Guild Wars 2

New tactic popping up as of late. 4-5+ dagger/dagger eles using the dagger 5 earth skills (earthquake) then teleporting into the enemy zerg with the air cantrip.

Teleporting does not interrupt the charge. The result is 5x earthquakes instantly going off inside the enemy team at the same time, killing 30+ people instantaneously.

Seeing this more and more, its near impossible to counter and the range is massive. Anyone having any luck against these teams?

lol it’s so easy to interrupt and the ele’s are pretty much sitting ducks.

Ilesyt.7084:

lol it’s so easy to interrupt and the ele’s are pretty much sitting ducks.

They cloak the eles with refuge or veil, the spike comes from stealth.

First of all when you teleport into blobs, you get tons of skill lag, so you are pretty much suicidal and for what? 5 enemies going into down state and then the rest of bob raising them up.

Really dont know if this thread is serious. Churning earth has a 3 1/4 sec casttime and a very noticable animation. While casting it they ele cant do anything(not move for example), so he is easy interruptable. The teleport has a range of 900 yards, so what is your zerg doing while the 5 eles are casting churning earth? And how can the 4-5 eles kill a 30+ zerg when there is a aoe limit on 5 people?

Wait a sec… you mean your server actually has a giant zerg-ball that stops moving for more than 2 seconds once in a while? We honestly don’t see much of that in Tier 1. This exact strategy has been tried by quite a few groups over the past 3 months in T1, but the zerg meta in this this tier is to roll through enemies without stopping, turn, veil, and roll through them again, repeating this until everyone is dead. It never stop moving, however, and most zergs are keeping up permanent swiftness and are very quick to drop group stability and cleansing as well, so the zergs are very hard catch by any means other than using the same exact tactic, only with a larger zerg.

What will they think of next? Of all the things to complain about. Oi vey.
Hardly comparable to what 5 mesmers can do. ie. Stealth the entire zerg.

I see more zergs wiped by mass warrior hammer stun and aoe daze than anything else.

Nothing more fun than not being able to play for 10 seconds.

I’ve seen this before, I say good on em, zergs ruin any amount of single play and a decently sized zerg can burn down gates before defenders can even get to them. This is a blessing imho… Gonna start explaining this in my team chat…

2 thieves
5 eles
Shadow’s Refuge>Earthquake>Teleport

my tactics: gather 20-30 guys with a direct hands and kill em all

Still a 5 target limit, you’re better off swapping to staff and dropping static fields to punish tight groups, which you can then drop stronger 5 target aoe’s.

Sort of a fool me once deal. The counter would be stability and protection. A lot of it. Which can be done before engaging.

I know as a necro i’d probably try and counter with a fear mark or blind well, then a putrid mark to remove bleeds

protection and retaliation would be good too.. also don’t be so squishy and if you are hang back and don’t ball up so stupidly

There’s much better things to build bombs around than eles. Not that you shouldn’t takeone along.

Static field is much better than teleport earthquake…I have literally cut a whole zerg in half with just one static field from one ele.

If a zerg manages to do a perfect veil, followed by all their eles earthquaking and tping to the center of the enemy… They probably deserve to win the fight.

Impossible to counter? No its incredibly easy to counter by tactics that’s existed for thousands of years. Divide and conquer. Scatter the zerg into multiple groups, and smash into the enemy zerg which are now without their eles. Or what, the target zerg to this ele bomb is assumed to not be capable of thinking outside of running in a 40 man single blob? Well then we are back at my first point… They probably deserve to loose.

I know this is crazy, but stop stacking might be just the trick.

lordhelmos.7623:

New tactic popping up as of late. 4-5+ dagger/dagger eles using the dagger 5 earth skills (earthquake) then teleporting into the enemy zerg with the air cantrip.

Teleporting does not interrupt the charge. The result is 5x earthquakes instantly going off inside the enemy team at the same time, killing 30+ people instantaneously.

Seeing this more and more, its near impossible to counter and the range is massive. Anyone having any luck against these teams?

AOE cap limit is 5, So chances of this happening are slim to none..

Good try though.

When ikittenerg, staff ele > D/D ele every time.

Thief Shadowstep -> Dagger Storm deals way more damage than that and you can always shadow return

Dagger Storm is damage over time, where as a 5x Earthquake spike with next to no warning will down players in one shot, letting the rest of the group clean up.

Most zergs stop when taking on towers/keeps/castle. If that’s when you are wrecked, spread out, make yourself less of a target.

Also, T1 (and occasionally T2) play on a whole different level. Us T3’ers and below aren’t as tactical, except for guild groups. So even a moving zerg blob can get wrecked by a ele Earthquake spike.

lordhelmos.7623:

New tactic popping up as of late. 4-5+ dagger/dagger eles using the dagger 5 earth skills (earthquake) then teleporting into the enemy zerg with the air cantrip.

Teleporting does not interrupt the charge. The result is 5x earthquakes instantly going off inside the enemy team at the same time, killing 30+ people instantaneously.

Seeing this more and more, its near impossible to counter and the range is massive. Anyone having any luck against these teams?

Exaggerate much?

SmokeyNYY.7841:

Static field is much better than teleport earthquake…I have literally cut a whole zerg in half with just one static field from one ele.

3 people do not make a zerg.

lordhelmos.7623:

New tactic popping up as of late. 4-5+ dagger/dagger eles using the dagger 5 earth skills (earthquake) then teleporting into the enemy zerg with the air cantrip.

Teleporting does not interrupt the charge. The result is 5x earthquakes instantly going off inside the enemy team at the same time, killing 30+ people instantaneously.

Seeing this more and more, its near impossible to counter and the range is massive. Anyone having any luck against these teams?

How can 4 or 5 Eles kill 30+ people?

4×5 (AoE limit) = 20
5×5 = 25

I think everybody should chill and cut the guy some slack. The OP might have come from a lower tier and therefore the meta is different.

No disrespect towards the lower tiers but as the game goes on, players will devise such strats and test it out. It is just a natural state of evolution.

It may be be a viable on the tier that the OP is on at the moment until somebody devises a counter and the whole process of discovery repeats itself.

What you guys are doing is just comparing apples to oranges and viewing his comment with benefit of hindsight which is always perfect.

Asglarek.8976:

SmokeyNYY.7841:

Static field is much better than teleport earthquake…I have literally cut a whole zerg in half with just one static field from one ele.

3 people do not make a zerg.

it was about 40

lordhelmos.7623:

New tactic popping up as of late. 4-5+ dagger/dagger eles using the dagger 5 earth skills (earthquake) then teleporting into the enemy zerg with the air cantrip.

Teleporting does not interrupt the charge. The result is 5x earthquakes instantly going off inside the enemy team at the same time, killing 30+ people instantaneously.

Seeing this more and more, its near impossible to counter and the range is massive. Anyone having any luck against these teams?

There are so many lies in this post it is almost funny. But it is not funny. At all.

Earthquake is Dagger 4 which does 1k damage and knocks down 5 players. Churning Earth is Dagger 5 which is channeled for 3 seconds, hits for 3k, puts on 8 stacks of bleed and also hits 5 targets. Since the bleed only stacks to 25 and it could be easily purged it would take 8 eles bombing just to kill 5 players assuming they all hit the same targets which is highly unlikely.

So if you have 30+ people dying you are being bombed by 50+ eles which means the fight has atleast 80 players in it and the skill lag would be so bad that the eles would be unable to combo lightning flash and churning earth anyway

TLDR: You’re a liar.

In the event masses of your group are being killed quickly, a few warriors with warbanner, or mesmers with illusion of life are another means of preventing the enemy zerg from rallying.

Even if he’s lying, something for them to consider.

This is so inaccurate its comical. Getting hit with a churning earth to the face would hurt I suppose, but it would be unlikely to down anyone unless multiple churning earths hit the same targets…meaning your maximum target number is dropping.

If you want to complain about zergbusting skills, complain about something that actually works: Lots of glamour mesmers.

Oh no, zergs need a buff! Personally I think they should inctroduce a wvw exp based ability as follows:
#1rank 10% damage reduction per each nearby ally
#2rank 10% speed boost per each nearby ally
#3rank 10% karma and magic find bonus per each nearby ally
#4rank 100% more damage to doors per each nearby ally

We did this a lot in our early days in tier 3. Video below.

After having done it for weeks, I can confidently inform you that the tactic works—and it’s a lot of fun. But it’s largely only useful against headless zergs.

If a commander sees an elementalist churn bomb coming, it’s as easy as ‘CHARGE’. They go down like bowling pins. But without that one person telling everyone to do it, there’s not enough force to knock them all down. Without a commander, players just tend to stand there in a disorderly fashion waiting to receive a bomb (as shown in the video). 9 times out of 10 all you need to do is push.

For more videos on churn bomb, visit my channel on youtube. Almost every video preceeding Instant Replay #5 is an ele stack group

Adding another one for any skeptics (if you can stomache the music. This video was made as a joke).

Start the video at 4:00 to view 8x elementalist churn stack.

Edit: Oops, fixed the link.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

We did this a lot in our early days in tier 3. Video below.

After having done it for weeks, I can confidently inform you that the tactic works—and it’s a lot of fun. But it’s largely only useful against headless zergs.

If a commander sees an elementalist churn bomb coming, it’s as easy as ‘CHARGE’. They go down like bowling pins. But without that one person telling everyone to do it, there’s not enough force to knock them all down. Without a commander, players just tend to stand there in a disorderly fashion waiting to receive a bomb (as shown in the video). 9 times out of 10 all you need to do is push.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0YnD37cK0

For more videos on churn bomb, visit my channel on youtube. Almost every video preceeding Instant Replay #5 is an ele stack group

Nice coordination on those d/d eles with the melee group!

I’m sorry but churning earth has a max target of 5. It does no where near enough damage to 1 shot anyone, much less have a zerg go down to 4-5. OP is having living nightmares or something.

If 5 churning earths from 5 eles hit you when you’re stacked with your zerg, you were unlucky; however the AOE cap means the CE’s did not hit 5 other people in your zerg.

If 5 churning earths each hit 5 unique players for a total of 25 players hit, it’s nice AOE, but non-lethal. The spike damage won’t kill you, and the bleed stacks can be easily removed.

If you died to a single cast of churning earth, there is nothing we can say to help you.

So, a small group of players planning ahead and making efforts to coordinate their attacks manages to defeat a large disorganized rabble of players who weren’t really paying attention to what their enemies were doing.

I see no issue here, even ignoring the mathematical inaccuracies already pointed out.

I WISH ele’s were that good. Our AoEs are good but only if you are lame enough to stand in them.

And who stands in one spot long enough to get killed by AoE?

You can dodge roll out of the blast if you see it coming. Kinda tough if they are invis but I suppose you will just have to watch for it.

I think the missing piece here is that the churn is really only 1/2 of the whole picture. The truth is that D/D eles have a lot of AoE abilities that, if cycled correctly, can be dropped in about 6-8

So you’re getting 5x hits for ~3k damage on the initial churn (15k damage) + Bleed.
Then 5x earthquake and Earth spikes ~1.5k combined (7.5k damage)
Then 5x Ring of Fire, fire breath, burning speed ~3.5k damage (17.5k damage) + Burning
Then 5x Ice breath and Ice AoE ~2k damage (10k damage) + Chilled
And then lightning which is largely single target so we’ll factor it out.

So that’s 50k damage with 5 elementalists hitting a single target (ideal).
Now factor in that you’ll be hitting at most 5 targets (again, ideal)
50k damage x 5 targets = 250k total unmitigated damage to 5 players (+ bleed and burning)in 6-8 seconds because all of these abilities (excluding churning earth) is an instant cast.
(this is assuming zero crits and a reasonable power build)

Realistically, you’re not wiping anything because the DPS of five eles is spread out (usually) to over 7-8 players as they spread out some after the first hit. But that’s 7-8 players who are very nearly downed.

In essence, what you’re getting killed by isn’t a churn stack. It’s a stack of D/D eles.

But here’s the catch—once those 6-8 seconds are done these eles are wholly useless for the next 15-20 seconds. Hence—in the video why we use the guardians to cover us while our cooldowns recharge.

important this post sounds like im arguing that Churn bombs are OP. They really aren’t as mentioned earlier. The easiest counter is to just play aggressively. If your zerg is just milling about—you’re going to get wiped. It’s an organized team with an organized strat. Nothing more.

You know they can use a portal while channeling their earth #5? ^^