Curse

Alay · Jul 12, 2011, 06:23 PM // 18:23

Made it all the way to The Fury in Foundry for first time. Quite a nice setup!

I Perma Mobs · Jul 12, 2011, 09:37 PM // 21:37

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That's what I use and still use.

I cleared whole DoA NM with it, HM is possible too. Also did: UW NM (4h was a pain though, required several tries), FoW HM, Urgoz NM (had never done it before, as said, HM is possible too without much trouble), Can't do Deep because of room 6's gate, but everything seems E-Z mode.
Also did Frostmaws HM twice, when I was testing the build. At neither run did I suffer a single casualty.

Alright, what I was thinking of when I built this together:
1. No need for paid-for heros
2. Heros never run out of energy
3. AoE damage>single target damage. Single target damage is never needed, because Spirits+minions+daggers+PI is more than enough to kill any End-Dungeon boss, including Fendi-Nin and Duncan.
4. Turning energy management into something useful: the best hex removal. 6 hex removing skills

5. Protection and safety>FB.
This is one of the most important factors. This build only really shows itself if you are a master at balling enemies. Knowing this, I thought and many runs proved it, that the speed and efficiency of this build increases if facing many enemies, not just a few. Thus, it was imperative that it could resist against 20+ enemies at the same time. With that, the AoE attacks' effects (Mistrust, Unnat signet, AR, DB, Cry, Inept mes, Icy veins, Putrib bile, theres a bunch of them lol) scale up and the overall speed increases alot more than the speed buff of Fall Back!.
I remember in the Urgoz run, I actually triggered the wardens in the room you can not trigger them by leaving a team mate behind, and I still cleared all of that without a single casualty XD wall block power.
6. Tanking is your friend.
With this build any caster can efficiently tank. You can Cycle through SoA and Healing Seed. Healing Seed is literally the beast. It has to be microed though. I also reccommend bringing IAU for the tank.

Variants: N/Me nuker instead of inept for ... well... no obvious advantage.
UA monk instead of HB, even with Hb heaven's delight might not be best choice.
ST rit instead of N/Mo bomber, problem is it'll need a third rit.

Time to Wrack Your Brains: This build also works with other classes other than assassin.
Warrior: 100b
Dervish: VoS +whirlwind attack+SY!
Paragon: Imbagon (your choice to keep splinter or not) or 100B para (lol?)
Ranger: Barrage with SY! +wards
Ritualist: DWG (note, this is jsut way too powerful). Bring some sort of auto protection or be ready to micro ur prots all the time. No splinter ofc
Mesmer: No splinter nor AR, I'd say run Panic and bring E-surge mes hero, but You can also go E-Surge if you prefer the numbers

(Or DWG)
Necro: SS nuker or something of the sort. As long as its alot of damage with armor ignoring capabilities.

Ele: this is probably where it shows the bad side: No AR nor splinter means the biggest part of the strong AoE damage you can do on purpose is away. You can't control where your damage is headed with an ele. However, a water ele with Deep Freeze or an Invoke Air CAN be worthwhile. Or just go DWG...

Monk: RoJ Smiter or DWG

Final Note: The advantage of this build is also that it is suited for EVERY place you go into, and it's really fast. So I guess it fits your description

flunders · Jul 13, 2011, 05:13 AM // 05:13

Illion: Why SoLS on the mesmers?

shanaya · Jul 13, 2011, 08:19 AM // 08:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by flunders

Illion: Why SoLS on the mesmers?

Its used in conjunction with Symbolic Celerity:

Enchantment Spell "For 36...55 seconds, all of your signets use your Fast Casting attribute instead of their normal attributes."

At FC = 12+1 this gives you 57 seconds when signets use the 12+1 FC attribute. This means a self-heal of 88 and an energy gain of 9 every time the mesmer can pop SoLS.

I tried this and have found that it works pretty well. Very vulnerable to enchantment stripping however.

shaygo · Jul 13, 2011, 05:18 PM // 17:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Perma Mobs

This is one of the most important factors. This build only really shows itself if you are a master at balling enemies. Knowing this, I thought and many runs proved it, that the speed and efficiency of this build increases if facing many enemies, not just a few. Thus, it was imperative that it could resist against 20+ enemies at the same time. With that, the AoE attacks' effects (Mistrust, Unnat signet, AR, DB, Cry, Inept mes, Icy veins, Putrib bile, theres a bunch of them lol) scale up and the overall speed increases alot more than the speed buff of Fall Back!.
...
6. Tanking is your friend.
With this build any caster can efficiently tank. You can Cycle through SoA and Healing Seed. Healing Seed is literally the beast. It has to be microed though. I also reccommend bringing IAU for the tank.
...
Time to Wrack Your Brains: This build also works with other classes other than assassin.
Warrior: 100b
Dervish: VoS +whirlwind attack+SY!
Paragon: Imbagon (your choice to keep splinter or not) or 100B para (lol?)
Ranger: Barrage with SY! +wards
Ritualist: DWG (note, this is jsut way too powerful). Bring some sort of auto protection or be ready to micro ur prots all the time. No splinter ofc
Mesmer: No splinter nor AR, I'd say run Panic and bring E-surge mes hero, but You can also go E-Surge if you prefer the numbers

(Or DWG)
Necro: SS nuker or something of the sort. As long as its alot of damage with armor ignoring capabilities.
Ele: Or just go DWG...
Monk: RoJ Smiter or DWG

Final Note: The advantage of this build is also that it is suited for EVERY place you go into, and it's really fast. So I guess it fits your description

I'm sorry but there are some contradictions in your post. after all past nerfs, there are truely few good builds for tanking, and really none for casters, except eles maybe. so all the builds you suggest for other classes are good but not for tanking, which is the major key of this setup.
cycling seed with SoA is nice but they are both enchantments which can be stripped easily. also, dealing with microing those skills and timing the heroes' charge at the ball of enemies (if you got a ball and haven't died in the attempt) reduces the speed of the run.
dont forget that as a melee/war class you get SY!, which most builds for casters don't. it must be a major component of your team's survivability.
have you really tried it with a caster of your own ?

flunders · Jul 14, 2011, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Just tried Illion's build and so far so good. The Necro/Rit (Livia in my case) scares the **** out of me haha. I think I'll need to add some res skills to them, cos being a warrior i rarely have a shot of running away when things go south.

I Perma Mobs · Jul 14, 2011, 10:36 AM // 10:36

@Shaygo

Yes, I did. I play frequently on my mesmer with this exact same hero set up, SY! isn't decisive on the outcome. It can help when facing elementalists, but other than that, the damage you take in form of AoE (and thats what wipes parties, not individual damage)is almost all armor-ignoring (mesmers, necros, Smite Monks, ...)

The fact that they are both enchantments is indeed a small problem. But lets see:
Prot spirit has a 5 second recharge. You can recast it if it gets stripped...
That is all you NEED for staying alive. I like to put in SoA and seed to spare the monk's energy. But in case of emergencies, where either SoA or seed gets stripped, you can stay alive with just prot spirit.

Another thing you're not fafctoring: This build has an insane ammount of interrupts. Believe me or not, I rarely get stripped of anything at all, and that was while fighting the greater dream riders in foundry, which carry mirror of disenchantment and shatter enchantment. Besides, the tanking is just for balling up better and protecting the party abit. Do you really think I can TANK like, without having my party in range of the attackers? No way lol. Only if I go with tank skills. That tanking is more like... be able to grab hold of a few monsters and not die, like you do when they are hitting you for 200+ dmg

Also, some things you didn't factor: You can pretty much just kill the majority of the group (say, 50%) and then keep running on. The leftover won't kill you. They'll simply stay behind to fight the minions and spirits.
Now tell me that doesn't count as speed. In a different urgoz run I did, we were 12, not 8 (had a friend come along) and we literally skipped whole rooms with foes, leaving our allies fighting behind. And what better build to accomplish a swift clean of the majority of the enemies, than one which focusses on aoe damage?

This is just my view on it, really.

Illion · Jul 14, 2011, 12:31 PM // 12:31

@I Perma mobs
How can you deal with the downtime waiting for the spirits cds all the time? I couldnt do it so I went ST on my com hero rit and summon spirits eliminated my SoS problem. Also you dont have Armor of Unfeeling, Foundry east spirits for breakfast in HM even with it wouldnt wanna imagine what happens without...

I have updated my build a little bit more, trying the ST instead of Reclaim and it works good enough. I read something about that ST hero behaviour has been optimized so I wanted to check it out. Also throwing out some minor dps skills for more support.

Just to throw it out there, Ive been having some fun playing DwG for a change lately. This build would work much better though with a W/Rt as main instead of a Rt/W due to the sentinel insignia and yeah just loads of more mitigation. The builds base is pretty much EFGJacks base build with a slight mod. Its always fun to just rush straight into mobs without flagging your heroes, AoE and run to to the next group (heroes should be on aggressive for this to work at all).