Curse

Kcp · Oct 03, 2006, 06:45 PM // 18:45

**You will need prophecies AND factions skills for this build**

Since I've never made an "official" guide here at guru for the necromancer solo uw build I guess now is the time. So here ya go.

I'll start off by assuming you know how to enter the Underworld and have all your attribute quests completed. Here is the build that I run. If you follow these simple directions and run the exact same attributes and skills you should have absolutely no problems finishing a UW smite run in the same amount of time a 2 man team finishes( if not faster as you progress.)

Armor

Face scar Curses +1 60 AL

Shing jea monastery Cabalists
Chest 15 AL
Gloves 15 AL
Leggings 15 AL
Boots 15 AL

You are now going to place 5 superior attribute runes in your armor, these runes are cheap and you can use w/e combo of them in your armor to reach these attributes listed below.

Attributes

Blood magic: 5
Death magic: 0
Curses: 16
Soul reaping: 4
Healing prayers: 8
Protection prayers: 10

You should have 105 health at this point in time, with the -50 life grim cesta you will have 55 health. You will be fighting with 55 health and 105 health when using certain weapon sets. Now for the skills.

Skills

Protective Spirit
Spirit Bond
Spiteful Spirit (E)
Reckless Haste
Shadow of Fear
Essence Bond
Balthazar's Spirit
Mending

Yes this is a hybrid spirit bond build. Why? Because with low hps vs foes that do not trigger Spirit bond "dependably" mending will save the day when you are only taking -5 damage. With low hp's degen is a concern as well and the +3 mending cancels out the bleeding, saving you from degen also. If you insist on doing this build w/o mending and higher life go for it. I'm comfortable with 55 health, dying nightmares, interrupts, etc. that I always use 55 hps. Tweak your health to a safe level and replace mending with life attunement and take pts from healing prayers to do with as you wish.

There is no spellbreaker obviously. And for those people that claim you can't solo UW without spellbreaker this build isn't for you. You will need to be prepared to kill dying nightmares with your wand, suicide them via rend enchantments combined with your running skills and evasion tactics.

" But there's no run skills or evasion stances on the skillbar!" You have a keyboard and a mouse don't you? Thats all you will need.

Weapons

Flatbow/longbow of enchanting. 105 health when equipped.

^This is what you will be using to aggro smites if need be while gathering.

Customized max damage 20/20 curse req. wand and a 12 energy 20/20 bone idol curse req. 105 Health when equipped.

^This is what you will be using for smites.

20/20 curse wand and -50 life cesta. 55 health when equipped.

^This is what you will be using for nightmare removal, first cast of Spiteful spirit and reckless haste on aatxe. Always aggro aatxe with this equipped due to nightmare pop-ups.

Fiery flame spitter of enchanting 20%, or totem axe, any melee based weapon with a 20% enchant mod, and -50 life cesta. 55 health when equipped.

^This will be used to trigger ripostes for fast aatxe kills , tank graspings, waitout maelstorms if you happen to get stuck by smites.

* The 20/20 curse wand and 20/20 bone idol can be crafted at vasburg armory or leviathon pits. The 20/20 bone idol can be found at collectors in both prophecies and factions.

So now with the gear, attributes, skills all set up you are ready to head to the underworld. Upon entering immediately begin casting your maintained enchants on yourself. There is no need to wait for energy regen. You will have more then enough to begin since the only enchant you have to cast before aggroing the aatxe is prot spirit. Personally I always start at the left staircase. Make sure that you have 55 health and your wand in hand ready to fire on any nightmares.

You will want to aggro aatxe in groups of 3+ at a time. You will have to weed out nightmares however. The nightmare spawns are all very easy to learn by the patrol patterns of the aatxe upon entering so you will know 9 times out of 10 where they are likely to spawn and deal with them first before concentrating on the aatxe.

It will take 1-3 hits, most times only 2, to kill the nightmares. Use the safe spot if you're not comfortable wanding nightmares with aatxe beating on you. You do know where the safe spot is right? Use the ghosts to body block aatxe, benton or sarah will work. Sarah's use req's more experience then Benton. You can even hide behind the lost soul =p.

* added due to it helping alot of people to target nightmares easily, it was an answer to a question answered later on in the thread and I will save ya time reading.

"Always start your target selection by pressing your target closest enemy button "C" when you get close to the group you are planning on aggroing. Now select the last enemy in the group you are planning to aggro using your keyboard's tab key, that way if a nightmare appears all you have to do is press your tab key 1x and press space, then you have a dead nightmare. You will know with experience if the 2nd wand hit is going to kill it. If you are uncertain as to the death of the nightmare with your second wand attack quickly press your run button AS soon as the second wand attack leaves your wand,( if you don't have a button designated on your keyboard to run you should make one, "R" is the normal key.) If the nightmare rends recast PS, SB as soon as possible. Then run to safe area and recast maintained enchants, then go about your business.

Same deal as above if 2 DN's spawn. Wand the first nightmare to appear by using tab to select it, manually clicking targets is too slow, space bar, 2 shots , then run. More then likely the 2 wand hits killed the first nightmare, and the second nightmare is finishing it's cast of rend enchantments, about to strip yours. I always tab to the second nightmare after the second wand hit is in flight on the original target to watch it's progress on casting rend enchantments.When it finishes casting rend just cast ps, sb and you're safe. ( This is strategy for the first chamber of aatxe's dying nightmares and not the smite's dying nightmares. See strategy located in beginning of smite part of guide for dealing with nightmares in that area.)

Running in a curved path can keep enough distance that the aatxe wont be able to hit you for a few seconds." It involves holding down your right mouse button to control your camera and using your keyboards to move forward and sideways at the same time. If you achieve the proper arc in your run you can get a couple seconds distance from the aatxe sometimes. At least enough time to get off two 1/4 second casting speed spells then return to a safe area to recast maintained enchantments.

So you got your group of big black cows gathered up ranging in size from 3-8 aatxe at once hopefully after eliminating the nightmares. Now you are going to go on the offensive and kill them all in a matter of seconds.

First you will need to determine the centermost cow in the group that IS attacking.Secondly you must determine how many of the aatxes are actually attacking you and not stuck. Ok now for example you have 3 out of the 6 aatxe you have gathered attacking you. Refresh Prot spirit, spirit bond and begin to lure out the savage slash's. Recast mending,balth spirit, or essence bond until all 3 savage slashes have been lured out. It should only take 3-5 casts of any of your maintained enchants to get all the interrupts wasted.

Immediately after the last of the interrupts is wasted cast SS on the target that will affect the largest radius. Cover SS with reckless haste as soon as it lands on an aatxe and immediately switch to your melee weapon. The aatxe will start activating riposte and deadly riposte whenever you have a melee weapon equipped. This will trigger SS even more if you remove it by attacking and they renew the ripostes. Always cancel out your melee attacks after removing the ripostes. Don't want the one you are doing 1-2 damage to dying before the rest do we.

Also NEVER use shadow of fear on aatxe or anything else besides smites.

As soon as Spiteful spirit is recharged immediately cast it on a new aatxe that will affect the rest of the group or cast it on the same original target whenever it is almost at 1/2 health.Sometimes you will see 4 or more -37's from 1 round of attacks as in this picture if you have them set up correctly for maximum aoe damage with 2 SS's on different targets. Depending on the speed at which you drew out the interrupts or faster recharge rate from wand's initial cast will dictate whether or not you will be able to get a 2nd Spiteful spirit off without having to bait out the interrupts again.

They drop so fast it's kind of shocking at first.

Here is actual footage of just clearing the main chamber eliminating nightmares with my wand while tanking aatxe, the Safe Spot location is located at the end of the video.
http://files.filefront.com/Nightmare.../fileinfo.html

So now you've cleared the chamber of aatxe. The one at the top of stairs isn't a priority. If squids get stuck on him you can kill them all at once or lead it into the last chamber with the last 4 cows before hitting smites it's up to you. You can 1v1 an aatxe and win but thats cuts into run time and this is what this build is about.

Take the quest from the lost soul. Immediately proceed to the left staircase where we originally started with the cows. There will be 4 squids that come from the left and stop just above the left staircase. Immediately target closest and hex with spiteful. As the squids are inbound cast Protective spirit, then let them waste their distracting blows then cast spirit bond. Now just stand there. They die. next group is right in front of you consisting of 3 more squids that came from the right. Target closest again, hex, prot spirit as they are inbound, spirit bond, stand there. Same deal with last group that comes down to righthand staircase. It only takes 1 SS to kill squids. With 10 protection prayers and a 20% enchant pommel you only have to cast Protective spirit once and spirit bond once and they will die when PS starts blinking. The squids die and your almost always back at full energy due to not expending energy and your soul reaping at lvl 4.

Video of all the squids when taking the lost soul's quest:
http://files.filefront.com/Squids_ne.../fileinfo.html

Now the doors are open proceed to grab the last 4 aatxe avoiding the squids in the next chamber and take them to chamber with the stairs leading to the smites. Kill them and now you're off to the smites.

I switch to my 20/20 combo at this point and proceed to gather the entire first area into 1 group. You can eliminate coldfires from your path in a short amount of time while tanking smites with 2 SS's and a reckless haste.

If a dying nightmare pops up while you are gathering smites don't fear. Keep running until it rends, it will kill iteself, immediately cast PS, then SB after the rend occurs then recast your maintained enchants. Make sure the smites dont surround you while doing so, it will slow your run down.

Once you've gathered as many smites as you can you are going to want to group them up close to one another. Upon doing so cast shadow of fear on them. They will begin to use smite hex which will make a distinct sound while they are activating it. The whole process takes a little over 5 seconds. Once you get the hang of it you will have Spiteful spirit casting as the last smite hex is used by the smites. As soon as it lands cover it with reckless haste. If spiteful spirit is going to recharge faster,fire it off one more time and quickly cover it with shadow of fear otherwise cover the reckless haste with shadow of fear.

By this point in time the smite hexes are coming again. Mostly removing the shadow of fear that you placed over reckless haste kicking in the attack speed of the smites. Each time you recast SS on a new smite quickly recover it with one of your aoe hexes. On a good flop it will take 2 SS's to drop any amount of smites you can gather provided you target the correct smites.

You can routinely group all the smites into 2-3 groups with usually 20 or more smites at a time depending on how far each group will pull to the next.
You can tank any number of coldfires + smites all day long. You can fight coldfires by themselves as well with no worries about spirit bond not triggering. You should have absolutely no problems breaking the 15 minute smite run mark with this build when things go well and you become experienced running it.

* If you only have prophecies you can still solo uw. Replace spirit bond with healing breeze, and replace reckless haste with desecrate enchantments. Follow same basic instructions as posted except gathering any and everything together at once. You are much more squishy.

Videos of various builds with a necro located here:
http://hosted.filefront.com/GodlikeSatan

Sorry No In-game demos, videos do the same. Enjoy the build.

Also available, Godlike Satan's Solo Necro Fissure of Woe Guide.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10056315

Gavin The Great · Oct 03, 2006, 08:00 PM // 20:00

Looks very nice indeed. I'll have a go at the weekend when I get a chance to play. I have a few lab reports to write at the minute.
Thanks for the submittion, and good work!

Kyubbi · Oct 03, 2006, 08:11 PM // 20:11

ZOMG Alot of thanks for the build Ive been looking for this for a long time.... I was going to ask u about it lol

Great Build I just tried it

Vladmir Mironov · Oct 04, 2006, 12:38 AM // 00:38

Just out of curiosity... do you have a video?

Kcp · Oct 04, 2006, 12:53 AM // 00:53

Videos are located at the link posted at the bottom of the guide.

15 minute smite run:
http://files.filefront.com/15_minute.../fileinfo.html

23 smites 5 coldfires ( basically entire first area at once.)
http://files.filefront.com/23_smites.../fileinfo.html

8 aatxe at once, showing the large aoe of SS and how to body block effectively.
http://files.filefront.com/8_aatxe_a.../fileinfo.html

Videos for prophecies builds will remain up for those that only have prophecies only and wish to do these runs.

monty123 · Oct 04, 2006, 01:01 AM // 01:01

I am glad you posted this, I saw your videos but your skills where from the un-updated version on gwonline.

cerb · Oct 04, 2006, 01:23 AM // 01:23

Looks a little less aggressive than black cows in GW

Good job as always, sir!

Pariah Hellfire · Oct 04, 2006, 02:56 AM // 02:56

I learned how to solo both FoW and UW from your earlier builds.I'd like to say thank you for sharing your accomplishments with the community and soloing with the 55 build is whats kept me playing still.I'm so comfortable with the original build (mainly the SS,Suffering,Orison of Healing for UW) that i'm a little worried about trying this Spirit Bond build,is there anywhere I can effectively test this build before entering UW just to get the hang of it?

Great work!!

«Ripskin · Oct 04, 2006, 03:05 AM // 03:05

Damn, I have a use for my necro again!

It used to be my only 55.. but I scrapped that..

I'm off to buy some more 55 stuff

Kcp · Oct 04, 2006, 03:15 AM // 03:15

Pariah this build is vastly improved from the old one. You said you're experienced with the older build from prophecies you should find this build simpler to run. The risk of interruption is almost negated now that savage slash has a 20 second recharge. Once you get to the smite area it's a field day seriously. And maelstorms aren't really anything to worry about anymore with the 1/4 second cast and 2 second recharge on spirit bond.

I'd say just jump into uw if you're familiar with it, take aatxe 3 at a time, take it slow at first. Don't attempt kill nightmares on sight, just run back behind benton then wand the nightmare from the safe spot. Do that until you feel comfortable with actually hunting down the nightmares to speed things up. I still use benton occasionally if multiple nightmares spawn or I was rended and got Prot spirit up in time I wont lie.

Even just getting the hang of it can be profitable. Considering the aatxe drop ectos , rubies, sapphires, dyes of all colors, and the occasional rare. I've had a 4 ecto drop just clearing the first chamber of aatxe before. It all pays off in the end.

Poison Ivy · Oct 04, 2006, 03:45 AM // 03:45

I'll try this when we have favor...

Thanks Godlike Satan, your my hero

Carboplatin · Oct 04, 2006, 04:52 AM // 04:52

Great build i been using this for about a month now and it works great. i can consistently do this in about 20min.

I personally don't use reckless haste as i find its recharge to be too long, instead i use desecrate. guranteed damage.

i suggest people treat that as an open slot.

Haggard · Oct 04, 2006, 06:47 AM // 06:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kcp

And maelstorms aren't really anything to worry about anymore with the 1/4 second cast and 2 second recharge on spirit bond.

Interuppt every second, and 1/4 second cast - that gives you a 75% chance to not get interuppted.. I like those odds

Yarly · Oct 04, 2006, 09:50 AM // 09:50

Great stuff KCP!

One question, where can i find the 20/20 Bone idol in Tyria?

osk · Oct 04, 2006, 10:38 AM // 10:38

Question: Why 60AL curse +1 face scar instead of 15AL ?

Abyss1 · Oct 04, 2006, 11:15 AM // 11:15

hmmmm time to fire up my 55 necro again I guess...retry UW solo again with some different skills

Kcp · Oct 04, 2006, 12:09 PM // 12:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by osk

Question: Why 60AL curse +1 face scar instead of 15AL ?

I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible for everyone. Why purchase a 15 al face scar when the 60 works perfectly fine for uw. Saves on inventory space. I originally used the 15 al face scar until I noticed I had never equipped it for almost a week of solo uw....so I scrapped it, it's not needed.

The 20/20 bone idol ( cesta in proph) can be found at the collector outside elona's reach, not one outside the door, the collector past that by himself by a hut in the desert by the sand drakes.

In factions you can craft one at the weapon crafter in 15k kurz and lux armories or purchase from a collector. I believe one collector in each territory offers the 20/20 bone idol. I could be wrong. Try altrumn ruins collector that might be the place in factions. ( I got mine so long ago I forget were I obtained it.)

Langdon is correct. You can replace RH with desecrate or defile enchantments. You have slightly more flexibility with 2 aoe cover hexes starting out. Once you get up to speed and feel comfortable with only 1 cover hex feel free to replace. The killing time equals out in the end imo.

TheYangg · Oct 04, 2006, 01:31 PM // 13:31

Is this doable with a monk too?
just 12 Curses...

RaisetheFish · Oct 04, 2006, 01:40 PM // 13:40

Oh no...the secret is out of the bag =T...Me and a few guildmates has been doing this for awhile now...sorta sad that toa will be even more populated.

nghwee · Oct 04, 2006, 03:12 PM // 15:12

Erm it's hardly a secret..... Godlike Satan's solo smite run and fow shadow army guide, using only prophecies skills, complete with video has been available for a long time, i think it was on gwonline. I think it's over a year old (can someone confirm this?). Kcp inspired several variants of his build.

This is an improved version incorporating factions skills.

Watching godlike satan decimating the shadow army, mesmers not withstanding, was really something.