Curse

XiaoTheBlade · Mar 02, 2008, 11:13 PM // 23:13

A nice, yet unrealistic counter to this would be a new paragon elite.

Basically a partywide RoF shout.

5e 15r
Elite Shout. The next two times each party member within earshot takes damage, that damage is negated and that party member gains 10-80(?) health.

Maybe a little overpowered, but hey overpoweredness is the paragons job isn't it? ;p

LifesRestorer · Mar 02, 2008, 11:18 PM // 23:18

you mean like ballad of restoration? y'know, that partywide rof that isnt elite?

Cirian · Mar 02, 2008, 11:34 PM // 23:34

It's the chilling/pious/eremites cheese-on-demand combo that scares me, the damage compression is nuts. The fast activation is the problem. The fact that they can do it about every 20s, and every second one is a teleport spike is brutal. [apr]'s version with Mind Freeze and dual Ancestor's Rages (E/Rt + Rt/A) plus a dom mesmer with Shatter / Burn is like... ouch, ok I'm dead already. There's 3 ench strips during the spike (2 x Grenths, 1 x Shatter) so how do you prot that or infuse it without screwing up eventually? WTB godly midliners maybe? I think that 3-hit dervish combo needs slowing down myself.

moriz · Mar 03, 2008, 12:29 AM // 00:29

why pious assault is overpowered:

remember way back, when anet was supposed to buff agonizing chop with 1/2 cast... but instead buffed decapitate with the 1/2 cast?

the same problems are here as well... except pious assault is not an elite, and doesn't cause you to lose all energy and adrenaline.

Fire Childe · Mar 03, 2008, 03:36 AM // 03:36

We run 1x Derv Spike in gvg now and considered switching our Shock Axe to Derv Spike too after playing Hawk Smash yesterday. To be honest, I can't see any reason why we shouldn't because the Shock Axe has to build adrenaline (often whilst blind and blurred), doesn't have a near permanent sprint and can't do as much damage in as short a space of time as Derv Spike.

They were running 2x Derv Spikes and wow. They caught our mindblast crossing paths with our mesmer at the time of one of their spikes and knocked both out. One of which was death pacted by our bsurge so 3 of us just died pretty much instantly and I had to laugh.

You can even watch the dervs and try to deduce from the targets they are training (or not training) which one they are likely to spike down but even if you guess correct and pre prot its a tall order to stand up to. Whenever we come across these 2x Derv teams now, our Mind Blast runs the flag pretty much from the start, I'll instead Rit at the stand and just try to get WoR or WoW on the target in time - slow the initial damage down enough that it can be WoHed back up a bit and then protted against after the rend. It would be nice if they are standing in one of the 2 Wards we got and hopefully they aren't pressuring us out of our wards with splinter and all kinds and we havent had some key skills like a Ward or WoR diverted and hopefully the blinds are coming at a ferocious rate and hopefully the entire spike isn't dead on so we can scramble some damage mitigation and maybe save our dude. We have loads of ways to stop it but when its played good its still really hard to play against. I've played the AoB Derv too and as frontliners go its quite easy to play with minimal coordination. You don't need to build adrenaline whilst blind and blurred and whatever. You can usually call for an RC and/or a hex strip when you are in position and then you are ready to roll.

Its great fun to play Derv Spike but damn does chilling victory, pious assault and grenth's aura need reworking because when you put them together its like lollersaurus rex. Where did all my hitpoints go?

Zabe · Mar 03, 2008, 08:01 AM // 08:01

The dervish damage isn't anything new. But in the past it has been kept in check with prots, but the recent version with AoB dervs is just too much with atleast 3 enchant removals, where 2 are AoE.

So the combination of pious + grenth's has to be controlled somehow.

JR · Mar 03, 2008, 08:27 AM // 08:27

The annoying thing is having not only to pre-prot, but then cover your pre-prot with another enchant before it gets stripped.

Yoshikuni Mahsu · Mar 03, 2008, 08:29 AM // 08:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

The annoying thing is having not only to pre-prot, but then cover your pre-prot with another enchant before it gets stripped.

Would you say, protting you're pre-prot?

Sorry. Im tired and I needed something to keep me up.

C2K · Mar 03, 2008, 08:32 AM // 08:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zabe

The dervish damage isn't anything new. But in the past it has been kept in check with prots, but the recent version with AoB dervs is just too much with atleast 3 enchant removals, where 2 are AoE.

So the combination of pious + grenth's has to be controlled somehow.

Also, Dervishs were limited to Wearying Strike as their only non-elite Deep Wound, which forced them to run Avatar of Melandru over all other elites.

Also, Attacker's Insight deserves to be in your combo, because it makes the Cgilling Victory + Pious Assault spike cost no energy to use. In fact, without Attacker's Insight, this spike could run out of gas and become slow in the late game.

makosi · Mar 03, 2008, 01:48 PM // 13:48

What bothers me is the fact that Anet are being so slow to deal with the problem. I realise there's a patch due out soon but would it be that difficult to sort out Grenth's Aura and Pious Assault sooner rather than later? It's having a huge negative effect throughout.

Nothing short of incompetence on the dev team's part.

samcobra · Mar 03, 2008, 02:18 PM // 14:18

There's pretty much no point to preprotting a dervspike. A perfect dervspike has 3x enchant removal, unblockable, etc. You're not gonna really do much with that much shit coming at you..

The solution, however, to derv spike is simple: [skill]Blinding Surge[/skill]

A real dervish spike takes about 1.5 seconds to pull off. You should be able to twitch skills in that time, and a Bsurge completely shuts down the spike.

makosi · Mar 03, 2008, 02:20 PM // 14:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by samcobra

There's pretty much no point to preprotting a dervspike. A perfect dervspike has 3x enchant removal, unblockable, etc. You're not gonna really do much with that much shit coming at you..

The solution, however, to derv spike is simple: [skill]Blinding Surge[/skill]

A real dervish spike takes about 1.5 seconds to pull off. You should be able to twitch skills in that time, and a Bsurge completely shuts down the spike.

Once your mesmer catches on, they'll divert your B-surge ele as the spike is being called. Remember that counters =/= balance.

Div · Mar 03, 2008, 02:40 PM // 14:40

Pretty much you need to land the prot spirit/spirit bond in between the enchantment strip hit and the followup hits. If you manage that, you win the game. If not, you lose.

DutchSmurf · Mar 03, 2008, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Pretty much you need to land the prot spirit/spirit bond in between the enchantment strip hit and the followup hits. If you manage that, you win the game. If not, you lose.

Aren't 2 enchantment strips part of the followup hits tho?

Ec]-[oMaN · Mar 03, 2008, 03:17 PM // 15:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

Aren't 2 enchantment strips part of the followup hits tho?

Pretty much you see the tele, chilling+prot lands, then 2xpious+EC+shatter enchant and you're RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed, oh then some paragon+ancestors follow up dmg.

flclisgreat · Mar 03, 2008, 03:39 PM // 15:39

can someone post the build?

Akaraxle · Mar 03, 2008, 03:46 PM // 15:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

Aren't 2 enchantment strips part of the followup hits tho?

If I'm not wrong and there's two of those dervs, you can count 4 enchant strips. I'm not playing much lately so - again - I might be mistaken, but the problem as I see it is that you're forced to redbar the spike as opposed to protting it.

moko · Mar 03, 2008, 03:48 PM // 15:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by samcobra

There's pretty much no point to preprotting a dervspike. A perfect dervspike has 3x enchant removal, unblockable, etc. You're not gonna really do much with that much shit coming at you..

The solution, however, to derv spike is simple: [skill]Blinding Surge[/skill]

A real dervish spike takes about 1.5 seconds to pull off. You should be able to twitch skills in that time, and a Bsurge completely shuts down the spike.

i can't believe you've properly played midline to really judge here. with the teleports, your reaction, cast time of bsurge (if you don't get lucky with FC all time) and the other team not being horrible, it's pretty much impossible to do a decent blinding on the spikes there all time.

besides, with most monks not being able to stop the spike properly, why would the the other midline NOT focus on shutting you down?

i'm wondering how heavy the balance will nerf it though.

edit; not meant to turn out as such hard words, but i've just seen and heard enough decent midliners that eventually couldn't do crap.

Kaon · Mar 03, 2008, 04:08 PM // 16:08

Actually bsurge is an incredible help against dervspike, untill they run Melandru dervishes (but then gale is still nice). Even so you can't always catch all spikes. But even then, a dervspike requires you to get a BIG advantage before VoD happens, or you will get torn apart. A bsurge makes this very hard to get as it's such a defensive character.

However it is beside the point, dervspike is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing retarded and needs to get nerfed hard and right now.

Renowned Spartan · Mar 03, 2008, 04:42 PM // 16:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuranthium

If it's a real spike, there isn't time to get another skill in.

~Z

I'm going to have to agree with this. Any true and good spike won't give the opposing team's healers enough time to throw a heal in..

As defined by our good friends at Guild Wiki:

A spiker is a player who inflicts massive amounts of damage to a single target in a short period of time. A spiker would overwhelm the healers' immediate healing capabilities.