Curse

LoneDust · Feb 17, 2005, 05:49 AM // 05:49

Update: Nevermind this thread. After testing with a friend, I found that vengeance does not bring back a character ignoring exhaustions.

Earlier today, I asked about Vengeance on irc.
(Bring target dead ally back to life at full health and full energy. After 30 seconds, or if this Enchantment is removed, the enchanted ally dies. Deaths while enchanted with Vengeance do not incur a death penalty. 10en, 4s cast, 60s recharge)

Sausaletus Rex replied:

Quote:

Nearly every hex, enchantment, or condition I know of is ended when you die. I can't imagine why Exhaustion would be any different.
That 15% DP you get from dying and the dangers inherint in rezzing someone (interrupts, energy, time, etc) are enough to make up for things being ended.

The advantage of vengeance is that there will be no extra DP applying to the death after the enchantment is over. Therefore, you will only get the initial 15% DP that applies to the initial death.

An idea I've been thinking about lately invoving using a nuking elemntalist. If you spam exhaustion spells, let him die, then bring him back with vengeance, this character can start all over again ready to nuke. Given that Saus was correct, this will create almost an exhaustion burden-free elementalist.

The most dangerous downside is the death penalty. The more often you die from natural death, the faster you run out of energy. However, I believe that if you can trade the 15% DP for a death of an enemy, you are even. Being resurrected by vengeance will give you an advantage: it keeps you from suffering another DP the next time you die. Therefore, you can continuously deal out exhaustion-grade damage with the minimum expence at energy-pool-shrinkage. As always, it all comes down to having good teamwork and an experienced resurrector. Also, this is a trick build, so it's not meant to be used over and over again. Both characters involved should have enough skill slots to be useful for the team, even when they're not running this strategy.

1. Nuker
Now, let me create a spam nuker. The best exhaustion spell, dps wise, would be obsidian flame. It does 94 damage ignoring armors if Earth Magic is maxed out. To make Obsidian Flame more spammable, I would throw in Echo/Arcane Echo from Mesmer's Illusion Magic.

With energy storage to full plust runes, in 21 seconds timeframe allowed by Echo/arcane echo, the elementalist could have casted obsidian flame 6 or 7 times. To be safe, we can assume that you only have enough energy for 6 Obsidian Flame attacks, that's still 564 damages in 16 seconds ignoring armors.

By this time, your energy pool is running extremely low, and you should think of dying. However, Elementalist/Mesmer is not a stereotypical primary target. Just for the sake of experimentation, I'll take this build a bit further and use an Elem/Monk instead. For that, a superior necklace + echo charm will be needed for this build.

Final build (El/mo):

12 + rune Energy Storage
12 + rune Earth magic
pump the rest in any other attribute.

Specific Skills:
Echo (Elite, superior charmed)
Obsidian Flame

Some non-exhaustion earth skills:
Stone Daggers
Eruption
Crystal Wave
Ward against Foes

Some obligatory Monk skills
Remove Hex
Resurrect

2. Vengeance Build
Vengeance has several weak spots:
a. It takes a long time to recharge
b. Even though better than regular resurrection, it still takes a long time to cast, open for interruptions.

To get around these weakness, I decided to use a ranger/monk to be the resurrector. First, people usually ignore ranger "monks" since they don't have the energy pool to support actual healing. Second, rangers have good armor, hence they are usually ignored if they are not doing major damage to the enemy. Last, but not least, rangers can use the expertise skill Oath Shot to recharge the slow-charging Vengeance. This will allow the ranger to bring the nuker back to life right away when Vengeance expired.

This ranger can pump attributes to Expertise and Marksmanship, because the monk skills he needs will not require attribute points. Therefore, this would be a typical ranger build, with some slight modification to help the nuker.

12 + rune Expertise
12 + rune Marksmanship
pump the rest to any other attribute.

specific skills:
Oath Shot (Elite)
Vengeance

regular ranger skills
Power Shot
Concussion Shot
Pin Down
Read the Wind
(etc, etc...)

Obligatory Monk Skills:
Resurrect

I though the skills I choose for this build are the best I could do to minimize the potential downsides. However, I did not include counters for hex or interruption. A possibility is switching the El/mo back to El/Mes and equip some anti-interrupt mantra skills. However, I don't know which character will be more effective. I am planning to try this strategy out at the next BWE. However, I would like some input from you, the more experienced players. Thanks.

edit:
just noticed gwguru's description for oath shot is different from one that I took from knights-templar.
gwguru: If Oath Shot hits, all your other bow attacks recharge.
If that's the case, this build will not work.

Greentongue · Feb 17, 2005, 01:06 PM // 13:06

You can use Spell Breaker to keep the Vengeance (or Unyielding Aura) from being dispelled.
[COLOR=Blue]Spell Breaker[/COLOR] [COLOR=DarkRed]ELITE[/COLOR] (Enchantment Spell) For 5..15 seconds, enemy spells targeted against target ally fail.

===
If you have a problem with killing yourself to activate the cycle ...

Dark Pact (Spell) Sacrifice 10..37 Health and do that amount of damage to target foe.
Awaken the Blood (Enchantment Spell) For the next 20..39 seconds, you gain +2 Blood Magic and +2 Curses, but any time you sacrifice Health, you sacrifice 50% more than the normal amount.
Barbed Signet (Signet) Sacrifice 14..43 Health. You steal 18..52 Health from target foe.
Signet of Agony (Signet) Sacrifice 14..43 Health and suffer from Bleeding. All nearby foes take 10..37 damage.
Plague Sending (Spell) Sacrifice 14..43 Health. Transfer one negative Condition from yourself to target foe.

With a rune and Awaken the Blood, Dark Pact should crank out some nice unblockable direct damage.
When you die, just start over.

Xapti · Feb 17, 2005, 03:09 PM // 15:09

Holy Cripes! this looks like a possible abuse it's so good.

Can you say double meteor shower?

If you have two (or even three if you want to pump the spell breaker) ressurecters, you can just have an ele/mes cast meteor shower twice (with echo/arcane echo), the maybe one or two other spells, then hopefully die as soon as possible, get ressed, then just loop. Considering that meteor shower has a 2 minute cooldown, and you're already exploiting it by casting two, this could be very powerful.

Well I guess we discovered a possible reason why not to implement a suicide into the game... Unless the idea is still that it can only be used once (although the suggestion was more about respawning more than it was about dying).

Maybe taking BiP as a 3rd profesion skill would work? 'need to cast it alot though, would take too much energy and time because of it.
And darn, taking echo as 3rd profession skill won't work, since BiP is the elite already.

I guess it's a choice between going Ele/Mes with Dual Meteor Shower (is triple possible?) and getting enemy to kill you (and using 1 necro sacrafice skill to hasten it)
And going Ele/Necro, and going single meteor shower (can always use other ele/necro skills, such as the necro ones greentongue mentioned.