Curse

NinjaKai · Aug 11, 2006, 02:04 AM // 02:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrane Latrobe

The problem with the thumpers is they need the draw to keep the blind/crippled off, for that reason and the blessed light monk becoming more common we swapped the mel arrow ranger to a defensive trapper. If you are having thumper trouble try a dust trap - park the monks in it. It will overwhelm the draw. Most thumpers get tunnel vision when they see the monk and have poor target selection.

I've done something like this before. Put barbed and spike trap on the luxons teleporting platform. Stood in front of it and watched the wammos fly through the portal. They never knew what hit them. Then my elemental friend hits of with some lovely earth spells.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 11, 2006, 04:40 AM // 04:40

Is it just me or has Split become a lot more popular? Seems like almost every build we've met tonight has been pure split.

It may just be because of our build (a lot of teams seem to split immediately vs smite for some reason), but pure 4-4s and assassin gankers on Druid's Isle. I guess it's just to counter Thumpway?

Byron · Aug 11, 2006, 05:37 AM // 05:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dzan

That said, the more popular Blessed Light monks become, the more viable Surge/Burn mesmers will be.

Signet of humility, please. Not likely to keep a team up with GoH and spirit bond.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Is it just me or has Split become a lot more popular?

Basically, I see three options in the current GvG metagame: Smite, spirits, or spilt. And the other two are much more boring, IMHO. There can be some crossover, i suppose (ie, single smite).

JR · Aug 11, 2006, 09:40 AM // 09:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I guess it's just to counter Thumpway?

And VoDtualists.

fatboyslimerr · Aug 11, 2006, 12:46 PM // 12:46

This post has been very informative. My guild has recently started GvGing a lot. I would say about 50-60% of the guilds we play against around 250-400 rank use some combo of thumpers/smite/Nuke/Tainted. Thumpers are just dominating this kind of rank. Decent players forsaking their balanced to play some stupid thumper build. Tbh they get sort of annoying when there's at least 2 thumpers in every guild you meet.

When we try using ward against melee, the enemy has a AoE fire nuker. When we try lots of blinding flashes, they have 2 smiters with draw condition. At the moment the way our balanced has shifted is away from the standard E/Mo air spikers to incorporate warrior hate hexes as well as degen such as phantasm/IoR crippling anguish mesmer and shadow of fear/siphon necro. Moving away from our trusty spike build to deal with these peasky Thumpers isn't ideal because we like spiking so much but this is just how we see the metagame.... Thumper orientated. Imo huge DPS such be left to warriors not rangers using a weapon that isn't even from their primary profession. Nerf 'em before they become as popular as iway.

Thanks for the tips though guys, very helpful

Neo-LD · Aug 11, 2006, 01:38 PM // 13:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Byron

Basically, I see three options in the current GvG metagame: Smite, spirits, or spilt. And the other two are much more boring, IMHO. There can be some crossover, i suppose (ie, single smite).

Well, its not quite as simple as that.

You have the standard option atm which is melee pressure, which you can choose to supplement with hex degen, condition degen, smite, or domination.

You also have the gold ol' adrenospike, but they only seem to work nowadays if you have a rit. Otherwise they crumble to pressure too quickly.

You also spike builds (caster is most viable atm), and split builds, anti-smite (nr/tranq)

Most of the varience in the meta, tho, comes from the different variations on pressure.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 11, 2006, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

You have the standard option atm which is melee pressure, which you can choose to supplement with hex degen, condition degen, smite, or domination.

I haven't seen Dom mesmers as a particularly effective pressure character for a while. E-surge can be okay AOE damage I guess, but most monks on good teams are simply too good at focus-swapping. Some things a Dom mesmer can throw still hurts (ie: Power Leak on Energy Drain or a lucky Diversion), but it's usually not going to run a team dry. Blackout has some offensive potential, but it only really hurts if used during a spike.

That's not to say E-denial is useless, but it's main use is getting rid of that 20 energy 'buffer' monks have before they hit the wall of their negative sets. Against heavy pressure that buffer can be something a monk relies on. I think a single copy of Debilitating Shot can achieve the same goal as a dom mesmer though, and it's more likely to hit an non-focus swapped target since it's hard for the enemy team to see coming.

Dom mesmers do have Shatter Enchantment though, which is a key skill in any balanced adren-spike. A skilled Dom mesmer can also kill a lot of the counters to Adren spike (interrupting wards, diverting warrior hate, ect.)

This is Brad · Aug 11, 2006, 08:32 PM // 20:32

The beauty of the heavy degen is that it goes straight through the protection spells that normally hinder balanced 2-3 warrior spikes. So instead of caring if the monk has that 20 energy buffer, you just ignore it and keep degening multiple targets. Then you kill/disable a heal party and the team collapses because a 2 monk backline trying to heal 6 characters taking -7 degen (14 damage every second) is almost hilariously pitiable.

This way you get around bringing enchant removal and still manage to get kills.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 11, 2006, 08:55 PM // 20:55

Agreed with Brad - degen is very scary if you can take out the heal party, and with Distortion rangers running around it's very difficult to keep your Heal Party going. A Distortion ranger can go almost anywhere on the battlefield without fear of damage, so it's very difficult to keep them from getting a Distracting Shot on your heal party with positioning.

Nadine · Aug 11, 2006, 11:36 PM // 23:36

All these *new* and allmost gimmick builds have chanced the metagame to situation where one can't find anymore the METAbuild. 4thumpers, >American Pressure>, hex heavys (european time zone pls).

But have any of u thought about trying something old? PnH( their smurf

) and GoH seriously may remeber that we tryed something old and good

.

Think about normal builds, think their way to deal damage, think your way to deal damage, think your way to prevent enemyes damage, think enemyes way to prevent your damage etc.

Type everything down. And pls tell me if u find some things that are in your and your enemye's build. And tell me if u can find some of these things in every build

. This is way to find and counter true metagame.

Thom · Aug 12, 2006, 01:09 AM // 01:09

Nadine, this type of post is really unappreciated. If you want to share something you think is working, please share.

The old weak point in my book was the two boon/prot backlines which were universal, but people are getting away from that with the strength of blessed light monks.

moriz · Aug 12, 2006, 01:03 PM // 13:03

BL monks can actually heal decently without Blessed Light. i personally only use Blessed Light to A: remove hexes B: heal target that's got both a condition and a hex, C: heal a target with condition that's low on health. for everything else with conditions, i just use good old Mend Condition.

anyways, on a fairly standard BL monk, GoH will heal just as much as Blessed Light. on mine for example: BL heals for 115, GoH heals for 114. hardly a noticeable difference

back on topic: i don't think there's a good way to defeat thumpers. the safest way is to simply outlast them by playing defensively and slowly DP them out. another way (although this is not tested) is to use your Mo/A BL monk as a bait, wait for the thumpers to converge on him, and push forward aggressively and take out their backline. the BL monk at the same time use Return to cripple the thumpers, which gives your team time to do its job. after than, the thumpers will definately try to rez their backline. let them, and take it out again when their monks are low on energy. this strategy attempts to DP out their backline, so their build collapses because of lack of healing. since most thumper builds are weak defensively, this could be very devastating.

Ventius Hozza · Aug 12, 2006, 01:44 PM // 13:44

Kill the pets repeatedly. A thumper without a pet has much less e-management, 70~ less damage per 10 secs or so, and it really hurts if you get blacked out every couple of seconds. Nice energy for your utility necro, but makes you pretty useless.

Nadine · Aug 12, 2006, 02:00 PM // 14:00

yeah, and b-light gets RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed by shame

.

I was just saying that there is huge number of 2+ warriors (war, assa or thumper) team. And when metagames gets more melee characters, they also gets more melee hate. I have seen teams with wards + aegises + b-flashes. So 3 different warrior hates, maybe more. So nowadays all teams have huge melee damage + huge number of melee hates.

still.mojo · Aug 12, 2006, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Current meta is reflection of season, no serious prizes, ppl on vacations, guild disbanding , and especially, farming of champion points in pug guilds that either lost players or were created for such purposes.
No wonder high preassure is played, it requires least level of team coordination, and is center based build that either rolls team or dies and moves on.Fast games, and loads of them, zerg or die.

Hexes cant counter this, too many interupts and preassure that is imediately applied, hexes take some time to get full potential up and running, time that is not given vs zerg builds.
Its no wonder why team like pnh, that has a lot to loose, plays heavy defensive vod build. They have option to split 24/7, in order distract other team, and lower number of their npc-s.
There seems no ground for any kind of balance if one wants to win, u either need to be as offensive as u can get, or vod based, and it will stay like that untill upcomming event ends in few weeks, nerfs hit us and ppl start making new builds.
There are very few things that arent seen this season, including comeback of some old skills, like gale, wild blow, war cunning on various chars, and that will positively change as season heats up now.
What i like to see , is when guilds use new ways of gameplay, like using of return on [Evil] monks , dismember on Necro Raiders Soul leech nec, etc, something that breaks monotony we fell in, and that can still make us laugh.

Nadine · Aug 12, 2006, 05:28 PM // 17:28

And gale on mojo's war/ele

Yeah it is nice to see some good old skill's rolled back to game. Mojo has also showed that spirit based builds may also work in gvg if they are properly played.

sixdartbart · Aug 13, 2006, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phelann

Also this might be useful for the topic: we used to run barely any defense in our builds, just a little bit on the ele. we now run double aegis, blind, mellee ward, and ice snares.

This is about the only build that we have ran across for 3 days now.
I guess this is the popular choice to deal with the melee heavy builds but my god it's a pain.

It use to be fun to just run our same balanced team against whatever changing enviroment came and went but when people are dedicating half of their team to utility characters I'm not sure what to do because this is no fun at all.
I've also noticed that the dual aegis-water snare-blind bot-ward campers are often the same people bitching about Rits being too defensive

*runs off to create "Black Hole" skill to suck these guys through their wards*

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 13, 2006, 06:35 PM // 18:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ventius Hozza

Kill the pets repeatedly. A thumper without a pet has much less e-management, 70~ less damage per 10 secs or so, and it really hurts if you get blacked out every couple of seconds. Nice energy for your utility necro, but makes you pretty useless.

Against Thumpway this is a very bad idea, IMO. The death necro often brings Death Nova to maintain on the pets, and once they're down you'll be getting hit by Putrid and Profane constantly. If the pets acquire a lot of DP you'll be seeing these things spammed every few seconds and thumpway becomes much more dangerous.

You need to have enough defense in your build to survive the initial onslaught, but you also need to be dealing constant damage to drain their monks. Sit at least one warrior and a lot of interrupts or e-denial on their necro, since he's very key to the build. From there just pressure their thumpers and their monks will eventually break.

overclocked · Aug 13, 2006, 08:41 PM // 20:41

WOW all the noob guilds that ran "thumpway" got like 500-1000 places on the ladder in 2 days were lucky cause its so easy to counter, thanks man were going to use your awsome tatics.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 13, 2006, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by overclocked

WOW all the noob guilds that ran "thumpway" got like 500-1000 places on the ladder in 2 days were lucky cause its so easy to counter, thanks man were going to use your awsome tatics.

I never used the word 'easy.' A well-played Thumpway is a difficult build to fight. If you have better suggestions than I made for countering Thumpway though, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, I really have no idea what point you're making with this post.