Curse

Akimb0 · Mar 22, 2007, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Hi, I'm just about to get Master of Whispers as another necromancer into my team, he's going to be set up as a Curse "spammer", While Olias is set up to use Blood magic, and I myself use Death Magic.

What I wanted advice on is curse skills to use, I mean Barbs is nice, and so is Mark of Pain, what I find a lot though is that my targets die before the curse really had much effect ( Apart from earlier where 8 bone fiends spat at one guy I'd cursed and dealt 240 shadow damage in around a second to eveything near them. 8x30 not 240 each xD ) This -is- against level 16+ opponents as well, yet they die quite fast, I suppose I wouldn't notice a massive difference until He's set up and casting his curses where they're needed. Still, the question remains the same, which curse skills do people prefer?

---- Please don't mention spireful spirit in this thread. I won't be using it

----

Stormlord Alex · Mar 22, 2007, 05:05 PM // 17:05

Other than SS?

Feast of Corruption is pretty good for raw damage - combining it with AoE hexes, some degen and some debilitating hexes makes for a well rounded character.

Reaper's Mark (not a Curses skill though...) is good for the degen aspect, if you want to go down that road with Whispers.

Hmm... Weaken Knees could see some use given the current AI, but it really isn't too great for an elite...

The only other one that would be decent for general PvE would be Signet of Suffering, with multiple necros it's easy to hit the hex-limit and get some impressive damage out of it... FoC would still be better for the AoE aspect though... Meh

Other than that it seems to be Enchant-hate and E-denial for Curse elites, enemies don't take enough dangerous enchants for enchant-removers to be effective and they're far too numerous and... well... easy for E-denial to be of use.

Batou of Nine · Mar 22, 2007, 05:11 PM // 17:11

Don't be an MM yourself. The Ai is 10x better at it then you, and on top of that can select minions 10x faster then you for Death Nova and Jagged Bones. Olias is always my MM...hehe. Unless, of course, you really like to MM youself...

Like the previous post, for Whiskers, i'd go with FoC. Pack on Suffering, Vocal Minority, and maybe one other AoE hex, and he will go to town. He wont always use the combo correctly, but when he does it works great. Even when he just spams the curses, their affects are still quite helpful to the team. Maybe us Soul Barbs on him too, since most targets will always get some sort of curse applied to them...

Just a few of my thoughts. Hope it helps!
cheers.

Akimb0 · Mar 22, 2007, 05:12 PM // 17:12

So far Feast of Corruption is the only elite skill I think I'd take from curses, they're really not that good. I'll make a quick list later on when I've decided what I'll likely use. Highly possible I'll use Flesh Golem as his elite, switching it to Jagged Bones when I get to it, and using normal curse spells to enhance my attacks in general - e.g Barbs, soul barbs, mark of pain, shadow of fear etc.

Carinae · Mar 22, 2007, 05:33 PM // 17:33

For direct damage, I've been running Desecrate, Defile and FoC with RH and/or Shadow of Fear as my cover hex.

Charge a mob and land RH on the melee guys, especially the Dervishes. Wait for them to aggro to a target, even you. Then pop off both Desecrates, then fire FoC.

Dervishes really hate Desecrate.

Degen takes too long, e-denial is useless in PvE, long lasting hexes also take too long.

Another excellent AoE debuff to bring though is Enfeebling Blood. Weakness is good.

Lord Natural · Mar 22, 2007, 05:43 PM // 17:43

AoE curses are pretty effective in PvE. Give him Feast of Corruption, Desecrate Enchantments, some AoE hexes with glyph of lesser energy and he will be pumping out some decent damage and taking some pressure off by slowing down melee.

Dostyvesky · Mar 22, 2007, 06:40 PM // 18:40

I agree with the poster that suggested making one of the heros the MM and you go curses. I breezed through Nightfall with Olias as MM and I ran arcane echo, SS, Mark Of Pain, Insidious Parasite, Reckless Haste, Enfeebling Blood, Desecrate Enchantments and Capture Sig. I would vary whether I echoed SS or mark of pain depending on the situation.

I've never seen as much AOE damage as Mark of Pain combined with my party + minions attacking one enemy.

I've spent a lot of time being a MM and agree with previous poster that a human can't match the AI, plus I find it more fun to play not having to worry with all the upkeep. Also you can optimize the choices of when to echo SS or mark of pain in a way that the AI can not.

Edit - I had forgotten about the "not SS" part of the thread, sorry about that.

BladeDVD · Mar 22, 2007, 11:48 PM // 23:48

Enfeebling Blood plus Insidious Parasite is a nice combo for any melee creatures attacking you.

SS and FOC are the main damage dealing elites though. If you can't use SS because you don't have Prophecies, then that won't help you.

Maybe go with Icy Veins/Reapers's Mark/Wail of Doom from the Soul Reaping line, and use non elite curse skills? And Grenth's Balance is unlinked. But that's better combined with Demonic Flesh from the Blood line to give you more health.

Vocal Minority is fun to use on warriors and paragons too.

Zodiak · Mar 23, 2007, 04:25 PM // 16:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dostyvesky

I agree with the poster that suggested making one of the heros the MM and you go curses. I breezed through Nightfall with Olias as MM and I ran arcane echo, SS, Mark Of Pain, Insidious Parasite, Reckless Haste, Enfeebling Blood, Desecrate Enchantments and Capture Sig. I would vary whether I echoed SS or mark of pain depending on the situation.

I've never seen as much AOE damage as Mark of Pain combined with my party + minions attacking one enemy.

I've spent a lot of time being a MM and agree with previous poster that a human can't match the AI, plus I find it more fun to play not having to worry with all the upkeep. Also you can optimize the choices of when to echo SS or mark of pain in a way that the AI can not.

Edit - I had forgotten about the "not SS" part of the thread, sorry about that.

I've actually found it very nice to MM yourself using Flesh golem as an elite with your usual MM skills have have Olias be Minion Support.

He can cause 10x more death nova if you focus yourself on being MM and have him cast Death Nova and Jagged Bones on YOUR minions

Think of it as Damage efficiancy through task management.

Seeing as he doesnt need to focus on making minions, he can focus on blocking them up and bringing them back

Its a very fare trade since you get more Death Novas and those alone do 1005 AOE dmg and AOE poison.

Give it a try

ZenRgy · Mar 23, 2007, 05:31 PM // 17:31

Reaper's mark OWNZZZZZZZ!

erfweiss · Mar 24, 2007, 09:21 AM // 09:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by BladeDVD

Enfeebling Blood plus Insidious Parasite is a nice combo for any melee creatures attacking you.

SS and FOC are the main damage dealing elites though. If you can't use SS because you don't have Prophecies, then that won't help you.

Actually, he won't be able to use Feast of Corruption, either. It's a Prophecies elite. (I finally got around to capturing that tonight. Capped in Dreadnaughts Drift (north of Snake Dance)