Is hexway dead now?

[Dogbert]

What do you think will happen to the original hexway build everyone used to run? Will you still use it now that price/reckless are 15 energy?

This is the build for those who don't know it.

1 Melee
2 Melee
3 Mesmer
4 Necro
5 Ranger/Mesmer
6 Monk
7 Monk
8 Flagger

[David Holtzman]

Hexway still works in a modern form, it's just not an auto-win like it used to be. At least, that's the way it looks to be so far. We'll know for sure come the next monthly AT (which I believe EotN skills will be out for).

[Dogbert]

If anyone still runs hexway post in this thread and let me know how it works? I have a feeling that with reckless low duration it can be tough.

[David Holtzman]

I saw (I think) StS running it yesterday, and they seemed to have no problems. That was before the 15e reckless though, so we'll have to see.

[Monstrum]

it can still be run effectively by a skilled guild... but the hexes no longer lasting a ridiculous 30-40-50 seconds means the sub-par guilds who just spammed fire-and-forget hexes all over the place will be gone, which was exactly the point of the nerf

[happy feet]

My guild runs 2 mesmers, a caster shutdown (arcane langour) and a melee shutdown (panic) and we are in the mids 500's goin down, still works :)

[SurviverX]

I think it still works. Surely it's weakened, but not by THAT much. I just think Shadow Prison need a complete overhaul or just remove it from the game. It's how it syn...oops...getting off topic ;)

[Dogbert]

I don't even see shadow prison much in gvg anymore. I have seen more assassins with aura of displacement and shadowy burden as hex. I know that's what supernova jpn runs.

Also how is panic shutting down melee?

[Yue]

Panic=no/low energy regen for melee=no bulls strike/shock/frenzy/crushing blow/scythe attacks/slower assassin chains/etc.

[David Holtzman]

I've never really minded panic that much, to be honest. On a melee character you're usually packing enough adrenal skills to do your job anyways. No bulls sucks, but it's hardly the end of the world. What really kills melee is Price stacked with any other miss hex. Swinging into those -40s is like having a hammer war sit on your face, and you may still be able to use frenzy, but I damn well wouldn't.

[happy feet]

I've never really minded panic that much, to be honest. On a melee character you're usually packing enough adrenal skills to do your job anyways. No bulls sucks, but it's hardly the end of the world. What really kills melee is Price stacked with any other miss hex. Swinging into those -40s is like having a hammer war sit on your face, and you may still be able to use frenzy, but I damn well wouldn't.

- Panic {E}
- Diversion
- Guilt
- Signet of Humility
- Empathy
- Spirit Shackles
- Spirit of Failure
- Soothing images

Thats what we stack on a frontliner, any frontliner I know would not be pleased to be losing energy every attack, having their energy drained, losing HP (on a small scale) for every swing, adrenal build up being f'd up, and their elite disabled, its not as offensive as the necro hexway, but it does a great job screwing spikes over especially if they are running a derv/sin on their frontline.....

[Ace Bear]

Guilt, empathy, and Soothing images suck. Power drain, Shatter Enchant, and a Res are better options.

Edit: Forgot Auspicious Incantation. Its wonderful for Panic Mesmers.

[happy feet]

Guilt, empathy, and Soothing images suck. Power drain, Shatter Enchant, and a Res are better options.

Edit: Forgot Auspicious Incantation. Its wonderful for Panic Mesmers.

I guess your narrow minded or I just don't know how to play PvP even though I'm the co-leader of r400 guild and was the leader of r200 guild for 5 months.....

I guess i'll cut you a break because you probally didnt know i was posting this as a melee shutdown, not a caster or general shutdown, specific to shutdown on the frontliners only..... >< next time please note this before attempting to undermine a perfectly fine build.....

guilt - very good counter to sins/dervs, you see the sin cast expose defenses on your teamate and you put it up before he uses his shadow step, if they are using a derv on their frontline, you can stay on him and basically eliminate his damage abilities because he has no energy.
empathy - mainly a cover hex but can be semi effective against stupid cripslashs or dev hammers who build up their adrnl on 1 target for like 20 seconds before the spike...
soothing images - wtf it doesnt suck, you throw this on the frontliners before they start hammering a random toon to build up ardrnl before they spike, and you delay their spike by 18 seconds, which is a long time

power drain - are you slow???? when was the last time you saw a frontliner casting a spell that took longer than 1 second??? this is used for emanagement for caster shutdowns....
shatter enchantment - yea this is a good skill we just didnt have room for it.....
res - we have a hard resser plus 3 sigs so we dont need a slot wasted.

[shawn]

I guess your narrow minded or I just don't know how to play PvP even though I'm the co-leader of r400 guild and was the leader of r200 guild for 5 months.....
I can't speak for anyone else, but David, Yue, and I are all from guilds that have been, or are, top 10. Just throwing that out there.


I guess i'll cut you a break because you probally didnt know i was posting this as a melee shutdown, not a caster or general shutdown, specific to shutdown on the frontliners only..... >< next time please note this before attempting to undermine a perfectly fine build.....

guilt - [...]
empathy - [...]
soothing images - [..]
power drain - are you slow???? when was the last time you saw a frontliner casting a spell that took longer than 1 second??? this is used for emanagement for caster shutdowns....
shatter enchantment - yea this is a good skill we just didnt have room for it.....
res - we have a hard resser plus 3 sigs so we dont need a slot wasted.
Okay. lol. Empathy is horrible. We used to tell Farin and Yue to frenzy through it, because the damage was so negligible. Also, ever heard of hex removal? And what do you do when you come up against caster spike or hexes? Hex the casters and hope they try to wand themselves to death?

[Yue]

I've never really minded panic that much, to be honest. On a melee character you're usually packing enough adrenal skills to do your job anyways. No bulls sucks, but it's hardly the end of the world. What really kills melee is Price stacked with any other miss hex. Swinging into those -40s is like having a hammer war sit on your face, and you may still be able to use frenzy, but I damn well wouldn't.

Makes sense. Though his target was towards melee, I think he didn't take into consideration that it ****s up rangers alot more than any melee classes, so there's a side benefit he probably overlooked.


power drain - are you slow???? when was the last time you saw a frontliner casting a spell that took longer than 1 second??? this is used for emanagement for caster shutdowns....


For the bar you posted, you're going to need the energy management (auspicious would be the best). Though pdrain probably isn't the best choice for what you wrote, I just think he didn't notice you were talking about melee shutdown with a dom mesmer.

[happy feet]

I can't speak for anyone else, but David, Yue, and I are all from guilds that have been, or are, top 10. Just throwing that out there.


Okay. lol. Empathy is horrible. We used to tell Farin and Yue to frenzy through it, because the damage was so negligible. Also, ever heard of hex removal? And what do you do when you come up against caster spike or hexes? Hex the casters and hope they try to wand themselves to death?

Point about the guilds taken, I was just providing it to show that I didn't start playing GW yesterday.....

Again empathy used mainly as a cover, but I could swap it for some emanagement of sorts.... facing casterspike we do what everyone knows is gonna happen to a casterspike, split....

I don't know why he called out guilt and soothing though, those are 2 very good skills.......

[happy feet]

Makes sense. Though his target was towards melee, I think he didn't take into consideration that it ****s up rangers alot more than any melee classes, so there's a side benefit he probably overlooked.



For the bar you posted, you're going to need the energy management (auspicious would be the best). Though pdrain probably isn't the best choice for what you wrote, I just think he didn't notice you were talking about melee shutdown with a dom mesmer.

I chose panic because it is versitile, it can be thrown on any class and be an annoyance, but especially frontliners with their low energy regen...

emanagement could be swapped in for empathy but then i would need another cover...

[Yue]

Cover isn't that big of a deal. That's not going to be the only hexer in your build (or shouldn't be), so you can coordinate covers with your other hexer(s).

[happy feet]

Cover isn't that big of a deal. That's not going to be the only hexer in your build (or shouldn't be), so you can coordinate covers with your other hexer(s).

meh we are not running hexway really, the other hexer is a caster shutdown and i don't think he will take a time out to cover the frontliners lol. we need a cover on that build...

[shawn]

I chose panic because it is versitile, it can be thrown on any class and be an annoyance, but especially frontliners with their low energy regen....
Here's the thing with Panic on warriors. They use adrenaline. They can still c + space you. And there's a condition which shuts them down much better - blind.
Panic on a Melandrus would be rather annoying though, I'll agree. As quite obviously blind wouldn't work on them, so miss hexes, block, and enchant removal/edenial are their counters.

Guilt and Soothing are also kind of bad.. but.. Okay, I guess the real reason is you're dedicating an entire character to shut down melee, and an ele with bsurge could take care of that with one or two skills. So with the ele doing that, you can then spec your mesmer to monk shutdown, which is far more effective than getting a few random Guilts on a necro or something. Besides, you said it was for frontline shut down, why would a frontliner be using a spell on you instead of bashing your face in with their weapon?

[Ace Bear]

Just chill, take advice..good lord.

[happy feet]

Just chill, take advice..good lord.

Advice?????? I accepted the empathy part from Yue, not that it sucked completely but that there is a better cover option or possibly more emanagement should be put in, but you went calling out soothing images and guilt, cmon now, i hope you saw the explanations and now realize that was a melee shutdown not a general edenial build....

[Ace Bear]

Advice?????? I accepted the empathy part from Yue, not that it sucked completely but that there is a better cover option or possibly more emanagement should be put in, but you went calling out soothing images and guilt, cmon now, i hope you saw the explanations and now realize that was a melee shutdown not a general edenial build....
Dude you devoted any entire build with a bunch of ok skills when one E/mo could do it with 2 skills. IT SUCKS. Or rather, there are better options out there.

[Defending Rohan]

Dude you devoted any entire build with a bunch of ok skills when one E/mo could do it with 2 skills. IT SUCKS. Or rather, there are better options out there.


He's right, that entire bar seems meaningless unless you are running it in a hex heavy build. However, in both cases there are better options.

[Monstrum]

i think the main reason empathy is a bad skill due to the fact that its in domination- if you're running a mes hexer, ur generally running fast cast, illu and insp... its just a skill that doesnt fit into the mesmer hex attributes

additionally, it doesnt actually STOP a warrior... insidious heals you, reckless + price of fail gives them a big miss chance... empathy just makes them take damage, similiar to spiteful spirit

however, telling ur wars to frenzy through empathy is just silly unless its just 2-3 hits for a spike- u will be taking 80 damage a swing

[Archedgar]

It makes no sense to be called hexway when only 1/4 of the characters are hex classes... by that logic it should be called monk or melee way.

[woot im a warrior]

It makes no sense to be called hexway when only 1/4 of the characters are hex classes... by that logic it should be called monk or melee way.

It does make sense because the team is built around those hexes.

[powercozmic]

- Panic {E}
- Diversion
- Guilt
- Signet of Humility
- Empathy
- Spirit Shackles
- Spirit of Failure
- Soothing images

Thats what we stack on a frontliner, any frontliner I know would not be pleased to be losing energy every attack, having their energy drained, losing HP (on a small scale) for every swing, adrenal build up being f'd up, and their elite disabled, its not as offensive as the necro hexway, but it does a great job screwing spikes over especially if they are running a derv/sin on their frontline.....

For a panic build, I'd expect better e-management.

[Yue]

however, telling ur wars to frenzy through empathy is just silly unless its just 2-3 hits for a spike- u will be taking 80 damage a swing

There's a little something called prot that good monks like to use.

[Tsai Cooper]

There's a little something called prot that good monks like to use.

your seriously advocating fighting through empathy just because the monks exist?

[woot im a warrior]

your seriously advocating fighting through empathy just because the monks exist?

It is because empathy sucks. If a team is using empathy in their build 99.9999% of the time they are bad and it will be an easy win anyway so why not?

[Monstrum]

There's a little something called prot that good monks like to use.


by that logic, your wars should frenzy through anything and everything

[Yue]

Pretty sure most top lvl monks give their warriors plenty of room to frenzy.

I'm obviously not advocating you to be stupid and frenzy through everything, but something like empathy is easy for a monk to deal with. It really doesn't matter what you have on you if your monks tell you they're in a position to handle it. As shawn said before, just prot the warriors and tell them to ignore the empathy.

If your monks are bad, then it's a different story.

[Tsai Cooper]

It is because empathy sucks. If a team is using empathy in their build 99.9999% of the time they are bad and it will be an easy win anyway so why not?

empathy can be 50 damage a second...
w/e thats still a terrible thing to advocate
never allow damage to happen just because theres a monk

[shawn]

ups ur bad

[Yue]

empathy can be 50 damage a second...
w/e thats still a terrible thing to advocate
never allow damage to happen just because theres a monk

Or your monks are actually good and allow you to take the damage.

[Bloody Samuel]

It is because empathy sucks. If a team is using empathy in their build 99.9999% of the time they are bad and it will be an easy win anyway so why not?

This is the reason why the warriors were told to frenzy through empathy.

So dont read anything else into it.

Facing a good team running hex overload. Don't frenzy throught it...

[Wuzzman]

the necro hex's are now sooo ****ty its funny to see people who actually still lose to them.

[MentalMidgit]

empathy can be 50 damage a second...
w/e thats still a terrible thing to advocate
never allow damage to happen just because theres a monk

If your warriors play aggressivly on their mid and backline it will cause the opposing teams warriors to come and push you out which takes pressure of your monks.In the end it can sometimes negate dmg by frenzying through the empathy.