Curse

Neo-LD · Aug 17, 2005, 11:52 AM // 11:52

You missed the point. If it takes a ranger 7 seconds to charge an energy attack, he is hardly spamming. You guys were suggesting firing IB on every other (some people suggested every!

) attack. Cutting that down to once per 7 seconds? So much for spamming....

I say this once again, the thing that becomes the deciding factor is innate damage and adrenal skills. In both categories the warrior boasts a clear advantage.

ICURADik · Aug 17, 2005, 11:57 AM // 11:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

You missed the point. If it takes a ranger 7 seconds to charge an energy attack, he is hardly spamming. You guys were suggesting firing IB on every other (some people suggested every!

) attack. Cutting that down to once per 7 seconds? So much for spamming....

I say this once again, the thing that becomes the deciding factor is innate damage and adrenal skills. In both categories the warrior boasts a clear advantage.

Thats a 10 energy skill...lol.

If the R/W is having so much toruble then how do you ever expect the Warrior to use JI, or FGj, or Warrior's Cunning, or Frenzy?

Ubiquitous · Aug 17, 2005, 12:06 PM // 12:06

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4: Breaking through environments unfavourable to melee attackers cannot be done for long periods of time, which makes the "sustainability" of efficient melee attackers (like a Hammer R/Ws) irrelevant.

5: If you want sustainable, efficient DPS, there are better choices (bow rangers) than Hammer using R/Ws.

You still have failed to acknowledge that a R/W hammer isn't solely about sustained DPS. It also adds knockdowns and stance breakers into the mix, which increases the ability for it to do sustained damage, but ALSO has disruption.

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Standard metagame of 3 monks calls for 3 disrupting characters. Unless OpFor brought secondary monks specifically outfitted to be able to cast Protective Spirit and Shielding Hands (happens sometimes), you do not worry about it. Why? I already explained on previous pages, but I guess will have to do it again:

The reason there are 3 disruptors (W/X, R/X or Mes/X) for each of the 3 OpFor Monks is because you are attempting to disrupt the sources of Protective Spirit/S-hands casting.
This requires coordination. Drop NR. Hit all 3 monks simultaneously. If you gambled right and there are no other sources of prot-spirit or Aegis, you'll have 3 death monks in a few seconds. You can't escape Warrior primary knock lock no more than you can escape Choking Gas from interrupting even your 1/4 second spells.

NR kills your judges. It also makes your JI take 2 seconds to cast - which makes the window at least one second longer. QZ in the game, which is usually is with NR also makes your judges cost 13, which if you've been drained any time in the past minutes means you can't cast your judges. Additionally, if the other team throws down THEIR NR while you're doing this (it's on a ranger, which means your team effort here has no effect), then your damage just took a serious hit without even requiring the monks to respond (plus it took out your rigor, as well...which means the WaM just beat you). Anyway, there is almost no team I've ever seen that can COMPLETELY shut down the monks. They can keep them from being nearly as effective, but it only takes a 3/4 second cast to render your knockdown spike irrelevant (swap in a focus, Heal Other, swap out is simple enough). In that particular environment of disruption/energy denial/NR, I'd much rather have a build that puts sustained pressure on them that eventually overloads the monks' ability to heal. With the warrior, you're betting everything on a long shot. With the R/W, you're playing the longer, more certain game.

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Important: the warriors need co-ordinate with the 'spirit machine' to time their casting of JI to finish after NR drops, or they lose it.
If you can't pull this off, you'll lose quite a bit of damage potential on the spike. For a team without the proper co-ordination, it's better not to use JI on the warriors themselves, but to have it come from an external source (for us a Necro/Monk).

A necro/monk would arguably be the one casting rigor as well, correct? Are you going to have to wait for both of those from the same source under NR? If so, you've left even more time for your damage train to get disrupted.

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Yeah, sometimes your warriors get drained. It doesn't matter. The extra knockdown duration on a Warrior primary ensures knock lock even *without* Frenzy.

The knockdown isn't the issue. The issue is if your hits come quickly enough so that the monks don't have time to throw up a RoF, Prot Spirit, or Heal Other. If any of those happened, your warrior looks like a bunch of wasted space.

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Rigour Mortis is for targets inside wards, since those cannot be removed by Nature's. You cover it right away with other hexes, so no Mesmer with singular enchant removal can get it off. There is usually nobody to remove the hex as the very same people capable of it are being disrupted. And yes, sometimes we do meet teams with monk secondaries packing convert hexes, which does screw us. Nothing is uncounterable though.

Again, any team with NR is immune to your hex removal "disruption". Rigor also takes longer to cast with NR down, which increases the likelihood that it will get NR'ed.

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As I kept saying since page 5. The window of opportunity for the Hammer Warrior to knock lock a target is very small, and requires coordination. You can see it from all the steps I detailed that need to be taken.

Yes, but you exacerbate the time problems by trying to have JI and Rigor cast UNDER a NR. Even if you time the JI perfectly and have it go off just after NR drops, you've still got another hex to throw up there, which means you're working through a counter that's already done to what you're doing. Additionally, hex breaker, inspired hex, purge signet (and that one doesn't even require energy - so your denial is useless in the fact of that)...all of these things and more completely destroy your ability to execute your damage train. Single shot counters don't exist to the sustained damage of the R/W.

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Such conditions cannot be sustained beyond those few seconds, though. Too many counters. Sustainable melee isn't useful for this very reason. If the melee attacker can't kill a target during the very first knock lock adrenaline chain, which R/W cannot, then there's no use for such a character in the build. We *need* the assigned target to die. That monk cannot be allowed to get up and cover himself with Prot Spirit.

Sustained damage + disruption is a very viable strategy. If I didn't have the empirical evidence, I wouldn't be bothering to have this conversation. Needing the target to die in 6 seconds places too high a margin of error on the build, and against good teams, even if your coordination is perfect, you likely won't be able to do it more than once. Certainly once they realize what you're doing, it gets shut down, since one-shot counters close off the crux of your team's damage potential.

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I thought I was being pretty clear when I said "I don't really see us using Hammer builds again anytime soon". Why are we talking about countering my warrior? The "fear of being countered" comment was about the new (to us) combination of strategies that we developed last night. It has nothing to do with my Hammer Warrior. It's common knowledge how to counter a melee attacker. It's far less simple to counter a team build that you aren't prepared for in advance.

Which only goes to show why your reticence to post the hammer build made no sense in the previous posts.

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Did I really have to post this? Aren't 50,000 other people running the same build? So why didn't I post it earlier, you ask? Because there is no point. The people advocating hammer R/Ws in this thread are looking for sustainability. Which a Hammer W/X cannot provide. Ofcourse R/W beats W/X for sustainability. But that's not what one uses a Hammer Warrior for. You use the Warrior primary for knock lock. Nothing else matters. And if you aren't using a warrior for that purpose, why didn't you bring a bow ranger instead?

Sustained damage and knockdowns is pretty bloody useful. If you concede that the R/W CLEARLY is better for sustainability, it's getting the best of both worlds (particularly given that energy skills can functionally be spammed), since you get good sustained DPS, and lots of knockdowns. Why isn't that clear by now?

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The primary conflict comes from the idea that warriors, either primary or secondary are supposedly good sources of sustained damage. And I keep trying to explain for 5 pages that with all the counters out there for melee attackers, the last thing you want to bring for sustainable DPS is a Hammer Ranger/Warrior. You don't want melee attackers at all.

The only good use for melee attackers in current PvP metagame, is knock lock (which for the simple lack of Stonefist Gauntlets a R/W cannot provide). That's it. Everything else another, less easily countered class (bow ranger) can do significantly better.

I disagree. The R/W has better sustained disruption+damage in a heavy energy denial & enchant/hex removal environment, in my opinion. Your warrior requires an enchant, a hex, and extreme coordination to be effective. Our R/W requires none of those to do their job. If it were straight disruption or straight damage, yes, the R/W would not be the superior option. But it's not, and all your arguments to the contrary just show that you're still not discussing the same thing I've been discussing.

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Perhaps this time the point will get through. If not, I give up. And the hammer R/W admiration society can keep on posting ...

And perhaps you will realize that your answers above don't respond to the points I've been making. Or perhaps not. And you'll undoubtedly "un give up" again and post more of the same without taking the time to actually answer my arguments.

Ubi

Ubiquitous · Aug 17, 2005, 12:16 PM // 12:16

IB has a 2 second recharge time under QZ. It is quite spammable for a ranger. Additionally your claims about energy denial make much less sense for a ranger, because expertise reduces the energy cost, making it prohibitive for an energy denier to keep them from executing 2-3 energy skills as often as 2-3 energy recharges. Additionally, rangers have the extra pip of regen advantage over the warriors, which means they get enough energy for one every 2-3 seconds, whereas the warrior gets 7 energy for it every 10 seconds or so. Surely the difference is very clear by now.

It's easy to keep a warrior down low enough not to be able to use JI when NR is up. 13 energy when a warrior is zeroed takes almost 20 seconds to regen - that's an eternity to wait for your train to start.

Ubi

Neo-LD · Aug 17, 2005, 12:32 PM // 12:32

But you still acknowledge though that losing 16 energy is losing 8 irresistable blows? Good at least some of what I said sunk in.

After a ranger is zeroed, sure a R/W recovers faster than a warrior. But still he is spamming IB far less and cant use TF. The difference between War and R/W has alwaysbeen innate damage + adrenal skills vs energy skills. Now that the R/W can spam those energy skils far less.... its a good thing? Well, it is for my argument.

Kabale · Aug 17, 2005, 02:38 PM // 14:38

Well...amidst all this I'll say I accidentaly made my new char r/wa and am deleting her straight away xD

JackOften · Aug 17, 2005, 05:29 PM // 17:29

Test on crithits with Eviscerate on AL approx 60 (moving character in random arenas, same person both times, rended first)

92 at str 0
100 at str 12

14 axe for both hits.

I guess that should be straightforward enough, even though I've said things to similar effect several times and laid out the math for it

Epinephrine · Aug 17, 2005, 05:35 PM // 17:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

But you still acknowledge though that losing 16 energy is losing 8 irresistable blows? Good at least some of what I said sunk in.

I really don't get why you think that this is bad for a ranger. Their skills cost less - that's a purely good thing. There is no bad side to having cheaper skills. If I came up with a 3 energy Orison that did the same job as the original you wouldn't use it because if someone drained 15 energy you'd lose out on 5 of the new one and only 3 of the old one? That's just dumb. Cheaper is not a disadvantage, no matter how you try to twist it.

JackOften · Aug 17, 2005, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epinephrine

If I came up with a 3 energy Orison that did the same job as the original you wouldn't use it because if someone drained 15 energy you'd lose out on 5 of the new one and only 3 of the old one? That's just dumb.

Welcome to the internet. A skill every 3 seconds is obviously inferior to a skill every 7.5 seconds. Duh you!

MuKen · Aug 17, 2005, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epinephrine

I really don't get why you think that this is bad for a ranger. Their skills cost less - that's a purely good thing. There is no bad side to having cheaper skills. If I came up with a 3 energy Orison that did the same job as the original you wouldn't use it because if someone drained 15 energy you'd lose out on 5 of the new one and only 3 of the old one? That's just dumb. Cheaper is not a disadvantage, no matter how you try to twist it.

Not that I'm taking sides in the general debate, but I think his point was that energy skills in general are of lesser value than the innate damage damage a Ranger sacrifices to get them. His point was not that cheaper energy skills are bad, only that they are not good enough to merit the cost of getting them.

JackOften · Aug 17, 2005, 05:41 PM // 17:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by MuKen

Not that I'm taking sides in the general debate, but I think his point was that energy skills in general are of lesser value than the innate damage damage a Ranger sacrifices to get them. His point was not that cheaper energy skills are bad, only that they are not good enough to merit the cost of getting them.

Might as well keep hitting on this. Its an approximately 8% damage increase (while using an attack skill) for 12 in an attribute - heck you might break 10% wiht 16, versus 50% faster skills for 9 in an attribute.

Dude, that is such a tough choice.

Mhydrian · Aug 17, 2005, 05:43 PM // 17:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

I think the main point they area missing, and will refuse to admit (ever) is that while a R/W has some advantage in terms of longetivity with QZ down, it doesnt matter because if you were going for longetivity you would go for a bow ranger or axe warrior instead. The gap between them is huge, not anything that a rangers wimpy non-stonefist-knocklock could ever make up for.

Also, they make points against a warrior but fail to mention how the same tactics affect a R/W. Take energy drain. Yes this is seriously damaging to a warrior. But a ranger loses the same amount of energy. Except, that for a warrior a 16 energy loss is equivilent to loses 3 Iresisatble blows. For a ranger, it is like losing 8 irresistable blows. Against a smart team a R/W will be drained as with as much priority as a warrior is. With energy attacks pretty much out of the picture (you will get a few in but not even half to how many you were using before) the ultimate deciding factor is innate damage and adrenal skills. Who has better innate damage? Who has better adrenal attacks?

Right.

Only a fool energy drains a ranger. I run with expertise at 14, 2 energy buys me a 5 enegery skill and 4 for a 10 energy skill. Draining a ranger with such low skill costs, is stupid, he will get the energy he needs for skills in between cast times for gods sake. And a ranger warrior is even worse because they use ardrenaline skills. Anyone energy draining a ranger/warrior should just stop PVPing.

Neo-LD · Aug 17, 2005, 06:02 PM // 18:02

I am NOT saying it is a disadvantage to have cheaper skills. What I am saying is that if a ranger is at 16 energy and gets drained (to 0) , he just lost most of his ability to capitalize on his strength- his IB spam. He just lost 8 IBs, which (correct me if Im wrong) is a bad thing. Getting zeroed cuts his IB spam nearly in half with QZ up. The R/W was already struggling to keep up with a war even when he WAS spamming IB left and right, and now he can only use it half as much? Correct me if Im wrong, but losing all your energy is FAR worse for a R/W than for a war.

Also, to those who say "dont drain a ranger its pointless", thats bull. A ranger left alone can go almost forever without running dry of energy. Zeroing him once and then moving on cuts his effectiveness significantly for the entire fight. "Only a fool" would stay and babysit a ranger to constantly 0 energy, because its very easy for them to regenerate 2 or 4 energy for a 5 or 10 energy skill.

Neo-LD · Aug 17, 2005, 06:05 PM // 18:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by JackOften

Might as well keep hitting on this. Its an approximately 8% damage increase (while using an attack skill) for 12 in an attribute - heck you might break 10% wiht 16, versus 50% faster skills for 9 in an attribute.

Dude, that is such a tough choice.

A weapon deals 100% damage at 12. It deals 115% damage at 16. ALL warriors should have 16 in their attribute. And warriors attack just as quickly using frenzy, while investing NO points in beastmastery.

Tuna · Aug 17, 2005, 08:11 PM // 20:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by JackOften

Test on crithits with Eviscerate on AL approx 60 (moving character in random arenas, same person both times, rended first)

92 at str 0
100 at str 12

14 axe for both hits.

God help us all if you ever go into science or engineering. You did 2 tests with a weapon that has a range of 6-28. Regardless of strength you are going to get drastically different numbers. If you want to do a proper test you would have to do more like 100 hits each in an controled environment.

Arri · Aug 17, 2005, 08:20 PM // 20:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

I am NOT saying it is a disadvantage to have cheaper skills. What I am saying is that if a ranger is at 16 energy and gets drained (to 0) , he just lost most of his ability to capitalize on his strength- his IB spam. He just lost 8 IBs, which (correct me if Im wrong) is a bad thing. Getting zeroed cuts his IB spam nearly in half with QZ up. The R/W was already struggling to keep up with a war even when he WAS spamming IB left and right, and now he can only use it half as much? Correct me if Im wrong, but losing all your energy is FAR worse for a R/W than for a war.

Also, to those who say "dont drain a ranger its pointless", thats bull. A ranger left alone can go almost forever without running dry of energy. Zeroing him once and then moving on cuts his effectiveness significantly for the entire fight. "Only a fool" would stay and babysit a ranger to constantly 0 energy, because its very easy for them to regenerate 2 or 4 energy for a 5 or 10 energy skill.

Neo, why do you insist to argue with everyone?

Aug 17, 2005, 08:35 PM // 20:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tuna

God help us all if you ever go into science or engineering. You did 2 tests with a weapon that has a range of 6-28. Regardless of strength you are going to get drastically different numbers. If you want to do a proper test you would have to do more like 100 hits each in an controled environment.

So true. He needed to have a table spanning a long list of data points to be able to draw conclusions. And it's a 6-28 weapon, he should have known better :/

Neo-LD · Aug 17, 2005, 09:20 PM // 21:20

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Originally Posted by Arri

Neo, why do you insist to argue with everyone?

You suggest that I not participate in my own thread? That I merely spectate as ideas that I disagree with are posted in opposition to mine? Sorry, but I dont see why...

I will say that this thread has lightened my point of view from

"R/W are totally useless they suck and cant do anything"

to more like

"They are ok for some things but honestly if you want to do this that you should play this other class combo"

So its not like Ive overconvinced myself to the point of non-reason. I simply disagree that R/W is an effective class combination and I am having a relatively informative discussion with people who think otherwise. (changed from the flamefest a few pages ago, I think everyone on both sides got a bit emotional)

MCS · Aug 17, 2005, 09:21 PM // 21:21

What a long pointless thread....

I got through 3 pages of MY WAR HAS STR SO IT DOES MORE DAMAGE before I gave up hope of actually seeing proof for either side.

Acan Vishnu · Aug 17, 2005, 09:28 PM // 21:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jackoften

Test on crithits with Eviscerate on AL approx 60 (moving character in random arenas, same person both times, rended first)

92 at str 0
100 at str 12

14 axe for both hits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tuna

God help us all if you ever go into science or engineering. You did 2 tests with a weapon that has a range of 6-28. Regardless of strength you are going to get drastically different numbers. If you want to do a proper test you would have to do more like 100 hits each in an controled environment.

Its my understand that hits on a moving enemy will always result in critical hits. It is also my understanding that critical hits will always deal the maximum damage possible for your weapon. If both of those statements are true, then why would the damage range of a weapon matter in that particular situation?

I certainly don't think that more testing would be amiss, but that doesn't mean that his results are worthless.