Curse

Daesu · Jul 04, 2012, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by ultimak719

Your second version looks good. I disagree about the minions/spirits. You have your ST rit which works best without minions, because they take the prots from the spirits as well. Also, the point of this is to vanquish quickly. Dedicating a hero to making minions which are a detriment to the team as a whole instead of straight damage for faster mob kills is stupid.

That is a common wrong thinking. There are several reasons why:

1. If you take a MM hero, most of the MM builds would include prots like Protective Spirit. If you already have Protective Spirit then bringing both ST and a MM with Protective Spirit would be overkill for most vanquishes. Therefore in most situations, you would only pick either one.

2. There are many different types of MM. What you are thinking of is called a minion bomber and not all MMs are minion bombers. There are MM builds that do not carry death nova so they do try to keep their minions alive as much as possible so as to maintain a wall of flesh against your enemies. An ST would still synergize well with that, assuming that the MM does not bring prots on his own.

3. Even if you have an ST rit with a minion bomber who doesnt carry prots, that is not too big a detriment. The worst that can happen is that the minions would live longer and you have a stronger wall. They death nova less often but you have a stronger defense, not necessarily an all-bad deal.

4. Yes, a minion bomber has a problem of lagging behind to cast 2s death nova. But that can be easily solved by flagging, so it is stilll worth bringing him considering his usefulness.

5. You have a team of squishes with no minions or spirits to hold the line in HM. How would it perform in the tougher areas? Minions and spirits provide a good source of defense by taking away hits from you. Minions also take potential hexes from you. They are very useful for survivability in tough areas, especially for an all-squishies team.

6. A good vanquishing build should be scalable. They should be able to scale down to 6 or even 4-man areas, not just for 8-man areas, as a matter of universability. What would the 4-man version of this build be like? A MM would shine in a 4-man area much more than a ST rit by providing the much needed additional bodies for both defense and offense.

Aria Frost · Jul 05, 2012, 09:28 AM // 09:28

@Drk Dervish
Also, Panic could also make Overload damage trigger less frequently, due to activation time shortened by the rupts. Using a 20% ench staff on BiP is something I was totally missing... but taking out PwK means I should bring some other party healing. Thus, some possible replacements I'm thinking of could be:

1) Bringing Heal Party on UA mesmer (taking advantage from FC reduced activation time and the UA +15% healing bonus) and pairing it with Drain Delusions to compensate its high energy cost. Another healing spell like Patient Spirit could be added in order to avoid hero wasting Heal Party to just heal BiP's sacs. This would mean changing the attributes values to something like: Dom 11+1+3, Insp 9+1, FC 8+1, Healing 8 and renouncing to the Illusion skills (or being forced to move them to the Esurge hero).

2) Taking Spirit to Flesh on ST hero. I don't know if and how well heroes use it, however could be dangerous if it destroys Shelter while receiving high damage.

3) Dropping the SF Resto hero for a Minion Master with Heal Party, Dwayna's Sorrow and another 1 or 2 direct healings using UA as elite, allowing to bring another Esurge (or something else) on the current UA mesmer. This would also solve the lack of a frontline.

@Daesu
About scalability, this can scale down to 6-man areas but not so well to 4-man party areas, in such areas I simply drop all the heroes to load MB protter, SoS resto and SoGM (I just did it for the daily ZV at The Breach).

I should say that everything is ok while Shelter is up, on the contrary my team could be easily in trouble against hard hitting foes, so I'll probably evaluate replacing the SF resto hero to address the frontline absence.
Maybe something like this:

Daesu · Jul 05, 2012, 05:31 PM // 17:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aria Frost

@Daesu
About scalability, this can scale down to 6-man areas but not so well to 4-man party areas, in such areas I simply drop all the heroes to load MB protter, SoS resto and SoGM (I just did it for the daily ZV at The Breach).

Good idea, that is what I have been using for my 4-man areas as well.

Yes, adding some meat shields would be an improvement.

Jeydra · Jul 07, 2012, 08:26 AM // 08:26

Your teambuild makes no sense. Inherent contradictions I can see:

1. You're running Weaken Armour with only one armour-sensitive damage source.
2. The player bar has no chance of having enough energy. You have neither GoLE nor Fire Attunement; even with BiP support there is no way you can keep casting the 25e Meteor Shower. The other spells aren't cheap either.
3. You've got 3x Shatter Delusions with only one hex that has 20s cooldown.
4. Searing Flames needs to be stacked to be effective. You only have one of them.
5. Overload contradicts Cry of Frustration, Guilt and Mistrust.

I don't know what to make of your build; it's just ... really disorganized.

Aria Frost · Jul 09, 2012, 12:23 PM // 12:23

Quote:

1. You're running Weaken Armour with only one armour-sensitive damage source.

You're forgetting that my elemental spells too deal armor-sensitive damage.

Quote:

2. The player bar has no chance of having enough energy. You have neither GoLE nor Fire Attunement; even with BiP support there is no way you can keep casting the 25e Meteor Shower. The other spells aren't cheap either.

This happens sometimes, but often I don’t need a second MS cast. I'm open to improvements here, keeping the ability to ball/snare foes (maybe AP earth is a better choice?).

Quote:

3. You've got 3x Shatter Delusions with only one hex that has 20s cooldown.

I don't understand what you mean, can you clarify this?

Quote:

4. Searing Flames needs to be stacked to be effective. You only have one of them.

My hero has Glyph of Immolation, so that SF damage triggers even if foes aren’t already burning. Moreover, hero AI is very good at keeping GoI up before casting SF.

Quote:

5. Overload contradicts Cry of Frustration, Guilt and Mistrust.

(Forget about Guilt, it’s not much needed) It could be, but I’m not sure about this. CoF doesn’t interrupt everything all the time, so Overload has its own usage opportunities. However, consider that I'd like to keep the Overload+SD combo somehow.

This one is the latest version I’m running:

UA MB optionals are: Putrid Explosion/Flesh/Bile for damage, Healing Ribbon, Patient Spirit, Heal Other for healing.

DomIll Comm elite optionals are: Energy Surge, Shared Burden.

Dom optionals are: Shatter Hex, Spiritual Pain.