A4 no sundering weapon initial spike damage = 578.5
B4 no sundering weapon total spike damage with follow up = 784.9 (Kill)

A5 1 ranger without brutal weapon and paragon without sundering weapon initial spike damage = 548.5
B5 1 ranger without brutal weapon and paragon without sundering weapon total spike damage = 739.9 (Kill)

Best way for Teams with Ward Against Harm to Shutdown Ranger Spike is to do the following

1) make 1 ranger miss completely to make spike more infusable.

2) shutdown sundering weapon on paragon AND brutal weapon on 1 ranger to make spike more infusable.

3) Obviously killing favourable winds will help a little and requires very little effort to do, makes it possible to dodge arrows and allows infuser more time to infuse before follow up damage arrives to finish off spike targets.

Because the initial spike damage leaves the target with a bit of health left it means the spike relies on the follow up damage to kill. Follow up damage will arrive [0.5 seconds + arrow flight time] after the initial spike damage hits... which should give ample time for a [0.25s cast + reaction time + ping lag] infuse.

What is Prottable in Ranger Spike?

Each packet from the main spikes skills of each ranger is prottable with [spirit bond], since they each individually go above 60 damage (even forked arrow packets because of the brutal weapon bonus). However, this is not easy as you need to get the spirit bond on the target before the main packets of damage land, pre-protting rspike is difficult.

Infuse remains the best way of catching the spikes.

How to Survive Initial Spike with Ward Against Harm: Stage 1

Obviously, when you first engage ranger spike they have all buffs up and therefore their first spike will be immune to anti-spike measures 2) and 3). Your best bet is therefore to try to achieve no 1) which should be easy if you have a mesmer with cry of frustration, or gale, or preprot on the right target.

An interesting tactic is to engage the rspike at the moment that all the brutal weapons start to run out at which point the rit has to start refreshing them. If you do this, you might be able to engage them while 1 of their rangers is missing brutal, and sundering weapon only lasts 10 seconds so the rit has to use it on recharge for the paragon so engaging while the rit has pressure to keep brutals on rangers while sundering the paragon is a good way of making sure the first spike less potent. This works well on Underworld, Burial Grounds and Fetid River and Golden Gates, but you cant do it on other maps.

After the First Spike: Stage 2

As soon as you survive the first spike your mesmer needs to get onto the ritualist and shutdown sundering weapon and brutal weapon. This involves interrupts mainly as a good ranger spike will do its best to prevent you from casting diversion and shame. Use pdrain and pleak wisely, with PD only being used if you have wasted your other interrupts since you will become useless at supporting spikes with enchantment removal.

Brutal weapon costs 15 energy, so power leaking it will remove 31 energy from the ritualist (assuming its not powered by glyph). If you get 1 Power leak on brutal weapon this way, then it wont be long until the ritualist will struggle to maintain vitals and brutals and sunderings on the team.

After or during you achieve good shutdown on the ritualist: Stage 3 Endgame

Now, depending on how good your mesmer is, you should be removing channeling off the rspike monk backlines as often as possible and assisting spikes with diversion/shame/shatters if possible. Once you have achieved sufficient shutdown on the ritualist you can pay less attention to it and more attention to monks. This means that you can use your interrupts on the monks to keep channelings off them after removing with rend enchantments. This will eventually drain the monks of their energy, you should aim to keep channeling off the prot monk to force the heal monks to heal more. Once you have achieved that... you should collapse the rspike to continued pressure spiking and channeling denial.

Other Comments

The longer you maintain shutdown on the ritualist and monks, the better your chances are at beating rspike, and the worse their chances of killing and staying alive. Vital weapons will begin to drop off monks when the rit is having to choose between buffing the spikers or vitalling the monks. Vital weapon should be of no real concern as long as you are able to pressure them well enough to make topping up health bars difficult for their monks (good pressure is characterised by enemy bars that are all hovering below 90% health). Make haste will be annoying if you train 1 target too long. Grasping earth from the rit will be annoying if the rit has energy to cast it... so as the match goes on you should see it being cast less and less.
Unfortunately, its not that possible to survive vs rpsike AND kill it fast at the same time. You can put your mesmer onto the backline which will obviously allow you to pressure them faster, but if you leave the rit free you will open yourself to the total damage from their spike, no monk is able to infuse flawlessly so chances are you will die before the rspike dies (especially if its a good one).
Most people make the mistake of believing that matches vs rspike should go quickly, just like most other matches in HA. This is not true, especially if you aim to beat experienced rspikes and survive. Concentrate on shutting down their spike ability first, and then switch to enabling pressure. You simply will not be able to pressure the experienced rspikes without first achieving some amount of shutdown on their spike...

Note

Unfortunately this guide assumes use of ward against harm. If you do not run this skill you look to take alot more damage from the spike.

I will have to revise the numbers for targets without ward against harm.

Rspike Damage Numbers for Teams without Ward Against Harm

Assuming target has defensive set which gives 8+10+7 = +25 armour vs rspike and cracked armour which is -20 armour. A caster will therefore have 65 armour using defensive sets.

Here are the damage numbers for teams without ward against harm.

Dont forget these numbers are the highest they will achieve with critical hits on the initial spike, the follow up damage is calculated at the average. Rspike damage while using [Anthem of Guidance] and [Anthem of Envy] without [''Go for the Eyes!''] is significantly lower.

A1 initial damage from perfect spike = 820.2 (Kill)
B1 including follow up = 1053.6

A2 initial damage from spike if 1 ranger misses = 607.8 (Kill)
B2 including follow up = 763.4

A3 initial damage if 1 ranger has no brutal weapon = 790.2 (Kill)
B3 including follow up = 1008.6

A4 initial spike with no sundering on paragon (therefore armour is 85 and no deep wound) = 578.5
B4 including follow up = 784.9 (Kill)

A5 initial spike with brutal weapon missing on 1 ranger and no sundering weapon on paragon = 548.5
B5 including follow up = 739.9 (Kill)

Conclusion for Teams without Ward Against Harm

Assuming no Pre-Prot

Shutting down sundering weapon remains the most effective shutdown on the rspike damage. Making the paragon miss its attack is even better (figures for this not shown). The only way of preventing an rspike from clean spiking with initial damage is to shutdown the sundering or making 1 ranger miss its attacks. However, even with sundering weapon shutdown AND brutal weapon absent from 1 ranger, the spike can still kill a 600 health target with follow up damage. Fortunately a single RoF is enough to stop the damage from going over the 600 mark meaning even without infuse the target shouldnt die, infuse would still be needed if you want to stop the target from dying from any more damage that gets thrown at it though.

Without ward against harm, the initial spikes from an rspike team would therefore be the most deadly if targetting casters. If facing a good rspike team you will only be able to catch the spikes if you have shutdown sundering weapon or somehow made the paragon miss its attack on the spike. But of course that is assuming all rangers hit with their attacks and no prot is on the target which is something you can easily prevent.

Advice for Teams without Ward Against Harm

1) Bring [Cry of Frustration] to stop the first spike.
2) Bring some form of anti-physical defense to stop either the rangers or the paragon from hitting with their spike skills (eg [Blinding Surge], [Blurred Vision], [Reckless Haste], [Price of Failure], [Gale], [Eruption], [Price of Failure], [Spirit of Failure]).
3) Bring some form of partywide block defense (eg [Defensive Anthem] and [Aegis]) which can prevent the rangers and paragon from hitting with their spikes skills without [Anthem of Guidance] or [Rigor Mortis].
4) Bring some hexes to shutdown the paragons shouts (eg [Vocal minority]) or deny the paragon adrenaline (eg [Soothing Images]) or simply interrupt the [Anthem of Guidance].
5) Kill [Favorable winds], it adds 36 damage to initial spike, adds 18 damage to the follow up spike, makes it difficult to dodge arrows, gives less time for infuser and prot to catch the spike.
6) Run [''Shields Up!''] - 60 extra armour (40 with cracked armour) is the equivalent of halving damage taken.

Spike damage without Criticals

Spike numbers for initial spike with [Anthem of Guidance] and no criticals from [''Go for the Eyes!''] with and without [Ward against Harm].

A1 693.4 without ward against harm/ 611.3 with ward against harm (perfect spike)
B1 926.8 without ward against harm/ 817.7 with ward against harm (perfect spike)

A2 517.4/ 493 (1 ranger misses)
B2 673/ 630.6 (1 ranger misses)

A3 663.4/ 581.3 (1 ranger without brutal)
B3 881.8/ 772.7 (1 ranger without brutal)

A4 487/ 487 (no sundering)
B4 693.4/ 693.4 (no sundering)

A5 457/ 457 (1 ranger without brutal and no sundering)
B5 648.4/ 648.4 (1 ranger without brutal and no sundering)

Notice how damage numbers for A4B4 and A5B5 are the same regardless of the ward against harm throughout this study. Ward against Harm only protects against the cracked armour when you do not shutdown sundering weapon. If sundering weapon is shutdown, you take no less or no more damage whether you have ward against harm or not (basically its useless unless you leave sundering weapon free). This is a direct result of the armour stack buff nerf that was aimed at making paragons less durable... the max armour buff you can get from multiple sources is +25. Only single sources of armour buff can go above. Ward against harm does not stack with defensive sets, but it does negate the effect of cracked armour. With no cracked armour, theres no point of having ward against harm AND defensive sets.

The damage becomes far more manageable when the ranger spike is using Guidance instead of GFTE, however, any block defenses will be useless versus this spike so much of the damage will go through unless protted against (need to prot the spike or mitigate it by other means is high).

The damage from GFTE spikes is much larger but is more susceptible to block defense and with defenses like DA and Aegis the damage can be halved (need to prot the spike or mitigate it by other means is low).

So if you are running some forms of passive defense like DA (and it doesnt get interrupted) an extremely good tactic is to disable anthem of guidance or rigor mortis so that the rangers get blocked by your defense. However, it is not easy to maintain DA 24/7 against good ranger spikes, because it has 2s activation time, they can interrupt your songs too, and even dual DA is not up for 100% of the time.

For most teams without reliable forms of passive defense, other forms of mitigating the damage (as listed above) remain necessary.

Final Conclusion

* You dont need Ward against Harm as long as you are effective at disabling the most powerful aspect of ranger spike - the cracked armour and deep wound.
* Best method of mitigating the damage from rspike is to use defensive sets for the +25 bonus in conjunction with shutting down the damage that comes from the cracked armour and deep wound.
* This will involve either disabling the sundering weapon from the ritualist or causing the paragon to miss with its attacks.
* Causing 1 ranger to miss with its attacks is also an effective counter measure to consider.
* Shutting down brutal weapon has low effect on the damage of the spike, however, Power leaking the ritualist while using Brutal weapon is an effective way of destroying the rits energy pool.
* If you are able to disable cracked armour and deep wound the spike will be easily infusable by an infuser with good ping and good reactions.
* Prot is not necessary as long as you do the above
* Killing favourable winds will allow prot monks to spot spike targets but this is not something to rely on unless your prot is familiar with the positioning habits of your team. If your midliners regularly stray within adjacent range of your backline or frontline then spotting who the bows are pointing at is impossible. - This is where ward against harm can become a liability.
* Passive defense although is more effective at mitigating blockable spikes will be shutdown by good ranger spikes
* Active defense is more reliable and provides more defense against their unblockable spikes (especially if you actively shutdown a ranger or the paragon spike damage).
* Shields up will halve damage against spikes even with cracked armour, against spikes without cracked armour damage will be reduced by more than half (can anyone work out by how much?)

blackknight1337 · Apr 22, 2008, 05:56 AM // 05:56

hmm...lorekeeper, just a question here. I may be missing something, but where do you figure glass arrows in here?

also, i've seen monks that can spirit bond r-spikes pretty well. it does require a very good field of view and quick reaction time....i'm just wondering why borat has such problems finding monks that can prot well.

mrmango · Apr 22, 2008, 06:05 AM // 06:05

He didn't. 123413

Horace The Great · Apr 22, 2008, 06:53 AM // 06:53

You forgot Glass Arrows right? And the armor pent of the hornbow, did you use that? And the armor pent of sundering weapon? And do they still use Antem of Envy?

Lorekeeper · Apr 22, 2008, 09:39 AM // 09:39

ah youre right i need to add in glass arrows, i wont bother with envy since the damage from it isnt as high as when they get a critical while GFTEs is up.

armour pen is factored in yes.

Killed u man · Apr 22, 2008, 12:51 PM // 12:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

ah youre right i need to add in glass arrows, i wont bother with envy since the damage from it isnt as high as when they get a critical while GFTEs is up.

armour pen is factored in yes.

Nice calculations o.0 They should put a "Lorekeeper" option next to the Windows Build-In Calculator...

Euhm, DW is a max of 100 Hp loss, Can't believe you didn' know that...

Other than that, I saw 1 more mistake on the Savage shot follow up:
Not 100% sure, but I don't think the follow up (Savage or Punish) comes in flight-time + 1/2 second, but rather 1/2 second later.

I'm also pretty sure that even tough Ranger interrupts state 1/2 second, it is infact 1/4 second (Tought I read it on wiki), aswell as the fact that when U use a regular attack follow with a 1/2, there won't be an aftercast on the first attack, meaning you won't have to calculate in aftercast.

Flight time doesn't also need to be calculated, because flight time also applies on the first "dual shot"-skill, meaning no matter what, Savage Shot/Punish should always hit 1/4 - 1/2 second after the first skill. (Depends wether what I read was correct)

Also, 1 Savage follow up has got the chance of interrupting a spell, which makes for another +29-ish damage.

As for a list of possible counters:

I have packed Ward against Harm, Packign a Bsurge means we simply won't have enough pressure to pressure they down. (I'm for once not willing to run a spike) I've concidered using "Shields Up!", problem is the fact that I will have to be in earshot of intire team, aswell as the fact there still is a 20 seconds downtime every 30 seconds... Gale is a nice shutdown, but you can't gale them every spike, can U?
I HAVE got an Eruption, Unsteady ground and Churning Earth (<3 When Para's using fallback in Churning Earth), Blurred vision is on my -to-put-in-build-list- but then I would have to take out a WardAgainstFoes/Deepfreeze out, cutting once again down on utility. (Half my build is already dedicated to staying alive against sway, rspike and hexway).

The "hexcounters" are nice, everyone knows that, but you can't stick em on, unless you're running hexway, which is something I don't like playing. (With 3 Monks, gl with your curses necro)
Aegis is nice, and I recently had on on my Monk bar, but I had to take it out (Ty izzy) because 15 Energy is unrealistic for a monk. I'm concidering bringing 2 Aegis's on my eles, further cutting down on my offensive/utility side.

Anyways, my bottom line merely is: there is some counters to rspike, but these counters are so build-specific (Bsurge simply doesn't fit into "any" build, because it means you will have to rely on spiking to kill) that you're forced to run a handfull of builds to stay competitive. It's not only rspike that is broken, hexway is a pain in the balls aswell.
I already had to take so much out to try and fit in dual convert hexes, because otherwise any half-decent hexway rolls over you. (Rend > Preveil and spotless)
Oh, did I also mention there is something called sway? Leaving alot of skills you pack against hexway utterly useless?

The 3 current metabuilds (Rspike, hexway and sway) are so "versatile" -from eachother- that any non-meta build doesn't stand a realistic chance.
The second you start packing counters against R/D way (Trappers, ...) and hexway, you notice you've lost ALL your pressure against rspike. When you pack your bsurge, you're already having problems killing rspike, but hexway will become such a pain, you simply can't be asked trying no more...

With the build I run now (Backbreakerway, huray), I got to HoH more than enough, yet I have the feeling this was nothing more than lucky skips, because the second we face an rspike (or A/D) thats knows what they are doing, they simply roll over us. Only on cap points with got a fairly good shot against them, because our build splits well by nature. Non-the-less, 1v1 eliminate matches shouldn't be autowin for rspike (and hexway, which is the second build I would like to see nerfed)...

Ate of DK · Apr 22, 2008, 01:31 PM // 13:31

Did you know that we don't have Anthem of Guidence or Sundering Weapon?

With Glass Arrows included or not. I can assure you that our r-spike does less damage than any outcome of Dragonlore's calculations because we don't use some of the mentioned spells/attacks.

Dragonlore's post is well done. Very much information.

Lorekeeper · Apr 22, 2008, 02:01 PM // 14:01

From my post i think the minimum amount of hard counters you need for rspike is a good mesmer with good ping and perhaps a good air ele and/or water ele (blind the caller or the paragon on spikes, water ele blurs the paragon and covers the hex with burst).

Air eles arent only useful in dedicated spike builds, shellshock and lightning bolt are both cheap and spammable medium damage spells. A typical frontline warrior can call a ''pressure'' spike as often as they recharge, and assuming the target is not protted too well the damage output should put the target at around 50% at least from just two people participating in the spike. Of course, expecting immediate success with these sorts of spikes is unreasonable and unrealistic. Depending on what else you are running the damage output of your spikes could be larger. The aim of the spikes is to trick the 3 monk backline into constantly overhealing and over protting. If the damage you throw in a spike is not enough to kill a target, spirit bond and infuse become wasted energy. The monks would be better off using RoF, WoH and RC like GvG monks often use when spikes in GvG are low yield.

Now when people speak of pressure its the gradual process by which you are overtaxing a backlines energy with constant streams of damage to the point where they struggle to counter any damage you are doing allowing you to kill.

This is where your mesmer is important. You wont be able to reach the final stages of this pressure process that results in collapses and kills if an enemy backline is able to keep its energy levels up with channeling. It is also quite important for your midline to be aware of its positioning so that it does not lend itself to sweet channeling farming spots for the enemy monks. Kill channeling. There have been posts in other threads talking about this before... channeling is HA monks achilles heel. Take it away from them and they will struggle.

Well directed packets of even low yield damage with a deep wound are useful in the pressure process if you can gradually decrease a monks ability to deal with it. The indication of the pressure process developing is that when you tab around you will notice that some targets have not been healed to 100% health. As your pressure kicks in, more and more targets will not be at 100%. As your pressure kicks in harder enemy health bars will gradually drop from 100% to 90% to 80%. However, some players might be better than others at avoiding damage so their health bars may be higher than others. Some players are poor at avoiding damage and their bars will be lower than others. If things are going well, and you are switching targets often, you will start to notice that their monk's reactions to your damage is getting slower and slower, this is probably because the monks are having to switch from their regen sets to their high sets to get the energy to cast. This is when you start to kill, because while you are tabbing through targets hovering at around 75% health and spiking them, the enemy monks will be struggling to keep up. Sooner or later you will come across a target thats at around 60% health or lower, which you should be able to kill with ease, or you will simply be able to drive hard onto a target thats even at full health without it receiving any kind of good heals that will prevent it from dying.

Potentially ANY type of build can achieve this as long as it has a mixture of shutdown and damage that gradually wears down monk backlines energy pools. But you simply cannot achieve this if you are struggling to stay alive. Call me old fashioned but warriors remain the best class for this type of pressure play, supported by fast recharging damage from a midline. Wounding strike dervishes can because of the 3second recharge, assassins, generally cannot unless using wounding strike or other low recharge high damage attacks like wearying strike.

For pressure to kick in you cannot spend the match ressing dead allies, DP counts heavily in favour of rspike as their initial packets of damage start to kill outright (where they might usually depend on the follow up damage to kill targets with 600 health +10% morale).

So if your build is struggling to stay alive vs rspike i think you need to solve that problem first... once you are able to survive a few minutes without death vs rspike then you should start to worry about whether your team has the ability or experience to pressure rspike out too.

i think a mistake that people make about HA is that they think the only currency to deal in is damage. Thats a myth that has developed out of the simple fact that the majority of teams in HA are bad and are not good enough to deal with large amounts of damage. Against the better teams this axiom shifts towards the currency of shutdown, since they are more experienced at dealing with high damage pressure you need to shift focus to disabling their ability to keep up with the damage rather than overloading them with even more damage.

In that sense, maybe you need to rethink your belief that taking more utility will hinder your pressure potential. Pressure is also related to time as well as damage, purely by being able to operate for a longer period of time is enough to defeat some teams in HA. Often a match between two good balanced teams is decided by who has the monks who can operate in GvG like conditions without good channeling spots. In those situations it doesnt matter how much damage you have, but who can survive the longest. Its in those matches that you will wish you had more defensive utility that was less vulnerable to energy issues and might help monks go for the long run.

Aegis is not a great choice in HA atm because of the comprehensive enchant removals. Id say that blinds were the best measure vs rspike atm, and some form of widely distributed snare (like water hexes or ward vs foes and grasping) is all you really need vs shitway and you can keep make haste on 1 guy whos being trained (like the mesmer). Eruption would add to that defense pretty nicely. A single shields up is better than none.

A good mesmer is the most important thing though.

Lorekeeper · Apr 22, 2008, 02:30 PM // 14:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ate of DK

Did you know that we don't have Anthem of Guidence or Sundering Weapon?

With Glass Arrows included or not. I can assure you that our r-spike does less damage than any outcome of Dragonlore's calculations because we don't use some of the mentioned spells/attacks.

Dragonlore's post is well done. Very much information.

TV's rspike works because they have been doing it longer than most (during a time alot of these new skills didnt even exist), they dont need thousands of numbers to kill someone, just the right target at the right time usually. Most other teams rely on numbers to kill, which is why i used the maximum possible damage figures for critical hits (you will rarely see unmitigated spikes with perfect crits across all the rangers) to show that even their builds can be dealt with with the right tools and strategies.

Killed u man · Apr 22, 2008, 04:31 PM // 16:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

to show that even their builds can be dealt with with the right tools and strategies.

You can beat a rspike, I never said you couldn't. But you could also beat a ritspike? Or a bloodspike? Or what about the recent N/A shit? (The bug) ALL these beats were beatable, nontheless, all of them got ether renewalled. (Bspike recently got a buff again)

I'm merely suggesting to tome damage down a bit. Or atleast give us viable options against Rspike without having to sacrifice so much offence. (Bring "Shields Up! back, Ward against Projectiles, maybe? Just give us something that fits on any bar, and doesn't require you to adjust your intire build, ending up with some form of Legoway or other gimmick)

borkbork · Apr 23, 2008, 04:43 AM // 04:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

(Bring "Shields Up! back, Ward against Projectiles, maybe? Just give us something that fits on any bar, and doesn't require you to adjust your intire build, ending up with some form of Legoway or other gimmick)

I've always wished for a little addition onto Ward Against Foes that slows down projectiles by 200% or so.

Bullet time dodging!

Horace The Great · Apr 23, 2008, 08:38 AM // 08:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by borkbork

I've always wished for a little addition onto Ward Against Foes that slows down projectiles by 200% or so.

Bullet time dodging!

That would look so cool, slowmotion trough ward. Do it matrix style.

supa tim · Apr 23, 2008, 08:29 PM // 20:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

(Bring "Shields Up! back, Ward against Projectiles, maybe? Just give us something that fits on any bar, and doesn't require you to adjust your intire build, ending up with some form of Legoway or other gimmick)

U find playing a build that requires skill to play (lego) gimmick?

hurric · Apr 28, 2008, 11:46 PM // 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

A good mesmer is the most important thing though.

ya but it's 1 mesmer vs. 3 monks. How much can a good mesmer do that the other 2 monks won't compensate for. Who do you even shut down?