Elemental Team

[FoxBat]

I'll keep it short because no-one reads these anyway. :P

Our basic problem last time was not killing destroyers fast enough. The waves appear on a timer, they aren't going to wait for you to finish one before the next one starts. Worse they all heal quite well with inner fire, so the typical random-damage-everywhere approach that worked so far is going to have trouble. After talking with sej I'm suggesting we try a KD/Snare and pile-on-the-aoe approach, with everyone getting on the same called target at the same time.

Ebon Battle Standard of Honor/Wisdom; we want these and we want to sit in them, that will ratchet up the entire team's offense. Consider strong emanagement when you are triggering the wisdom recharges.

Winter- not sure where to put it, but destroyers have a vulnerability to cold damage we should exploit.

Mindbender- dunno who has room/asuran points, but this is a great skill for speeding up your long cast nukes.

Aegis, maybe displacement - the biggest damage threat was the barragers followed by the warrior types. These should help pull some of the burden of defense off of eles so they can crank out more damage.

Blood: Going to use a touch ranger build here. The damage is high, heroes spam it well, and most importantly they can run out and catch most of the barrages/ele damage with their stances and armor in the frontline.

Fire: Sej is going to swap over to this one, he has a "hellraiser" build or something that stacks a ton of AoE and buffs it - and under winter it should all be nice and frosty damage.

Ice: I suggest Mirror of Ice or else Shatterstorm-based build to raise damage. This mission has few tremors so ward vs harm isn't as useful. Try and have some way to keep at least one foe perma-snared. Slipper ground is also an OK KD if the air ele is going to pack some strong blind.

Earth: Lets fit in earthquake on the usual earth AoEs to have another KD source. Maybe even glyph of energy to help spam the earthquakes.

Air: Hureg is coming in on this role. As far as I know for damage it's either the lightning hammer spam builds, or else maybe the armor-ignoring damage from Glimmering Mark while spreading blind on off-target foes. I'd consider gale too for when the KDs may be needed.

Smite: I'll stick a hero with the rit healing responsibilites and take over this role. Instead of Raying I can abuse the KD signets with mantra of inscriptions to get foes stuck in the aoe masses. Might even play kamikaze-tank style and hit things with holy/stonesoul strike.


Point for debate: technically the stout-hearted title adds life stealing damage whenever you use a skill, which is producing damage outside of most players' element. This is a little unflavorful/inconsistent, and I'd hate to see if we chose spam skills to abuse the title when snare/nuke would otherwise be stronger. On the other hand heroes have to equip whatever title their leader chooses, and we might be having a hard enough time as is with the destroyers.

[WarBlade]

Damned browser crash ate my post! Take 2:

I'll keep it short because no-one reads these anyway. :P

I do.

Aegis, maybe displacement - the biggest damage threat was the barragers followed by the warrior types. These should help pull some of the burden of defense off of eles so they can crank out more damage.

Winds on the Air Mage is worth a look. It might even help preserve a Displacement a little. Aegis I would be very cautious about thanks to the Destroyer of Thoughts running Mirror of Disenchantment among it's formidable anti-enchant arsenal.

Ice: I suggest Mirror of Ice or else Shatterstorm-based build to raise damage. This mission has few tremors so ward vs harm isn't as useful. Try and have some way to keep at least one foe perma-snared. Slipper ground is also an OK KD if the air ele is going to pack some strong blind.

Shatter Storm? wtf?

Shatterstone and Water Trident are my preferred alternatives to Ward Against Harm here.

The Destroyer of Thoughts is the problem with excessive hexing as well as enchanting. I tend to avoid using both when fighting Destroyers. Otherwise that particular Destroyer must be target priority #1 at all times (like it wasn't last week when everyone ignored my target call... ).

Point for debate: technically the stout-hearted title adds life stealing damage whenever you use a skill, which is producing damage outside of most players' element. This is a little unflavorful/inconsistent, and I'd hate to see if we chose spam skills to abuse the title when snare/nuke would otherwise be stronger. On the other hand heroes have to equip whatever title their leader chooses, and we might be having a hard enough time as is with the destroyers.

What about legitimate use if the life steal effect fits the theme of a build. Example: Ice absorbs heat, hits a Destroyer, sucks out the fire, thus causing life drain into the source of the Cold Damage output...?

[Zed-F]

I'm pretty much locked into spamming enchants everywhere, that's how Ether Renewal works. On the plus side, the spam usually means that anything critical tends to be covered and I rarely have my ether renewal stripped so I can keep pumping out those enchants all over the place -- mirror of disenchant should generally not do too much.

[Seijin]

Yeah the build i was using was for fire was:

1. Savannah heat
2. Breath of fire
3. Teinai's heat
4. Searing heat
5. GoLE
6. Standard of Honor
7. Standard of Wisdom
8. Fire attunement

I was using that build a lot for a lot of HM stuff even if it did cause scatter. Worked well with sabway because minions sometimes body blocked enemies from going the way they wanted. I kinda had to setup before I would cast stuff since I had two wards to deal with. If someone else brings either of the wards (or both) I can take Mindbender and/or Air of Superiority. Alternatively I could take Assassin's Promise (assuming we're killing fast enough and a Thought doesn't remove it) to recharge the fire skills and replace Savannah with something like Fire Storm.

[FoxBat]

Actually Water Trident could be pretty useful for keeping foes from running away. Still it kindof needs to be paired with some slowdown hexes... and yeah those thoughts are going to shatter it, but they are a general nuisance anyway with enchant removal and guilts, they should be target #1 anyways.

[Courin]

I'll keep it short because no-one reads these anyway. :P

I love your idea of short!

[WarBlade]

Man, oh man! Last week was pure pwnage compared to this week's debacle.

Some of the problems to sort out for GOLEM...

Dark Mage: Why did we have a N/Rt in that spot? Given that the Necromancer's primary attribute is going to be low value I suggest sticking with a Rt/- for the Spawning benefits or Me/Rt for the cast times.

Wards: We had Ebon Vanguard Wards in the first pass and then not in a later run? What was going on there? We could be using all three and as it turned out we really needed them.

Should I bring back Ward Against Harm? Without the Vanguard stuff it seemed as though we could have used the build I was running last week.

Tactical Consideration: Half of the initial mobs we were clearing out have trigger points that cause them to run past stationary mobs to attack us. I couldn't see the reason to trip the back mob and attack the front one at the same time. Can we refrain from doing that next time?

Titles: Please get this decided on on the forum before assembling at Rata Sum.

[Seijin]

Wards: We had Ebon Vanguard Wards in the first pass and then not in a later run? What was going on there? We could be using all three and as it turned out we really needed them.

#1 - I had honor and wisdom with me during today's first run. I asked if anyone else could take maybe one to free me up for some other pve skill. Fox was the only one who acknowledged trying to fit it onto his bar, but wasn't able to. So I ended up with both which I hate doing because I end up having to cast both in succession and then cast my other spells. So I don't remember anyone else offering to take them to help out the team and I got stuck with it.

#2 - I was asked to change builds. And I"m pretty sure aside from me, some others knew I changed my build to primary KD while fox tried nuking with RoJ. My first build revolved around the idea that we were using winter since I saw it suggested. If I'm taking something like MS with me, I'm taking mindbender with me. If I have long recharging skills, even Wisdom is not gonna help me that much so I took AP as my elite, but we still couldn't kill that fast. So I had 5 fire spells, AP, mindbender, and GoLE.

So here's the deal, there were 7 of us. There are 3 wards. I asked about 2 which I could carry, but I usualy only do that when i h/h for the obvious reason that my h/h can't do it. And BTW, Honor doesn't affect RoJ, i'm not sure who is or isn't aware of that. Again, only Fox said anything about trying to fit it on his bar. NO ONE else offered or seemed to care. If we're all just gonna run our own shit and not care, I can easily do that and spec whatever way I want like a lot of us do.

Honestly what we need is more damage. More defense will help, but if we get overrun, all the defense in the world isn't gonna save us because we can't kill shit. We rarely call targets which is fun when I'm trying to figure out what to KD.

You want the title thing sorted out...just don't use it. Winter kills the spirit of the variant...well so does constant life steal. Your argument for winter is the argument for the title.

[Zed-F]

I agree that if we are using DoTAoE at all, we want to be using DoTAoE with both Ebon Vanguards.

We could use some kind of global armour buff to take some of the edge off those big hits so the healers have a bit more reaction time. Ideally it should be an AoE armour buff so we can get the most utility from one skill. Ward Against Harm's bonus vs. fire is probably wasted for an elite skill, but Stand Your Ground is a decent non-elite equivalent, assuming we can fit that in as a non-class skill.

Weapon of Shadow is probably not a good skill for a hero to use. It doesn't do anything to stop an incoming damage wave, instead it applies a condition after the next damage wave after it is applied. The Hero AI will wait to use it until someone gets low on health, by which point it's too late; the next attack will likely kill that person before the blindness gets triggered. We need more reliable blinding and/or weakness, which seems to me should be the Air ele's role. Either that, or have a player take the darkness role so Weapon of Shadow can be used more proactively.

Someone should step up to be the lead attacker, and that someone should be calling targets. Fox was leading off last time, but people were still complaining about target calling so I assume that wasn't happening consistently. I don't know that our smiter is really the best person to be up front taking the first hits anyway; someone who can bring a strong defensive skill like Earth or Water should be doing that.

If the DoTAoE thing doesn't work and we are stuck with low offense anyway, we might as well skip all the scatter-inducing skills and stick an Obsidian tank up front. Mirror of Disenchantment and hexes won't be a problem in that event, and so long as we have enough blindness to handle leakers and maintain aggro discipline, it should be a slow but relatively sure way to handle the mission.

[WarBlade]

#1 - I had honor and wisdom with me during today's first run.

Yeah, we really do need them. I've never run Fire Magic against the Destroyers and I don't know how badly hamstrung users of that damage type are when fighting Destroyers, but if it's as bad as people say, then the Fire Mage is always going to be the #1 candidate for picking those up in more of a utility role than the other damagers.

You want the title thing sorted out...just don't use it. Winter kills the spirit of the variant...well so does constant life steal. Your argument for winter is the argument for the title.

No, they are two distinctly separate points of debate. I've already stated my position that the Delver title is justifiable on selected units if it fits the theme of that particular character against a fire based enemy. The argument against the use of Winter is that it turns ~4 Elemental damagers into ~4 Water damagers.

I agree that if we are using DoTAoE at all, we want to be using DoTAoE with both Ebon Vanguards.

All three even. I'm actually sceptical of the defensive impact of standing in Wards against the Destroyers, given the multi-target physical attacks being used against us. So that's part of my motivation to bring up the topic of Ward Against Harm, seeing as I can match (well, exceed marginally) Ebon Battle Standard of Courage with it. Ward Against Melee could also be very valuable.

If the DoTAoE thing doesn't work and we are stuck with low offense anyway, we might as well skip all the scatter-inducing skills and stick an Obsidian tank up front.

I'm happy to explore a more single-target damage philosophy after seeing my limited snares and knock downs fail repeatedly. The Obsidian Tank idea I'm not so sure about. How many Destroyers are we expecting to ball up on the hill? One mistake and the Destroyer of Thoughts gets a chink in the armour, then all hell breaks loose. The Destroyer of Deeds is actively going to be looking to create such a chink as well.

It's worth exploring though.