Curse

Gigashadow · Jul 02, 2009, 04:23 AM // 04:23

Here's my latest hero setup, works with the player being a warrior, not sure about other professions. Note, this is a different setup from the one I posted in the "What Heroes for Warrior" thread earlier today, although the classes and some of the concepts are similar. This is a much stronger setup than that one, as I've had a lot more bake time optimizing this one.

P/Mo Motivation paragon with Strength of Honor, Hexbreaker Aria
P/Rt Command Paragon with Splinter Weapon
N/Mo Minion bomber with Empathic, Dwayna's and some Curses

The motigon uses Anthem of Fury to give himself and the command guy +4 adrenaline. This allows for a very rapidly obtained Hexbreaker Aria, as well as more frequent spammage of adrenaline-based chants (which are energy management for both paragons). More chants = more of those good Finales triggering.

The command guy does splinter weapon and spirits, and his disruption and envy anthems affect his spirits. As I made reference to in another thread, you have 6 entities here (3 spirits + 2 paragons + you) who take advantage of Anthem of Envy and Disruption, and Anthem of Envy is not consumed if you hit someone above 50% health, so it will stick around until used (or it times out). The command guy also supplies the deep wound, which you can optionally pre-cast on yourself before the next battle so it's up again earlier.

Conditions are dealt with quite well by Purifying Finale, Foul Feast, Empathic, but if they are still a problem for the area you are in, you can move Anthem of Fury to the command guy and put Song of Purification on the motigon. However you'll lose the spirits and their side-benefits from the shouts.

Hexes are taken care of fairly well between Empathic and the rapidly obtained Hexbreaker Aria.

Spear mastery is not really very relevant to these guys, as they have only one attack skill, which is used to trigger various things.

Both of them use Spear of Lightning as their attack skill, due to its low recharge. The Weaken Armor on necro/Chest Thumper trick on paragons unfortunately doesn't work out in this setup, because the necro ends up being too busy doing other things to be quick enough on the Weaken Armor.

Command P/Rt
10+1+1 leadership
8+1 command
8+1 spear mastery
10 channeling

Signet of Spirits {elite}
Splinter Weapon
Spear of Lightning
"Never give up!"
"Find their weakness!"
"Go for the eyes!"
Anthem of Disruption
Anthem of Envy

Motivation P/Mo
12+1+1 leadership
10+1 motivation
2+1 spear mastery
8 smiting

Anthem of Fury {elite}
Strength of Honor
Spear of Lightning
Hexbreaker Aria
Blazing Finale
Finale of Restoration
Purifying Finale
"They're on Fire!"

N/Mo minion bomber
10+1+1 Death magic
8+1 Soul Reaping
10+1 Curses
8 Healing Prayers

Empathic Removal {elite}
Dwayna's Sorrow
Animate Bone Minions
Death Nova
Rip Enchantment
Enfeebling Blood
Foul Feast
Signet of Lost Souls

MercenaryKnight · Jul 02, 2009, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Seems really odd imo. 1 paragon has 10 channeling for splinter weapon and signet of spirits. The other has 8 smiting for a single skill which is going to be bad.

Just don't see it being that great atm.

Gigashadow · Jul 02, 2009, 05:16 AM // 05:16

While unusual, it works really well. 8 smiting is fine and adds a fair amount of damage; people often run 10 smiting or so on other secondary smiting characters for SoH, and the difference between and 8 and 10 spec is a whole 2 points of damage per hit, or between 8 and 12 spec (which is a ton of attribute points) is only 5 points per hit. Paragons get great energy management returns from their adrenaline shouts, so -1 energy regen is really not a big deal to him. He was a great place to stick SoH as he wasn't otherwise using a secondary, and it frees up someone else's secondary.

Splinter weapon is a spell you put on a character that can preferably cast it on recharge. The trick is to find a character that has the pacing required where it can do that, while having useful skills on the rest of his bar. The command paragon has a couple of shouts with no cast time, and other skills on medium recharges, so splinter is well suited to him. The 3 spirits do provide quite a bit of benefit, their interrupts alone are very noticeable, let alone the damage.

This is actually the strongest of the hero setups I've run in Guild Wars to date, and I've run all the usual stuff.

IronSheik · Jul 02, 2009, 05:23 AM // 05:23

Conditions are lol in PvE

I do like the disruption syncing with Signet of spirits...but still quite the odd setup
I'd take vicious over FTW, although I guess FTW can be used to find a better thing to DW.

I'll bookmark this to try out later.

Super Igor · Jul 02, 2009, 11:27 AM // 11:27

looks pretty random.
Synergiez tho.
Why are you running FF? You have enough condition removal on your bar imo.

Carnivorous Cupcake · Jul 07, 2009, 05:12 PM // 17:12

Looks strange but I can see it has a good synergy and might work well.

I will try it on my Warrior and post the results, after all, Discordway looked strange too when it first came out! ^^

Racthoh · Jul 07, 2009, 09:49 PM // 21:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

2+1 spear mastery

Quote:

Spear of Lightning

Ignoring the fact that having no Spear Mastery on a Paragon isn't the wisest choice there are two problems I have with this. One, you have an attack skill on a character that will do less damage than a caster does with a wand auto-attacking. Two, you're using a minor rune for some reason. Even if we don't take into account this there is also the fact that Spear of Lightning has the same +damage at a 2 or 3 spec.

You have an absurd amount of condition removal unless this is designed specifically for doing Shards of Orr or Frostmaw's. Even then there is a serious lacking of party wide condition removal, be it Extinguish, Song of Purification, Recovery, whatever.

Terrokian · Jul 07, 2009, 11:15 PM // 23:15

Frostmaws is conquered in HM with ease with one single skill. Pain Inverter.

Axel Zinfandel · Jul 08, 2009, 01:47 AM // 01:47

Leadership- 9 +1
Motivation- 9+ 2 + 1
Smiting Prayers- 9
Spear Mastery- 9+1

Spear of Redemption
Wild Throw
Merciless Spear
Song of Purification (E)
Ballad of Restoration
Chorus of Restoration / "Go For the Eyes" (GFTE for low adrenal energy management. even with no points, it's at least half decent)
Aggressive Refrain
Strength of Honor

A great deal better attribute spread and ridiculous energy management to cover for the lack of regen. Because of the need for adrenaline, consider an orders hero to help.

If you don't want song of Purification (though that one skill pretty much makes conditions go away), you can sub it for something like Anthem of Fury and put a +2 rune on Leadership instead of Motivation

Carnivorous Cupcake · Jul 08, 2009, 09:04 AM // 09:04

I tried this with my Warrior and Asassin yesterday and I must say WOW THIS THING ROCKS!!!

Heroes are able to use every skill on the bar effectively, they spread echos all over the party, echos trigger very often thanks to constant shouts ending, I always had all of my sdrenal skills charged and killed arguebly as fast, if not faster than with Discord.
It's also very versatile because it can handle all hex and condition heavy areas with ease, it also doesn't fear lower ammount of healing because of higher AL.

I advise everyone try running this build before comenting because it doesn't fall under any logic.

Gigashadow, you get one internet!

Riot Narita · Jul 08, 2009, 09:52 AM // 09:52

Your Command paragon... I was trying something similar on my Paragon to boost a pair of Rit spirit spam heroes. Anthem of Disruption, Anthem of Envy, Anthem of Weariness.

Anthem of Envy seemed to work best... the interrupts were nice but a bit random... applying weakness, I got better results with Enfeebling Blood on a Curses Necro instead (seems you found that too). GFTE! affects "allies" too, but it seems spirits aren't capable of critical hits (BAH! :-P). I didn't get my team working very well though, and I gave up on the idea.

I also tried a Command Paragon hero, for my R/Rt + Rit Hero Spirit Spam team... but once again I gave up on it, I was getting better results replacing the Paragon with another Rit for healing/prot, or a Curses Necro.

But I think I might revisit the concept now though, based on your team (and Axel's post). With me as R/Rt spamming extra spirits though - probably Communing spirits and Signet of Ghostly Might. I like that your team is a bit "off-the-wall", thanks for sharing.

By the way - is the Necro hero good at casting Dwayna's Sorrow on minions (rather than party members)... or does it need some micro-management? And are you doing OK without any rez skills?

Carnivorous Cupcake · Jul 08, 2009, 10:26 AM // 10:26

Hissy

This build is build shines on high damage melee builds that use SY!, it is less effective on everything else.

Riot Narita · Jul 08, 2009, 10:58 AM // 10:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carnivorous Cupcake

Hissy

This build is build shines on high damage melee builds that use SY!, it is less effective on everything else.

Not sure I undertsand you - are you saying Giga is running SY! on his Warrior, that's why the team is effective, and classes that can't keep SY! up won't get such good results with these heroes?

I could run these heroes with a SY! character (my Paragon or my Ranger), but I am interested to see what the shout synergies would do, given a bunch of extra spirits. I mean, if I'm going to spam SY!... I don't need this hero team - I can take ANY team that does big damage and has some healing...

Carnivorous Cupcake · Jul 08, 2009, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Hissy

Thats exactly what I'm trying to say. Dont know about you but this build looks very melee/sy! orientated. Burning Finale, FTW!, Anthem of Envy, GTFE!, Anthem of Fury all fovor these things greatly.

I however think you should try your idea anyway, I think that a spirit wall will make up for lack of SY! and spirits will do allot of damage and interrupting.

Gigashadow · Jul 09, 2009, 07:33 AM // 07:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

Ignoring the fact that having no Spear Mastery on a Paragon isn't the wisest choice there are two problems I have with this. One, you have an attack skill on a character that will do less damage than a caster does with a wand auto-attacking. Two, you're using a minor rune for some reason. Even if we don't take into account this there is also the fact that Spear of Lightning has the same +damage at a 2 or 3 spec.

The point of him having that one skill is to trigger the anthem of fury on himself to get 5 adrenaline from one hit, as well as to also trigger attack skill chants (interrupt, +damage), and various other on-chant-end effects on himself. That is all the spear mastery is there for, this guy is just not set up to do damage with his spears, so his level of spear mastery is irrelevant to him. It could be 0, he just happened to have a minor spear rune still on him from previous, more conventional paragon builds.

I'm not generally that impressed with the damage of spears, and that is not why I bring paragons in a H/H setup where I control the build of only 3 heroes instead of a full team; the chants/shouts/echoes are what I am really after here. And although I don't have them in this particular setup, many spear skills that I would consider for their utility (deep wound, stance removal, interrupt) don't even require much of an investment, or are in leadership (spear swipe).

In this setup, most of the time of the paragons should preferably be spent casting those. This is also why I'm using Anthem of Fury instead of skills such as Soldier's Fury/Aggressive Refrain etc. which benefit from you continuously attacking; he is not continuously attacking; instead, he throws the odd attack in here and there to trigger things and get the big adrenaline return every 10 seconds, then immediately goes back to chanting.

On the subject of condition removal I agree, more than really needed, I can get rid of Foul Feast on the necro.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Axel Zinfandel

Leadership- 9 +1
Motivation- 9+ 2 + 1
Smiting Prayers- 9
Spear Mastery- 9+1

Spear of Redemption
Wild Throw
Merciless Spear
Song of Purification (E)
Ballad of Restoration
Chorus of Restoration / "Go For the Eyes" (GFTE for low adrenal energy management. even with no points, it's at least half decent)
Aggressive Refrain
Strength of Honor

A great deal better attribute spread and ridiculous energy management to cover for the lack of regen. Because of the need for adrenaline, consider an orders hero to help.

If you don't want song of Purification (though that one skill pretty much makes conditions go away), you can sub it for something like Anthem of Fury and put a +2 rune on Leadership instead of Motivation

You took out "They're on Fire!" and "Blazing Finale" though, which are the main attractions of the setup, as ToF has substantial party-wide damage reduction that also works on yourself (unlike SY), not to mention being yet another shout to trigger various things every 10 seconds, and conveniently having no cast time.

As you point out, the problem with the above will be adrenaline. This is one reason why it's tougher to make these sorts of setups work when you have control over only 3 hero builds and are trying to take a couple of paragons; you need to fit in all the usual stuff you want in builds, and then you are really tempted to try to squeeze in Dark Fury somewhere as well (and maybe Orders as well), as that supercharges everything the paragons do. But then, to take the most advantage of that, you'd really like them to be attacking most of the time (and perhaps using a personal attack speed/adrenaline increaser as well), rather than casting chants most of the time as they do now. If they're attacking most of the time, you'd then want them to have some proper level of attributes in spears, etc. Going down that path tends to work against the chant focus I was experimenting with.

With only 3 heroes, you can see my bizarre use of secondaries on the paragons to squeeze in splinter weapon and strength of honor on them, at the expense of their spear mastery, in order to leave my third hero free for other things. I feel the tradeoff of spear mastery for splinter and SoH was worth it in this setup though, as they don't really attack much.

One thing about experimenting with adrenaline skills on paragon heroes is that you really have to watch their skill bar while you're fighting and see if which skills they are using or neglecting. I've spent a whole bunch of time on this, and Spear of Lightning (for example) is something they will use fairly often. Having 3 or more adrenaline skills often results in starvation, depending on what you have. Some other skills that often seem like a great idea, don't get used; for example, Wearying Spear seems ideal for paragons with low to moderate spear mastery, because it does a lot of +bonus damage, and you don't really care that much about weakess at such low levels; unfortunately, the AI rarely uses it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hissy

Your Command paragon... I was trying something similar on my Paragon to boost a pair of Rit spirit spam heroes. Anthem of Disruption, Anthem of Envy, Anthem of Weariness.

Anthem of Envy seemed to work best... the interrupts were nice but a bit random... applying weakness, I got better results with Enfeebling Blood on a Curses Necro instead (seems you found that too). GFTE! affects "allies" too, but it seems spirits aren't capable of critical hits (BAH! :-P). I didn't get my team working very well though, and I gave up on the idea.

I also tried a Command Paragon hero, for my R/Rt + Rit Hero Spirit Spam team... but once again I gave up on it, I was getting better results replacing the Paragon with another Rit for healing/prot, or a Curses Necro.

But I think I might revisit the concept now though, based on your team (and Axel's post). With me as R/Rt spamming extra spirits though - probably Communing spirits and Signet of Ghostly Might. I like that your team is a bit "off-the-wall", thanks for sharing.

By the way - is the Necro hero good at casting Dwayna's Sorrow on minions (rather than party members)... or does it need some micro-management? And are you doing OK without any rez skills?

Yes, Anthem of Weariness was too random, which is why I don't have it; Enfeebling Blood is just so good.

Dwayna's doesn't need micro'ing, the heroes cast it perfectly well.

I haven't found Rez skills to be important, although Death Pact Signet (if you can fit it in) is really nice to get someone up immediately while you can still recover from the situation. If you die, whether in a dungeon or vanquishing, you rez at the closest shrine anyway. I carry a Scroll of Resurrection on my character, which doesn't require a skill slot, although I don't really ever care to use them. I'm happy to rez at a nearby shrine if there is a wipe, or retreat and let a hero rez, or let a healer hero use its hard rez after the fight is over.

Regarding your consideration of a Command paragon; I'm currently experimenting with a 1 paragon setup, with him being Command. The skills I like most on that guy, though, are the Leadership skills, "They're on Fire" and "Blazing Finale". In addition to providing the trigger for "They're on Fire!"'s 33% damage reduction, Blazing Finale is just so good, it's AOE damage that mobs don't scatter from, like a mini Balthazar's Aura.

I've also been experimenting with Bladeturn Refrain, which the AI uses very well, although you really want 13+ Command for this to be worthwhile, as it is really quite a lot more effective when you are getting ~18%+ out of it. Depending on what other shouts you have in your build (e.g. I have "Fall Back!") you can end up having Bladeturn Refrain kept up on the entire party as it moves from mob group to mob group.

Something else I tried, which is pretty out-there, is 2 paragons somewhat similar to the above, plus a curses N/P (I'd have used a 3rd paragon hero if one existed though). The N/P has Enfeebling Blood, Dark Fury, and even more shouts, and handles some of the Refrains (which at 5 energy are cheap to cast, as they are priced for paragons), which results in a completely ridiculous number of shouts being thrown around. It is very experimental and is too crazy to make a serious post about anyway.

Carnivorous Cupcake · Jul 09, 2009, 10:59 AM // 10:59

Ok, I have done some testing on hero casting patterns for this skill. It seems they are only going to cast this spell on a target surrounded by 3 or more foes, thats why pulling can be very helpful with this build.

Just a bit of useful info.

Riot Narita · Jul 10, 2009, 10:23 AM // 10:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carnivorous Cupcake

Hissy

Thats exactly what I'm trying to say. Dont know about you but this build looks very melee/sy! orientated. Burning Finale, FTW!, Anthem of Envy, GTFE!, Anthem of Fury all fovor these things greatly.

Yes, I can see how it is geared for melee. However, most of those skills would also help any player that uses martial weapons including Rangers and Paragons, even more so if they use adrenal skills. It's Blazing Finale that wouldn't be so good, and Strength of Honor would be useless without some melee in the party.

The thing is, I'm not a great fan of using SY! with a melee character... I seem to be out of shout range of some party members at the worst moment, or SY! drops when I'm snared or running between scattered targets. I prefer using SY! on my Paragon or Ranger since they don't have to run around so much, and tend to stay in the mid-line with most of the party within shout range.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carnivorous Cupcake

I however think you should try your idea anyway, I think that a spirit wall will make up for lack of SY! and spirits will do allot of damage and interrupting.

So far I haven't had a lot of success with the team as it is. Possibly because it's optimal for a Warrior - and I don't have a Warrior (or any other proper melee character) with these heroes. Bunny thumper, axe ranger, and scythe ranger didn't work too well for me in Hard Mode, with or without SY!

SY! Paragon was better, but I still had problems if there were no minions up.
I also had to use one or two melee henchies to fit the team build... but they tend to suck and/or chase enemies til they've aggro'd the whole map. Using a Warrior hero and me playing one of the team paragons was similarly bad, and also meant no SY!

So instead I am trying to use some of the concepts here, with my Ranger as a spirit-spammer. I already have a hero team geared up to support that and it has worked very well everywhere I've tried it, in HM and in places where you can't make minions.

I want to see if I can get better results using a modified version of this team. I'm just starting to test a few ideas, but I won't go into details, as it's too far off-topic. But there's one thing that is relevant:

So far I'm not happy with Anthem of Disruption - it seems it causes a bunch of pretty random interrupts by the spirits and attackers for a couple of seconds, every 15 seconds. Which I don't think is that useful. Perhaps replacing Anthem of Disruption with Disrupting Throw would be better - so you'd have an interrupt that can be used when it's really needed?

evilsofa · Jul 18, 2009, 10:06 PM // 22:06

At first glance I am very impressed with this build. As a warrior, I'm quite excited to find a build that might be better than Sabway, because I have found Discord to be just unworkable.

Initially I find that for henchmen, using two healers and two melee types seems good.

I've put 5 Centurion's Insignias and shields with 30hp and -5 received physical damage on both, and they seem to consistently be the last left alive when wiping; still working on getting good spears - I'm thinking energy +5 and Furious 10% would be most useful to them.

If Anthem of Disruption is not effective, perhaps Death Pact Signet would be the way to go, because otherwise the group lacks that entirely.

Have you tweaked this further since?

Gigashadow · Jul 18, 2009, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by evilsofa

Have you tweaked this further since?

I haven't, it was more of a proof of concept to make a heavy shout build that worked for me.

Currently I have moved on to my next experiment, which is unrelated to this build so not going to go into big detail here. Basically it's a curses/(prot OR smiting) necro that takes weaken armor (but not barbs, or hexes of any kind), a command/leadership paragon with the AOE burning gimmick, and chest thumper (the AI is excellent for using it on any cracked armor target), and a Rt/ channeling resto that is somewhat similar to a N/Rt healer but more offensive (14 ancestors' rage is very noticeable on cracked armor targets). No minions.

Paul Dawg · Jul 20, 2009, 04:06 AM // 04:06

I guess my three questions are:

1. What are you going to do against blockers? The Sabway curser has defile defenses or rigor mortis. I guess that means you can put it on the N/Mo, but what would you take off for it?

2. What weapon does the second para use with 3 spear mastery?

3. How are you getting healed?

Oh, make it four questions:

4. Don't you find that in difficult areas strength of honor gets stripped so often that it doesn't even pay to bring the skill (and invest 8 points in smite for it)?