When spirit spam goes bad...

I just got out of a 6team free-for-all tombs game. Basically what happened was everyone got through their 1v1's, then our group defeated one of the survivors, and it was us vs. a spirit spam build. We lured them out, seeing the millions of spirits around their priest, and started the battle.

1 hour later (not exaggerating), our team all quit and they went on. The most boring battle I've ever had to witness. Keep in mind we were a PuG that wasn't at all prepared for a spirit spam, and apparently neither were they. There was absolutely no killing going on, it seemed like their build focused solely on staying alive. For an unprepared group (and who the hell makes a build around countering spirit spam? especially PuGs, which are most common in the tombs), there was little we could do. Eventually the other monks started leaving, I myself stuck around for a couple more minutes then left.

So bottom line, NERF!
All jokes aside, we need some sort of beefed up Unnatural Signet or something, cause right now it's incredibly easy to go into tombs and prolong battles for hours. I'm all for creativity and new builds, but when people start to focus on pissing off the opponent and winning by forcing them to leave, that's where you gotta draw the line.

no nerf needed.
ppl just realize that one sided teams NEVER have a chance against all teams.
If your team cant counter anything you deserfe to loose.
Same if 2 of such teams met each other.

Our guild fought against a spirit spam team and won. We were at Burials grounds, after clearing out the other teams it was just us and a spirit spam team left.

You have to notice that a spirit spam team is much lower on offense than a regular team build. Their main strategy is basically to wait for you to make a mistake, THEN they'll nail you hard. Much more passive tactics compared to a FOTM air spike team. You really need to know what spirit to take out and when. Most spirits are not that high in level (at least the ones we encountered). A level 8 spirit can be taken out easily by wands/staves from casters. Have your main damage dealers go after their players, and have your non-offense casters to take out the spirits.

Prioritize what spirits to take out. Nature's Renewal, Fertile Seaon, Energizing Wind, Quickening Zephyr...these should be high priority. Then just take out other random stuff like Favoring Winds or Greater Conflagation when you have time. And if they decide to put down a Frozen Soil...just check to see what the battle situation is. If you are with the advantage, then Frozen Soil would work in your favour instead.

Killing the spirits is not an option when you have a ranger spamming 50 or so and using oath shot to recharge them.

Well then please, do tell how you would counter this build.

A barrage spammer can quickly kill the spirits while dealing damage to other players, keeping enemy monks busy. Just take out quickning zephyr and you can easily kill everything else.

Once again, killing the spirits is often not an option. Not only are there many instances of quickening zephyr spread out all over the place, but there's also tons of fertile seasons, and those add ~450hp to every other spirit. Barrage won't be killing them anytime soon.

Kill the Druid. Treat him as you would a, say, protection Monk. What are you, daft?

Interrupt the Druid. A single Marksman using Distracting Shot will be able to prevent any and all rituals from being cast.

Don't give the Druid a time advantage. In the Hall of Heroes, don't let his team take the altar right away, then wait until the two minute mark, giving him seven/eight minutes to spam away. Also, don't stand back and watch/laugh as the Druid does his stuff. Jump in there and smash them.

Take skills like Edge of Extinction, just in case.

Oh me oh my, that was certainly hard.

I believe spirits have... rather long casts. Just intuerpt the guy and the problem is solved. When you get interupted the skill has to recharge and they waste energy. Oath shot has a rather long recharge time also. If you can't kill 3-4 fertile seasons etc. your team just plain sucks. If you say they concentrate on keeping themselves alive, that means they aren't doing damage, allowing you to run rampant among their spirits.

*sighs* This is no different than facing an all monk team or a team of runners (Yes I've faced a whole team of them doing nothing but running). Prepare for a long long battle and stop calling for nerfs.

Seems the July FOTM is arriving a little early

No nerf. Just learn how to counter it...research up, develop your own devious strategy, and there you go

Yeah we definitely need more of those. Can someone please come up with some more things to nerf? It's been DAYS since we had a good nerfing around here! We need to pick up the pace if we're ever going to make our goal of nerfing every single skill / item / build / area by Fall '05.

Sigh.

Creston

Well... aoe kills spirits really fast, considering those spirits can't move out of the way... it's incredibly easy.

And most spike groups won't really need to kill the spirits anyways, just target, and 1,2,3, Blam, target dead, next target... blah, blah, and so on.

Edge of Extinction + Balthazar's Aura

oh, and Perishiko ReLLiK, You can't spike someone that has over 1,000 health.

Actually...Balthazar's Aura is exactly how my guild defeated the spirit spam. We put max BA on a tank and have him run into the crowd of spirits and they drop really fast. Our non-offense casters (our monks) just plucked off the other non-essential spirits after. It actually turned up nicely because we (ie our guild) usually don't run Smiting much, so it was refreshing to see BA doing so well in Tombs.

I wish people would quit coming to the forums and whining because they got owned and are too stupid or not creative enough to develope a counter strategy. They owned you. Get over it. Go back, and win.

Wow, weezer and creston must have something stuck up their ass or something, noone seems to be able to take a joke lightly these days.
Anyways, killing the druid is not an option when he knows he will be targetted and will buff himself to hell, not to mention every single monk will be healing him since their whole strategy relies on him being alive :/ Go ahead and try and spike someone with zephyr and fertile soil active...

Balth's aura doesn't do nearly enough damage to kill the tons of spirits that have 450+hp, and the energy cost is simply hideous with zephyr. Same with AoEs. A smart ranger spreads out his spirits.

Your only chance is to have 2+ mesmers or rangers to continuously interrupt the bastards, else they will more often than not be able to spam their spirits anyways. And that takes a specific build that most PuGs wont be able to pull off (which was the focus of this thread). And god forbid they're holding HoH and have the time to spam their stuff.

PS: lmao weezer. You call forcing your opponent to quit after 1 hour of mind-numbingly boring combat, ownage? Man your standards are low. For the record, we later won the HoH and held it 4 times (not that it's something special).

edit: one of the obvious weakness of spirit spam is that enemy mo/me can park themselves next to the spirits, cast channeling, and spam the living daylight out of all their skills, which is what we were doing. too bad that only helps defensively, doesn't do squat to quicken the battle.

Bleh griefer builds are another flavor of the month thing. Bring EoE on at least one ranger and you'll counter those builds easily. Besides EoE could come in handy when you're taking or holding the HoH (some evil thoughts I'm having with that skill). Don't cry nerf when the counter is so easy and apparent.

Just wondering on one thing do all the people that suggest use area effect spells trully think people put all the spirits right beside each other? I know I wouldnt if I was using a spirit spam team.

[QUOTE=Red Locust]You call forcing your opponent to quit after 1 hour of mind-numbingly boring combat, ownage?/QUOTE]


I don't think that "ownage" but if it works I won't blame them for trying something different.

This game is just like any other. It's all about the metagame. You have a build that can beat another build, but there is always someone else with yet a different build that can beat you. That's the way it should be.

Hmmm.... and from what I was told Rangers suck in PvP