Curse

a cadet · Nov 20, 2005, 03:51 PM // 15:51

When i played against powers or other ranger groups, all i did was head straight for their rangers and try to disable them. Nothing will stop a 'perfect' spike, so infusing will only work if you meet a bad ranger spike team. Thats not to say its useless, but it wont do you much good if the targets drop way too fast. For example, if you run a spike team try spiking the rangers. With one less ranger its at least much more difficult to spike the target. I would go for the order mesmer, but thats the most obvious and well protected choice, so its not always an option.

However, in terms of defense these strategies work well too:
Fertile Seasons is excellant. Even putting it on a w/r with low beast mastery this prevents the rangers from doing that 'first spike' which is usually their best; instead they have to go kill the spirit first giving you the time to start the offense earlier.
Aegis chains are very important. It can block half the arrows if it isnt removed - and if it is you can easily tell who the target is right before a spike, so just throw up guardian and have the monks start healing preemptively.

A bonder wont do you much good if they spike the bonder, its usually too late to put up bonds after he dies. There was a discussion on "Shields Up" over at TGH and why that isnt as impressive as it sounds. Blinding rangers is a strategy but the healer can time martyr to fall just as they say "2" in the spike.

One last counter which is somewhat hard to notice - when a player targets another, even before he shoots, the target sort of "crouches" if you know what i mean. So if everyone stands perfectly still, and the monks watch for someone to suddenly 'crouch'... well, someone said they could save people based on that

I guess my main point is that you should go straight for their rangers, not the order mesmer or monks, those are too well protected. Take out their caller, for example, and you already have a huge advantage.

Kate Bloodspirit · Nov 21, 2005, 12:09 AM // 00:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by a cadet

However, in terms of defense these strategies work well too:
Fertile Seasons is excellant.Even putting it on a w/r with low beast mastery this prevents the rangers from doing that 'first spike' which is usually their best;

To a point... Low lever fertile will die in 1 shoot (usually when the count is still at 3...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by a cadet

instead they have to go kill the spirit first giving you the time to start the offense earlier.

That assuming the ranger spike won't spike you through a low lever fertile...

Quote:

Originally Posted by a cadet

There was a discussion on "Shields Up" over at TGH and why that isnt as impressive as it sounds.

Shields up is still very good choice against ranger spike. 50 AL... gg

Quote:

Originally Posted by a cadet

I guess my main point is that you should go straight for their rangers, not the order mesmer or monks, those are too well protected. Take out their caller, for example, and you already have a huge advantage.

What's up with the groups with more than 1 caller? say may be 4 callers? hehehe...

a cadet · Nov 21, 2005, 01:56 AM // 01:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kate Bloodspirit

To a point... Low lever fertile will die in 1 shoot (usually when the count is still at 3...)

ofcourse. However, and I’ve seen this done many times, right as your offense runs in (for example a warrior running at the team) the ranger spike will quickly kill him just as he runs out (usually beyond the range of the monks). Fertile Seasons, in a way, prevents this. Once a teams offense is disrupted by resing, the ranger spike has a much easier time spiking down targets. It’s all about that first 10 seconds, as I see it anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kate Bloodspirit

That assuming the ranger spike won't spike you through a low lever fertile...

Also true, but again i never said that you wont need monks; the fertile will at least prevent that 'perfect spike', meaning an infuser actually has a human chance of saving a target.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kate Bloodspirit

Shields up is still very good choice against ranger spike. 50 AL... gg

The TGH article mentioned something about most of the damage coming from orders/preps/spirits... you can read the article here: http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/showthread.php?t=31155 (sorry for my lack of knowledge on how to make the link pretty...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kate Bloodspirit

What's up with the groups with more than 1 caller? say may be 4 callers? hehehe...

Also true, but even if there are enough callers, missing one spiker reduces the effectiveness of the spike. As I see it, the battle is really about ways to prevent the spike from being 'perfect' i.e. no one simply dies without forewarning.

It’s not easy. The key thing to note is that ranger spike works well even with only 3 rangers spiking, something allot of teams are taking advantage of (for example, I believe power runs Oath Shot on one ranger instead of QS/Punishing Shot). What this means is that if your offense/defense cant stop the spike, you will eventually run out of sigs/DP will kick in, and then its gg. I may not be explaining this too well so here’s my example:

Our team met Power’s team in Scarred Earth. This is only important because by the second fight, neither side had the possibility of a morale boost since both Ghostly Heroes were either dead or hidden. My team was admittedly not the greatest team, Power’s team was, well, Power’s team. Playing a mesmer, I immediately went for a ranger. I would use Diversion, the Blackout, with an occasional energy surge/burn… basically I shutdown a ranger. The rest of my team went for the mesmer/necro or whatever, I wasn’t the leader of the group and I didn’t really have control over that. But throughout the fight, I just consistently camped one of the rangers, diverting the Dual Shot, blacking out a spirit, etc. This went on for quite some time, maybe 5 minutes or more. Our offense wasn’t good enough and we couldn’t drop any of them, but I had most of their spike in check and the monks could handle whatever spikes they did. Not to sound like I was the only good player on the team – I wasn’t – but eventually I was spiked down and once our team was preoccupied with resing it was basically over. (Its interesting to note here that the offense was busy resing, taking their pressure off the rangers for whatever seconds, allowing more spikes. Had the monks been resing, it might not have been the end).

What I learned from that fight is what I was basically saying – the key is to go for a ranger and stop the spike. One slip up could be enough to finish your team. Sorry for the length of that, but I thought it would be informative.

JR · Nov 21, 2005, 02:49 AM // 02:49

Basicly you can't rely on your monks to deal with Ranger spike. Enchants are useless, because they will be stripped just before the spike, and don't try and argue that "Thats a good sign of who they are going to spike", because a good spike team will strip 2-3 people at once.

Some skills help, distortion is pretty godly, 'Shields Up!' is nice, bringing someone with Fertile isn't a bad idea. But mainly its agressive play. If you let them keep you at their range, your going to get hammered. The key is to push on, if someone drops res them straight away and keep pushing. Start dropping their offence, starting with the order necro, and harrasing the rangers wherever possible with edenial, blackout etc. Or if their is the opportunity, force them to come to you, and put themselves in a less than desirable position.

Once the **** starts to hit the fan, a balanced team has by far the advantage, due to being way more flexible and versatile. Also, using terrian effectively as you push up is key.

A pug of friends I was part of hit ranger spike in tombs a couple weeks ago, all we had to do was hole up behind a wall, waited for them to come to us. As soon as they got in range, and in a position where they could spike, they were close enough that our trapper could sprint out and drop a spike trap in the middle of them. It completely ruined their first spike, chaos ensued, and we came out on top.

glenn_rolfe · Nov 21, 2005, 07:28 AM // 07:28

shields up is a must and all builds need to carry as long as we have ranger spike

I think hexing is your friend here. Trying to prot the infuser won't help because as soon as they find the infuser he will be spiked down repeatedly until you've wasted all your rez sigs on him.

If you can control one of the rangers you should survive the spike, so really work one over with blinds and misses like shadown of fear

crimsonfilms · Nov 21, 2005, 04:27 PM // 16:27

You guys are depending on Shield's Up too much. The beauty of Ranger spike is that it is numerous small damage (+ RTW + Vamp + Orders + Winnow+ etc). Add a Shat Ench and you are dealing about 500-700 damage with 4 rangers. All of these not protected by Shields Up.

Fertile and killing the necro is the key. In short term, ruining the first spike is important.

Point is Shields Up will not save your arse. Far from it. It will help, but you are not denying MOST of the damage (since most of the damage is not from the arrow but the mods on it).

Ollj · Nov 21, 2005, 05:18 PM // 17:18

echoing reversal of fortune?
crazy idea, were you get all the energy from?

this helps:

Warriors smart enough to target rangers first!!!
Warriors smart enough to target rangers first!!! (has to be mentioned twice)
A ranger with whirling defense, dust trap and throw dirt.
A boon prot monk with reversal of fortune.
Anything that increases max health!
Heal monks running around like crazy instead of triing to heal with skills that cast after 2 seconds.
Any enchantment removing.
Interupting "read the wind".
Greater Conflagration.

last but not least, stop using superior runes with all the spiking arouns!!!

qwe4rty · Nov 21, 2005, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Blackout - can't be removed. Put it on either a ranger, or their order spammer

Just find a good way to apply it so it doesn't hurt your team to much