Curse

Dak Frostarrow · May 29, 2005, 09:50 PM // 21:50

Hi.

I have a W/Mo 20 that I want to use for PVP(as a tank) and farming mostly, but would like to be able to switch to PVE fairly easily. I need an idea on what I should put my attributes into and which skills I should take. Thanks.

toastgodsupreme · May 30, 2005, 12:28 AM // 00:28

plenty of wamo builds on these forums man, just search a little. seriously, they're the flavor of the year. TONS of them have been posted.

have you thought of just adjusting your skills/attributes as you play and level? you're not going to start at level 20, and that's what all builds are based on here.

it's one of the best aspects of this game... the ability to completely change how your character plays without penalty (drop your sword skills/attributes and go all healing protection if you wanted, etc).

just play and adjust your character accordingly.

Dak Frostarrow · May 30, 2005, 03:57 PM // 15:57

Actually I am going to start at lvl 20... I've already gotten there and now want to perfect my build

Minwanabi · May 30, 2005, 04:09 PM // 16:09

If you want to suck, put some into healing prayers and bring breeze or hands and other shit. If you want to be useful to a well coordinated team of 8, you can try smiting, JI and SoH are decent, but expensive.

Oh, and you can't tank in PvP, persay.

rii · May 30, 2005, 04:15 PM // 16:15

Min, thats very narrow minded

Breeze is doubtful in its place as one of the top heals, but hands isnt.
Hands is still a good skill. It used to heal for 25-30hp, and its cooldown was 10 seconds, so anyone used to be able to tank with it, but it was nerfed and now its a warriors only kind of skill, since it still heals due to their armour. I use hands in the arena, and while that isnt 'a team of 8' its the principal.
If you want to be useful, dont use smiting. The whole point of smiting is for pure monks to have some defense against those big lumps called warriors who go for them all the time. Notice how most of em are all attacking enemies (like retribution, shield of judgement, holy wrath, holy strike, the list gos on) Then they go divine favour, healing/protection, smiting, and give them something like i dont know, shield of judgement. Then, when theyre focused, slap it on. Smiting is not useful for many things outside of that that isnt pve. (and which it is effective at). And you can tank in pvp if you want, you just have to dedicate your build to it, which is a bit of a waste of time. If i wanted to be pedantic, id tank with a r/me with echo fertile season, and bring some enchantments with symbiosis as well.

Minwanabi · May 30, 2005, 04:30 PM // 16:30

Ok, first, the problem with both breeze and hands on a warrior is that they are subject to enchant removal. Keep in mind that I'm talking about organized PvP, I don't care about arena. There is one situation where a war needs to use those, and that's when everyone else is dead, and the group is focusing the war. He sees this, the monks are dead, and wants to cast these spells on himself. First, he has limited energy, both of these casts cost him 20 energy, which will leave him between 0 and 7 energy (probably 7, most wars run with gladiator's). Therefore, he's extremely subject to energy denial. One interrupt, one drain, a few 'fear me's, and he's toast. Next, even if he casts them, since the group is focusing him, they'll just strip, drain, inspire, rend, lingering curse, well of the profane, or chillblains those enchants away. Really, there are always better skills to bring then self heals.

Next, we have smiting. Personally, I don't like it, because of the energy costs, and we don't use it, but when you get right down to it, in the extremely basic setup of any party, you have damage, support, and healing. A War falls into the damage category, and should focus on that. When we run wamos, they have only one monk skill, it's an enchant, but I'm not going to get into that.

Quote:

The whole point of smiting is for pure monks to have some defense against those big lumps called warriors who go for them all the time. Notice how most of em are all attacking enemies (like retribution, shield of judgement, holy wrath, holy strike, the list gos on) Then they go divine favour, healing/protection, smiting, and give them something like i dont know, shield of judgement. Then, when theyre focused, slap it on. Smiting is not useful for many things outside of that that isnt pve.

K, we run into the same problem here. I assume you're talking about arena, or some PUG you run with in Tombs. If the warriors are attacking a monk, that means he's the focused target, which means he won't have enchants on (see the list of removal above). The Smiting direct damage skills aren't terrible, but they certainly won't make or break a fight, and they aren't going to scare a war away.
We do agree that smiting isn't very useful outside of PvE, but you really underestimate both yourself and enemies. Since enchants are really overpowered atm, there is always a lot of enchant removal. The counter to removal is having interrupts/energy denial at the ready, but usually there's enough hidden on secondary necros, etc, to have a rend get through.

JYX · May 30, 2005, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Thats your answer to everything isn't it?...Fertile Season >.>

Who uses healing breeze on a war/mo anyway? Mending's what its all about...especially since you can be cheap and get 3 pips without investing everything a lot at all into healing prayers.

and I thought the whole point of smiting was for flourish war/mo? oh yeah...and to be lame with...

Hmm...enchantment stripping is an interesting one, take a look at the list you just posted above. Notice how they're not very good? Long recharge time? Energy intensive? Long casting time? With the exception of rend...rend's a nice one. To be quite honest, I don't know whether you're talking about primary monks or what, a war/mo is never going to have more than 2-3 monk skills. One of which must be a rez. The main question here is...who is gonna focus on a war/mo anyway?

Minwanabi · May 30, 2005, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Mending is terrible. I hope that post was sarcastic. Seriously, it's like the biggest joke in our guild. Do you have any idea how little 3 pips is? How easily mending gets removed? And how much that screws any energy management you planned on having?

Quote:

and I thought the whole point of smiting was for flourish war/mo? oh yeah...and to be lame with...

How does this even make sense? Let's pretend you're running mending, this means you're either at 0 pips because you're using a zealous weapon, or you're at one, and don't have zealous. Next, you're trying to cast huge energy smite spells like balth aura, flourish, and repeat? Where are you getting energy with? And how is it lame? It's just terrible.

JYX · May 30, 2005, 04:56 PM // 16:56

btw. I wasn't talking to you...Rii knows where I'm being sarcastic and where I'm not

but for the benefit of others i'll explain:

Mending provides less energy efficiency than just about everything a monk primary can dish out. I was originally being sarcastic when I posted it. Again, its a stab at Rii's tendancies with mending...

the lameness comes from other stuff...such as balthazar's aura, which is now rightly fixed, wasn't suggesting you chuck all this stuff into one build

a flourish warrior will most likely not have need for a zealous weapon, also the most "popular" notion here is to cast smite in addition to pure strike etc. and then flourish. Nowhere did I say that I condoned this sort of behavior >.> again...Rii will know what I meant due to my constant ramblings about smiting

rii · May 30, 2005, 05:16 PM // 17:16

Minwanabi, let me get one thing straight. I do not, and probably never will use, smiting.
This is one of those meaningless theoretical arguments. Anyway, enchantment removal. It sucks. My personal opinion is that is aint that hot, in fact its quite cold. And its more or less true. (apart from rend) If your the last wa/mo alive..... youve lost the battle (cept 4v4 perhaps).... If i want to use an enchantment, i blanket over it with a cheap one. Of course, im not stupid enough to stand there going 'omg come get some' when i have hands on since im asking for a ...... shatter..... in the face. so you stack it, and that can be enough. If the foes are focusing more than one person on you to multi remove, then 'wtf', that means one of YOUR team has noone on em... unless you have builds for soley removing enchantments. Rend is of course, death to all enchantments. Problem is, enchantements provide all of the 'intelligent' protection there is. Apart from that the only thing left is wards, armour, shields and runes of abosrbtion. Problem is only warriors and rangers have a decent number of these things to not bother. So support characters, they need their enchantments. I dont have to list them all to you, you know them, and you know what i mean.

Yes, fertile season is the meaning of life, atm.... still waiting for that nerf.
And 3 pips is 6 health per second..... it appears i do know. yes, it sucks. But if the devil came up to me and said... rii, do you want 2 pips of energy regen for a warrior, or 3 pips of perma health regen and 1 pip of energy regen?? id say the latter, but fortunatley the devil hasnt presented me with this option, so ill go do something else.

JYX · May 30, 2005, 05:20 PM // 17:20

It would appear the devil did present you with such a choice...looking at how religiously you employ the paladin premade >.>

at which i will continue to express my disgust...

Concerning things such as healing hands...would it be more efficient to go get a necro to rend the thing...lose some health while he's doing it...and prevent the man from gaining a slight amount of health in the next 7 seconds...Or...get a ele to do a lightning orb/lightning surge on him for 200 damage. Hands is not gonna cover that.

rii · May 30, 2005, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Hey we once ran the tombs with a whole group of wa/mo, and would have won, if we hadnt gotten bugged into the geometry.... that was somewhat inconvenient.

JYX · May 30, 2005, 05:40 PM // 17:40

...i'm off to the Steam forums where things make sense :P

and this has gotten hilariously off topic. All the man wanted was a build. I hold you personally responsible for finding the guy a high damage PvP wa/mo build and a defensive PvE build...don't care where you get it from