Curse

Photeus · Sep 30, 2005, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Flourish: (once Guru skill site comes back up, I'll try to update this skill description, until then please check it out first if you don't understand the skill already)

I first wanted to try this skill with a Ranger/Warrior hammer build that I saw on Guru here. At some point they changed flourish to be linked to strength. That made it so that a Hammer warrior running Flourish was just silly since Oath shot alone would be better in all possible ways, and would at least synergize off of Expertise. All Flourish would do is with 4 hammer attack skills, maybe net you 2 extra energy and recharge them. Not bad I guess, but not good enough, plenty of better things.

I had Flourish, and wanted it to work. It was one of those elites I was excited to get, and a fairly difficult one to get at that, compared to others. I next tried a high strength Hammer warrior with flourish, since hammer line skills had high skill recharges. Poor at best. The energy regain of 6 just wasn't enough to allow the spamming of the skills. Besides that, just getting the build to work efficiently at that ammount of energy wasn't happening.

I finally gave up on the skill when I found I could cycle flourish with 5 random strenght skills....and put out random and hardly synergizing effects. Some of the skills recharged TOO fast and I could flourish in time before they recharged, net loss in energy needed, so the builds quickly lost steam. Adrenaline reliance would have been better.

I gave up on Flourish and decided it was terrible. It just didn't run well. With the few attack skills in the game it synergized well with, it just wasn't enough of a punch to warrent running Flourish over another skill. It was like running a build with the former Mind Freeze (before recently updated) instead of going with Mind Burn or Mind Shock. It was plain stupid and that's that.

However, I recently decided to play with Flourish again...because I was playing with a build, moved my cursor over Flourish and realized at level 14 strength, it offers 7. This meant that at level 16 (I don't have my super strength rune yet) it *could* give 8. However, I first tried it and ran the numbers. With 3, decent recharge skills, I figured I could Flourish after spamming them, spam them again, and Final Thrust, for a powerful spike. It worked decently. I choose Bull Strike, Seeking Blade, and Savage Slash. They all had different and interesting effects which would give the warrior extra diversity, and damage. As I said, it worked well...and I was impressed.

If this skill can be used and recharge 8 energy per skill recharged, it'll be great. With it, you could just keep on 2 decent attack skills (mana costing) and flourish, and be able to run those skills constantly with a total net-gain of energy (Flourish: 5, Skill 1: 5, Skill 2: 5 = 15 total, but Flourish gives you 16 -that's 1 free and two skills recharged, very hard to pull off) and still be able to keep more skills on your bar to be more useful than before.

That is my rant and my continuing examination of Flourish.

lord_shar · Oct 01, 2005, 05:49 AM // 05:49

I just got this last night and decided to play around with it. My findings were pretty much the same as yours:. Flourish doesn't work well with energy-based melee attack skills since most of them have fast recycle times. Flourish actually needs slower recycle times to form energy and recharge synergies. Also, flourish doesn't benefit adrenelin-based attack skills at all.

My suggestion to ANET for making Flourish more elite-skill-worthy: give it +2 adrenelin per uncharged adrenelin skill in the skill bar in addition to its other current effects.

Suuk · Oct 19, 2005, 08:22 AM // 08:22

I ran this in my W/Me build with hamstring, savage, distracting blow and seeking blade (and arcane conundrum). Was pretty funny. Still not convinced that flourish is a good elite for me though.

Sum Gai · Oct 21, 2005, 01:24 AM // 01:24

I saw a W/R with Flourish and Bow Attacks in CA one time.

Tainted Poon · Nov 13, 2005, 02:30 AM // 02:30

Wouldnt using this skill for warrior's cunning and beserkers stance own and skills such as that?

Racthoh · Nov 13, 2005, 03:09 AM // 03:09

I originally had an idea running a r/w with Flourish using the bow and pet interrupts. However, even though Flourish says "Recharge all attack skills", "Pet AttacK" didn't fall into that category and I was rather displeased. Could've done it with Oath Shot, but the 20 second recharge on it compared to Flourish's 10 was too much of a difference.

Morganas · Nov 13, 2005, 04:28 AM // 04:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sum Gai

I saw a W/R with Flourish and Bow Attacks in CA one time.

Considering I'm the only person I've ever seen run that build, and I've done it with some regularity, it was probably me. Terrible build despite the fact that strength affects bow attacks, but it's fun to mess around with for the suprise factor.

gou · Nov 14, 2005, 03:31 AM // 03:31

my hammer warrior cycles through various builds depending on my mood, but my flourish build is a favourite simply for the massive damage:
tactics 16
hammer 9 (to meet requirement)
enough in strength to get flourish to 5 energy gain
the spare in strength or secondary profession

balanced stance (to prevent the knockdown from...)
desperation blow (+42 damage and a random condition)
thrill of victory (+42 damage if you have more health than target)
flourish (to recharge the above 2 attacks)

repeating this I can get about 5 or 6 desperation blows before balanced stance ends and by then I have plenty of adrenaline to keep me going till the next balanced stance.

desperation blow this way does 100-130 damage to a monk in pvp

Xaero Gouki Kriegor · Jul 20, 2006, 09:07 AM // 09:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by gou

my hammer warrior cycles through various builds depending on my mood, but my flourish build is a favourite simply for the massive damage:
tactics 16
hammer 9 (to meet requirement)
enough in strength to get flourish to 5 energy gain
the spare in strength or secondary profession

balanced stance (to prevent the knockdown from...)
desperation blow (+42 damage and a random condition)
thrill of victory (+42 damage if you have more health than target)
flourish (to recharge the above 2 attacks)

repeating this I can get about 5 or 6 desperation blows before balanced stance ends and by then I have plenty of adrenaline to keep me going till the next balanced stance.

desperation blow this way does 100-130 damage to a monk in pvp

i did the exact same thing, i loaded up 4 energy skills, unloaded on taht 100 al attack dummy with balanced stance on, hit flourish did it on more time and he was dead

Munanko Roha · Jul 20, 2006, 01:44 PM // 13:44

Flourish works pretty well with sword, I use to cycle through Savage Slash, Pure Sword and its Factions counterpart with Swordmanship at 16 and Strenght at 13. It's an awesome damaging chain (Pure and counterpart can't be blocked or evaded if you're not in a stance, definite plus against evaders and Guardian) and it allows me to use Final Thrust as my only adrenaline based skill without the drawback of losing all of the adrenaline.

When PVPing Pure and counterpart can be switched with Hamstring and Bull's Strike and still be very effective.

Not to speak of the many W/A builds relying on Flourish to chain dagger attacks...

CHUIU · Jul 20, 2006, 06:32 PM // 18:32

I think it works best with sword. I've used this a few times when factions first came out and the outcome is a consistant high-damage per hit.

Pure Strike
Jaizhenju Strike
Seeking Blade (or Wild Blow)
Flourish
Distracting Blow (or Wild Blow or Bulls Strike or a 2nd class condition removal skill like Antidote Signet)
Healing Signet
Rush (or Sprint if you're bringing Wild Blow)
Resurrection Signet

Attributes:
Strength: 12 (at least)
Swordsmanship: 12 (or 14 if you want to use a superior)
Tactics: 11

And you can chain them pretty well with little cooldown between uses. When im using this pretty much 80% of all my hits are with attack skills so 80% of all my hits are with strength's 12% AP (sometimes combined with 20% AP). Distracting blow slot is stuck after Flourish because I intend to use whatever skill is there not as a spammable but when I need it.

Dagoth Umbra · Jul 20, 2006, 07:36 PM // 19:36

I capped Flourish just because I wanted to cap every single elite for prophecies, at first I thought the same, that Flourish sucked, never used it. But recently, in factions, I was hacked and lost 400k, so I said, screw it, and finally decided to spend money on skills. Spent 120k on skill and cap sigs. So I realized I now had factions warrior skills, so I went throught and looked at Flourish again, and realized it could be useful if used right. So I made this build, and ran it while doing boreas seabed mission.

Pure strike
Jaizhenju Strike
Power attack
Flourish
Sig of Cap
Galrath Slash
Silverwing Slash
Signet of Strength

I then capped Dragon Slash during that mission, MUAHAHAAHAHAHA, Godly Damage, would use the 3 energy attack skills then Flourish, yes they will not have recharge before you hit Floursh, I put power attack third for a reason, maybe do it again, by that time, I hit the adrenal skills, which would finally charge Dragon slash, with would then recharge the other adrenal skills, so that another Flourish combo would charge the two adrenal attacks, and when those were used, it would charge dragon slash. I think Zu Hanuku pissed itself before I killed it

Lowly Peasant · Jul 24, 2006, 04:19 PM // 16:19

Believe it or not, I find the skill fairly useful for the use of an assassin. Most Assassin skills have recharges ranging from 8 seconds to 20. Since Assassins don't really have to worry about energy, this really helps when a target die's mid combo and you can't want to wait until your starter move recharges so you can attack the next target. It's more reliable than Mobius strike since your target doesn't have to be half dead for it to work.