Curse

The Purple Pants Guy · Apr 15, 2006, 04:43 AM // 04:43

W/N

Sever Artery
Gash
Final Thrust
Grenth's Balance {E}
Frenzy
Plague Touch
Sprint
Ressurection Signet

16 Swordsmanship (12 + superior rune + hat)
13 Strength (12 + minor rune)

Equipment: Zealous Sword of Shelter, Shocking Sword of Shelter, the 20% for -5 dmg shield and the -3 dmg when hexed shield

I take this guy around RA and he seems to do well... I usually pick a target then hit him 'till my adrenaline builds up and when he's around 50-75% health I trigger Frenzy and use Sever + Gash + Final. That usually seems to kill them unless there's a monk.

How I Deal With My Enemies

Against monks, when I go after them, if they maintain Guardian or whatever pretty steadily, I usually just eventually charge my adrenal skills and go spike someone else suddenly. Or I just keep pressuring them and they eventually die. Then again, if I'm around 100 health or less, I wait for them to heal themselves almost all the way then spike them with Grenth's Balance + Final Thrust, sever + gash only if they're needed. I can also do that to anyone...it just works especially well for monks.

Ineptitude/illusion mesmers don't really seem to do much against me 'cause I plague touch the blind right away and the damage from illusion magic just doesn't seem to matter. IW mesmers... there's not much I can do save not frenzy and use skills on them when they don't have distortion up. Same for soothing images/sympathetic visage, which is when I generally stay away from them or get them dead.

Necromancers, on the other hand, seem to really prevent me from doing anything (if they're good). If they brought Faintheartedness/Soothing Images/SS/any warrior hate, I try to stay away from them and fight someone else.

Blind/Weakness spamming eles just make me use energy on plague touch. Any other kinds of eles could possibly hurt me, so I just don't frenzy and try to kill them as efficiently as possible. Wards, though, are a problem. Then I just rely on Grenth's and luck.

Rangers in general aren't usually a problem for me as long as I'm careful. When they pop up on the other team, they're usually running builds based on poison or interrupts. On the rare occasion of a trapper, that's easy... just look where they put their traps and make a point of not going over there. Or go there and plague touch stuff like Blind to shut them down!

That's also how I deal with poison rangers, though sometimes they get lucky and throw an interrupt that hits my plague touch. Interrupt rangers just shouldn't bother with me since there's not really much to interrupt on a warrior and my adrenal skills usually hit them too unexpectedly for them to react. When they throw up a stance, I try to guess when it's over and work on another target while it's up then go back to the ranger and hope I can kill him.

Against warriors, I just equip my shocking sword and hit them more than the other professions due to their greater defense (unless they have frenzy on). The elemental damage really seems to help. If one of 'em starts a chain of attacks that's based on conditions (sever + gash), I can plague touch the first one away to mess them up. In the event that one of 'em is a threat to me, I either fight them and if that's too dangerous... kite and Grenth's spike when I'm regen'd enough.

I just Sprint when someone kites then Frenzy if they stop moving. As for target selection, I usually go for overextending people or whoever I think I can get quick kills off of. If I lose...then gg and gj to the other team.

I know there are more builds than that, those are just the ones I see most frequently in RA these days.
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I've been loving playing this guy lately and I wanted some input on my build and how I play it.

Murder In China · Apr 15, 2006, 06:05 AM // 06:05

Looks pretty solid. But I would rather use a Stance shield.

Zui · Apr 15, 2006, 06:58 AM // 06:58

Very solid, as murder in china says the -2dmg +45hp stance shield is better than the -5 20% +30hp shield, although you will need to watch out for health drops when a stance is ending if you're low(same with the hexed), but your grenths balance should take care of that.

Other than that, looks good.

mariano · Apr 15, 2006, 02:25 PM // 14:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Purple Pants Guy

W/N

Sever Artery
Gash
Final Thrust
Grenth's Balance {E}
Frenzy
Plague Touch
Sprint
Ressurection Signet
[...]
Ineptitude/illusion mesmers don't really seem to do much against me 'cause I plague touch the blind right away and the damage from illusion magic just doesn't seem to matter. IW mesmers... there's not much I can do save not frenzy and use skills on them when they don't have distortion up. Same for soothing images/sympathetic visage, which is when I generally stay away from them or get them dead.

I think, that a counter to your build, may be, are hexes.

I use to play a mesmer.

To try to keep safe from RA warriors I use Distortion plus Spirit of Failure, I may not be able to go without these two in RA, then Ether Feast and recently I have added Empathy for a bit of dissuasion.

My other skills are the two energy burns, and Diversion, which are mainly to deal with monks.

As a mesmer I may be a primary target if no monk is in the team. And, with these skills I may, the least, keep bussy a single warrior and still I may be able to do something else.
The first spell I cast, almost, always is Spirit of Fealure on a warrior or a ranger (if no warriors). I fear kiting from warriors because I think that I am killed more often when kitting than when staying; but, your build does not seem to me so dangerous if I were trying to kite.

When I have gone in RA as anti-warrior, I did bring:

Ineptitude [E]
Conjure Phantasm
Clumsiness
...
Distortion
Ether Feast
...

I start with Conjure Phantasm. Clumsiness recharges in 10 seconds. Warriors may fall quickly if not prepared for it. But, this build is almost useless if there is a monk in the opposing team.

Bushels The Great · Apr 18, 2006, 08:25 AM // 08:25

For RA, I like to take a healing spell. Although Grenth's Balance is alright, it is considerably more effective when you have a lot of HP+ mods (weapon, shield, no sup stat runes). As such, I would highly recommend getting rid of it. IMO, 12+1 Strength is a tad overkill. If you lower it to 10+1, you can up your Tactics to 8, which makes Healing Sig heal for 100. But to each his own, I guess.

Of course, this would give you an empty Elite slot, and I don't know what else you would run with this build in particular.

Alternatively, and probably preferably, just go ahead and add some freaking HP to your build!

Is a Sup rune really necessary on a Sword build? Maybe switch out the Shelter for Fortitude (and the aforementioned shield change)?

Also, try out Rush a few times. I used Sprint for a long time, but after trying out Rush, there is no way I'll go back. After I generate 4 initial adren, I have a 25% speed boost for the rest of the match (generally). However, Final Thrust might get in the way of that a bit.

I don't recommend Frenzy for RA. People don't discriminate targets as much as TA, or especially GvG. You might want to replace it with an interrupt. Without any attack speed boosts, I recommend Disrupting Blow because of the 1/2 second activation time.

Anyways, I've always run an Axe build. Just an FYI, an Axe build would be able to duplicate everything your build does except for the Bleed, with *considerably* more overall damage. (Exec, Evis, and another attack skill, maybe Axe Rake?) But like I said earlier, to each his own.

Note: I should go ahead and say that I have been playing this game for less than 2 weeks, I just read a crapload of forums. My PvP experience at 20 has only consisted of RA, about 30k faction earned so far. If something is horribly wrong with what I posted, sue me.