Curse

Golradiar [NOOB] · Jul 30, 2005, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Haven't seen a good strategy thread for tombs in a while so here we go. Making a good build is one of the most important parts of having a HoH winning team, skilled players are good, but if you don't have certain elements you won't hold hall more than once or even at all. Tombs is different than other arenas because you need a very careful balance between offense and defense, your team needs to be able to hold an altar for at least a minute against 2 teams if you want to win much. However, you also need to be able to knock a team off the altar alone when it comes down to it and be able to win a 1v1 battle.

Defense-To effectively hold the altar or even stay alive in a 1v1 you will need to run 3 monks in a build, whether you want 2 healer and 1 prot (standard) or 3 healing is the team's choice and really depends on how the rest of your defense is coordinated. 2 healing and a prot works best when your team doesn't have many anti-warrior countermeasures or to a lesser degree, ranger or spike counters. If you run fertile season a prot monk is not needed against spikers for the most part since healing monks should be able to keep up the heals when everyone has 700-900 health. For warriors the best counters are melee ward, foe ward, or a prot monk. Blinding spells from various classes are decent for a very short amount of time since almost any decent team will have fast condition removal especially for blinds.

Mesmers and rangers, even knockdown warriors are also good defensive classes with certain skills. They can interrupt, drain, and otherwise annoy damage dealers when playing defensive in order to relieve part of the strain on monks.

You will need 3 monks, and you will need wards or spirits, even both to hold against 2 good teams when you're on defense, it's not hard to fit a fertile on someone or to take a few wards as an ele secondary. Healing seed and/or heal area are very nice to have on the altar, they pretty much rend smiting useless as long as everyone is in the seed radius.

Also, for killing spirit spamming teams you need to do 1 of 2 things, either bring edge and constantly drop it to clear out spirits, or disable the spirit spammer by using interrupts, knockdowns, or blackout. It's fairly common to have whirling defense so bring wild blow to counter that.

Offense-There are many more ways to get a workable offense than those for defense. Some of the popular ones currently are smiting and ranger groups. Smiting works by having 1-2 E/Mo using spells such as ether renewal while having a couple enchantments up (a popular one is aura of restoration) as well as zealot's fire while spamming draw conditions to trigger zealot's fire as well as gaining you energy by way of ether renewal. Balthazar's, Symbol of Wrath, and Judge's Insight are likewise popular smiting spells. Smite builds use 2 warriors also to be the targets of the smite spells, they run into large groups while attacking with either axe or hammer (sword is rarely used).

Ranger builds rely on their spirits to screw over other teams, then kill by using skills such as chocking gas, incendiary arrows, or kindle arrows. Debilitating is also popular in conjunction with quickening zephyr.

Spike teams are rare in tombs as they don't have the power to cut through wards or fertile season, and they don't have the holding power to keep the altar.

Warriors are a common source of damage and work well in a team if you have 2. Common supporters for them are mesmers to shutdown monks, rangers as monk disrupters and added damage, necros for increasing warrior damage with spells such as rigor mortis, mark of pain, barbs, defile flesh, rend enchantments, lingering curse, and malign intervention, and monks for removing hexes/conditions.

A couple things you'll also need are enough condition and hex removal on your team. You'll need about 2 hex removal spells, preferably 3, then 2-3 mend ailment/conditions. Martyr is definately a good spell but takes a valuable elite slot, against heavy condition teams it's very nice, but a few mend ailments and good healing are generally enough.

One last thing to remember on altars is to bring AoE damage, spells like earthquake, aftershock, maelstrom, chaos storm, and meteor shower are especially powerful for taking out a healing ball or heavily defensive team.

Relic Runs-There are many different ways to effectively do relic runs. The main points to keep in mind are to make sure your runner has a speed boost, there's is crippled, slowed, knocked down, or body blocked, and to try and take out their ghostly hero whenever a chance presents itself. Teamwork and coordination are what win relic runs.

I hope this has been useful to some of you, lets see everyone else's favorite HoH tactics.

Jarlaxe · Jul 30, 2005, 10:42 AM // 10:42

Well u introduce ways to build team but u didn't tell which one u prefer. All u said is true for me. My guild use strategy based on 2 healing monks, 1 protection, 2 self smiters (elem), 1 earth elem, mesmer and necro. It have some weaknesses but work quite good vs most of usuall build teams. We still cant handle ranger spam team - this is big problem coz of this stupid spirit spam and heavy defence. They just stay alive enough long to finish one by one using ignite arrows + poison + barrage. I really can't find way to kill them with good setup - im speaking about good ranger teams - we killed few lame and 2 korea ranger guilds but they were not high ranked.

U said about ether renewal and zealots smite from warriors - u need then 2 warriors (probbly knockdown/aftershock - or axe arriors with apply poison), 2 smiters (elem/monk) also as u said 3 monks ( 2 heal one prot or 3 heal) and u got one free slot - as long as axe warrior/ranger can bring 1-2 spirits for defence u dont need ranger - probably mesmer shutdown right ? what about necro with putrid and tained then? Also u lack elem skills to destroy altar like meteor shower and so on. So whats exacly team build u are playing and how its working vs specific teams ( explain 4 teams - spike, ranger, smite and balanced - in offence and defence if u can - i know it will take a bit but its most usefull for us i think.) - thx.

Xellos · Jul 30, 2005, 10:51 AM // 10:51

HoH is based on how little offense you can use and get away with it, while the rest is stalling defense. Ranger spirit spams are the most obvious. Maybe some day fertile/nature and stuff will get changed or countered, but as of now, I don't think there's anything that can counter it effectively. 1v1, any team that's worth their salt using a Ranger spirit spam can beat any team, ANY team. Fact is, 10 min is too short. Think of it this way, if 2 top 10 guilds faced each other, what are the chances in a best out of 3, the outcome comes out in 10 min or even 20 min? Not much, if any. Even getting rolled, you can still hold out for 30 at least. HoH is easily doable.

Golradiar [NOOB] · Jul 30, 2005, 10:56 AM // 10:56

True I didn't say a single build I prefer, mainly intended this to counter the mass amount of clueless people entering tombs with no chance of winning. Also to show people various workable strategies to serve as a template to build upon for their HoH builds. Personally, I like to run 2 warriors for damage, supported by a variable group of mesmers, elementalists, and spirit spammer. I either choose to overload monks with 4 damage dealers, or shutdown monks with mesmers, both ways work, just differently. Thanks for your input.

Xellos · Jul 30, 2005, 11:02 AM // 11:02

For that type of purpose, almost anything works as long as you aren't predicting spirit spam. Once you do though, your options are severely limited. It depends how much of a factor you believe spirit spam is.

Jarlaxe · Jul 30, 2005, 11:12 AM // 11:12

Spirit spam is just so stupid - one nature renewal and shutdown mesmer is working in 50% -_-' also necros with any hexes. So u got simle 4 other classes - monk, warrior, ranger, elem - but hey rangers have 2 x higher armor vs elem so elem no - lets see who we got - warriors, rangers and monks - smiters are useless as long as rangers use healing ball strat - so we have with luck 3 healers without ench so u dont worry about ench drop with nature renewals - and now choose between warriors and rangers - both have quite high armor but rangers can use healing spring or troll and still be good damage dealers and if warrior go as stupid paladin with mending he is useless - so there are two classes - rangers and monks -_-' - answer: to counter rangers use rangers -_-' - anyone got better idea ? -_-'

Xellos · Jul 30, 2005, 01:30 PM // 13:30

If there was a strategy that effectively beats spirit spam without huge requirements do you think people are gonna whine about spirits still?

Golradiar [NOOB] · Jul 31, 2005, 12:18 AM // 00:18

To counter spirit spam you need to do one of three things, first of all build a team that doesn't rely on enchantments too much and try to shutdown the spammer with knockdown warrior, interrupt ranger, or blackout; second way is to build a team that uses spirits to it's advantage, meaning expect quickening zephyr and make sure you have ways of gaining energy back, don't run many enchantments or hexes, and in the case of fertile season, use overtime damage from warriors, rangers, or conditions rather than spike; third way, the one most people choose but the least effective, is just try to keep the spirit spammer interrupted, dead, knocked down, or run EoE to kill spirits, again the best way to get around spirits is to make a build that either benefits from their effects, or at least isn't hurt much by them.

Spirit spam is definately not impossible to beat, but certain builds really do suffer from them, you just need to work around this until you are able to take out the spammer. The builds it hurts the most are your high damage spiking builds or enchantment heavy smite builds; warriors, rangers, conditions, and energy denial only benefit from spirits.

Red Locust · Jul 31, 2005, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golradiar [NOOB]

To counter spirit spam you need to do one of three things, first of all build a team that doesn't rely on enchantments too much and try to shutdown the spammer with knockdown warrior, interrupt ranger, or blackout; second way is to build a team that uses spirits to it's advantage, meaning expect quickening zephyr and make sure you have ways of gaining energy back, don't run many enchantments or hexes, and in the case of fertile season, use overtime damage from warriors, rangers, or conditions rather than spike; third way, the one most people choose but the least effective, is just try to keep the spirit spammer interrupted, dead, knocked down, or run EoE to kill spirits, again the best way to get around spirits is to make a build that either benefits from their effects, or at least isn't hurt much by them.

Spirit spam is definately not impossible to beat, but certain builds really do suffer from them, you just need to work around this until you are able to take out the spammer. The builds it hurts the most are your high damage spiking builds or enchantment heavy smite builds; warriors, rangers, conditions, and energy denial only benefit from spirits.

Out of those solutions you posted, solution #1 and #3 are identical, and equally difficult to pull off, depending on how good the enemy is. Solution #2 is not really a counter, just an "if you can't beat them, join them" answer.

And I'll agree with you. Right now, the best and only reliable way of countering these spirit teams is to make a build that takes advantage of the conditions they put up at the start of the battle.

But that's really not a proper counter, is it? You're forced to play on their terms no matter what, with little hope of getting rid of the ritual effects. Good luck trying to beat them within the given timeframe.

Moskel · Jul 31, 2005, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Consider having a few folks 'waste' a slot on the way to HoH and then when you get there use some attribute refunds to jack up their Fire, 6 Meteor Showers counters spirits and anything else on the Altar just fine

, you just have to give up 1 skill slot and figure out how to get an Ele pri/sec on that many characters.

You could get it done with less if you have AE/Echo E/Me, I prefer AE/Glyph of E {E} that way you only have exhaustion from one of them. The Glyph is nice for the long run on the Ele too while Echo is very situational.

Rangers themselves are pretty easy to counter though, a few folks packing Spirit Shackles and you can kiss their team goodbye, they'll spend a lot of time dropping Nature's Renewal to get rid of it but their DPS will go to nil, hopefully letting you pound through their sponge.

The fun part of this game is for anything somebody does there is 1000 ways to counter it, you just have to decide what works best for you.

While 10 minutes might not be long enough in HoH, Burial Mounds and Scarred should go to Victory or Death! after 15 minutes or something to eliminate all of the standoffs and bartering. Tombs is entertaining sometimes but GvG is a lot more fun for me. You can't ride a one trick pony through GvG very well, in Tombs you can sneak through because by the time the other team figures out what you've done they're dead (Take a Suffering/Feast/Dark Pact 5 Necro type team). In GvG they get to come back for round 2.

Golradiar [NOOB] · Jul 31, 2005, 10:58 PM // 22:58

For the HoH itself, spirit spamming with or without a full ranger team is one of the most powerful defensive strategies you can find. Really, the only way to reduce the amount of teams that go totally defensive would be to change the way HoH works. Currently, with 2 teams always on the offensive and 1 defending, the defending team is at such a huge disadvantage that it needs to take any sort of defensive ability it can get.

My solution would be to change rezzing to include priests for the 2 attacking teams, this would allow either the defenders to go kill a priest while everyone is fighting, or even the 2 attackers to fight it out first before taking the defenders 1v1.

10 minutes of constant attacking is really plenty to kill a spirit spamming team if you brought the right tools, if you didn't then no amount of time will help you much. However, I see it all the time that teams use the "wait for 2 minutes" or sometimes the less stupid "wait for 4 minutes" approach that just benefits a spirit spamming team. If you see a healing ball and/or spirit spammers, attack as early as possible to knock them off the altar. Spells such as earthquake, meteor shower, maelstrom, chaos storm, and EoE are very useful. The best way to use EoE would be to lay it down, attack any fertile seasons you see, and once those are dropped, as long as your team has some of the AoE attacks I mentioned you should be able to kill the team.

Another thing to watch for is channeling, almost any defensive based/altar team will run it so do not cluster in the middle, only warriors should be anywhere near it. Once you can drop a couple guys from defense, a putrid spam will knock the rest of their team out.

Overall I hate how the HoH works as it benefits only certain tactics and favors defensive teams over anything else. GvG has definitive counters to spirit spam that make it weak, mainly the lack of mobility letting the other team dictate the pace and location of battle. I do GvG to win, and HoH to have a little fun or relax, that's all it's good for right now, maybe if it was more balanced I'd be more serious about it. Again, I do NOT think spirits are unbalanced, the things that are unbalanced are HoH game mechanics.