Curse

Warskull · Oct 30, 2007, 12:43 AM // 00:43

I've heard a number of complaints from a number of different sources about the charr in hard mode. The charr are not that dangerous due to mediocre healing and their behaviors. The key is recognizing the threats and dealing with them appropriately. Hit the charr hard and fast.

Follow these tips:
#1) Focus on blocked based defense. Don't take bad defensive skills. Use skills like aegis, defensive anthem, guardian, and shield's up to mitigate the charrs damage. Their most consistent damage is physical based.

#2) Don't worry too much about agro and tank. Focus more and engaging and killing as many charr as quickly as possible. Your monks are there to keep you alive. The best way to help them is reduce the number of charr present as quickly as possible.

#3) Take interrupts. Interrputing Rez chant, the fire eles, aegis, and rez sigs goes a long way. Interrupts hurt charr. Their greatest threat is meteor shower, but it can very easily be interrupted (you have 5 freaking seconds.) Choking gas, savage shot, distracting shot, power return, power spike, cry of frustration, distracting strike, and distracting blow are all very good vs charr.

#4) Only use combat rezzes in combat, if you rebirth you die. Use rez chant, death pact signet, flesh of my flesh, signet of return, and rez sigs in battle. Save everything else for picking up the pieces afterwards.

#5) Apply instant AoE liberally. The charr tend to ball, but will scatter if you drop skills like Savannah heat. Splinter weapon, rodgort's invocation, searing flames, and other similar skills rip the charr up.

#6) If you still seem to be taking a lot of damage with blocks grab a bsurge. All charr enchant themselves and you can blind all their melees with a single bsurge usually.

Whiskeyjack · Oct 30, 2007, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Good advice there, the only thing's i would add are that all warriors should run SY! it reduces the incoming dmg considerably. Also paragon's make the charr missions(and every misison tbh) a cakewalk.

TheGuildWarsPenguin · Oct 30, 2007, 12:56 AM // 00:56

Actually, you don't have 5 seconds to interrupt MS in HM. They cast faster.

Kale Ironfist · Oct 30, 2007, 01:23 AM // 01:23

HM critters get half cast, so it's 2.5 seconds.

Graphik Desine · Oct 30, 2007, 05:34 AM // 05:34

also consider you cannot interrupt the charr dominator res chant or avenger flesh of my flesh either. both are almost instant. if you have perfect ping and quick reflexes---or just get lucky---well, good luck on that interrupting.

if you have problems with them ressing, focus on 1 target, and take frozen soil---but put it out of their reach, but in range so they cannot res. this way you can kill whatever you want. it is kinda fun watching them and elite stone summit scramble around when one of their buddies dies and they can't hard res it

use it wisely, though, it can hurt your party. bring lively was naomei in case of a wipe. hopefully whoever has that won't get interrupted...or...youll just wipe and have to run back to wherever you were ._.

pain inverter works really well on the charr flameshielders. if you cannot interrupt them, use that, and they die instantly especially if your h/h are balled up. there is enough time to cast pain inverter while they are casting meteor shower/firestorm, so you don't waste extra precious seconds on assuming when they will cast an aoe next.

Mickey · Oct 30, 2007, 05:37 AM // 05:37

BHA + Epidemic.

They ball up, spread the conditions around.

Div · Oct 30, 2007, 06:09 AM // 06:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graphik Desine

also consider you cannot interrupt the charr dominator res chant or avenger flesh of my flesh either. both are almost instant. if you have perfect ping and quick reflexes---or just get lucky---well, good luck on that interrupting.

HM monsters cast at 2x rate, and with fast casting (which is about 2-2.5x), they'll cast 4-5x faster? That still means it takes a little more than a second to cast those spells, aka pretty easily interruptible?

trobinson97 · Oct 30, 2007, 07:43 AM // 07:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mickey

BHA + Epidemic.

They ball up, spread the conditions around.

Does that really work well? If so, we might have to start a thread to try and get it nerfed. I've never used that tactic, but if someone else is using a different strategy than mine I don't like; it makes me feel less special and less elite.

GaladrielMoloch · Oct 30, 2007, 11:11 AM // 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by trobinson97

Does that really work well? If so, we might have to start a thread to try and get it nerfed. I've never used that tactic, but if someone else is using a different strategy than mine I don't like; it makes me feel less special and less elite.

o.O logic that makes the world spin backwards

and the Rez's can still be interrupted, particularly with daze skills. Party wide buffs, particularly anti-melee help well as OP said.

Government Flu · Oct 30, 2007, 04:07 PM // 16:07

I usually just stab them with a sword until they bleed and die, but most of your suggestions should help those who are trying out new strategies.

Gigashadow · Oct 30, 2007, 07:43 PM // 19:43

Do you think Mantra of Flame would be worthwhile (the physicals use Conjure Flame and the casters use fire spells) when vanquishing Charr areas, or is that just a waste of time or overkill?

Graphik Desine · Oct 30, 2007, 08:20 PM // 20:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

HM monsters cast at 2x rate, and with fast casting (which is about 2-2.5x), they'll cast 4-5x faster? That still means it takes a little more than a second to cast those spells, aka pretty easily interruptible?

have you ever heard of a rezzmer?

have you observed these charr in HM rez their buddies? have you seen how fast rezzing is? you almost DON'T see it. by the time you finish killing 1 charr and click over to the guy who is rezzing, it was already done. AND if you are focused on the one who is rezzing, and hench/people kill something while you have the hard rezzer targeted, it is almost like watching it use a shout...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

Do you think Mantra of Flame would be worthwhile (the physicals use Conjure Flame and the casters use fire spells) when vanquishing Charr areas, or is that just a waste of time or overkill?

this is up to you. i had considered it, but if you are running with hero/hench builds, you can't force the last 4 hench to bring it. so to me it was a waste of time. if you run with people, you could have them bring it, but keep in mind they would be skimping on strength/divine favor/energy storage attributes...:/

Warskull · Oct 31, 2007, 12:06 AM // 00:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheGuildWarsPenguin

Actually, you don't have 5 seconds to interrupt MS in HM. They cast faster.

Yeah, you are right it is faster in hard mode. However, it is still slow and easy to interrupt. 3 seconds is a long time. All the way down to 1s is viable to interrupt.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

Do you think Mantra of Flame would be worthwhile (the physicals use Conjure Flame and the casters use fire spells) when vanquishing Charr areas, or is that just a waste of time or overkill?

It isn't worth it. Takes too much spec and isn't as effective as using block based defenses (like aegis.)

Quote:

also consider you cannot interrupt the charr dominator res chant or avenger flesh of my flesh either. both are almost instant. if you have perfect ping and quick reflexes---or just get lucky---well, good luck on that interrupting.

The charr dominator is usually interrupted or knocked down almost instantly after the charr healer goes down. Sometimes he gets it off, but the healer is only rezzed with a sliver of health at that point anyway and goes straight back down.

Longasc · Oct 31, 2007, 06:25 AM // 06:25

It should be mentioned that the Vanguard Rank effect works vs all charr, so not only in the Charr Homeland but in Old Ascalon as well!

I also recommend the Ebon Battle Standard of Courage = constant sure +48 armor vs charr, recommended for solo vanquishing.

Government Flu · Nov 02, 2007, 02:37 AM // 02:37

Quote:

It should be mentioned that the Vanguard Rank effect works vs all charr, so not only in the Charr Homeland but in Old Ascalon as well!

However, there is a bug with rank 9 agent. You don't gain the extra adrenaline. I'm not so sure whether you get the +9 armor either, but you do get the +2 energy. I haven't tried going against the Charr at rank 10 yet, but regardless...if you're a warrior or paragon with rank 9, you're going to run into some problems until this bug is fixed.

Yol · Nov 02, 2007, 10:42 AM // 10:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

Do you think Mantra of Flame would be worthwhile (the physicals use Conjure Flame and the casters use fire spells) when vanquishing Charr areas, or is that just a waste of time or overkill?

Some of the charr warriors use Conjure Frost.

Div · Nov 02, 2007, 11:02 AM // 11:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graphik Desine

have you ever heard of a rezzmer?

Yes

Quote:

have you observed these charr in HM rez their buddies?

No, but I've seen them try. Mass AoE KD + pinpoint interrupts ftw.

Quote:

have you seen how fast rezzing is? you almost DON'T see it.

Pretty slow. If you play any type of ranger or mesmer that relies on interrupt, you'll think it's pretty slow too.

Quote:

by the time you finish killing 1 charr and click over to the guy who is rezzing, it was already done. AND if you are focused on the one who is rezzing, and hench/people kill something while you have the hard rezzer targeted, it is almost like watching it use a shout...

Practice makes perfect. People who never practiced interrupting will always think it's hard. When I first started a mesmer, I thought interrupting one second casts was hard. Now, I can hit 3/4 casts with nice consistency.

Cebe · Nov 02, 2007, 12:22 PM // 12:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graphik Desine

have you observed these charr in HM rez their buddies?

No, but I've seen them try. Mass AoE KD + pinpoint interrupts ftw.

It's true.

I'm not the greatest fan of Fire Magic but I decided to resort to it yesterday when trying to vanquish Grothmar Wardowns. I kept coming up to a group of Charr with a Prophet, Mender and Dominator. Focus Fire on the Dominator with a Meteor Shower from Me and Cynn and plenty of Heats around the place seemed to do the trick quite nicely.

My Charr Killing strategy was first to kill the Dominator. He seems pretty weak. After Mr. Resbot is dead it's time to focus on the monks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yol

Some of the charr warriors use Conjure Frost.

A few, but not all. Many Rangers and Warriors do use Conjure Flame. The Rangers also use Ignite (more fire damage) and the Flameshielders use AoE fire magic. There's WAY more fire than there is cold damage.

Longasc · Nov 03, 2007, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Government Flu

However, there is a bug with rank 9 agent. You don't gain the extra adrenaline. I'm not so sure whether you get the +9 armor either, but you do get the +2 energy. I haven't tried going against the Charr at rank 10 yet, but regardless...if you're a warrior or paragon with rank 9, you're going to run into some problems until this bug is fixed.

Wow... this is serious bug. I hope you reported directly to ANet support?

I did not notice that, being rank 9 Vanguard but playing a Necromancer, so I did not really notice that.