Curse

Arathorn5000 · Aug 30, 2005, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaylee Ann

ER + 3 enchantments will negate the damage, and not stop the smiter from smiting. Why waste an elite when you can bring rend, and stop atleast the spamming part.

Didn't even think about it, you're completely right...

Thanks for the link Scaphism

White Designs · Aug 31, 2005, 12:02 AM // 00:02

Hm..perhaps I should have worded my original statement slightly better: The most common form of Smiting (2 War/2 Emo) is just flavor of the month and is easy to counter.

One Mesmer can easily shut that down: Diversion on one of the targets and keep Rend on the other. Lingering Curse is also an option.

There will be certain variants that are more powerful. I don't particularly put much stock in the 8 monk smiter example since it was based on a one-time example and didn't offer much in the way of real information: skills used, etc., but the 3 War/3 Emo example is valid as a stronger team. However, innovations are different than the general trend. Air Spike, which was so popular, obviously had counters and wasn't overpowered, and was beat regularly, but certain groups did make nice innovations to it at times in order to win a few times. I am not saying Smiting is useless, but a definitely believe a team whose entire offense and support is Smiting to be easy to beat and counter.

Rend will definitely hurt any kind of smite team because without Zealot's Fire, damage is severely compromised. Running multiple copies of Drain Enchantment also works well and is an 'easy counter' since have that skill on your bar in order to counter Smiting doesn't hurt you otherwise, its a great skill in almost any situation.

Nightwish · Aug 31, 2005, 12:25 AM // 00:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by White Designs

One Mesmer can easily shut that down: Diversion on one of the targets and keep Rend on the other. Lingering Curse is also an option.
.

You can be sure that the mesmer's throat will be the 1st they going to lunge for the second the game started and probably hunted throughout the whole round

ElderAtronach · Aug 31, 2005, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

I have come across on a few occasions in hoh where their party was all Smiting Monks. All their dmg was smiting and they completely owned our group like there was no tommorow. They had killed 3 of our guys in less than 5 secs and that was just our warriors. Not even another 15 secs from that 3 more guys disapear from our party due to a large splash of smiting dmg. I know what skills they used since I was watching them but it can be done indubitibly. A metor shower and Meteor might have done its dmg to them if not killed 1 or 2 but if they caught you casting that spell your a dead man before you could get either one of those spells unless you caught them on the recharging of thier skills.

There are many counters now to the signet spikers/heal ball build. A poison/cyclone axe R/W shouting To the Limit and Fear Me constantly, under the effects of QZ, would rape all those monk's mana. Combine that with an E/Mo of your own (smiting off the R/W) and having your team designed to operate under QZ, would destroy an 8 monk team without much trouble. That R/W would own on the altar as well.

Another counter I've seen is arcane echo'd mark of pains and spiteful spirit. Combine with smiting of your own (again), and you can possibly break healing seed, though I suspect you'd need energy denial options and multiple rends to break the seed ball.

Also I've played in a group with a practiced stance/choking gas ranger, and let me tell you, it's real funny hearing all those clicks when the bunched-up monks try to cast heal area or seed.

White Designs · Aug 31, 2005, 12:34 AM // 00:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightwish

You can be sure that the mesmer's throat will be the 1st they going to lunge for the second the game started and probably hunted throughout the whole round

Then they aren't very good, since a good Smiting team knows to go after whoever is bunched up the most. If the Zealot's Fire/Balthazar's is only hitting one target, it is rather lackluster damage. And unless your own team is very bad, the Mesmer can easily cast Rend/Lingering/Diversion before dropping.

Ensign · Aug 31, 2005, 01:01 AM // 01:01

I similarly do not know where 'smiting is easily countered' attitude came from, because it's a load of crap, to be blunt.

Smiting is popular because it is lethal. That cannot be understated enough - if you do not keep their smiters shut down they will run right over you. You simply cannot stand next to a target getting active smites, and running doesn't help as much as it needs to because it's a moving AoE.

Can it be shut down? Sure, but it's non-trivial. Smiters ignore most forms of shutdown, from hex stacking to energy denial. You need specific counters. The most common and talked about one is Diversion, but just tossing Diversion on a smiter isn't going to do much. You need to *spam* Diversion. There's a lot of chaff being cast (Aura of Restoration, Smite Hex, Aegis, Wards, whatever), and there are two spammables that you need to hit to turn off the Zealot's Fire. Even then you still have Balthazar's Aura to deal with, plus whatever defensive options they're running. Basically the smiter needs to have Diversion on him at all times or he simply will not care about you.

Rend is another decent solution, though it has to be used like clockwork. Pulling off Zealot's Fire will shut down Draw / RoF for a while. Though, again, you still will have Balth's Aura flying around, as well as whatever defensive options they're running. It's also an incomplete solution, because as soon as they get a fast recharge on Zealot's Fire they're going to have a good 15 seconds of undisrupted smiting to rip your team apart with.

Seed is also a nice partial solution for as long as it lasts, since it'll mitigate a good chunk of the damage in an AoE. Of course you're still vulnerable to strips and target switching and all that so this is a temporary fix at best.

After that you have some decent options like Blackout, but those are standard 1 for 1 trades that I'm usually happy to make.

So in a typical matchup you're going to see a smiter, and shutting him down is going to be your #1 priority. Usually you'll have a Mesmer that you normally put on the Monks and he's going to be pulled off to stop the smiter. No biggie. The problem then is what do you do if they have *two* smiters? Or, heaven forbid, three? It isn't like standard hate is going to work on them. Practically, multiple smiters run right over the hate that you brought to fight them, and remember what I said eariler? An unstopped smiter is going to smash your team. It's non-trivial to bring the hate to shut down a smiting team and still have enough of a build left to put up a good fight against everything else.

Which is why smiters are here, why they're so popular, and how you'd better get ready to fight multiples every round because otherwise you're just preparing to be roadkill.

Peace,
-CxE

Red Locust · Aug 31, 2005, 01:10 AM // 01:10

On the bright side, smiter teams are very predictable and very common. You can bring the proper countermeasures and be sure that most of the time they will work, since all smite teams run on the same principle and often the same build.

Kaylee Ann · Aug 31, 2005, 01:13 AM // 01:13

N/m, Ensign wrapped up what I wanted to say. Anyone who thinks shutting down a "good" smiting team is easy is naive.

smurfhunter · Aug 31, 2005, 01:17 AM // 01:17

as an emo in one of those common 2 warrior/2 emo builds heres what i know from experience:

if your ER is interupted, byebye. you cant do anything. if that happens i usually start crying *or* go after the ghostly hero, since that recharges sig/ER. ofcourse you dont want to do that in the beginning of a fight but you do towards the end.

diversion - meh its not *that* bad. at least not as bad as interupting ER when you have low energy. although it is incredibly annoying. one diversion wont do anything. its a sustained diversion that hurts. oh and the meanest combo is blackout with diversion right as it ends. you always use a skill once you can and i always get caught that way. which reminds me, blackout doesnt really do much but give you an opportunity to use diversion right after.

backfire - does nothing. really nothing. you use smite hex and spam for the aura to get you back up. or you can smite hex then put ER up and laugh it away.
(problem is when they use backfire and then bury it with other hexes - then it starts to hurt)

and yea it happens that the teams bring alot of mesmers and shut me down - trouble is they usually dont bring counters to thewarriors then. and the opposite is true - they shut down the warriors, we just smite with emos.

in most cases, when i lost, it was because they dropped a monk repeatedly (everyone reses so once isnt gonna do much). then the parties defense starts to go down and pretty soon we all die. otoh, when i was ganged first, we usually won quick. i just use BA on myself and let the monks handle it.

the biggest problem was when one of the mesmers was nasty enough to keep two targets - me and a monk. he would black me out, and stack me with backfire - diversion then get to work on a monk, while i had to wait like __ seconds, then back to me, etc. that usually made me and the monks drop at the same time leaving us with just about... no offense/defense. ouch.

so overall - we did best as a smite team. yes its counterable, but you rarely see one of those ouch mesmers that double teams alot. we usually did a flawless or we got owned. btw lingering was funny... it did just about nothing. without buffering it i just use smite hex and put up my enchants again. without something more ouchy like diversion it really doesnt hurt. overall, i think well of profane is better because you tend to chase your warriors and, its hella annoying to find out if thats your well or the others.

so, take what you want from it but thats what happened to me

*edit
wow while i typed ensign answered. lol. i agree with everything he said except taking out the smiters first because we have two usually - but then he mentions that too. and then, we didnt *smash* the other team always when they got to work on the monks. i mean competent healing + snares screwed our smites up too, and when we lost the monks it started to go downhill from there. if they dropped a monk more than once it usually turned into a res battle - with us winning when there was a priest(sometimes only with the priest)/res orb and losing in those godawful relic runs/scarred earth maps.

btw i played this for like 4 hours (>.<) so plz dont challenge what actually happened but my interpertations of them. just a heads up

smurfhunter · Aug 31, 2005, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

On the bright side, smiter teams are very predictable and very common. You can bring the proper countermeasures and be sure that most of the time they will work, since all smite teams run on the same principle and often the same build.

heehee what is that proper countermeasure to > 1 smiter? thats the big question ysee

Phades · Aug 31, 2005, 02:08 AM // 02:08

AOE shielding hands would be the intuitive response, but that doesnt exist atm. You can try to prepare for some aspects of it like holding measures like wards for AL versus attacks or warrior hate, but nothing will really stop the 2-3 copies of balthazar's aura punching straight through that and possibly hitting more than one target. Fertile doesnt do anything really, but prolong the fight in this instance, as it is sustained damage. Chillblains and lingering curse can keep up with the application of balthazar's aura, but only chillblains could be used to wipe out the immediate application of the skill, but it would get countered by staggered skill useage. Signet of humility to knock out the energy recharge would create downtime, while using copied blackout on a second target would be reasonably effective, if the mesmer or mesmer combination stayed alive to do so. It would probably require alternating casts of mark of protection to pull off initally. Copied gale for a third smiter would work as well or possibly a hammer warrior, for a limited time, but your team would still have to manage to kill their monks without dying in the process.

Then of course there are the obvious manuvers to hurt people asleep at the wheel via choking gas, concussion effect, malestorm, and meteor shower.

smurfhunter · Aug 31, 2005, 02:36 AM // 02:36

i think gw staff know how important shielding hands is, look at the recharge it has compared to all the other 5 energy prot skills. i think they put that in place to stop it from being over powered. aoe shielding hands would be... broken. really.

Vermilion Okeanos · Aug 31, 2005, 03:24 AM // 03:24

Sure is a long list... perhaps I hit a jackpot? Because the team I faced 3 times in a row were all 70-90% armor ignoring damage (even a necro with dark aura + touch of agony + bal aura etc).

They all out damaged our healing ball.

We had all ward, alot of spike (to take out smiter in 1 call coordination)... and heal area/heal party/ healing seed... although healing party is rarely used (just can't keep up, pratically a filler... but it was one of the left over multi heal we can take).

Yes occassionally we did get hit by zealot of fire... but ward against harm neutralized that (+66 armor vs fire for 22 sec). So, the in the end... 70-90% of the damage were indeed armor ignoring (melee? what melee? they don't hurt jack).

What is funny is that, I am surprise for once that healing just can't keep up... this healing ball was suppose to go to HoH, but we realize that just at front 1vs1... we can't out heal the smiting.

Anyway, enough of the past... Personally I still believe +5 def is nice... but I also believe that it is not as nice as before. Then again, depend on your build almost always.

Grigori Sokolov · Aug 31, 2005, 04:28 AM // 04:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scaphism

Holy damage does not ignore armor. Some smiting spells do. Zealot's Fire is not one of them.

Holy Damage is one of the three that ignore armor.

Zealot's Fire is not holy damage, it is fire damage.

All "Holy Damage" (not "Fire Damage") ignores armor completely.

Pharalon · Aug 31, 2005, 05:11 AM // 05:11

No damage type inherently ignores armor. Only some skills ignore armor.

Vermilion Okeanos · Aug 31, 2005, 06:06 AM // 06:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grigori Sokolov

Holy Damage is one of the three that ignore armor.

Zealot's Fire is not holy damage, it is fire damage.

All "Holy Damage" (not "Fire Damage") ignores armor completely.

example: judge's insight = not armor ignoring

Scaphism · Aug 31, 2005, 06:12 AM // 06:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grigori Sokolov

Holy Damage is one of the three that ignore armor.

Zealot's Fire is not holy damage, it is fire damage.

All "Holy Damage" (not "Fire Damage") ignores armor completely.

Someone didn't follow the links and thinks he knows more than he does.

smurfhunter · Aug 31, 2005, 07:48 AM // 07:48

...but has anyone ever seen BA get weakened from anything other than a life bond? (prot spirit would have to mean the target had like 220 health... = weird at best)

i think thats what people mean when they say it 'ignores armor', while something like meteor shower is weakened if you wear the right armor.

idk im just sayin

Kaylee Ann · Aug 31, 2005, 07:54 AM // 07:54

Life barrier wtfpwns BA.

smurfhunter · Aug 31, 2005, 08:02 AM // 08:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaylee Ann

Life barrier wtfpwns BA.

lol life barrier is like the same as life bond.. only an elite. ive barely ever taken damage from it, and you definetly wont from BA. haha i even tried using both once lol