Curse

arredondo · Sep 20, 2005, 08:27 PM // 20:27

There's a topic in the main forum on the "difficulty" of using a corpse for a team's needs before the other side Necro spams it away. Similar issues were brought up during the days of people crying for daddy Arena.net to nerf Putrid Explosion. It's done already so not worthy of debating anymore, but corpse denial strategies that I and others outlined back then still work now. I brought some of it back up here and expanded on it a bit.

So, you want to use a corpse for your own purpose but the other team beats you to it? Either speed up your cast or stop the enemy necro from getting his spell up first. The real question is, do you really want the corpse more than the other team? There's no reason why the odds can't be in your favor if you bother to bring in the right skills. The best thing you can do is find the offending Necro and then apply one of these manhandling tactics to take over from there. Here are PLENTY of options to choose from, particularly if there's a Mesmer class on your team:

Diversion - Before a corpse goes down, cast this and he's limited to either one use of his Death spell (Putrid?) for up to a minute, or you have 3-5 seconds of a cast advantage on him as he waits it out.

Archane Conundrum or Migraine - Use one to double the enemy Necro's cast time, or stack them to triple it. This gives your Necro (or you if your'e a MeNe or NeMe) a great chance to get up the Well you want, especially with Fast Cast points invested.

Interrupt the corpse spell cast - Any decent Mesmer can do this with ease. One second casts aren't overly difficult (especially in a predictable situation like when a death occurs), and using AC or Migraine increases your success chances so your team mate Necro can get the advantage.

Black Out - It's impossible for a Necro to beat your team to a corpse when all his skills are gone for up to seven seconds. Your Necro team mate has time to cast TWO wells of his choice if there are multiple dead bodies. If you are the MeNe who Blacked him out, you can get off a Well of your choice when you wake up in 5 seconds if you have at least 1 point in Fast Cast. Otherwise it could be a 50/50 vs. his one second cast when he wakes up in 7 secs.

Guilt - This skill gives you a simple way to spam your own 1-sec. corpse molesting spells without any competition. With up to 10 seconds or so of someone dying, you can put this on a Necro and it will stop the next offensive attack cast he uses. So if laid on him with, say 3-4 seconds of someone dying (corpse necros know when the time is near), you have a great chance that the next trigger will be a Death spell attempt. If he tries a Well, his cast will go all the way to 2.99 before failing. For 1-sec casts, it fails at .99, so your team again has the advantage of using the corpse for their own means.

Power Block - With this elite (useful in many other ways too), you target a necro who wants to use a spell when a death occurs and you interrupt it. The bonus is no Death spell casting at all from him for up to 16 seconds. Free corpses for your team during this entire period.

Be a MeNe - Mesmer Fast Cast abilities give you a better cast advantage than using Blood Stained Boots, and the class helps with almost all the examples below. Or simply let a Mesmer primary handle the corpse denial and a different Necro primary take advantage of the available corpses.

...and for non-Mesmers...

Ele Glyph of Sacrifice - Use it moments before a death occurs for it to work. Instant cast on the Well of your choice.

Hammer Warrior knock downs - Nothing more needs to be said.

Ranger Choking Gas - Doesn't have to be timed perfectly. Prep it as a death nears and spam an enemy Necro from targeting a corpse.

This may not be all the options, but certainly there's enough to work with for those who want an advantage in using corpses for their team's needs. If you want it bad enough, the skills are there for you.

And if the other team has two Death Necros when your team only has one denier? Well I guess they want the corpse even more than you do

. So next time, either double up your denial classes, or have the one you brought cast his anti-Necro spells on multiple targets (Guilt on one, Power Block the other). Maybe the Necro has anti-interrupt/knockdown/hex defenses on him? Counter strats to any of your counter strats exist, so determine which is the one you're most likely to face and be prepared to stop that tactic too... if you REALLY want that corpse bad enough.

Carinae · Sep 20, 2005, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Good Post.

Another good one for Ele's is Gale - Use it right before the target dies, and you have enough time to cast any Well.

arredondo · Sep 20, 2005, 08:42 PM // 20:42

I swear I had Gale in there before I counted up the results. I must've deleted the text somehow. The cool thing about Gale I explained is that it takes 1 second to cast and recharges in 5... just like Putrid. You can keep a Necro on his butt for as long as you need your Necro buddy to operate.

knives · Sep 20, 2005, 08:43 PM // 20:43

The trouble with a mesmer running a well is the energy. With the death of someone it is almost guaranteed that the necro will end up with enough energy for the well as a body drops. For a mesmer, I usually am at extremely low energy because of diversion spam, and that would make me put points into dom, fast cast, death, and inspiration to acquire the needed energy. My skillbar can't accomodate that much =/.

Even though I play a me/n consume + putrid for energy gain + a bit of damage.

arredondo · Sep 20, 2005, 08:52 PM // 20:52

You can't have it all, lol. Diversion spam will often keep your energy low regardless of your build. Choose Mantra of Recall as your elite as one way to keep the energy up, or use Power Drain to net 25E every 25 seconds (mixed with your other energy gainers). Even a Necro with good SR points can run out of energy with Diversion spam.

glockjs · Sep 20, 2005, 09:39 PM // 21:39

or you could just have one of your primary/secondary nec's bring Necrotic Traversal and avoid death magic all together

arredondo · Sep 20, 2005, 09:41 PM // 21:41

Indeed, and Consume Corpse also works for pure denial.

smurfhunter · Sep 20, 2005, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

Indeed, and Consume Corpse also works for pure denial.

pure denial is traversal. consume is both denial/energy management. actually one thing i might add - if you use consume and then manage to pull off traversal *before* you teleport, you take two corpses and brielfy apear at the first one. accomplished with the 20% casting speed item i think.

arredondo · Sep 20, 2005, 11:47 PM // 23:47

^^^^ Very nice. I never knew that about the double cast.

And for the record to those who don't know the specs, he's referring to NT's .25 cast advantage over Consume Corpse if you really want the fastest corpse spam spell. Both have no recharge so you can chain them if not stopped by the tactics I describe above.

smurfhunter · Sep 20, 2005, 11:52 PM // 23:52

oh and its incredibly deceptive with the .25 casting time, like yes you do 'claim' the corpse in .25 seconds but you cant use it 4 times in one second, you have to go thru the boring 'warp' procedure, which is where the double thing comes in.

Hanuman li Tosh · Sep 21, 2005, 02:07 AM // 02:07

putrid consume and traversal have the shortest casting times, use them.

arredondo · Sep 21, 2005, 03:03 AM // 03:03

No need to settle for speed spam when you want to use other slower spells like Wells. That's what this thread is about, giving a team options. BTW, Malign Intervention beats both of your spam attempts on the corpse (on an enemy corpse at least).

cookiehoarder · Sep 21, 2005, 10:53 AM // 10:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

pure denial is traversal. consume is both denial/energy management. actually one thing i might add - if you use consume and then manage to pull off traversal *before* you teleport, you take two corpses and brielfy apear at the first one. accomplished with the 20% casting speed item i think.

Consume>Traversal. Traversal has a delay in each teleport, Consume you can spam the button for a few more corpses while you're teleporting. The only problem with it is running out of energy before you can collect from the corpses

Shadow Devil · Sep 21, 2005, 05:43 PM // 17:43

A concussion shot/skull breaker can also shut a necro up for a while. Dazed last long, the spells will take 3x longer to cast and are easily interupted. Daze the necro before any corpses appear and when it does, that necro won't get it.

Zhou Feng · Sep 21, 2005, 05:46 PM // 17:46

Why is it people see something and cry to daddy ArenaNet to nerf it instead of finding ways and solutions to deal with it. The ONLY time I abide a nerf IS IF and ONLY IF no strategy can counter the situation. THEN a NERF is in need.

smurfhunter · Sep 21, 2005, 05:52 PM // 17:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by cookiehoarder

Consume>Traversal. Traversal has a delay in each teleport, Consume you can spam the button for a few more corpses while you're teleporting. The only problem with it is running out of energy before you can collect from the corpses

lol ya that is horribly annoying. you need to get lucky with the 20% for the double cast thing to work

and dazed is useless, conditions are removed all the time. its not worth the like 25 energy for concussion shot or the 8 adrenaline on skullcrack.

Keure · Sep 21, 2005, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zhou Feng

Why is it people see something and cry to daddy ArenaNet to nerf it instead of finding ways and solutions to deal with it. The ONLY time I abide a nerf IS IF and ONLY IF no strategy can counter the situation. THEN a NERF is in need.

Leech signet can counter basically everything.

Does that mean that every skill Leech Signet can counter isn't overpowered?

smurfhunter · Sep 21, 2005, 11:10 PM // 23:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keure

Leech signet can counter basically everything.

Does that mean that every skill Leech Signet can counter isn't overpowered?

heehee let me just say that ensign said that first ^^ (unless he stole it from someone else lol but i doubt that

)

Keure · Sep 21, 2005, 11:15 PM // 23:15

Meh, never took credit for saying it.

Still applies, though, to this line of reasoning.

*edit* Besides, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to independently come up with this anyway.

Shadow Devil · Sep 22, 2005, 06:06 AM // 06:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

and dazed is useless, conditions are removed all the time. its not worth the like 25 energy for concussion shot or the 8 adrenaline on skullcrack.

Dont underestimate the effect of dazed. Expertise will make CS only cost less than 15 energy, making it fairly spammable. Rangers are also know for stacking conditions on enemies, so when mend ailment or the like is used, it will remove the condition you put on top of dazed. Martyr/draw condition will only move the condition to the monk, so if the monk is targetted , it'll be harder for him to remove all the conditions he put on himself. Restore conditions and purge signet will always be pretty annoying though.