Curse

tafy69 · Feb 24, 2006, 11:12 PM // 23:12

Someone running IW in arena prob isnt clever enough to cover his enchant

Entropius · Feb 26, 2006, 05:48 PM // 17:48

IW is horrible, but the original poster raises an interesting point that nobody has addressed.

Nobody should die to an IW mesmer. If your team has no way to remove IW, then the target can just kite him, as people have mentioned, until IW is down. Yes, Reversal of Fortune can mitigate the IW damage almost completely, but no more efficiently than it can mitigate any damage, and -- faced with an unchecked IW mesmer wailing on someone along with other competent attackers, you will run out of energy.

The problem with monking against IW is that the best ways to handle IW damage rely on the target (or other offensive characters on your team) doing something: kiting or removing it. There are no protection spells that are especially good against it -- nothing you, as a monk, can do to stop the damage other than healing it.

Since there are so many morons in CA, IW is "effective" because many people will just stand there and soak the damage -- and there's not much you can do, if they refuse to kite, other than heal them (or RoF them) after the fact.

The one protection spell that is marginally effective against it is Shielding Hands. It's useful in many other situations; you may want to consider it.

Ruriks Cube · Feb 27, 2006, 10:42 PM // 22:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Entropius

Nobody should die to an IW mesmer. If your team has no way to remove IW, then the target can just kite him, as people have mentioned, until IW is down. Yes, Reversal of Fortune can mitigate the IW damage almost completely, but no more efficiently than it can mitigate any damage...

Actually this is wrong. The effective heal from RoF is twice the damage that you would have taken. If you use it against a warrior, you might hit Executioner's Strike, or you could hit a non-critical regular attack that would have only hurt for 10 hp. You usually just don't know. However, when you know that a big hit is coming, there is no better heal than RoF. With IW, you know that every single swing is going to be a big hit. So, experienced monks will know who on their team is dying from IW and cast only RoF on them. Whenever you know that a big hit is coming, RoF is ridiculously efficient. Another example of this would be experienced arena monks who will have their target on enemy eles to know when a lightning orb is coming.

A boon RoF will heal somebody about to be hit with IW for effectively 200: +160 hp when they would have had -40. For this reason, it's important to not overheal. Since RoF is so efficient against IW, you should really never run out of energy healing from it.

glountz · Feb 28, 2006, 10:18 AM // 10:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

That's becasue PvE mobs virtually never kite unless there's some sort of AoE affecting them. They just stand there while you bash their face in. I've seen IW builds that purportedly solo UW or portions of it. That, I'm not surprised at.

Did you read my post? Why are you talking about PVE mobs in a PVP discussion?
I said that [Illusion of Haste + Plague Sending]>Kiting. Either I run faster than you, monk, or either you're crippled.
You can do nothing but to soak my damage. IW mesmers should bring Ethereal/Imagined burden if they don't have any kind of snare/speed boost.
Your "kiting" solution is not valid against a well thought IW mesmer, sorry.
However you see everything in a 1V1 (prot booner Vs IW) point of view.
An IW mesmer doesn't attack monks, but warriors/hard targets.
RoF is good against one IW. If nobody wands/hits you at the same time, this said, so RoF could also heal 10 hp.

wheel · Feb 28, 2006, 11:19 AM // 11:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

Did you read my post? Why are you talking about PVE mobs in a PVP discussion?
I said that [Illusion of Haste + Plague Sending]>Kiting. Either I run faster than you, monk, or either you're crippled.
You can do nothing but to soak my damage. IW mesmers should bring Ethereal/Imagined burden if they don't have any kind of snare/speed boost.
Your "kiting" solution is not valid against a well thought IW mesmer, sorry.
However you see everything in a 1V1 (prot booner Vs IW) point of view. An IW mesmer doesn't attack monks, but warriors/hard targets.
RoF is good against one IW. If nobody wands/hits you at the same time, this said, so RoF could also heal 10 hp.

I did read your post, and you clearly did say PvE. At any rate, I apologize for misunderstanding you. Even as a boon prot in random arena, I have the ability to Drain Enchant you every single time you put IW up. As any other character with an enchantment removal, I have the same ability to completely disable your damage. That means that no matter how many snares you put on me, or how many speed boosts you bring, you will be doing nil for damage against me or anyone else on my team. You'll be sitting waiting to have IW back up for 40.5-41 seconds. Any other =<1c, <40r enchantment removal will be able to counter IW.

Now, as far as kiting not being a valid solution against IW mesmers, let's run through the skills you'll most likely be using.

Ethereal Burden
15e, 3c, 45r, 10d of 50% reduced run speed

Long recharge kills it (not to mention cast time, which will be fairly high on an IW build, since Fast Casting is of lower importance)

Imagined Burden
15e, 1c, 30r, 21d of 50% reduced run speed

Decent duration, but the recharge is too long to be used effectively when the monk can toss out hex removals at much more regular intervals.

Illusion of Haste
10e, 1c, 5r, 11d of 33% increased run speed (13d w/ 20% ench)

Plague Touch
5e, .75c, 0r, 15d of 50% reduced run speed (if coupled with Illusion of Haste)

This combo will be fairly effective, though very taxing on your energy. The increased runspeed of IoH will be the best boon to the build, as the cripple, when sent to the opposing target, will be removed at the cost of 5 energy. It would be simpler simply to not worry about Plague Sending/Touch. You're effectively spending 10 energy every 13 seconds on top of the IW costs, just so that you can do DPS.

Sprint
5e, 0c, 20r, 8d of 25% increased run speed

Simple, semi long recharge on a character that depends on the enemy in melee range.

Now, all of these skills are great on an IW mesmer. I'm not going to debate that. They allow you to stay in melee range of a character fairly easily. The runspeed increasers work much better than the snares do in this case, because they're harder to remove than snares. So your best choice is probably going to be Illusion of Haste or Sprint. Sprint is decent, but it doesn't last long enough without any points in strength.

However, IoH is very taxing on your energy, taking up ~2.31 pips of regen. IW, meanwhile, is taking ~1.02 pips. This can be an issue when you're getting hit by Distortion and the like. The character is very intensive on energy. Add on top of that that you're disabled for 40.5-41 seconds when someone drains your IW as soon as you put it up, and you can start to see why IW is a bad build in a competitive setting.

Long recharge
Vulnerable to Enchantment removal
Energy intensive
Conditional upon positioning

Compare that to your average warrior's abilities to do damage.

Short recharge
Does not rely on Enchantments for damage
Mostly energy independent
Conditional upon positioning

That's a somewhat shallow view to look at IW mesmers vs Warriors, but Warriors are much less fragile, much less conditional, and can spike targets out. The IW mesmer isn't even close to something I think of as being a high damage build in ANY setting, let alone GvG.

glountz · Feb 28, 2006, 01:25 PM // 13:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

I did read your post, and you clearly did say PvE. At any rate, I apologize for misunderstanding you. Even as a boon prot in random arena, I have the ability to Drain Enchant you every single time you put IW up. As any other character with an enchantment removal, I have the same ability to completely disable your damage. That means that no matter how many snares you put on me, or how many speed boosts you bring, you will be doing nil for damage against me or anyone else on my team. You'll be sitting waiting to have IW back up for 40.5-41 seconds. Any other =<1c, <40r enchantment removal will be able to counter IW.

You generally cast IW before IH. Should you drain an enchant it will be IH. And then I send cripple to you and your teamates, while still in IW. And recast IH in case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

However, IoH is very taxing on your energy, taking up ~2.31 pips of regen. IW, meanwhile, is taking ~1.02 pips. This can be an issue when you're getting hit by Distortion and the like. The character is very intensive on energy. Add on top of that that you're disabled for 40.5-41 seconds when someone drains your IW as soon as you put it up, and you can start to see why IW is a bad build in a competitive setting.

* Long recharge
* Vulnerable to Enchantment removal
* Energy intensive
* Conditional upon positioning

Compare that to your average warrior's abilities to do damage.

* Short recharge
* Does not rely on Enchantments for damage
* Mostly energy independent
* Conditional upon positioning

That's a somewhat shallow view to look at IW mesmers vs Warriors, but Warriors are much less fragile, much less conditional, and can spike targets out. The IW mesmer isn't even close to something I think of as being a high damage build in ANY setting, let alone GvG.

You think IW is energy intensive but not so much. The only things you have to do is to cast IWay, IH, maybe Plague Sending, and then strike between. You don't spam energy costy skills like a prot monk does. Distortion if you are targeted, but not always up on you. While you're striking , your 4 pips of energy regen do the job.
And finally, you forget what is the core strenght of IW: the absolute lack of damage mitigation. You don't fear blind, evade stances, evade enchants (like guardian), heavy armors or armor buffs.
I agree though, that IW is so much enchant dependant and armor lacking that it won't go past CA. But it is completely suited for CA, as he can take all the randomness of it by the lack of its damage mitigation.

wheel · Feb 28, 2006, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

You generally cast IW before IH. Should you drain an enchant it will be IH. And then I send cripple to you and your teamates, while still in IW. And recast IH in case.

I realize that you are going to try to cast IoH after IW. That's the idea with a cover enchantment. The problem is that once I see you cast IW, I am going to Drain Ench before IoH is done casting. The IW mesmer is then out of the battle for over 40 seconds.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

You think IW is energy intensive but not so much. The only things you have to do is to cast IWay, IH, maybe Plague Sending, and then strike between. You don't spam energy costy skills like a prot monk does. Distortion if you are targeted, but not always up on you. While you're striking , your 4 pips of energy regen do the job.
And finally, you forget what is the core strenght of IW: the absolute lack of damage mitigation. You don't fear blind, evade stances, evade enchants (like guardian), heavy armors or armor buffs.
I agree though, that IW is so much enchant dependant and armor lacking that it won't go past CA. But it is completely suited for CA, as he can take all the randomness of it by the lack of its damage mitigation.

Having a character that uses enchantments to enhance their durability and effectiveness is fine. Having a character that depeneds on enchantments to even do damage, at all, is a bad idea. When you run IW in Arena, you are counting on the other team not to bring any enchantment removal. If the enemy team has one smart person on their team with any 1c, <40r enchantment removal, you are useless. Compare this to Warriors, which are much harder to shut down effectively, and can do much more damage. IW mesmers do not add up.

JR · Feb 28, 2006, 04:54 PM // 16:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

When you run IW in Arena, you are counting on the other team not to bring any enchantment removal.

Indeed. And that is the main flaw with most "arena builds". You are counting on the other team being bad. This is the reason why these gimmicks will never even be part of a strong TA team, they can't go the distance. Maybe a fun build to run as a solo character in Random Arena, but that is as far as it goes. Should you ever make it to Team Arena, you are going to be devastated by the first decent team you hit. And that is what I don't like about this kind of arena build, it is not 'playing to win', however good you think it is.

glountz · Feb 28, 2006, 05:07 PM // 17:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

Compare this to Warriors, which are much harder to shut down effectively, and can do much more damage. IW mesmers do not add up.

That's the central point on which we completely disagree. In arenas, shutting down warriors is easy. More than IW. You are not in GvG/8v8.
They don't have 2 prot monks to save their butt with mend/martyr, so they are so vulnerable to conditions that it is laughable. Especially when their prot monk is chased to death and have to survive by kiting/protecting himself instead of curing the Wars.
Your point on "I will drain IW as soon as I see it" is entirely theoretical and not really doable in reality unless you are lucky. With Decent fast cast (8), Illusionnary weaponry takes 3/4 to launch, as well as the following IoHaste. Your drain enchantment takes, as a monk, 1 sec to cast. I seriously doubt you have sufficient speed to drain IW instead of IoH; which has by the way a 5 sec recharge.
Provided of course you catch the IW mesmer so your are targetting him and knowing from the beginning he is an IW.
You generally drain enchants that you can yourself use, like monk's ones... So you rarely target the mesmer first. And your drain enchant has a 20 sec recharge. So if you drained another Enchant or missed IW, you're doomed.
An IW mesmer hide that he is an IW until full battle. He rarely cast his weaponry before getting near warriors (I repeat, an IW mesmer rarely goes after the Monk but after the Ws...) and have a switch set to hide the fact he will throw himself in melee (like have a staff of enchanting).
And as a monk, you don't monitor ennemy mesmers, but health bars of your friends. I play a booner also in arenas. Maybe I'm a noob, but it is impossible to me to catch what is going on on the ennemies while I'm watching heath/condition/hex bars of my friends.
Try not to stick at the GvG prot booner/GaleWar/Cripshot ranger mindset, like I sense it in your posts. IW is diversity, it works well in CA, no doubt on it. There is ways to counter it for sure, but not so much, so you rarely bring them in RA/TA. Up to now, the counters on IW you gave me are difficult to apply, and are in addition rarely used in CA/TA (the common prot booner doesn't use Drain Enchant, and if so targets opposite monks prior to mesmers).
The best answer to an IW mesmer, IMO, is not drain enchant as you stated, but Signet of Humility, Rend Enchant/Lingering curse or, worst and a lot easier, full killing unavoidable Ele damage.
I stop here for this thread. CA/TA still is a place of diversity where builds like IW have a place to hold, unlike Tombs (Iway) and GvG (Gale/protboon/Cripshot copycat teams). And I hope it will stay at it is.

JR · Feb 28, 2006, 05:16 PM // 17:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

Provided of course you catch the IW mesmer so your are targetting him and knowing from the beginning he is an IW.

Me/W with a sword... Not hard to spot. That will make draining IW fairly easy when you take cast times and aftercast into account.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

You generally drain enchants that you can yourself use, like monk's ones...

You are confusing Inspired Enchanment and Drain Enchanment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

And as a monk, you don't monitor ennemy mesmers, but health bars of your friends. I play a booner also in arenas.

An excellent monk can play fairly well with the party window closed. Battlefield awareness is what seperates average monks from decent monks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

CA/TA still is a place of diversity where builds like IW have a place to hold, unlike Tombs (Iway) and GvG (Gale/protboon/Cripshot copycat teams). And I hope it will stay at it is.

No. CA is a place where you can win with trash, because the level of competition is so low. Make people feel good about their horrible builds. Untill of course you meet a decent team and they tear you a new one.

wheel · Feb 28, 2006, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

Your point on "I will drain IW as soon as I see it" is entirely theoretical and not really doable in reality unless you are lucky. With Decent fast cast (8), Illusionnary weaponry takes 3/4 to launch, as well as the following IoHaste. Your drain enchantment takes, as a monk, 1 sec to cast. I seriously doubt you have sufficient speed to drain IW instead of IoH; which has by the way a 5 sec recharge.

In case you weren't aware, there is a .75s aftercast betwen non PBAoE spells. At a bare minmium, it will take you 1.75s to cast IW and IoH. In your scenario, IoH wouldn't hit until 2.25s. That's plenty of time for me to cast Drain Enchant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

An IW mesmer hide that he is an IW until full battle. He rarely cast his weaponry before getting near warriors (I repeat, an IW mesmer rarely goes after the Monk but after the Ws...) and have a switch set to hide the fact he will throw himself in melee (like have a staff of enchanting).
And as a monk, you don't monitor ennemy mesmers, but health bars of your friends. I play a booner also in arenas. Maybe I'm a noob, but it is impossible to me to catch what is going on on the ennemies while I'm watching heath/condition/hex bars of my friends.

As far as me "identifying" you being an IW mesmer, that much is usually extremely easy due to the fact that I am constantly cycling through targets to assess their danger. Once I notice your movement & skill patterns, I will know that you are IW for the rest of the match. If you get one IW off, that's not a problem, because I now know to simply watch you every 35s or so to see you put up IW, and as soon as I see that, I cast Drain Ench, and you're disabled for over 40 seconds. As a monk in arena (and in GvG) you do have time to watch the enemy's movements and skills. It's actually more efficient than just watching your party bar all match because you can pre prot and more easily interpret a spike. You just have to practice at micromanaging your time. I monitor enemy mesmers first to see what skills they're running, because mesmers have the best potential to put me in a world of hurt. When I see that they're IW mesmers, I laugh inside as my day is made a lot easier. Free energy from Drain Ench as well as their team will be running as 3v4 for the entirety of the match.

glountz · Feb 28, 2006, 05:43 PM // 17:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

You are confusing Inspired Enchanment and Drain Enchanment.

OMG you're right! Sorry.
Drain is even worst with its 25 sec recharge.

JR · Feb 28, 2006, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

OMG you're right! Sorry.
Drain is even worst with its 25 sec recharge.

Whats the recharge on IW again?

wheel · Feb 28, 2006, 05:49 PM // 17:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

OMG you're right! Sorry.
Drain is even worst with its 25 sec recharge.

Worse recharge, yes, but the energy management aspect to it is much better.

To completely shut down an IW mes, however, you only need it to have ~35r.

glountz · Feb 28, 2006, 07:45 PM // 19:45

JR, Wheel, please.
I'm not trying to assess that IW is great. It simply doesn't do enough damage, is too energy dependant and have no side effects compared to Warriors like conditions or Knocklocks.
But saying that as a prot monk you will catch IW before it is covered is nonsense. Drain enchant will work against a noob IW with no cover enchant, but not against a covered IW, sorry. You will be able to drain it before it is covered only if you're waiting the IW mesmer to cast IW, and as a busy prot monk (especially in TA where you're often the priority target) it is near to impossible. Pure luck if you manage to. It assumes that you aren't kiting/casting a spell when the IW starts. No sorry, a single Drain Enchant won't screw up a covered IW. Talk about E-denial mesmer, interrupter, okay I will listen to you. But as a prot monk with only Drain Ench? Nah, definetely not.

wheel · Feb 28, 2006, 07:59 PM // 19:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

JR, Wheel, please.
I'm not trying to assess that IW is great. It simply doesn't do enough damage, is too energy dependant and have no side effects compared to Warriors like conditions or Knocklocks.
But saying that as a prot monk you will catch IW before it is covered is nonsense. Drain enchant will work against a noob IW with no cover enchant, but not against a covered IW, sorry. You will be able to drain it before it is covered only if you're waiting the IW mesmer to cast IW, and as a busy prot monk (especially in TA where you're often the priority target) it is near to impossible. Pure luck if you manage to. It assumes that you aren't kiting/casting a spell when the IW starts. No sorry, a single Drain Enchant won't screw up a covered IW. Talk about E-denial mesmer, interrupter, okay I will listen to you. But as a prot monk with only Drain Ench? Nah, definetely not.

I'm not speaking from the land of theory and make believe, here. I do it all the time. You just have to know how to micromanage well. Contrary to what you may think, it's not hard to time the recharge of IW in your head and be ready for a Drain Ench just before he's about to cast it. I can buy time enough to be able to cast Drain Ench when I need to against IW. It's not like I have to do it every 10 seconds. I only need to worry about it once every 40 seconds. In a random arena match, usually that is only going to be an issue 4-5 times max in a match. Try it and you'll see. With practice, it's so easy to nail IW that it's not even funny, even as a monk.

Siren · Feb 28, 2006, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Pacifism, anyone? At max Prot, you could be looking at a duration of approximately 20 seconds. With a 30-second recharge and an appropriate cover hex, you've just reduced the DPS of an IW Mesmer down to 0. Of course, if the IW Mes is intelligent, he'd bring Shatter Hex, but if you can snag a fast cover hex like Conjure or Parasitic Bond...

Correction: at max Prot, the duration is 21 seconds.

That means the IW Mesmer only has 9-10 seconds of IW potency at any one time.

JR · Mar 01, 2006, 12:29 AM // 00:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Siren

Pacifism, anyone? At max Prot, you could be looking at a duration of approximately 20 seconds. With a 30-second recharge and an appropriate cover hex, you've just reduced the DPS of an IW Mesmer down to 0. Of course, if the IW Mes is intelligent, he'd bring Shatter Hex, but if you can snag a fast cover hex like Conjure or Parasitic Bond...

Correction: at max Prot, the duration is 21 seconds.

That means the IW Mesmer only has 9-10 seconds of IW potency at any one time.

Pacifism is clunky to use at the best of times, especially in arena where your team mates wont usually have the coordination to *not* attack the target you are hexing it with. Not to mention any kind of AoE damage. And as you pointed out, it is a hex; it can just be removed.

Siren · Mar 01, 2006, 02:45 AM // 02:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

Pacifism is clunky to use at the best of times, especially in arena where your team mates wont usually have the coordination to *not* attack the target you are hexing it with. Not to mention any kind of AoE damage. And as you pointed out, it is a hex; it can just be removed.

True, but in random arenas anyway, your team usually will suck quite badly to begin with, which effectively limits many counters and strategies from the start. What's really disappointing is how few times I've seen people using something like Mark of Pain.

But since there only appear to be two counters to IW mentioned here, Shielding Hands and Enchant Strips (Drain, etc), just figured I'd mention Pacifism anyway. Pacifism, provided your team is either pre-occupied or not candidates for gene pool purification, is, like Abstinence, the only way to be 100% sure you never get IW.

...plus, if the Wars on your team are dumb enough to attack an IW Mesmer (keeping in mind that Illusion Mesmers should carry Sympathetic Visage, because it's so much fun), they deserve to get punished if that Mesmer's Pacifism ends from the damage.

Vindexus · Mar 01, 2006, 04:24 AM // 04:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warskull

Also as Vindexus would say (and probably will at some point) "WASD, build down." I don't know many IW Mesmers to take a running skill, in addition they tend to not spec to heavily into their running skill should they take one. You can kite them forever if you want to, then once the easier targets on their team have been mopped up lay into them.