Curse

Phades · Aug 31, 2005, 01:42 PM // 13:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

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.

No more broken than skills that ignore armor level or skills that fractionalize imbound damage. Like ageis, it wouldnt be a 5 energy skill if it did exist.

The Red Knight · Aug 31, 2005, 02:20 PM // 14:20

I dunno I was playing with a friend of mine last night we seemed to rape e/mo smiters with esurge and e burn. Its just the FOTM =/

Kaylee Ann · Aug 31, 2005, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

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

There is a pretty big difference between life bond and life barrier. You might want to reread and test both before you start making claims....

Mithie · Aug 31, 2005, 03:14 PM // 15:14

One counter that works well to a limited degree (Read: 50-50) is greater conflag + winter + spinal shivers on the elmos, then spam whatever you can at them. FC Mes with stone daggers works

smurfhunter · Aug 31, 2005, 03:32 PM // 15:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaylee Ann

There is a pretty big difference between life bond and life barrier. You might want to reread and test both before you start making claims....

ok heres the skills as copied directly from the gwguru website:
Life Bond:
While you maintain this enchantment, whenever target other ally takes damage from an attack, half the damage is redirected to you. The damage you receive this way is reduced 3-25 points.

Life Barrier
While you maintain this "Enchantment", damage to target other ally is halved. If your health is below 70~46% when that ally takes damage, Life Barrier ends.

in BOTH the target of the life barrier/bond takes *half damage* from all sources. (i *think* its all sources). in life BOND you take half the damage -25, in life barrier you dont, only it ends if your hp is < 46%.

my point was that both do the same thing, halve the damage taken from all sources. however, especially in the case of BA and zealots (smiting), BA (at 12 smiting) would do 22 damage, so 11 would be redirected to you with life bond, doing a grand total of 11 - 25 or 0 damage to you. life barrier would do the exact same thing. (even zealots at 37 damage at 12 smiting wont hurt you). thats how i reached my conclusion that in a smite build setting, life barrier is a waste of an elite.

Kaylee Ann · Aug 31, 2005, 03:46 PM // 15:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

ok heres the skills as copied directly from the gwguru website:
Life Bond:
While you maintain this enchantment, whenever target other ally takes damage from an attack, half the damage is redirected to you. The damage you receive this way is reduced 3-25 points.

You missed one key concept that life bond has.

Icuradik2 · Aug 31, 2005, 03:48 PM // 15:48

Life bond is only physical/wands I believe... Barrier is all damage. Barrier+Aegis is awesome combo imo to stop smiting and chillblain's.

About E/Mo's, they really are counterable, and for that reason we only run one, with a monk casting spell breaker on him. So funny to run into teams with a couple mesmers and have them just stand there practically useless.

Caldur · Aug 31, 2005, 09:55 PM // 21:55

How about a mesmer with echo, signet of humility and mantra of inscriptions? Can more than halve two enemy smiter's effectiveness, (ie no ether renewal) and still has 5 skills left to annoy monks or a third smiter. Would also be ok against non smiting teams, although not brilliant. Maybe take signet of weariness too, and echo that instead against non smite, or one smite teams.

Pharalon · Aug 31, 2005, 10:49 PM // 22:49

Signet of humilty doesn't do much against long recharge elites. They only need the skill to be active for one second out of 30 to be fully effective. Even if you time it perfectly, you're just bumping the recharge from 30 to 40 seconds, and more often than not, you'll just hit the skill while it's recharging. There's better targets to use Signet of Humility on.

smurfhunter · Aug 31, 2005, 11:08 PM // 23:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icuradik2

Life bond is only physical/wands I believe... Barrier is all damage. Barrier+Aegis is awesome combo imo to stop smiting and chillblain's.

About E/Mo's, they really are counterable, and for that reason we only run one, with a monk casting spell breaker on him. So funny to run into teams with a couple mesmers and have them just stand there practically useless.

are you totally sure about that? ive seen my BA hit for 11 damage sometimes.. but then it was probably life barrier. lol.

oh and i remember back in the old spike team days we would use life bond and it helped against a spike... its not physical damage tho >.<

maybe i just rememberd it wrong. w/e thanks for telling me

Mitsu Bishi · Aug 31, 2005, 11:29 PM // 23:29

Well, Life Bond seems to be on "attacks" which also seems to be anything targetting the player. Whereas smiting doesn't target a player and therefore is not cut in half.

Xylaphone · Sep 01, 2005, 12:47 AM // 00:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

are you totally sure about that? ive seen my BA hit for 11 damage sometimes.. but then it was probably life barrier. lol.

oh and i remember back in the old spike team days we would use life bond and it helped against a spike... its not physical damage tho >.<

maybe i just rememberd it wrong. w/e thanks for telling me

Yea, I thought that's how it worked at first... But our team kept dying to spike still(this was first month or so of GW). We realized rather quickly there must be some reason Life Barrier was in the game. I still think Life Bond's are amazing against melee. With the low energy cost, and quick recharge, it is important to cast them actively/cancel them, and not use it on every member.

Grigori Sokolov · Sep 01, 2005, 01:22 AM // 01:22

Ok, in correction to my above post:

There is a skill that deals holy damage without ignoring armor, due to the circumstances of the skill: Judge's. There, you happy?

Chaos, Holy, and Dark damage ignore armor under usual circumstances. Read the strategy guide.

Rossaroni · Sep 01, 2005, 01:28 AM // 01:28

Two warriors with chilbains, run energizing wind, add a mesmer, bam, no more enchantments. You think a smiter's gonna be able to recover after losing 2 enchantments, getting diversioned, then losing another enchantment or two?

Drain Enchantment on monks sounded like a great idea. I believe it was one of the iQ guys? *steals*

smurfhunter · Sep 01, 2005, 02:31 AM // 02:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rossaroni

Two warriors with chilbains, run energizing wind, add a mesmer, bam, no more enchantments. You think a smiter's gonna be able to recover after losing 2 enchantments, getting diversioned, then losing another enchantment or two?

Drain Enchantment on monks sounded like a great idea. I believe it was one of the iQ guys? *steals*

speaking of chillblains, it was amazingly fun to have our mesmer use consume corpse as soon as someone died and then use chillblains right as soon as he warped

that was fun....

and, well, what we did if any of our players got irreversibly screwed by diversion was go after the ghostly. usually worked out pretty good ^^

Phades · Sep 01, 2005, 03:36 AM // 03:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pharalon

Signet of humilty doesn't do much against long recharge elites. They only need the skill to be active for one second out of 30 to be fully effective. Even if you time it perfectly, you're just bumping the recharge from 30 to 40 seconds, and more often than not, you'll just hit the skill while it's recharging. There's better targets to use Signet of Humility on.

Yeah, by its self it wouldnt really accomplish anything. As far as the energy angle is concerned it would open a window for forms of E-denial to work opposed to the renewal just overpowering them.

Caldur · Sep 01, 2005, 12:21 PM // 12:21

With inspiration at 15, mantra of inscriptions gives ~50% faster recharge time to signets. Signet of humility is 20 second recharge time, and at 15 inspiration lasts for 16 seconds. Ignoring echo for the moment, this means you can keep one target from ever using ether renewal, and you have a 6 second error period - ie you only have to recast SoH within 6 seconds of it recharging. With a 2 second cast time, it could be difficult depending on positioning, but its easily doable.

By stopping one el/mo from using ether renewal permanently, you effectively stop the el/mo from regaining 75 energy (assuming max energy of 90) every 30 seconds, or 150 energy every 60. Name any other skill which will be able to deny an opponent 150 energy every minute? Thats the same as stopping the smiter from dealing

2*220 (balths aura - could cast it more than twice in a minute, but usually cast while ether renewal is on) + 37*20 (zealots fire triggered 20 times to make up the rest of the energy)
=1180 dmg every minute, assuming that the warrior the smiter is working on, is only in range of 1 target. The fact that the warrior is likely to be in range of at least 2 targets for much of the minute hopefully makes up for the errors in my dmg calculations ^^

Now throw in echo. You gain another sig of humility for 20 seconds every 30 seconds. So... you cast it on another smiter, preventing his ether renewal for 16 seconds, it then recharges in 10 seconds. Now comes the hard timing bit -you would need to cast the echoed sig of humility 4 seconds after it recharges - there is a risk if you are a second too late the first sig of humility will have worn off before it takes effect, but the el/mo might not have enough energy or realise in time to cast ether renewal right away. This is possible, but there would have to be a small gap in while the echo is recast + the real sig is recast.

So, although you wouldn't be able to shut down 2 smiters permanently, you could easily shut down one's ether renewal, and the others ER for 32 seconds - so they will only be able to use it half as often as long as you wait for 15 seconds or so before starting the sig of humility chain on the second smiter. Even shutting down just one with sig of humility should have a major effect on the oppositions damage (assuming my calculations above are correct).

Zeru · Sep 01, 2005, 03:24 PM // 15:24

What you can do, is use SoH/MI and proceed to drain that one. As smiters have no way to regain energy effectively besides focus swapping or ER they will have very limited durability.

Since MI/Soh is really cheap and energy denial with mes pays for itself, you can proceed to diversion spam the second elmo (needs to be spammed, many spells must be locked).

There, 1 mes locks down 2 smiters. It's not easy but it's doable.

Scaphism · Sep 01, 2005, 05:08 PM // 17:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grigori Sokolov

Ok, in correction to my above post:

There is a skill that deals holy damage without ignoring armor, due to the circumstances of the skill: Judge's. There, you happy?

Chaos, Holy, and Dark damage ignore armor under usual circumstances. Read the strategy guide.

Not happy.
I helped write the guide for this site by testing effects in-game and consulting other testers with an extensive knowledge of the game. A little skepticism is healthy- in fact, the in-game descriptions are horribly misleading. That's why we went and tested these things for ourselves in the first place.

Damage types do not ignore armor- some skills do. Damage types are just that- types.
Don't believe me? Pick up a mesmer staff or necromancer cane, test it, and come back.

Arathorn5000 · Sep 01, 2005, 05:15 PM // 17:15

but does balth's aura ignore armor?