Hybrid VS Absorb, what can we do?

[thefrag]

Now I'm not talking sorcs, necros, druids, zons, othersins, but when a Barb or a Smiter/hamemrdin decides to throw on a tgods/wisp (or as my case usually is, they come with it permanently attached -_-) what options does a hybrid sin have? I know it's possible to hit these fellows with WW and I often do, but a melee fight is really their game. Is absorb destined to screw a sin over that can't risk the melee range? I have a widowmaker btw, and while I do use it it's risky as hell to go without clawblock for even a moment when you're getting charged at.

[Smithenator]

I would suggest you have a kb claw in your stash for those situations, if it was a 1v1 then I would also suggest a full bramble switch, which can go a long way towards evening the play field. However, in a pub a bramble switch isnt always an option depending on the other chars in the game.

[callmejay]

sometimes you have to match bm with bm.

lower res charges/amp charges

i remember a friend of mine has +3shadow disciplines claws on switch and they had amp and lr charges on them.

then of course you can use infinity on a merc but that gets pricy

overdoing the sorb takes way to much out of the duel.

one of the reasons i dont use elemental characters anymore.

[thefrag]

Right charges and mercs are both pricy, and I don't think you can get lower res on claws in general. Either way I'll try KB out I guess, does this help to land hits or just keep them from being directly on me? I'm thinking for these matchups it's GM or nadda right about now for my hybrid ;[ Which sucks because I love my sin, and GM matches don't seem exist lol (wish there was a way to set an asshole restriction like level restrictions when making a game XP)

[Smithenator]

kb just keeps them from hitting you, it really works wonder on smiters.

about the gm or nothing, the only bm chars that really get annoying are smiters, hdins, and bvc. That is a big part of pubs I realize, but hybrids are fun enough so that its well worth the aggravation of sorbers.

[Bune]

Smiters: Unless they're really crappy, an above average one you will need a solid chance to hit vs them and a way of keeping them away from you (knockback). Quite a few ways to do this, if you switch to bramble however (my suggestion is to be able to be able to use bramble if you hate people absorbing you) then you basically can scrap the whole FCR thing and just toss in items that will help tip the battle in your favor ie: giant skull, angelics, verdungos...

Hdins: WW their sweet spot, you can usually take out even the highest of life ones this way, you just have to try to be ahead of the game and predict their movements. Make sure you keep some fire traps around you at all times. Personally I wouldn't recommend bramble here because I like being able to teleport out of hammer fields, but that's something you'll have to play around with.

BVC: I find that as long as my AR is sufficient you can pretty much go toe-to-toe with them... keeping in mind that any GOOD barb is going to mop the floor with you regardless. If you are a ghost sin with high levels of MB, as soon as you ww through them start raining them with MB's.


Hope that helps
~Bune

[Queen Mebd]

Right charges and mercs are both pricy. . .

An ort rune + chipped gem in the cube will give you a fully repaired and recharged weapon (reviving the merc however can get expensive). Someone overabsorbing you may not be fun, and you do have a point about the meanie restricting function on games being nice, but to try and watch your language there mate.

[mephiztophelez]

KB and some OW is the way to go against sorbing smiters. i find getting close to max %DR is also nice. sprinkle lots of fire traps around, use lots of mindblast. i find it's when they also start tagging me with 'tap from marrows & competently tele-smiting that i've got serious hassles.

bvc's can be put into stunlock long enough for a quick tri-whirl or a drive-by, it depends on how good they are and how lucky you are. if you can clip them at the end of a whirl and get out again, good luck. i'm with Bune tho' a top-notch BvC is gonna mop the floor with you no, sorb or not. a good one will jump on top of you and just soak up everything you can dish out for long enough to kill you. even GM, i'll put a good dent in them, but if i can't at least get a few free hits in before the pounding starts, i'm stuffed.

i detest mass-sorbing hammerdins. kb and seemingly constant whirling to the south-west (if they continually telebomb) can knock them down. it just blows.

in any event, i'm constantly amazed at the number of people who've neglected their poison res. lit-res and sorb stacked through the wazoo is on tap, but poison res/plr is marginal. i'm winning a lot of fights with majority ww.

sorb is basically screwed up. especially when combined with +max-res. throwing integer sorb in the mix too was just ludicrous from a pvp perspective. vs someone with 85%res, 20integer sorb and 40% sorb (tgods + 2x Wisp?), it takes something like a 15k hit to not heal them. (i'll have to dig up the exact numbers later).

sometimes you have to match bm with bm.

lower res charges/amp charges

i remember a friend of mine has +3shadow disciplines claws on switch and they had amp and lr charges on them.

i call shenanigans.

Lower Res charges are available on neccy heads, daggers, wands & staves, while the only charges of Amp i know of are on the Gavel of Pain unique martel de fer, there are 3 of them, lvl 18 iirc.

amp is available on weapons as a proc which can't be set of by ww, so it's b-fury or 'talon. at a whopping 5% CTC, thats a high risk manouever for a somewhat dubious benefit.

i've toyed with switch lower-res charged wands on a max-block with SS, 102fcr k/t'sin. while effective, if you can pull it off, its somewhat galling to be juggling a CtA and the wand if you know what i mean.

[thefrag]

Thanks guys for the responses, and thanks meph for that rundown specifically. ;] Seems I'm not the only one with issues on dins/barbs then, my trap damage is sitting at 6800 with shadow gcs right now, which is fine without a tgods in the mix, but yeah I don't even use LS for half the people I fight in pubbies now, but I do dish out a fair deal of fires. I guess what I should start to do is look for a fools claw with enough base ias to allow ums and maybe a nef. As it stands the only open wounds I'm getting is from chaos, and I realize thats not nearly satisfactory. =/

I guess a quick poll on opinions here couldnt hurt. If forced to choose between 3 light sentry mod on your fools claw without ums, or a no skill fools with double ums, what is best for an, 'wear constantly' claw heh. I play pubbies pretty often and always get attacked by casters/high defense enemies on the fly, so like my fools to be on hand at all times rather than bother with my fury. Thanks. ;]

[Von Lazuli]

I guess a quick poll on opinions here couldnt hurt. If forced to choose between 3 light sentry mod on your fools claw without ums, or a no skill fools with double ums, what is best for an, 'wear constantly' claw heh. I play pubbies pretty often and always get attacked by casters/high defense enemies on the fly, so like my fools to be on hand at all times rather than bother with my fury. Thanks. ;]

You can always stick at least one Um in your claw... I would prioritise like this:
1. IAS (I main-hand my fool's since the main/offhand debate is inconclusive, better safe than sorry)
2. 2 Sockets or 3+ LS
3. Lesser Skills

Don't worry... Your problems with sorbing characters are felt across the board... I have to make the same comments as Bune here, Bramble switches are handy, but against a good tele-smiter, you will still likely lose. They just have too much always hit damage for my liking... oh, and a ready source of mass defence and life-tap...

BvCs eat you... simple as that. You can out whirl mediocre ones if you have good gear, but absorbing better ones will kill you every time.

Hammerdins are strangely the easiest (In my opinion anyway) of the absorbing characters. Since you can keep your distance, you can often do a little bit of unreturned damage with defensive whirls. Unfortunately, it still is 2 or 3 mistakes = death, whereas they can get away with a lot of mistakes. Traps are still handy to try to prevent desync, but I like whirling along their path ahead of them in addition to this. Fool's Claw is a must for these ones, you need to hit as often as you can.

Laz

[ThatWasShockin]

I find 99% of smiters on west are stupid and will chase you so you can just whirl away the hole time, I've only met one that tele'd and for him I just did circular whirls and won.

Bvcs with sorb are the hardest fight. On them, if you can, a bramble/ss switch with max block works pretty well. You can also use whitstan's shield if you don't need the dr on ss.

On hdins sometimes kick works better then ww, if they don't drop a few hammers and run off again then whirl to there blind spot and start kicking. If they don't move or try to smite you then you don't get hit.

Another hard fight for me is auradins, what do you guys do on them? The only way to stack that I have thought of is take off some shadow gcs.

[Bune]

Depends entirely on how good the auradin is..... Personally I toss on a Kiras, if my resists still don't go high enough, toss on a Jade talon as well. My strategy vs them is to just keep traps after them, maintain a constant namelock and keep tele ww'ing as much as possible. If the auradin is seriously annoying just toss on a dwarf star and a tgods, that should do the trick...

[Smithenator]

Indeed, I dont fight auradins in pubs anymore because I rarely win if I dont stack vs them, and if I throw on stack gear then some crappy smiter or hammerdin will come and get me

[SicHalo]

hmm bvc with sorb+ mediocre skill > sin..


It is a ridiculously hard fight vs a bvc with max res + 2 piece of absorb as trap almost does no dmg..

1 absorb i.e tg is still beatable but if they abuse abs this is where a lower resist wand or infinity merc comes out.

As even with ww side of things a barb will most likely destroy you whirl for whirl the only chance is when you briefly have the barb locked up and u go for drive by tele whirls which then hopefully trigger ow etc.

hammerdin and smiter is still very beatable u just need to know how to whirl rite vs a smiter and vs a hammerdin use alot of traps to locked it up and slowly chip away hp with the traps + ow and use wof + mb alot.

[HappyAssassin]

Well, for hammerdins the solution if they absorb is to just beat them like a pure ghost, MB spam, trap lock them with wake, anticipate desync, whirlwind them when they come to you or if you get a good angle with a lock. Ghosts can beat hammerdins, thus so can WW/Trappers, it'll just take longer due to lower WW dmg + AR.

If a smiter absorbs you, switch to wake also, its better for stunning charge anyway. You can beat most of them with good whirls, especially with bramble switch. If they flash holy freeze and use slow + tele-smite you are in trouble. We can't switch to slow gear as well (clegs means we lose trangs, = lose massive damage), so they can use a Griefz against us to hit us from range. Most bad smiters are beatable with plain WW though.

BvC is unbeatable if they absorb. Last ditch option, throw on a widow and run/spam. In a pub this will never kill them, they'll just town if they get hit a lot.

Honestly the best solution to absorbers is to have someone else kill them. If you pub, pub with a friend who has a nice unresistable character. Even if you friend is terrible, it's childs play to kill a char who is getting locked by a good assassin. My favorite is a necro. They can abuse curses and prison/wall/minions all you want, a lot of the common solutions to this (zerk on a BvC for example) get ruined by trap lock. Amp helps a ghost with a nice physical claw, decrep messes up sync and wrecks most smiters, even iron maiden + prison can be used on barbs. Necros do tons of irresistable damage too, nice for quick kills.

Infinity mercs are useless, come on, everyone can kill a merc attached to a 65 FCR sin.

Auradins who are good with charge or zeal are dangerous, you do need stack to beat them. With kiras + jade + res ring or boots, they become a very simple duel. Without, its a crap shoot, if you fail a claw block they can take 2/3 of your life in a hit.

IMO the Bramble switch isn't very useful on a WW/Trapper. It burns up your life because you need to invest in stats to wear it with good DR, it's ineffective in pubs, it's ineffective against most skilled duelers in private. A lot of smiters pull out a widow if you take off your teleport in priv. Vs. BvCs the lack of WW speed and mobility kills you. Vs. Hammerdins you need FCR anyway. While it's a cool option sometimes, I don't think its worth the cons.

[thefrag]

I've heard a lot of advice on WWing the hammerdin blindspot. This would mean WW south waiting for him to namelock teleport you right? Also when going for a wake of fire fhr lock with mind blast, how many traps do you guys generally lay? I've been going with 2/3 wake of fires, and 2/3 LSes and that works on most chars, but are more fires required for certain matchups? (I assume some classes and builds have differing average fhr bps to take into account and all) Also what exactly do you do with your stat build to be able to use widow? Hah, I went as low dex/str as possible to wear my eq, and that leaves me falling short of slapping on that ward bow (I could Hel it I guess but I always thought the whole point of widow was ranged OW via um). =/

[yelopen]

I've heard a lot of advice on WWing the hammerdin blindspot. This would mean WW south waiting for him to namelock teleport you right? Also when going for a wake of fire fhr lock with mind blast, how many traps do you guys generally lay? I've been going with 2/3 wake of fires, and 2/3 LSes and that works on most chars, but are more fires required for certain matchups? (I assume some classes and builds have differing average fhr bps to take into account and all) Also what exactly do you do with your stat build to be able to use widow? Hah, I went as low dex/str as possible to wear my eq, and that leaves me falling short of slapping on that ward bow (I could Hel it I guess but I always thought the whole point of widow was ranged OW via um). =/

For BvCs and other chars it is that way. I think Venom is a nice damage source already is it not?

[thefrag]

Well venom alone without bramble might not be enough for high life barbs/etc, considering the problem is their stacked resists in general. I'm thinking knockback and open wounds are the answer right now, I've had some success trying out different methods. WWing away from smiters indeed is amazing, something I previously was unaware of being so effective. BvCs are something else all together though, it's a win for them if they absorb, and I can accept that. (afterall, there are certainly enough classes that seem guaranteed wins for me, gotta expect that to happen to me XD)

My one concern about Knockback though, is the fact I 'love' DTalon with Wake of Fire/MB showers. It's amazing for stunlocks, and these three skills I use very often to finish zons/sorcs/etc that get caught in a trap. Would knock back work against me for this? I figure kicking them and bumping them back with a chain attack move would mean I only connect with the first, and the stunlock then fails, or perhaps even knock them away from the traps in general. If anyone has messed around with KB enough, please let me know how it pans out for lock attacks =]

[mephiztophelez]

My one concern about Knockback though, is the fact I 'love' DTalon with Wake of Fire/MB showers. It's amazing for stunlocks, and these three skills I use very often to finish zons/sorcs/etc that get caught in a trap. Would knock back work against me for this? I figure kicking them and bumping them back with a chain attack move would mean I only connect with the first, and the stunlock then fails, or perhaps even knock them away from the traps in general. If anyone has messed around with KB enough, please let me know how it pans out for lock attacks =]
talon has it's own knockback that applies on the last kick of the volley. it overrides knockback from gear.

for stunlocking on my 'old ww/kicker, i found 2xWoF, 3xLS to be the best lockdown. i try and get away with only one WoF on my ww/kick/trap

[Bune]

2 WoF and 3 LS is the best way to go definately