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Old Jan 03, 2007, 11:07 PM // 23:07   #1
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Default Spiritual Pain Spike

I designed this build with the goal of packing in a lot of distributed defense and to have a powerful spike. It's untested, but this is definately a build I would like to try out sometime. Spikes are about as frequent as a signet of mystic wrath spike, but much harder for your opposition to interrupt. I was thinking the PD mesmer would be the spike caller, since their bar will be blacked out at times. In between spikes, the players use their defensive skills and disrupt the opponent's offense using domination.

http://gwshack.us/3ad16

With four copies of spiritual pain and two of them paired with glyph of lesser energy, it should definately blow up teams that decide to let their spirits play for them. And if they set up any spirits on an altar, then you get to nuke both teams at once...
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Old Jan 04, 2007, 11:09 PM // 23:09   #2
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Looks like a dangerous build. One thought though -- Since you're packing 2 copies of Shield of Absorbtion, why not swap Life Sheath for a more powerful hex removal. Some hex builds, such as the one ran by [ftl], still incorporate Vocal Minority, which would hinder Hexbreaker Aria. If a team such as this manages to get a hex stack on your Paragon, you could face some problems with just a single veil.
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Old Jan 04, 2007, 11:18 PM // 23:18   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Natural
One thought though -- Since you're packing 2 copies of Shield of Absorbtion, why not swap Life Sheath for a more powerful hex removal?
What did you have in mind? Expel hexes or divert hexes? Expel could easily replace life sheath on the Me/Mo's bar. If you wanted divert hexes instead, then that would need to go to the monk and put ZB on the Me/Mo (fast casting with ZB kind of makes up for the lower prot spec and no divine favor).
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Old Jan 04, 2007, 11:33 PM // 23:33   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Divineshadows
What did you have in mind? Expel hexes or divert hexes? Expel could easily replace life sheath on the Me/Mo's bar. If you wanted divert hexes instead, then that would need to go to the monk and put ZB on the Me/Mo (fast casting with ZB kind of makes up for the lower prot spec and no divine favor).
IMO, ZB would be much more powerful and useful on the monk than on the mesmer. I would stick Expel on the Sheath mesmer.

Other than that, looks like a great build. I'll have to test it some time.
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Old Jan 05, 2007, 01:25 AM // 01:25   #5
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Yeah, it looks like it would actually pack a spike punch. I was considering running a SP spike in HA, but then I realized that I would be better off playing a a holding build. The Shatter-phantom is what makes the spike work really, and unofrtuanetely, it will give it away. But luckily, not much infuses seen in HA, but u will see a quick Spirit bond or Prot on him
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Old Jan 05, 2007, 01:43 AM // 01:43   #6
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First things first, the mes spike that people see isnt a spiritual pain spike. It's the dmg on the watrel's demise that kills. There are any number of skills that can be used for the primary damage.

Spiking every 30 secs is aweful, period. It's 10 secs slower than a SoMW spike, giving you the ability to kill someone 2 times a minute, if all your spikes kill you will need at least 3 mins to kill a team and that is if they dont rez.

You should be able to counter the spirit spam buils until you run out of energy, spamming a 10e skill over and over taps you out quick, and if they have an oath shotter he will be able to out pace you because, you just can't kill fast enough.

Your extremely low on enchant removal I would hate to see the timer on the match when you run into them. I bet it would way past the smash head on keyboard, aka, /roll stage.

The Mes monks have no decent energy management, the protter in particular would run dry extremely fast if you face the thumper spirit build.

Def put expel in.

any particular reason for windborne over Storm Dijin?

Prot Spirit, thats like my fav spell, use it. If they kill your bonder you screwed.

its a good start but you def need a secondary spike on all the spikers.

personally I would drop the paragon, run 2 real monks, and bring enough skills to counter everything, it's 4 mesmers.

I ran the mes spike a few days ago with some friends and 2 hero monks, we did well considering they made me call when I was a little tispy. We used a SP/Burn combo for the primary spike dmg. 2 SP and 2 burn per spike.

w/e you do have fun
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Old Jan 05, 2007, 03:42 AM // 03:42   #7
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Ok, here is some of the logic behind the decisions I made when creating this build. Please point out any logical fallacies you see.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
First things first, the mes spike that people see isnt a spiritual pain spike. It's the dmg on the watrel's demise that kills.
Yeah. Wastrel's demise is what kills in the build.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
Spiking every 30 secs is aweful, period. It's 10 secs slower than a SoMW spike, giving you the ability to kill someone 2 times a minute, if all your spikes kill you will need at least 3 mins to kill a team and that is if they dont rez.
I'm not seeing the issue here. The build has a lot of tools for relic runs and on deathmatch maps it can spike and run using godspeed and ward against foes. On Courtyard and Broken Tower, just race to the center first using godspeed, cap immediately, and hold; no need to spike. In HoH, is it unreasonable to rely on the 3rd team to at least apply some pressure to the holding team? I'm sure we could find some unprotted targets to spike out provided the 3rd team is running a pressure build (i.e. not spike) and is not completely horrible.

Longer matches on deathmatch maps won't bother me as long as the build actually has the defense necessary to hold in halls for 4 minutes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
You should be able to counter the spirit spam buils until you run out of energy, spamming a 10e skill over and over taps you out quick, and if they have an oath shotter he will be able to out pace you because, you just can't kill fast enough.
2 x glyph of lesser -> followed by 3 fast spiritual pains = a total of 6 spiritual pains and each mesmer only spent 15 energy. psychic distraction counters oath shot well enough IMO.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
Your extremely low on enchant removal I would hate to see the timer on the match when you run into them. I bet it would way past the smash head on keyboard, aka, /roll stage.
Is signet of mystic wrath spike still prevelant in HA? I have spent probably about 15 hours in HA since they removed heroes and have had yet to face it. If I need gaze of contempt, then I really have no clue as to how to fit that into the build as I do not see any easy way to fit a necromancer secondary into the build.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
The Mes monks have no decent energy management, the protter in particular would run dry extremely fast if you face the thumper spirit build.
This is true, but their spells are cheap for the most part or have longish recharges (i.e. healing seed and Aegis) that make them not energy hogs. Extinguish is the only exception to this, so yeah that mesmer could probably only afford to use it once every 20 or 25 seconds or so instead of every 12. Why wouldn't you just spike one of the thumpers first to greatly reduce their pressure? On non-altar maps, stalling until the next spike with ward against foes, godspeed and gale are always options to use against heavy pressure builds. Kind of like how the blood spikes would run around and stall you trying to get your players out of position so they could spike one down. The difference being that these blood spikes did not have a party wide speed buff and only had ward against foes to cover their tracks and their spike was much more easily interrupted.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
any particular reason for windborne over Storm Dijin?
Because this skill is not just for relic running. It's also to make sure you get your ghostly to the altar on broken tower and courtyard first.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
Prot Spirit, thats like my fav spell, use it. If they kill your bonder you screwed.
I whole-heartedly agree that prot spirit is awesome in any PvP area that is larger than 4v4 (i.e. GvG, HA, ABs), but I only had room for either prot spirit or spirit bond. Spirit bond won out due to a lower recharge and better interaction with shield of absorption.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
its a good start but you def need a secondary spike on all the spikers.
If I wanted to spike more often, then yes I would definately run e-burn on all 4 of the mesmers. However, that would mean I'd have to take out 4 of the defensive and/or utility skills. Kind of defeats the purpose in running spike at all IMO.

Quote:
Originally Posted by just rude
personally I would drop the paragon, run 2 real monks, and bring enough skills to counter everything, it's 4 mesmers.
Sorry, but you cannot fit "enough skills to counter everything" onto mesmer bars that are using 3 skills for spike as you proposed. Will 2 diversion, 1 gale, 1 shame, 1 guild, 1 shatter enchantment, 1 psychic distraction, 1 blinding surge, and 1 expel hexes not counter enough? Seems like you're not too happy of the idea with the defense being distributed across all 6 characters in the build and having a spike distributed across 5 of them. On the lead up to the spike (i.e. immediately before), one opposing monk can get galed while the other gets shamed or diversioned.

How can a mesmer spike build run 2 "real monks"? 4x spiritual pain + 4x wastrel's demise = 552 damage. That's not enough to guarentee a kill on anything. I could always run phantom pain and shatter delusions on one of the monks, but I don't think that would fit your qualification of real monk. Do you really feel that dropping the paragon and adding a 2nd monk will help prevent damage better? I'd lose angelic bond (which you can keep up on you whole team) and its awesome interaction with shield of absorption and healing seed. I'd lose godspeed, song of concentration, brace yourself, and hexbreaker aria. These 5 skills seem like awesome enough skills to want in HA and are most certainly functions a 2nd monk cannot provide. A 2nd monk just adds more reliance to enchantments which is risky given that many teams will have a grenths dervish or gaze of contempt to tear through enchantment based defenses. Besides, the functions of a 2nd monk were pretty much equally divided between the two Me/Mo.
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Old Jan 05, 2007, 10:36 AM // 10:36   #8
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if its a deep wound you want, couldn't the paragon use paragon skills to trigger it without the pink bar phenomenon?
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Old Jan 05, 2007, 04:22 PM // 16:22   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy
if its a deep wound you want, couldn't the paragon use paragon skills to trigger it without the pink bar phenomenon?
Of course I looked into that. The paragon has 4 skills that apply deep wound. The only one with an easy condition to meet is:

- cruel spear. If it hits a non-moving foe. Simple condition to meet if the paragon is using gale. Problem is that this is an elite skill.

The others are simply way too conditional:

- vicious attack. If it criticals it causes deep wound. Obviously, you'd want to include go for the eyes, but even then you still have about 1/4 to 1/3 chance of failure depending upon your level of spear mastery.

- merciless spear. If it hits a foe with less than 50% health. Useful in pressure builds. Garbage in spike builds.

- slayer's spear. If that foe has more heal than you, it causes deep wound. And I would want to run an angelic bonder with extremely low health? No way.
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Old Jan 06, 2007, 07:28 AM // 07:28   #10
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This build works. We just won halls with it. With 3 PUGs from ID 1. Although, my leet calling skills and Divine's leet build-making and PUG finding skills helped lead us to victory
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Old Jan 07, 2007, 07:14 PM // 19:14   #11
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I occassionally run a similar build into HA, but we also run with Energy Burn... Having E Burn gets you down to 1 spike every 20 seconds, then another 10s later.

The downside is that the energy burn spike will only work on casters (8*4 = 32) because most other things don't have enough energy at any given time for all your dmg from the burn to go through. Use it on casters, though, and you're great.

The only reason I'm suggesting the addition of E burn is because it seems like the long distance between spikes could cost you a match.
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Old Jan 07, 2007, 09:36 PM // 21:36   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bloodied Blade
The only reason I'm suggesting the addition of E burn is because it seems like the long distance between spikes could cost you a match.
But like, you can just run around and they can't touch you when you're not spiking. The whole point of a spike in a gametype that rewards defensive builds is to pack as much defense as possible. Loosing 4 skills just so you can kill people faster, when you can already kill them sortof defeats the point, IMO.
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