Curse

Paperfly · Jun 22, 2006, 12:51 PM // 12:51

(I appreciate that there's a Kurzick FA tactica amongst recent posts, but this goes into considerably more depth in its hyper-specialised subject matter. Enjoy!)

A Guide to Gate-Bonding in Fort Aspenwood, with Common Counters and Counter-Counters:
Being Ye Olde Guide for Newcomers, with Tips for the Already Enlightened, Seasoned with some Sour Humours and Expressions of Malice.

Introduction:
As we've all probably seen, one of the easiest ways to wrangle a win on the Kurzick end of Fort Aspenwood is to “bond the gate”. By “gate”, we mean one of the NPC Elementalists on the other side of one of the front gates (and eventually the Green gate, if you get pushed back that far), since as long as one of these helpful little munchkins is alive the gate stays up and the Luxons can't get in.

It's important to remember that the point of gate-bonding is to allow local superiority. That is, if a single player can hold the Orange gate alone, you then theoretically have seven players left to defend the Purple side against four Luxons (assuming they split evenly). The exception is when you get two or more bonders on the team – but then that's the Aspenwood equivalent of hitting the jackpot and isn't something you can plan on!

Against a poor Luxon team, even a single bonder can be an autowin. If you can sit behind the Green gate and hold for an arbitrarily long amount of time because the other team consists of seven stance tanks and a barrager... Well, you may as well do so, and you probably don't need a guide! For our purposes here, I'm going to assume that the Luxon team brought a respectable amount of countermeasure skills, or at least enough degen that they would be able to break in eventually. But hey, that's fine – you don't need to survive forever, just until the Thin Dragon sings. Or beats the drum, whatever.

Assumptions and conventions:
One usually bonds the Orange front gate. That's because the rest of the team usually charges straight to the Purple mine, and it's annoying to have to let half a dozen low-health mine runners through the gate when they have a whole Luxon pack at their heels. So for the rest of this guide “Orange” means “the side you have bonded”, and “Purple” means “the side you have no control over”. Feel free to reverse the above if you like.

...Oh, and this is skillset I'll be discussing:

{E} Life Barrier
Life Bond
Essence Bond
Blessed Signet
Protective Spirit
Mend Ailment
Dwayna's Kiss
Ethreal Light

Juggle your attributes and gear accordingly

This is a generalist build that works irrespective of your secondary. It's open to plenty of tweaking – and feel free to post your own builds – but for the purposes of our discussion it does all the essential jobs.

It's almost the build I use. I kicked Mend Ailment out (and yes, it hurt to do so!) in favour of Soul Feast as a way of getting around Well of the Profane. More on that towards the end of the guide...

Note that metagames vary a bit from server to server, and a lot from time of day to time of day. So if I comment offhand that “nobody's picked up on Order of Apostasy yet”, remember that may not be the case in your games.

I play a dedicated bond-stripper on the Luxon side for variety, by the way – and yes, I run both Order of Apostasy and Well of the Profane!

Part I: Notes on General Play
Beginning play:
The game starts, everyone rushes to the teleporter, and complains about how many AFKs there are again, that sort of thing... At this point I usually state loudly and clearly: "I am going to bond the Orange gate. I may need caster support and will scream if I need it." Nine times out of ten nobody's paying attention, but at least the competent players on your side will know what's going on and will adapt their playstyle accordingly.
...Once or twice I've managed to state the above on general chat rather than team. But hey, it's not an unitigated mistake – I've at least intimidated the opposition slightly!

A quick zip later and you're sitting behind the Outer Orange gate. If you're new at this, you may want to practice targetting the NPC through the gate – particularly if you have to break off and close the door behind an inconsiderate amber-running Assassin. Learn where to fix your camera so that you can click straight ahead and hit your target... Another technique that's worth practicing is selecting the NPC then quickly backing out of casting range without deselecting him: You'll want to spend a lot of time ducking in and out of your max cast range, and you almost never want to be flat up against the gate – since you're susceptible to damage spells and Turtle shots.

Sometimes someone clever will madly charge the gate to try and rush you out of a proper bonding job. Don't worry too much – a single character usually can't spike that well and get through Ward Against Melee in time – just make sure you put up a Protective Spirit quickly before your main bonding starts.

Life Barrier -> Life Bond -> Essence Bond. The order's important against enchantment strip and the order in which the bond damage calculations are made is apparently important, though I'll admit I haven't researched the math beyond what Wiki told me was correct!

From there on, your job's pretty simple: Keep Prot Spirit up at all times, and throw out a Dwayna's Kiss if your Elementalist drops below 2/3 health. Oh, and deal with enemy countermeasures, but that'll be a whole section to itself...

The reason for keeping up Prot Spirit is Turtles. Turtles are virtually worthless if a bondee has a Buddha-head icon active, and as long as you duck back a bit when you see the siege shot warmup it shouldn't touch you either. Keeping the Spirit live also means enemies can't spike your bondee quickly enough to run you out of energy, plus it's fast recharge makes it an awesome cover enchantment to keep one-shot removal from touching your bonds.

To do so, obviously you'll need to spam Blessed Signet whenever possible – unless there's an Assassin feeding you energy through Essence Bond, of course! Signet use is a bit of an art, and you'll get better at it with practice... About the only pertinent advice I have to offer is to make sure there's plenty of time left on your Prot Spirit before using it (can you sense a theme here?).

One last job you have is live updating. Don't spam, and don't play little Hitler – but to the better players on your team knowing how much pressure is being applied to each gate is valuable information. Not infrequently you'll find that a team with no good way of beating your bond will abandon the Orange side entirely, in which case you'd do well to advertise the free mine! Make sure that whoever comes to run amber won't die to the lone turtle though (or alternatively can solo both the turtles and the lux warriors!). Encourage key Purple defenders to stay in place, too – the point to running amber here is to keep Purple up longer, after all!

When the Orange mine is being run, I usually take full command of the gate-switch – I open it when the runners are getting close, and I close it again quicker than they could. The corollary is that I can and will shut the gate before the runner can get through if I have to: A dead runner is less tragic than a downed gate. Don't do this unless you're confident that you can get back to the bondee fast, mind you.

The Outer Orange Gate has been Breached!
No matter how good you are, you can't hold forever against enough Luxons who really know their stuff. Don't abandon your bondee until he's dead – there's been plenty of times when I've brought that ele back from a fully black bar with a last-instant Dwayna's – but at the same time make sure that you don't die at the exact wrong moment, and that you have at least enough energy for a Prot Spirit on an Inner gatesman.

...That's because pulling back from Outer to Inner is dangerous. A committed amount of firepower is bearing down directly on you, they're highly motivated to keep you from establishing your bond on Inner Orange, and you're operating well below full energy. One trick I've taken to – and it is just a trick, not some miraculous piece of technology – is bonding an Inner gate necromancer instead of the elementalist if I'm being pressured. Bonding the ele is the orthodox choice, so the smart players spike them at full speed... And if they breached a gate, you have to work on the assumption that these guys are smart!

Assuming you get your balance back and set up your bonds in time, you're still looking at a slightly harder fight than you were before. Sure, people can shoot down from the sidelines (which, to be honest, I don't always recommend – often it only draws turtle fire that would have been prevented by Prot Spirit anyway), but (a) you're up against a team that's shown they can beat bonds, and they're hungry for more, (b) your reserves aren't at full, (c) you have less room to manouver backwards on that ledge, and (d) they have more corpses to play with!

Having said that, bonding Inner isn't all that different to bonding Outer – nine times out of ten if you get your bonds up in time you'll be forced to move back to Green because Purple is swamped, not because of any failing on your side.

The Inner Orange Gate has been Breached!
Because the Green NPCs can hold a little longer (especially the Juggernaut) you can afford to defend Inner Orange to the death – your death, I mean, not the team's! You then respawn on your side with full energy and drop your bonds on the friendly ele.

At this point I usually drop a Life Barrier (only) on a second NPC at the Green Gate. Depending on my mood, I either put it on the Jug to keep it active and dealing with turtles for longer, or I put it on a mesmer to confuse opponents as to which NPC I'm bonding (the latter particularly if I bonded the necro earlier and showed I'm willing to make unorthodox choices). In some rare circumstances I do both and take off the Essence Bond from my main guy. Remember that with four maintained enchantments your Signet is your only source of energy... Make sure that (as usual) you have enough for those Prot Spirits! Once my spare bondees are dead (and they're only really meant to do some delaying and confusing), it's all systems go on the main man.

At this point, depending on your team and the game situation, it can be useful to have an amber piece on standby to repair the Green Gate the instant it goes down (talk to either Gatekeeper, not the Master Architect). Seriously, it does happen and it's probably just bought you several whole minutes.

Since you've pulled back as far as is possible, you should be able to conscript other team members to help you more easily. The flipside is that you're more likely to have amber runners bust in inconsiderately with Luxons behind them! If this happens, you just have to kite, heal yourself, and Prot Spirit the bondee. Yeah, that easy [/sarcasm].

There's a couple of additional challenges that come with the Green gate. If the opposition has two turtles lined up and firing you can't send teammates to the gate to cast through it as easily (Prot Spirit still means that they still can't easily hurt the bondee), and the sheer number of peeps around makes this the spot where Edge of Extinction is really dangerous. Oh, and sometimes you'll have to curse and swear at that idiot Poletski, who randomly goes for runs out into the melee.

The Green Gate has been Breached!
Remember those two turtles who were insignificant because of Prot Spirit? They just became gamebreakers.

The good news is that the Gatekeepers have Prot Spirit too – and honestly, that's going to have to keep multiple team members alive.

There are very few circumstances where dropping multiple bonds is helpful here (and to be honest most of them involve a second monk). If you do, make it Life Bond – Barrier's not that great when you can expect to spend a lot of time under half health! In practice, if you're on your own here your job is to Prot Spirit -> kite -> Ethereal Light -> kite -> Prot Spirit -> die and respawn. And hope someone else on the team has a good chelonean-killing plan.

Usually you'll want to keep either or both gatekeepers alive as long as you can. The exception is if the opponent's kill condition is multiple Touch Rangers, since these bypass the Prots – in this case just flood Gunther with all the healing you can and keep Prot up anyway to deflect turtle shots.

If you do have multiple monks, it's a good idea to have one healing the healers. So to speak. One of the most impressive games I've played involved an AFK, three ragequitters, and three monks who held – with the Green gate down – by healing Gunther alone from the 25% mark! We did it by having one monk kite warriors, one heal Gunther, and one healing the kiter. The warriors changed targets from time to time, of course, so we all just shifted roles!

...Good times. Anyway! With some luck you're past the 90% mark here and can hold 'till "game" gets called.

The Inner Purple Gate has been Breached! AKA Falling Back Voluntarily:
You'd think that with seven of your players free to hold the Purple side they'd have it easy, right? Well, in practice there's always too many idiots off ganking commanders (which I personally consider a form of being AFK for all the good it does) or attempting one-on-one stance tank duels. I've lost multiple games where I was comfortably holding Outer Orange and meanwhile the other team has managed to suicide-charge their way past the Green NPCs before I could fall back!

From Inner Orange it's usually easy to see when you need to fall back (and my advice here is "better safe than sorry!"), but from Outer Orange you can't move back far enough without losing sight of your bondee for too long – or even losing your bonds! Your best bet here is good communication – try to get a sense of how much danger the other side is in at any given time. If your team sucks and is incommunicative, then act on your distrust and fall back on Green right away – don't take bad risks. I also back up for a peek at the middle from time to time – my rule of thumb is that if any of the center NPCs are dead, you should probably fall back.

Advancing:
Moving up to a repaired gate is as dangerous as falling back one – you spend a lot of time on low energy reserves and are vulnerable while you set up. My philosophy on advancing gates is to do so only if it's self-evidently a good thing – that is, if the attacking force has been completely routed. This goes double if you're moving from Green to Inner Orange – only do so if Inner Purple is holding and the opposition seems to have given up on the orange side!

(Part II, countermeasures, will go in the next post to break up the wall of text a bit!)

Paperfly · Jun 22, 2006, 01:03 PM // 13:03

Part II: Countermeasures and their, uh, Counters

One quick point: 90% of these countermeasures can be significantly blunted by having an offensive caster who can project damage (i.e. no missile spells) or degen through the gate to keep the opposition from trying anything clever. So if you have a surplus of competent casters, get one to come along with you... Unfortunately, these same casters are usually vital to the defense of the other gate!

(Things they may try that don't work: )
- One-shot enchantment removal (e.g. Strip Enchantment). Even in multiples, the spammability of Prot Spirit as a cover plus the efficiency of your healing should make this a non-issue.
- Unsupported damage spikes of any kind. See Spirit, Protective. 'sin combos already collapse under Ward Against Melee, throw in the energy you're getting back from Essence Bond and they become laughable. Your friendly, neighbourhood MM is also welcome to the party – he's preventing his teammates from Profaning you and he's up against the raw comedy that is minions vs. Silver Armour.

One-Shot Mass Enchant Removal: (e.g. Expunge Enchantments, Gaze of Contempt)
Not to be underestimated – heck, the fact that your opponent brought this skill along means they were at least bright enough to consider how they were going to deal with bonders. Now, if you face a concerted push along with the quick strip you're in trouble, but it's not hopeless. You have two things working in your favour: How quickly Prot Spirit regenerates, and the fact that even with no protections it's hard for your opponent to spike the ele down before you can get your bonds back up. The latter will be taken into consideration by your opponent if he's really good, and he'll strip just before a Turtle shot... But that's not always possible. You also have two efficient heal spells and your full energy regeneration – use all your advantages and you have a good shot at surviving the strip.

Massive Degen:
Not a threat by itself – it's capped, after all, and you still have some powerful heal spells – mass degen is more of a problem when combined with monk-sniping (coming up...). The main pitfal to avoid is forgetting to keep your Prot Spirit up just because it's not stopping the degen: There's still turtles shooting out there, and most offensive casters will have some non-degen damage as backup.

Incidentally, I recommend against fighting the degen with removal spells – they're usually slower and less redundant than the offense, and they take up valuable slots.

Touch Rangers fall into this capacity too – they're a huge threat when combined with a degen character hitting at the same time. However, the same counters apply: Out-heal them. And call in an offensive caster to take them out.

Killing the Monk!
The countermeasure you're likely to see the most often, simply because it's easiest to organise on an ad-hoc basis. We're talking about direct (or mesmer!) damage that fires through walls here, btw. Now, your primary defense here is the quick back-and-forwards shuffle in and out of cast range. Remember that while they're targetting you (hard up against the gate, taking damage from the ele) they can't spike the bondee, so don't panic and stay disciplined: Renew Prot Spirit when it's needed, heal the bondee when he falls below half or so, and heal yourself (or Signet) while you're out of range. Try to stay above half-health to keep Life Barrier up, but don't sweat too much if it goes down.

You can actually ignore a proportion of the damage – there's only so many spells they have to deal 600+ damage to you and the bondee, after all. Spiteful Spirit on a monk is, incidentally, a complete joke. Backfire is more dangerous, but it has a shorter duration than people realise, and you can usually afford a single Prot Spirit on your target while hexed - which is often all you need.

...As with the massive degen mentioned above, it's more efficient to heal yourself here than it is to remove conditions or hexes. Less complicated, too!

If there's too many of them, though (defined as "more than two"), you're going to need help. Call up that offensive caster I keep suggesting and fight fire with fire! Or Life Siphons, whatever.

The Really, Really Good Enchantment Removers:
Some people take bonders as a personal challenge. Those people run Well of the Profane or Order of Apostasy.

Well is the main thing you have to worry about at the moment – people who should be running Order usually take SS instead! It's probably the more dangerous of the two, but it's also situational and has an obvious counter.

...That counter is Soul Feast. One second cast, instant recharge. The 10E cost is a problem (pity about the teleport on Necrotic Transversal... Does that even work through gates?), but when you're bonding Outer (at least) there's only one corpse you have to worry about – unless the necro is good enough to lure someone on your team into offloading the Luxon Warriors from the turtle.

If you're not /N (or don't have access to one on the team) then Well remains a major threat. It is survivable, though (I've managed to do so an unimpressive total of four times, so far!) for one very good reason: the necro needs a spike to help him kill the ele in time. Good necros will time the Well just before a Turtle shot, but the need for a corpse can make them nervous – they often have to exploit it fast for fear of your potential Feast or even a friendly idiot MM nicking it (do I sound bitter? I have reasons!).

Order, as I've mentioned, is less powerful but also much less situational. The good thing about it from your perspective is that it can be suicidal for the caster, and it's even more dependent than the Well on a supportive spike (they can either wand the victim and strip enchantments, or cast spells and do damage, not both). The suicidal factor doesn't mean much on an Outer gate – he'll probably respawn at the mine – but is a huge deal when they're trying to batter down Green. Killing the necro by spamming monk enchants in this situation means they have to walk all the way back again – and few necros have a speed boost! The other good thing about opposing necros who Order is (you guessed it!) Prot Spirit's relative spammability as a cover.

One situational defense against both of these – and it takes some luck and synchronicity – is a Shelter spammin' rit. Note that Well doesn't affect Weapon spells either, so feel free to drop the I-can't-believe-it's-not-an-enchantment Weapon of Warding.

Edge of Extinction:
The Luxon flavour of the month is only really a problem when you're at the Green gate – there's not enough potential deaths to fuel it anywhere else. To be honest, there's not a lot you can do about EoE that you wouldn't do anyway (Prot Spirit, heals), except that you'll need to keep an eye on the Gatekeepers' health. Oh, and because it's bang in the middle of the base a friendly warrior will probably kill the spirit for you if you scream at him loudly enough! Remember that the ranger probably needs an Oath Shot to reset it, too.

Pulling the Bondee out of Casting Range:
This is a more dangerous trick some experienced rangers know how to pull. The solution here is to not panic: he probably can't do enough damage before the ele gets bored and wanders back into your range. The trick is to recognise that it's about to happen, and get a new Prot Spirit on him immediately to last out the whole gap period. A quick heal, if you have time, then duck back out of range.

Conclusions:
There's two things I want you to take away from this guide. The first is that bonding is a complicated and skillful process, and that you can expect to get better at it with practice! Oh, and it's not cheap, cheesy, or unbeatable. A good bonder vs stripper fight is some of the most fun I've ever had, an adrenaline packed rollercoster of extravaganzas as two peeps pit their minds and reflexes against each other! Although it's admittedly rather boring for the rest of the team!

The second (it's more practical) is what a huge advantage it is to have an offensive caster on your side helping. You can't always spare them – you can't always get them – but if one puts themself at your disposal, things are looking up!

(If any take offense at the above guide, remember: It was all but a dream! You know, as I am an honest Puck!)

AW Lore · Jun 22, 2006, 04:26 PM // 16:26

well, i use a diferent build:

Prot spirit
RoF
Guardian
Life sheath (E)
signet of devotion
Mend ailment
remove hex
Aegis.

with prot spirit and life sheath can negate the turtles 48 dmg, what i like about this build is that i dont have to set bonds and is very flexible in that i can follow and help anyone of my team when the enemy gets in.

altough i might change RoF for essence bond to get a little bit of energy.
stats are 13 prot, 15 divine, the only thing that scares me are the well of profanes, single enchant strippers either take out guardian or life sheath, leaving prot spirit alone.

Yakumo · Jun 23, 2006, 11:22 AM // 11:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paperfly

A Guide to Gate-Bonding in Fort Aspenwood, with Common Counters and Counter-Counters:
Being Ye Olde Guide for Newcomers, with Tips for the Already Enlightened, Seasoned with some Sour Humours and Expressions of Malice.

Nice guide, thank you for posting it.

I don't play a bonder myself, but found it a good read. Whether I decide to play a bonder in the future or not, at least I know what that Monk is actually doing... other than just standing there, all alone at the Orange gate.

I was lucky one night to have been teamed up 4 times with the same Monk, but with everything that was happening, I never really had a chance to see what she was doing. All I knew was that she somehow held the gate... freeing us up to go gank the commanders... *ahem* I mean hold Purple!

Amity and Truth · Jun 23, 2006, 11:42 AM // 11:42

Thank you for the guide. Yes, the power of a bonding monk in Aspenwood is enough to offset several afk leechers and still win a match. Just like a single interrupt with a recharge of 10 can keep the turtles at bay for an unlimited amount of time (but that's another topic, really)

beanerman_99 · Jun 23, 2006, 07:17 PM // 19:17

Nice guide, well written.

One way I have countered a bonder monk on the other side of the gate is to immediately tell team what you are up to. That brings 1 to 2 more teammates to help take out that gate. I play and ele so I cast Mark of Rodgort on the monk and then start casting Tenhai's Heat and Searing heat and Breath of fire to keep him away and to keep him burning. Monks will back out of it for sure but they are on fire and burning at this point. My teammates rush in to gank the NPC and if the monk tries to come back they he usually enters my AoE's that are still up and begins to burn again. By this time he usually has to heal himself back up which takes his focus away from the NPC and uses up some of his energy.

Now I am not implying that YOU the writer of this guide would fall for my shenanigans, but in my experience, the monks I have seen try to bond has failed. Could be simply that they don't have the experience and thought process you do. Given time they would probably figure it out.

The one time I had a problem stopping a bonder was when the monk had a Mesmer side kick. And what a damn fine mesmer he/she was too! wow. That mesmer had a counter for every trick I tried to use. The whole battle she/he was on me like flies on...well you know. I tried to tell the team to shut her down but they, like most players, don't see mesmers as a threat, which is stupid. I whispered the mesmer after the battle to let them know they did a damn fine job and should teach other mesmers to play as well. They said "thanks" and appreciated me saying as much and said I definitely kept them on their toes the whole match. Was probably the best time I had at the Fort. I love it when players can acknowledge good, clean, fun, and exciting competition.

Paperfly · Jun 24, 2006, 01:31 AM // 01:31

Thanks for the replies, guys!

AW Lore: Interesting build, I haven't tried an all-prot solution. Don't you find you're a bit susceptible to massed degen, though? One suggestion I might make (that won't change your build too much) is taking Spell Breaker as your elite instead. That would make you a great "second bonder" to confuse a lot of counter-tactics... I'm a bit wary of a build with so little raw healing, though, to be honest.

Yakumo: You've found me out, really I'm just after some attention.

Amity: Far be it from me to disparage turtle interrupting! The only slight reservation I have is that it seems inefficient to dedicate a full slot to stalemating only one turtle. If you're bringing some secondary roles to the table, though - retaking mines, for instance - then great!

beanerman: given the amount of time I've spent in the Fort, you probably have killed me a couple of times! A fire ele is probably the next best monk-killer to a custom-built mesmer in this context, and when both sides know what they're doing it's a bit of a coin-flip as to who will come out on top.

...Like I said in the guide - and as you mentioned - the safest option from a bonder's perspective when you're being attacked through the gate is to call an offensive caster as backup.

Incidentally, Meteor's often a good spell to lead with rather than Mark; the former gets you a knockdown, a potential interrupt, and a second to cast something else, whereas the latter lets the monk know what's about to happen, even if he can't avoid the damage entirely.

And I fully agree that the best games are the ones with tight competition and mutual respect and sportsmanship.

Zui · Jun 24, 2006, 02:05 AM // 02:05

Question, shouldn't this go in Gladiator's Arena? Last time I checked Fort Aspenwood was PvP, and Gladiator's Arena was a PvP-related fourm.

Benandorf · Jun 24, 2006, 02:35 AM // 02:35

He wrote a friggin thesis! Give him a break!

Nice guide, very helpful to see any weaknesses in the strategy =)

BlackRecluse · Jun 24, 2006, 03:55 AM // 03:55

good guide..sorry just have to say when i glanced at the title i thought it said:

full guide to bondage arts

rofl

Reks · Jun 24, 2006, 04:17 AM // 04:17

Nice guide, it really explains the art of bonding. I used to bond the orange gate as a monk with a sub-par skillbar, and it worked for the really bad Luxon teams. But of course, I didn't last long against the really good enchant strippers.

So here's a recent build I used that prospective bonders shouldn't bring to Aspenwood.

Air of Enchantment {E}
Mend Ailment
Guardian
Reversal of Fortune
Protective Spirit
Life Attunement
Divine Boon
Contemplation of Purity

Cast Life Attunement, then basically power through damage with the divine favor heal + Life Attunement and AoE enchant spammage. The onle plus side was that I didn't have to worry about the one-shot/mass enchant removal, since I was reapplying just as quickly. It worked for a bit, until I was eaten alive by a good domination mesmer with Backfire and Diversion. x_X A Well of Profane also ended my fun. Never thought about taking Soul Feast though(shows how little I think outside the box...).

Conversely, on the Luxon side I always brought enchant strips to combat bonders(Lyssa's Balance on the Warrior and Ranger, Gaze of Contempt on the Ele), and I was one of those people that stripped them off before the turtle shots, hehehe.

These days however I spend my days defending Aspenwood. There's something dastardly about Turtles blasting away with 200+ dmg per hit, and not even hurting allies. :0 C'mon we're just trying to build a superweapon of death here.

AW Lore · Jun 24, 2006, 04:41 AM // 04:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paperfly

AW Lore: Interesting build, I haven't tried an all-prot solution. Don't you find you're a bit susceptible to massed degen, though? One suggestion I might make (that won't change your build too much) is taking Spell Breaker as your elite instead. That would make you a great "second bonder" to confuse a lot of counter-tactics... I'm a bit wary of a build with so little raw healing, though, to be honest.

that build served me well for a long time, but indeed, makes ME vulnerable to mass degen, i was able to keep the ele alive for a bit longer, but not permanent.

now, i have changed to a new heal-prot build:

1.-dwayna kiss
2.- ethereal light
3.- prot spirit
4.- life sheath (E)
5.- remove hex
6.- mend ailment
7.- guardian
8.- essence bond

well, decided to add essence bond after i saw your thesis (and after i posted my old build

) and make some tweaks.

with the old build most of the healing was done thanks to divine favor, and reduced with RoF and Life sheath, with this one i can heal the ele (or gatekeepers and gunther) i had heal other instead of ethereal light, but i needed a good strong self heal, and orizon only heals half of what ethereal does, so while im behind a gate, its safe to use it.

eles are not much of a threat, once i see them coming i can use prot spirit to mitigate the meteor damage and follow up atacks, mesmers with Backfire are a threat if i dont have prot spirit up before that, and degen necros have become less of a threat with ethereal light

life sheath+prot spirit is a nice combo, though it sounds like a good idea to have spell breaker when im starting to be under mass spell atack, its going to be a bit weird, im so in love with life sheath

mega_jamie · Jun 24, 2006, 08:46 AM // 08:46

A nice Rit Lord build.

Shelter
Union
Rit Lord {Elite}
Life
Regeneration (i think thats its name)
Boon of Creation
Weapon of Warding

And a free slot for w/e, maybe more energy management, or a few prot monk spells, should be able to handle itself pretty well protecting the gatesmen, but may fall short a few times, dpeending on the longevity of your spirits, and the danger of recasting a shelter droping it over union for a moment messes up your protting if both spirits are stil alive.

Amity and Truth · Jun 24, 2006, 11:28 AM // 11:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paperfly

Amity: Far be it from me to disparage turtle interrupting! The only slight reservation I have is that it seems inefficient to dedicate a full slot to stalemating only one turtle. If you're bringing some secondary roles to the table, though - retaking mines, for instance - then great!

Nah, of course not ^^
That was just a random statement of mine commenting on the usefulness of interrupts. They're useful themself in many a two situations but can really turn the tide of the battle when you're simply taking the turtle out of the game.

Might just be my understanding of the Aspenwood Map, please correct me if i am wrong, but my main objective when i'm on my warrior character is to slow the Luxons down as much as possible, thus my skillset is not based upon heaps of damage but on ultimate annoyance and slowdown. So basically, i can take down the NPCs at the amber mines, but will seldomly have enough damage to take down a Playercharacter but i can keep them busy for a while. I just love to imagine them cursing for a while as their character crawls the map inch for an inch, constantly cussing around and swearing revenge. It's just funny to see them focus fire on you as soon as you get near them the next time just because you've managed to piss them off big time and ruin their ego.

Though as soon as another Teammember is near, my characters power gets from puny to devastating.
Snare the monk trying to get away, break the defensive stance of the self confident interrupt ranger, interrupt that Meteor Shower, take care of the corpses to piss of Necromancers and if there is nothing to do or they could easily deal with the matters themselves i'm running amber or retaking mines. Once again, i could be dead wrong about this playing style... if so, please correct me. After all i'm willing to learn ^^

AW Lore · Jun 24, 2006, 03:13 PM // 15:13

amity, the moment you said

"skillset is not based upon heaps of damage but on ultimate annoyance and slowdown. So basically, i can take down the NPCs at the amber mines," was enough to made me smile.

but with this:

"Snare the monk trying to get away, break the defensive stance of the self confident interrupt ranger, interrupt that Meteor Shower, take care of the corpses to piss of Necromancers "

is there something you cant do?

and as long as you dont go for the enemie commanders you are a great warrior.

when i play with my ranger i do tend to go and babysit the turtles, poison and little damage will kill them fast without a monk or wammo with Healing Breeze, or a rit. just stopping the turtle for a few moments is more than enough to buy valuable time for the teammates that are defending the other gate to finish their busissness there and come to the other gate.

Paperfly · Jun 25, 2006, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

Question, shouldn't this go in Gladiator's Arena? Last time I checked Fort Aspenwood was PvP, and Gladiator's Arena was a PvP-related fourm.

I wasn't sure... But I ultimately decided that the Fort is it's own animal, neither flesh nor fowl nor GvG. Plus the playerbase consists of Canthan PVEers, hence the interested audience wouldn't be browsing the Glads forum. Mods are welcome to move the post if they feel otherwise, of course.

@ mega_jamie: I've started playing Aspenwood with my Ritualist for variety (some variety - I'm still holding gates!

), and reached a few similar conclusions. I'm not finding the Restoration-based spirits all that effective though - they're designed to combat "pressure" damage, and what a gatekeeper is worried about is "spike". Honestly, I'd rather just slot in Spirit Light and variants!

I'm also liking what Soul Twisting does to a build, even one with just three spirits. Shelter is your money skill, and Twisting lets you keep it up more consistently (although it doesn't let you spam the others as often as Lord would).

@ others: (To keep it in the context of this thread) I'm still thinking through how a warrior should support a team that contains a bonder. You're right in saying their job becomes holding Purple, but I'm not 100% sure what the most efficient way to help with that as a warrior is.

My gut says there's two really important roles: Retaking the Purple mine (and running amber from it if the circumstances allow), and intercepting key PCs (a shocking deviation from orthodoxy, I know!).

Taking the mine has the obvious advantage of amber, which is a warrior's only way of keeping a gate up (since they can't plausibly support gate npcs in the way a caster would). Pushing back the spawn point is huge if you're monkless, but funnily enough it's a bit less relevant if Orange is being bonded, since the Luxons are guaranteed to be spawning at the Orange mine 80% of the time anyway.

Why intercepting key PCs? Because other classes are better suited to killing the Turtles. Heck, other classes are better suited at killing the hammer warriors, too! Whereas if you set yourself up as a PC killer you can keep MMs from gaining too much momentum, take out monks who are healing the turtle, and kill touch rangers and EoE spirits that are making people's life miserable.

There's a common trick of bringing a fully-powered stance tank into the mix, then meleeing a turtle in a courtyard and detaining it indefinitely without killing it. That feels a bit wasteful to me (like the ranger who's only job is to interrupt it), but it's probably a decent contribution to make if the team has the local superiority I mentioned in the article and can afford to run seven players on the Purple side.

...As I said, still thinking all this through! Don't expect a guide on "Warriors in FA" any time soon.

Okay, fully back on topic now. I don't have a ranger (and all my slots are full!) so I can't test this out, and I would really appreciate some feedback on this one:

Symbiosis in Fort Aspenwood. On paper, it looks like it can stop any anti-bonder measure short of Well of the Profane if you plonk it down next to your monk. If one of you brave rangerinos (or /R's) can give it a try over a few games and let me know how it goes I'll be your friend forever, and even give you co-author credit!

AW Lore · Jun 25, 2006, 05:31 AM // 05:31

uhhh, no need to test it much, but i think simbiosis could screw it to the monks...well...at least it would screw me

life barrier + life bond builds wouldnt be affected much...maybe...

eles would have three enchants on them: 3x125 = 375+125 from the 10 second silver armor= 500+125 from prot spirit=625+480 that is the elementalist natural life (tested prot spirit +Reversal of Fortune just before a siege atack)= 1105 life, (top 980 without silver armor) you would need at least infuse to be able to keep the healing.

the key skill here is protective spirit, wich keeps the ele from taking too much damage from the siege atack, according to guildwiki:
"Skill (monsters only). Enemies within the blast area take 50 damage"
i think, not sure about it, that casters armor (60AL) take 300 damage, it could be more.

with just life barrier+life bond= 300/2=150 (assumming attributes are at 16)
150/2= 75
75 damage would go through to elementalist. that damage then would be reduced to to 48 with prot spirit. with simbiosis the elementalist would be taking the 75 damage.

altough a dwayna kiss could outheal it... it really needs testing.

sucks that i have finals, or else i would contact you ingame with my ranger and we could try to spike our way together in.

Paperfly · Jun 27, 2006, 06:34 AM // 06:34

...Yeah, I thought of the Prot Spirit anti-synergy about 20 minutes after I posted. I suspect there's still a good use for Symbiosis in this context somewhere - on a Rt/R, maybe? - but I'm not sure how to optimise it on a single character.

Dwayna's Kiss's healing is astronomical on a bondee, though. So I'd still like to see some empirical trials of the bonder/Symbiosis combo.

Astraea Zopyros · Jun 27, 2006, 04:41 PM // 16:41

If I had only found this three days earlier.

I've recently begun actively playing Fort Aspenwood on my preferred character, my monk (Astraea Boitheia). For the first week or so, I played primarily Luxon as I have never before bonded in my life. I got tired of getting Luxon faction, so I switched to Kurzick and found that the best role for a monk seems to be bonding. I went to hell and back, asking every monk what build and tips/tricks they used to bond (I got a lot of "What a nub, can't even bond", but also a lot of helpful people), and finally got this build:

Life Bond
Protective Spirit
Dwayna's Kiss
Life Sheath {E}
Contemplation of Purity
Balthazar's Spirit
Blessed Signet
Signet of Devotion/Soul Feast

Now, for a baby bonder (I'm three days old! Whee...), why Essence Bond, not Balthazar's Spirit?

Also, thank you immensely for this guide. I looked at every other "Bonding" post on the site, I swear, but none of them were really up to par for this role of dedication to one target. I just wish I'd found this sooner, before my countless attempts (and quick failures) at bonding! (Though I'm still not all that good...)

AW Lore · Jun 27, 2006, 06:33 PM // 18:33

the reason why of essence instead of balthazar is because:

essence bond gives the caster that casts that enchantment energy when the target under its effect is hit, while baltazhar spirit gives energy and adrenaline to the target that is under the effect of that enchantment, in the case of bonding, essence will give you (the bonder) energy if cast on the npc, while balthazar will give him (the npc) the energy.

the reason to use essence bond on him and not balthazar on yourself is so that dwayna kiss can heal the npc for an additional bit because of that extra enchantment.