Curse

Bloodied Blade · Sep 12, 2006, 12:25 AM // 00:25

I've been debating for a month or so wether or not to reveal this build, and decided it was time that I shared the wealth. This is a build that my guild and I used frequently in AB and has proven to be nigh unstoppable as a capping team.

Before you criticize it, keep this in mind- The build is a lot more resilient than it looks. All tactics will be explained at the end of the guide.

The Build:

E/Mo

Water Magic: 12 + 1 + x (Build is effective with no water runes)
Energy Storage: 10 + 2
Healing Prayers: All remaining attribute points

1.) Deep Freeze
2.) Ice Spikes
3.) Vapor Blade
4.) Maelstrom
5.) Heal Party
6.) Heal Other
7.) Armor of Mist
8.) Ether Prodigy {e}

E/Mo

Fire Magic: 12 + 1 + 3
Energy Storage: 10 + 1
Healing Prayers: All remaining attribute points

1.) Immolate
2.) Meteor
3.) Rodgort's Invocation
4.) Burning Speed
5.) Healing Breeze
6.) Fire Attunement
7.) Elemental Attunement {e}
8.) Meteor Shower/utility (it depended on how we ran that night)

E/Mo

Air Magic: 12 + 1 + x (minor rune unless energy is also a minor)
Energy Storage: 10 + x (see above)
Healing Prayers: All remaining attribute points

1.) Lightning Strike
2.) Enervating Charge
3.) Lightning Orb
4.) Blinding Flash
5.) Windborne Speed
6.) Orison/Healing Breeze/Utility EDIT: Utility is Gale, we often ran it on slot 6 as an interrupt.
7.) Air Attunement
8.) Elemental Attunement {e}

Mo/Me

Divine Favor: 12 + 1 + 3
Protection Prayers: 8/9 + 1
Inspiration Magic: All remaining attribute points

1.) Reversal of Fortune
2.) Guardian
3.) Mend Condition
4.) PROTECTIVE SPIRIT
5.) Contemplation of Purity
6.) Mantra of Recall {e}
7.) Inspired Hex
8.) Divine Boon

This is the build that my guild and I decided on after weeks of testing different AB builds. There are builds out there that will kill more people at one moment or do more DPS, and there are those that have better survival than this build. None that we tried could come remotely close to the ability of this build to balance the two almost perfectly.

The Usage:

The one key factor of this build is teamwork, it was designed as a GUILD build and is meant to be used as such. If you aren't using some form of voice communication (Ventrilo or Teamspeak) you will not get NEARLY the amount of power out of the build as you would in a guild environment. Another bonus of being a guild build is that you are confident enough that when you say "Heal One" into your mike that the heal is going to be there one way or another. I'll try not to go too far into this, but suffice it to say that if you can't depend on the people that you are running this build with, you will fail.

The build will take practice to gain the judgement of when to use each power, you can't just follow a list and win. Expect to have to work for your victories.

Now then, we get to what everyone has been waiting for-

The Water E/Mo IS NOT A SNARE ELLY. Or at least, not the way that you would think of one. The community opinion of the water elementalist is that it is highly inferior to all other AoE. I'm going to say right now that it's a lie.

The Fire E/Mo is also meant to be played in a rather unusual style. To put it concisely, I'll say that Burning Speed isn't exactly there for a run speed increase. Degen is your best friend when doing damage.

The Air E/Mo is designed primarily for support purposes, E Charge 1, B. Flash another, and pressure targets via your 2 damage spells.

The boon/prot is there for healing reasons, but Protective Spirit is capitalized because without it, the build wouldn't be able to cap 100% of shrine types as easily and fast as it does.

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I'll break it down by shrines

Warrior Shrines-

Make sure that you are kiting the warriors, it helps lower the amount your monk has to heal for, and thusly increases the efficiency of the build here.

Water Elly: Armor of Mist to get in range (don't aggro), target middle warrior, Deep Freeze + Ice Spikes, and back up. As the warriors charge at your group, call them one at a time as targets (in case you haven't already guessed, I played Water Elly and coordinated tactics). By "call them one at a time" I mean that you call one of them, use Vapor Blade on it while the Fire/Air ellies aid you in killing it/the group off.

Fire Elly: I alluded to Burning Speed being used as an attack, not a run skill. You're about to understand why. Rodgort's Invocation, Burning Speed into the group. Let it wear off and set the warriors on fire again. Meteor can also be used as an opener before Rodgort's in order to KD the group after they are slowed via Deep Freeze + Ice Spikes. Follow your target caller and pressure/spike with Immolate, Rodgort's, and (rarely) meteor.

Air Elly: The Air Elly is going to use Blinding Flash on one of the closest warriors, and follow it with Enervating Charge (used on the next warrior). Follow your target caller's directions with Lightning Strike and Lightning Orb.

I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT SPLIT TARGETS! DO NOT SPLIT TARGETS! DO NOT SPLIT TARGETS!

Boon/Prot: Guardian your Ellies if they need it, MAINTAIN MANTRA OF RECALL IN CASE YOU ARE ATTACKED. If you need the energy from MoR, you'll want to have it.

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Ranger Shrines-

The damage of your trio is going to be a lot lower here, but still very viable.

Water Elly: Your Water Magic magic won't be used for slows here as your enemies are ranged, and thusly, won't have any effect. In this case, it will be used for AoE. After Deep Freeze + Ice Spikes, Vapor Blade will be spammed on the target.

Fire Elly: Make use of Rodgort's Invocation and Meteor here as the rangers tend to stay in a closely packed group, making them heavily succeptable to AoEs. Follow the directions of your caller.

Air Elly: Once again, Make use of Blinding Flash and Enervating Charge to reduce incoming dps. Follow the directions of your caller.

Boon/Prot: Make use of Guardian and RoF here, using Mend Condition as needed. Once again, maintain MoR even if it appears that you don't need it.

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Elementalist Shrines-

Possibly the most dangerous shrine that your team will EVER have to face (hell, it seemed that without 1 skill this shrine would be harder to defeat than 99% of all *good* teams that we came up against).

Water Elly: Congradulations, that skill collecting dust on your bar gets 100% of it's use here. Maelstrom takes ~1-2 seconds before the first pulse, allowing a Deep Freeze + Ice Spikes combo. It also (thank god!) interrupts Lightning Orb. Call targets and spike with vapor blade as with all other shrines.

Fire Elly: Open with Meteor here, I cannot stress this enough. Your boon/prot can be out of range for 80% of this fight and a well-placed Meteor will make the shrine doable without one.

Air Elly: Spike called targets while watching for incoming teams. If anyone comes in while you're about to finish of the shrine, blind rangers and E. Charge warriors. Blind Assassins. More on this when I talk about fighting a team.

Boon/Prot: There was a reason I capitalized Protective Spirit. Your water elly has a 100% chance of dying if you don't stop the inevitable spike of Lightning Orbs with a Protective Spirit (even a RoF spam tends not to work).

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Monk Shrines-

Only fight these shrines when absolutely necessary, I say this because the shrines tend to cost you a lot more than they are worth. The only time that my guild would attack at a monk shrine was to retake it if it was the one closest to our base, or to protect it from an immense amount of attackers.

Water Elly: Same tactics as used against the elly shrine.

Fire Elly: Same tactics as elly shrine, but make use of Burning Speed as well. Meteor Shower if you brought it.

Air Elly: Same tactics as elly shrine.

What to do if a mob of people is there: I hesitate to mention this because it is never advisable to attack a large group of people. Pressure often exceeds mitigation. So, here's what you would do-

Locate Minion Masters/Key Characters. Often times, this is a monk that is giving your alliance a lot of trouble (the smiter in a smite group, the boon/prot keeping the MM alive, etc). Call the target, and nuke it with everything you have. If there's a warrior conveniently placed in the center of the monk shrine, use him as your Meteor Shower point-of-origin as it tends to keep people away from the shrine, which gives the remaining monks time to heal and reduces pressure on the shrine itself (or increases it if you're trying to capture the shrine. Your Fire Elly may have to make a suicide bombing for the good of the alliance if you get pulled in over your head or to save your monk via Burning Speed. The Fire Elly will die, but if you've been bombing the group, at least half won't survive the burn and the wrath of the remaining elementalists. It is very important that you learn how to use each of your powers to shutdown enemies properly and that you learn what primary secondary professions the common builds are and how to locate/shut them down. As stated earlier, BE WARNED, monk shrines are the hardest to capture when there is a mob there.

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Necromancer Shrines-

These are literally laughable, their healing and damage is pathetic. I'm not even going to bother with tactics-by-build as the water elly alone can actually solo the shrine.

All elementalists: Call a target and nuke it.

Monk: same tactics as you would use in all caster cases, just remove key hexes if they are called.

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If I have forgotten any shrines, I apologize. Simply mention the shrine in your post and I will do my best to update accordingly.

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Now then, tactics by team.

I will generalize against professions, not all builds will come to mind when mentioning tactics. If you wish for tactics against a specific target, simply request and I will update.

Balanced-

The abilities of these teams in alliance battles are not as sterling as their HoH counterparts. Slow/Blind/Weakness the warrior/assassin, Blind/Weakness the ranger, pressure spike the monk via high dps skills, nuke mesmers in the same manner. Ritualists are almost useless in AB, spike them down. Necromancers- If they are minion masters, nuke them down and try to come from the top/bottom of a hill when doing so. If you want specific profession build advice, just ask.

Team build advice:

Hex Overload: Easily overcomed with the use of monk skills and elementalist heals. If they Hex Overload the monk, simply spam Heal Party and Heal Other on the monk. Have one of the other elementalists Heal Breeze the monk. These teams are a bit complicated to actually *kill*. You will have to coordinate Rodgort + Light Orb + Vapor Blade in one burst (I'm not gonna call it a spike, all you do is just call the target, say "nuke target" into the mic, and support the monk ASAFP after killing the target.)

Dual Smite: Slow + Blind their melee character that they are smiting off of, and nuke down the monks.

I listed Hex Overload and Dual Smite because they are the two AB builds that I'm most comfortable with other than the Elementalist Faction Bomb.

Once again, if you want advice against another build, just ask and I will try to give you a solution.

Builds/shrines not mentioned are not because I haven't seen/cannot beat the build or shrine, but simply because I forgot to mention it in the first post.

I wish you all good luck with earning your faction.

-Blade

EDIT: For those who couldn't guess it already from the way you cap shrines/the builds. Here is how you should generally deal with teams-

Target the boon/prot or whatever their real backline monk is, spike it down with nukes, and move to the rest of the team. I realize that this is kinda vague, but it really is what you do. Beyond that, simply use your best judgement.

Arturo02 · Sep 12, 2006, 09:41 AM // 09:41

another fun one is one ele running met shower and bed of coals and another running aftershock. Even more fun if you throw Starburst into the mix. Use these as your secret weapons on an AB team.

sir lockt · Sep 12, 2006, 10:27 AM // 10:27

On the shrine capping... one meteor shower, a teleport and 1 or 2 fire eoe skills are enough to clear them all out... ALONE...

Termil · Sep 13, 2006, 06:10 PM // 18:10

I don't know if it was you guys but I ran into a 3 ele, 1 monk team a few weeks ago. They were Kurzicks. I was playing a ranger and got owned every time I hit them. I'm not new to AB (Steward title) and this was one of the hardest teams I've run into. Tried going as a team , toe-to -toe, hit-n-run and any other tactic I know and never killed one. I learned to run from them and go cap where the warriors, touchers, and MMs were.

I'm pretty sure I was using a Quick Shot build that has good dps.

So I guees my point is this build isn't just a kill the AI on the cap build but handles humans as well on the way to that cap.

Bloodied Blade · Sep 13, 2006, 07:36 PM // 19:36

@Termil, if it was recently it wasn't us. We haven't AB'ed as a guild lately since we've disbanded. Also, we were luxxon. -and ya, the build isn't designed to be a cap build, it would cap faster if we wanted it to, but we focus on capping and destroying anything that becomes a detriment to us (we had a cripshot ranger on us that we just owned with a nuke spam b/c he wouldn't leave the monk alone and we didn't feel like bothering with him b/c we were capping another shrine).

@Arturo02, I could use Meteor Shower and Bed of Coals, but they are very situational. Many people still think that we used Meteor Shower for the damage (which is why you might add Bed of Coals), but it was really for caster shrines to make them go a little faster via stopping them from casting. It's also not much of a 'secret weapon' against another team when they see an E/A running at them. I don't see one of those and think that it's a water elly, the same is true for my teammates. If you know what builds are coming at you, you know what to target. We chose not to run aftershock because then you have to use a lot of exhaustion from the earth magic line to supplement it with very little mobile utility (wards really aren't very good in AB from my experience). If we replaced the air, we now wouldn't be able to blind/weakness opposing rangers/sins/wars and if we replaced the water we would lose an easy cap on the elly shrine.

@sir lockt, yes, they would easily be doable. However, then I'm making my elementalist into an elly/assassin and saying that I NEED that teleport available and the energy to use Meteor Shower and subsequent AoEs. Shrines really do go down in moments since 2/3s of your attacks are AoE. You just call the guy in the middle and everything around him dies.

EDIT: @Termil, I believe the team that you ran into was a guild that a former guildy is in. He worked with me on designing the build (he was the fire elly who loved burning speed). If it was him, I'm not surprised that you got owned by him. We literally practiced weeks until we got to the point where the only communication over vent was just when it was from something abnormal ("go back to cap dragon") or the normal calling of heal parties/healing/nuking. If you see them again, give a /wave from me.