Curse

HigherMinion · Jan 16, 2012, 10:27 PM // 22:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

My thinking on that issue.

---

On another topic: People trying to get damage out of ST might try Edge of Extinction?

More AoE damage isn't really necessary; and I don't think it will deal much damage anyway. If Splinter doesn't hit, then they won't be below 90% health. If Splinter hit, odds are they died from MoP spike.

Kunder · Jan 16, 2012, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

More AoE damage isn't really necessary; and I don't think it will deal much damage anyway. If Splinter doesn't hit, then they won't be below 90% health. If Splinter hit, odds are they died from MoP spike.

If your AoE nukes hit something else and then the Splinter/MoP hits, you could very well eliminate that something else instantly. Not much use for the Death's Charge insta-kill part of the build, but EoE might prove worthwhile for the other 50% of mobs you face in the meantime.

HigherMinion · Feb 10, 2012, 09:02 AM // 09:02

Updated OP with new build. I have re-tested ER prot and decided it's good enough to sidebar both ER and ST, but the Infuse seems indispensable at the moment.

Shared Burden is clearly superior to any water snares, and Fragility+Withering Aura+Reap Impurities is epic synergy. With Arcane Con. and Shared, Overload becomes amazing AoE damage also and very consistent. 75 adjacent AoE damage on a 1s recharge is pretty cool. Not sure if the Dom bar is lacking anything else like CoF, but I'll see what you all think.

I don't know if this can get any better right now. It has all the survivability and killing power possible.

Thoughts?

=XM= · Feb 10, 2012, 09:36 PM // 21:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

Updated OP with new build. I have re-tested ER prot and decided it's good enough to sidebar both ER and ST, but the Infuse seems indispensable at the moment.

Shared Burden is clearly superior to any water snares, and Fragility+Withering Aura+Reap Impurities is epic synergy. With Arcane Con. and Shared, Overload becomes amazing AoE damage also and very consistent. 75 adjacent AoE damage on a 1s recharge is pretty cool. Not sure if the Dom bar is lacking anything else like CoF, but I'll see what you all think.

I don't know if this can get any better right now. It has all the survivability and killing power possible.

Thoughts?

Shared Burden is one of the best elites in PvE, but Illusion is not a great attribute line. Ineptitude, which you can't take, and wandering eye are pretty much it and in most areas even those are not as useful as Domination. That's not a problem however, because with 8 spec (13s/15s) or 10 spec (15s/15s) you can use it on an X/Me that doesn't need its elite or a primary dom mes that has BiP support (not relevant to this team build).

The range and duration means you only need one cast on a ball and don't need the lowered recharge from having it on a mes with FC. The only problem is the 2s casting time, this can be a pain if you don't micro it sometimes as called targets die before a 2s cast can land, wasting energy. It's the only >1s offensive skill in my team build other than barbs, but it's worth it. On my nec I take Shared Burden instead of OoU on the bone fiend MM hero. You lose 112 Al ignoring dps from OoU, but overall Shared Burden is op enough to warrant this.

Putting Shared Burden aside for a bit, if you have an ST rit and running MoP why not use a bone fiend MM in addition to the two dervs as others have suggested in this thread? You only really need animate, masochsim and BotM and can spec 8 or 10 in a third attribute. They don't always pick the target you want, but watch the field and you can most of the time get it working. The way I think about it is that it's an extra 5.9 MoP triggers per second. Compare that with 3.6 or 5.3 (splinter) for a derv, but with the added benefit of meatshields to confuse mob AI and body block more easily than relying on the sometimes really retarded melee AI. A fiend volley is an extra 462 dmg from MoP. So that's an extra 250 adjacent range dps during a spike. If you cast EBSoH and they are under OoU they do 200 single target DPS. Add barbs and that's 300 AL ignoring single target dps. Their base damage is not too bad either now after the update and the target will be under cracked armor from the dervs too.

As for the overall build, I switched from R/P beastmasters to dervs a few months ago. They are not as nice for switching targets or positioning. The retarded melee AI is frustrating if you don't plan well in open areas where balling is harder when the player build can't ball. The unbuffed single target dps is lower than RaO R/P. However, despite all this, the fact remains VoS derv deals 2x more physical damage procs than an R/P + pet under RaO. This shoots up to 3x when under splinter weapon. And when you are MoP nuking, all that counts is the number of physical damage procs you can squeeze out. They also perform better if you screw up and MoP is recharging.

Going back to Shared Burden, if you are using it mainly for anti-scatter, then the best skill for this purpose is Psychic Instability (backed by Earthbind on an ST rit where required). But that's because like in all games, stun is the best snare and cc all wrapped in one, and PI is the best stun in GW PvE, it has the best combination of low recharge (2x its duration), large enough range and easiest to meet requirement. The only annoying thing I find with PI after testing it a lot recently is that the AI doesn't seem to give it enough priority on a normal bar or want to use it even if it's all they have on their damn bar. I have been trying weird builds where it works for me. Stupid things like a non-IASed (sigh) 12 spear mastery and high command mesmer with only one or two other skills with cast times and/or aftercast and just spear attacks and shouts. The other that works actually weirdly okish in an MoP nuking build is a Me/R beastmaster (yes you can start laughing now) with only one other skill with cast time other than comfort animal. The recharge needs to be >10s-15s after FC (e.g. Hex Eater Signet but not Shatter Hex). If the recharge is low on the skill, it needs to be conditional and not met constantly in battle (e.g Mirror of Disenchantment) but not related to foes casting or not casting. If you give them wnwn, they tend to cast it at bad times like during aftercasts so they can't rupt the next skill because they are themselves in aftercast when the foe casts. If they would only use it on foes KDed from PI, it would be great energy management. Sometimes they are not in the middle of an attack animation, don't have a skill queued, are not moving but yet will not cast PI. Not sure if it's related to being in auto-attack and animation delay, because after they stop auto-attacking after a spike and a mantid caster rezzes from False Death, PI almost always rupts the first skill they try to cast even if it has very low cast time. If anyone can abuse PI consistently with MoP, without microing it or resorting to retarded bars as described above, I wouldn't mind some advice...

HigherMinion · Feb 10, 2012, 10:08 PM // 22:08

The recharge is great, it's only 5e and the anti-melee is great; I would almost think of removing Displacement for an offensive spirit or Union. I tired PI, but you need too much investment and Shared Burden is amazing. It's Arcane Conundrum, Meekness and Deep Freeze in one skill.

mortenya · Feb 10, 2012, 10:12 PM // 22:12

for some reason heroes do not like to use PI. it has been talked about in other threads actually, i ran it for quite awhile, but like you noted, they don't even like to use it if it is the only skill on their bar.

Avatar Exico · Feb 10, 2012, 10:20 PM // 22:20

maybe throwing it out there, with that extra slot, why not bring interput/EoE Ranger. EoE for even more bomb on mobs and interputing help.

HigherMinion · Feb 10, 2012, 10:55 PM // 22:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avatar Exico

maybe throwing it out there, with that extra slot, why not bring interput/EoE Ranger. EoE for even more bomb on mobs and interputing help.

What extra slot? The one on the screenshot shows 9 builds, with a separator to show the last two are either-or.

itiscurtains · Feb 11, 2012, 02:32 AM // 02:32

Do the dervs do well with four adrenal skills?
I assume that HoF is the most important of those skills, and from my own experience heroes are pretty bad at prioritizing IAS skills, especially adrenal IAS's. On my own dervs I run RI and HoF as the only adrenal skills in an effort to prompt them to use those two skills more frequently. I haven't really found that they need the extra e-management of Radiant Scythe, and, as far as losing Aura Slicer, I usually pack Weaken Armor on my N/Rt.

HigherMinion · Mar 02, 2012, 07:04 AM // 07:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by itiscurtains

Do the dervs do well with four adrenal skills?
I assume that HoF is the most important of those skills, and from my own experience heroes are pretty bad at prioritizing IAS skills, especially adrenal IAS's. On my own dervs I run RI and HoF as the only adrenal skills in an effort to prompt them to use those two skills more frequently. I haven't really found that they need the extra e-management of Radiant Scythe, and, as far as losing Aura Slicer, I usually pack Weaken Armor on my N/Rt.

Don't know why I didn't reply to this earlier, but:

Currently, these are the best derv bars possible. They spam their adrenal skills as and when they get adrenaline and the effects are just what's needed. Aura Slicer adds bar compression, so my necro doesn't *need* cracked armour, and Reap is spammed quite heavily, yeah. The IAS doesn't matter that much with VoS really, but there's a new debate in town.

Dagger sin heroes are now viable. The question is, is the damage and survivability of them better than the dervs? Well, we know they lose on armour, but what about damage?

Throwing it out there.

AndrewSX · Mar 02, 2012, 08:30 AM // 08:30

I'd definitely give a shot.

Sins weren't even considered before, now they can be almost on par with dervs an wars: point is find the right build balancing sruviving/dmg that works on a stupid hero.

Did a couple of test on MoDmg, prolly the Wota bar (that rocks on human) is a good starting point.

JS-FF-DB + Crit eye + Wota. other 3 skills (that for human are the OP pve ones :P ) could be a extra e-management ( malicious strike - critical strike) and self surviving (way of perfection? a jump with heal - hos, dc...). Maybe a res could be possible too, or looking in war/derv secondary profs.

If sins are better than dervs...well, that's still to see.

yayowars · Mar 03, 2012, 07:11 PM // 19:11

I also tried a WotA sin on Master of damge with JS-FF-DB, and while it was fast, there were times where it didn't know what to do in between (and it only had those four skills).
So I decided to go with Locust's Fury, after all I just care about triggering MoP.

That left me with he problem of IAS, so I took Heket's Rampage seeing as it doesn't even have attack skills.
Well now the problem is that I have to invest quite a lot into beast mastery, so I guess I've give it a pet with some low cost skills.

HigherMinion · May 26, 2012, 05:41 AM // 05:41

Decided to update the OP, add some usage and get rid of much of the back story. If anyone has anything to add, do comment. Anyone currently running it?

Relyk · May 26, 2012, 08:43 AM // 08:43

Linking to pvx build won't hurt, though it would fall out-of-date huh. Drop DPS on healer, it's fine on ST because it's ST. can drop wnwn for drain delusions, you have so much hex fodder. Unfortunately, the panic spread doesn't allow 9+1 ins breakpoint since you have 10 command breakpoint for never surrender, so you can try it low spec. Unnatural Signet is still better than Overload as unconditional, unless you really find setting up using Overload as more effective. You can drop arcane conundrum, fragility makes it redundant for hex fodder and technobabble makes it pretty redundant. There isn't enchantment removal since you don't have pod option (good thing) or room for drain enchantment, which you can easily drop wnwn. Reckless haste should be optional since it really isn't doing much with the ST and melee hate, and rend enchantments would be more sexy mainbar anyways so you don't need to bring it in your team. Chilblains is nice theorycraft for AP necro as well. reverse hex is a better option than convert since convert is overkill unless you're in high end. I would suggest testing Epidemic because you can combo with FH! That in no way suggests fevered dreams because your building around shared burden which is pretty key when using emo. You can also bring weaken armor in the reckless haste spot. I don't like RH on the mainbar.

=XM= · May 26, 2012, 12:42 PM // 12:42

Messing with something like this currently. No speed boosts in this permutation at the moment. On some maps I ball myself by pre-protting and corner blocking but the dervs and minions are enough generally.

Dervishes have the lowest health (520) but highest armor and that seems to be fine for aggro. Dervs use vampiric scythe instead of zealous. Grenth's aura turned out to be quite nice to put a floor on the scythe damage against higher AL since it doesn't care how much you actually hit for and is a nice alternative to TMS (fail AI) and victorious sweep for some small self-healing. It takes 4 hits to spam victorious sweep on recharge so grenth will have done more damage and 9 less healing (but w/o the conditionality). Works well enough despite the attribute split. Dervs hit single targets (assuming no adjacent) for 20+20+17+5=62 AL-ignoring on auto-attack. I'm trying to swap armor of sanctity for something with no cast-time but the damage reduction is really nice. Not quite as foolproof as Call of Protection on pets due to the conditionality but it is effective to filter large numbers of small damage packets. Not sure in what order it interacts with PS though, haven't tested.

I've noticed since the melee AI update that the dervs spam attack skills a lot more so I only have 2 attacks on each bar so they can spam reap all day. They always use it as soon, or sometimes one auto-hit after it is recharged, which is pretty often with dark fury up constantly.

I micro the PI on the illusion mesmer and set the dom mes on an off-target offensive caster. Perma-KD seems to work better this way than letting them both on the same target when they might waste both PIs on the same skill. The AI seems much more willing to use PI on long cast-time spells so arcane conundrum helps a lot if you don't want to micro PI. When facing large mobs the dom mesmer gets panic and higher dom. Sometimes the illusion one has ineptitude for blind spam in some areas. Mesmers have shield and wand since they waste splinter on themselves if they have spears.

The emo has a secondary heal after infuse (and 10 healing prayers) because the AI picks which spell to use based on how far from max health the target is. This way it spams infuse less jsut because something went under 80% and this seems to both attract less aggro and enables infuse to heal from full health more often. Life attunement is maintained on the emo. I swap the emo for ST if I really need Earthbind. I don't like ST+Shelter however, as the rest of the bar automatically becomes subpar unless you lower attributes to get 8 triggers of shelter instead of 9. Then you can run 10 prot for aegis, soa etc. Not having to pre-prot like with PS is pretty nice though. Pretty interchangeable overall unless you use an emo as a primary healer.

The Dwayna AoE heal has nice synergy with minions and LA+infuse on the emo. The AoE cripple is spammed well enough and makes kiting if ball fails easy. If I run ST instead of emo, SoH gets replaced by spirit light and pious restraint by a 10s flash enchant.

I replace LA on the MM with draw conditions if it's one of the very few areas where conditions are a problem. This is pretty rare. The MM gets swapped for SoS rit if there are no corpses or just shuffle attributes and slot IV and putrid bile. In areas with smaller groups I run OoU MM instead of AotL as I don't need the meat wall. Dark fury is nice though with a weapon that hits 3 targets and attack skills that need 6 adren max...

HigherMinion · May 26, 2012, 05:47 PM // 17:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by =XM=

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8...dwaynaaotl.png

Messing with something like this currently. No speed boosts in this permutation at the moment. On some maps I ball myself by pre-protting and corner blocking but the dervs and minions are enough generally.

Dervishes have the lowest health (520) but highest armor and that seems to be fine for aggro. Dervs use vampiric scythe instead of zealous. Grenth's aura turned out to be quite nice to put a floor on the scythe damage against higher AL since it doesn't care how much you actually hit for and is a nice alternative to TMS (fail AI) and victorious sweep for some small self-healing. It takes 4 hits to spam victorious sweep on recharge so grenth will have done more damage and 9 less healing (but w/o the conditionality). Works well enough despite the attribute split. Dervs hit single targets (assuming no adjacent) for 20+20+17+5=62 AL-ignoring on auto-attack. I'm trying to swap armor of sanctity for something with no cast-time but the damage reduction is really nice. Not quite as foolproof as Call of Protection on pets due to the conditionality but it is effective to filter large numbers of small damage packets. Not sure in what order it interacts with PS though, haven't tested.

I've noticed since the melee AI update that the dervs spam attack skills a lot more so I only have 2 attacks on each bar so they can spam reap all day. They always use it as soon, or sometimes one auto-hit after it is recharged, which is pretty often with dark fury up constantly.

I micro the PI on the illusion mesmer and set the dom mes on an off-target offensive caster. Perma-KD seems to work better this way than letting them both on the same target when they might waste both PIs on the same skill. The AI seems much more willing to use PI on long cast-time spells so arcane conundrum helps a lot if you don't want to micro PI. When facing large mobs the dom mesmer gets panic and higher dom. Sometimes the illusion one has ineptitude for blind spam in some areas. Mesmers have shield and wand since they waste splinter on themselves if they have spears.

The emo has a secondary heal after infuse (and 10 healing prayers) because the AI picks which spell to use based on how far from max health the target is. This way it spams infuse less jsut because something went under 80% and this seems to both attract less aggro and enables infuse to heal from full health more often. Life attunement is maintained on the emo. I swap the emo for ST if I really need Earthbind. I don't like ST+Shelter however, as the rest of the bar automatically becomes subpar unless you lower attributes to get 8 triggers of shelter instead of 9. Then you can run 10 prot for aegis, soa etc. Not having to pre-prot like with PS is pretty nice though. Pretty interchangeable overall unless you use an emo as a primary healer.

The Dwayna AoE heal has nice synergy with minions and LA+infuse on the emo. The AoE cripple is spammed well enough and makes kiting if ball fails easy. If I run ST instead of emo, SoH gets replaced by spirit light and pious restraint by a 10s flash enchant.

I replace LA on the MM with draw conditions if it's one of the very few areas where conditions are a problem. This is pretty rare. The MM gets swapped for SoS rit if there are no corpses or just shuffle attributes and slot IV and putrid bile. In areas with smaller groups I run OoU MM instead of AotL as I don't need the meat wall. Dark fury is nice though with a weapon that hits 3 targets and attack skills that need 6 adren max...

I like AoS on the dervs for extra survivability, but speccing into Wind just for one skill when you can use Victorious seems like a waste. Do two PI heroes function well? I've never found having two copies of Splinter necessary since I can precast when entering a mob, or it gets cast on one of the dervs and is enough to cause massive damage.

The main difference between your variant is the Minion master and AoD. I have been thinking about a MM as a platform for Dark Fury, because Reap spam is nice, but I don't like that AoD bar; it seems just like a platform for SoH, which you can easily slot on the MM instead of Life Attunement, with SoLS over Aegis, then you have a free slot. With that spare slot you can take the standard SoS hybrid and change Splinter on one of the mesmers.

Also, you really want to be using technobabble over Ymlad; there's no use in snaring one foe (and EVAS can already do that) and Dervish already cause weakness with Withering Aura.

But if you've been having success with it, gg.

=XM= · May 27, 2012, 05:03 PM // 17:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

I like AoS on the dervs for extra survivability, but speccing into Wind just for one skill when you can use Victorious seems like a waste. Do two PI heroes function well? I've never found having two copies of Splinter necessary since I can precast when entering a mob, or it gets cast on one of the dervs and is enough to cause massive damage.

The main difference between your variant is the Minion master and AoD. I have been thinking about a MM as a platform for Dark Fury, because Reap spam is nice, but I don't like that AoD bar; it seems just like a platform for SoH, which you can easily slot on the MM instead of Life Attunement, with SoLS over Aegis, then you have a free slot. With that spare slot you can take the standard SoS hybrid and change Splinter on one of the mesmers.

Also, you really want to be using technobabble over Ymlad; there's no use in snaring one foe (and EVAS can already do that) and Dervish already cause weakness with Withering Aura.

But if you've been having success with it, gg.

AoS is nice to make up for no Union, but the only issue with it is that it's not a flash enchantment so unless you pre-cast it the dervs will cast it once in battle and they start taking damage, still worth it I think. It'd be nicer if it had no cast-time. The wind cross-spec was an attempt at finding extra damage that doesn't come from attack skills but I can see how it might not be attractive esp if running minor scythe rune. Still playing with how to achieve this, not much in Earth for this purpose.

I would definitely recommend you try a bar with less attack skills however if you run any form of adrenaline gain increase (to maximise reap spam). My original builds when I swapped from RaO/spear to dervs had reap, aura slicer, victorious and crippling sweep. I found it to be too much. Two seems to be the sweet spot for me. With aura slicer always available you definitely only need one copy then.

The dual splinter is just to minimise microing because I am lazy, but like you said one is enough if pre-casting. Dual PI works well if you micro one, or force one to cast something else at the start of battle so that they automatically alternate it. Or lock one on an off-target. Otherwise like all rupts stacking they can end up using it at the same time, which would make only one PI better. I find panic works better if you have really large groups, of course. PI is OP enough that I don't mind microing it.

SoH can easily go on the MM (but at slightly lower spec). 2x PwK has the advantage that it's not random and gets used when you need it most, but I've found AoD to work really well with minions (esp. OoU MM), EVAS and when I had them, pets. I can also stick dark fury and withering aura on it instead of SoH and AoE cripple when I switch the MM for something else. It could also be a UA Smiter with party healing and high spec SoH. The 2-hero healer/prot backline can be anything that meets the heal/party heal/prot requirement. I do like to separate hex removal and condition removal from healers so the AI has only one trigger to react to however (except MBS if running SoS ofc).

Enfeebling blood is mainly for cases where melee mobs break aggro and go for casters. Weakness + Aegis means I can then just ignore them. I might give enchant removal or a fish hex a go in that slot. Ymlad instead of EbSoH, however, I am finding is just extra damage that's not that great. I have EBSoH there when I have OoU instead of AotL and used to have Mindbender before it was nerfed. Might try technobable again although I find panic or PI to be enough when I tried it last year.

HigherMinion · Jun 20, 2012, 04:26 AM // 04:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daesu

Yes the downside is not as bad assuming that the hero manages to cast it on a number of nearby foes. The hero AI doesn't consider those decisions when it casts spells so I expect there will be times when Shared Burden or even Panic would be cast on single targets. But like I said, there is a downside but it is small.

When you're only fighting one foe, you won't expend much energy; you'd most likely only get one or two skills off before it dies. Doesn't matter what hexes are removed because in a mesmer gaining more energy, they will just recast. In the time it takes to recharge a skill you've generally killed everything anyway.

Daesu · Jun 20, 2012, 04:42 AM // 04:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

When you're only fighting one foe, you won't expend much energy; you'd most likely only get one or two skills off before it dies. Doesn't matter what hexes are removed because in a mesmer gaining more energy, they will just recast. In the time it takes to recharge a skill you've generally killed everything anyway.

Not necessarily that you are only fighting one foe, it could be 1 foe by itself on 1 side while the rest of the mob are on the other side and the AI may choose to cast the hex on that 1 foe and the other mesmer hero may choose to remove that as he runs out of energy.

Yes, they would just recast after gaining energy which means they have to deal with a recharge. Like I said, I don't think the recharge is that long (<15s with FC) so it is not a big deal in this case. But since there are other decent energy management skills besides Drain Delusions, I wouldn't bring Drain Delusions.

HigherMinion · Jun 20, 2012, 10:49 AM // 10:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daesu

Yes, they would just recast after gaining energy which means they have to deal with a recharge. Like I said, I don't think the recharge is that long (<15s with FC) so it is not a big deal in this case. But since there are other decent energy management skills besides Drain Delusions, I wouldn't bring Drain Delusions.

What skill would you suggest as a replacement?

Just to note; when calling with this build, you'd be a fool to cast on a single foe when there is a mob of foes waiting to be nuked.