Curse

Symbol · Mar 27, 2006, 01:36 PM // 13:36

Well...he's got a point. Warriors can get 40dps under a speedboost just auto-attacking. But they can't really run frenzy all the time esp with four necros around. Without frenzy their dps drops to a much more manageable level.

SaintGreg · Mar 27, 2006, 02:11 PM // 14:11

4 necros all with the same elite (defensive no less) pretty much guarantees you won't kill anything though. The warrior will still attack you even though he has no attack skills and will still do a good amount of damage.

The Real Roy Keane · Mar 27, 2006, 02:38 PM // 14:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom

There is also uncertainty about assasins role in PvP. I am sure people will play with assassin spikes of various types, but I don't see any serious use for a Assassin primary since they come accross as "warrior lite".

I'm also slightly confused as to where they fit into the grand scheme of things. As mentioned above, Temple Strike borders on the unfair in 4x4-the two most debilitating conditions for the respective classes, all in one simple attack- but apart from this, I can only really see two other uses for them in competetive PvP:
(1)Relic runs in HA maps.The Assasins teleport skills could finish these games off before the other party picks up your relic.
(2)'Assasinating' NPC's in GvG.

Thing is, is it worth taking one just to fill these very specific roles, if a Warrior can do anything else they can do, and do it better?

Kabale · Mar 27, 2006, 03:12 PM // 15:12

Did anyone try and pick up items and shadowstep? Did it work or did the item drop?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign
It's not actually all that prone to interrupts, because of the fast recharge. Interrupting a single Boon Signet doesn't accomplish all that much.

I guess I was referring more to things like distracting shot, disrupting chop, etc, as it would be predictable when the monk would use it. Also, Diversion would hurt it.

IDK, if the heal was more substantial, it might have been worthwhile and comparable to Healing Light. But perhaps if it was, it may be overpowered.

Agreed about the amount of time it would require to make it worthwhile.

Parkerbsb · Mar 27, 2006, 03:39 PM // 15:39

You drop whatever you are carrying when you teleport, also we tried deaths' chargin the NPC's in GvG, and it wouldn't work. Guessing you can't use these skills over walls

Too bad too cuz we had pretty good setup to kill all their NPC's real fast

Byron · Mar 27, 2006, 04:18 PM // 16:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by OverlordTyrael

Charge and hundred blades are trash.

Charge can't be trash or everyone would stop using it, eh?

Hundred blades was overlooked for good reason. But, considering that it allows 2 hits for the price of one, enchanting attacks come into big play. A conjure lightning, judges insight, or strength of honor (or better, a combination of those) makes for a powerful double hit. Not to mention the capability of hitting adjacent foes, as well. And with this new adrenaline double attack, sun and moon slash, a hundred blades attack is going to be a big part of a big combo. I've seen a lot of <100 guilds using that elite with "Fear Me!" and in conjuncntion with an eviscerate warrior to put out some very effective damage.

Though, if your taking only one warrior, then you would most likely go with eviscerate, the most powerful skill in the game (IMHO).

Medion · Mar 27, 2006, 04:21 PM // 16:21

Quote:

You don't need to run it all the time, just when you're going to spike. Again, not overpowered per se, but it skews the metagame further towards physical damage dealers, and I don't think that's a good thing.

Why would you want to remove enchantments from the whole enemy if you are about to spike? I know some are able to spike 2 people at the same but a whole party seems like a waste of energy and an elite to me.

Meteoric · Mar 27, 2006, 05:20 PM // 17:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Byron

Charge can't be trash or everyone would stop using it, eh?

Sundering cant be trash either since everyone uses it...

arredondo · Mar 27, 2006, 06:59 PM // 18:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

You under-estimate the damage a group of warriors can put out just by swinging away happily.

Against blood steals and basic support heals (Monks, Rits) repairing the damage, it won't matter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintGreg

4 necros all with the same elite (defensive no less) pretty much guarantees you won't kill anything though. The warrior will still attack you even though he has no attack skills and will still do a good amount of damage.

Lol, how so? Blood spamming is all about doing un-reducable damage that heals the caster... that simple sword swinging loses its remaining power from non-elite Blood spell casts. Add to that the new Ward from Eles that prevent KDs, have a Rit surround them with spirits, and you have a band of merry bloodsuckers that honestly have little to fear from a Warrior dominant team as far as I can see.

It's not restricted to Necros primaries... Ranger Vamps can implement the same offense (no WoD obviously on their bar) and do much more damage to a "mortal" Warrior who has no attack skills... they can now SUPER-spam the combo of Vampiric Touch with the new mirror copy of Vampiric Bite (same stats), which gives them a 71 damaging blood steal every second (under Awaken the Blood).

Touches have no after-casts so the DPS is steady on a movement-restricted foe, and any basic chop-chops from a neutered axe are repaired with each blood skill use. So two Vamp Rangers using these attack skills while two Necro-Rangers are controlling four Warriors with Wail of Doom under QZ or SQ - all using blood steals - will have the targeted melee types really struggling to keep the pressure up.

Warriors got better, no doubt. I still see them being challenged harder for being able to deliver reliable damage output than they've ever been in GW. We'll hopefully see a greater range of builds and classes used in higher play as a result.

Divineshadows · Mar 27, 2006, 07:03 PM // 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Well they'll likely be used in warrior-type roles. Exactly what they'll be, we don't know yet. With 75 skills, you have to figure there's enough there for the profession to make sense somewhere even if it doesn't appear that it'll ever be a driving metagame factor.

At least in 8 man. In 4 man, Temple Strike is unfair amounts of fun.

/QFT

All of the assassins and R/A in 4 man arenas that were good were packing this skill. The thing that bothers me about this skill is the lack of player skill required to use the skill. Unlike concussion shot and skull crack, the application of dazed requires no spell interruption and comes with a free cover condition (which made contemplation of purity a much less useful counter). As a boon monk, I have rarely asked for supporting conditional removal from my 3 teammates in TA aside from the plauge touch warrior.

Later in the weekend, I started to catch on by having either a Me/Mo, a N/Mo, or an E/Mo on my team pack draw conditions. Late last evening, my guild took it one step further in using a team without a warrior. We had a crippling shot interrupt ranger with read the wind, the typical blinding flash air ele, and a necromancer with spiteful spirit, price of failure, insidious parasite, and backfire. I am typically opposed to running builds that rely upon enemy stupidity since a smart team will counter it, but I caved and agreed to let my necromancer guildmate who loves this type of build to have his fun. The result, 26 consecutive wins later, were several dead enemy assassins, warriors, and rangers. During some matches, the enemy would self-kill so fast that I ended up laughing to the point of tears and found it very distracting trying to do my duties as a monk. Not the most successful run I've ever had in TA, but definately the most amusing. I am certain several of these blissfully unaware melee players complained to their monk following the loss about not getting enough healing.

arredondo · Mar 27, 2006, 07:09 PM // 19:09

Try going as a MoNe... you can use Plague Touch repeatedly (1 second each attempt) until Daze is gone since skills aren't affected by that Condition. You have your own energy manager now, so you're not stuck with OoB.

Wasteland Squidget · Mar 27, 2006, 07:22 PM // 19:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

Lol, how so? Blood spamming is all about doing un-reducable damage that heals the caster... that simple sword swinging loses its remaining power from non-elite Blood spell casts. Add to that the new Ward from Eles that prevent KDs, have a Rit surround them with spirits, and you have a band of merry bloodsuckers that honestly have little to fear from a Warrior dominant team as far as I can see.

Sounds like a pretty nice IWAY counter. Now try doing the same to the far more common team of 2-3 Mesmers and some support characters. Signet of Humility and Diversion are going to take out your Wails pretty quickly if the opposing mesmers see what you're doing.

As far as basing your damage around blood skills, good luck with that. What you're discussing would probably be an interesting spike build, but it takes more than blood magic to do pressure damage. You're just going to get beaten by ultra-efficent spells like Heal Party and Word of Healing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arrendondo

It's not restricted to Necros primaries... Ranger Vamps can implement the same offense (no WoD obviously on their bar) and do much more damage to a "mortal" Warrior who has no attack skills... they can now SUPER-spam the combo of Vampiric Touch with the new mirror copy of Vampiric Bite (same stats), which gives them a 71 damaging blood steal every second (under Awaken the Blood).

Touches have no after-casts so the DPS is steady on a movement-restricted foe, and any basic chop-chops from a neutered axe are repaired with each blood skill use. So two Vamp Rangers using these attack skills while two Necro-Rangers are controlling four Warriors with Wail of Doom under QZ or SQ - all using blood steals - will have the targeted melee types really struggling to keep the pressure up.

R/N touch guys for your damage? O_o

They're halfway decent DPS if the enemy team is sitting there and letting you hit them, but they don't begin to match up to even a partially shut-down warrior. Then once you toss a bit of easy disruption their way (hello Domination mesmers) their DPS goes to hell.

Not to mention they can't do any kind of a spike, so there's no way to drop low targets. Again, ultra-efficent monk heals will win the day here because they monks won't be particularly rushed to keep everyone in good shape and watch for spikes.

The build you've described certainly shuts down warriors pretty well, but it simply doesn't have enough damage to kill anything. You're basically putting yourself in a situation where the enemy can sit around and figure out every aspect of your build, then counter it with some well-placed shutdown while you can accomplish nothing in return.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arrendondo

Warriors got better, no doubt. I still see them being challenged harder for being able to deliver reliable damage output than they've ever been in GW. We'll hopefully see a greater range of builds and classes used in higher play as a result.

Certainly I'd agree with you that some warrior counters got buffed. Things like Ward of Stability, the aforementioned Wail of Doom, and quite a few other skills really have the potential to ruin a warrior's day.

However, more available warrior counters doesn't necessarily mean less warriors. You still have to deal damage and you only have 64 slots, so you can only pack so many of those counters into your build without severely gimping something else.

Since you can't really deal significant damage without warriors outside of a spike build, new warrior counters just means you need to bring more and better support to keep your warriors running. If warrior counters every reach the state where they can reliable and completely shut down warrior DPS without a huge sacrifice in anything else, then there simply won't be any means of dealing damage and the metagame would probably shift to something more spikish.

BannyD · Mar 27, 2006, 07:35 PM // 19:35

during the first factions preview event i played as a temple strike R/A and tore apart just about any caster...except for this one. everytime i would try to 'spike' him he would wait until i had all my conditions on him...then used plague signet [E] and completely screwed me over instead. Im just wondering if something like that would become more common...

also im very excited about the new mesmer skills. Psychic Distraction...is god. I ran it in HA for a bit and could interrupt -anything- endlessly. Im not completely sure, but I believe it even interrupts through resolve as i wasnt having one bit of trouble making the lives of trappers hell....since you will most likely be spamming this 10E skill, try filling up your bar with a bunch of signets and mantra of inscriptions, there is a whole new line of useful signets for mesmers.

something that i didnt get to try out though was the speed siphon Me/A running the spammable Stolen Speed fast cast elite and siphon speed from the assassin line. together you are a mini Migraine/snare while buffing yourself (although the cast buff is pointless if you want stolen speed to be its best at 16 fast cast)

one last thing i was wondering about..is if a Ritualist/Ranger spirit spammer could replace a prot monk. with Ritual Lord and serpents quickness...you can hold up union and shelter (universal shielding hands + prot spirit) almost endlessly as well as throwing out other nice spirits.

but yes...very excited to see new PvP builds will come out

Rey Lentless · Mar 27, 2006, 07:44 PM // 19:44

I didn't see anything that lead me to believe warriors would be more useful than they already are.

A lot of the new skills and elites are designed around dps, other than spike.. which I like.. but you still only have one real spike option with eviscerate still.

Primal rage looks to be iway specific.. until IAS is available on a non-stance skill, or the meta-game moves to adrenal deniers and skill lockouts. Signet of strength looks like it's only useful with primal rage.

I liked the look of quivering blade and enraged smash.. but quivering forces your secondary and enraged eliminates your secondary. I didn't see anything else that would be common place in pvp from warriors.

More nasty hexes, but many more options for hex removal. First multi-target hex removal since NR. Many more multi-hex removals too.. to add to comtemplation, purge signet, and convert.

Ritualists look like great passive prot if not dealt with.

Assassins didn't seem that great, other than their teleporting.. but that's a big 'other'.

Eles.. don't understand energy elites that cause exhaustion. Apparently Anet's in love with the concept though. Only one skill stuck out as impressive to me, and that was Ward of Stability. One fire elite looked maybe ok with 240 damage over two seconds at range, but that's about it.

Mes.. rez sigs had a bullseye

rii · Mar 27, 2006, 08:29 PM // 20:29

I think people are wetting themselves a little too hard at the moment. The game already contains fantastic warrior shutdown - if you want to the levels arredondo is going to you can do it one whole lot better with prophecies skill only. Warriors however are top of the game at the moment and probably will stay so.
A team can only contain so much defence against warriors before it turns into a bag of crap (see blood spike above), and what is currently availiable isnt *worse* than whats new. The unmitigated flash turret is better than a lot of the shutdown soon to be availiable, and your glossing over a little the large amount of defensive and hex removal options that are coming along with all your sexah hexes and so on.
Warriors still rule, and in 3 months they probably still will.

arredondo · Mar 27, 2006, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Snip....

That's what's being analyzed here, the fact that there are now counters vs. Warriors that together are so hard and difficult to resolve that they are "mortal" damage dealers like everyone else with the right tools.

Challenge: Have you and a friend take two pure Warriors (or secondaries with no offensive spells/skills) into TA with no attack skills. Bring full Mesmer and Monk support if you wish. Please show me a picture of any extended win streaks that you are able to earn. It's not that simple, is it? Under Wail of Doom that's stacked by hexes, it'll be interesting. It's a good thing Hex removal is improved, but of course that costs extra slots.

And now that Dazing Monkies is much simpler with the Assassin, spam heals aren't necessarily automatic if the team has some decent non-melee DPS going on. Yes Mesmers counter spell-based builds, which keeps it all balanced. I'm not saying Blood builds are king now (or can't have damage reduced/negated), but just giving one example of what a build type can do if the Warriors are controlled. They all have better counters, which allows more unique teams to be created as a result.

Warrior/Monk + support is hopefully not the end-all example of a great team anymore. Rits have few spells to worry about being countered (if they can survive ritual cast times, lol), Necros are better in almost every area, Mesmers fit into growing specialized roles, Assassins for Daze (if nothing else) seems pretty solid early on. Who knows? Maybe Eles will be tweaked again to sustain more consistent damage over time. If Warrior-hate is commonplace as we move on in so many forms, offense from additional sources have to be discovered and used.

DarkAynjil · Mar 27, 2006, 08:54 PM // 20:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by BannyD

during the first factions preview event i played as a temple strike R/A and tore apart just about any caster...except for this one. everytime i would try to 'spike' him he would wait until i had all my conditions on him...then used plague signet [E] and completely screwed me over instead. Im just wondering if something like that would become more common...

also im very excited about the new mesmer skills. Psychic Distraction...is god. I ran it in HA for a bit and could interrupt -anything- endlessly. Im not completely sure, but I believe it even interrupts through resolve as i wasnt having one bit of trouble making the lives of trappers hell....since you will most likely be spamming this 10E skill, try filling up your bar with a bunch of signets and mantra of inscriptions, there is a whole new line of useful signets for mesmers.

something that i didnt get to try out though was the speed siphon Me/A running the spammable Stolen Speed fast cast elite and siphon speed from the assassin line. together you are a mini Migraine/snare while buffing yourself (although the cast buff is pointless if you want stolen speed to be its best at 16 fast cast)

one last thing i was wondering about..is if a Ritualist/Ranger spirit spammer could replace a prot monk. with Ritual Lord and serpents quickness...you can hold up union and shelter (universal shielding hands + prot spirit) almost endlessly as well as throwing out other nice spirits.

but yes...very excited to see new PvP builds will come out

I ran a R/Rit spirit spammer with 16 expertise and oath shot - it was VERY effective. Replace a monk? I don't know about that - i know in RA with a boon prot on my team, we were untouchable. My skillbar was: Shadow Song, Displacement, Dissonance, Disenchantment, Unity, Oath Shot, Whirling D., Res. Sig.

arredondo · Mar 27, 2006, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by rii

I think people are wetting themselves a little too hard at the moment. The game already contains fantastic warrior shutdown - if you want to the levels arredondo is going to you can do it one whole lot better with prophecies skill only. Warriors however are top of the game at the moment and probably will stay so.
A team can only contain so much defence against warriors before it turns into a bag of crap (see blood spike above), and what is currently availiable isnt *worse* than whats new. The unmitigated flash turret is better than a lot of the shutdown soon to be availiable, and your glossing over a little the large amount of defensive and hex removal options that are coming along with all your sexah hexes and so on.
Warriors still rule, and in 3 months they probably still will.

Blood tactics get around protection from Monks and Rits. Full damage constantly. Not as high as a unhindered Warrior, but the question is can Warriors be hindered enough to whittle down their dominant numbers a bit? It may be early to say for sure, but these new anti-Warrior skills look promising on top of what's already there.

trialist · Mar 27, 2006, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rey Lentless

One fire elite looked maybe ok with 240 damage over two seconds at range, but that's about it.

Erm by that description, i'm sure you meant double dragon? Its not a ranged aoe, its a pbaoe, and one that gives you exhaustion as well, on top of being elite, so its not really that great.

TheOneMephisto · Mar 27, 2006, 09:33 PM // 21:33

I think that lots of people might start using assassins mainly as secondaries for teleporting/some of their hexes/defensive stances. That's what I feel their best use is as.