Curse

Burakus Lightwing · Jan 18, 2006, 09:27 PM // 21:27

Now I may be called a noob and get flamed...but if you're already bringing a Necro or two why not use curses and hit them with Faintheartedness and S.S.
To my own defense, I almost always only do 4vs4 arenas so I'm not sure how this would help in the bigger arenas. However looking at the above posts, with all the traps and wards it seems like it would make sense to slow down attacks and degen to counter health regen. Plus S.S. would make that quick attack work against them, although the health regen may counter their own damage. Just a thought.

a cadet · Jan 18, 2006, 10:03 PM // 22:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kabale

have 2 people on your team checking out each of the trappers until they drop the nature's

If the fight extends beyond the recharge time of Natures Renewal, you may be in for a nasty surprise midway through the fight. And that’s really all it takes - if the IWAY is harassing you to the point where you missed several Blessed Signets, and your surviving on Balthazars *Spirit, once Natures goes up you probably don’t even have time to run out before they all drop.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kabale

All it takes is coordination. If your team can't deal with a Nature's...well then you've lost...

I would have to disagree. Speaking from the other side of playing on several 'good' IWAYs, I don’t think there was a fight when Natures Renewal wasnt dropped. The range of a spirit is approximately twice the range of a spell; i can just as easily say that "if your trapper cant place Natures s.t. it will be in range of the other team, but outside casting range of the other team, you've lost."

Clearly, defeating an IWAY has a lot to do with quickly killing and eliminating spirits. But also, bonders are incredibly fragile. I’m not disputing the fact that they do work vs. IWAY; it just may not work as well in this particular case.

In my mind it’s a lot like a ranger who relies on Choking Gas to interrupt, or a mesmer that relies on Migraine to interrupt. Obviously, they all have uses, I just see them as the 'easy' version of interrupting, or in this case, of protecting.

You probably can have the best of both worlds if you know when to give up your Life Bonds. For example, if NR goes up and you cant kill it fast enough, an option is to simply cancel all your Life Bonds and play an active prot monk.

There is also the overlap of Protective Spirit and Life Bond. At 480 health, the breakpoint for Life Bond to be totally useless is 96 damage. That amount of damage can only be expected from an adrenal attack like Eviscerate or Executioners Strike.

But look at the effect it has on damage in the 48-96 range. Let’s say you hit for 72 damage: with a life bond you are protecting for 36 damage, with Prot. Spirit you protect for only 24 damage. The difference is 12. Does it really make that much of a difference?

I don’t really want to calculate this out with precision, but let me just make a reasonable assumption and say that a warriors swing does ~60 damage, on average. (If you know the actual amount a warrior at 16 Axe Mastery does, please feel free to correct me). Prot. Spirit will protect you from 12 damage, Life Bond from 30. The difference is 18 (hit points?).

The main point of all that is this, at the 96+ amount of damage, Protective Spirit is the only one that matters. At the 48-96 range, Life Bond protects for a small amount in comparison. At less than 48 amount of damage, it clearly beats Protective Spirit. You need to ask yourself - do you really need that ~20 point damage reduction?

Further, let me state the counter argument: IWAY is more about dps, rather than spike damage. Wouldn’t that indicate that Life Bond is more useful than Prot. Spirit? The reason I would still say Protective Spirit is superior is because an IWAY does not attack all targets equally. In certain situations, it is clear that, for example, warriors won’t be targeted, or that a certain mesmer out back is being ignored. In the event of an adrenal spike by the IWAY, protective spirit clearly wins, and in terms of the rest, Prot. Spirit is adequate (in my opinion).

What this really all shows is the importance of blocking the damage. If you block an attack, by Aegis for example, you are essentially protecting against all of the 50, or 70, or 100+ damage. It is obvious that the priority is much more on blocking the damage than on protecting against it, by whatever means. A Life Bonder can’t always cast a 15 energy spell. A Mo/E, with Glyph of Lesser Energy, always can. This reveals my personal preference of playing as a Mo/E, but even if you play as whatever else; Mo/Me with Channeling, or Mo/N with OoB, whatever. Any other monk has far less to lose from spending the last 15 energy you have on Aegis, and furthermore is more likely to be able to do so regularly. In terms of damage reduction, Aegis takes priority over Prot. Spirit, Life Bond, anything. Unfortunately, once you lose your Life Bonds, your done. You can’t really put them back up in a decent amount of time, and you don’t have the option of putting Aegis above Life Bonds, Life Bonds just take the #1 spot out of necessity.

Sorry for the length of this – it didn’t start out this long, but it an interesting concept and I felt like talking it through. And also, if you have the actual numbers on warrior damage, please correct me on that, or any other factual mistakes i might have made.