Curse

Nightwish · Jul 19, 2005, 06:10 AM // 06:10

From the posts I have read, often people ask for help against spike groups, spirit spam grps and etc. Majority here is helpful enough to provide insightful counter strategy against these grps.

However, more often, the counter strategy is specific against that certain enemy build. Hence, unless you know what the opponent team is going to be, how do you know what counters to bring along (except the general ones).

Hence, seems to me that, as easy as the spike grps and others are countered, they are still very viable unless there are others willing take the chance to equip themselves with specific counters.

Aetherfukz · Jul 19, 2005, 06:32 AM // 06:32

Well, you don't need specific counters, just one or more good mesmers, they can shut down a caster in almost no time. Of course if you're up against a full group of spikers, or a spirit spam build, dwayna help you if you are just a pickup group!

theclam · Jul 19, 2005, 07:52 AM // 07:52

Well, all you really need to do is pack hard counters against the most popular builds. That should take less than a quarter of your 64 skill slots, leaving you lots of room.

Darc.Syde · Jul 19, 2005, 08:23 AM // 08:23

you dont make a team specificly to counter a single strategy. you run the minimal amount of counters in your build to be able to counter these strategies. the rest is player skill.

Mercury Angel · Jul 19, 2005, 08:48 AM // 08:48

Many skills that can be used to counter a specific strategy are also decent in their own right.

Fertile Season reduces the effectiveness of spike damage. However, it's also used to reduce the effectiveness of damage in general when one is defending a location.

Protective Spirit is another counter to spike damage. Damage over 50 is pretty common on soft targets, especially considering most elemental spells will deal over 50 damage to a 60 AL target. Whether Protective Spirit is reducing 80's to 48's or 120's to 48's, it's still doing its job of making damage more manageable.

Since there tend to be multiple skills that can be used to the same effect to counter a strategy, choose those that will also aid you in other ways.

Versus a maintained enchanter group, you have Chillbains, Well of the Profane, Rend Enchantments, Nature's Renewal, Lingering Curse, Primal Echoes, and Rust at your disposal.

Nature's Renewal removes them all in a huge radius at once, and slows their recast. It also can harm you, so it may not be the best choice.
Chillbains can strip off enchantments on multiple people without harming your group, and it's 100% effective at 0 curses. Another perk is that it can remove enchantments that can't be removed directly (Such as Spellbreaker or Obsidian Flesh).
Well of the Profane is superior to the above, but it takes a corpse. It removes all enchantments and prevents future ones within it's AoE.
Lingering Curse and Rend Enchantments totally strip a single target. Often, teams will cover their vital enchantments with lesser ones, so that single enchantment removal isn't a bother.
And then, there's addressing the source of the enchantments-
Primal Echoes makes the major perk of signets, their being free, gone. It counters maintained enchantment builds by making their energy mangement skill, Blessed Signet, cost 10 energy, which is very impractical. It, like Nature's Renewal, also hurts your own group. It's also somewhat nice for shutting down Healing Signet on warriors, since 10 energy is a it high for a warrior. Against a warrior heavy team, it can be as annoying as frozen soil because of its effect on rez signet.
Rust slows the casting time of Blessed Signet by 3x, making it take 6 seconds to use. Also an annoyance for Signet of Devotion, which is a likely skill for them to carry to aid in energy management. In addition to that, it's also good for controlling resurrections for non-monks (3 second rez becomes a 9 second rez), and making Healing Signet a VERY bad choice. (6 seconds to cast, which is a lot of time to be standing around as a warrior, but also 6 seconds of -40 AL).

By picking skills that have multiple uses to shutdown multiple strategies, or to at least impede them, it's really not an issue at all. You may not choose the best skills for any single strategy, but to gain more versatility is an even trade-off.

Nightwish · Jul 19, 2005, 02:41 PM // 14:41

Thanks for clarifying my doubts

I've been looking at the counters too narrowly