User:Rask/Rants

Stone Sheath
Ok, so plenty of people have been trying to take advantage of Stone Sheath in both pve and pvp. I'll be listing advantages AND disadvantages of using SS in both formats, as I'm not the most intelligent player when it comes to pvp feel free to correct me on the talk page.

PvE
The reason SS is a horrible choice on a hero is twofold:
 * Assuming your hero is set for earth magic, you have two alternatives that are more effective than any amount of SS spam: Unsteady Ground, which provides a near constant knockdown on enemy mobs, and Ward Against Harm, assuming you split into water magic for a ward hero.
 * Even assuming you don't have EITHER of those skills, an ST rit makes the armor boost null and void, necros are able to spam weakness and pump out more damage than any Stone Sheath build can, WITHOUT sacrificing energy management or utility. There are far too many better options, and by many I mean fucking tons.

PvP
Stone Sheath grants weakness in two possible places, does a little damage, AND grants two people (possibly) an armor boost. Needless to say, it's not a BAD skill to take in team oriented formats, running a SS support build however is dumb, you lack consistent energy management and sacrifice your secondary for support which removes the availability of defensive skills. tl;dr:

In my opinion SS should be limited to a stoning spammer, or ran as a support in a team consisting of stoning eles, ele spike says hai. Unfortunately Arena net keeps passing the torch to the less intelligent person on the team each time. Flux has fucked any gimmicks, and that's all SS can really be utilized fully in, gimmicks.

Jaigoda
My issues with Jai are two-fold:

Species
As you all know, Jai is a ginger. Gingers lack human souls and as such have very few human emotions. While Jai is the most friendly ginger I know, there is another issue that makes him unbearable:

Personal Space
Jai feels the need to have his head inside of your rectum nearly 24/7. He likes to push you off of ledges, knock you out of waterfalls, and jew all of the iron to hoard massive amounts of tools.

Moral of the Story
If you play Minecraft with Jai, prepare for endless rage. ~Love,  RąʂKɭɘş ♣  14/f/japan  11:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Tryndamere needs an "Endless Love"-Valentine skin. -- DANDY ^_^ -- 15:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Ineptitude vs. Energy Surge (As a bar)
First off, I want to do my best to do both bars justice, because each has its place. This isn't going to be a 2 illu vs 2 dom breakdown, this is simply comparing each builds Damage Output, Utility, AI usage, and shutdown. I'm not going to bash one bar, or raise another on a pedestal because it's fucking blindingly obvious that they both just about even out.

I'll start with listing each bar, both set at 16 of their respective attribute, I won't be listing energy management or optionals, I'll get into that later.

Ineptitude Bar
[build prof=me/any illusion=12+1+3 fast=10+1 ins=8+1][ineptitude][wandering eye][signet of clumsiness][/build]

Esurge Bar
[build prof=Me/any Dom=12+1+3 Insp=8+1 Fast=10+1][Energy Surge][Mistrust][Unnatural Signet][Cry of Frustration][/build]

Damage Break Down
Ineptitude has 323 AoE damage, 115 is nearby and 208 is Adjacent. Casting the entire chain takes 4 seconds to run through. 80.75 AoE DPS with ineptitude with it's basic setup, I'm listing DPS purely for reference as it's irrelevant when you're spiking.

Energy Surge has 334 AoE damage, 205 is nearby AoE, 53 is Adjacent and 79 is in the area. Casting the entire chain takes 6 seconds to run through. 55.7 AoE DPS with Esurge's basic setup, again listing DPS purely for reference as it's irrelevant when you're spiking.

Utility
We'll assume two slots on each bar will be dedicated to energy management, since it's safe to say few people are comfortable running a BiP necro. That leaves 3 slots for utility on the Ineptitude, and 2 slots on the Esurge.

While Ineptitude has more room for utility, it's safe to say that you shouldn't need more than 2 utility skills on the bar, you want your hero to focus on pushing out damage so no brownie points there.

All in all both are well balanced for bringing utility skills. There's no such thing as "better" utility, so on this point they break even.

AI Usage
I'd first like to point out something not a lot of people seem to get. In few cases is there AI written for specific skills. Skill usage is based on the skills themselves, so when an update (like the recent one) comes out, and it improves NPC's ability to find the best AoE Target, it's going to affect all AoE skills.

The recent update pushed panic from micro quality to c-space quality. Esurge and Ineptitude were already used properly and frequently by heroes, but they wouldn't run out of casting range to hit AoE targets, meaning a melee foe close to your team could waste some valuable (and expensive) skills. This has been improved upon tremendously I'm happy to say.

Shutdown
There are three key types of shutdown in guild wars, Martial shutdown (E.G. Blind, Blurry Vision, Wandering Eye), Caster shutdown (E.G. Daze, Mistrust), then there's the mother of them all shutdown, Hard Stops (E.G. Interrupts, Knock Downs, Recharge extenders).

Ineptitude provides passive defense against martial foes, make no mistake, your reason for taking ineptitude is not the blind. It's the heavy hitting armor ignoring damage, blind is just the icing on the cake. Several people are under the assumption that casters are more threatening than martial classes, and I can see that being true in certain areas, however casters do auto attack in between spells so this still pumps out massive damage and should be on every mesmer team.

Energy Surge provides plenty of AoE damage and tons of caster shutdown. Mistrust and CoF on caster groups makes for easy pickings and Energy Surge Compliments the interrupts with solid damage. All in all every mesmer team should have a minimum of one dom mes, as the casterhate and solid damage is too great to pass up.

Blue Bar
I've seen plenty of people complaining about blue bar issues on ineptitude, and to be frank, it's pretty fucking stupid. I'm not going to even attempt to be unbiased here.

Ineptitude = 10 Energy Wandering = 5 Energy Signet    = 0 Energy Grant total= 15 energy for a chain

Esurge    = 5 Energy Mistrust  = 10 Energy Cry of Frus= 10 Energy Signet    = 0 Energy Grand Total= 25 energy for a chain

15/25=.6 Energy surge has 60% more energy consumption than Ineptitude. So stop whining about how it kills your blue bar. You're either a fucking liar or a moron, possibly both.

Summary
All in all, if you're looking for a mesmer spike then Ineptitude has slightly superior damage, energy management, and martial defense. It should always be paired with an ES/Dom mesmer however, as caster shutdown is a must have.

Energy Surge spikers work extremely well in caster heavy areas, however they fall apart when there is a lack of aggressive casters.

Each build has its niche, both compliment each other wonderfully, and both deserve to be vetted on this wiki. Stop the stupid pissing contest, if you want to get banned then just call someone a faggot and get it over with. Your drawn out angst driven tantrum is unbecoming, and quite unpleasant to wade through.