User:Raine Valen/Musings/Terran Siege Tank

The Build

 * One frontline.
 * Two midline.
 * One backline.

How It Works:

 * Backline backlines.
 * Midline midlines.
 * Frontline kills stuff EVERYTHING.

It started off as me wanting to play one of my chars that I hadn't played in a while. I was ABing with Die, and he had this bright idea: "Here, I'll play something so you can do lolbigdamage". lolbigdamage, indeed. After running around the first round in wtfgodmode, I decided that we'd be doing it all night. We made a couple of changes to a couple of builds, but overall, it remained the same: lolbigdamage frontline, steroidz midline, optional midline (we still don't know what goes here), and backline. It just makes the whole "Utility beats damage" thing look silly. Death is the strongest interrupt, shutdown, and snare in the game, and we spammed it like it was going out of style.

Spike statistics:

 * Recharge time: 4 seconds. *
 * * The IAS used has a 45% downtime. Without the IAS, the spike takes a staggering three seconds to complete.
 * * The single longest-recharging spike assist skill takes eight seconds to recharge. It is not necessary for lethal spike damage.


 * Net Energy cost/cycle: 0 *
 * * Per full thirty-second cycle. The energy management skills are not used on every spike, but cover the cost of the spikes on which they were not used.  The figure given includes energy regeneration.


 * Usage range: Melee range, with assist from full casting range.
 * AoE range: Adjacent. *
 * * Target foe and foes adjacent to that target will take the most damage. Foes adjacent to the foes adjacent to the target will take some damage, but this is insignificant.


 * Party members involved: 2 of 4.

Overview:
It's heady, being able to decimate parties in seconds. Much more so when you know you're single-handedly tearing them apart, the sole frontline, the sole offense of your party. That kind of power, it makes you feel... godly. It's is if Balthazar himself were there, holding your hand. And it's fun as hell. Tonight, we mostly played around with it, not really perfecting, but just putting in filler where necessary. Just filling slots so we can run with it. We all took turns playing different positions, and generally just had a good time soaking in the win.

Hilights:

 * The Kurzick Army Monk:
 * "LOLWTF JUST HAPPENED?!"
 * "It was just there. Then not.  lol"
 * The Kurzick Army Monk was rich. I was playing frontline at that point, it was still pretty early in the night.  We took the attack point, then headed up to rez.  The Kurz center team had gone around us (dishonorable, tbh), so when we got there, it was just the army monk.  I killed it in a little under two seconds; it didn't even get PS off.


 * The Three-Second Party Wipe:
 * "That's what happens when you get split up from your party."
 * "Uh, that was the whole party."
 * After monking for us (Strong ZB), Claymore decided to play her frontline: Terran Siege Tank. On her second run, the first team we fought tried to lineback (Strong balling up.  Strong.).  The team died in three hits.  All of them.


 * '''The Frenzied-Defense Healsig:
 * "Aw, that's gay, she's not gonna hit."
 * "LOL 438!! Frenzy healsig moar, kthx!"
 * After running from the necro shrine (I'd just lolwiped it), this mesmer heads up the hill in Frenzied defense and hits Healsig. I'm thinking the same thing as Die: "I'm not gonna hit."  But I hit.  The mesmer, already at ~25% health, just explodes.  438 damage, gg.  I wish it would've been a crit, though...


 * The Badass Bambi-Monk:
 * Prose took the frontline spot after me, before Claymore. After wiping two teams like nothing, we show up at the res shrine, where a monk flashes a bambi (srs bsns!) and runs around in a circle with it (shiny trail is pretty, y'know?).  Before he even realizes what's happening, he's just gone.  After two hits, he's around 10%, and he casts Patient like it's gonna do something.  lol patient.

Overview:
Only two guildies tonight, so more puggage. The thing is, only two people really need to know what they're doing for it to work (a good monk helps, too). We ended up with a decent-ish monk and a HA Cryer para, which turned out to be pretty win (Owut? Faintheartedness?  Cried.). The opposition was better tonight. The monks protted (tried to, anyway), casters kited, melee... well, I didn't notice much good melee. But I wasn't really aiming to lolkill melee, so I might not've noticed. Even so, the matches weren't quite as easy as the first night's. Accordingly, beating them was far more fulfilling. I ran some slight variations in my build tonight. I didn't like them, so I'll be using the original next time. We're still working out the ideal midline.

Highlights:

 * Strong Troll Unguent:
 * "You really stopped to do that?"
 * The last surviving member of the enemy party was a ranger (huge surprise?), who'd managed to get pretty far away with Natty before I could finish them off. I'm thinking, "Darn, they're going to get away", but then he stops to Troll.  loloneshotted.


 * Brave pRage:
 * "Why would you do that? Were you not taking enough damage?"
 * A warrior had the bright idea to run up to me and start attacking me (wars do that). I guess I wasn't dying quickly enough for him, so he goes into pRage.  At that point, he's already around 50% health, and their monk is pumping them heals.  But there really wasn't much that the monk could do when their war was taking 230 damage per hit.


 * Powerful Hexage:
 * "How's that Insidious treating you?"
 * Insidious Parasite is usually pretty serious business. However.  It doesn't do crap against 150 damage hits.


 * And More Bambi:
 * "Stop your dishonorable turtling! Bring your bambi back out here!"
 * This time, it was a war. Near the end of the match (shortly before literally driving ALL of the Kurz back up into their base), some war thought it'd be pr0 to flash his bambi after killing a squishy from one of the other teams.  Unfortunately, bambi is not a cancel stance for pRage.  It's also noteworthy that the bambi doesn't stop when the user dies; it floats above them and finishes its animation.  Needless to say, that war died quickly, and I couldn't get him to come out of the base for the rest of the match. =/