Curse

Divineshadows · Apr 14, 2006, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Well only the ranger gets close on resiliency, and no other profession has damage...so yeah, not a lot of alternatives there.

Please explain what you mean, because this statement seems backward to me. Certainly a warrior is strictly better than a ranger at DPS, but the DPS gap seems to be less than the resiliency gap.

How is a ranger's resiliency level anywhere close to that of a warrior? The difference between 116 AL v. physical and 70 AL v. physical is staggering. Do you mean resiliency in terms of skills such as troll unguent and whirling defense? One thing I notice when playing a ranger in PvP, is that I am largely ignored compared to when I play monk, mesmer, or warrior. As a ranger, you get less warrior hate (blind, faintheart, etc.) thrown at you than if you were a warrior. If you are good at landing your interrupts and keeping enemy warriors and key targets crippled, then the ranger causes quite a bit of chaos on the battlefield. When a warrior does decide to come after you as a ranger, you have to kite in much the same way a caster would kite unless you have crippling shot. A ranger's armor is really not all that much better than a monk wearing judge's on chest and legs. As a warrior I love going up against a team with a thumper, because the players who play the thumper often do not know how to kite allowing the warrior to do far more damage than they would against a kiting monk or a distortion mesmer.

I find ranger builds that have high marksmanship (14+) and read the wind actually allow a ranger to get closer to the warrior in terms of DPS than resiliency. The lesser damage output of the ranger can be offset by the damage they negate by interrupting and locking key spells such as e-surge, e-burn, diversion, etc.

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 14, 2006, 06:15 PM // 18:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

I find ranger builds that have high marksmanship (14+) and read the wind actually allow a ranger to get closer to the warrior in terms of DPS than resiliency. The lesser damage output of the ranger can be offset by the damage they negate by interrupting and locking key spells such as e-surge, e-burn, diversion, etc.

Rangers run into DPS issues in the following ways...

-Their DPS is inherently not as good as a warrior. It's not bad, but not on the same level of a guy swinging an axe into somebody's face without skills. They make up for this on a team build with disruption, in the form of condition spreading and interrupts. A Ranger can be a great addition to an offense if the damage + disruption effect is what you want, but it always have to be stacked against the disruption a warrior can create simply by existing and forcing everyone else to kite.

-Finding decent skills for a Marksmanship ranger are tough. Dual Shot and Savage Shot are shoe-ins, and Savage Shot especially has great utility in addition to its damage, but there aren't many other marksmanship skills competing for places in a bar. The exception is some of the Ranger elite skills (Cripshot, Punishing Shot), but while those are both great skills even they don't quite compare to the warrior alternative of Eviscerate.

-Lack of Deep Wound makes it really difficult for Rangers to spike to the effectiveness of warriors. It's nice to have degen and such, but spike is crucial in PvP and being able to drop a target from 60% to dead in a couple seconds is a great thing that a warrior brings to the table.

-As Ensign's mentioned, Rangers run into the same counters as warriors. If your rangers ever did become a DPS issue they could just put their Flashbots and Shadows of Fear onto the rangers instead of the warriors and counter you the same way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

How is a ranger's resiliency level anywhere close to that of a warrior?

They're extremely resilient for the job they have to do. A Warrior absolutely needs his high AL because his job is to charge into enemy lines, often out of monk range, and hit things up close. A Ranger's job can typically be done from the same place as his offensive casters (his team's midline), which instantly makes him a much more difficult target.

Furthermore, the Ranger is probably carrying Crippling Shot (who doesn't?), which means he can still do a pretty effective job so long as he can reach the warriors attacking his team. Thus, if a warrior ever gets on him he can just kite back, forcing the warrior to overextend or switch targets, all without hindering his own efficency.

The reason Rangers aren't usually targeted first is because if you can reach the rangers you can also reach any number of offensive casters, who are easier to kill and will probably be more hindered by having to kite back.

Divineshadows · Apr 14, 2006, 07:01 PM // 19:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

A Ranger can be a great addition to an offense if the damage + disruption effect is what you want, but it always have to be stacked against the disruption a warrior can create simply by existing and forcing everyone else to kite.

Damage+disruption is the way to go if you are using a ranger to supplement offense. For 4v4, something like Punishing Shot, Savage Shot, Distracting Shot, Debilitating Shot, Read The Wind, Serpents Quickness, Lightning Reflexes or Whirling Defense with an attribute spread of 14 marks, 14 expertise, 7 wildnerness is ridiculously effective. It lacks the conditions a crip-shot guy can offer, but offers a lot of disruption with decent DPS. Certainly not a better all-around choice than the crip-shot guy in GvG though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

They're extremely resilient for the job they have to do. A Warrior absolutely needs his high AL because his job is to charge into enemy lines, often out of monk range, and hit things up close. A Ranger's job can typically be done from the same place as his offensive casters (his team's midline), which instantly makes him a much more difficult target.

You're exactly right. This is probably what Ensign meant (relative positioning in GvG) with respect to a ranger's resilience. I was thinking more along the lines of position independence when comparing a warrior's and ranger's resilience which makes the gap look very wide. This is what puzzles me about guilds that run thumpers trying to have a ranger do a warrior's job. Good guilds and good teams punish teams who do this.

Ensign · Apr 14, 2006, 07:43 PM // 19:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

Please explain what you mean, because this statement seems backward to me. Certainly a warrior is strictly better than a ranger at DPS, but the DPS gap seems to be less than the resiliency gap.

Well if you look back at the larger context of where that was said, it was said when the conversation was about soloing a base. When you're doing that, his combination of base armor, skills (block stances and a slow but strong self heal), and range (he doesn't have to commit nearly as much to get kills as a warrior does making it easier to escape) make him the next best choice to a sword warrior - slower, but safer.

You can apply this to larger battles as well though, because they're a pain in the ass to kill there for the same reasons they're a pain to kill everywhere - they don't have to expose themselves significantly to do their jobs, and if you get on them they're harder to kill than any non-warrior.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

As a ranger, you get less warrior hate (blind, faintheart, etc.) thrown at you than if you were a warrior. If you are good at landing your interrupts and keeping enemy warriors and key targets crippled, then the ranger causes quite a bit of chaos on the battlefield.

Yeah, rangers can be invaluable from all the disruption they add to a fight - interrupts in particular, and spreading degen doesn't exactly hurt either. The big difference in my experience is that it takes a lot of practice and kill to really be a threat as a ranger, and even then his threat is more subtle. A ranger who's left unchecked will interrupt and spread degen and be a pain in the ass - a warrior who's left unchecked will kill you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

I find ranger builds that have high marksmanship (14+) and read the wind actually allow a ranger to get closer to the warrior in terms of DPS than resiliency.

Sure you can get closer on damage than on resiliency if you so choose - but that option really isn't as good. You lose a lot of flexibility and utility from trying to do so, from your weapon selection (have to make a short or flatbow work to really pump bow DPS) to attributes (can't spec wilderness anymore) to the skills themselves. Remember that warriors have a lot of room on their bars for utility because their damage comes at such a low cost, and can branch out a lot because he isn't needy on attributes. Things get messier when you start adding in skills - a ranger's damage skills really aren't all that hot, you can't deep wound, and getting Tiger's Fury in there is actually kinda hard because your attributes are so tight.

I guess I can just be blunt and say that a DPS-style ranger just isn't a strong character. He has to commit too much to get respectable DPS and really can't do anything else. In practice it's just so much stronger to play to the strengths of a ranger, to take all that offensive utility and be a support character with a reasonable amount of incidental damage from bow hits and health degeneration.

It's not as bad as the Mark of Rodgort / Flare guy, but the concept is the same - to get that respectable DPS out of someone you need to jump through too many hoops and distort your character sufficiently that it just isn't worth the investment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

-As Ensign's mentioned, Rangers run into the same counters as warriors. If your rangers ever did become a DPS issue they could just put their Flashbots and Shadows of Fear onto the rangers instead of the warriors and counter you the same way.

This is my biggest issue with running rangers these days - warriors are so dominant, and skills to counter them so prevalent, that running a ranger out there is just asking to be shut down. Rangers need that condition, hex, and enchantment removal to be coming in as well if they're going to stay effective, and his presence is one less character to make it happen. That's not to say that they're bad, in the right build or the right matchups they're still very strong characters - they're just risky in a general metagame.

Peace,
-CxE

Falconer · Apr 14, 2006, 10:55 PM // 22:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

They're extremely resilient for the job they have to do. A Warrior absolutely needs his high AL because his job is to charge into enemy lines, often out of monk range, and hit things up close. A Ranger's job can typically be done from the same place as his offensive casters (his team's midline), which instantly makes him a much more difficult target.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

No one cares how hard a target is unless he's the person you most want to kill. Just look at all the jokes made about W/Mo "paladin" builds - the characters are non-threatening and can safely be ignored in favor of actually dangerous targets.

Don't put the cart before the horse - damage is what makes warriors the key to PvP. If the damage wasn't there they'd be jokes. The armor just makes them even better at their jobs.

I agree wholeheartedly. But the problem here is we have something of a self-fulfilling prophecy going on here. I would argue MANY people would love to kill the rampaging warrior over anyone else on the battlefield. But they can't because it is TOO WELL protected. So they choose the next best thing... hex/condition him up so he's not as much of a threat. I'm not saying they don't need better protection than others given their role. It's just that a damage built warrior does not trade-off enough for his protection in my estimation. Your estimation can and will differ.

Also you need to address this observation though... what about the assassin who is also supposed to be able to fight up close and personal? Is the assassins damage so much better than the warriors that it justifies it's comparative lack of protection?! Is he supposed to stand around in the mid-lines doing nothing positive while waiting to strike his target?

This is just me, but from a construction standpoint, the game would have been far better if warriors NEVER had absorbtion style damage reduction. I think the game would have been better if that would be an assassin class feature (EG: warriors big armor big protection, assassins lower armor but damage reduction). But again, keep in mind.. this is just a reflection of my view of "it would be better if it was this way". It's probably too late to do anything about it (imagine the screaming if suddenly all the superior absorbtion runes disappeared... or had their effect changed to something different but inferior, especially by those who spent big gold on one).

Otherwise, Ensign et al. have the right of it... a DPS ranger in PvP requires far too much specialization. It's possible, but not advised because you're too easy to shutdown. You have to play to their strengths. After a point though, you start to end up with the old threads from just after the game started of how much rangers suck... because they don't have a clearly defined role. (a viewpoint I disagreed with then and now).

Though significantly... I believe this is a point which is overlooked. The fact that we can even talk about the possibility of a DPS ranger says something. The potential is just below the surface right now, it just requires too much effort right now to mine it. Can we even begin to say the same thing of any elementalist builds?!

As such I do make the implicit argument that they need their DPS restored, or they need to have a role found or recreated for them. To me the best way to restore a balance to the game as a whole is to restore their old function as the warriors worst nightmare.

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 14, 2006, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

I agree wholeheartedly. But the problem here is we have something of a self-fulfilling prophecy going on here. I would argue MANY people would love to kill the rampaging warrior over anyone else on the battlefield. But they can't because it is TOO WELL protected. So they choose the next best thing... hex/condition him up so he's not as much of a threat. I'm not saying they don't need better protection than others given their role. It's just that a damage built warrior does not trade-off enough for his protection in my estimation. Your estimation can and will differ.

No, that's pretty much correct. This is a point Ensign covered quite a few pages back - the warriors are a priority target, both because they're so dangerous and because DP hurts much more on a warrior than on anyone else. Warriors have high armor so it often isn't feasable to kill your DPS trying to hit through it, but if a warrior overextends too far out of monk range and you get the chance to kill him, you definitely want to take it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Also you need to address this observation though... what about the assassin who is also supposed to be able to fight up close and personal? Is the assassins damage so much better than the warriors that it justifies it's comparative lack of protection?! Is he supposed to stand around in the mid-lines doing nothing positive while waiting to strike his target?

That's a key problem with the GvG assassin currently. The best answer I've seen is utilizing Recall to quickly move in and out of battle. Maintaining Recall on a midline caster allows you to extend freely, because if their damage tries to get in your face it's easy to teleport far out of range before they can do anything significant. This has drawbacks, of course (Recall's quite energy-intensive and requires a skillslot), but in theory it allows an assassin to extend even more freely than a standard warrior.

The other problem I've seen with assassins is that offensively they play like a gimped warrior that's easier to counter, and unlike Rangers they don't have a whole lot of tricks to make up for it.

This is, of course, just my experience in the beta weekend and maybe others had different builds that worked better than what I ran. I couldn't find anything about the assassin that made them really worth taking in GvG, but I'd be curious to hear better ideas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Though significantly... I believe this is a point which is overlooked. The fact that we can even talk about the possibility of a DPS ranger says something. The potential is just below the surface right now, it just requires too much effort right now to mine it. Can we even begin to say the same thing of any elementalist builds?!

Yes and no - a lot of the elementalist lines really would be good if only a couple spells existed to build them around. They're like what the illusion line would be if you removed Conjure Phantasm - some decent individual effects that can debilitate a team, but not enough to do in the meantime to warrant devoting a character to the subject.

Ensign mentioned, rightly, that Fire becomes a lot more attractive in Tombs where you can use something like Flame Burst without positioning concerns. A good skill that you can use when you're looking for a massive grouping for your AoE or waiting to throw in your spike skills makes all the difference.

Rangers suffer, in my opinion, from the opposite problem. They can deal DPS and have strong spammables, but their money skills don't fit well on pure marksmanship rangers. Apply Poison, all the decent spirits, traps, and other cool skills that don't require constant spamming are primarily in Wilderness. As a result, almost every Ranger is a Marksmanship + Wilderness + Expertise combo, leaving no room for Beast Mastery and Tiger's Fury and resulting in a lack of damage from no IAS.

Basically, with a Ranger you have to choose between trying to be a damage force and trying to use the skills you actually want to use. Trying to make a pure Marksmanship/Expertise ranger you end up filling your bar with crap, because there simply isn't anything good to use in comparison to other Ranger skills.

Ensign · Apr 16, 2006, 08:11 AM // 08:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

I would argue MANY people would love to kill the rampaging warrior over anyone else on the battlefield. But they can't because it is TOO WELL protected.

Agreed, while builds that have a spike with a significant armor ignoring component can drop a warrior who pushes up too aggressively, it requires a good bit of trickery and/or luck to drop a warrior otherwise.

Another thing to keep in mind that isn't exactly intuitive is how a warrior's positioning on the front lines actually makes him safer a lot of the time. Why? Because the other team is using warriors to kill too. When you're rampaging in their midlines their warriors are likely doing the same, and they can't attack you without pulling back to do so. As a warrior, once you've pushed up far enough, through the danger zone where you're out of range of your monks, you wind up in this comfort zone where the other team cannot reasonably hurt you any more and you feel invincible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

This is just me, but from a construction standpoint, the game would have been far better if warriors NEVER had absorbtion style damage reduction.

Absorption-style damage reduction is particularly good on a warrior because of all that natural armor. The armor reduces damage down to a fraction of what it was, then absorption just whacks off a static chunk of what's left. The -7 DR that a typical warrior has amounts to over 18 damage pre-armor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

To me the best way to restore a balance to the game as a whole is to restore their old function as the warriors worst nightmare.

They do fill that role, at least in a team context, between blinds and Blurred Vision and the occasional snare. Elementalists are far from useless, they're nice utility characters, and have a pretty well established niche now. Granted, that niche is about a dozen skills deep, but it exists.

I've always focused on a specific aspect of the profession, the ability to deal damage, because that's supposed to be a selling point of the profession, and because their failure in that department makes the game a lot more one-dimensional than it really should be.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

They're like what the illusion line would be if you removed Conjure Phantasm - some decent individual effects that can debilitate a team, but not enough to do in the meantime to warrant devoting a character to the subject.

I think that's a fair comparison.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Rangers suffer, in my opinion, from the opposite problem. They can deal DPS and have strong spammables, but their money skills don't fit well on pure marksmanship rangers.

Their money skills aren't in marksmanship or expertise for the most part, and the few that are there (the interrupts and snares) really don't benefit much from a really high attribute. Hence the pure marksman ranger is a character that you look at and have to wonder what it is he actually does. I mean sure, you can build him in such a way that he can actually deal damage, but that's it. He doesn't bring anything special into a build.

It's one of the big holes in ranger spike, actually - it has to have all of these weak, high marksmanship rangers for spiking purposes that leave the build with very little utility or other tricks.

I think a lot of necromancer builds fail along the same lines as well. Necromancers have a lot of spammable utility that you might want, but they only have a few, build specific tricks that can really break games open. For example the blood line - there are a lot of skills in that line that provide solid, spammable utility, and it has a good energy elite to boot. But when you go down the list looking for the money skills that earn characters places in builds, the line is pretty much barren besides Order of Pain. Being able to keep busy and productive with a character is a great thing, but if it doesn't do anything special it will be left as an afterthought.

Peace,
-CxE

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 16, 2006, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I think a lot of necromancer builds fail along the same lines as well. Necromancers have a lot of spammable utility that you might want, but they only have a few, build specific tricks that can really break games open. For example the blood line - there are a lot of skills in that line that provide solid, spammable utility, and it has a good energy elite to boot. But when you go down the list looking for the money skills that earn characters places in builds, the line is pretty much barren besides Order of Pain. Being able to keep busy and productive with a character is a great thing, but if it doesn't do anything special it will be left as an afterthought.

I've always thought the Blood line has excellent utility/toolbox skills that you can use to fill a bar. Blood Ritual is a very nice skill to have, particularly in the energy-denial metagame. Order of Pain and Dark Fury are both nice buffs for your warriors with significantly increase the power and frequency of their spikes. They can remove enchantments, have a spammable degen hex in Life Siphon, and can use Vamp Gaze as a finisher for a spike. Overall, they don't excel in any one area, but bring a lot of utility to the team.

Building a Curses or Death necro though, I usually run into the same problems you do. Both Curses and Death have a couple good skills - Faintheartedness and SoF own in the Curses line, while Rotting Flesh is a great skill to have under Death. However, neither of these lines have enough good skills to really fill a bar. When I'm building a Curses or Death guy my inclination is always to split attributes into blood so I can use the utility skills it provides, because the other lines just don't provide enough.

Ensign · Apr 16, 2006, 09:16 PM // 21:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I've always thought the Blood line has excellent utility/toolbox skills that you can use to fill a bar.

That's what I said it was. I think you misread, my complaint with a blood guy is that he doesn't do anything special. I like blood DDs and Life Siphons and all that as much as the next guy, but a character full of those doesn't actually do anything. Each character on a team needs to be enough of a threat to force a reaction from the other team - you need to have eight priority targets out there. The only skills from the blood line that can really make someone a priority target are the Orders and Blood is Power. Hence while you can easily fill a skill bar with blood spells, filling it in a way that will force a reaction from the other team is decidedly non-trivial.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Building a Curses or Death necro though, I usually run into the same problems you do.

Death is an extreme version of an elementalist line. You have two downright awesome things you can do, create minions and spread disease. But when those things aren't good or aren't available the line is absolutely atrocious - you're basically a Deathly Swarm turret. Swarm is nice and energy efficient and all but I wouldn't call it pulling your weight.

Curses doesn't have an identity. You never really want a curses guy, and it's unclear what they guy would do anyway. It doesn't have a lot of skills that are really money either. Curses is kinda like the inspiration line for necromancers. There's usually a skill or two in there that you'd like to have on a character, but it isn't something you need to invest terribly in and it isn't going to require a huge commitment in any case.

The bigger problem with curses is that it doesn't have much money. From a glance it would appear that what you want is a blood guy for utility, with a splash of death or curses for some really money stuff - but that's really limited to disease, because minions require a huge attribute investment to be effective, and all the really money things in curses are elite (and usually require a large attribute investment as well, ala Feast of Corruption / Spiteful Spirit).

Peace,
-CxE

Xpl0iter · Apr 17, 2006, 04:51 AM // 04:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

Omg, making that skill no attribute defeats the purpose... the attribute must be Energy Storage based.

I so agree with sha.
Those kinda skills must be energy storage, and thus other professions stop benefiting from it. I hate to see ele being used secondary by other profession to actualy spam Ele spikes. Mesmers and necros do it. Removing exhaustion like us eles through no attribute skill just defeats the purpose of WE being ele at first place if every one else can achieve this.

Regardz
An Elementalist.

Rieselle · Apr 17, 2006, 06:03 AM // 06:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Actually it works the other way - exhaustion makes elementalist skills perfectly playable on a secondary, because exhaustion goes away at the same rate for everyone. If there's a problem it's with the way the exhaustion is used. Basically it's put onto two types of skills - one, on strong, spammable effects to limit their use with a mechanism other than high energy cost (ala Obsidian Flame or Gale), the other, on ridiculously overpriced AoE skills to make them even more silly.

Funnily enough, before release I was looking over the GW skill list, after having come from EQ2 and WoW, and I thought that Exhaustion would be a really cool mechanic :P

(I didnt play in the beta weekends)

I had thought that Exhaustion was a way to have "super spells" in the game, such as Meteor Storm, which would be very powerful but would be limited by exhaustion so there would be a cost to using them too often, or using too many of them.

Unfortunately then the game was released and I discovered the real situation, that Meteor Storm sucks, and exhaustion is primarily used to to prevent infinite knockdowns, and annoy the hell out of anyone using Elem Energy Management. Ah well...

As for the general Elementalist problem, a question directed to Ensign:
You managed to spend some time with one of the GW designers (Iggy?) when you were in Taiwan. Did this topic ever come up? If not, presumably you or someone else here is either in Alpha or are on good terms with someone who is.

I'm wondering what the ANet Designers' feelings are on this topic. Is it "working as intended" ? Or "working on it, expect big things to come"? Or "uhh... we're looking to do some tweaks in the future....yeah...."?

Presumably it doesnt break NDA or anything to just generally give an opinion of what their attitudes are towards this issue.

wheel · Apr 17, 2006, 07:40 AM // 07:40

Izzy is his name

Sha Noran · Apr 17, 2006, 08:44 AM // 08:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Curses doesn't have an identity. You never really want a curses guy, and it's unclear what they guy would do anyway. It doesn't have a lot of skills that are really money either. Curses is kinda like the inspiration line for necromancers. There's usually a skill or two in there that you'd like to have on a character, but it isn't something you need to invest terribly in and it isn't going to require a huge commitment in any case.

The bigger problem with curses is that it doesn't have much money. From a glance it would appear that what you want is a blood guy for utility, with a splash of death or curses for some really money stuff - but that's really limited to disease, because minions require a huge attribute investment to be effective, and all the really money things in curses are elite (and usually require a large attribute investment as well, ala Feast of Corruption / Spiteful Spirit).

Whoa whoa whoa, I wouldn't say that. Pressure hex builds nearly revolve around Curses. Faintheartedness and Shadow of Fear, as mentioned, are money as money can get. Faintheartedness is particular is just evil... 3 degen, slowed attack rate, and non elite? Sign me up! Throw in Price of Failure and you've really got something going as far as anti-melee, which is particularly strong in the current Warrior heavy metagame. (Look at me! I said metagame! Weeee.)

If you didn't want to go straight Curses you could certainly go Mes/Nec and mix between Illusion and Curses for a crazy evil anti-tank build, ala Ineptitude {E}, Clumsiness, Faintheartedness, Shadow of Fear and Price of Failure. You could even then throw in a bit of Inspiration for Spirit of Failure and some E-management.

Also you could throw in some Enfeeble/Enfeebling Blood for some spammable Weakness, Insidious Parasite for some empathy-type DoTs, Malaise for some wicked energy annoyance, or even Weaken Armor to make your opponents Ghostly Hero/Guild Lord more sussesptible to damage.

While we're on the topic, doesn't Faintheartedness have a ridiculously long name? I just had to type it four times. Bleh.

So yea, Curses rocks.

Ensign · Apr 17, 2006, 10:30 AM // 10:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

Whoa whoa whoa, I wouldn't say that. Pressure hex builds nearly revolve around Curses.

The core of a "Pressure hex" build is spammable degen, most specifically Conjure Phantasm, Life Siphon, and Parasitic Bond. You mix in some better hexes to bury in all that chaff and call it a build. It usually incorporates a curses hex or two, but they aren't exactly critical. Note that this build gets absolutely manhandled by a single, powered copy of Heal Party, and is completely unviable for competitive play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

Faintheartedness and Shadow of Fear, as mentioned, are money as money can get.

I can't agree with that. Faintheartedness is a nice hex. It deals reasonably efficient damage for the energy invested and the slow effect isn't something to laugh at. If you have a necro primary with other hex support in the build it's probably worthwhile to fit Faintheartedness in. But money? No, it's not money. It's annoying, but it doesn't shut someone down hard, or draw disruptive hate from its presence.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

So yea, Curses rocks.

If you were paying attention you'd have noticed that I never said anything to the contrary. What I did say is that the line does not lend itself well to making a "curses guy" who invests heavily in the line. I think it's clear that this is the case - especially from this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

Also you could throw in some Enfeeble/Enfeebling Blood for some spammable Weakness, Insidious Parasite for some empathy-type DoTs, Malaise for some wicked energy annoyance, or even Weaken Armor to make your opponents Ghostly Hero/Guild Lord more sussesptible to damage.

Isn't the character you just outlined a schizophrenic mess who doesn't do anything terribly well? What's his job? How does he force another team to deal with him or lose? Why should anyone care about that character, period?

My characterization of the curses line is not saying it's a bad line at all. It's just not self-sufficient, much like the inspiration line. There are a lot of characters that happily take a couple of skills from the line and perform admirably - Offering powered hexers with Faintheartedness and Parasitic Bond; fast cast mesmer hexers with Price of Failure and sometimes Malaise; spike assist mesmers with Rend Enchantments and Rigor Mortis; toolbox necros with Faintheartedness and Enfeeble; lots of free secondaries with a splashed Shadow of Fear. There are others as well. The idea remains the same, though: the curses line is deep, but it's one that you want to pick a couple of skills out of to flesh out a character.

Peace,
-CxE

Sha Noran · Apr 17, 2006, 12:18 PM // 12:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

Also you could throw in some Enfeeble/Enfeebling Blood for some spammable Weakness, Insidious Parasite for some empathy-type DoTs, Malaise for some wicked energy annoyance, or even Weaken Armor to make your opponents Ghostly Hero/Guild Lord more sussesptible to damage.

Isn't the character you just outlined a schizophrenic mess who doesn't do anything terribly well? What's his job? How does he force another team to deal with him or lose? Why should anyone care about that character, period?

No, no, not ALL of those skills on one build... I was saying that any of those skills could be incorperated into an effective Curses build.

You mention at the end of your post a long list of things Curses can be incorperated into builds to do... why not combine those into one very versatile Curses build? Such as...

-Enfeeble
-Faintheartedness
-Insidious Parasite
-Price of Failure
-Spiteful Spirit
-Spirit of Failure
-<E-management>
-Rez

I dunno, it's not the best build ever, but its certainly got some utility as well as damage. (To go back to the topic, it CERTAINLY is more effective than most Ele builds, excluding E/Mo Water Snare/HP). Mainly this type of character would be focused on making life hard for any enemy Warriors.. which in my opinion would be extremely nice in the current Warrior heavy metagame (echo?).

A Warrior who is attack slower is building up adrenaline slower, making him much less effective and probably very agitated, i.e. Faintheartedness. Weakness may not be that great, but it lessens the damage from the games current DD machine: Warrior. Conditions are easily removable, but Enfeeble is equally spammable. SS and IP are both constant punishment for a Warrior for simply doing what his character is designed to do. Price and Spirit of Failure are simply further burden for a Warrior already having trouble with the other skills mentioned.

If your GvG build is based around Warrior DoTs (as many top ranked GvG teams seem to be) then this kind of a Curses guy would definately be a priority target.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The core of a "Pressure hex" build is spammable degen, most specifically Conjure Phantasm, Life Siphon, and Parasitic Bond. You mix in some better hexes to bury in all that chaff and call it a build. It usually incorporates a curses hex or two, but they aren't exactly critical. Note that this build gets absolutely manhandled by a single, powered copy of Heal Party, and is completely unviable for competitive play.

I didn't say it was the magical build to end all builds, I said thats what it did. I might have exaggerated when I said that it was based around Curses... but when playing Ranger, the Curses hexes are the ones I notice, i.e. Faintheartedness, SoF.

But ANYWAY, it seems that this argument is grossly off topic... it could be debated whether or not a "Curses guy" belongs in a main stream GvG or HoH environment, but it seems clear (to me at least) that he's a far more effective character than, say, a Fire Ele.

Oh, back on that subject, has anyone actually looked at the new Ele skills? They're really quite horrid for the most part... in fact, most of them further the problems brought up in this thread rather than try to fix them. Here's a great example or two:

Energy Boon {Elite Spell} E: 5 CT: 1 RT: 5

You gain 10...18 energy. This spell causes exhaustion.

Double Dragon {Elite Spell} E: 15 CT: .75 RT: 30

For two seconds, foes adjacent to this location are struck for 7-91 fire damage each second. This spell causes Exhaustion.

Ride the Lightning {Elite Spell} E: 10 CT: 1 RT: 20

You ride the lightning to target foe. That foe is struck for 15...63 damage. This spell causes Exhaustion.

Star Burst {Elite Spell} E:5 CT: .75 RT: 10

Target touched foe and all nearby foes are struck for 7...91 fire damage. If more than one foe was struck, you lose 5 energy.

The first one I listed here, Energy Boon, does not give you enough energy back to even be worth the Exhaustion, let alone the elite spot. It's like a horrible version of OoB.

The last three are examples of Ele spells that, to me, show just how little ANet even cares about the Ele profession or what it originally stated that it was supposed to do (which I think is the point of this thread). They're all local AoEs, with the exception of RtL, which will most likely put your poor Ele in a horrible spot. According to the original game book (yes I still have it :-P):

"The wise Elementalist avoids becoming surrounded, but keeps a local area-of-effect spell on hand just in case."

If I'm bringing an Elite skill, its certainly not a "just in case" type of thing... but really, the shear number of LAoEs, regardless of whether or not they're Elite, makes me think thier original plan of keeping the Ele out of combat just isn't the plan anymore.

Mister Furious · Apr 17, 2006, 04:31 PM // 16:31

It occured to me the other day that perhaps the reason why eles do such bad damage is because the developers figured that if eles were really damage dealers, then no one would care about assassins which is one of the major selling points of Factions. I also think that the developers gave a lot of ele spells long cast times and exhaustion simply for flavor. It seems like they figured that casting a spell that caused meteors to fall out of the sky would be a really hard spell to cast and would probably make you tired after you did it, so they gave it a long cast time and exhaustion just because. I don't know if that's really true, but if you look at how many spells cause exhaustion and which ones do it, that's what it looks like to me. I also firmly believe that if they were going to fix eles, they would've done it the last update. All they did was give a few really insignifigant and miniscule boosts to damage to a few fire spells no one uses anyway and nerfed gale.

cookiemonkie · Apr 17, 2006, 05:54 PM // 17:54

In other words what you are saying is the developer (ANET). Decided that elementalist should be weak minded gimps and dorks, so they gave them the dorkiest dance and look in the game as well as skills to justify that perception.

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 17, 2006, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Elementalists are not gimps. If you look at the playoffs, many matches were won and lost by the elementalists on spamming blinds and water snares at the right time, combined with Heal Party spam. In that context, they're an efficent utility character with a ridiculous amount of energy at their disposal.

The thing to recognize is that these characters aren't there to deal damage (aside from maybe throwing a spare spell into a spike.) They're there because elementalists have some decent spammable utility skills and because Ether Prodigy is such a powerful skill.

Of course, it doesn't say a whole lot for Eles that their entire GvG role is focused around one specific skill, such that if you removed that skill they'd be unlikely to see use again. Prodigy is cool and all, but the way its come to dominate elementalist builds definitely demonstrates the underlying problems with the class.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noron

-Enfeeble
-Faintheartedness
-Insidious Parasite
-Price of Failure
-Spiteful Spirit
-Spirit of Failure
-<E-management>
-Rez

So, what's the purpose of my taking this character along, aside from "Hey look, a pure Curses guy!"

It's not that all of the skills there are bad, but the build you've created isn't going to make me target you and try to get you off the battlefield, it's going to make me pump my Heal Party and Purge Signet. You're not going to have the energy to use all those hexes to the point where you need to because you haven't got OOB, and while individually it's great to have covered Faintheartedness and Spirit of Failure around, there are better forms of warrior shutdown than that.

To look at it another way, the sort of incidental damage you're doing through this build before the hexes get removed is going to get handled by Heal Party and possibly Healing Signet. In the meantime all you've managed to do is slow down their warriors, not shut them down. Wouldn't you rather have a Flashbot to keep a near-constant blind on their warriors while providing tons of other utility to the team? What does this character provide that your standard Flashbot doesn't?

And it's not even like the Flashbot is a ridiculously good character. He's not bad and does his job pretty well, but he's not so great that he'll be the first person the enemy team wants to target. He's just better than the pure Curses guy, because he provides better warrior shutdown and utility in exchange for damage which will get eaten up by basic healing.

DieInBasra · Apr 17, 2006, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Quote:

You mention at the end of your post a long list of things Curses can be incorperated into builds to do... why not combine those into one very versatile Curses build? Such as...

-Enfeeble
-Faintheartedness
-Insidious Parasite
-Price of Failure
-Spiteful Spirit
-Spirit of Failure
-<E-management>
-Rez

I dunno, it's not the best build ever, but its certainly got some utility as well as damage. (To go back to the topic, it CERTAINLY is more effective than most Ele builds, excluding E/Mo Water Snare/HP). Mainly this type of character would be focused on making life hard for any enemy Warriors.. which in my opinion would be extremely nice in the current Warrior heavy metagame (echo?).

Well, of course it depends on your build, but you could have a FlashBot doing pretty much the same thing. That build, though it makes a warrior a bit annoyed, does nothing to enemy monks, except maybe 3 degen(scary), while a FlashBot can assist a spike with orb, and power out Heal Party and spam draw conditions. And really, if stuff like that actually did get popular, a single copy of Convert or Purge could make you feel pretty useless.

[EDIT]:Wasteland beat me to it.

cookiemonkie · Apr 17, 2006, 09:01 PM // 21:01

Wasteland Squidget: That was just my pathetic attempt at being humorous. The elementalist class has some of the best and most energy effiecient defensive skills with water hexes which aren't removed as often since teams can only afford to have around 3 or 4 hex removals without being to specialized. Can't deny the neutralizing ability of wards which affects the map. From an offensive standpoint, they are still gimps