Curse

ca_aok · Aug 06, 2007, 06:57 PM // 18:57

Well last night my guild was bored. We're a PvE division but we thought we'd try a little HA for shits and giggles. I had only ever done HA once before, though I'd had some experience in the lower end PvP (RA/TA/AB).

At first we were running a thumper/spirit spam build with a smoke trapper. I rolled an N/Mo HB healer as part of the build. I found that even with the spammable heals I was having a hard time keeping the party alive, and even with Soul Reaping my pool would eventually run dry with the 10-15e spells (though we dropped our BiP a few runs in so that might've been part of the problem). The build seemed to stand up fairly well to some builds such as the ritspike, but we had problems against builds that had heavy frontlines... in particular we ran into a group repeatedly that was using D/As and smite monks to overload our healing. We had little to no way to stop melee pressure.

So instead, we switched up the build to 3 thumpers, a trapper, an SS, an tainted flesh MM, and two N/Rt healers. This seemed to be more versitile overall, but still had some issues. I was playing as the tainted flesh MM, and it seemed like RC monks were wreaking havok with anything I could do. Also we noticed that running the two support necros left us quite weak to Nature's Renewal, which we ran into several times.

My questions are thus:
As an N/Mo healer how do I deal with pressure when most of my heals are large and high in energy cost.

As the Tainted MM, I felt that A) My minions weren't doing a lot of good, and B) When teams had either condition or enchantment counters, the build lost most of its effectiveness. What should I do in those situations?

I found HA to be fun, and I think a few of our guildmates will keep at it. I'm thinking that as more of a beginner I should probably be running one of the thumpers instead of a necro, but they needed another body last night so I didn't really care. Also, is there a relatively effective build for teams that are getting into HA? (Other than IWAY). Any tips or general information would be much appreciated.

Despozblehero · Aug 07, 2007, 05:46 PM // 17:46

Congrats that you and your guild are getting into HA. I'd suggest using the Observation Mode to see what is being played and how people are playing it, as to specifics on skills/builds I wont comment that really depends on individual people and how they use those skills, and as you play more your skills and ideas will develop. If you see a new build on observation mode dont hesitate to get your friends and give a it a shot until you all get the hang of things, having as many perspectives as possible is helpful, and once you all have a good understanding of the environment start coming up with new things. I will however say healer can be the hardest thing to do especially for a new player so dont be discouraged if you have trouble early on, again hit up observation mode and see how another healer deals with the pressure. but for a beginner role elementalist is usually the easiest to play imho (i.e. fire nuker).

Tordek · Aug 07, 2007, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Quote:

My questions are thus:
As an N/Mo healer how do I deal with pressure when most of my heals are large and high in energy cost.

HA is (well, maybe not any more) known for its steep learning curve. A Monk or an HB Nerco Infuser needs to learn to use energy management. Healing a guy who is about 80% health is a waste of energy. You also may not be using skills that will efficently heal you or your guildmates (healing breeze ftl). Once you get the hang of HA you will make better decisions in terms of healing, predicting spikes, and infusing.

Quote:

As the Tainted MM, I felt that A) My minions weren't doing a lot of good, and B) When teams had either condition or enchantment counters, the build lost most of its effectiveness. What should I do in those situations?

You are the Tainted necro? Tainted Necros don't bring healing skills (actually I would't kow, I haven't done heroway/tainted necor in QUITE some time). Also, the minions are little more than e-management for heroGAY and the necos while providing minor pressure once a player is able to exploit the bodies of others.

Second, yes there is a lot of enchantment removal/condition removal skills out there, but like you the other team is on a tight budget of energy, and if you can survive long enough and keep the pressure up, the other team will buckle.

HA was, and mybe still is fun. Other than iway the current metagame is heroway, which is slowly being phased out (thank god). Good teams with players who are in hero's ascent for the whole pvp aspect and not for the title will usually run some sort of balanced with heavy pressure with a spike mixed in to it. I've seen a rit spike or two, but since the removal of kill count and some of the newer maps and rule changes; teams may be less inclined to try their luck with a full on spike.

I agree with Despozblehero, watch a few matches in observer mode, and see what the other players are running, learn the pros and cons of each map and team build and try to pick up on some good habits like pre-prot the front line before they rush into a rit spike or body blocking the relic runner.

Although I would ask you a question, are you going to do Hero's Ascent because you want to emote bambi? Or do you want some more fulfillment to your game? If you just want to walk into Lion's Arch and do /rank so you can attract the attention of pve players, then HA is not the place for you.

ca_aok · Aug 07, 2007, 07:59 PM // 19:59

Quote:

HA is (well, maybe not any more) known for its steep learning curve. A Monk or an HB Nerco Infuser needs to learn to use energy management. Healing a guy who is about 80% health is a waste of energy. You also may not be using skills that will efficently heal you or your guildmates (healing breeze ftl). Once you get the hang of HA you will make better decisions in terms of healing, predicting spikes, and infusing.

I'm perfectly aware that healing breeze sucks

The original build was using Heal Other/Jamei's with Heal Party and draw/convert hexes while using SoLS for Emanagement (along with 14 SR). Since we were running expel hexes and BiP this seemed to work OK. Once we dropped the BiP I had a few energy issues at times, but nothing horrid. I wasn't running Infuse but HO/Jamei's was healing for 226 so it was a makeshift large heal. TBH I'm much more used to running a regular prot or hybrid monk than a N/Mo... but the build in question called for it.

Quote:

You are the Tainted necro? Tainted Necros don't bring healing skills (actually I would't kow, I haven't done heroway/tainted necor in QUITE some time). Also, the minions are little more than e-management for heroGAY and the necos while providing minor pressure once a player is able to exploit the bodies of others.

We switched builds at this point (the elite on the heal necro was Healer's Boon). I'm well aware that the build was more ideal for a hero than a human but we had 8 folks and decided that we needed more pressure, and a way to deal with melee (the SS/curses necro). The minions were probably more for emanagement now that I think about it (at that point we had 4 neros on the team... gimmick build ftw?).

Quote:

I agree with Despozblehero, watch a few matches in observer mode, and see what the other players are running, learn the pros and cons of each map and team build and try to pick up on some good habits like pre-prot the front line before they rush into a rit spike or body blocking the relic runner.

The problem there would be the lack of prot skills in the build

As for observer mode I've already started watching a bit.

Quote:

Although I would ask you a question, are you going to do Hero's Ascent because you want to emote bambi? Or do you want some more fulfillment to your game? If you just want to walk into Lion's Arch and do /rank so you can attract the attention of pve players, then HA is not the place for you.

I don't really care about the rank emote, since I doubt I'll hit R3 any time soon. Personally the fact that you IWAYed your way to a bambi doesn't really impress me in PvE or PvP. Tbh our ultimate goal is to screenshot our PvE division winning HoH so we can laugh at the PvP divisions that call us "PvE scrubs" but that seems like quite a ways off.

Entropius · Aug 08, 2007, 05:36 AM // 05:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by ca_aok

Well last night my guild was bored. We're a PvE division but we thought we'd try a little HA for shits and giggles. I had only ever done HA once before, though I'd had some experience in the lower end PvP (RA/TA/AB).

Welcome! I hope you find higher-end PvP to be as enjoyable as the rest of us. While the learning curve is steep, you'll get better!

Quote:

At first we were running a thumper/spirit spam build with a smoke trapper. I rolled an N/Mo HB healer as part of the build. I found that even with the spammable heals I was having a hard time keeping the party alive, and even with Soul Reaping my pool would eventually run dry with the 10-15e spells (though we dropped our BiP a few runs in so that might've been part of the problem). The build seemed to stand up fairly well to some builds such as the ritspike, but we had problems against builds that had heavy frontlines... in particular we ran into a group repeatedly that was using D/As and smite monks to overload our healing. We had little to no way to stop melee pressure.

This is a good point.

Healer's Boon or not, you are not going to be able to deal with heavy pressure, especially heavy melee pressure, by healing. There is just too much damage. This is why protection monks are so common. Skills like Spirit Bond and Shield of Absorption can make their target nearly unkillable for the duration, forcing melee to switch targets.

Ritualists have a similar skill in Weapon of Warding.

So this isn't your fault. Your team build needs more protection skills, or those skills need to be used better. It's not your fault if you can't heal through tons of pressure -- nobody can.

Quote:

So instead, we switched up the build to 3 thumpers, a trapper, an SS, an tainted flesh MM, and two N/Rt healers. This seemed to be more versitile overall, but still had some issues. I was playing as the tainted flesh MM, and it seemed like RC monks were wreaking havok with anything I could do. Also we noticed that running the two support necros left us quite weak to Nature's Renewal, which we ran into several times.

RC monks use 5 energy to remove a single instance of disease. Think about your experience as a healer and about how much energy it would take to remove that much disease. Then think about doing that without soul reaping.

Trust me, disease is a pain for any team that doesn't bring Extinguish. Most don't these days (although I have no clue why).

Nature's Renewal messes with a lot of people. In your case it probably hurt you less than many teams who rely on enchantments from prot monks; your N/Rt's can still use Weapon of Warding just fine. Really all you can do is kill it; most teams will be hurt badly by it.

Quote:

My questions are thus:
As an N/Mo healer how do I deal with pressure when most of my heals are large and high in energy cost.

Get a prot monk to help you. Use party-wide heals (Heal Party, Protective was Kaolai, Light of Deliverance) to mop up random damage.

Quote:

As the Tainted MM, I felt that A) My minions weren't doing a lot of good, and B) When teams had either condition or enchantment counters, the build lost most of its effectiveness. What should I do in those situations?

(a) the minions, as someone else said, are there mainly to feed necros energy
(b) Everyone has condition and enchant removal, but taints and disease force people to use both of these on your stuff rather than use them on more important things.

In those situations keep reapplying taints. It costs you 5e and 1s to apply one; can someone really remove them that fast?

Remember you can do quite a bit of damage (although it's slow) with Deathly Swarm. If NR goes up, use Swarm on it.

Quote:

I found HA to be fun, and I think a few of our guildmates will keep at it. I'm thinking that as more of a beginner I should probably be running one of the thumpers instead of a necro, but they needed another body last night so I didn't really care. Also, is there a relatively effective build for teams that are getting into HA? (Other than IWAY). Any tips or general information would be much appreciated.

General tips:

1) Your defense seems like it needs more party-wide heals and prots, and less reliance on things like Booned heal other.

2) In PvE most things you do will be uncontested. Monsters don't remove disease, for instance. In PvP it may seem like people are countering what you do, but all those counters cost the other team something to apply. They might remove your disease, but that's something *else* they can't remove, and eventually the pressure gets too much and they crack.

3) Use Vent if you don't already.

Just Another Chest Runner · Aug 08, 2007, 04:21 PM // 16:21

welcome to HA =)

as its already mentioned before, obs a lot and study some of the winning builds.

energy management is crucial but also is your bar.

If your bar is packed with mostly 10-15e heals that might be a problem. with HB you gotta remember you heal for a lot more at the cost of -1 regen (which for most N/Mo isnt an issue). Just watch your energy and use well timed heals instead of trying to keep everyone at 100%. There's a diff in monking to keep your team happy and monking to keep everyone alive (ex. no diff if you win with your team all at 100% or all at 10%, its still a win)

best of luck

-Shiv

Tordek · Aug 08, 2007, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Quote:

We switched builds at this point (the elite on the heal necro was Healer's Boon). I'm well aware that the build was more ideal for a hero than a human but we had 8 folks and decided that we needed more pressure, and a way to deal with melee (the SS/curses necro). The minions were probably more for emanagement now that I think about it (at that point we had 4 neros on the team... gimmick build ftw?).

Tainted, Thumpers, and Necro Healers are part of the metagame, (although thanks to map roation the two hero/henchmen limit, and the soon to be skill balance); heroway is for the most part gone.

Quote:

The original build was using Heal Other/Jamei's with Heal Party

Heal Party ftl. Its Expensive, its slow, doesn't heal all that much, and the 24 odd health gained from points put into divine favor will only be on the caster not the party. Since neco monks don't get divine favor, its all for naught.

more advice: Just learn to shrug off the 'welcome to pvp' helldump that some players use after they smear your dead body across the wall. I was with a group yesterday; running a r5++ BALANCED against another balanced group who was apparently r9+. the game lasted for 23 minutes (ugh), and about half way they started getting frustraded and called us noobs and told us to resign. After we lost they just had to rub it in that they won, and said we should just stick to fighting Shiro and the gang. Just say gg and move on, HA is not the place to have a reputation for being an ass unless you are good enough for it not to matter.

ca_aok · Aug 08, 2007, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Quote:

Heal Party ftl. Its Expensive, its slow, doesn't heal all that much, and the 24 odd health gained from points put into divine favor will only be on the caster not the party. Since neco monks don't get divine favor, its all for naught.

It's not as slow with Healer's Boon, and when running a N/Mo the energy wasn't supposed to be an issue (note N/Mo: no divine favor bonus... so that's not exactly an issue).

Holz · Aug 08, 2007, 10:17 PM // 22:17

Hi, I am new to HA too. So far HA disappointed me really bad. No one wants an unranked player in their uber leet r9+ heroway parties, although I can understand that it's kinda sucky to search for a party for 1 hour and eventually get in a so called 'balanced' team that gets owned in the Underworld. Most of the guilds requires atleast r3+ players for their core HA group also. My current guild has an experienced leader and we tried several original builds somehow face a lot of experienced thumpway parties that we just can't beat. I almost feel obliged to spend 540k on getting r3

.

Apok Omen · Aug 08, 2007, 10:42 PM // 22:42

to the above: If you are just starting HA, don't try jumping into r9+ groups just yet. 1) they might want to form a group of players with just as much experience as them and 2) they might have gimmicked their r9 and being in their group would equal fail.

If you're having a problem getting into an HA guild that requies a certain rank, just say that you're new to it and need some help with builds, strategies, tactics, etc. If they are nice enough, they'll let you in. If not, keep trying.

Start off slow, and you'll get better. Remember, everyone started off just like you, so no pressure.

Despozblehero · Aug 09, 2007, 05:12 PM // 17:12

To all those who are brand new and have trouble finding a party dont be discouraged weve all been there, we all started at the same place when we were new Id like to suggest using your Guild/Alliance and friends list to find parties. Those are some invaluable tools there, and also the benefit to PuGing is if you play with someone whos good add them to your friends list, dont hesitate to message and play with them again, and in a while youll find that you have a lot of people to play with, hopefully by then your guild will be in on it.

Horace The Great · Aug 11, 2007, 12:28 PM // 12:28

You just started to play HA and you already think of how to mod your build vs other builds thats very good.
Just keep going, at the start it is always hard.

The thing with the N/Mo is that his only energy is Soul Reaping, so..when you get pressure hard and you ened to spam things but nothing dies you have a problem. So you need to think to maybe let your team release the pressure for a bit.
Also don't overheal and prot is energy managment for healers.

gasmaskman · Aug 11, 2007, 06:51 PM // 18:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Holz

Hi, I am new to HA too. So far HA disappointed me really bad. No one wants an unranked player in their uber leet r9+ heroway parties, although I can understand that it's kinda sucky to search for a party for 1 hour and eventually get in a so called 'balanced' team that gets owned in the Underworld. Most of the guilds requires atleast r3+ players for their core HA group also. My current guild has an experienced leader and we tried several original builds somehow face a lot of experienced thumpway parties that we just can't beat. I almost feel obliged to spend 540k on getting r3

.

If you're good enough no one cares about rank.

Kwisatz_Haderach · Aug 12, 2007, 03:11 AM // 03:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by gasmaskman

If you're good enough no one cares about rank.

How do you prove your good enough to random pugs then?

God Apprentice · Aug 12, 2007, 03:17 AM // 03:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kwisatz_Haderach

How do you prove your good enough to random pugs then?

Be a good player.

Shmanka · Aug 12, 2007, 03:20 AM // 03:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by God Apprentice

Be a good player.

You make amazing posts.

God Apprentice · Aug 12, 2007, 03:28 AM // 03:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shmanka

You make amazing posts.

Since clarification is obviously needed:

If you know how to run your build, then there shouldn't be a problem.

Tordek · Aug 12, 2007, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Being a good player doesn't mean you'll be invited into higher ranked pugs. Leaders can't know if you are a good player unless someone can vouch for you, and more often than not the group will opt for a person of higher rank. Rank only matters in pugs because they bank on the fact that higher ranked players are generally better. Which is generally the case; there are plenty of exceptions to this rule, but myself and many others would rather play it safe.

Is it fair and does it encourage players to get better? No. Does it make sense? Yes.

TheRaven · Aug 29, 2007, 12:52 PM // 12:52

This is the same problem I'm running into. I love HA and given the choice, I'd play in there every evening. The problem is that my guild doesn't seem interested. They go in maybe once a week around midnight (which is way too late for me).

I'm not a good HA player. I haven't had enough experience in HA to become a good player. Therefore I can't get into pugs to earn experience. I've joined random pugs in HA, but quickly found out that they are so horrible they can't even beat the Zaishen. Is there any hope for someone like me?

I'd love to organize a group of 8 HA newbies that are willing to go into HA with me and learn. Just 8 folks that, like me, are new to HA but want to improve. The goal at this point isn't winning Halls. Heck, it isn't even winning the Underworld map. Just working on builds and improving team coordination so that we can improve our gameplay.

Cammy · Aug 30, 2007, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

This is the same problem I'm running into. I love HA and given the choice, I'd play in there every evening. The problem is that my guild doesn't seem interested. They go in maybe once a week around midnight (which is way too late for me).

I'm not a good HA player. I haven't had enough experience in HA to become a good player. Therefore I can't get into pugs to earn experience. I've joined random pugs in HA, but quickly found out that they are so horrible they can't even beat the Zaishen. Is there any hope for someone like me?

I'd love to organize a group of 8 HA newbies that are willing to go into HA with me and learn. Just 8 folks that, like me, are new to HA but want to improve. The goal at this point isn't winning Halls. Heck, it isn't even winning the Underworld map. Just working on builds and improving team coordination so that we can improve our gameplay.

Want to get a group started? I'm looking for the same thing.