Curse

Drewfense · Dec 15, 2006, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Burst of Aggression, Bull Strike, Executioners, Decapitate, <Side Step, switch from -5 to +5>, Critical, Prot

Its a hyper aggressive bar and is purely spike, but it does a lot of damage and you get all 4 hits in before they stand up from the kd. If Shadow Prison gets nerfed, my guess is that this as well as Shove will be the main spike warrior bars. For a pressure build, yes its garbage.

twicky_kid · Dec 15, 2006, 10:08 PM // 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drewfense

Burst of Aggression, Bull Strike, Executioners, Decapitate, <Side Step, switch from -5 to +5>, Critical, Prot

Its a hyper aggressive bar and is purely spike, but it does a lot of damage and you get all 4 hits in before they stand up from the kd. If Shadow Prison gets nerfed, my guess is that this as well as Shove will be the main spike warrior bars. For a pressure build, yes its garbage.

Why would I want a 4 hit spike? Evis>Ex or dismember>critial chop gets the job done in .2 Even under IAS decapitate takes 4 seconds for its spike then you are left with no adrenaline or energy to do anything with.

So if its being outclassed in spike and its junk for pressure than it must be a worthless skills for a war. Considering that's all a War's job is.

Drewfense · Dec 15, 2006, 11:21 PM // 23:21

I agree with you that dismember+crit is the best spike atm. That is what I am referring to by Shadow Prison caster spike in both of my posts (Shadow Prison + dismember + crit). What I am saying though is if that if shadow prison is nerfed, Decapitate makes a good spike. Even if you don't do the combo listed above, decapitate + crit chop > evis + exec for a spike. It is a lot more damage for a pure spike build.

Evis + Ex and that additional utility you bring with it will still be dominate in the america meta because of its flexibility, but the euro meta has always been dominated by spike. There is no attempt to pressure in between. The Bouncers are a good example, their warrior will just gently tap on yours with a furious mod till he gets his adren up. All the casters will play hyper defensive until shadow prison is recharged. It is a pure caster spike. Utility to pressure on the warrior is un-needed.

A better question, will it be as good as shove? Similarly the bar offers no utility. I am not sure how the damage compares. If they are similar, I think shove will still be favored because of an unconditional kd (works better with deaths charge) and isn't adrenaline dependant which helps a lot for spike teams with a split.

Edit: And that combo doesn't take 4 seconds. I was testing it with guildies at the start of the season, you get all 4 hits off before the target stands up from a 2 second kd.

twicky_kid · Dec 16, 2006, 01:08 AM // 01:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drewfense

I agree with you that dismember+crit is the best spike atm. That is what I am referring to by Shadow Prison caster spike in both of my posts (Shadow Prison + dismember + crit). What I am saying though is if that if shadow prison is nerfed, Decapitate makes a good spike. Even if you don't do the combo listed above, decapitate + crit chop > evis + exec for a spike. It is a lot more damage for a pure spike build.

Evis + Ex and that additional utility you bring with it will still be dominate in the america meta because of its flexibility, but the euro meta has always been dominated by spike. There is no attempt to pressure in between. The Bouncers are a good example, their warrior will just gently tap on yours with a furious mod till he gets his adren up. All the casters will play hyper defensive until shadow prison is recharged. It is a pure caster spike. Utility to pressure on the warrior is un-needed.

A better question, will it be as good as shove? Similarly the bar offers no utility. I am not sure how the damage compares. If they are similar, I think shove will still be favored because of an unconditional kd (works better with deaths charge) and isn't adrenaline dependant which helps a lot for spike teams with a split.

Edit: And that combo doesn't take 4 seconds. I was testing it with guildies at the start of the season, you get all 4 hits off before the target stands up from a 2 second kd.

I don't know how you plan on doing decapitate>crit chop considering you will have 0 energy. You can do a switch but the switch stops you from moving and takes at least 1 second.

Bull strike = 1 sec
Decapitate = 1 second
weapon switch = 1 second
crit strike = 1/2 second
prot strik = 1/2 second

That's a total of 4 seconds.

Even with shadow prison nerfed it will not stop dismember>crit chop. Ele and mesmers have gain more power in their spells. All the war needs to do is inflict deep wound and hit with a follow up attack to activate. If they nerf shadow prison people will just go back to bull's charge.

Symbol · Dec 16, 2006, 03:38 AM // 03:38

I'd like to take this thread in a slightly different discussion. Instead of just everyone just listing a bunch of things they want changed and talking past each other, why don't we focus on one skill at a time, and try and build some sort of consensus.

Let me start off with one of the new fire elites:
Mind Blast
Elite Spell
5E, 1S, 2R
Target foe is struck for 15...51(63) fire damage. If you have more Energy than target foe, you gain 1...7(10) Energy.

This is a skill I really want to like. It provides robust energy management with some damage. Unfortunately there are two things wrong with it. It's a spammable skill, on a 2 sec recharge. This means you ideally want to pair it with other 1s cast skills on short recharges. Unfortunately the only two skills that fit the bill are immolate and liquid flame. Immolate's damage is unimpressive, and the skill has a 5 sec recharge. Liquid flame hits hard, but is on a 15 sec timer. Neither is an ideal spammable in a mind blast build. The second is that mind blast's damage is not impressive by itself, it's barely better than flare-this wouldn't be such an issue if there was something good to pair it with.

As it stands mind blast is in an uneasy niche-not enough damage to compete with searing flames, not as good as powering secondary class skills as ether prodigy (and is in a skill line with no utility).

Possible changes:

1) Change cast time to 3/4 secs. This raises dps a bit and makes the skill fairly difficult to interrupt (so it may not do much damage, but it's hard to shutdown).

2) Change damage to 15...63(79). Straightforward damage boost. Enough to be noticeable, not enough to be overwhelming. Combined with a moderately buffed immolate it should be enough to make this skill into a serious damage threat that's efficient in terms of time, energy, and skill slot usage.

3) Recharge to 5 seconds, damage to 10...82(106), energy gained to 1...12(16). You cast half as often, get roughly 70% more damage and 60% more energy. Basically it makes it easier to fit other spells between casts-while the damage increase means that you can do a serviceable spike assist.

LoyalSoldier · Dec 16, 2006, 03:56 AM // 03:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drewfense

I can't believe I am about to argue about PvE... I am guessing you are referring to the standard retribution monk tank build being used in DoA. If not, I suspect it is pretty similar. First off, it is horribly imbalanced and should be nerfed to hell. Farming builds are already a lame exploitation, but this one is way to overpowered. When you can almost clear DoA using 3 heros, something is wrong.

I am talking about the 55 variant that is more useful than the normal 55.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drewfense

Secondly, increasing the recharge to as high as 20 seconds would do nothing to the build. It operates under QZ with Blessed Aura so you would still have SoA up 24/7. Energy shouldn't be a problem...but if it is the build can accomodate a succor or BiP pretty easily.

Well you are talking about a completely different build. A solo monk build for casual farming needs Blessed Aura and a +20 Enchant mod in order for the build to work. Or else SoA runs out too fast.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drewfense

Third, the farming build will be gone anyways. The recommendation to add Wild Blow to the enemies has already been made. Wild Blow > Monk Tank with Mantra of Resolve.

Wild Blow won't do much anyways.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Balancing skills around how effective they are at farming is really stupid. If anything, the SB nerf shows that Anet will gladly nerf skills solely to gimp their farming potential.

If they want to fix DoA farming, the only thing they need to do is give the mobs better enchant removal. Kind of like they already did by adding the dying nightmares to UW.

The SB builds were far better than anything the SoA offers. Since the SB builds could allow you to get up to 600 + health, Retribution and Holy Wrath were down right deadly. A two man group would just clean out the underworld in less than an hour.

Drewfense · Dec 16, 2006, 07:44 AM // 07:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

I don't know how you plan on doing decapitate>crit chop considering you will have 0 energy. You can do a switch but the switch stops you from moving and takes at least 1 second.

Bull strike = 1 sec
Decapitate = 1 second
weapon switch = 1 second
crit strike = 1/2 second
prot strik = 1/2 second

That's a total of 4 seconds.

Even with shadow prison nerfed it will not stop dismember>crit chop. Ele and mesmers have gain more power in their spells. All the war needs to do is inflict deep wound and hit with a follow up attack to activate. If they nerf shadow prison people will just go back to bull's charge.

I am not sure why they would bring Bulls Charge. If not using Shadow Prison, why not take an evis or decap to replace the dismember, its worth the 3 additional adrenaline.

As for the combo, you can get all 4 hits (exec, decap, crit, prot) with burst of aggression during the 2 second kd, I can prove it in a scrim if you want

(next week though about to go on vacation). You overcome the weapon switch time by side stepping. It tricks the computer allowing you to weapon switch faster.

Riotgear · Dec 16, 2006, 08:34 AM // 08:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoyalSoldier

The SB builds were far better than anything the SoA offers. Since the SB builds could allow you to get up to 600 + health, Retribution and Holy Wrath were down right deadly. A two man group would just clean out the underworld in less than an hour.

I realize that. I'm not saying SoA is as effective as SB was, I'm saying that Anet is not going to hesitate on an SoA nerf because it'll hurt farmers, especially when they just got done nerfing a skill specifically to hurt farmers.

Bankai · Dec 16, 2006, 08:58 AM // 08:58

At the Second Wind 'Buff': You DO know that that will make the spell worthless, right? The purpose of it is to have some exhaustion FROM the second wind to gain energy.

Rapture · Dec 16, 2006, 09:27 AM // 09:27

being forced to spam gale would just be terrible, wouldnt it?

twicky_kid · Dec 16, 2006, 10:05 AM // 10:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

At the Second Wind 'Buff': You DO know that that will make the spell worthless, right? The purpose of it is to have some exhaustion FROM the second wind to gain energy.

You do realize that second wind has a 15 second recharge while it takes 30 seconds to recover from 1 exhaustion spell?

If you used this skill every time it was recharged you wouldn't have an energy pool.

Remove the exhaustion and increase the recharge or energy cost to keep the energy gain in line with the other emanagment spells in the game.

I don't want something to be broken just usable. As it is I would never choose this over either prodigy.

Mr Dbest · Dec 16, 2006, 10:16 AM // 10:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

The same could be said about e surge + spiritual pain. You can't help but to crowd on some maps. Any aoe spike would have done the same thing.

Tell me one that does that every 2 seconds and ill give u a cookie =]

dgb · Dec 16, 2006, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

As it is I would never choose this over either prodigy.

What about in a NR/Tranq heavy meta or build?

Etrik · Dec 16, 2006, 01:51 PM // 13:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgb

What about in a NR/Tranq heavy meta or build?

Then you kill the damned spirit and Dshot the spammer's Oath Shot

JYX · Dec 16, 2006, 02:06 PM // 14:06

your NR tranq

Patccmoi · Dec 16, 2006, 04:29 PM // 16:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

You do realize that second wind has a 15 second recharge while it takes 30 seconds to recover from 1 exhaustion spell?

If you used this skill every time it was recharged you wouldn't have an energy pool.

Remove the exhaustion and increase the recharge or energy cost to keep the energy gain in line with the other emanagment spells in the game.

I don't want something to be broken just usable. As it is I would never choose this over either prodigy.

It's 5/2/5. If you remove the fact that it cause exhaustion, you could easily go for +30/-2 energy set to have like 100E exhaust yourself for about 50E (i dunno, spam gale or w/e) and then you would have to burn 50E every 7s to somehow lack energy. You could have potentially something like 7E/second. That's 21 pips of energy regen...

The stats on it would need to be severly nerfed to have it somewhat balanced without causing exhaustion. And then it would likely become a weak skill because it would be really specialized for 1-2 builds. And more importantly, it's not a self-sufficient skill anymore. It forces you to bring other exhaustion skills, and it's not always something you want. For example, if you want to spam Heal Party while being out of fight area, you can't gale people. It would really limit what you can do with the skill.

Honestly Second Wind is really fine as is. It's ATTRIBUTELESS, which is a huge advantage over something like EProdigy. Me/E can use it to have better emanagement then they get with Inspiration elites with 0 investment, and with the possibility to add Attunement runes now and using a +15/-1 set a Mesmer can easily have around 70-75E. You could have a Mesmer going 14 Dom-12 Fast Cast with +8E Armor/+8E Runes/+17E energy set with Second Wind as only emanagement and they would likely be able to spam like crazy. And it's the same for other caster prof really, it's just that it's a 2s cast and that's something you must be careful with when it's your elite.

And lastly, Second Wind has the advantage of being able to 'borrow' energy. If you're in a pinch and really need the energy now, you can use it more than you would usually, getting your exhaustion to 20-30E but getting the energy right away. But this means that you must wait a little bit to let your exhaustion settle without using it afterwards. But for finishing people or the like, when you know that you'll have time to recover exhaustion afterwards, it can be used 2-3 times (well, use it, burn your energy, use it again, etc.) to have HUGE energy for a short amount of time at the cost of building exhaustion.

I think it's a well thought out skills with advantages over other elite emanagement (able to get lots of energy fast by building more exhaustion, attributeless and yet with 70 max E at 35 exhaustion, used every 30s you get as good emanagement as level 15 OoB) and drawbacks (2s cast, must have high max energy). For an attributeless elite emanagement i doubt you could make it any better than it is.

Phades · Dec 16, 2006, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Basically to fix second wind to make it more attractive, you essentially have to allow e-storage to passivly remove exhaustion faster or prevent a portion of it to let it be usable more often and keep it from being overly abused by mesmers. Do this and gale lock becomes more common like when warriors carried it, but it wouldnt be anymore devastating than it already is.

TheOneMephisto · Dec 16, 2006, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

WoW, now I've seen it all. A call to nerf d shot. It deserves to be a 20 second disable. Its the longest recharging ranger interrupt. It deals no dmg. Very little chance of interrupting anything 1 sec cast without having read the winds or favorable winds. If you wanted to interrupt a skill 1 second casting you would have to be rather close and have less than a 1/2 reaction time. Most people get interrupted by rangers from spam not skill.

Are you freaking serious? Dshot is an amazing skill, though I'm not sure it's nerf-worthy. It's basically the bread and butter skill of the ranger profession, like gift is to monks.

And if you can't consistently interrupt 1 sec casts from a decent range with a recurve bow then you suck, badly. The average reaction time is around 1/4 sec. I know quite a few rangers that can consistently hit 3/4 sec casts, and can hit 1/2 sec casts fairly consistently by predicting when people use skills. Basically, if you can't hit a 1 sec casts with dshot, you shouldn't be playing any reflex based class at all.

Xpl0iter · Dec 16, 2006, 10:02 PM // 22:02

using GoLE for Ether Prism is ridiculous. An energy elite that requires a Non Energy Elite to make it Useful.

Energy on this elite should be lowered instead.

Phades: Good idea on Exhaustion Removal on Ele Primary E-Storage.

Bankai · Dec 16, 2006, 10:52 PM // 22:52

Nappa: Vegeta, what does the scouter say about the usage of Spiritual Pain in the playoffs?
Vegeta: IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!

It's seeing way too much play. Reduce the AoE. Either damage or range.