Curse

Lordhelmos · Nov 30, 2006, 10:31 AM // 10:31

For those of you having problems finding the skills, simply make a pvp character and do some RA battles for quick faction, you can get the missing skills you need unlocked for you heros in no time (:

Dark Angle · Nov 30, 2006, 11:38 AM // 11:38

i did last 2 missions with the build and got masters in both on my first try WOOOHOOO thx a mil
~DA

RuPee · Nov 30, 2006, 02:38 PM // 14:38

after failing gates of madness once, i put it off for 2 weeks and played my other characters. but this team set up got me masters on the last two missions. thanks a bunch.

some things i changed tho, i gave the ranger one more interrupt and dropped troll and dropped points from WS all together and put some into command.
and im not sure if my monk hero was using it but i gave him an inspiration interupt for some e-management. multi-tasking AI FTW!

Poison Ivy · Nov 30, 2006, 02:41 PM // 14:41

I swaped the Inspired/Revealed Hex for a Gift of Health and set the attrabutes to 14 Prot, 10 Divine, 10 Healing, 8 Inspiration, and it seems to be working a bit better. Try it out

]SK[ · Nov 30, 2006, 02:51 PM // 14:51

You made a mistake on the Mo/Me build. You can't use a minor inspiration rune.

FrogDevourer · Nov 30, 2006, 03:03 PM // 15:03

My approach is more aggressive. I abuse the most powerful (PvE wise, that is) paragon skills like you do. But I don't see the point of using a monk hero. In my experience, it's a waste of resources. When you're zapping all types of monsters in a few seconds, there is no point in playing defensively. A couple of monk henchmen (and often *one* monk hench) is more than you need to keep everybody alive (a couple of rez signets will take care of your occasional mistake).

In short, my third hero is a blood necromancer with Order of the Vampire. With 4 or 5 physical damagers in the group (myself included), the raw damage output (see quote below) of a perma-OoV added to the disgusting Paragon goodies will melt anything you can find in this game.

Typical setup:
- Me (sword, strength, mindnumbing dragon slash)
- Paragon (motivation, sword, leadership)
- Necro (blood, soul reaping, motivation)
- Warrior/Paragon (for Wild blow & YAA, axe + command) or Ranger (barrage, command)

For Shiro, you might want to customize a couple of secondaries to strengthen your defense (wards, wells, aegis...), and for abbaddon you need a couple of group condition removal ([skill=text]Cautery Signet[/skill] or [skill=text]Martyr[/skill] or [skill=text]Extinguish[/skill]), + group speed buff ([skill=text]"Fall Back!"[/skill]). No need to cap the shrines nor to be particularly afraid of nasty bosses. Lastly, you don't need a MM in the group (too slow, no synergy with OoV and most paragon skills).

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer, SoF forum

[skill=text]Order of the Vampire[/skill] is up 6s/8s (enchanting, recharge, recast) that is to say 75% of the time. At 18 blood (read: [skill=text]awaken the blood[/skill]), that's 19 life steal per attack when the enchantment is up, or 14 with 75% availability. If we assume permanent IAS stance (which is true on humans and heroes), my standard setup gets quite a lot out of OoV:

Axe/Sword x 3 (me + koss + morgan)
- 16 lifesteal / s (1.14 attacks / s)
Hammer x 1 (devona)
- 12 lifesteal / s
Scythes x 1 (holy hench)
- 12 lifesteal / s assuming only one target in scythe range

The total is an average of ~71 additional DPS just from the OoV or a peak of 94 additional DPS when OoV is up. Presented differently, an OoV lasts for 6s with an enchanting weapon, each cast of OoV is doing 560 focussed damage (not AoE damage), and the necromancer has about 60% of spare time to cast something else.

Of course I'm not counting special AoE attacks (triple chop, cyclone, barrage...) nor multi attacks (Sun & Moon, Dual shot), nor the intrinsic AoE effect of the scythe on 2/3 clustered targets.

Best of all, this is life stealing and not regular damage. It ignores armor (outstanding against resilient bosses or special creatures), it bypasses all damage mitigations (such as the Harbingers' special effect), and it provides free healing and saves your monks' energy.

In practice, a blood necro has a good OoV timing, and if you kill the most pesky targets first, you'll be killing him very fast under peak DPS. Even the most pesky bosses usually fall in seconds against this (not mention that your physical damagers will benefit from OoV even when using interrupt attacks against monk bosses).

Carboplatin · Nov 30, 2006, 03:59 PM // 15:59

gonna try this build for some of the master quests that i am having trouble with, sounds good.

Chris616263 · Nov 30, 2006, 05:36 PM // 17:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lordhelmos

For those of you having problems finding the skills, simply make a pvp character and do some RA battles for quick faction, you can get the missing skills you need unlocked for you heros in no time (:

Going into Zaishen Challenge against the pathetic IW team for 2k points a day works pretty well too.

Lordhelmos · Nov 30, 2006, 07:33 PM // 19:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by ]SK[

You made a mistake on the Mo/Me build. You can't use a minor inspiration rune.

nice catch, was a sloppy edit. Fixed now.

Sidra · Nov 30, 2006, 08:45 PM // 20:45

I think the problem was that I had been misinformed that the shrines took AWAY the bonus. So 5 henchies wiped, and I was stuck with me, the monk hero, the paragon, and the ranger (let the monk rez the ranger). Capped mesmer shrine, then rezzed the warrior and went for the bowmaster shrine. Got wiped. Anyway, on my next try, (without people. I took a guildie, and the idiot body blocked all the henchmen behind Shiro'Ken. God dammit.) I think I'll definetely do that. Not to mention, I gave both myself and Morgahn Wild attacks, so we should be good. Thanks for your help, Helmos. I'll post results >.>

Otherwise, throughout the mission, this build was a tank. And by a tank, I mean, it's like an elephant getting bitten by very, very easy to swat flies. Bwahahaha.

Chris616263 · Dec 01, 2006, 01:38 AM // 01:38

AAAAAAAND nerfed:

http://www.guildwars.com/support/gameupdates/

Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds.
Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1.
Stand Your Ground: Increased energy cost to 10.
"Watch Yourself!": Changed armor gain to 5..25, based on the Tactics attribute.

NOTE: guildwars.com's description of WY! is inaccurate; it's 5..21 armor over 5..10 seconds.

Aryth · Dec 01, 2006, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Total total complete and unbelievable horse sh*t. This build was great. I wouldnt consider it cheating. I Still got killed by certain groups. Got owned by any group that I didnt take care to make sure necros were taken out first. Vocal minority, well of silence, could totally screw you. It was a BALANCE!!!! This took advantage of every characters strong points.....but of course it got the nerf bat. Dammit I'm so mad I could spit....There I just spit.....crap... now I have to go get a paper towel. Anyways kudos to the intelligent people who took the time to figure out a build like this. It was very well thought out and helped me alot while it lasted.

Anyone have any workarounds for a similar effect?

Sidra · Dec 01, 2006, 01:48 AM // 01:48

Alright! Used the suggested henchmen accomplices by Helmos, and kicked ass. It took me only around 35 minutes, and had Tahklora die once to a weird aggro bug in the beginning where 5 beasties went after her. Either then that, it was easy crap! I was the only melee character, so i fanned henchmen out, and had them steadily damage Shiro as I stripped his stances and completely owned him. Impossible Odds did absolutely nothing :-P he didn't even spread blindness to me.

Xeliya · Dec 01, 2006, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Wait...are we surprised? I mean this build is...WAS no doubt great, however, might as well have titled the thread: "Dear ANET, Please nerf the following skills:" Maybe next time someone comes up with an uber build, name it something like "THE WORST BUILD...EVER!"

Aryth · Dec 01, 2006, 01:55 AM // 01:55

And ANOTHER thing. Why is every nerf always about pvp pvp pvp. Thats All I freakin hear. Yknow pvp and pve work in such completely different ways...how can you even have something that works for both. Why not make the skills independent in pvp and pve. Jeez. Screwing pve'ers out of a great (but not totally uber) hero/henchie build. GRRRR.

Delanon · Dec 01, 2006, 02:07 AM // 02:07

Thx for the build! Used it to get past gates 0f madness

PvPed a nit to unlock some skills!

TheGuildWarsPenguin · Dec 01, 2006, 03:37 AM // 03:37

Anet nerfed paragons so your Energizer battery isn't effective anymore.

Teutonic Paladin · Dec 01, 2006, 06:16 AM // 06:16

It still works... just not as well. To deal with the Finale nerf I just threw in an extra GftE on myself to help gain more energy. It works fine for PvE. Why do they nerf things for PvP? Because any decent player could go through the game with anything. You don't need masterfully planned out builds, just a brain.

strcpy · Dec 01, 2006, 08:12 AM // 08:12

Also found build still works well. I can no longer just spam away any skill nonstop and had to change Koss to use some adrenaline skills. There are MANY different combinations that work well with this line of thought. Too many to post, too many to nerf without killing a class.

Still can tank a large force for long periods of time, still find my monks have full energy at the end of a battle, and the only issue is that I have to be careful that the good paragon general doesn't cast single person energy regen spells on the warrior or dervish instead of the monks. Mostly that means going back to the old 5E (dervish) and adrenaline (warrior) based skills. I also need to carry one self heal.

Still better than before this build, still able to be abused in PvE. I mean, with the damage Shiro was putting out most any monk could handle. I just have to pull and other normal strategies. Did anyone think that brainless walk forward and aggro everything *wouldn't* be nerfed? And anyone who thinks it could be well hidden has never been root on a system (My laptop has a great sticker: "Bow before me, for I am root"). To note, neither your great build or your great farming area is secret to the devs and their game logs. If you are getting something out of the ordinary it *will* be flagged and will be addressed if the devs feel like it. In fact, out of the ordinary is far easier to notice than something every one else is abusing.

twentynine · Dec 01, 2006, 09:24 AM // 09:24

The flat 20 AL bonus of Watch Yourself has also been nerfed. Well at least for the purposes of Battery Paragon it has. For warriors that invest in tactics, it's actually been improved a bit. Luckily for me, I am one of those tactics using WYS spamming fools.

Just tried your RC Prot & Battery Paragon combo tonight. I have to say that it still rocks the house despite the recent changes.