Yet another Guild Wars post.
I know there have been lots of posts about this game, but they have been focused on the 1-20 grind. This game really begins at lvl 20 in the hall of heros. Here are some quotes from GWONLINE that I think will explain. My intent here is to give other gamers a little insight to the end game so they can make an informed decision about buying/playing.
Thread title- I DESPISE this new Trend of Air Elementalist
first post by Furqan
to start off, I just wanna say this is not a rant, nor a mindless call for "nerf nerf" but a plea from a frustrated PvPer (Rank 3) for some insight here...
well, it's pretty obvious that TONS of PvP teams are now running 2,3 sometimes 4 AIR ELE's on one team. These air ele's do the ol' lightning surge/orb/gale/chain lightning combo, and it is just SHREDDING our teams.
I'm a monk, usually play protection monk. As a rule of thumb, I'll chain Life Bond on all my teammates, and let them essence bond off me for the VERY HIGH energy regen. I also bring Protective Spirit to lessen the damge to 10% of energy and soften the blow from the 170 dmage that these Air Ele's are dealing sometimes. Also on my team will be 2 Healing Monks who are very competent, and are good about seeding, orisoning whoever is gettin hit.
but with all this, all it takes is for the other team to just target one person with 3-4 air ele's, and they're dropped. The Life Bond I throw on them is not enough to lessen the blow, the shock damage is WAYYY too fast and WAYYY too strong for any word of healing, orison, hell even insta-case reversal of fortune to be effective at all. If i'm lucky, I might get a chance to throw protective spirit in the 1 second notice I have between the time they're gettin hit and the time they fall.
But if I do manage to get it on them, prot spirit has a long cooldown, and all it takes is a simple switch target from the other team and boom the next target is helpless to the oncoming shock damage, even with 3 monks ready and waiting to heal/protect them.
so ok, maybe you might say with the exhaustion and heavy energy drain, that all it takes it just to withstand the first barrage, res up, and fight the ele's when they have less energy. The problem is your DP really begins to hurt you, and eventually you're getting ONE-SHOTTED from these air ele's (which is a really sad feeling lol)
you might say, well just mesmer up and lock em down. my team runs with 2 mesmers, and with 3 air ele's on their team,it's still too much to lockdown effectively. Ward Against Elements is not very effective with the Armor Penetration...
so this is a plea for help: Is there a counter you all have found that is effective against these Air Ele's? From the massive influx of Air Ele's, it doesn't seem so, as most teams have adopted the "if you can't beat em, join em" mentality...
is it time to start thinking about the "n" word with these air ele's? (nerf)
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page 2 of thread same author
well last nite (Friday nite - around 2am PST) I ran with a group of 3 Air Ele's/3 Monks/1 Warrior and a Mesmer (me). The individual players on our team were realy not that great, I think I was the highest ranked at 190 fame.
Still, our build was just absolutely RIPPING through every team we met... Casters throw essence bond on the protection monk and use the endless energy pool to just shock damage over any healing the other team could do . The only time we'd have trouble was against other teams with Air Ele's, but even then that just meant we had a couple of deaths before winning.
The whole time, we were noticing that the same Korean Guild kept winning the Tombs over and over and over. We finally met them in the HoH, and lo and behold they had Air Elementalists as well... except they only had 7 people. 2 Air Ele's (one being an E/N), 1 Mes/Nec, 2 monks, and 2 Warriors. I was really impressed by their ability to squeeze out the DPS out of the 2 Ele's+Warriors, and they were really skilled with their wards/wells (ugh on well of the profane)...
they promptly whooped us... we met them again in the HoH, only to get beat again by them. I actually didn't felt all bad getting beat, as it showed me that the stacked Air build CAN be defeated.
coincidentally, today I PvP'd in the tombs for a few hours, and *EVERY SINGLE WINNING TEAM* was running at least 2 Air Ele's, with the exception of the Idiot Savants Guild, who rolled with 3 warriors, and made it work with an adrenaline build-up strat (which was also really effective versus our Air Ele's)...
someone made a good point earlier, that when you notice that each team demands that all Elementalists run Air or they get booted, it's clear one line is overpowered. I wonder how long it'll take before an effective counter is popularized, and we move to the next GW PvP fad...
Last edited by Furqan : 29-05-2005 at 09:52 AM.
page 5 by DataPhreak
I think that the fact that the Air Ele build was made specificly to take down a 3w/2ele/3monk standard build should be taken into account too. I think where people go wrong is building a team to specificly counter another build. If you've ever played magic the gathering, and i know many of you have, there are very rare surcumstance that you build a deck specificly to defeat an certain type of opponent. More often, you build a deck for a specific purpose. This lightning build is the Pyro deck or goblin deck or thrull deck (you see what kind of magic player i was... ^_^ Cheezy is still effective) to the proverbial white/green slow moving creature deck. before the other team has time to even get some damage going, they've already taken 3 lightnings and a couple fire balls, leaving them at 4hp.
What i think needs to happen, is instead of comming up with a way to beat the lighting team, is create more speciallized teams that will pwn against multitasking teams. Look at the realy effective decks from back in magics hayday.... How about the Interupt/land destruction decks? make a team with all mez as either pri or secondary with interupts, energy drain and DoT. How about an all healer group with smiting? All ranged with lots of AoE? Don't limit yourself to countering the big fad thats out, make the new one. Thats what the point of the game was all about, imo.
page 6 by hart
It looks to me like the SWOT analysis has identified that the major weakness of the Aeromancer is mana management. From posts earlier in the thread, it can be presumed that the typical counter for the high mana costs of the staple skills is Air Attunement in combination with Elemental Attunement. An advanced mana regen trick is Essence Bond on a Protection Monk who is Life Bonded to many targets.
Therefore, the first thing we need to do is remove enchantments. IMO Rend Enchantments, Lingering Curse and Well of the Profane are the best options because they remove all enchantments. This is important to counter the E/Mo Aeromancer build with Essence Bond. In this case you kill two birds with one stone, both limiting your attackers energy supply and providing a vulnerable target for your counterattack.
Once we have the enchantments removed we have substantially reduced the number of bolts that can be tossed. At this point the focus becomes reducing the mana pool of the opposing Aeromancers to zero as quickly as possible. I recommend a twofold strategy; first place a Quickening Zephyr near the center of the opposing party to increase their mana costs. Your warriors and rangers will feel only a minimal effect from QZ due to adrenal skills and expertise respectively, but elementalists can be crippled.
The reason this is effective is simple math. With both Elemental Attunement and Air Attunement each Lightning Orb costs around 5 power to cast {15 - (.5*15) - (.3*15)}. That's around 18 orbs assuming the Aeromancer has 90 power. When the Aeromancer has these enchantments removed each orb costs 15 power to cast, or about 6 orbs. Under Quickening Zephyr each orb costs 20 power, or about 4 orbs.
If this technique is combined with Mesmer, Ranger, or Necromancer skills to deprive the caster of power or interrupt casting the effect is much more noticable; rather than interrupting a spell that cost 5 power when everything was said and done, you interrupted a spell that cost 20 power. Countering a 25 point spell results in 33 points of wasted power under QZ. Remember, it takes an elementalist the same 4 seconds to regen 5 power that it takes all other casters; that means 16 seconds to charge up enough for one Lightning Orb, or ~10 seconds for a Lightning Strike from zero mana.
The trick here is to remove the opponents' enchantments early and keep them off. Your enchantment removal skills will recharge twice as fast as long as you keep QZ up; that means you can Rend enchants every 15 seconds. Bring along at least one Warrior to benefit from the QZ - their adrenal skills are unaffected and Skull Crack seriously impairs casters; in an Aeromancer group you're typically looking at between 6 and 8 casters who can be instantly halved in effectiveness by that skill alone. Defend your QZ spirit, interrupt and deny their casters, counter their enchantment heavy build with necromancers and rangers.
Since I'm writing a wall of text anyway, I imagine that the reason that Air spike builds became so powerful has to do with a general feeling that Necromancers and Rangers are less important than Warriors, Monks, and Elementalists when it comes to PvP. The most effective counters for the Aeromancer builds are carried by the least used classes for pick up groups. Each class has a place; less direct damage does not mean useless. As the general level of awareness and skill grows I expect that the best builds will be something like 2x healer, 1x debuffer, 1x interrupter, 1x controller, and either 2x nuker 1x melee or 1x nuker 2x melee with each individual focusing on his role within the team rather than how his individual character operates.
~Hart
Are you supprised? Did you get the refferences to Magic, The Gathering? I think that compareson with co-ordnated team play in a 3d environment is starting to define the game. Thanks for reading this huge post.
I know there have been lots of posts about this game, but they have been focused on the 1-20 grind. This game really begins at lvl 20 in the hall of heros. Here are some quotes from GWONLINE that I think will explain. My intent here is to give other gamers a little insight to the end game so they can make an informed decision about buying/playing.
Thread title- I DESPISE this new Trend of Air Elementalist
first post by Furqan
to start off, I just wanna say this is not a rant, nor a mindless call for "nerf nerf" but a plea from a frustrated PvPer (Rank 3) for some insight here...
well, it's pretty obvious that TONS of PvP teams are now running 2,3 sometimes 4 AIR ELE's on one team. These air ele's do the ol' lightning surge/orb/gale/chain lightning combo, and it is just SHREDDING our teams.
I'm a monk, usually play protection monk. As a rule of thumb, I'll chain Life Bond on all my teammates, and let them essence bond off me for the VERY HIGH energy regen. I also bring Protective Spirit to lessen the damge to 10% of energy and soften the blow from the 170 dmage that these Air Ele's are dealing sometimes. Also on my team will be 2 Healing Monks who are very competent, and are good about seeding, orisoning whoever is gettin hit.
but with all this, all it takes is for the other team to just target one person with 3-4 air ele's, and they're dropped. The Life Bond I throw on them is not enough to lessen the blow, the shock damage is WAYYY too fast and WAYYY too strong for any word of healing, orison, hell even insta-case reversal of fortune to be effective at all. If i'm lucky, I might get a chance to throw protective spirit in the 1 second notice I have between the time they're gettin hit and the time they fall.
But if I do manage to get it on them, prot spirit has a long cooldown, and all it takes is a simple switch target from the other team and boom the next target is helpless to the oncoming shock damage, even with 3 monks ready and waiting to heal/protect them.
so ok, maybe you might say with the exhaustion and heavy energy drain, that all it takes it just to withstand the first barrage, res up, and fight the ele's when they have less energy. The problem is your DP really begins to hurt you, and eventually you're getting ONE-SHOTTED from these air ele's (which is a really sad feeling lol)
you might say, well just mesmer up and lock em down. my team runs with 2 mesmers, and with 3 air ele's on their team,it's still too much to lockdown effectively. Ward Against Elements is not very effective with the Armor Penetration...
so this is a plea for help: Is there a counter you all have found that is effective against these Air Ele's? From the massive influx of Air Ele's, it doesn't seem so, as most teams have adopted the "if you can't beat em, join em" mentality...
is it time to start thinking about the "n" word with these air ele's? (nerf)
Reply With Quote
page 2 of thread same author
well last nite (Friday nite - around 2am PST) I ran with a group of 3 Air Ele's/3 Monks/1 Warrior and a Mesmer (me). The individual players on our team were realy not that great, I think I was the highest ranked at 190 fame.
Still, our build was just absolutely RIPPING through every team we met... Casters throw essence bond on the protection monk and use the endless energy pool to just shock damage over any healing the other team could do . The only time we'd have trouble was against other teams with Air Ele's, but even then that just meant we had a couple of deaths before winning.
The whole time, we were noticing that the same Korean Guild kept winning the Tombs over and over and over. We finally met them in the HoH, and lo and behold they had Air Elementalists as well... except they only had 7 people. 2 Air Ele's (one being an E/N), 1 Mes/Nec, 2 monks, and 2 Warriors. I was really impressed by their ability to squeeze out the DPS out of the 2 Ele's+Warriors, and they were really skilled with their wards/wells (ugh on well of the profane)...
they promptly whooped us... we met them again in the HoH, only to get beat again by them. I actually didn't felt all bad getting beat, as it showed me that the stacked Air build CAN be defeated.
coincidentally, today I PvP'd in the tombs for a few hours, and *EVERY SINGLE WINNING TEAM* was running at least 2 Air Ele's, with the exception of the Idiot Savants Guild, who rolled with 3 warriors, and made it work with an adrenaline build-up strat (which was also really effective versus our Air Ele's)...
someone made a good point earlier, that when you notice that each team demands that all Elementalists run Air or they get booted, it's clear one line is overpowered. I wonder how long it'll take before an effective counter is popularized, and we move to the next GW PvP fad...
Last edited by Furqan : 29-05-2005 at 09:52 AM.
page 5 by DataPhreak
I think that the fact that the Air Ele build was made specificly to take down a 3w/2ele/3monk standard build should be taken into account too. I think where people go wrong is building a team to specificly counter another build. If you've ever played magic the gathering, and i know many of you have, there are very rare surcumstance that you build a deck specificly to defeat an certain type of opponent. More often, you build a deck for a specific purpose. This lightning build is the Pyro deck or goblin deck or thrull deck (you see what kind of magic player i was... ^_^ Cheezy is still effective) to the proverbial white/green slow moving creature deck. before the other team has time to even get some damage going, they've already taken 3 lightnings and a couple fire balls, leaving them at 4hp.
What i think needs to happen, is instead of comming up with a way to beat the lighting team, is create more speciallized teams that will pwn against multitasking teams. Look at the realy effective decks from back in magics hayday.... How about the Interupt/land destruction decks? make a team with all mez as either pri or secondary with interupts, energy drain and DoT. How about an all healer group with smiting? All ranged with lots of AoE? Don't limit yourself to countering the big fad thats out, make the new one. Thats what the point of the game was all about, imo.
page 6 by hart
It looks to me like the SWOT analysis has identified that the major weakness of the Aeromancer is mana management. From posts earlier in the thread, it can be presumed that the typical counter for the high mana costs of the staple skills is Air Attunement in combination with Elemental Attunement. An advanced mana regen trick is Essence Bond on a Protection Monk who is Life Bonded to many targets.
Therefore, the first thing we need to do is remove enchantments. IMO Rend Enchantments, Lingering Curse and Well of the Profane are the best options because they remove all enchantments. This is important to counter the E/Mo Aeromancer build with Essence Bond. In this case you kill two birds with one stone, both limiting your attackers energy supply and providing a vulnerable target for your counterattack.
Once we have the enchantments removed we have substantially reduced the number of bolts that can be tossed. At this point the focus becomes reducing the mana pool of the opposing Aeromancers to zero as quickly as possible. I recommend a twofold strategy; first place a Quickening Zephyr near the center of the opposing party to increase their mana costs. Your warriors and rangers will feel only a minimal effect from QZ due to adrenal skills and expertise respectively, but elementalists can be crippled.
The reason this is effective is simple math. With both Elemental Attunement and Air Attunement each Lightning Orb costs around 5 power to cast {15 - (.5*15) - (.3*15)}. That's around 18 orbs assuming the Aeromancer has 90 power. When the Aeromancer has these enchantments removed each orb costs 15 power to cast, or about 6 orbs. Under Quickening Zephyr each orb costs 20 power, or about 4 orbs.
If this technique is combined with Mesmer, Ranger, or Necromancer skills to deprive the caster of power or interrupt casting the effect is much more noticable; rather than interrupting a spell that cost 5 power when everything was said and done, you interrupted a spell that cost 20 power. Countering a 25 point spell results in 33 points of wasted power under QZ. Remember, it takes an elementalist the same 4 seconds to regen 5 power that it takes all other casters; that means 16 seconds to charge up enough for one Lightning Orb, or ~10 seconds for a Lightning Strike from zero mana.
The trick here is to remove the opponents' enchantments early and keep them off. Your enchantment removal skills will recharge twice as fast as long as you keep QZ up; that means you can Rend enchants every 15 seconds. Bring along at least one Warrior to benefit from the QZ - their adrenal skills are unaffected and Skull Crack seriously impairs casters; in an Aeromancer group you're typically looking at between 6 and 8 casters who can be instantly halved in effectiveness by that skill alone. Defend your QZ spirit, interrupt and deny their casters, counter their enchantment heavy build with necromancers and rangers.
Since I'm writing a wall of text anyway, I imagine that the reason that Air spike builds became so powerful has to do with a general feeling that Necromancers and Rangers are less important than Warriors, Monks, and Elementalists when it comes to PvP. The most effective counters for the Aeromancer builds are carried by the least used classes for pick up groups. Each class has a place; less direct damage does not mean useless. As the general level of awareness and skill grows I expect that the best builds will be something like 2x healer, 1x debuffer, 1x interrupter, 1x controller, and either 2x nuker 1x melee or 1x nuker 2x melee with each individual focusing on his role within the team rather than how his individual character operates.
~Hart
Are you supprised? Did you get the refferences to Magic, The Gathering? I think that compareson with co-ordnated team play in a 3d environment is starting to define the game. Thanks for reading this huge post.
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