Curse

Darkrouge101 · Aug 03, 2005, 06:12 PM // 18:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arathorn5000

First of all, he keeps calling the spirit rangers "casters", leading me to believe he doesn't really know about spirit groups. Their whole build isn't designed around renewal either, it's just something they spam with their other good spirits because they don't need enchantments. He also doesn't realize that if you have warriors charging up to the spirit ranger, that ranger can hit whirling defense (stance) and instantly have 75% chance to evade any attack, for a considerable amount of time. Plus, the whole idea of warriors as interrupters is flawed...I'm led to believe Darkrouge is a warrior himself. The truth is, rangers and mesmers will be much better at interrupting and shutting down their team's pure spirit ranger(s).

Or am I wrong, and there actually is a "nature's renewal build" that isn't the spirit group?

Look. The point of the warriors is not solely to simply distract the Rangers/Casters. By the way, When I say casters I'm talking about either rangers, eles, necros, or mesmers; because this could work against most of them as well. Think about it, if your team saw a bunch of warriors running at you, thinking they are bringing heavy damage stances of their own, are you just going to sit there and ignore them? Or use one or two skills that are going to keep them busy for a while? No, your team will try and do something about them to keep your teammates alive. It's that time that will be utilized by your heavy damage dealers (By the way, the elementalists setup was just an example, if you don't think they work against then change them to something else-grow some balls of your own and post something useful other than saying "Eles suck against rangers!!1 LoL!!").

I'm not saying don't bring other distracters; that way if either of the group is ignored (if they leave the warriors alone and go straight for the healers) then they will be caught offguard by the warrior's knockdowns; especially if they have a secondary class that aids in interrupting.

I've said that this strategy would not work alone, and that it does take some skill, but it works if you are able to properly put it to use.

Darkrouge101 · Aug 03, 2005, 06:18 PM // 18:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xellos

Your sacrificing your ability to do anything to people who don't use NR in exchange for a chance to beat NR. That's hilarious.

How so? You don't think interrupts work against other "casters"? And the high damage setup in your backfield won't do anything. Yeah you're probably right. The fact that your team is built around heavy damage, interrupting, and 2 or 3 distracting warriors totally blows all it's chances away against everything else.

You're hilarious.

knives · Aug 03, 2005, 06:21 PM // 18:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xellos

Your sacrificing your ability to do anything to people who don't use NR in exchange for a chance to beat NR. That's hilarious.

In any decent team, you can beat spirit groups. If you use a spike group, you won't. I guess your gut is busted now as NR teams were made solely to counter spike groups.

Xellos · Aug 03, 2005, 06:40 PM // 18:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darkrouge101

How so? You don't think interrupts work against other "casters"? And the high damage setup in your backfield won't do anything. Yeah you're probably right. The fact that your team is built around heavy damage, interrupting, and 2 or 3 distracting warriors totally blows all it's chances away against everything else.

You're hilarious.

Spirit Spammers don't cast. You don't even have a clue who I am or how I play the game. Stop assuming. The only strong distract move is distracting shot and disruptive chop, both which then gimp your offense because both are on characters that are normally offensive. So you stall the rangers from spamming fertile, what then? Your clearly not targetting the monks, therefore you ain't killing squatt anyways. HoH is about time, and that's where fertile wins. NR is just a super powerful move that can kill any team that relies on heavy enchants. It's not the end-be-all like some people exaggerate, but it severely limits the game, which is also a part of balance. I have no trouble dealing with NR, but that also limits my build which isn't that fun in the end.

Quote:

Originally Posted by knives

In any decent team, you can beat spirit groups. If you use a spike group, you won't. I guess your gut is busted now as NR teams were made solely to counter spike groups.

This is a laughable assumption, seeing as how NR is not really strong at all in GvG, and that is all I play at the moment. Tombs is about fertile season, NR is just a move that cuts down smiters and what not. Is NR overpowered completely? No. Does it make alot of the skills in this game useless thus making them unusable because if you use them you'll get your ass kicked within seconds by one of these teams? Yes. It limits diversity.

NR isn't made to counter spike groups, fertile season is. You should all stop trying to use the "the pros can do it" stance before "the pros" come in and lay the smackdown in your face. In fact, which one of you can bring in a top page guild or renowned guild member to support that NR isn't broken in power and breaking diversity?

Savio · Aug 03, 2005, 07:06 PM // 19:06

Just focusing on your Warrior setup, Darkrouge...

First, Flourish only works on Energy-based attack skills. It won't work on Adrenal-based or non-attack skills, so it won't recharge Disrupting Chop or Shield Bash.

Shield Bash only works on melee attacks, so it won't work on rangers, and even if it did it'd require them to attack, not when they're using Spirits.

Belly Smash is a hammer attack, Disrupting Chop an axe attack. Using two different weapons is not good for a warrior in general.

"Warrior's Cunning - For 5-10 seconds your melee attacks cannot be blocked or evaded."
Doesn't sound like it works on skills (I don't use it), and Flourish wouldn't recharge it either. There are much better skills out there anyway.

Even if you managed to interrupt/knockdown all the Rangers, Nature's Renewal doesn't just go away. And the other team *probably* won't just sit there either. Most likely, anyone using skills or spells, such as NR, will have cast them by the time the warriors catch up to them (if they do, considering there are plenty of ways to slow down warriors, i.e. Pin Down.)

Mainly, using Warriors (2 or 3 of them at that) to disrupt is not a good idea. But, Darkrouge, if you really feel like this is a good idea, then go test it out yourself and bring back results.

mostro · Aug 03, 2005, 07:15 PM // 19:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xellos

The only strong distract move is distracting shot and disruptive chop, both which then gimp your offense because both are on characters that are normally offensive. So you stall the rangers from spamming fertile, what then? Your clearly not targetting the monks, therefore you ain't killing squatt anyways. HoH is about time, and that's where fertile wins.

I second this. in tomb, Fertile is more of a problem than NR. NR, while nasty against hexes and enchantments, are livable.

In one HoH battle, our smiting team spent about 5-6 minutes clearing all the spirits stacked in the dais, and while we were making good progress (we managed to thin out the spirits considerably), we simply ran out of time in the end and lost. We also knew exactly which rangers spam the fertile seasons from the beginning, but we still have some difficulties preventing him from spamming more spirits anyway. Some of our members even removed their armor altogether and tried to suicide for putrid fuel towards the end of the match, but their fertile prevented us from dying.

Xellos · Aug 03, 2005, 09:26 PM // 21:26

What's worse is if another team is spamming spirits, then you have no chance to dethrone the champions period. Right now, HoH requires 2 teams to take out 1 spirit team because of the way HoH works. Which is plain stupid.

Jake · Aug 04, 2005, 01:33 AM // 01:33

Warrior's have some tricks and gimmicks in them to combat rangers well but this is just all theoryfighter... you have to actually test your builds out so you can point out the obvious flaws first. You won't convince anyone if you got some glaring errors right off the bat.

MowaMoka · Aug 04, 2005, 03:04 AM // 03:04

our guild has been testing some anti ranger builds lately and we finaly came up with one particularly astonishing. it was actualy an accident we got tiered of trying to beat unsuccessfully these rangers with special theorized builds. as a joke one member said that we had less trouble vs ranger teams with our elem spike team than with our creations so it inspired us on making an air spike group. we soon realized that we needed to get around the rangers natural def vs elemental dmg. we then conducted many tests with armor ignoring high dmg builds such as blood necros or smiter or even dmg dealing mesmers they all worked rather well vs the rangers (mostly the smite) but we did horrible vs anything else. we had bad armor and not enough focus fire on the other builds with more defence buffing enchants (life bond/barrier or prot bond). we then came up with a very COOL build. amazingly its the elems that can own the rangers. yet this build isnt very fine tuned yet we got two HoH sigle wins with it.

setup:
-4 E/R or E/W
-3 good monks(2 heal 1prot/ 3healers)
-1 N/Mo

the 4 elems must have 16 earth 11 energy storage 8 attribs in the secondary proff and use the wand+focus that both have nrg regen -1 and nrg +15. they must spam obsedian flame on a single target and use the secondary proffesion to use stances that block attacks. they must run obsedian flesh as an elite since it has 30 sec recharge and lasts 21sec with 16earth. the rest of the skills must be wards vs melee and elements armor of earth and some sort of emergency heal in case the monks are in big trouble (heal sig works well since if u are the E/W version u should run 8 tactics for the stances). U should understand how to use this build after 30minutes or so and it works great (except for the huge exhustion prob but its about 2-3minutes b4 u get shutdown by the exhustion so better spike well).

the 3 monks are very standard and they are there to fix the teams common mistakes so almost any good monk build will do.

last but not least the necro is a key for the elementals to unleash their powers. this char should have 16curses and 12 smiting. as soon as a target is chosen the necro goes soul barbs=lingering curse=defile flesh=scourge healing after he uses strip enchants on any new enchant. defile flesh is optional (if u dont use defile u can try to use awaken the blood for extra efectivity but it becomes rather vulnerable to enemies). basicaly this build is the anti monk for the poor guy who is about to get spiked.

I hope this could help bring the balence back in the force (GW HoH strategies).
IGN=Mowa Moka

nguyenmb · Aug 04, 2005, 07:20 AM // 07:20

I agree with the original poster, and skill interupt is the best counter to any spirit build. I've been quite successful with a similar build, and 1vs1 my guild has been very capable of making sure any spirit we don't want never gets cast.

The huge problem though is 2vs1, especially when defending HoH. If you rely on any ounce of long delay long cast enchantments (like healing seed), you're going to get skrewed in 2 vs 1 situations. With 16 people on the board, it's very difficult to just find the guys casting nature's renewal, and by the time you do, it's too late...

Furthermore, many of the smarter teams, know that the counter for nature's renewal is skill interupt, and simply just bring 5 people with it. The coordination necessary to interupt 5 people is quite insane. (Even with 5 people with interupts, you'll need to assign those 5 people very quickly, and melee-ers still have to run into melee range to interupt)

Amused Observer · Aug 04, 2005, 07:36 AM // 07:36

I've been thinking for a while on this "problem," and I agree that eles hold the key to defeating rangers, but in a different way. So let me throw this out and see what ppl think:

2 w/e
1 r/w
2 e/me
2 mo/me
1 mo/n

The way it works is that the 2 w/e will group with 1 e/me and the r/w to kill of the rangers, one at a time. The second e/me will be 16 fire nuker targeting the spirits. the mo/n will use offering of blood as E. All mes secondaries will carry mantra of resolve and keep it on at all times (i've soloed w/ a fire e/me in elona reach, and the resolve works fine against interruptions by the distracting devourers).

The anti-ranger e/me will be earth and interruption based, and carry cry of frustration, leech signet, power drain, glyph of energy [elite], eruption, obsidian flame, mantra of resolve, rez sig. The leech signet will interrupt the first spirit attempt by the target caster. Cry of frustration would be the next interrupter. if a spell is cast, use power drain instead. Eruption will make the ranger blind for 10 seconds, during which ob flame will be spammed repeatedly. Plz note that the skill bar is immune to NR.

The r/w provides backup interruption, and some damage. The 2 w/e are axe and air based, and will carry distracting blow, disrupting chop, shields up (used by alternating warrior to keep in effect at all times), dismember, swift chop (great counter for whirlwind defense), lightning javelin, whirlwind, rez sign. 16 axe is a must.

The spirit killing e/me is your regular 16 fire nuker carrying flare, firestorm, meteor shower, lava font, glyph of energy [elite], arcane echo, mantra of resolve, rez sig.

The Red Knight · Aug 04, 2005, 12:05 PM // 12:05

shield bash is only for attack skills hitting you =/

Yukito Kunisaki · Aug 04, 2005, 04:36 PM // 16:36

Problems arise too easily with Spirit spamming.

You won't be there to stop their initial spirits. Their range is gigantic so casting it long before you get close enough to interrupt it is the BASIC strategy to spirit spam usage.

Oath Shot which is the default spirit spam skill will be on all the spirit spammers. It won't hamper them in the slightest. The spirits body block and gain gigantic amounts of hp through fertile season. So much for killing them... :\

Is your enemy team trying to do damage? Tough luck, Fertile Season turns all of your 100 dmg spells to crap. Nature's Renewal, well, we all know what that does.

Spirit Spammers are built to be UNKILLABLE... The drawback, no damage can be dealt since a spirit spammer brings at least 4 spirits to the table. But who cares about damage when the goal is to just stand there and live?

With King of the Hill maps being the focus of HoH, Spirit spam is the team to beat.

Which leads to the balancing issue.

BRING BACK UNNATURAL SIGNET! That skill sitting on your skill bar for just in case spirits come by scenarios is a GOOD balancing idea. You're bringing a single skill that will rip apart an entire team's strategy. If you're NOT fighting a spirit spam team, it's just ONE skill! Your team won't be hampered much if at all if you bring just ONE skill designed to rip a team in half and if you don't fight that team, you've got 7 other skills for that.

Think Soul Reaping is useless now? If Unnatural Signet is ever re-implemented, Soul Reaping will be THE primary to beat should it come up against a spirit team...

Arathorn5000 · Aug 04, 2005, 05:00 PM // 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yukito Kunisaki

BRING BACK UNNATURAL SIGNET! That skill sitting on your skill bar for just in case spirits come by scenarios is a GOOD balancing idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yukito Kunisaki

You're bringing a single skill that will rip apart an entire team's strategy. If you're NOT fighting a spirit spam team, it's just ONE skill! Your team won't be hampered much if at all if you bring just ONE skill designed to rip a team in half and if you don't fight that team, you've got 7 other skills for that.

I can't fathom how you pretend to be looking out for good game balance, and then think that the answer is a SINGLE skill that will "rip a team in half". Isn't that what people complain about with nature's renewal?

jesh · Aug 04, 2005, 07:22 PM // 19:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arathorn5000

I can't fathom how you pretend to be looking out for good game balance, and then think that the answer is a SINGLE skill that will "rip a team in half". Isn't that what people complain about with nature's renewal?

I think his point was, GW is supposed to be a balanced game. Several people have already admitted that NR and the other spirits, (fertile season), in combination make a team bascially untouchable, at least in certain situations. Guild Wars is a game where every strategy has a counter, or have you forgotten? Unnatural Signet would bring the counter back into the game, and all those spirit teams would have to think of a different strategy. It would become another passing fad, just like the 8 man air spiker groups of the past.

Third Quarter · Aug 04, 2005, 07:54 PM // 19:54

uh how?

If Unnatural Signet killed a single spirit, then it would be completely useless without a quick recharge, in which case it renders spirits completely unviable. If it were able to kill many spirits at once, the same problem arises.

I would be more interested in seeing Fertile Season having no effect on itself or other spirits. If such were the case, they would still be quite spammable, which I think is a perfectly valid strategy, but it would no longer be remotely as easy to create an indestructable turtle-build. This would also drastically reduce the problem of using spirits to bodyblock parts of the map.

rii · Aug 04, 2005, 08:06 PM // 20:06

Having it wipe all spirits aoe would be reasonable with a fairly long recharge, giving opposing teams windows of oppurtunity to take people out. Kind of like rend before a spike. That would be cool.

Spura · Aug 04, 2005, 10:57 PM // 22:57

Stances and wards and blind won't stop warriors from disrupting NR, because if IIRC, distracting blow doesn't need to hit at all and counts as a miss for all purposes. Could be wrong though.