[Theory/Solution]How to deal with GWFs on Hotenow map and maybe Rivenscar

llantiss

Minimum requirements (IMO):
32k hp
T2 PvP set (for short cooldown bonus on tab skill)
1.2k regen
3k recovery

The idea is:
- you go top tree, to stack 5 chill faster and insta freeze the GWF using chillstrike & ray of frost
- you get a LOW lvl weapon from the auction house, so you do almost no damage at all
- slotting repel on tab, 6s cooldown and repeatedly push the GWF off the stage without proccing unstoppable thus allowing you FULL control when hes near or far.

I tried this once in a premade but the problem was I was using perf vorpal and kept proccing unstoppable, but yesterday I switched to lvl 8 white weapon and managed to push the GWF all the way to the middle flag from our base (just for science!)

Yes, obviously not doing any dmg puts you in big danger vs other classes but this is on the fly setup (don't think it's an abuse if you switch weapon to a common type lol) and I'm sure it can be tweaked much more, but try it, it's FUN!


Rotation:
- Chill strike + ray of frost, repel
- (if hes on stage close to wall) entangle, repel, icy rays, ray of frost (he'll end up on stage but off the flag)
- rotation doesn't really matter because you don't have to worry about his unstoppable, just spam wutever you want to keep him off the point
- practice it long enough and you can freeze him, get close, lift choke him, get behind and repel him off, and freeze him again while hes down below the stage trying to climb back

Discuss.

slushpsycho

Good guy Lanties.

I will probably switch out choke and put COI into rotation as tab skill. The CD on repel are naturally low. by putting it on tab you only lower its cool down by 1 sec with GG T2 set. COI+ Icy Ray + Chill strike + Ray of frost= How to build a snowman 101. The massive slow provide by multiple chill stack should give you enough room to move to a proper position to repel him off the point and even you fail to do so, bottom line he would be almost perma frozen anyway.

On Hotenow I would say your rotation is better since smart GWF would just hug wall so you can't get him off the platform.

Still I am just gonna wait for GWF nerf. I see them coming, I mean they better do...

stoxforum1

I'm amused by this. It's like trololol. But what happens when the TR or another CW comes? You die fast, they cap the point, then you have to stay and get the cap against the GWF, you can't push him all over everywhere. Any half decent group will just have the GWF go mid or to the opposite point, and put say the TR on you and that point repeatedly.

llantiss

stoxforum1 wrote: »

I'm amused by this. It's like trololol. But what happens when the TR or another CW comes? You die fast, they cap the point, then you have to stay and get the cap against the GWF, you can't push him all over everywhere. Any half decent group will just have the GWF go mid or to the opposite point, and put say the TR on you and that point repeatedly.

If at any point you manage to force rotation where the GWF is called to middle you practically won the game, also you're pretty tanky, you can swap to your main weap and still do dmg. you can also retake the cap, why can't i "push him all over"? this is exactly what this setup does, I get 100% control he never goes immune to it.

and lets be serious here, all capping points aside, if I was a GWF and i was forced off the point by a CW with lvl 8 weap i'd be furious, I'd try killing him just for the challenge

* This might not work out in premades, although I don't think anyone ever done it so it will take the opponent atleast 200 points before their GWF realizes whats going on (when I did it, i took 100 points w/ perf vorpal untill the gwf started hugging the walls). But it works extremely well in pugs due to slow communication, and I think 95% of the pvp community just pug all day anyway.

niadan

These kind of threads make me want to start pvping. We should start a thread about how to annoy your opponent to death, with builds and strategies to just drive them crazy. Especially when they think they have another squishy easy kill in their sights! Thanks for this

hiddenfate

niadan wrote: »

These kind of threads make me want to start pvping. We should start a thread about how to annoy your opponent to death, with builds and strategies to just drive them crazy. Especially when they think they have another squishy easy kill in their sights! Thanks for this

Best way to annoy your targets? If they charge at you place a control on them and run away. I did that one round against a really annoying GWF and he kept trying to hunt me down while my team captured every single point behind his back :P

Didn't get much glory that round, frankly did not care xD

jayrad8

Doesn't one cast of EF give a GWF instant half bar of unstop? So "EF then Repel" would be more like EF then kite out an unstop then repel off since any good GWF would pop it the second you EF?

Btw I like the EF + tabbed meatball combo, gives mad luls and ggs -- but the cc duration of EF is seemingly not enough in many cases unless you have maxed Orb slotted for the 15% duration increase. Not sure that I could improve on casting time either, any tips?

I was thinking that a repel, icy, shard combo with the same goal of tea bagging them could be mastered, something like icy mark + repel + icy stun + shard drop. Only reason I've been trying it is because EF just hasn't been cutting it, seems like if you master shard dropping at precisely the right distance they are repelled, then the repel and icy cc may improve on landing the shard drop. You'd basically have to master dropping at full and deflected repel distances, and quick recognition of which one it will be. Could be followed up with chill strike for more prone lock off point and then frost as they run back to you.

It also keeps them off the point while you stay on, instead of being in stall with the EF combo. Though I haven't tested whether the icy repel shard combo gives insta unstop for gwf, which if it does then I'm not sure if it would be any improvement in that regard, there might just be too many timing variables involved too. Any thoughts?

llantiss

jayrad8 wrote: »

Doesn't one cast of EF give a GWF instant half bar of unstop? So "EF then Repel" would be more like EF then kite out an unstop then repel off since any good GWF would pop it the second you EF?

Btw I like the EF + tabbed meatball combo, gives mad luls and ggs -- but the cc duration of EF is seemingly not enough in many cases unless you have maxed Orb slotted for the 15% duration increase. Not sure that I could improve on casting time either, any tips?

I was thinking that a repel, icy, shard combo with the same goal of tea bagging them could be mastered, something like icy mark + repel + icy stun + shard drop. Only reason I've been trying it is because EF just hasn't been cutting it, seems like if you master shard dropping at precisely the right distance they are repelled, then the repel and icy cc may improve on landing the shard drop. You'd basically have to master dropping at full and deflected repel distances, and quick recognition of which one it will be. Could be followed up with chill strike for more prone lock off point and then frost as they run back to you.

It also keeps them off the point while you stay on, instead of being in stall with the EF combo. Though I haven't tested whether the icy repel shard combo gives insta unstop for gwf, which if it does then I'm not sure if it would be any improvement in that regard, there might just be too many timing variables involved too. Any thoughts?

what on earth are you babbling about? did you even read the topic lol

jayrad8

llantiss wrote: »

what on earth are you babbling about? did you even read the topic lol

Mostly thinking out loud and hoping for some constructive criticism, but..

Yeah you gave a theory for handling gwf reliant on cc and using a low level weapon to never proc unstop (and for laughs), but as you mentioned it leaves you vulnerable to other classes and would be an on the fly thing.

You sacrifice any chance at killing by switching to low level weapon, but gain all the cc you could want, so could you sacrifice some cc in order to get the kill? I mean say you're fooling around after the match doing 1v1s, what are some approaches to take em down? inb4 'if it's a skilled/farmed gwf you won't be able to'

grimah

from playing my gwf i was under the impression determination gain is dependant on what kind of attack is done, not how much damage you take. Or am i wrong?

llantiss

jayrad8 wrote: »

Mostly thinking out loud and hoping for some constructive criticism, but..

Yeah you gave a theory for handling gwf reliant on cc and using a low level weapon to never proc unstop (and for laughs), but as you mentioned it leaves you vulnerable to other classes and would be an on the fly thing.

You sacrifice any chance at killing by switching to low level weapon, but gain all the cc you could want, so could you sacrifice some cc in order to get the kill? I mean say you're fooling around after the match doing 1v1s, what are some approaches to take em down? inb4 'if it's a skilled/farmed gwf you won't be able to'

Ofcourse you can kill them, its just the matchup isn't in your favor, you also have to consider the fact that GWF was already a strong class when beta came out and yet they buffed it TWICE since then AND gave them broken boon/s on top of that.

If you want a good place to start check out my 1v1 before the expansion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIH6FNiwbxI
Maybe it'll help to come up with new combos or you will come to the same realization as I did and why I stopped playing this game. (that cryptic takes zero feedback and no matter how hard you try they will always unbalance things the next patch)

judicas

You do realize they had nerfed the class to uselessness multiple times and gave them a small buff after taking the nerf hammer and pounding them into the ground

pers3phone

judicas wrote: »

You do realize they had nerfed the class to uselessness multiple times and gave them a small buff after taking the nerf hammer and pounding them into the ground

The class needed PvE buffs. Not PvP

Cryptic "fixes" something only to add an even bigger imbalance. GWFs were already pretty dominating in M2 PvP, and instead of being adjusted to be more balanced, they got spammable gap closer (basically a non-stamina dependent teleport) and crazy bleed damage.

llantiss

judicas wrote: »

You do realize they had nerfed the class to uselessness multiple times and gave them a small buff after taking the nerf hammer and pounding them into the ground

I don't want to go off topic, ill just end this topic with my theory (as stated in OP). Regarding your claims, you are basing them on nothing, EVEN if they were useless its just one more reason why I don't trust cryptic, you need to let the game live abit before you do any balancing, especially with their small resources.

At the end of the day you can argue all you want but we all know GWF is currently meta breaker class in PVP, the class doesn't have any bad matchups, even the hypocrite GWFs who defend their class, as soon as you say you can kill them they will make sure to remind you how broken they are.

jayrad8

llantiss wrote: »

Ofcourse you can kill them, its just the matchup isn't in your favor, you also have to consider the fact that GWF was already a strong class when beta came out and yet they buffed it TWICE since then AND gave them broken boon/s on top of that.

If you want a good place to start check out my 1v1 before the expansion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIH6FNiwbxI
Maybe it'll help to come up with new combos or you will come to the same realization as I did and why I stopped playing this game. (that cryptic takes zero feedback and no matter how hard you try they will always unbalance things the next patch)

I agree with the blatant unbalanced PvP, but something about winning the underdog matches against gwf/tr as cw and finding new counters appeals to me. The devs hinted at more PvP content in the next expansion so maybe they'll manage things a bit better and add some variety, but based on Cryptic's customer service I'm not getting my hopes too high. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if part of their business model is to make a different class op in PvP with each expansion so that ppl spend money to start roflstomping asap. First tr, now gwf, maybe it will be cw turn next :eek:

Maybe I've been given false information or it's new as of dread ring, but I was told that one EF on a gwf gives them half of the unstop bar, so they're able to get out of EF and the shard combo. This didn't look to be the case in your vid though (pre dread ring), and it looks like sometimes you EF then shard or preemptively shard then EF them into it, where the latter looks more reliable for landing the combo.

My previous blab was about trying to avoid using EF on them at all to avoid this, if true, and to come up with a way of landing the shard with other ccs/stuns on gwf that doesn't insta proc their unstop or sacrifice usefulness against other classes, just other fun ways to land it in general. Thanks for the reply and pointing me to your vid, hopefully they may give you and others a reason to return in the future

benskix2

I don't see the need to bother with the low level weapon, a GWF going unstoppable for 4 seconds while I'm standing 60 meters away is just a minor inconvenience, if they are being controlled when you repel them they will fly far enough away that unstoppable will be just about worn off by the time they get back to you and you can just throw them back again. Just DO NOT HIT THEM WHEN THEY ARE UNSTOPPABLE because then you are giving them free determination without eating away any of their hit points and their unstoppable self heal combined with regen will end up healing them faster than you can whittle them down.