Triple melee is gay

What makes triple melee so op that you cant deal with it.

Suggested changes are in bold

The build can be broken down quite simply as to how it forces kills without the opposing team being able to kill. It is usually the degen that actually kills opposing team.

Hammer wars:
These are pretty balanced. The only overpowered thing about them is wild throw. Warriors have access to a stance remove (wild blow) but they dont bring it because it has a draw back. Wildthrow however is always available and whenever bstance goes up, it takes 0 skill to switch to a spear and take it down. When wild throw is on a paragon it takes good co-ordination for the para to wildthrow the stance when required. But the paragon itself cant take advantage of this hard counter to bstance because the para has no access to kd's. Hence if you want the easy way to knocklock this monk you have to sacrifice a whole character option. The result of all this is you wreck the delicate balance of knock vs anti knock. It takes NO skill whatsoever to execute this combo and because the prot cant aura itself, as a warrior theres is no incentive to hit anyone but that prot since he will always be on the floor. This is just dull for both players. The hammer war becomes a braindead bar and the prot is frustrated that there is nothing it can do. And its highly effective as the prot can barely get any casts off whilst the hammer war pumps non-stop dps.

Wild Throw: add a "disables your non paragon skills for 10seconds"
This forces this skill onto only paragon bars and requires co-ordination between midline and frontline for it to have a significant effect.

Assasin:
Assasins are a major part of triple melee since they are the strongest flagger pushing characters by far. With shadow walk the usual way you deal with flagger push (snares and punishing the out of position character) are gone. The sin is impossible to collapse on without taking 10sec to run to it and then it just shadow walks back and continues to attack whilst you run back to main for 10 seconds. So you spent 20 seconds doing nothing whilst the sin pushed your flagger and did dps at main.
And then there are 2 skills in the assasins bar that make the sin viable 8v8 but also makes them deal too much pressure. Jagged strike is ridiculously spamable. At 1 second rewind you will always get your lead attack off since its jagged->block->jagged again until u hit. Rarely more than 2-3 attempts which is only 3 seconds. And then since fox fangs is unblockable this is a guaranteed hit and then sins have access to their more powerfull dual attacks. The dual attacks are fairly balanced since they should have "longer recharges" since it takes more time to get a sucessfull chain off and access them. And leading onto this, dual attacks being so accesable means that assault enchants is also so accesable. You can assault all prots off someone and then confidently do another unblockable sin chain so assault is rdy for the next prot within 4 seconds. This also syncs in perfectly with hammer warriors. With other types of warrior its easier to play around prots and output dps since u can switch target with more ease. A hammer was always the warrior that has to play around prots with more care and once you land your kd you can be pretty sure that you have a 4 second window where you knocklock a monk and they wont receive prots. Hence you get the bigger reward for attacking an unprotted target compared to the other warriors but its harder to chose the correct target.With the assault sin it takes no skill to pick your target as the sin strips every prot that comes so it takes no skill to chose your target on warrior anymore. But you still reap the huge reward gained from it.
My aim with assasin nerfs would be for it to chain their attacks with the same frequency as your average eviscerate warrior, so however long it takes to build 8 adren on average

Jagged strike Nerf the recharge to 3 seconds.
Still very spammable but if you miss 1 of your attacks it will actually matter.

Fox Fangs Nerf the recharge to 7 seconds
May sound harsh but its almost guaranteed to hit every time as unblockable

Assault Enchants Nerf the recharge to 5 seconds
The skill is not that op, its the spamability of the lead/offhand attacks and the way they can be guaranteed to always hit that makes assault so op.

Cripshot:
This skill is a problem in every build. Its only functionality is to push on flaggers. The only purpose is to run through their team and spam on flagger, spam spam spam. 0 skill whatsoever but incredibly effective. It has play on split but the benefits of spamming at stand on a flagger far outweigh these. And On split pindown can have similar effects anyway. When pushing on a flagger with this skill its cripshot->rc cripshot->rc cripshot->rc taking no effort on the rangers path but draining the prot monk of half its energy every time it come to pushing a flag. Triple melee is especially effective at flagger pushing as when the flagger is trying to push through, 2 hammer wars training each monk means they have to spend their energy keeping themselves alive so cant rc cripple quickly enough. So if the flagger is running in he wont be able to party heal at the same time for a large period of time. In combination with all the degen that triple melee has from the necro degen (sihpon, bleeding) every time you run flags in on your flagger you are going to risk a wipe and 90% of the case this is the case.
Therefore cripshot forces every team to bring flags in on a warrior meaning you do not have sufficient offense to kill the opposing team with a spike build as we have nerfed spikes to the point where without 2 wars at stand, your chances of forcing sufficient kills is minimal. So one of the 3 playstyles (the 3 being spike, split and pressure) is wiped out there and then. Add in the shutdown ability of hammer wars on spiking characters on demand through kd's, spikes have no chance of outspiking a well played triple melee.
This may suggest a apply nerf at the same time and im really not sure about this. Since aegis nerf, tab-space playstyle of ranger is certainly more effective but prior the triple melee and hexes meta, it was not overly problematic. A nerf on poison duration from apply poison or the recharge of savage shot to remove its ability to spam the poison faster could be a good thing but i would certainly observe the direction the meta takes first.

Cripshot: Increase recharge to 6 seconds.
With this skill i'm aiming for a tradeoff between the ranger elites and especially with melshot. Melshot is longer recharge but does bleeding, faster activation but can be dodged. Cripshot is unblockable and more spammable but no bleeding and dodgeable. And at this recharge monks only have to remove it once every 6 seconds making it much easier on their energy per flagger push and promoting flagging in on a rit.

Blood necro:
A core part of any triple melee build atm. It pumps out far too many conditions and too much degen. And since you have either a shadow walk sin or a cripshot making the flaggers job impossible the degen really tells. And the hexes cant be removed from the monks becaused they are knocked when they go to rc a bleeding or remove a life siphon. This necro is also the key reason triple melee always dominates on split. In a 1v1 this character wins vs any other meta split character. I dont think barbed signet itself is as much as a problem as people say. I view it as a signet with no recharge that applies bleeding every 4 seconds. Life Siphon is a ridiculously spammable hex as its duration is so insane. 6dps x 24 duration is over 240 damage spammed every 5 sec if not removed. And on split, if a character tries to split off from main team vs this guy he will be half dead before he ever gets anywhere simply from the degen. Add oppresive on top of this which is also 20 seconds of poison the necro will be doing -10 degen on the enemy split character which if they dont have condi remove which most split chars dont, they wont be able to deal with. AND the necro is regening from life siphon.
Strip enchant has already been identified as problematic and i am fully in support in any of the changes proposed.
This necro also not only deals with any split attempt they may make but also deals with any counter push they make on your flagger. Its so easy to collapse this guy on the attempts to push on your flagger with the massive degen and weakness most things pushing your flagger have to pull back very very quickly. And if you are running dark pact they die even faster. So they cant push your flagger but you can push theirs. And the free elite lets quite a few necros in this meta run flesh wound which is used purely as a hard counter to cripshot showing how op a cripshot pushing on your flagger really is. Although the necro can run pretty much anything with You're all alone very popular for total dominance on split.

Life Siphon: Reduce its duration to around 15sec
At this spec its not as maintainable at flag stand and less easy to maintain on split aswell as you have to recast it giving your split opponent oppurtunity to engage you and shut it down or just run away.

Oppresive GazeReduce its duartion to 12 sec
Same reasons as life siphon

Strip enchant Any of the proposed changes

Dark pact increase recharge to 4 sec
Mindless spam with no drawback making the necro immensly powerfull on split and providing to much damage to what should be a degen based char.

With the necro's complete dominance over the split its very easy to maintain your base vs dedicated split build. And you are under no pressure to push in and force npc kills and triple war is one of the best builds for dealing lord damage. 3 wars is so much raw dps and hard targets making them able to tank more damage. And weakness is the only skill which really prevents lord damage from melee characters. Hence the necro single handedly makes split a non-viable option for beating triple melee.

So you cant spike or split triple melee leaving your 1 remaining option to pressure it except its harder to reach their flagger since you have the necro in your way. So you need shadow walk to negate most of the degen threat when pushing the flagger and then you find yourselves running triple melee. Hexes was a sort of counter because of how op they were but the hammers could just lineback the squishy hex characters providing massive amounts of shutdown whilst dealing similar pressure at the same time.

Hence at the end of the day there is only 1 viable build left in the meta which is triple melee which can be observed from nearly every at. The meta is so stale and dull and its been like this for so long i know many people contemplating quitting the game. I just want to be able to play more than 1 build and this wont happen until these things that make triple melee uncountarable are nerfed. Then other builds will start to see play again.

A few examples and why they dont see play:
2ele+mes spike - flagger pushed, assault the eles, they have to flag on war and lose their offensive threat or wipe, hammer kd the eles dealing damage and shutting down their spike
3 ele split - assault sin strips every attune, necro degens out the split
1 war + dual para spikes - paragons get linebacked, the war has to flag and no offensive threat or wipe
Dual ranger - Similar to triple melee but with 0 defense they can monk stomp you with the assault sin which will pressure far greater than your turret ranger
Balance - flagger pushed, mesmer linebacked, have to flag on war or wipe
There are numerous other examples of builds that are out there but are not viable as triple melee counters everything.

Anti melee in general (blind/blurred)
These do NOTHING vs the current triple melee. Blind is a spike catcher and sure you can catch one 1 kd from a hammer but it wont decrease their dps. A nerf to draw could help with this though. A blind to a sin will also do nothing as the chain recharges so quick.
Snares do nothing vs hammers or sins. Snare a hammer war mid combo and it will do nothing and snaring a hammer when unbuilt and the hammer will spear to build adren and then just kd anyway loosing minimal dps. As for sin, they just hit either a flagher carrying flag so cant kite anyway as the are perma cripshotted or a monk that cant move off the floor because they are perma kd.
Other anti melee (empathy, sv) do minimal vs hammer wars as they dont have frenzy.
This just demonstrates how your standard anti melee is inneffective.
I hope this post gives some insight into the exact problems of triple melee and how we nerf parts of the build to allow others to see play but keep it viable.

if you want to increase recharge on cripshot, mel shots needs a buff tbh, with a crip sheild or rune, you cant even maintain the cripple on mel shot, whereas cripshot can always be maintained :s

id say make cripshot 5sec recharge, mel shot (its 12sec atm isnt it) to 10sec, (if its 10sec atm, make it 8sec)...

As for the whole bstance issue, yes wild throw needs changing to give a drawback (and idc about the 1 you suggested, (it seems fine)) but it really isnt hard to put aura of stab on the other monk, or just drop bstance all together (dolyak sig is horrible though), pretty sure SoSo beat several tripple melee in the last mAT without running trip melee once, partly because they took dual aura of stab (and dual bstance),but Brock also changed for spotless mind if a team wasnt tripple melee (except in the last game they played, which he then regretted). Basically people need to stop over rating sig of rejuv... (i know you will go waa he sucks and aura sucks and everything you suggest sucks cos im amazing, but w/e :p)

Assult enchants has needed nerfing since the days it was used in hero battles, its basically a 2sec recharge (i think) strip of every enchant on a flagger as he runs in, (amazing if a warrior is training him)...

Basically if the sin was nerfed a bit and the necro was nerfed, tripple melee wouldnt be an issue (wild throw nerf would be nice though)

What is driving the melee and degen surge is the repeated nerfs to the powerful scaling skills that used to blunt their effectiveness.

Losing Aegis and Ward against Melee, in addition to nerfs to many other anti-physical skills, have empowered physicals, and particularly stacking physicals. You no longer have any need to devote characters to stopping strong, scaling anti-physical defense, and can simply overload on physical damage.

In particular the most fragile offense (assassin combos, KD chains) has been let loose by the loss of general anti-melee defenses.

Degen has similarly been empowered by the repeated nerfs to party heals. Without efficient ways to clean up party wide damage, random conditions are much stronger than they have ever been. It should surprise no one that after a character built entirely to pump party heals (which was on every team) was nerfed out of the game that the characters most affected by party heals (blood necros, apply rangers, degen hexers) would be having a field day.

It has also been increasingly easy to cram more and more snares in a build, while more difficult to justify anti-snare skills; Ice Prison Polly rules the game when every team can bring 4, 5, sometimes even 6 snare characters in a build without significantly affecting 8v8 power. In addition, the weakening of midline and runner defenses mean that split fights are more about firepower than durability, and you get more firepower with...more physicals.

Essentially there are fewer attractive non-melee, non-monk templates than at any point I can remember (ranger, blood nec, and mind blast are the only ones left); and as none of those are particularly anti-melee it should surprise no one that melee dominates more than ever.

...and just to be clear, people aren't running as many physicals and as much damage as they can because Life Siphon does 138 damage over 23 seconds, but because physicals are awesome, have always been awesome, and there's nothing you can do to deny them from being awesome anymore.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
What is driving the melee and degen surge is the repeated nerfs to the powerful scaling skills that used to blunt their effectiveness.

I disagree with this. Its less about degen in general and more about the fact that there is 1 super OP condition spammer with power unrivalled compared to any other point in the game.

People need to stop dispelling it down to any more than a single op build that defined the meta the day it was created.

The same applies to physicals. They would not be running rampant if the prot could actually stand up at some point in the game and prot the melee.

Rits were meta party heal for ages with a bad pot and life instead of recup. And noone ran degen builds that caused problems to the extent that they do now. Even though in theory you could run barbed arrows + apply for a similar effect as ranger + nec. The reason: Barbed arrows template aint op, blood necro is.

Blood necro and wildthrow are the problematic templates. Nerf these and reap the rewards of a variable and more balanced guild wars.

The Apply Poison Ranger deals more damage and spreads more conditions that the Necro. With the obvious exception of the POS flagger, the Necro is by far the weakest character in the build in a teamfight. The main things he offers are the strip enchantment and better self healing on a split than what a Ranger gives; this makes him a much better split response against casters, as the Ranger wants to get a lot of use out of his stances.

Against the Fire Ele, he has the advantage of Eles getting wrecked by Strip Enchant, and of having the free elite for YAA or Crippling Anguish. Fire Eles don't beat Necros or Rangers and are thus clearly the 3rd midline template.

If there is an issue with the Necro (and I'm inclined to say there is), it is that it is bar none the best split template; it stalemates or beats the Ranger, and clearly beats everything else. But the skills responsible for that are Strip Enchantment and Blood Renewal in conjunction with the free elite slot that can be dedicated entirely to split power. It's not healthy to have a dominant split character that nothing beats.

To re-iterate: the teamfight power of the Necro is nothing special, enough to justify the character slot but not much more. Its power is as a dominant split template.

The whole Wild Throw thing is mind-boggling. Are you saying that if the 3rd physical can't run Wild Throw, you cut him for an Ele? This makes no sense, especially as many of these teams don't bother running Wild Throw, in favor of a variety of skills. What do you think would be run if Wild Throw was nerfed out of the game? Why is Wild Throw all that is keeping that build from seeing the light of day?

Previous metagames with the Rit runner featured powerful Water templates to mitigate a large amount of damage and physical disruption. Those templates have been severely nerfed and are no longer strong characters defensively. Recup doesn't cut it when people lose their midlines and just blast each other with physicals and degen.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
The Apply Poison Ranger deals more damage and spreads more conditions that the Necro.

Except apply is so much easier to shut down(blurred, dshot, kd) and in order to poison spread the ranger has to sacrifice other actions.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
To re-iterate: the teamfight power of the Necro is nothing special, enough to justify the character slot but not much more. Its power is as a dominant split template.

The necro is a god at split and at stand. Moderate spike damage, insane degen pressure, controlling flagger pushes, stripping every enchantment. Its not the most overpowered stand character ever but its certainly more powerfull than any other midline template in this meta. And as you say, its unrivalled on split and it does not even need blood renewal to be this.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
The whole Wild Throw thing is mind-boggling. Are you saying that if the 3rd physical can't run Wild Throw, you cut him for an Ele? This makes no sense, especially as many of these teams don't bother running Wild Throw, in favor of a variety of skills. What do you think would be run if Wild Throw was nerfed out of the game? Why is Wild Throw all that is keeping that build from seeing the light of day?

Wild throw = prot on the ground 24/7 = no RC, no guardian on the 3 melee ever, no removal of the conditions on your entire team. Wild throw makes a huge difference and if nerfed people probably would switch to whirling axe like they did before. However then you no longer have to deal with the sin on your flagger 24/7, it at least requires some coordination to remove the bstance and if this whirling war wants to train other targets besides the prot, bstance wont be removed instantly.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
Previous metagames with the Rit runner featured powerful Water templates to mitigate a large amount of damage and physical disruption. Those templates have been severely nerfed and are no longer strong characters defensively. Recup doesn't cut it when people lose their midlines and just blast each other with physicals and degen.

I was under the impression that monk flaggers were nerfed as a reduction of powercreep. Now the degen pressure itself needs nerfing. This to me sounds pretty logical.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Christopher Lewis
Except apply is so much easier to shut down(blurred, dshot, kd) and in order to poison spread the ranger has to sacrifice other actions.

What actions does the Ranger have to sacrifice to spread poison? Certainly you don't think he can't interrupt while tab+spacing...



Quote:
Moderate spike damage

He has an enchant removal on spike that does 61 damage. He can follow this up with a Dark Pact for 45 damage. This is roughly the same damage as hammer autoattacks without Flail.

It is armor ignoring, in fairness. But don't kid yourself, the Necro is not dealing compressed spike damage. Shatter Enchantment on its own, with no follow-up, does roughly the same damage.



Quote:
insane degen pressure

Barbed Signet, used on recharge and maximized, can keep bleeding on 5 targets. Pumping all your energy into Life Siphon gives you another 3 pips on 4 targets.

As far as party-wide pressure goes, that is roughly enough degen to counter Recuperation, and somewhat less degen than is put out by a Necro maintaining Tainted Flesh.

Unless casting disease is the standard for insane degen pressure I can't see how you can conclude that the degen the blood necro puts out is anything more than modest; about what you would expect for a degen condition spreader.



Quote:
controlling flagger pushes

I thought we were just complaining about how easy it is to push flaggers in another thread. Isn't this a good thing?



Quote:
stripping every enchantment

Stripping enchants from one character every 15 (soon to be 20) seconds is enough to keep down every enchantment?



Quote:
Its not the most overpowered stand character ever but its certainly more powerfull than any other midline template in this meta.

I agree! But I agree because pretty much every other midline caster (besides the fire ele) is wretched or depends on powerful casters to be viable. Continuing to nerf midline is not a call for more variety, but a push towards running even more physicals in every build.



Quote:
Wild throw makes a huge difference and if nerfed people probably would switch to whirling axe like they did before.

So the reason that people ran Whirling Axe all that time was to knock Balanced Stance off the Prot Monk so that the Hammer can keep training him - otherwise you run more hammers?



Quote:
I was under the impression that monk flaggers were nerfed as a reduction of powercreep. Now the degen pressure itself needs nerfing. This to me sounds pretty logical.

Ah, so let me clear that up for you, as it is easy to come to patently wrong conclusions, quite logically, if you start from a fallcious set of facts.

Flaggers have been chain nerfed for the last several years. When I first came back to the game and logged onto my PvP Rit runner, I had 6 skills on my bar that had been nerfed. Many of the replacements for those skills have been nerfed. Alternative classes have been nerfed. A few skills along the lines had been buffed enough to see usage and were promptly nerfed.

The runner was objectively the weakest, most fragile character in every PvP build before the last update, and it received a nerf. If the ever diminishing party healing it could use was not so necessary, you would cut the character from your builds quickly and with prejudice.

Please re-evaluate your conclusions in light of this. There has certainly been a slow power creep in many other positions in the game, but it hasn't touched the flaggers, who are in yet another low point on their power trajectory.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
What actions does the Ranger have to sacrifice to spread poison? Certainly you don't think he can't interrupt while tab+spacing...

He can interupt random things sure, but he can't interupt the specific skills which would really make a difference. OK in theory you could tab around whilst keeping an eye out for say an RC cast but in reality, no chance. Same applies for optimum use of say cripshot.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
He has an enchant removal on spike that does 61 damage. He can follow this up with a Dark Pact for 45 damage. This is roughly the same damage as hammer autoattacks without Flail.
It is armor ignoring, in fairness. But don't kid yourself, the Necro is not dealing compressed spike damage. Shatter Enchantment on its own, with no follow-up, does roughly the same damage.

And that dark pact is recharged 2sec later for additional afterdamage in a train/spike. So its dark pact -> strip -> dark pact which when combined with suppose 75% health targets from the degen and pressure, I would certainly call it moderate spike damage. Ofc its not in the same numbers as the meta dom mes but it is similar numbers to shard storm --> freezing guest without moi up or shellshock --> lightning bolt.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
Unless casting disease is the standard for insane degen pressure I can't see how you can conclude that the degen the blood necro puts out is anything more than modest; about what you would expect for a degen condition spreader.

Except that this degen stacks so that its not 8 characters suffeing -3 degen but 3-4 suffering -6 degen (bleeding + life siphon) in addition to the -4from the ranger making -10. Heavy degen on a couple of guys is far harder to deal with than party wide degen at a lower level where the rit dropping 1 pot or putting up a recup actually counters it.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
I thought we were just complaining about how easy it is to push flaggers in another thread. Isn't this a good thing?

No. The necro is a hard counter to flagger pushing and atm its the only counter. And because a sucessful flagger push gives so much reward either you run a necro or you lose the battle on flags and in this meta, that usually means you lose the game. Hence the dull unvaried meta.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
Stripping enchants from one character every 15 (soon to be 20) seconds is enough to keep down every enchantment?

Last all call I was keeping down 2 conjures, air attune and MOI enchants on recharge without any problems. Yes it is enough to keep down all the enchantments you need to.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
I agree! But I agree because pretty much every other midline caster (besides the fire ele) is wretched or depends on powerful casters to be viable. Continuing to nerf midline is not a call for more variety, but a push towards running even more physicals in every build.

There are plenty of viable caster midline in the meta. Bsurge, Water Ele. LC necro, Dom mesmers, illusion mesmers, rit midliners and probably a load more waiting to be discovered. But they wont be as effective as the necro.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
So the reason that people ran Whirling Axe all that time was to knock Balanced Stance off the Prot Monk so that the Hammer can keep training him - otherwise you run more hammers?

Whirling is strong in spike builds ofc. But people have discovered now how devestatingly effective training the prot with a hammer when he cant prevent the knockdowns is.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Connaughton
Ah, so let me clear that up for you, as it is easy to come to patently wrong conclusions, quite logically, if you start from a fallcious set of facts.
The runner was objectively the weakest fragile character in every PvP build before the last update, and it received a nerf. If the ever diminishing party healing it could use was not so necessary, you would cut the character from your builds quickly and with prejudice.

You still need someone to run flags and base defend. Clearly a third monk best fulfills this. So now you want to make splitting even more difficult along with killing incoming flaggers in order to force a boost? Note i say killing and not snaring it indefinately with cripshot draining the monk energy due to pressure from lack of party heal. Incoming flaggers should be a target, but if they die, the whole team should not wipe becuase of it. There is nothing wrong with a fragile flagger but i do fully support party heal on characters besides the flagger.

Note: I made a mistake earlier, apparently Barbed hilts/spearheads don't work with the new Barbed Signet, so it's not doing anywhere near the damage I thought it was (90 per application instead of 120).



Quote:
Originally Posted by Christopher Lewis
Last all call I was keeping down 2 conjures, air attune and MOI enchants on recharge without any problems. Yes it is enough to keep down all the enchantments you need to.

Are you referring to the first game, where you had an Assault Enchantments Assassin taking off most of the enchantments, where you stripped the Water Ele exactly once all game? Or game 3 where the Air Ele was in our base the entire game while the Necro sat at the stand? I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Christopher Lewis
There are plenty of viable caster midline in the meta. Bsurge, Water Ele. LC necro, Dom mesmers, illusion mesmers, rit midliners and probably a load more waiting to be discovered. But they wont be as effective as the necro.

They aren't as effective as taking another Warrior, either. Which is the bigger problem.

BSurge is worthless. Rit midliners aren't any better. Dom guys need good defensive midline in the metagame to be worthwhile. Every time I've seen a Illusion Mesmer it's looked really weak and felt dominated by better builds. I haven't seen or played against an LC Necro in months so can't comment on that one.

Water guys are pretty marginal, but still have value on very split / mobility heavy maps. But they're so one-dimensional that you can't run it on any map that isn't dominated by snares.

So there's at least one that isn't totally worthless.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Christopher Lewis
But people have discovered now how devestatingly effective training the prot with a hammer when he cant prevent the knockdowns is.

And yet have thus far failed to adapt their builds in any way to compensate for this. At least I see people running Crippling Anguish on their Necros on occasion, so it's not entirely hopeless.

I won't believe it until I start seeing Shield Bash again, though.

tbh you either buff midline damage, which everyone cried about (i mean pure damage rather than damage over time), which leads to strong spike builds,
or you reduce the effectiveness of monk bars so that the shutdown element of the midliners comes back into use. However to nerf the backline would require nerf to wild throw (i guess, though dual aura of stab is [was last time i played] viable), and the degen hexes. This however leads to debates of how ping is important (also cried about).
Basically it seems people want a balanced game (involving pressure, shutdown and spike, but without the ping dependency, and without the huge damage midliners, oh and apparently without degen spamming midliners) so no matter what anet do, people will cry (unless they bring back vod then idc what build is run, i will prob play the game again).

You keep saying the necro in these builds has a free elite, have you tried running martyr to control the condition spread from their team? People are scared to try things anymore on characters that could end up countering or controlling the meta build, because of the risk involved that you might lose i game (i assume this is why) and simply run the same stuff as everyone else because its easier, or must be the best build because if someone else hasnt thought of trying something (or you havent seen them try it) then it must not work.... owait isnt that what happened in the TK? you told me of a skill update, i needed less than 5mins to tell you how it would be abused and then the skill was changed to prevent it, people will miss things... especially when they think they are amazing.