Curse

joshuarodger · Apr 17, 2008, 05:42 PM // 17:42

haha wish i had seen this thread before i spent about a week turning my derv into a 600 tank. even though he's actually a 726 after vital blessing. been using him in UW with tahlkora as smiter.

[600 Derv Tank;OgOk4wP7qxKT9QLeXNJqX2L9QeA]

12 smiting
11 protection
6+1+1 earth prayers
2+1 mysticism

can kill anything in UW up to chaos plains. can replace [fleeting stability] with [rending aura] and [mystic regeneration] with [mystic twister] if you all you want to do is kill aatxes and smites. of course change all earth prayers attribute points and runes to wind prayers. but with 700+ HP holy wrath and retribution do a lot more damage. killing smites with this build can take a little time especially if it's down to the last one of the group, due to their divine intervention and reversal of fortune. that's why if all you want to do is clear smites and aatxes you should use the 2nd set of skills.

EDIT: for some reason it wasn't letting me put the full build in with the new icons.

A Simple Farmer · Apr 17, 2008, 10:06 PM // 22:06

Hey Joshuarodger,

Nice build, thanks for posting!!. I'll update the mainpage with your UW builds.

What happens in chaos planes? Does SB run out? If so, I posted here, a technique to take out the Mindblades (#9). You should be able to clear UW and do most of the quests with your hero in NM. The guide's a little out of date, I'll try and update it this weekend.

MercenaryKnight · Apr 18, 2008, 10:26 PM // 22:26

I have a question, for the basic monk 600 tank (mo/me I generally see). I understand that most say they need mantra of resolve for the spiders, but I managed to do a run with a ritualist fairly easy even with fighting a few spiders.

So what I want to know is without taking mantra of resolve, I am assuming mo/e would be better for use of glyph of swiftness to use on spellbreaker so you could go into another group quicker. Or is arcane echo still better to use than glyph of swiftness?

Also, I was wondering since I know light of deldrimor does speed things up considerably for the undead types, how would you fit both light of deldrimor and glyph of swiftness onto a build? I guess taking out shield of absorption would give room but probably not be so good against enchanted.

joshuarodger · Apr 19, 2008, 01:57 AM // 01:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Simple Farmer

Hey Joshuarodger,

Nice build, thanks for posting!!. I'll update the mainpage with your UW builds.

What happens in chaos planes? Does SB run out? If so, I posted here, a technique to take out the Mindblades (#9). You should be able to clear UW and do most of the quests with your hero in NM. The guide's a little out of date, I'll try and update it this weekend.

honestly i've only just recently tried out the chaos plains and i just am not that familiar with where the mindblade spawn or dying nightmare spawn points are. i can usually take them out if i know where they are going to be coming from, but yeah SB running out is a bit of a problem when i get hit with migraine. mystic regen at 8 earth prayers gives 9 pips of regen which nearly cancels out all of their degen from hexes and having tahlkora run in and use purge signet or SB every now and then usually keeps me alive. the problem is that i tend to have her flagged where a group spawns and they murder her instantly. lol. as i become more familiar with it i should be able to handle them most of the time though... i hope.

and honestly i have a lot more problems with the build in NM than HM because i'm not getting hit hard enough for spirit bond to trigger, and as a derv, SoA doesn't last long enough. but since i've really only used this build to farm and not actually clear it's not that big of a deal to me if i make it to chaos plains and die there. lol. anyway i know i can take out dryders, behemoths, and blacknesses with this build and maybe a tweak or two will make chaos plains more do-able also. thanks for the link btw. maybe i'll give it more of a shot to start trying to clear out UW though. if i can i'll be more than happy to update.

Incandecree · Apr 19, 2008, 03:50 AM // 03:50

Air of Superiority. The chance of a full skill recharge is pretty good. Also the condition removal is very nice. This skill can speed up a run in CoF (TotD).

joshuarodger · Apr 22, 2008, 04:02 PM // 16:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyssa Apate

I have a problem. Since the festival Ogden takes damage whenever I take damage. First I figured I had screwed up aggro.. but there was no one near Ogden. Then I thought it was the build (for some reason unknown to man) and went in with the original Me/Mo version, same result. Is it me or some hidden skill update or a bug?

Nevertheless, before the weekend updates I was succesful with the original Me/Mo build.

(notice Ogden's dp? He ran wild when I released him and he ran back to the firespitters.. every single time x) )

I'm sure others have already thought of this and maybe just not posted it, but one way to mitigate the damage your smiter takes is to attack the crypt banshees after you aggro their group. with my monk i use a totem axe and it does 0-1 damage to the banshees, which is then reflected to me (the 600) through Reversal of Damage. usually you can attack them before they attack you after they've casted RoD, thus effectively removing RoD from them before they get hit with Retribution and Holy Wrath. This way you don't really need any other skills for your hero's survivability. I haven't tried it yet but you could probably use a scythe with a 20% enchant mod to hit all the banshees at the same time since i haven't seen more than 3 in a group. that way your hero never takes any pain from RoD.

A Simple Farmer · Apr 23, 2008, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Good hint, also apply retribution before Holy Wrath to minimize ROD.

For mindblade spawns, Cerb's 'art of the underworld' has a great map where they spawn.

joshuarodger · Apr 23, 2008, 02:03 AM // 02:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Simple Farmer

Good hint, also apply retribution before Holy Wrath to minimize ROD.

For mindblade spawns, Cerb's 'art of the underworld' has a great map where they spawn.

yeah i figured out the Retribution before Holy Wrath thing the hard way. lol, then i decided to read the rest of this thread and the pvx guide.

thanks for the link to that map, but a little late with it. i discovered it a few days ago but haven't tried to get that far yet. been playing around in CoF and other dungeons quite a bit with my monk.

i really do appreciate the work and help that you, and others like you, ASF, provide for slow-minded dimwits like me, though. saves me a lot of time and gold when i have some sort of guide to follow.

philo · Apr 23, 2008, 07:35 AM // 07:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by joshuarodger

I haven't tried it yet but you could probably use a scythe with a 20% enchant mod to hit all the banshees at the same time since i haven't seen more than 3 in a group.

Unfortunately, your not having seen more than 3 in a group doesn't mean that more dangerous constellations don't exist. Personally, I have seen groups of 4 banshees more than once, and I even ran into a catastrophic spawn of 5 banshees one single time (out of a couple of hundreds).

joshuarodger · Apr 23, 2008, 03:28 PM // 15:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by philo

Unfortunately, your not having seen more than 3 in a group doesn't mean that more dangerous constellations don't exist. Personally, I have seen groups of 4 banshees more than once, and I even ran into a catastrophic spawn of 5 banshees one single time (out of a couple of hundreds).

yeah i ran into a spawn of 4 last night actually. i brought drok's reaper with me though and it worked like a charm. ogden never got below 50% health the whole run. i did have sig of devotion on him though so that probably helped a little also. but all things considered, taking a scythe really reduces damage dealt to the smiter. you will have to clump the banshees up in front of you, though, in order to hit as many as possible with each swing.

ducktape · Jun 05, 2008, 02:53 PM // 14:53

Hi, I was hoping to try this since I'm getting bored with the stuff that I usually farm, but I am having a small problem. The first maybe 3 guys die really fast, but after that, Retribution and all the -10's have eaten all of the monk's energy and it takes like 1-2 minutes for the rest of the enemies to die without Retribution and with just Holy Wrath.

I'm sure I'm just misunderstanding something but I don't know what. BTW I am using the Ele build, that part works well but things just don't die fast enough.

Also, I tried to watch your vid, Simple Farmer, but your site is down. Total bummer.

Larcen · Jun 05, 2008, 03:27 PM // 15:27

Hm.. I'm trying to understand your first paragraph, and am failing. It -sounds- like your monk isn't maintaining the enchantments. First off, hold SHIFT and then Click all the Monk-Smiter's skills so they have a red O and / through the skills. Then begin applying them to -you- so they are -always- on. Retribution first, then Holy Wrath, then whatever other enchantments you use. Hope that helps, if not, please let us know so that we can further investigate whats going wrong.

ducktape · Jun 05, 2008, 06:18 PM // 18:18

Nope, he does have Holy Wrath on me, as well as the other maintained enchants. I have them disabled so that he can't cast or un-cast them unless I click it.

Holy Wrath says it subtracts 10 energy from whoever is maintaining the enchantment (the smiter) whenever it does damage to the enemy, so if the smiter has 50 energy, Holy Wrath only dishes damage 5 times before it can't subtract energy from the smiter anymore and (apparently?) stops doing anything. Then all there is dealing any damage is Retribution, which isn't terribly fast to kill stuff with on its own.

I'm sure I've misunderstood something with the energy management of the smiter build but I can't figure out what it is. I mean, from what I can tell, there is no energy management other than blessed sig. I saw a video on youtube by a different 600/smite guy but it didn't show the smiter's energy bar so I don't know if the smiter is supposed to run out of energy in 3 seconds or not.

Larcen · Jun 05, 2008, 07:14 PM // 19:14

Ok, as long as the smiter is only maintaining 4 enchants on you, it doesn't matter if the smiter stays at 0 energy or not. If you are maintaining more than that, it'll drop one or more of the enchants to compensate when he reaches 0. As long as you can look at the hero bar and see it has Holy Wrath, and Retribution, and the other 2 maintains still cast on -you- then all is well, and they will die in a few more seconds.

Otherwise, I'll just have to meet you in game to see if I can figure out what you're talking about. Let me know.

ducktape · Jun 05, 2008, 07:59 PM // 19:59

I only have the 4 enchantments on me, so ok, at least I didn't mess up something that obvious. It seemed like something was wrong with the way stuff died, in the video they all died in maybe 5-10 seconds every time, when I do it the first 3 guys die in about 5 seconds and the other 3-4 guys take like 15-20 seconds to die (unless it's a warrior!) and die almost one-at-a-time, so like a minute more after the first guys die until the last enemy of the group is dead. Does that sound right? I got fed up and quit after taking entirely too long to even get to the first charr keyholder guy every time I tried the farm run.
I thought maybe it would help to switch to normal mode but they die slower because they attack even slower there.

If that sounds messed up, yeah I think I'll need some help or at least to be pointed at other videos that I should watch to look for hints.

Incandecree · Jun 05, 2008, 08:17 PM // 20:17

With the update to RoD to 3s recharge and with hard mode increasing the speed of the recharge it could very well be a longer time to kill things. It took me more than a minute to kill 6 banshees in one group. This was because they were spamming RoD on each other. When I was in the middle of that group I had to look up to make sure that I had the enchantments up and they were. Then I took a close look at the enemies around. Not only were there 6 banshees but there were others that would not stay hitting on me. They would come in and swipe once and run back to the edge of the aggro bubble. It really did look like one of those old martial arts movies where they would wait until someone got hit away and then the next person would come in for their shot.

Larcen · Jun 05, 2008, 08:18 PM // 20:18

Video's can be misleading, because most of them are played back faster than real-time. One more possibility -> You are in Hard Mode right? Other than that, add me to your friends list and keep an eye out for me when I get online later tonight after work.

IGN: Beast Creed

ducktape · Jun 05, 2008, 08:45 PM // 20:45

Wow, that's a lot of helpful hints!

Yes, using Hard Mode. Thought maybe the guy's video was normal mode but I tried normal mode and the enemies die even slower because they don't attack as fast, so I was like WTF mine's broken in either mode. Also did not consider that the video was on fast forward when showing the enemies die, that's probably part of the problem now that you guys mention it.

The other problem is like Incandecree said, stuff will run up, swipe at me, and then flee, come swipe, flee more, so that's why the damn things won't die quickly. Warriors die super good and rangers die decently (o hai troll ungent) and other stuff dying at a decent speed is a crapshoot as to whether or not they will keep crying and running away instead. I hadn't thought of the new skill updates causing that so it makes sense.

Thanks Larcen, I am working 2 jobs today though so chances are good that I won't be on GW today or that you will be off GW when it's 1AM eastern time. I can do GW tomorrow or the weekend though for sure. I really appreciate the offer!

Dumb Question: Do I maybe not have enough health? It says 600/smite and I have about 680 health with the enchants on, I didn't buy a more expensive vigor since I figured I had plenty extra health. Does it make a big difference to have higher health than that? If so, what is the ideal range of health to have?

Larcen · Jun 06, 2008, 01:15 AM // 01:15

600 doesn't deal max damage, around 800ish does (I think, my math could be wrong) However, anything above 600 will do just fine against undead since they take double damage anyhow. You're right, I'll be heading bed here shortly, however I am online quite a bit on the weekends starting Friday night, usually can be found in ToA with ASF (lately anyway) farming UW, however I still manage to venture North to Doomlore. Let me know when you're on and I'll join you.

Incandecree · Jun 06, 2008, 02:42 AM // 02:42

I typically start with 686 health. That is 211 health from Vital Blessing. When I end the dungeon I have 734 health.

The optimum health is actually 740. The reason for this is 16 in smite. Holy Wrath is 53 and Retribution is 21. 740 damage at 10% is 74... which is exactly the amount HW and Retribution deal back.