Curse

diabiosx · Jun 25, 2010, 03:06 PM // 15:06

So the current aura of the lich deathly swarm spike has 7necros and 1 hb infuse.
My opinion of Aura of the Lich spike.

With 7 spikers and at 17death magic
deathly swarm does 98x7=686
fetid ground does 72x7=504
and when combined it does 1190 to a 60Armor foe.
The build uses crack armor as well as a deep wound from augury of death.

There are a couple of flaws i find to this build.
First Aura of the Lich.
-It gives rise to minions that doesn't do much damage as they spend more time running than attacking. Monks with channeling use these minions to gain an unlimited amount of energy.
-And it also wastes 1 elite slot which can be used for ultility Elites(like consume soul to deal with annoying spirits.)

Second 7 spikers?! that's OD
-the highest health a person can have is around 700.
With just 4spikers it does 648(almost close to death) which means that
Having just 5 spikers at 16death magic(810damage.) is enough to kill. What this means is that even without deep wound, that person will die.

-Having 7 spikers spike at the same time causes 7 of your teammates to stand still for 4.25seconds just to cast deathly swarm, 3/4sec after cast, fetid ground 3/4after cast. (equivalent of all 7 of your teammates being BackBreakered) as a result your team build up a lot of pressure which causes all your n/rts and n/mos to spam their defensive skills, which then drains all their energy and in the end they dont have enough energy to spike.

third Augury of death
-with so little hexes in the build, augury usually just gives the spike away.
-the spike does enough damage with 5spikers that you dont really need a deep wound.

I think a better build would be to get rid of all the Aura of the Lich elites, and spec useful elites to the necros.(blood is power, consume soul, prot elites, etc)
have 6spikers and 2monks(1ls prot, 1hb infuse with shellshock maybe xD) even with 2deathly swarm interupted and all the fetid ground going through, the spike should meet exceed the damage to kill.

Evil Eye · Jun 25, 2010, 05:14 PM // 17:14

people dont have cold shields or infuse monks

Killed u man · Jun 25, 2010, 05:25 PM // 17:25

1) You don't have 7 spikers AND cracked armor. The caller either spikes with deathly swarm, or uses augury/Shadow Shroud/weaken. I'm pretty sure the bar doesn't even have room for fetid ground follow up. Also, the N/Mo runs RC instead of Aura of the lich, but that's nitpicking.

All in all, this would result in the spike truly dealing about 1100 dmg.

2) Aura Of The Lich isn't there for the damage. However, what you describe as "not much damage", I describe as health bars getting pushed down while enemy Monks are frantically trying to catch the spikes. On top of that, it really isn't minor damage. I think a minion can hit up to 40 (If not 60). If you have 10 of those minnions hitting the same guy, his bar spikes down every 3 seconds.
On top of that, minions are mad body blockers, often confusing enemy monks as to where to are, resulting in them not catching spikes.

3) Overkill. If you have a non-armor ignoring spike, 700 damage is barely scraping it. 900 damage is, imo, the benchmark. 1000 ideal and anything above a welcome extra. Riftspike does about 1100 damage and often doesn't kill the target. Rspike is about the same, and they have 400-ish armor ignoring damage.

4) This is and always has been the weakness of necro spikes: 7/8 characters standing still for 3+ seconds to spike. That's why it's so important for them that every, or close to every, spike goes through. (Hence the overkill) On top of that, with over 20 minnions running around, they can last atleast a couple of minutes before running out of energy. (Soul Reaping) Also, every Aura of the Lich a necro uses essentially gives the whole team 9 "free" energy.

5) Hence why you "time" it. If the augury pops up before the spike, the caller is bad, not the build. DW is always welcome, especially against high armor targets such as rangers, warriors and obviously the ghostly. As a matter of fact, I would almost go as far as saying augury often decides the kill on KoTH matches on ghostlies.

Shadow Shroud enables the caller to use augury, weaken armor AND spike with the rest of the team, without drawing out prots.

The build is pretty solid, any changes to it would only be for the worse. MAYBE you could take out the N/Mo for a real prot, but I see no need to.

FlyMoto · Jun 25, 2010, 05:31 PM // 17:31

You have 7 spikers because you will rarely have the perfect spike scenario. Targets will have higher armor or certain teammates might not get the spike at the right time, KD'd or whatever. Overkill on the spike = insurance that the spike actually goes through, especially with a gimmick build like this.

I would imagine AotL would mainly be used for minions who would simply be annoying. I can somewhat agree that this is probably unnecessary.

I haven't seen this in action but imagine that it is like most any other gimmick spike builds.

Xsiriss · Jun 25, 2010, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Spikes revolve around survivability and then the minimalistic offense. Necro's are squishy, no matter how you try to augment them they will not stand up to a good balanced team.

Reverend Dr · Jun 25, 2010, 07:24 PM // 19:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabiosx

I think a better build would be to get rid of all the Aura of the Lich elites, and spec useful elites to the necros.(blood is power, consume soul, prot elites, etc)
have 6spikers and 2monks(1ls prot, 1hb infuse with shellshock maybe xD) even with 2deathly swarm interupted and all the fetid ground going through, the spike should meet exceed the damage to kill.

So exactly like oldschool bloodspike?

The 6-8 caster spike builds really don't have all that much variation over the basic concept:1-2 spike skills, rest of the bars filled with defense and party support.

diabiosx · Jun 25, 2010, 07:55 PM // 19:55

I just tested the build pugging ID1 with only 5necro spikers, crack armor no deepwound, I was able to kill the other team quite effectively, had trouble killing the ghostly(always down to 20Health) but im pretty sure with 6spikers it would be enough.

5spikers,1soul twist, 2monks.

the soul twist was pretty useless

diabiosx · Jun 25, 2010, 08:02 PM // 20:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

So exactly like oldschool bloodspike?

The 6-8 caster spike builds really don't have all that much variation over the basic concept:1-2 spike skills, rest of the bars filled with defense and party support.

I thought the old school blood spike was brilliant and was very hard to kill if played by the right team.

Krill · Jun 25, 2010, 09:10 PM // 21:10

I ran it quite a bit last year. It's got to be the easiest spike to call other than blood spam and wasn't too bad when it first appeared, but the aegis nerf and IWAY / sway builds becoming meta made it not so great.

Things I noticed:

Caller - Shadow shroud helps push kills, but if your minions are depleted you'll wish you had BiP.

Necros - A lot of puggers get lazy with their minion production and / or forget to use AoL in a 40/40 for minions at the start. You should have at least 15 minions when the gate opens but again, people are lazy / stupid. Then you have people who spike from their 40/40 and give it away and don't use their support skills between spikes. In all fairness it is hard for the prot necros to prot decently and spike though. Usually the first few spikes are great and then start to get sloppier, but that's fine if you get kills strait away and possibly some multi-kills.

Maybe you run it differently but I never ran it with snares. You can easily win unholy temples without snares because your spike can multi-kill body blockers, but here again people all too often put on their stupid hats and don't listen.

And against IWAY / sway it's always a battle keeping the spirits down unless you have someone trustworthy doing it. Against this BB sway crap someone will usually just sit on the caller the whole match unless you have a stability ward or 2 AoS's.

It's a fun build though

Oh, and on your original point of replacing AoL with something else. Maybe you could do it more efficiently with sac'd minions at the start but what other necro elites are really worth having in a death spike? Provided everyone uses their AoL's on recharge you'll always have at least some minions regardless of corpses and it also boost death +1.

Zodiac Meteor · Jun 25, 2010, 09:32 PM // 21:32

Another huge problem is that the casters are squishy. A balanced team can put more than enough pressure on two, three or even four targets. Plus seeing the caller is a cake walk. It doesn't matter if you have a backup caller or not, killing him easily delays the spike.

As mentioned the minions provide energy for the channeling monks, the minions can put loads of pressure but that wouldn't matter if the monks can spam away.

Pulling minions + nuke. Taking your entire army away with a will protected player and if your lucky you can also get an added bonus of a failed attempted spike.

Gift3d · Jun 25, 2010, 10:04 PM // 22:04

most of my ha career has been spent monking, and protting vs lich spike is ridiculously easy. spread out and prot where the obnoxious big black ball is. you could just spam spirit bond and heal party for funzies, all those minions make it so much easier to monk against, free energy EVERYWHERE. used to love that. sometimes a spike would get through cause of shadow shroud, but by the time that shit recharges enough times to actually get enough spikes through to win a match, all those 60al necros would be face down in the dirt. i only see really bad teams losing to lich spike. for the amount of coordination it would require just to live long enough (a really, really long time) to actually win a match vs. a team with common sense, i've gotta say the entire build in itself doesn't have much of a point. there are so many 321 builds that are exponentially better than it, and that's why it dropped out of the meta.

Krill · Jun 25, 2010, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Another huge problem is that the casters are squishy.

This wasn't a huge problem before the aegis nerf and to a lesser extent PwK. A dual aegis chain + 3 PwK's, life / recovery / recoup on 3 necro healers was a considerable amount of defense. Also, squishy is a relative term. With the minion master (in this build obviously) or tormentor insignias and a shield or the old +24 AL PwK a necro suddenly has a decent amount of armor. Idk why players like borat still advocate survivors insignias over more armor, the only surviving you'll do with them is degen on a split. Different discussion though.

Killed u man · Jun 26, 2010, 05:10 PM // 17:10

I dont always want survivor over armor. Its just that PvP has become very spike based, and with the introduction of cracked armor -which reduces just about every 60 AL target to having 60 AL despite what insignias they run, armor generally isnt worth it.

Normally, you`d always want armor over HP to reduce the general stress on the heal monk. But when you have the build filled with healers, aswell as party healing and defence, you simply dont need that extra 10 armor.

On top of that, because you have so much defence, the weakness of every spike build simply is another spike build. You cant outpressure an rspike, you have to spike them out one by one. The same goes for the old ritspike, bspam and just about every other spike.

And it is pretty well known that HP > Armor against spike builds, hence I rather run HP in most of my spike biulds,

Grape Bird · Jun 26, 2010, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

I dont always want survivor over armor. Its just that PvP has become very spike based, and with the introduction of cracked armor -which reduces just about every 60 AL target to having 60 AL despite what insignias they run, armor generally isnt worth it.

Normally, you`d always want armor over HP to reduce the general stress on the heal monk. But when you have the build filled with healers, aswell as party healing and defence, you simply dont need that extra 10 armor.

On top of that, because you have so much defence, the weakness of every spike build simply is another spike build. You cant outpressure an rspike, you have to spike them out one by one. The same goes for the old ritspike, bspam and just about every other spike.

And it is pretty well known that HP > Armor against spike builds, hence I rather run HP in most of my spike biulds,

This only applies to 60AR characters. 70AR+ will still benefit from using +armor insigs and weapons.

Reverend Dr · Jun 27, 2010, 06:37 AM // 06:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabiosx

I thought the old school blood spike was brilliant and was very hard to kill if played by the right team.

Assuming you had a good team a fight against blood spike went through 3 phases and this really didn't matter how good] a blood spike team they were, that build capped out in effectiveness very quickly.

Phase 1: prevent the spikes, this was mostly up to the infuse monk but could be assisted by cry of frustration

Phase 2: damage set in, your damage dealers put their blood spike on the defensive so much so that even if they can successfully spike you can still rez fast enough to keep them on defensive

Phase 3: they wipe

Then again these three phases are the same phases that any pure caster spike goes through.

Narcin · Jul 03, 2010, 05:51 AM // 05:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krill

This wasn't a huge problem before the aegis nerf and to a lesser extent PwK. A dual aegis chain + 3 PwK's, life / recovery / recoup on 3 necro healers was a considerable amount of defense. Also, squishy is a relative term. With the minion master (in this build obviously) or tormentor insignias and a shield or the old +24 AL PwK a necro suddenly has a decent amount of armor. Idk why players like borat still advocate survivors insignias over more armor, the only surviving you'll do with them is degen on a split. Different discussion though.

The biggest defense this build has is weapons, not PwK. With 3+ weapon spells, there shouldn't be a survival issue. Also survivor's are MUCH better, the plus armor only prevents so much damage, nothing significant. More health helps much more than the armor.

superraptors · Jul 03, 2010, 10:49 AM // 10:49

if ur playing a balanced team with 5 spikers using 2 second opening skills ur not gonna get many spikes through.

Secondly survivor is never better than armor insignias unless ur vsing degen. You will put less strain on your monks if u ran armor...

*lemming* · Jul 03, 2010, 11:21 AM // 11:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Narcin

The biggest defense this build has is weapons, not PwK. With 3+ weapon spells, there shouldn't be a survival issue. Also survivor's are MUCH better, the plus armor only prevents so much damage, nothing significant. More health helps much more than the armor.

You are wrong.

Killed u man · Jul 03, 2010, 12:11 PM // 12:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by lemming

You are wrong.

For HA? I wouldn't know. In GvG, (on those few occasions I guest) I always try and use the fitting armor insignia, because in GvG, matches stretch out for minutes and minutes.

In HA, your general match lasts no longer than 2-3 minutes, and how much damage will your +10 armor have prevented in those 2-3 minutes? Definatly more than 40 (If you were to run HP insignias), but but it won't be a whole lot, on top of the fact that you have 40 less HP on a spike.

And thats ignoring the fact that there is a shitton of hexways, bbsways and spike builds (spike, aura of the lich, bspam and mesmerspike) in HA, all of which have armor ignoring damage or cracked armor.

Though, in the end, I'm more of a "If you lost with HP insignias, you probably also would have lost running armor insignias", and the opposite isn't any less true either. Just like the HP +29/+30 shield discussion, the difference is so minor (in HA) it really doesn't matter. And since it doesn't matter, I'dd rather see everyone with as high as HP as possible...

Fahhhh · Jul 03, 2010, 05:19 PM // 17:19

http://www.teamquitter.com/phpBB2/vi...fda1 47bd3c5a

I don't HA or GvG much anymore as all my buddies have left this game so I could be wrong but I'm fairly certain +armor is always better than +health in 8v8