Curse

Coney · Mar 17, 2009, 09:58 AM // 09:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I don't know, I was playing around with Radiation Field yesterday and surprisingly if sliver+EBSOH are blasting away, the raptors DO NOT SCATTER like you think they would. Try it sometime, I think if you can handle staffing back 3-4 that do scatter toward the end, the overall damage makes it more effective than Ural's or Intensity.

When there's never more than 1-2 alive after 20 seconds, what's the point? 2 second cast leaves a lot of time for interrupts - seems there's better AOE mop-up spells...

Xhizors · Mar 17, 2009, 11:20 AM // 11:20

i use this:
[sliver armor][Shadow form][Air of Superiority][Intensity][Storm Djinn's Haste][Glyph of Sacrifice][Aftershock][Ebon Battle Standard of Honor]

Voodoo Rage · Mar 17, 2009, 02:26 PM // 14:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coney

When there's never more than 1-2 alive after 20 seconds, what's the point? 2 second cast leaves a lot of time for interrupts - seems there's better AOE mop-up spells...

It's not mop up, I cast it right at the beginning so the raptors are degenerating over the entire farm. By my math, that's over 100 health lost for every raptor in the bubble. It seems effective enough to clear all 34 in two sliver casts which I was not able to do before. Interrupts are never an issue with this farm with the Mantra of Resolve and Channeling giving you energy. Try it. You do get some minor kiting at the end as your stream of sliver damage tapers off but they can be brought back easy enough (or just allowed to degenerate to death, since they are diseased).

Nechtan Thaumaturge · Mar 18, 2009, 07:16 PM // 19:16

I'm of two minds regarding Radiation Field. On the one hand, it can do up to 220 armor-ignoring damage, which is a whole heck of a lot for an AoE spell, and it's good to have an AoE spell in your arsenal to complement Sliver Armor. The scattering is manageable because it doesn't set in for ~15 seconds, and by then you should have whittled down the mob so that only ~6 Nestlings remain.

On the other hand, the two-second cast time tends to allow for a lot of Disrupting Stabs to get through. That and the 15 energy casting cost means it can be an expensive spell to use. Beyond that, you can't amp up the damage via Ebon Battle Standard of Honor, "By Ural's Hammer!", or anything else. Also, you have to give up a PvE skill slot for it, most often that means giving up either a running skill or Intensity/"By Ural's Hammer!". These are all hard to replace. Finally, there are plenty of other damage skills in the Earth Magic line that, while not as potent as Radiation Field, can serve the same purpose.

All in all, I think it's a useful but not devastating skill. Depending on exactly which skills you have available, it might actually be the best choice for your build. My sense is that it would work best in an E/A build based on Shadow Form, but I haven't checked this. Here's another possibility: if you could figure out exactly when the Nestlings are going to scatter, you could conceivably Earthquake + Aftershock them to death before they run.

On a completely different subject, I've been playing around with a new build idea lately. It has been my experience that farming tends to boil down to two pursuits: identifying the most powerful skills available and then abusing these to the maximum extent possible. Hundred Blades and Sliver Armor are the two most potent Raptor farming skills going nowadays, so why not combine them? Here's what I've got:

[build prof=E/W name="Hundred Slivers" desc="Sword of Enchanting" earth=12+3+1 sword=11 tactics=5 energy=4+1][Stoneflesh Aura][Wary Stance][Whirlwind Attack][Hundred Blades][Sliver Armor][Ebon Battle Standard of Honor][Magnetic Aura][Mindbender][/build]

You will need a Sword of Enchanting, and, although not necessary, a Shield of Devotion with a "Through Thick or Thin" inscription couldn't hurt. Also, Drunken Master will work in place of Mindbender; you might even try Storm Djinn's Haste or something similar.

Running the build takes a certain amount of technique and some practice. In general, things should go something like this:

Run to the cave entrance using whichever running skill you chose.
Pre-cast Stoneflesh Aura. While you are doing this, pan the camera right and Ctrl-Shift-Click on Rekoff Broodmother to select her. This will help with step 9.
Aggro the eastern half of the cave, minus perhaps the two outliers. If you brought Mindbender, cast it when it recharges using Wary Stance to cover it.
Re-cast Stoneflesh Aura, covering it with Wary Stance. You should be poised to aggro the boss group at this point. Also, Whirlwind Attack should be charged or nearly so. You can help things along by stalling just before you cast Stoneflesh Aura in order to let the Nestlings catch up, thereby giving them a better chance to attempt to interrupt you.
Cast Magnetic Aura. Even though there's nothing protecting the cast, there's a very good chance it will get through because most of the Nestlings will have just wasted their Disrupting Stabs. Besides that, it's a 1/4 second spell (1/8 if you're running Mindbender), so the window of opportunity is small. You might try casting Mindbender after Sliver Armor instead; I'm not sure what works best.
Aggro the boss group, timing it such that Wary Stance recharges at about the same time.
Cast Sliver Armor, covering it with Wary Stance.
Cast Ebon Battle Standard of Honor, this is also unprotected but between Sliver Armor and Magnetic Aura, the Nestlings will be blocked nearly 90% of the time.
Attack Rekoff once she gets in melee range, this will keep her from scattering.
You may need to re-cast Stoneflesh Aura in the interim.
As soon as you see Rekoff's health dropping, activate Hundred Blades.
When she's dead, immediately target the nearest Nestling and hit Wary Stance then Whirlwind Attack.

That ought to do it. The run isn't foolproof; steps 5, 8, and 10 can fail due simply to bad luck. However, there's enough redundancy that a single interruption won't necessarily mean the end of the run. Also, if Rekoff doesn't die within the first five seconds or so, there's a good chance that you'll either run out of health yourself or be left with too few Nestlings to pull off the Hundred Blades spike properly.

Assuming everything does come together as planned, you should get the kills right at the minute mark. Picking up drops will tack more time onto this, but you'll generally be resigning in under 1:10. So, it's about five seconds faster than the build I posted earlier in this thread.

I can't necessarily recommend this build for everyone, however. You do get fast runs, but there's also a significant risk of dying with nothing to show for it. My advice would be that if you've already got all of the skills listed, then give it a try. If not, then use one of the other previously posted builds. Of course, someone might be able to improve upon it, as well.

Coney · Mar 24, 2009, 01:55 AM // 01:55

I tried something similar, using the following build:
[build=OgFUkY2QzaSqMoCka8Qpi9F5F7gA]
and adding the paragon hero runner as per:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10356876

It worked some, but seemed too risky for a slight speed boost (normally just picking up event drops can take as much time as waiting for the second sliver to wear out anyways). However, I love this paragon runner idea - frees up [armor of mist] skill slot in my current BKM for [glyph of elemental power] or [intensity]...
[build=OgVEMWyryGZC4OgKwOwDlLmKGBA]

Voodoo Rage · Mar 24, 2009, 02:59 AM // 02:59

Cool, so try adding my Radiation Field in there and you should clear them before your sliver even runs out.

Coney · Mar 24, 2009, 11:53 PM // 23:53

LOL - I don't have any asura skills yet on this char. As it is now, about 22-24 are dead by the time I cast my second [sliver armor], and it expires shortly after I pick up the loot (kills all but 1 - usually 30-32). Settled on the following build, hitting for 55 a pop:
[build=OgVEMWyryGFBYCgKwOkLyDhDmKC]
Running to the cave at 33% is a nice boost on this ele farm! It also keeps you busy microing the para skills, so farming doesn't seem as tedious. I really want to increase my vanguard title from 5 soon, as well my deldrimor title from 3. However, asura skills are tops on my list, as so many of them are great...

EDIT: OK, just got [radiation field] (rank 8 asura), and replaced [by ural's hammer] with it (rank 9 sunspear). I cast it just after sliver/boosts are up, and it usually doesn't finish casting until after boss is dead. I usually cast it a second time when it is available again. It really doesn't seem any faster/slower than my build without it (based on sliver expiration time), but I notice two things:
1. It does cause late scatter of 1-4, which is kinda annoying.
2. If you stay on top of wanding 1-2 that run (3+ not true), usually all die if you wait a few seconds after second sliver expires.
I think I'm going to do the math, given ~30 raptors and boss (need health estimates), of how much more damage is done per raptor from 44->55 sliver (ural's), and see if it's more than the ~200 from rad (guessing it's prolly very similar - assume 800hp, 19*44 sliver attacks to kill, 19*11 ~200)... However, waiting that extra few seconds for the last 1-2 to die over simply /resign'ing doesn't seem worth the hassle.

Nechtan Thaumaturge · Mar 25, 2009, 04:53 AM // 04:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coney

I think I'm going to do the math, given ~30 raptors and boss (need health estimates), of how much more damage is done per raptor from 44->55 sliver (ural's), and see if it's more than the ~200 from rad (guessing it's prolly very similar - assume 800hp, 19*44 sliver attacks to kill, 19*11 ~200)... However, waiting that extra few seconds for the last 1-2 to die over simply /resign'ing doesn't seem worth the hassle.

The Nestlings in Hard Mode have right around 380 hp (the Broodmother has well over 1,000 hp, something like 1800 hp). So, you should be killing them with 7 Sliver Armor activations at 55 per hit, or 9 at 41. The two extra hits would be more than covered by even a weak Radiation Field, so, in that analysis, Radiation Field is better.

That calculation is a bit misleading, though. The first 5-10 Raptors are going to be dead before you can finish casting Radiation Field, so over these kills it gives you nothing relative to "By Ural's Hammer!", which you can cast instantaneously. Once you finish casting, the damage starts happening, but only little by little. So, the 11th Raptor might only lose 20 health before it dies. You'll have killed ~25 Raptors before you get the full benefit of Radiation Field.

Another way of looking at it is to consider the amount of time it takes you to kill those last two Nestlings, as you suggested. If you can kill 32 Raptors every, say, 96 seconds (counting two map loading periods), that's 3 seconds per Raptor. If Radiation Field takes more than 6 extra seconds to kill the last two Nestlings, as compared to "By Ural's Hammer!" or something else, it's not worth it in the long run. You can use the same guidelines for aggro, by the way; if you have to go more than 3 seconds out of your way to aggro any single Nestling, it's probably not going to be worth it.

Incidentally, for as much as I get into these discussions of efficiency, in the interests of full disclosure I should mention that once you get to the point where you're running Sliver Armor + Ebon Battle Standard of Honor + Intensity/"By Ural's Hammer!", you're basically achieving 90% of what is possible with the best Sliver Armor-based build out there. Any further optimizations are generally only going to improve your run by 5-10 seconds. So, you're not going to see day/night contrasts between most of these builds, time-wise. Still, shaving 10 seconds off a 90 second build means you're going to make about 10% more gold, all things being equal.

Voodoo Rage · Mar 25, 2009, 04:58 PM // 16:58

Yeah, it's almost impossible to truly calculate raptor farming DPS because they are dying off and your sliver damage drops off. I guess the ultimate test is how many raptors you kill in a particular amount of time. I've found that adding Radiation Field in place of Intensity (or Ural's) nets me a more efficient run in the end. Before, I would kill about 30 in two sliver casts and now I can clear all of them. That's about 3-4 more kills or about 10% more kills. Now, I do find that my run might be about 5 seconds LONGER because that second sliver runs out and I tend to get greedy and wait for that last raptor to degenerate to death. Regardless, in terms of timing the whole run, a few seconds longer for about 10% more kills is well worth it.