Curse

Ensign · Jun 23, 2006, 08:27 PM // 20:27

Most of this is straight out nonsense. You're going to hide in wards against triple smite? You think pulling one Zealot's Fire is going to matter?

Triple smite breaks a balanced build in about 30 seconds. It breaks a well defended balanced build in under a minute. Simple tricks aren't going to beat it, period. That's the reason the build is popular with top teams - it beats the balanced toolbox builds' faces in. If you do have to face it with some sort of toolbox build, a 4/4 split on Imperial Isle is your best chance to beat it. If not that, play on some other spread out map. If you can kite like mad and avoid AoE, you have a chance.

The weakness of the build is to spike. It does not have particularly good spike tools, and spike can force those kills in the first 30 seconds before your team starts to break. Multiple copies of Aegis make ranger spike suboptimal, but fast cast air spike (blind helps a lot and gale makes the spikes unstoppable) and SNA/OUT spike both have good games against it.

Another factor to look at is how short the ladder seasons are. You have less than a month to accumulate over 100 wins if you want to even qualify for playoffs, let alone have a good seed in the tournament. Builds that win, and win fast, have a huge premium in that sort of environment - grinding out wins at VoD all the time just has you falling behind unless you can play eight hours a day. Builds that climb the ladder fast, like spike or triple smite, are incredibly valuable because of it.

Peace,
-CxE

bobrath · Jun 23, 2006, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Just wondering, but how would Sympathietic Visage affect this? Not sure about the tradeoff of taking the damage but draining their thumpers and smiters of adren and nrg....

Spook_Cell · Jun 23, 2006, 09:23 PM // 21:23

OoA on some kind of low health necro could work but you'd need EW and then you're almost becoming a gimmick to counter a gimmick so....

I wonder if the new modded IWAYs could outpressure them

.

Edit : As for sympathetic it might slow down the thumpers a bit but a lot of the dmg comes from the enchants and it wouldn't be too hard to change targets even at that.

Ensign · Jun 23, 2006, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Players, unlike Smite Crawlers, know how to change targets.

kryshnysh · Jun 23, 2006, 09:24 PM // 21:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobrath

Just wondering, but how would Sympathietic Visage affect this? Not sure about the tradeoff of taking the damage but draining their thumpers and smiters of adren and nrg....

Thumpers yes, smiters shouldn't be in range to lose enery from that.

Not to mention switching targets > sympathetic visage.

Senator Tom · Jun 23, 2006, 09:36 PM // 21:36

and we move back to the energy denial meta

Patrograd · Jun 24, 2006, 10:56 AM // 10:56

OK, how about you run two boons that look like this:

Monk/Mesmer
Level: 20

Divine Favor: 15 (11+4)
Healing Prayers: 9 (8+1)
Protection Prayers: 9 (8+1)
Inspiration Magic: 9

- Healing Seed (Healing Prayers)
- Reversal of Fortune (Protection Prayers)
- Guardian (Protection Prayers)
- Mend Condition (Protection Prayers)
- Protective Spirit (Protection Prayers)
- Divine Boon (Divine Favor)
- Inspired Hex (Inspiration Magic)
- Mantra of Recall [Elite] (Inspiration Magic)

Now, my rather limited tombs experience tells me that healing seed > smite. With 2 healing seeds you have a theoretical 2/50 secs downtime assuming 20% enchant staff, and these GvG smiters dont seem to carry enchant removal unless I've missed something. Now I guess most people now how to play seed against smite, and it works in a tombs environment given good movement and communication etc, is there an obvious reason why you couldnt run that in GvG? Is it just me being a numpty or is healing seed the exact counter to balthazar's aura? Is the healing seed a total passenger against every other kind of non-smite build or could you fit that monk setup into a balanced team effectively?

Nadine · Jun 24, 2006, 03:13 PM // 15:13

hmm, did anyone of u see [Quit] vs [Sup]??

We owned [Sup] in 18 minutes. In 8v8 we just out pressured them.
We are running normal 2 warrio, 2 monk, 1 miter, 2 burner, 1 emo runner.
We made another mesmer, warrior and emo to change running turns. At that point we got heal party to 8v8 playing. Then if u look their build really carefully u see 2 things:
Only defence is 3 smiters, but if smiters begin to defend they loose much of attack power.
If their only attack power is one thumper per monk, it isnt much. We simply made one mesmer to take out their smiter nro1, second mesmer to take out healer, one warrior on healer and one warrior on smiter nro2. So only healing power left was smiter nro3, and it is not enough

. And when we got pushed back, we just made one mesmer to run the flagg and emo to slow down the thumpers and heal party all the time. And our smiter applyed boon and healed other monks. And everytime they tryes to gank our flagger we casted balthazar on him and pressed their monks. So they needed to stop blocking/ganking our flagger becouse of lacking heal power.

Okay we needed to draw back from their lors becouse we went in little bit too fast. But we drawed back to flag stand, then just pressed them again.

GvG isnt matter of build, u just need one build which is able to 1. split, 2. defend, 3.spike, 4. apply heavy pressure.

awesome sauce · Jun 24, 2006, 03:30 PM // 15:30

Or you could use the hit and run spike tactic used by rus corp. They always bring some sort of a hexer/warder to slow the other team down, run away, and spike when theyre ready again.

EagleEye812 · Jun 24, 2006, 03:44 PM // 15:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nadine

hmm, did anyone of u see [Quit] vs [Sup]??

We owned [Sup] in 18 minutes. In 8v8 we just out pressured them.
We are running normal 2 warrio, 2 monk, 1 miter, 2 burner, 1 emo runner.
We made another mesmer, warrior and emo to change running turns. At that point we got heal party to 8v8 playing. Then if u look their build really carefully u see 2 things:
Only defence is 3 smiters, but if smiters begin to defend they loose much of attack power.
If their only attack power is one thumper per monk, it isnt much. We simply made one mesmer to take out their smiter nro1, second mesmer to take out healer, one warrior on healer and one warrior on smiter nro2. So only healing power left was smiter nro3, and it is not enough

. And when we got pushed back, we just made one mesmer to run the flagg and emo to slow down the thumpers and heal party all the time. And our smiter applyed boon and healed other monks. And everytime they tryes to gank our flagger we casted balthazar on him and pressed their monks. So they needed to stop blocking/ganking our flagger becouse of lacking heal power.

Okay we needed to draw back from their lors becouse we went in little bit too fast. But we drawed back to flag stand, then just pressed them again.

GvG isnt matter of build, u just need one build which is able to 1. split, 2. defend, 3.spike, 4. apply heavy pressure.

That was a great match! No way around it, you won that match without a problem (was it flawless?)

Good build, good tactics, good overview, completely blew us away

By the way, where is the topic that asks for a nerf of gvg SoulBarbs Spike? Because we lost to one today ([mn]: we had a err7 & a thumper forgot his hammer

) and nearly lost to another ([WoW], they just killed us but we got them back) just because that spike is so unhealable... We took a convert the first time, seemed to work (only every 20 seconds tho)

yesitsrob · Jun 24, 2006, 04:12 PM // 16:12

To answer the original question. No, not everyone is running this triple smite.... those not running it are running soul barbs spike

. The short seasons promote this dull as shit ending to everyone of them

art_ · Jun 24, 2006, 04:18 PM // 16:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by EagleEye812

That was a great match! No way around it, you won that match without a problem (was it flawless?)

Good build, good tactics, good overview, completely blew us away

By the way, where is the topic that asks for a nerf of gvg SoulBarbs Spike? Because we lost to one today ([mn]: we had a err7 & a thumper forgot his hammer

) and nearly lost to another ([WoW], they just killed us but we got them back) just because that spike is so unhealable... We took a convert the first time, seemed to work (only every 20 seconds tho)

Heheh. We faced the soul barbs spike when we had purge signet in our QZ build

sir lockt · Jun 26, 2006, 06:47 AM // 06:47

In the old days, dual smite was countered by IWAY... But I think triple smite even outdamages IWAY regen, can somebody who tried this trick to confirm this?

Draining zealots, helps a bit, but remember: 3 smiters is a lot... And it doesnt affect the output of the thumpers... Staying in wards will be very nice for the smite team...zealots is not the only offense they have...

I understand the desire to qualify for the play-offs, and when you look at the ladder, everybody is turning mad, the amount of games played is awesome. I would be very eager to see if the elite-guilds have counters for smite ready for ON the play-offs. I think the trick-hat will be openend there. So I am looking forward to that!

cookiemonkie · Jun 26, 2006, 11:02 PM // 23:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by sir lockt

I would be very eager to see if the elite-guilds have counters for smite ready for ON the play-offs. I think the trick-hat will be openend there. So I am looking forward to that!

You won't see anything new, 3 domination mesmer backlines to diversion, eburn, esurge, signet of weariness, shatter enchant spike the smitters.... or Convert Hexes from SB/RI......... Nothing new, we are back at square 1 pretty much with this game that being e-denial / spike mesmers and the fact that being everyone running either smite, sb/ri, and a counter. Sorry if I find the whole theme of a monk smiting line of skills doing more damage than other lines retarted, and just plain poor game balance.

ANET should should appropriately title their next release "Build Wars" rather than "Guild Wars".

glenn_rolfe · Jun 27, 2006, 02:05 AM // 02:05

It does need a nerf touch, and it's AoE that is gonna get it (needs a far longer cool down).

I like the idea of gank builds, where you run through into the base and gangbang the lord. But it needs to be extremely high risk. Triple smite has a far greater chance of winning this way then the game should allow.

SB spike, triple smite, FoC spike, blood spike, fast cast air spike - the lame list grows and grows

guppy · Jun 27, 2006, 02:23 AM // 02:23

I am sort of new to gvg (and to the game), but isn't air of enchantment one of the reasons why the smite builds are so popular now? I mean, without it, the build starts to consider energy management issues and actually has energy being spent rather than a very strange 0 energy spell period. I mean.. I find it strange that the secondary profession really doesn't matter very much at all on the smiters.

cookiemonkie · Jun 27, 2006, 06:01 AM // 06:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by guppy

I am sort of new to gvg (and to the game), but isn't air of enchantment one of the reasons why the smite builds are so popular now? I mean, without it, the build starts to consider energy management issues and actually has energy being spent rather than a very strange 0 energy spell period. I mean.. I find it strange that the secondary profession really doesn't matter very much at all on the smiters.

Its no different than the old ether renewal that smiting eles used. The old ether renewal was nerfed to being useless when the smite skills themselves should have taken the big nerf. Ether renewal should had been reworked to triggering ele skills and buffed in a way to encourage the use of ele skills.... One year later we are back at square one with smiting and another broken elite. Rather than turning air of enchantment into a useless elite like ether renewal is now, just tone it down a bit and nerf the smite skill and damage as it should have been done correctly a long time ago.

rii · Jun 27, 2006, 10:33 AM // 10:33

They did nerf the damage of zealot's fire and I think balthazars aura after the ether renewal nerf (although I might be wrong). I think the main problem is AoE, the actual damage provided by balth/zealots (hitting one target) is ok. Perhaps if it only reduced the enchantment cost by 2/3 instead of 5 it might be harder to run both balth aura, zealots spam, and usually smite hex and JI on two warriors combined with hex breaker maintenance.

Happy · Jun 27, 2006, 12:31 PM // 12:31

Don't even like JI on smiters that much, the added damage is marginal considering the damage you already do, rather take a couple of aegis's, nice cover for zealots and makes you a little less vunarable to enemy offense.

kryshnysh · Jun 27, 2006, 04:54 PM // 16:54

Zealots Fire from 5...37 to 5...29, Balth's Aura they increased the recharge from 15 to 25 and casting time from 1 to 2. Sep 29, 2005 update.