Curse

Ensign · Jun 19, 2006, 09:34 PM // 21:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guillaume De Sonoma

If feel that if you are not looking for the role of a spirit spammer that Ritualists are a great source of spike damage. Maybe you look at it in the sense that the channeled strike (the rits most powerful spike) takes two seconds to cast, but the damage is close to one hundred or over if you have a lot of channeling or are holding an item. If an ele can contribute a two second lightning orb to a spike, I feel that a ritualist can do the same with channeled strike.

Hmmm? I think you misunderstood what I wrote because I think you agree with me.

Elementalists are stronger in a build that wants to spike quickly - should I have said frequently? The thing that makes Obsidian Flame and Lightning Orb attractive is the recharge. You can spike every 7-8 seconds with those skills, which is exactly what a good spike build wants to do. If you look at the strongest ranger spikes, they'll have multiple spikes built into their bars so that they can spike more frequently. Ele spikes function the same way.

Ritualists on the other hand have much stronger contributions to a slower spike, via Gaze from Beyond, Channeled Strike, etc. Effect for effect, those are stronger spikes than anything an elementalist can kick out, but they're on substantial recharges. Hence they're more valuable in a slow-spike build, one that perhaps pressures for a while then tries to spike someone out every 20 seconds or so. Gaze from Beyond in particular is very strong due to its one second cast time.

Hence the distinction - ritualists spike harder, but eles spike twice as often.

Also, Spirit Burn and Essence Strike are great, small DDs that completely outclass anything an elementalist can do, which is why I say they are much better at throwing small DDs around. They do have the two best ones in the game after all. =)

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

Without even talking about warrior hate, targets of warriors kite. It delays a lot their damage, and more than an aftercast.

That's one way to look at it. The way I look at it, though, is that I can take a warrior on my team and sit him on any caster on the other team. Doing that will largely shut down that caster, because putting a warrior in his face *forces* him to kite. It's not like, 'oh, our guys can kite, so warriors are useless.' A warrior chasing a guy around in circles, at best, makes both characters useless. However it's really an asymmetric trade usually because the warriors are *designed* to chase kiters, through speed buffs, knockdowns, and the like. Hence a guy running for a full minute contributes nothing at all, while the warrior is still getting hits in and dishing out some damage.

If you're just looking for straight damage and pressure, a good warrior will switch targets often. That usually forces *multiple* people on the other team to kite *one* warrior. Also, the warrior deals much more damage this way because he'll hit whatever target happens to expose himself, at least until he starts running too.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that kiting is cost-free. It doesn't take energy, but it consumes time, and it isn't even full neutralization. It's something that needs to be done, though, because the price of not kiting is a warrior Frenzying your face, and that's a whole lot worse for your defenses than taking the time to run.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zui

I hope that is an adiquite explanation of why kiting and warrior hate were not factored in the actual figures.

At it's most basic, yeah. Those raw damage figures are not terribly valuable on their own, but what's valuable is how they are indicitive of how much pressure a template puts on the other team. You don't measure disruption on how much damage it prevents, but *how much more efficient it is than healing that damage*. Guardian is useful when it makes a warrior miss, or forces him to waste a second or two finding a different target to swing at. If your guys are closely packed, allowing for fast target switching, and guardian is never attacked through, the skill becomes downright inefficient and is no longer an effective counter.

Kiting is valuable for two reasons - one, because it is energy-free mitigation, which is really important in pressure situations, and second, because it's mitigation that *any* character can contribute, not just the monks. If you dump the entire defensive burden of the team on the monks energy you're going to pop. Now, a monk kiting is an ideal situation for the monk, because he's doing his job (mitigating the other teams damage) without expending energy. Chasing monks is generally a terrible play. On the other hand, attacking their offense is going to deal more damage (since offense is less willing to pick up and run, as they can't do their job while running), and it slows down their offense, bolstering your defense in the process. That lets you run even more offense, applying more pressure. The best teams spend most of their time attacking offense to maximize their own damage while defending themselves - they only switch onto monks in short bursts when they're going to break the other team, and when that happens they use mes effects and snares to remove kiting from the equation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by torquemada

Point being, Eles can pack utilities Warriors can't

I still don't understand why people think that a character that requires no skill slots and no energy expenditure to do his job and push the other team around does not pack a lot of utility. If a caster wants to shut down an opposing mesmer, he has to use a lot of skills to keep him from being effective - if a warrior wants to shut down an opposing mesmer, he simply has to target him.

Just to compare the utility of the most generic of templates:

Axe Warrior: Eviscerate, Executioner's Strike, Frenzy, Shock, Bull's Strike, Sprint, Healing Signet, Resurrection Signet
Air Elementalist: Lightning Orb, Lightning Strike, Ether Prodigy, Gale, Blinding Flash, Windborne Speed, Heal Party, Resurrection Signet

Go down the lists skill for skill. Both have two attack skills, the warrior's being one of the strongest spikes in the game, the elementalist's being an assist on a warrior's spike target usually. Warriors of course deal a lot of damage without using those two skills, while the ele does nothing, but still, two attack skills per bar. Frenzy makes the warrior a crazy attacker, Ether Prodigy lets the elementalist function - call it a wash of core function skills. Both have an unconditional knockdown - Shock or Gale - and a speed boost - Windborne or Sprint. Both have their upsides. Ressig on each.

So really when you're talking about 'all the extra utility' of an elementalist, you're talking about two skills - Blinding Flash and Heal Party - and how much more utility you get out of those, compared to an additional knockdown (Bull's Strike) and strong self-heal. Granted, Blinding Flash and Heal Party are both very, very strong spells that shore up a lot of weaknesses of a team. But don't knock the value of an additional knockdown and what that contributes tactically to a team, and the Healing Signet gives a warrior a huge amount of freedom of movement, since he no longer has to retreat to the monks to clean up incidental damage.

That's a typical template. Eles do contribute a different, and likely stronger set of defensive utility skills to the team, but the warrior has a ton of utility of his own that I would not understate. Of course you *could* pack more utility on an elementalist, but that comes at the expense of what little offensive capability he has. Which I'm more than willing to do pretty often, but it's also why I keep harping on elementalists is being one of the three primarily defensive professions (along with ritualists and monks) while the other five are primarily offensive.

Peace,
-CxE

shadex · Jun 20, 2006, 02:18 AM // 02:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

That's news to me. I thought everyone was running them because they are simultaneously the best source of damage in the game (bar none), the strongest individual characters on the battlefield, as well as being some of the best characters in small scale combat.

If all I wanted to do was spike people I'd run rangers.

Again, your now making an entire team based on a single spike. You need atleast 4 rangers, and an order necro to effectivly pull off a necro spike.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Beating the energy out of their monks is an effective way to keep them from healing.

I agree. In game mechanics however, spikeing is far more powerfull then pressure. Hence why every guild uses atleast a adrenaline spike of some sort. Warriors damage alone is not enough to drain monks energy away. You need a knockdown, or a mez timing it for a decent kill. Otherwise the team using a spike (and no im not talking about an entire build based on a spike) while easily gain the advantage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

You see buckets of warrior hate because teams need their warriors working to kill you (if they are not trying to 321spike you out), and if you don't shut them down they *will* kill you. You do not see lots of interrupters because the slow casters are generally not threats to kill you. They tend to be defensively minded utility characters who can partially neutralize your interrupts through positioning.

The best way to deal with an offensive caster, in my experience, is to park a warrior in his face to keep him from ever casting long enough to really hurt.

Ok, so warriors purpose is to negate the casters from casting... Just as casters purpose is to negate the warrior. One of the reasons why a ranger and necro spike work so well, is that there much harder to take down. Thats why alot of groups bring cry of frustration, because there warriors are unable to deal with the spike group by parking themselfs infront of one and attacking it.

At this point we can agree the purpose of a warrior is to apply dps, neutralize casters and to spike. Where as a simple air or ice ele is to neutralize warriors, to spike and to provide utility.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

First, if you don't have those warriors there to *force* your opponent to mitigate their damage, your opponent will not be under pressure, and all the time and energy that would otherwise go into mitigation will go directly into your face offensively.

Now i never claimed that warriors are unneeded in gvg. There simply a part of the equastion. My point is that it is far better to mix damage types because of the flexability, and the current metagame. Assuming that is true however, that ele's arnt capable of pressure, Rifts me/e is useless. If you take away the fast casting the damage is still there, where as the fast casting is generally used to provide a spike inside a gale.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Second, isn't it rather telling that even in an environment so saturated in warrior hate, the top teams still run two to three warriors out there every match and find a way to power through it? Do you think that's because the top teams don't know what they're doing, or is it because there aren't any viable alternatives?

There are viable alternatives. Several top guilds use them. Now correct me if i'm wrong here, one of the main reasons why top guilds settle into a balance build with warriors is the split. When your facing a spike, or a mass hex, you generally split. Where as other builds have a hard time spliting and staying effective. You also said that they run two to three warriors...why not run 5 warriors and a flag runner? Because a strong anti warrior build will easily beat it into the ground. Because you need class's to stop the warrior hate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Crafty warriors can come pretty close, especially the sword guys. But I don't understand why that would even be relevant since there are no 1v1 formats in this game, only 8v8. Spiking has always been a whole team effort. Always will be too.

So can a crafty ele, it's just a differnt stratagy. And even a crafty warrior takes 3 seconds atleast to push out 200-300 damage (2 if using evaserate/exectioners)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

You sit on one offensive caster in those builds and they become incapable of killing anything. Spikes can't deal 600 damage. They need to deal closer to 1000 to get through mitigation.

Unless i'm mistaken, the average sup runed player has around 550 hp, depending on what weapons your bring. Without sup runes, its fairly hard to get above 600 hp's without enchantments. Midigation is meaningless in a spike. I belive your talking about premtive midigation like prot spiriting the potiential target, which boils down to an educated guess. Assume a perfect spike, where all the damage hits at the same time instantly, it only takes the amount of health equal to the amount of hp the character has. If we are talking about area midigation such as union/shelter, or a rof on a guy, a build using a smaller spike such as that generally has anti midigation as well. Again mostly this arguement varies from build to build. Yes, bringing a 600 hp spike alone is useless, unless it has something to back it up, just as bringing 2 warriors are useless unless they have something to remove the warrior hate. On a bigger spike team like 5 ele's you can generally give them heal party, and aegis and wards and be fine, same as you would a necro spike. The biggest difference, is the 4 second recharge and wards vs the ability to go through armor and prot spirit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Lightning Orb is a piece of shit without knockdowns or snares supporting it. If you want to use Orbs to kill you either need a mixed team to set up the target, or you need to fast cast it with a Mesmer so that it can land while the target is still galed. Five guys casting Orb on an unsnared target is a complete joke.

No shit. Same was as watching a warrior try to hit someone blind. Again its build dependant. A plaque touch warrior is equvilant to a Air ele with a snare.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Elaborate.

No. If you can't figure it out, then stick to your meta game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Prodigy doesn't work with Mesmer/Elementalists, and Elementalist primaries can't set up their Orb with Gale. Prodigy plus Obs. Flame is a non-combo.

i would tink we already covered this. flame has a few combo's, though none are very good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Only time you throw Orbs with a Prodigy guy is to assist on an adrenal spike, and on those you expect the warriors to handle the knockdowns.

Hey, if thats what you want to limit yourself to, go ahead. Prodigy allows near unlimited energy, with the cost of exhaustion and 2 points of damage for each point in energy left. This means unless your trying to midigate damage, or have diversion up, or facing a interupt group, you can be safe in just casting a few orbs to increase to the pressure. There really arn't alot of reasons for a EP ele not to cast. If they avoid the orb, your still dont lose much, unless your stupid enough to cast it within 4 seconds of a spike.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Massed warriors are actually only vulnerable to a narrow set of warrior hate - namely, Aegis and Ward v Melee. Everything else actually gets diluted and it becomes impossible for them to shut down all of them.

I'm thinking of mass aoe snares, single target blocks, Multiple blinds, blurred vission etc. Aggred you lose alot of hate going from 2-3 warriors but you don't lose much from going 3-4. I do see and agree with that point. There are still some pretty easy to fit in spells and skills that take groups of warriors. I can think of them form ele's, necro's, monks, assassins, rangers... Hence why 4 warrior builds arn't generally run and 2 is prefered.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I don't understand what you mean by warriors always sucking at utility. Warriors have some of the best utility in the game, because they have so much natural strength. You only have to devote 2-3 skills on your bar and you already have the best offensive weapon you can make in the game, so you can fill the rest up with whatever you like - speed, interrupts, snares, knockdowns, mes effects, you name it. Sure, you don't have skills on your bar explicitly to shut down, say, an opposing mesmer, but *you don't need to*, because you can shut him down perfectly well simply by getting in his face and making him kite.

Well, Warriors are naturally limited to mana, with the exclusion of a secondary class mana or a blood rit, or perhaps warriors endurence which blows in most situations. Aggred most warriors can fit 2-3 adrenaline skills and be fine for spike damage, yet you really need frenzy or tigers fury, or even tigers stance for adrenaline build up and damage. Where as tigers fury needs alot of energy and frenzy needs a stance canceler your really limited to perhaps 3-4 skills left on your bar for utility. Now this utility generally needs low mana, low cast times, as the warrior needs to make sure he has enough mana to use frenzy and sprint or frenzy and rush or tigers fury when needed. Because there damage is truely constant, and they must be in meele range, you risk alot to go and cast a spell. Assuming you have a w/n with blood is power or a w/mo with aegis, your still having to stop, and toss out the spell, forcing you to lose your target, and to break up your presure. Where as an ele has a cooldown between spells, and generally fit in a utility spell during cooldown. Assuming your talking about stance and adrenaline skills, there are a few nice utility ones for sure, but there still not what i would call powerfull utility for a warrior.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I've thought about it quite a bit. That and all of my practical experience has shown conclusively that elementalists are an incredibly poor option for dealing damage - only ritualists are comparably poor, now that monks have such a strong smiting option. This experience and conclusion was completely supported by game mechanics and mathematics.

I respect your openion, and i just happen to disagree with that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I'm not going to pull this punch - I understand game mechanics a whole lot better than you do. The math in those articles is correct. I will go a bit further and say that based upon evidence in your posts, it is safe to conclude that you don't know the first thing about caster mechanics, and have never heard of the aftercast delay.

Yea, it's called a global cooldown. Originally invented by sojourin muds modded diku code. I really dont feel like getting into this fight. I have no intention of getting into a pissing match with you over an internet forum.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

In other words, it's a really brave thing for someone as ignorant as you appear to be to come out and call tried and tested game mechanics incorrect.

Damn i really must of struck a cord here. Look, your math is incorrect. If you would like me to point out the inaccuracy's of your math, and more to the point of your article i will. Most of it was that you left out quite a bit on both class's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Odds are he's looking at Orb -> Strike and has no idea what an aftercast is.

Orb to lighting strike or arc is 210. Its roughly the same damage as a 2 adrenaline skill warrior. The biggest difference is that orb and arc if used with a water snare cause 290 damage with 70 of it being on a seperate target. Since its nice if you have a snare with orb, its a natural step.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Ritualists are on par in terms of damage. They can contribute better on a slower spike, worse on a fast spike, but are a bit better at randomly throwing damage around. Barring spiking a target down, smite monks outclass elementalists in every way, though. For assisting on a warrior spike, the two are probably comparable (Balth's Aura hits a few times during the knockdown, and Zealot's Fire triggers on the Draw).

ritualists are far from on par in terms of damage. There far to conditional for the build, and far to conditional to what the enemy decides what to do with the spirits, assuming they bring spirits. What i'm not understanding is that your now comparing a smite monk with an ele. Your still running into the same problem with the warrior. You need a snare on the target, or atleast speed on the warrior. You need to make sure the warrior stays in range at all times. The obvious benifit to caster damage is range and that you can't block it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

It would be nice if the people who like to call posted figures wrong would post what they think is correct so I can rip it apart. Can't really expect it of them, though.

Ok, i'll be happy to. Let me do that on the next post though, as this post is very long.

pork soldier · Jun 20, 2006, 02:23 AM // 02:23

Wow, high end gvg has eles all over the place - so does tombs. If you're calling Ele pvp dead because there aren't any uber-leet all ele spike builds floating around right now that's shortsighted.

Symbol · Jun 20, 2006, 02:32 AM // 02:32

Quote:

Hey, if thats what you want to limit yourself to, go ahead. Prodigy allows near unlimited energy, with the cost of exhaustion and 2 points of damage for each point in energy left. This means unless your trying to midigate damage, or have diversion up, or facing a interupt group, you can be safe in just casting a few orbs to increase to the pressure. There really arn't alot of reasons for a EP ele not to cast. If they avoid the orb, your still dont lose much, unless your stupid enough to cast it within 4 seconds of a spike.

The EP ele is generally casting blinding flash and heal party between spikes, not orb.

Quote:

Well, Warriors are naturally limited to mana, with the exclusion of a secondary class mana or a blood rit, or perhaps warriors endurence which blows in most situations. Aggred most warriors can fit 2-3 adrenaline skills and be fine for spike damage, yet you really need frenzy or tigers fury, or even tigers stance for adrenaline build up and damage. Where as tigers fury needs alot of energy and frenzy needs a stance canceler your really limited to perhaps 3-4 skills left on your bar for utility. Now this utility generally needs low mana, low cast times, as the warrior needs to make sure he has enough mana to use frenzy and sprint or frenzy and rush or tigers fury when needed. Because there damage is truely constant, and they must be in meele range, you risk alot to go and cast a spell. Assuming you have a w/n with blood is power or a w/mo with aegis, your still having to stop, and toss out the spell, forcing you to lose your target, and to break up your presure. Where as an ele has a cooldown between spells, and generally fit in a utility spell during cooldown. Assuming your talking about stance and adrenaline skills, there are a few nice utility ones for sure, but there still not what i would call powerfull utility for a warrior.

You completely missed the point. The warrior doesn't need to cast spells to have utility, he can achieve an almost complete shutdown by chasing the target around. Anything else on top of that is gravy.

Quote:

Orb to lighting strike or arc is 210. Its roughly the same damage as a 2 adrenaline skill warrior. The biggest difference is that orb and arc if used with a water snare cause 290 damage with 70 of it being on a seperate target. Since its nice if you have a snare with orb, its a natural step.

Orb + strike is not anywhere close to frenzied evisc + executioners. The later is 260 damage in 1.7822 seconds. Orb + strike is 210 over 3.75 seconds. If you don't count the first hit in the time those numbers become .8911 and 1.75.

Note that orb being a projectile does have the side effect of compressing the damage somewhat, since it has a flight time and so depending on distance you could see the strike hitting closer to the orb. But then orb can miss too...

Leddy · Jun 20, 2006, 03:07 AM // 03:07

Eles are still very, very useful in Alliance Battles and Fort Aspenwood; basically any PvP where your main opponents aren't the opposing players.

In both, (but particularly in Aspenwood), Eles can solo entire command points, making them really nice cappers. Because in Aspenwood the teams are completely random, people are unable to form a team build; and because the NPCs are command points are stupid, you can take them down to half health before they start hitting you with whatever they've got on an Ele.

Run up to the NPCs, hit Meteor Shower (they won't attack you until you hit them first at casting range), Rodgort's Invocation, and if they're not dead already, drop a Fireball on them. The NPCs drop like a proverbial sack of potatoes.

Dropping Siege Turtles can be done the same way. Meteor Shower, Mark of Rodgort, then chuck an Invocation on it. You're probably dead because of the Luxon Warriors, but you respawn a lot quicker than the turtle does; and if you nuke from a ledge the warriors can't kill you.

LightningHell · Jun 20, 2006, 03:52 AM // 03:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Again, your now making an entire team based on a single spike. You need atleast 4 rangers, and an order necro to effectivly pull off a necro spike.

Again, Elly spikes need at least 4 Ellys...usually 5.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

I agree. In game mechanics however, spikeing is far more powerfull then pressure. Hence why every guild uses atleast a adrenaline spike of some sort. Warriors damage alone is not enough to drain monks energy away. You need a knockdown, or a mez timing it for a decent kill. Otherwise the team using a spike (and no im not talking about an entire build based on a spike) while easily gain the advantage.

Warrior damage alone cannot; Warrior damage with attack skills can.

Actually, I haven't played any PvP since...some time, so I'll leave this to Ensign.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Ok, so warriors purpose is to negate the casters from casting... Just as casters purpose is to negate the warrior. One of the reasons why a ranger and necro spike work so well, is that there much harder to take down. Thats why alot of groups bring cry of frustration, because there warriors are unable to deal with the spike group by parking themselfs infront of one and attacking it.

I don't think so. From my experiences before, Warriors are the killers of the group; everything else is usually to buff the Warriors, or to negate the other team's Warrior's damage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Now i never claimed that warriors are unneeded in gvg. There simply a part of the equastion. My point is that it is far better to mix damage types because of the flexability, and the current metagame. Assuming that is true however, that ele's arnt capable of pressure, Rifts me/e is useless. If you take away the fast casting the damage is still there, where as the fast casting is generally used to provide a spike inside a gale.

I'll allow Ensign to elaborate...

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

There are viable alternatives. Several top guilds use them. Now correct me if i'm wrong here, one of the main reasons why top guilds settle into a balance build with warriors is the split. When your facing a spike, or a mass hex, you generally split. Where as other builds have a hard time spliting and staying effective. You also said that they run two to three warriors...why not run 5 warriors and a flag runner? Because a strong anti warrior build will easily beat it into the ground. Because you need class's to stop the warrior hate.

Because you don't have enough to stop their warriors?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

So can a crafty ele, it's just a differnt stratagy. And even a crafty warrior takes 3 seconds atleast to push out 200-300 damage (2 if using evaserate/exectioners)

And who wouldn't? ... ... ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

No shit. Same was as watching a warrior try to hit someone blind. Again its build dependant. A plaque touch warrior is equvilant to a Air ele with a snare.

The Plague Touch warrior can deal consistant damage, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

No. If you can't figure it out, then stick to your meta game.

What kind of metagame are you in?

Quote:

i would tink we already covered this. flame has a few combo's, though none are very good.

Which?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Hey, if thats what you want to limit yourself to, go ahead. Prodigy allows near unlimited energy, with the cost of exhaustion and 2 points of damage for each point in energy left. This means unless your trying to midigate damage, or have diversion up, or facing a interupt group, you can be safe in just casting a few orbs to increase to the pressure. There really arn't alot of reasons for a EP ele not to cast. If they avoid the orb, your still dont lose much, unless your stupid enough to cast it within 4 seconds of a spike.

EP ellys usually spam Blinding Flash, Heal Party, ocassionally Windborne Speed, Enervating Charge, Healing Breeze...

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

I'm thinking of mass aoe snares, single target blocks, Multiple blinds, blurred vission etc. Aggred you lose alot of hate going from 2-3 warriors but you don't lose much from going 3-4. I do see and agree with that point. There are still some pretty easy to fit in spells and skills that take groups of warriors. I can think of them form ele's, necro's, monks, assassins, rangers... Hence why 4 warrior builds arn't generally run and 2 is prefered.

The raw power of four Warriors means you can power through their monks quite easily. If they have to be constantly distracted to stop your Warriors, then it's quite a fair tradeoff - or even tilting it on your side, as you don't need to spend any Energy and they have to spend oceans of it.

WM used 4 Warriors in the WM v LuM game in the GWWC (Prophecies), I seem to remember.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Well, Warriors are naturally limited to mana, with the exclusion of a secondary class mana or a blood rit, or perhaps warriors endurence which blows in most situations. Aggred most warriors can fit 2-3 adrenaline skills and be fine for spike damage, yet you really need frenzy or tigers fury, or even tigers stance for adrenaline build up and damage. Where as tigers fury needs alot of energy and frenzy needs a stance canceler your really limited to perhaps 3-4 skills left on your bar for utility. Now this utility generally needs low mana, low cast times, as the warrior needs to make sure he has enough mana to use frenzy and sprint or frenzy and rush or tigers fury when needed. Because there damage is truely constant, and they must be in meele range, you risk alot to go and cast a spell. Assuming you have a w/n with blood is power or a w/mo with aegis, your still having to stop, and toss out the spell, forcing you to lose your target, and to break up your presure. Where as an ele has a cooldown between spells, and generally fit in a utility spell during cooldown. Assuming your talking about stance and adrenaline skills, there are a few nice utility ones for sure, but there still not what i would call powerfull utility for a warrior.

What, you're trying to be a caster as a Warrior?

The Warrior's utility, as I understand it, is that even if he doesn't do anything, the opposing team still has to spend truckloads of mana, skill slots, etc, to stop him from being an active threat - and still they're a quite major threat.

Completely missed the point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Damn i really must of struck a cord here. Look, your math is incorrect. If you would like me to point out the inaccuracy's of your math, and more to the point of your article i will. Most of it was that you left out quite a bit on both class's.

Evidence. We need concrete evidence.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Orb to lighting strike or arc is 210. Its roughly the same damage as a 2 adrenaline skill warrior. The biggest difference is that orb and arc if used with a water snare cause 290 damage with 70 of it being on a seperate target. Since its nice if you have a snare with orb, its a natural step.

We KNOW THAT.

But isn't it a bit...obvious if you're putting a snare on him, if he isn't a central target?

And isn't it somewhat more than three seconds? <<main point<<

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

ritualists are far from on par in terms of damage. There far to conditional for the build, and far to conditional to what the enemy decides what to do with the spirits, assuming they bring spirits. What i'm not understanding is that your now comparing a smite monk with an ele. Your still running into the same problem with the warrior. You need a snare on the target, or atleast speed on the warrior. You need to make sure the warrior stays in range at all times. The obvious benifit to caster damage is range and that you can't block it.

The obvious disadvantage to caster damage is that it's inferior to Warrior damage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Ok, i'll be happy to. Let me do that on the next post though, as this post is very long.

Do so.

shadex · Jun 20, 2006, 04:00 AM // 04:00

Ok, here we go.

"Sword: 34.12 damage per hit, 25.59 damage per second, 1536 damage per minute; 38.39 damage per second, 2303 damage per minute while under Frenzy"

Did you take into account crits? I can run some tests tonight, or atleast with a crit % though thats within 2 damage of what you posted 16 attibutes did to the swords base damage in an earlier article. And not to nitpick but even with your numbers it's 1539.2

"Axe warriors are the most common, they have the median damage numbers, and those numbers happen to be nice and round, so I use those as a basis for what an attacker should do. If a warrior with no skills can deal at least 1600 damage a minute to a target, any attacker you make better be able to do that as well. Similarly I see the 2400 DPM mark as a baseline for 'high' damage."

You fail to menchin that that half of the skills that spend mana to negate the warrior come from energy effecient class's such as necro hex's, ele's wards and blinds, and mez hex's. Further more your talking ideal conditions. And i'm confused, 2400 dpm is high damage on a non moving target with no defence? if so thats a static judgement, and where as a class that had one skill that did 2400 damage every minute wouldn't be as high valued as a class that could do 600 damage every 30 seconds in a single hit, where as a class that did 2400 damage over 8 guys in a minute is virtually useless.

So now that that baseline has been established, what can an elementalist do?
From here on i think this is very inaccurate. Your basicly picking random spells and with a spike combo and seeing how it is vs a warriors damage.

Flare Combined with mark of rodgort, one of the oldest damage tricks, taking 2 skills and doing 62 damage per hit, with 14 of it ignoring the global cooldown. BTW is the global cooldown correct? i've never gotten around to testing it, and i've not seen any documentation on it. It's good to know, though i still think it might be slightly faster, as ice spikes with fast casting's DPS seems a bit high for that.

"Now this would actually be promising if 1) you could fit four copies of Lightning Strike on your skillbar, and 2) Lightning Strike didn't require the same 8.5 pips of energy regeneration Flare did."

1) thats what the me/e capitializes on, as well as a e/me with arcane echo can give you 3 comfortably with either prodigy. This is beyond the point though.
2) Either prodigy

Again, your taking a look at this through a pressure point of view. Capitalizing on a target with lighting orb, is far easier to pull off then capitalizing on a target with an adrenaline skill. There is no guarentee that your adrenaline is charged. I digress to blackout. Blackout will not only stop a warrior, it will also drain his adrenaline in most cases.

Also you keep claiming that orbs miss frequently. Thats generally true if someone is actively dodging them, or running away with speed. Where as a simple retreating character wont be able to dodge it. You also described it as spikey and unrealiable. While, its a spike skill. What do you expect?

you then go to talk about how a fire ele can do awsome dps with aoe. Here is my biggest problem with all of this. Armor. When a warrior hits a 80 armor target, his damage is drasticly altered. Str gives armor penatration, however, at rank 10 it's still only 10%. Where as almost the entire air line has 25% armor pen. This is a huge leap. To clairify, A warrior vs a 100 armor target is going to do significantly less damage then on a 60 armor target. Where as an ele's difference on the same 100 and 60 armor target is much less of a difference. Hence the whole basis of armor pen. Where as fire has none. Hence why you dont see many fire ele's in gvg, though you see plenty of air ele's.

"2) The energy costs of nukes are insane. Sure, a warrior only has two pips of regen while an elementalist has four, but a warrior's pips can be spent entirely on spikes or defensive stances or otherwise 'special' attacks. An elementalist, as you can gather from the above, has to spend *twice* his natural energy regeneration *just to be as effective as a warrior doing nothing*. If he wants to do anything special, like spike harder or throw up a defense or any of the things a warrior takes for granted, he has to spend *even more* energy, which is already incredibly difficult for him to come by. The net effect is that unlike a warrior, where you're looking at the different enhancements and tricks and figuring out which you want on his bar, building an elementalist is really an effort to get enough energy on his bar so that he can actually use the few skill slots that are left over."

Yes an ele has far more energy use then a warrior even per arrow of energy regen. Thats also why they have a huge amount of energy management. Actually, ele's have the best energy management spells in the game hands down...which i'm guessing is for that reason. Energy on an ele is easier to get then adrenaline on a warrior by far. Especially with the new factions ele skills.

"3) cooldowns" Cooldowns are not that bad considering you usually can afford multiple spells. Assuming an average warrior without frenzy is attempting to gain adrenaline, your generally seeing that the adrenaline skills have a longer cooldown them the majority of ele skills.

"4) Cast times" This is arguably in every caster class. Dealing them in larger packets is better. This allows a greater chance of a kill, and greater attention to a target. If your attempting to kill something, the more damage in a smaller time frame the better. Let me clairify... 600 damage in a single spell will always beat 100 every second for 6 seconds. This has been the forefront of every pvp stratagey since MOORPGS when 3D. Also of note, 170 instant damage is far better in most situations then 200 damage spread out.

"What I do know, is that warriors are *unconditionally* the best offense in the game without any competition whatsoever"

Thats a really stupid statement. GVG by its nature is conditional. Hell, PK in all its forms is conditional. Warriors are very conditional by nature. They need to make sure they can stay in range of the target, be able to hit the target and have healing. Thats conditional enough. Where as an ele needs to avoid damage, and have the time to cast its skills without being interupted.

"For example a properly specced and played Mesmer is an incredibly high threat character because of the havoc he wrecks in a backline through disruption and shutdown. Hell, sometimes he's the highest value target on the field because of it. But Warriors and Elementalists don't work that way, they are threatening because of their ability to deal damage. "

Again, your mixing apples with oranges. The where as an ele's hate can be from anything to ice snares and wards to conditions and anti warrior hex's.

You go into this big discussion of how kiting a warrior is important and that the kiter gets screwed. You then make this huge assumption that battlefield pressence is formed soley on forcing a character to kite. What positioning? what about frontloading aka spiking? what about forcing spell use? I mean your talking aggression. This is all tactical. Sticking a warrior in a monks face is just as good as sitting a EP orb/arc/strike ele on the monk. The biggest difference is the ele is almost guarentied to hit, where as the warriors damage is negated from kiting.

If kiting was not highly effecient in damage midigation, more so then doing there class's damage, why do people do it? It's because the guy who's kiting the warrior isn't taking damage. That means your huge dps machines are negated, meaning that if your putting all your eggs in one basket, the other team is doing damage with any of there other class's. Now obviously you can't kite a warrior forever, so you have other options. which leads me to one thing that you failed to talk about in this whole article.

To be fair, there is alot of condition removal in the game. However any half way decent EP ele can keep a warrior blinded indefently, reguardless of condition removal AND still throw in a few spells. This is not to say how great an ele is damage wise, but how you completely understated how easy it is to shutdown a warrior.

shadex · Jun 20, 2006, 04:18 AM // 04:18

"We KNOW THAT.

But isn't it a bit...obvious if you're putting a snare on him, if he isn't a central target?

And isn't it somewhat more than three seconds? <<main point<<"

Ice spikes allows an aoe snare. Generally speaking if your doing nothing but pressure, then it doesn't really matter. Most of the time if you put a ele in conjunction with other class's, the tend to snare for you, or just choose a target who's busy doing something. You can generally pressure them to move.

'EP ellys usually spam Blinding Flash, Heal Party, ocassionally Windborne Speed, Enervating Charge, Healing Breeze..."

Thats kinda my whole point. flashbots are huge in the meta-game for anti warrior stopage, which then forces lots of condition removal on warrior based teams. To be honest, a simple ward at the flag stand, or a blurred vision will take care of the majority of it warrior negation, and if you cover it with ice spikes you can generally get around most teams hex removal. There are plenty of ways where a single class can keep 2 warriors useless for an entire match.

"The obvious disadvantage to caster damage is that it's inferior to Warrior damage."

Pure DPS in a vacume is useless though. anyone can make a super damaging DPS class, just try an Air ele with Virulence or a a/mo with there nice 4 hit combo. It's not the ability to be able to do damage, its the ability to actually do the damage what makes a class worth while.

Ensign · Jun 20, 2006, 04:25 AM // 04:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

I agree. In game mechanics however, spikeing is far more powerfull then pressure.

Why?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Warriors damage alone is not enough to drain monks energy away.

iWay.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

My point is that it is far better to mix damage types

Why?

Teams bring a variety of defensive tools to be able to try and fight the wide variety of offenses that they might see. Why is it better to show them a mix of damage types, allowing them to get more milage out of all of their defenses, than to simply overwhelm a specific defense with a focused attack?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

that ele's arnt capable of pressure, Rifts me/e is useless.

What exactly do you think they're doing with that build?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

If you take away the fast casting the damage is still there

The damage doesn't matter if it isn't coming in the form of a spike, and the spikes are only terribly effective if they are both frequent and accompanied by strong mes effects via Gale. Take away the Gales and the build isn't all that threatening - take away the Blinding Flashes and it's basically worthless.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

There are viable alternatives. Several top guilds use them.

Name one. Every top guild either beats people down with some variant of warriors, or runs a countdown spike. Every one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Now correct me if i'm wrong here, one of the main reasons why top guilds settle into a balance build with warriors is the split.

Top guilds don't want to be caught unable to play anything but spike during playoffs, because anyone can adjust their build to beat spike if they know it's coming. Hence they play the other subset of builds, the ones that are driven by warriors.

However, you will see top guilds break out spike for climbing the ladder at times, or break it out for a game during playoffs. As long as you can play warriors 321spike is a viable wildcard. Good teams know how to play both.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

why not run 5 warriors and a flag runner?

One, if you don't hate out their warriors they will destroy you. Second, it is generally stronger to support your warriors and keep them running at maximum effectiveness then to throw a couple warriors away to their hate and rely on the few that are clean to kill the other team.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

So can a crafty ele, it's just a differnt stratagy.

Bullshit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Midigation is meaningless in a spike.

...

How exactly are you fighting against a spike team if you aren't actively breaking it up?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

I belive your talking about premtive midigation like prot spiriting the potiential target, which boils down to an educated guess.

No, I'm talking about the real world where a mesmer is going to sit on one of your spiker's faces while warriors keep another one on the floor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Assume a perfect spike, where all the damage hits at the same time instantly, it only takes the amount of health equal to the amount of hp the character has.

Yeah, there's nothing you can do to stop those. Now in the real world, those *never* happen. Timing is always a little bit off, and the other team's offense is actively working to make your spikes at broken and sloppy as possible. That is why in the real world, an effective spike needs to deal around 900-1000 damage on paper, so that you *actually* get the 600 you need through on a consistent basis.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

No. If you can't figure it out, then stick to your meta game.

I'll read that as "I don't have one and will try and weasel out of this one by talking down to you." Not buying it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

This means unless your trying to midigate damage, or have diversion up, or facing a interupt group, you can be safe in just casting a few orbs to increase to the pressure.

Randomly thrown Orbs are terrible additions to pressure. Outside of a spike situation, the best offensive play an air elementalist has is Blinding Flash. Blinding their warriors allows your monks to stay up and your mesmers to play much more aggressively. It might not be intuitive but it really is the best offensive play you have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

If they avoid the orb, your still dont lose much, unless your stupid enough to cast it within 4 seconds of a spike.

You lose 15 energy that in all likelihood should have been spent on a Heal Party or Blinding Flash. Ether Prodigy only gives you 10 pips at best. That's barely enough to keep two warriors blind constantly - anything on top of that is draining your energy even with Prodigy up nonstop.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

I'm thinking of mass aoe snares, single target blocks, Multiple blinds, blurred vission etc.

None of those are terribly effective against masses of warriors. What, do you think a team with three or four warriors is going to have them all train the same target? Please. Four warriors, four targets, possible convergence to unload adrenaline though it's unlikely to be neccessary in this configuration. More than two guys converging would likely be wasted. Deep Freeze can hit more than one guy on the right map, but the other snares aren't ever going to get multiple warriors. Blind and Guardian only address one warrior at a time. Same with Blurred. There are a lot of skills that might seem attractive for stopping a mass of warriors on paper but in practice there just aren't that many - Wards and Aegis, with a nod to Deep Freeze, are really the sum of it in practice.

It's what I said - with 4 warriors, it's likely that you'll have 2 warriors that are basically clean to run at full strength, and a couple that are shut down hard by the amount of hate teams typically pack. That's shown to be a bit weaker than running 2-3 warriors and the support to keep those warriors running at max efficiency (since those support templates contribute in other ways besides straight warrior cleaning), but it most definitely is strategy that one needs to watch out for. War Machine did win the first korean nationals with four warriors, remember.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Well, Warriors are naturally limited to mana

Yes, and no. A warrior's offense and self-healing doesn't require a drop of energy to sustain. They only have two pips, but they get to pump every drop of it into their utility skills. Casters have to spend their energy just to do their main jobs. It's not nearly as limiting as you might think it to be. Just looking at it on paper, is there really a substantial difference between supporting eight energy skills on four pips, and four on two pips?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

yet you really need frenzy or tigers fury, or even tigers stance for adrenaline build up and damage.

Frenzy is really a threat, that if you don't pay any attention to the guy he'll get to Frenzy your face off. While tricks are nice and all if you can just Frenzy people's faces all day I'd do that in a heartbeat. Tricks are used to set up kills, after all, and if you can just kill people why bother with tricks?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Look, your math is incorrect. If you would like me to point out the inaccuracy's of your math, and more to the point of your article i will.

Well, you can either point out the inaccuracies that you see and explain why they're inaccurate, or you can continue to be dismissed as another idiot who doesn't have a clue. Your call.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

What i'm not understanding is that your now comparing a smite monk with an ele.

Smite monks deal a lot more damage in practice than an elementalist ever could, and provide some convenient utility in the process - such as drawing without interrupting the damage output at all. If you're looking for a reason, it's a comparable to better energy engine to fuel the offense coupled with attractively costed skills.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

Orb + strike is not anywhere close to frenzied evisc + executioners. The later is 260 damage in 1.7822 seconds. Orb + strike is 210 over 3.75 seconds. If you don't count the first hit in the time those numbers become .8911 and 1.75.

4.5 seconds on the Orb + Strike, actually - aftercast on the Strike too. If you don't want to count that, you shouldn't count the latter half of the second swing on the axe either, making the comparable axe timeframe 1.333- seconds.

Peace,
-CxE

LightningHell · Jun 20, 2006, 04:27 AM // 04:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

"Sword: 34.12 damage per hit, 25.59 damage per second, 1536 damage per minute; 38.39 damage per second, 2303 damage per minute while under Frenzy"

Did you take into account crits? I can run some tests tonight, or atleast with a crit % though thats within 2 damage of what you posted 16 attibutes did to the swords base damage in an earlier article. And not to nitpick but even with your numbers it's 1539.2

Using those figures:
Not under Frenzy: 1535.4
Under Frenzy: 2303.4

"Axe warriors are the most common, they have the median damage numbers, and those numbers happen to be nice and round, so I use those as a basis for what an attacker should do. If a warrior with no skills can deal at least 1600 damage a minute to a target, any attacker you make better be able to do that as well. Similarly I see the 2400 DPM mark as a baseline for 'high' damage."

You fail to menchin that that half of the skills that spend mana to negate the warrior come from energy effecient class's such as necro hex's, ele's wards and blinds, and mez hex's. Further more your talking ideal conditions. And i'm confused, 2400 dpm is high damage -yes, it is, it forces the Monk to heal that much- on a non moving target with no defence? if so thats a static judgement, and where as a class that had one skill that did 2400 damage every minute wouldn't be as high valued as a class that could do 600 damage every 30 seconds in a single hit -Oh my god, what class is that?-, where as a class that did 2400 damage over 8 guys in a minute is virtually useless WHere did you get that "over 8 guys" from....

So now that that baseline has been established, what can an elementalist do?
From here on i think this is very inaccurate. Your basicly picking random spells and with a spike combo and seeing how it is vs a warriors damage.

Flare Combined with mark of rodgort, one of the oldest damage tricks, taking 2 skills and doing 62 damage per hit, with 14 of it ignoring the global cooldown. BTW is the global cooldown correct? i've never gotten around to testing it, and i've not seen any documentation on it. It's good to know, though i still think it might be slightly faster, as ice spikes with fast casting's DPS seems a bit high for that.

"Now this would actually be promising if 1) you could fit four copies of Lightning Strike on your skillbar, and 2) Lightning Strike didn't require the same 8.5 pips of energy regeneration Flare did."

1) thats what the me/e capitializes on, as well as a e/me with arcane echo can give you 3 comfortably with either prodigy. This is beyond the point though.
2) Either prodigy

Again, your taking a look at this through a pressure point of view. Capitalizing on a target with lighting orb, is far easier to pull off then capitalizing on a target with an adrenaline skill. There is no guarentee that your adrenaline is charged. I digress to blackout. Blackout will not only stop a warrior, it will also drain his adrenaline in most cases. Blackout will not completely stop a Warrior, while it does casters. It does, however, render the spike ability of the Warrior to nil.

Also you keep claiming that orbs miss frequently. Thats generally true if someone is actively dodging them, or running away with speed. Where as a simple retreating character wont be able to dodge it. You also described it as spikey and unrealiable. While, its a spike skill. What do you expect? I expect it to be reliable.

you then go to talk about how a fire ele can do awsome dps with aoe. Here is my biggest problem with all of this. Armor. When a warrior hits a 80 armor target, his damage is drasticly altered. But who the hell wants the Warrior to hit another Warrior? Nobody. Str gives armor penatration, however, at rank 10 it's still only 10%. Where as almost the entire air line has 25% armor pen. This is a huge leap. To clairify, A warrior vs a 100 armor target -skills?-Attack skills ignore armor, you know. is going to do significantly less damage then on a 60 armor target. Where as an ele's difference on the same 100 and 60 armor target is much less of a difference. Hence the whole basis of armor pen. Where as fire has none. Hence why you dont see many fire ele's in gvg I would never play GvG if Meteor Shower ever became viable there, though you see plenty of air ele's. I see plenty of Flashbots. Including me.

"2) The energy costs of nukes are insane. Sure, a warrior only has two pips of regen while an elementalist has four, but a warrior's pips can be spent entirely on spikes or defensive stances or otherwise 'special' attacks. An elementalist, as you can gather from the above, has to spend *twice* his natural energy regeneration *just to be as effective as a warrior doing nothing*. If he wants to do anything special, like spike harder or throw up a defense or any of the things a warrior takes for granted, he has to spend *even more* energy, which is already incredibly difficult for him to come by. The net effect is that unlike a warrior, where you're looking at the different enhancements and tricks and figuring out which you want on his bar, building an elementalist is really an effort to get enough energy on his bar so that he can actually use the few skill slots that are left over."

Yes an ele has far more energy use then a warrior even per arrow of energy regen. Thats also why they have a huge amount of energy management. Actually, ele's have the best energy management spells in the game hands down...which i'm guessing is for that reason. Energy on an ele is easier to get then adrenaline on a warrior by far. Especially with the new factions ele skills. Seeing most of the Faction energy-gainers are Elite...Also, a Warrior has many ways to get adrenaline; wanding, hitting with weapon, To The Limit, et cetera.

"3) cooldowns" Cooldowns are not that bad considering you usually can afford multiple spells. Assuming an average warrior without frenzy is attempting to gain adrenaline, your generally seeing that the adrenaline skills have a longer cooldown them the majority of ele skills. Who brings out a template Warrior without an IAS boost?

"4) Cast times" This is arguably in every caster class. Dealing them in larger packets is better. This allows a greater chance of a kill, and greater attention to a target. If your attempting to kill something, the more damage in a smaller time frame the better. Let me clairify... 600 damage in a single spell will always beat 100 every second for 6 seconds. What the hell... This has been the forefront of every pvp stratagey since MOORPGS when 3D. Also of note, 170 instant damage is far better in most situations then 200 damage spread out.

"What I do know, is that warriors are *unconditionally* the best offense in the game without any competition whatsoever"

Thats a really stupid statement. GVG by its nature is conditional. Hell, PK in all its forms is conditional. Warriors are very conditional by nature. They need to make sure they can stay in range of the target, be able to hit the target and have healing. Thats conditional enough. Where as an ele needs to avoid damage, and have the time to cast its skills without being interupted. [b]By unconditional, I would say he means without compare; Even/when there is hate.

"For example a properly specced and played Mesmer is an incredibly high threat character because of the havoc he wrecks in a backline through disruption and shutdown. Hell, sometimes he's the highest value target on the field because of it. But Warriors and Elementalists don't work that way, they are threatening because of their ability to deal damage. "

Again, your mixing apples with oranges. The where as an ele's hate can be from anything to ice snares and wards to conditions and anti warrior hex's.

You go into this big discussion of how kiting a warrior is important and that the kiter gets screwed. You then make this huge assumption that battlefield pressence is formed soley on forcing a character to kite. What positioning? what about frontloading aka spiking? what about forcing spell use? I mean your talking aggression. This is all tactical. Sticking a warrior in a monks face is just as good as sitting a EP orb/arc/strike ele on the monk. The biggest difference is the ele is almost guarentied to hit, where as the warriors damage is negated from kiting. No - the Elly is going to run out of Energy, while the Warrior is FORCING the Monk to kite. We can't cast while running, and the Monk is still taking damage.

If kiting was not highly effecient in damage midigation, more so then doing there class's damage, why do people do it? It's because the guy who's kiting the warrior isn't taking damage. Yes s/he is. That means your huge dps machines are negated, meaning that if your putting all your eggs in one basket, the other team is doing damage with any of there other class's. Mesmer ftw. Now obviously you can't kite a warrior forever, so you have other options. which leads me to one thing that you failed to talk about in this whole article.

To be fair, there is alot of condition removal in the game. However any half way decent EP ele can keep a warrior blinded indefently unless he gets shutdown or pwned some other way, reguardless of condition removal AND still throw in a few spells. This is not to say how great an ele is damage wise, but how you completely understated how easy it is to shutdown a warrior.

A few things I took out. I missed a hell of a lot of things, but I'll leave that for pickings from other people.

Symbol · Jun 20, 2006, 04:27 AM // 04:27

Quote:

you then go to talk about how a fire ele can do awsome dps with aoe. Here is my biggest problem with all of this. Armor. When a warrior hits a 80 armor target, his damage is drasticly altered. Str gives armor penatration, however, at rank 10 it's still only 10%. Where as almost the entire air line has 25% armor pen. This is a huge leap. To clairify, A warrior vs a 100 armor target is going to do significantly less damage then on a 60 armor target. Where as an ele's difference on the same 100 and 60 armor target is much less of a difference. Hence the whole basis of armor pen. Where as fire has none. Hence why you dont see many fire ele's in gvg, though you see plenty of air ele's.

No, you don't understand how armor penetration works. With 0% armor penetration you lose half your damage going from AL 60 to AL 100. With 25% armor penetration you lose ~40% of your damage. That's hardly a huge difference.

Meanwhile said warrior is going to have in the neighborhood of 20% of his damage coming from attack skills, which is armor ignoring. Against a 100 AL target that warrior will lose 40% of his damage just like the air ele. If you add more attack skills (aka more armor ignoring dps) that percentage becomes smaller. Add a vampiric weapon. That percentage goes down. Add an adrenaline boost (more attack skill spammage), that percentage goes down.

Clusmas · Jun 20, 2006, 04:28 AM // 04:28

shadex, dude, just challenge Ensign's guild to a gvg.

You run your ele frontline, they'll run their warrior frontline.

Or just don't because we already know the outcome, and IQ more than likely could not be arsed wasting their time.

You keep arguing the same points and they keep getting blown to bits.

Eles ARE an inferior damage dealing class *period*.

shadex · Jun 20, 2006, 04:29 AM // 04:29

Symbol

Well, if you noticed i said without evaserate/executioners strike. Though lets play along. Lighting orb is 140 damage on a 60 armor target. Lighting Strike is 70 damage on a 60 armor target. Lighting strike has a 5 second recharge, where lighting orb has 4 second recharge. the Evaserate/Executioners combo requires 8 adrenaline. Assuming (and its unlikely it will be this) your hitting on a target constantly building up adrenaline your at 8 seconds with frenzy 11 seconds without. Also Evaserate is an elite. If you add in either lightning surge or mindshock your doing 280 damage. Now your beating your evaserate/executioners...also Warrior damage by its nature is variable. The damage could be 240 or 280 with evaserate/executioners

LightningHell · Jun 20, 2006, 04:39 AM // 04:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadex

Symbol

Well, if you noticed i said without evaserate/executioners strike. Though lets play along. Lighting orb is 140 damage on a 60 armor target. Lighting Strike is 70 damage on a 60 armor target. Lighting strike has a 5 second recharge, where lighting orb has 4 second recharge. the Evaserate/Executioners combo requires 8 adrenaline. Assuming (and its unlikely it will be this) your hitting on a target constantly building up adrenaline your at 8 seconds with frenzy 11 seconds without. Also Evaserate is an elite. If you add in either lightning surge or mindshock your doing 280 damage. Now your beating your evaserate/executioners...also Warrior damage by its nature is variable. The damage could be 240 or 280 with evaserate/executioners

And the cast times + aftercasts for the Elly?

Ensign plays an Elementalist, just so that you know.

I do too, to a much lesser extent.

You're only counting the warrior's spike itself; you see it as a weakness. We see it as a strength. See; while the Warrior builds up for its spike, it deals a lot of damage. Simple enough terms?

EDIT: And which sane person wouldn't use attack skills on a Warrior?

shadex · Jun 20, 2006, 04:52 AM // 04:52

"Name one. Every top guild either beats people down with some variant of warriors, or runs a countdown spike. Every one."

Name a varient of a build without warriors that does well? Me/e, FoC rit builds, etc. Name a build that doesn't include pressure or a spike? There really isn't other damage types besides pressure or spike. Mass degen/hex i supose but it still is a pressure build. Your talking how you deal with damage, and how you control the fight rather then whats in the build.

"It's not nearly as limiting as you might think it to be. Just looking at it on paper, is there really a substantial difference between supporting eight energy skills on four pips, and four on two pips?"
Again we are talking build dependancy. If that one skill is order of pain, then yes, if its something like shields up, then no. Also keep in mind that the majority of casters have energy management, where warriors dont have many choices.

"I'll read that as "I don't have one and will try and weasel out of this one by talking down to you." Not buying it."

Well, belive it as you will. I'll tell you what, i'll gladly show you ingame under the obvious premiss that it doesn't get posted on the forums. I've been playing these games a long time. Giving someone knowlage that can beat you is generally a stupid ideal. If you have an edge you wil use it. Feel free to look me up in game.

"How exactly are you fighting against a spike team if you aren't actively breaking it up?" are you counting midigation as shutdown, and spliting as midigation? if so then we arn't at crosspurposes.

"Frenzy is really a threat, that if you don't pay any attention to the guy he'll get to Frenzy your face off. While tricks are nice and all if you can just Frenzy people's faces all day I'd do that in a heartbeat. Tricks are used to set up kills, after all, and if you can just kill people why bother with tricks?"

Aggred.

You basicly said bullshit that an ele can not single spike a target, where a warrior can. Assuming your talking about a target thats already getting low on health, he can. Same way as a warrior. Assuming a spike is instant damage from full health to zero, then no, a warrior can't, assuming it's remaining health to none, any damage class can do that if they have spike damage.

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jun 20, 2006, 04:55 AM // 04:55

Shadax man you're just flamebait.

Anyways because everyone is talking so much about aftercast if you have a Mesmer with enough fastcasting to make all spells half (10 I think) how long will it take to apply phantom pain and then shatter (not counting the aftercast on shatter)?

Symbol · Jun 20, 2006, 04:56 AM // 04:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

4.5 seconds on the Orb + Strike, actually - aftercast on the Strike too. If you don't want to count that, you shouldn't count the latter half of the second swing on the axe either, making the comparable axe timeframe 1.333- seconds.

Do hits occur in the middle of the attack animation?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadex

Well, if you noticed i said without evaserate/executioners strike. Though lets play along. Lighting orb is 140 damage on a 60 armor target. Lighting Strike is 70 damage on a 60 armor target. Lighting strike has a 5 second recharge, where lighting orb has 4 second recharge. the Evaserate/Executioners combo requires 8 adrenaline. Assuming (and its unlikely it will be this) your hitting on a target constantly building up adrenaline your at 8 seconds with frenzy 11 seconds without. Also Evaserate is an elite. If you add in either lightning surge or mindshock your doing 280 damage. Now your beating your evaserate/executioners...also Warrior damage by its nature is variable. The damage could be 240 or 280 with evaserate/executioners

Orb and strike are both 5 second recharge. You're limited to doing one orb-strike combo every 7 seconds. Warrior damage may be variable, but that doesn't matter, the figures I listed were averages.

And what you keep ignoring is that the warrior spike happens much faster. In the same time that it takes to do orb + strike you could to evisc + executioner's + penetrating which completely outclasses it.

Furthermore sword warriors can put out a similarly punishing spike. Gash + final on an already bleeding target is again much better than strike-orb. And if you want to talk doing it often you can use dragon slash instead of final.

LightningHell · Jun 20, 2006, 05:06 AM // 05:06

I think we should just shut up and let him rant on.

shadex · Jun 20, 2006, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Anyways, i've enjoyed this little debate. It is taking far to much of my time to respond to this crap, i do need to sleep, and this game is pretty much my retirement from competitve play, so i dont have the amount of time i use to. So I'll finish with this.

while i do agree that warriors are great at forcing characters to kite, and they have great dps, it hardly makes an ele useless. Damagewise ele's are very good, yet have far more access to utility then almost any class in the game. It's short sighted to openly say "this class sucks, and there is no room for it in gvg" when it's made its way in some form or another in nearly every balance build in the game.

To say that an ele is useless simply because it does not do a warriors job better then a warrior is kinda retarded. Each build for each class, for each job has a differnt battle pressence. Where as a monks battle pressence is in healing there own team, it's not to say it's the only type, just as a warrior may get in a casters face and cause kiting, a ele can control the midline, or really push the backline fairly well, including stoping warriors on the frontline and forcing either a retreat, or atleast a few minutes of uselessness.

Frontloading/spiking has been in form as there have been high damage skills and spells. To dismiss this is to dismiss the meta game of every PK game in exisitance. Simply put, a spike kills faster then pressure does, because you do not have to waiste time draining the monks. This can be seen in every top guild (even yours ensign) there ends up being a spike of somesort to get the kill. Thus some sort of spike damage is needed.

This is perhaps the most balanced game since muds, due to a lack of FOTM. Where skills rarely change, and almost never change drasticly, every class has a specific job its good at, and to a lesser extent can be made into any job. It's mostly important to understand that this entire argument is build dependant. where as 2 warriors and 2 mezmers can do a grand job at shutting down the monks long enough for the warriors to get a kill, so can 2 ele's and 2 mezmers or even 2 warriors and 2 ele's using gale on the monks and then spiking the warriors target. It's again hugely depenant on what your build is and how you want to control the match.

Now, if you really want to see any of this, and your really dont understand what i'm talking about, or are curious about what i'm talking about ensign, feel free to talk to me in game, and i'll show you. Otherwise i would rather play the game with the limited amount of time i have, rather then argue with you for 10 pages on a point thats mearly a point of view.

-S

Zui · Jun 20, 2006, 05:33 AM // 05:33

I'll be blunt...

Shadex, please save yourself some embarrasment, and people who actualy know what they're talking about some time; Stop posting.

Edit: I'd love a demonstration that what you're saying is correct. I'll certainly be hitting you up in game so you can prove me wrong. Don't worry, nothing you do or say will be posted here at GWGuru.