Curse

Teh_Zero · Jul 18, 2005, 12:20 PM // 12:20

Well i saw a few weak points in spirit teams. Mostly there are beggingrs who think OMG that is so good. ( im leaving the good guilds out of this who uses this kind of tactics effectivly). So when you start fighting with them IF you have room you lure them back slowly so they wont figure it out - or rush them stright on so they wont expect you :> - au and trie locating the nature renewal ranger or frozen soil one and take em out as fast as possible.

EDIT: and and about that pic - ty taking one maelstorm and spike traps/meteor showers. they dont need to do big dmg they just need to do the interupting/knockowning effectivly.

Schorny · Jul 18, 2005, 12:30 PM // 12:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teh_Zero

Mostly there are beggingrs who think OMG that is so good. ( im leaving the good guilds out of this who uses this kind of tactics effectivly). So when you start fighting with them IF you have room you lure them back slowly so they wont figure it out - or rush them stright on so they wont expect you :>

Oh, yes. That will work against any decend team

No sorry, this will only kill bad teams. But bad teams are never a problem to defeat.

Quote:

- au and trie locating the nature renewal ranger or frozen soil one and take em out as fast as possible.

That works really great if the enemy is an all ranger team. So you have to shut down half of their team...

SoTzuMe · Jul 18, 2005, 12:39 PM // 12:39

Spirit teams can be pretty effective and tough to kill, but their offense is a weak point as noted. The other thing is they may well be using Quickening Zephyr as well, in which case the extra cost for spells will be largely be offset by a rangers Expertise - thus they are affected less by spell cost than you are.

Bring signets and low cost spells to even the playing field a bit.

And, as someone else noted, spirits affect everyone in the area, look for ways to take advantage of their effects within your own team.

Yukito Kunisaki · Jul 18, 2005, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Good one SoTzuMe, that means you can bring every character that'd normally be part of a Spirit Spam team, only, without the spirits...

Just get offensive.

Red Locust · Jul 18, 2005, 05:19 PM // 17:19

Here's a little trick which I've tested and works great vs. spirit spammers: bring channeling.

When you surround yourself by enemy spirits, everytime you cast a spell, you steal one energy from each spirit around you. This more than offsets the increased energy costs. As a monk, I was able to spam healing spells all day long, and each cast would bring my energy back to full. We lasted for a very long time, but unfortunately so did they.
This would work much better if rangers weren't so goddamn resistant to elemental spells. As it is right now, even if your eles brought channeling along, it'd take forever for them to do any considerable damage to 1000+hp rangers that have 100+armor vs. elements.

Glasswalker · Jul 18, 2005, 07:56 PM // 19:56

Edge of Extinction is a tool that can be used very effectively against this build. Trying to spike elemental damage with this though, is rather ineffective. Try another form of damage, and concentrate on Winter. My favorite form of damage? Blood Magic. N/R and W/N both with Shadow Strike and Vampiric Gaze can bring down the first Winter from a distance in seconds. EoE drastically hurts the rest. Vampiric Gaze or Touch a second one, the EoE starts anihillating ALL OF THEM (when EoE kills the third, it is set off again, kills the 4th, etc.).

Yes, you have to be able to plant EoE for this to work at all. And yes, other forms of damage (Holy) work as well. Try Whirling Defense on the Trapper, and have Shields Up! running (this will help against the Oath Shot too). Elementalist is waiting for Winter to go down (hold the CTRL key and watch them disappear. Hit your hotkey with CTRL still down, and your team will know when you start your spike). Knockdown/Interupt the Spammer(s) (God I Love Gale! And a big favorite for me is Disrupting Chop only 6 adren. (Use a ferocious axe!)) and Necro moves on to next Spirit type. Or in my case, switch to Bow and start poisoning people -- Give them something else to pay attention to. Throw in the occasional disrupting shot.

One Trick Pony.

They will find themselves naked soon. And nature abhores a naked Ranger. (How is that for an obscure reference?) Kill, kill, kill.

ManaCraft · Jul 18, 2005, 08:59 PM // 20:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tellani Artini

You can't enchant or hex spirits and their healing is cut down to 10% or so. Try it sometime, preferrably before you suggest it.

A good spirit team will lock down the person casting EoE, so it's not a very good one to rely on.

I did notice the enchantment animation missing, but the spell itself does seem to "go off" nicely. But I'll take your word for it. In any case, EoE is still your best bet for a decent counter to spirit builds. I've pulled off wins against rather capable spirit builds, even with spike teams, using EoE as the counter.

Oh, and there is such a thing as being polite. You might try it on occation.

ManaCraft

Tellani Artini · Jul 18, 2005, 09:26 PM // 21:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by ManaCraft

I did notice the enchantment animation missing, but the spell itself does seem to "go off" nicely. But I'll take your word for it. In any case, EoE is still your best bet for a decent counter to spirit builds. I've pulled off wins against rather capable spirit builds, even with spike teams, using EoE as the counter.

Oh, and there is such a thing as being polite. You might try it on occation.

Sorry, the misinformation gets to me. Once I got bored during a tombs match and started healing the spirits. Word of healing did an impressive +27.

Properties of spirits, in the interests of this discussion:

- No enchantments, hexes, or conditions
- Their effects work on themselves and other spirits
- Healing effect is reduced dramatically
- Can be energy drained, and their energy can be stolen (EDIT: not sure about this, was based on channeling which has a deceptive skill description)
- Death triggers soul reaping
- All rituals create spirits of the same species

lanilifar · Jul 19, 2005, 02:04 AM // 02:04

I have some questions on the spirit properties:
Does the end of their duration count as death? From my casual observation I would say no, but I am not positive, I currently have a Ne/R so I can test this easy myself.

If you kill the only EoE, does its death set itself off or does its effect count as leaving, and then it dies? I just happened to be carrying this spirit last night for fun and came up against a spirit spamming team in the burial mounds 6 team map. After my team finished off our nearest competitor we started roaming and came upon the spirit spammers fighting another team. I ran in and dropped EoE, and then we started killing spirits (I made sure to keep EoE up). The compass had been a hoard of yellow dots when we charged in, I was quite happy that about a minute later all the spirits had dropped. However, that was when yellow was under duress already from another team and they couldnt concentrate on us. The match ended with us vs them, and we were an Earth Ele spike build. We started well, but they had already seen us use EoE once and they kept killing it and interrupting me. We kept the sprits down for awhile but they were able to outlast us, but it was a fun match and EoE was useful as part of a tactic to keep the spirits down. I happened to be standing right in my EoE while an enemy warrior was pounding on it (and unfortunatley it was the only EoE left), and when he killed it I am pretty sure none of the other spirits took damage, but I am not positive (my bm was 14, so the damage of the EoE was a noticeable 50, even with Fertile up).

Tetra · Jul 19, 2005, 02:34 AM // 02:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by SoTzuMe

Spirit teams can be pretty effective and tough to kill, but their offense is a weak point as noted. The other thing is they may well be using Quickening Zephyr as well, in which case the extra cost for spells will be largely be offset by a rangers Expertise - thus they are affected less by spell cost than you are.

Bring signets and low cost spells to even the playing field a bit.

And, as someone else noted, spirits affect everyone in the area, look for ways to take advantage of their effects within your own team.

Normally spirit teams either #1) Hold the altar with spirits eg. symbolis, fertile season as seen in the picture i posted. #2) They make rangers super high damage with almost no cost of energy. That's with winnowing +4damage, Favorable winds +6damage. Considering that no teams will ever bring alot of warrior. Or alot of rangers(unless they are spirit team as well). You will be in alot of disadvantage. Every shot from them does additional of 10damage adding even more with preparation since it wouldn't require much energy to sustain. In the long run they will win cos they will never require much energy while maintaining damage.

Plus in a good spirit team they put in nature's renewal(consistently) which screw up ur protection monk and your ele's attunement/energy recovery enchantments. Effectively disabling 1 of your monks unless none of you are protection monk and furthermore reducing the energy recovered by the ele's. And fertile season will make you do crap to the spirits. So killing fertile season is the piority... Otherwise it takes longer to kill other spirits.

The only effective way I read so far from all the threads is to shutdown the spirit ranger and kill all the spirits.

Tellani Artini · Jul 19, 2005, 06:59 AM // 06:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by lanilifar

I have some questions on the spirit properties:
Does the end of their duration count as death? From my casual observation I would say no, but I am not positive, I currently have a Ne/R so I can test this easy myself.

Still counts as death. Have seen it trigger EoE.

ComMan · Jul 19, 2005, 02:57 PM // 14:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tetra

The only effective way I read so far from all the threads is to shutdown the spirit ranger and kill all the spirits.

With QZ down they can all be carrying Spirits, and if they spam Healing Spring (everyone focus fires in Tombs, you won't interrupt all 8 of them) they will be healing all the time. 1 Healing Spring might not be a big deal, but 4-6 of them are.

Recharges will only be about 15 seconds for most spirits, so if 3-4 Rangers have each one, you can't shut them down. They'll just keep putting up spirits one after the other. If they're relying on one Oath Shot Ranger then you can knock him down and take him out, but if the entire team is carrying spirits, you won't be able to shut them all down, if you target one the someone else will take up the role.

Tetra pretty much covered the spirit teams. Nobody brings the counters, that's why they win. A few Hammers in your face will shut down that Oath Shot guy, but nobody brings those. The "everybody has spirits" build is less powerful (since at any given time at least 1 person is using Healing Sping or a spirit), and it's very beatable. However, your Air Ele Spike groups wouldn't know that because your enchantments get stripped every 5-10 seconds and you can't spike over Fertile Season.

Spirits count as deaths, they trigger EoE and Soul Reaping.

Tuon · Jul 19, 2005, 03:58 PM // 15:58

stop using air spike ffs

stumpy · Jul 19, 2005, 04:47 PM // 16:47

I've played on both sides effectively ...

heres some notable points ...

1.) They will take alot longer to take down ... as with many other strong builds.
2) The healing rediuction works on their seed too
3) If attacking an alter, any AoE interrupt will open windows of opportunity to either take out one of the spammers etc
4) Fact = Rangers healing spring heals 52 every 2 seconds * (lets say 4 rangers) = 104 healing per second. Your damage wont work without intterupts ... sorry spikers but its the truth.

5) Heres a combo that worked against us ... enemy sent up a dummy with sheild of judgement we (rangers) focused on him for a couple seconds ... ended up on our azz of course, they followed it with aftershock twice ... many of our health bars dropped down to 60% they threw up a Maelstrom doing damage plus interrupting our healing spring eventually got one guy down while we tried to recover ....

Its not hard to beat spirit spammers for 2 reasons ... 1. they have little offense ... here you are talking about there +10 damage per arrow??? I am almost laughing how you think that is powerful ... as a ranger on the other end ... its almost not even noticeable difference. But go on and be scared lol. If half my bar is dedicated to spirit spamming / spirit survival etc ... my arrows will do about 47.8 at best. How many spirit spammers will have 12 marksmanship ... well likely they either have alot in wilderness or beastmastery ... quite a few in expertise, I usually run 14 12 10 ... 10 being marksmanship. This reduces this damage to 42.238 per arrow.

It only boils down to coordination and a plan of attack. If you do not have any form of interrupt ... you will likely have a very long drawn out battle.

Glasswalker · Jul 19, 2005, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Yup, Maelstrom is nice. Here are a few more hints from the lines I know best:

Rangers, bring Choking Gas. People used to complain that this was only useful if casters would stand in one place. Well guess what? Spammers pretty much do. Time to bring this skill back out.

Necros, bring Well of Suffering. Another skill that works well in general for HoH, but in particular against Spirit Spammers. Remember, any dead body will do. If your Ranger's pet or your Warrior (see below for more fun) went charging in there and somehow died, so much the better. And some say pets are useless in HoH

. Blood Magic skills do decent damage that ignores armor -- don't leave home without one.

Any Warrior/Rangers out there? Here's a fun one for you: Apply Poison works on melee weapons too, not just arrows (shhh, don't tell ArenaNet). Apply Poison and hit Cyclone Axe. Everyone stands in a neat little clump for you, and they all get poisoned

!

None of the above are Enchantments OR Hexes; and they work great in combination.

I don't know the Mesmer line well at all, but I like Chaos Storm (not a hex). I would also like to see the effect of an (Arcane) Echoed Arcane Thievery. Spirit Spam works because of overlap and redundancy. Take one skill at random from 2-3 different people, and watch the house of cards fall down. Has anyone tried this? Looking over the list, it looks like Mesmers are ideal for shutting down this build.

That's all I have for now.

Red Locust · Jul 19, 2005, 06:26 PM // 18:26

Maelstrom, choking gas, chaos storm and most mesmer interruts don't do jack, since ranger spirits are not considered spells :|
Some of the most popular means of interrupting don't even work on spirits.

Hart · Jul 19, 2005, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Couple quick points here on preperation and execution.

Preperation - always, always, always bring a mesmer if you're serious about winning. Here are a couple examples that can ruin a spirit team outside of Diversion, which is awesome in its own right and can be added to the below.

Arcane Thievery, Signet of Humility, Blackout, Quickening Zephyr:
One ranger locked 100% of the time, Oath Shot on another locked 100% of the time, two random skills from a third locked 100% of the time. Needs mana support from either the inspiration line or a BiP necro - NOT blood ritual, it's trash. Negative here is that Blackout takes melee range, so you'll be fine until you reach the dias and then screwed because you can't touch the rangers around the spirit spam; but that's what EoE is for.

Energy Drain, Arcane Echo, Ether Lord:
One ranger out of power 100% of the time at 16 inspiration. Similar to the above but doesn't need power management or QZ to work, so better for groups that can't handle their zephyr. Also doesn't require touch range, so it works better on dias maps. Less efficient overall but slightly more flexible.

Execution - the way you use Edge of Extinction is just as important as bringing it along. You start by flailing wildly at a number of different spirits - ideally you want to get around 10 of them to a very low amount of life. After you have a group of spirits set up for the fall, place your EoE and kill one to spark a chain reaction that wipes them all out.

A more detailed explaination of the above: Let's say spirits have 320 HP at level 11 and Fertile Season is adding an extra 350 HP. That means that in order to wipe the board, you need to do 320 + 350 = 670 damage to all the spirits at once. If your Edge does 63 damage that means a total of 11 spirits need to die at the same time in order to kill all spirits within the edge area off.

If you beat 4 spirits to within a sliver of death and kill one after placing EoE, all 4 will die for 63 * 4 = 252 damage to all spirits in the EoE radius. If there are another 4 spirits sitting around with less than 252 hp left, they'll all die in the blast, causing another 252 damage for 252 + 252 = 504 total damage. Another three spirits with under 504 HP results in a total wipe at 693 damage.

The problem with EoE isn't that it's an ineffective skill; the problem is that people use it in an ineffective fashion.

Red Locust · Jul 19, 2005, 07:24 PM // 19:24

not only does what Hart said require a lot of coordination (getting 4 or more spirits down to minimal health without having the 7 other teammates killing them is difficult enough), but who the hell runs around with an EoE for 63dmg? That's like 16 in beast mastery, if I'm not mistaken. An absolute waste in every case other than this one. Even 12 in beast mastery would be a lot, and then you'd need to kill 16 spirits to kill everything, NOT taking into account the fact that new spirits are popping up every 5 seconds and that EoE will be targetted right away.

All this coordination and killing time gives the spirit spammers valuable time during which they can kill you.

Glasswalker · Jul 19, 2005, 07:33 PM // 19:33

Red Locust -- Chaos Storm drains energy. If you have no energy, then you spam no spirits and it is AoE. As for Choking Gas / Maelstrom -- What you say is true, but Healing comes in basically two flavors. Enchantments and Spells. Spammers have destroyed their own ability to cast Enchantments, and this stops Spells. (Almost) No healing on the dias. Yes, there are still Signets and Troll Unguent. Be prepared to counter/interupt them. That warrior on the dias spreading poison is helping out pretty well.

I wouldn't recommend Mesmer interupts, but Energy denials are great (in combination with other tactics widely known), and Epidemic + Fevered Dreams look like fun. As I said though, I don't know Mesmers so I will happily concede this one.

Hart -- Well spoken summary of EoE.

Tellani Artini · Jul 19, 2005, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glasswalker

Red Locust -- Chaos Storm drains energy. If you have no energy, then you spam no spirits and it is AoE. As for Choking Gas / Maelstrom -- What you say is true, but Healing comes in basically two flavors. Enchantments and Spells. Spammers have destroyed their own ability to cast Enchantments, and this stops Spells. (Almost) No healing on the dias. Yes, there are still Signets and Troll Unguent. Be prepared to counter/interupt them. That warrior on the dias spreading poison is helping out pretty well.

I wouldn't recommend Mesmer interupts, but Energy denials are great (in combination with other tactics widely known), and Epidemic + Fevered Dreams look like fun. As I said though, I don't know Mesmers so I will happily concede this one.

Chaos storm does not drain energy from ritualists because rituals are not spells. I've never seen a ritualist that uses any spells or enchantments to heal themselves, just infuse health (1/4s cast time) or resurrect. Energy denial does not work on ritualists, because all rituals cost 5 energy (3 modified). How long can a mesmer keep a ranger below 3 energy? Unless he's using ether lord or wither, not terribly long. You might halve his spirit output with all your drain skills, but it only takes 3 seconds to regen enough to use a ritual. Blackout, leech signet, and cry of frustration are the only skill interrupts a mesmer can touch a ritualist with, and blackout is the only one I see very often in tombs (it happens to be pretty effective). A ritualist fears rangers and warriors much more than mesmers.

You might be surprised how many times I've been backfired while "spirit spamming"