Curse

Nephele · Nov 03, 2011, 12:16 AM // 00:16

My first post, so bear with me. My 7h team is built around my warrior main. I recently changed from a 3-4 necro setup to a more mesmer heavy build, and it's been great to me so far. Any criticism welcome, I threw the build together just to try something different and was surprised at how well it works. I use a minion master (and my warrior) for meat shields, a 3 mesmer backbone for damage and disruption, necro healer plus E/Mo prot spammer to keep us alive, and a channeling rit for damage and splinter weapon.

First update: Added enchantment removal to Panic and Shared Burden mesmers.
Second update: Ditched keystone for smite monk, changed up Panic a bit.

Minion Master: N/P 12+3+1 Death Magic, 10 Command, 8+1 Soul Reaping
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Aura of the Lich - Animate Bone Horror - Withering Aura - Masochism - Signet of Lost Souls - "Find Their Weakness!" - "Stand Your Ground!" - "Fall Back!"

Necro Healer: N/Rt 12+1+1 Soul Reaping, 12 Restoration Magic
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Xinrae's Weapon - Spirit Light - Mend Body and Soul - Protective Was Kaolai - Rejuvenation - Foul Feast - Signet of Lost Souls - Flesh of My Flesh

Panic Mesmer: Me/Rt 12+1+1 Domination, 10+1 Fast Casting, 8+1 Inspiration Magic, 2 Restoration Magic
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Panic - Unnatural Signet - Cry of Frustration - Mistrust - Signet of Disruption - Leech Signet - Power Drain - Death Pact Signet

Shared Burden Mesmer: Me/Rt 11+1+1 Illusion Magic, 10 Restoration Magic, 7+1 Fast Casting, 7+1 Inspiration Magic
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Shared Burden - Wandering Eye - Signet of Clumsiness - Spirit Light - Protective Was Kaolai - Hex Eater Signet - Drain Enchantment - Death Pact Signet

Smite Monk: Mo/Me Smiting Prayers 12+1+1, Divine Favor 10+1, Inspiration Magic 8
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Ray of Judgement - Reversal of Damage - Smite Hex - Smite Condition - Smiter's Boon - Leech Signet - Waste Not, Want Not - Strength Of Honor

Channeling Rit: Rt/X 12+1+1 Channeling Magic, 12+1 Restoration Magic, 3 Spawning Power
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Signet of Spirits - Ancestors' Rage - Splinter Weapon - Spirit Siphon - Spirit Light - Mend Body and Soul - Protective Was Kaolai -Life

ER Ele: E/Mo 12+3+1 Energy Storage 12 Protection Prayers
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Ether Renewal - Aura of Restoration - Aegis - Protective Spirit - Shield of Absorption - Spirit Bond - Mend Condition - Reverse Hex

Jim Beam · Nov 03, 2011, 01:21 AM // 01:21

well i always try to fit strength of honor somewhere whenever i melee

turbo234 · Nov 03, 2011, 01:31 AM // 01:31

it looks ok and all but..how exactly is this melee support with only a few minor skills that are used on the melee.

The Drunkard · Nov 03, 2011, 02:01 AM // 02:01

A couple of recommendations:

- Ditch Xinrae's weapon on the necro. Heroes will spam it when you take barely any damage, which will damage splinter's effectiveness.

- I feel like the minion master would be stronger as a N/Mo than /p. With /Mo you can maintain SoH, giving you a damage boost, and smite hex, which is nice holy damage. Switch withering out for D-Nova

- Panic, Shared/healing, and Keystone/healing is overkill on defensive, and very weak with damage output. Honestly Panic+Ineptitude is all you need for a mesmer backline. On the panic bar, I'd switch the sig for Power Spike- it hits almost as hard as mistrust and is fairly cheap. Switch out shatter hex for unnatural sig.

- If you want to run shared, you want to make your team composition more AoE orientated (IE: RoJ, MoP support, Invoke), to maximize the crowd control that Shared gives. Grab another copy of A-rage and splinter instead of the healing spec.

- If you want to run keystone on a hero (which I don't recommend because of the bad AI), don't put healing sigs on the bar- heroes will prioritize it over the damage. Replace bane sig with sig of clumsiness- it's superior in every way, shape, and form.

What exactly are you running on your bar?

Nephele · Nov 03, 2011, 03:48 AM // 03:48

Going to try a full smite monk to see how that works. I tried an esurge in place of the keystone, wasn't happy. I noticed that my heroes will try not to replace a weapon spell once it's cast on you, so losing splinter weapon because of Xinrae's hasn't been an issue. Plus I don't know what I'd swap it with anyway. I run /P on my MM cause I just like fall back and stand your ground that much. And every time I give him death nova he spams it like mad instead of running with my group so I gave it up.

My warrior is doing W/A enduring daggers. I don't really have a set build, beyond WE and the 3 dagger attacks. I usually run SY though. Thinking of going to enduring axe.

Premium Unleaded · Nov 03, 2011, 03:58 AM // 03:58

Weapon spell priority is that they will always override an offensive spell (eg. splinter) with a defensive spell (xw/wor/wow etc) if it's required, and never override the other way round.

Lanier · Nov 03, 2011, 04:16 AM // 04:16

I use a physical support hero team on my physical chars too. However... your heroes aren't exactly geared toward physical support. Mesmers don't mesh well at all with physway teams, so i would ditch both for another physical and a orders/curses support necro.

Also, I have found the biggest counter to physway teams as being anti-physical hexes and conditions. You want to be able to clean these off the physicals immediately. As such, I would drop RoJ on the smiter for empathetic removal. RoJ is only useful in ball + spike teams anyway.

Finally, death nova is too good not to have on the mm. He should be spamming it like mad. If he's lagging behind because of death nova spamming, thats fine - simply wait a second or two for him to catch up before entering battle.

Premium Unleaded · Nov 03, 2011, 04:55 AM // 04:55

He's not looking for a physway team setup given his initial composition.
Mes bots do fine supporting melee. Shatter hex for example seems to be on a much higher priority than compared to cure/smite hex, and shared burden makes bodyblocking much easier because the consequences of loose runners becomes far less problematic.
Orders are also mediocre at best when there is only going to be one person, the player, attacking. And since he is a warrior, ball and spike just becomes an issue of whether you're bothered to set up or just feel like going straight in.

Lanier · Nov 03, 2011, 05:20 AM // 05:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Premium Unleaded

He's not looking for a physway team setup given his initial composition.
Mes bots do fine supporting melee. Shatter hex for example seems to be on a much higher priority than compared to cure/smite hex, and shared burden makes bodyblocking much easier because the consequences of loose runners becomes far less problematic.
Orders are also mediocre at best when there is only going to be one person, the player, attacking. And since he is a warrior, ball and spike just becomes an issue of whether you're bothered to set up or just feel like going straight in.

Physway and caster-damage builds do not hybridize well together... at all. If you're going to focus on damage from mesmers/invoke-eles/RoJ, you don't bother with physical support. If you're going to focus on damage from melee support, you don't use eles. My advice would be to focus more on the physical support, and if this is the case, then the points i made hold true. Otherwise, the player should forget about melee support completely.

Shatter hex is literally the only mesmer skill that synergizes with a melee support build. Your reasoning for shared burden is stretch, especially for builds that just involve running in and attacking targets (which is what I assume every hero build to be unless the player specifies that he intends to ball + spike targets). If you had read my last post, you would have noticed that I suggested adding a physical hero to the team, thus giving two heroes for orders to support. Orders support when you have two physicals on a team is good.

Laylat · Nov 03, 2011, 05:46 AM // 05:46

I would highly recommend you bring Mark of Pain. It works incredibly well if you bring Hundred Blades and Whirlwind Attack. Heroes don't use it too well, so I recommend micro-ing it if you want a ball-and-spike battle everytime.

I don't recommend Reversal of Damage, since Heroes tend to spam it.

Xsiriss · Nov 03, 2011, 09:02 AM // 09:02

That's a pretty standard build set up . It's not really worth basing it around physical unless you have more physical party members. Take a command paragon instead of the smite monk and earth dervish instead of the illusion (armor of sanctity+sand shards are worth it). Then on the minion master spec into curses for barbs+MoP (best to micro barbs).

Denar · Nov 03, 2011, 02:13 PM // 14:13

Put the prot spells on the minion master (and give it bone minions, not horrors), and then you can take another RoJ monk instead of the ER prot (great if you're running hammer), or an ST if you are worried about defense.