Curse

Brother Andicus · Sep 25, 2005, 11:09 PM // 23:09

Hello all.

I just came from a fairly high level GvG(70sih vs 250ish), and had the privelage of seeing Prav beat us silly with what is probably going to be the next FotM.

This spike is every bit as nasty as the air spike, but with the added twist that prot spirit doesnt counter it.

The basic idea is that each of the 4-5 Rangers uses kindle combined with dmg shots, and multiple low dmg hits blow you away.

Has anyone else run across this executed by a good team yet? And if so, could you counter it? And with what?

The ideas I had so far are fertile season, ward against elements, or a making all 3 monks heal/prot hybrids(RoF is fast enough - just).

Ward against elements will help with the kindle damage, but for me, fertile isnt too practical now you cant have multiple copies of it.

Unless theres something obvious im missing, ranger spike has potential to be far stronger than IWAY or smite ever were.

Arathorn5000 · Sep 25, 2005, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brother Andicus

This spike is every bit as nasty as the air spike, but with the added twist that prot spirit doesnt counter it.

What about the other added twist that tons of protection skills put the lid on this type of damage?

I believe patient relaxed people came up with this build, or at least have credit for using it best.

Counters? If you can sacrifice a slot for a water ele with ward against harm, that makes the fire damage embarassingly low.

smurfhunter · Sep 25, 2005, 11:44 PM // 23:44

actually shields up is to arrows what ward against melee is to warriors. so just make sure you keep it up and use shielding hands on whoevers getting spiked. kinda old

Dzan · Sep 25, 2005, 11:48 PM // 23:48

Yup, Shielding hands/Healing seed work, but then again you have to guess who and when the spike will be on.

Schorny · Sep 25, 2005, 11:53 PM // 23:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brother Andicus

Has anyone else run across this executed by a good team yet? And if so, could you counter it? And with what?

In tombs you see many top teams and now also some bad teams running it.

The spike consists of many low damage hits. All those little hits sum up to some nice damage.

Forget RoF, it won't work. Use shielding hands. One shielding hands completly takes out the spike. Healing hands will too do this, but I doubt it's worth the elite.

But ranger spike has one serious problem: you need a free field to spike good. So you can easily hide behind things. With fav winds up, you don't have a chance to evade the attacks by moving, but if it is down, you can

And hitting is the next weak spot: arrows only do damage if they hit. So put shield of deflection, aegis, guardian in your skillbar

Ranger spike is really nasty and if done right you have serious problems, but it _can_ be countered. There are also some non so straigth ways like greater conflag and ward against harm/elements, watch yourself,...

And don't forget: it is spike. So the one true counter to spike applies here too: just kill one spiker and the remaining spiking power should be too weak to kill you.

Brother Andicus · Sep 25, 2005, 11:53 PM // 23:53

No, seed is fairly useless in this situation. Whoever the target will be long gone before seed casts.

Silmor · Sep 25, 2005, 11:58 PM // 23:58

And unlike air spike, the barrage of small hits is easier to switch onto a different target, and after spiking a few times, the spike rangers can still use their interrupts in a regular fashion until their energy is back to spamming levels.

smurfhunter · Sep 26, 2005, 12:20 AM // 00:20

biggest weakness of this build is the inability to target more than one person. playing against many teams like this, it usully goes:

ranger spike drops your monk, monk resd.
renger spike drops another monk, monk resd.

then one of two things happens: your team panics and falls apart, OR, your monks figure out whats going on and the next target doesnt die but gets close, and by then the ranger team is dead.

all you really need to do is have the heal monks spam heal other/woh as soon as they see someones hp drop, then have the prot monk use shielding hands/guardian. thats it really... shields up just totally owns it, all the arrows end up doing 0 damage, IF they hit. build is definetly a fotW, even pRp stopped doing it.

romO · Sep 26, 2005, 12:30 AM // 00:30

well thanks for giving us some publicity brother andicus ^^;; what guild were you? and by the way we're no longer rank 70ish, its 43 for now (and rising) =P

but try to keep the ranger spike on the down low, we don't want EVERYONE running it, do we? and Le Big Mac, we don't want EVERYONE countering it, do we? ^^

what i will say about the counter though is that it is definetely possible but it takes a lot of organization and coordination. if you begin to panic, your vent channel isn't clear, or someone doesn't listen, its basically over. a lot of teams run ranger spike with ridiculous giveaways (like pRp did), and then it was so much easier to counter because you knew in advance who was going to be hit. its harder to counter in gvg because the hexer is replaced by a runner and you have no idea who is going to be next.

fertile doesnt work because, well, we would have killed it lol. ward against elements reduces some damage but there is still a lot of damage coming from other forms of damage. hybrid monks are just pretty much a preference in the build. there is one very good counter to the build that hasn't been mentioned yet, and all i have to say is WHEW! glad you didn't see a certain part of it ^^

gg though man

smurfhunter · Sep 26, 2005, 01:28 AM // 01:28

maybe i forgot to mention spirit shackles > interupt rangers? you got me all excited with that one extra counter

hmmm what else... i mean you could just walk behind walls. thats what i always did, hang around a corner so as soon as you get spiked just turn around and run behind the wall. strafeing doesnt work so well with fav winds/fast attacks... hMMMmmm

someone already mentioned ward against harm....

>.<

let me think about this one

Entropius · Sep 26, 2005, 01:31 AM // 01:31

pRp's running some sort of weird variant of ranger spike with traps now. We (Free Faction / Embryo Slaystyle's PUG team) beat it a couple of times last night, but our team is a rather bad matchup for theirs.

Seems like Ward vs. Harm would blunt the kindle damage in a rather uncounterable way. Might be why pRp runs traps, to clear the wards.

romO · Sep 26, 2005, 01:35 AM // 01:35

i must say corners are sooooo annoying. we had to switch guild halls because we had one where you could hide behind the buildings, and now we have the ice one where there is more open space. and spirit shackles is good if you get it off, but it has a 3 second cast time. i mean, they are INTERUPT rangers, arent they? ^^

P.S. embryo is that you? we havent played together in a while, one of us is always busy =( we need to game soon.

Entropius · Sep 26, 2005, 01:37 AM // 01:37

pRp's running some sort of weird variant of ranger spike with traps now. We (Free Faction / Embryo Slaystyle's PUG team) beat it a couple of times last night, but our team is a rather bad matchup for theirs.

Seems like Ward vs. Harm would blunt the kindle damage in a rather uncounterable way. Might be why pRp runs traps, to clear the wards.

Zeru · Sep 26, 2005, 03:50 AM // 03:50

A few things:

Prot spirit does not and never did counter air spike. Good air spike teams would rend the target right before chain lightning hit. Scrub teams didn't, but who cares?

You need more than 1 angle to stop the spike. Just wards won't do it. Just aegis or guardian won't do it. Shields Up alone won't do it. You need to shutdown their disenchanters (rangers or a me/n usually), keep your own up, and have defense in multiple ways.

With wards versus an only ranged team...you better not have any warriors and you better be holding the altar. Otherwise you have absolutely zero mobility and you can still be spiked in downtime/when moving positions. Wards are awesome, don't get me wrong, but don't depend on them.

The build is rather tough on energy. Edenial anyone?

captain velron · Sep 26, 2005, 04:58 AM // 04:58

Mantra of Inscriptions / Signet of Weariness spam on the rangers perhaps?

Vindexus · Sep 26, 2005, 05:21 AM // 05:21

I've been playing this in tombs a lot lately and any enchantment is going to get stripped before we spike, so you can discount those as counters. The only counters to the damage are Watch Yourself, Mantra of Flame, Fertile Season, Ward Against Elements, and Ward Against Harm.

Kindle is bugged in that the damage from it will still hit even if you dodge or evade the arrows.

Rey Lentless · Sep 26, 2005, 05:32 AM // 05:32

Most of the builds run a lingering curse mesmer, so you have to rely on non enchants to protect yourself. Ward against harm and shields up does the job well. Spirit shackles can too, but it'll cost you a death or two first, and only if you can overload their hex removal.

From what I heard, preps will no longer hit if the arrows won't in the next patch, but that won't change this build too much with most of them running lingering anyway, and rigor's there to make sure heroes get interupted.

The build is counterable and very strongly with wah and shields up (two uncommon skill lines however and does use an elite), but the build still needs a nerf. The strongest interupt build shouldn't have have a huge dps either.

It makes a good spike, and good holding because of the huge number of interupts. You basically have to disable or completely kill off the rangers to cap.

Alone) · Sep 26, 2005, 05:40 AM // 05:40

Prot. Spirit..hm...

Not bad, but counterable, as every build out there.
Stronger than a smite or IWAY group? Possibly. Better? Not really.

Random thought: Wonder if anyone ever one HoH with 8 warrior/monks. I'd like to see that

Vindexus · Sep 26, 2005, 05:42 AM // 05:42

Shields Up does nothing because Kindle is bugged and converts your damage to fire.

Phades · Sep 26, 2005, 06:54 AM // 06:54

Same with swirling aura.