Curse

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 07, 2005, 07:24 AM // 07:24

Well, since the old build review thread seems to be now be turning more to people talking about their own builds, I think it's time we give each individual build review its own thread. You want a build reviewed, post it in the original. You want to talk about the latest build review, post it here.

This time around it's a Warrior/Elementalist build up in the cross-hairs and you can view the results here.

Whosa Skylore · Mar 07, 2005, 04:59 PM // 16:59

YES!! A W/MES BUILD!!! its good so far ill edit the full details of what i think once i finish it

edit- i have problems reading

, anyways nice build made me want to try warrior/ele sometime

Mar 07, 2005, 05:14 PM // 17:14

I read some of it, looks really nice(Armor of Earth baby!)

WNxTyphoon · Mar 07, 2005, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Always useful and always informative

Long Live the King!

Rellok · Mar 07, 2005, 08:28 PM // 20:28

Great review, and lots of good information.

I would, however, have liked some info on a War/Ele hammer build. I'm guessing with all the material you already had, that hammer builds would be best suited to their own build review.

VERY thorough with the intent of reviewing that one person's build.

Great work as always!

Matt

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 07, 2005, 09:27 PM // 21:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rellok

I would, however, have liked some info on a War/Ele hammer build. I'm guessing with all the material you already had, that hammer builds would be best suited to their own build review.

The original build was a sword build so, yes, hammers would have been a bit beyond the scope of things.

But, as for a War/Ele hammer build the best way to build one is to forget a hammer and get yourself a sword or axe instead.

Seriously, Hammers are the Unnatural Signet of the Warrior weapons. They're bad, they've been bad, and when you look at them you have to stop and wonder just why they've remained so bad for so long.

Hammers were, once, really good, and indeed during E3 I played a hammer WaMo and was long after an adherant to my two-handed skull crusher but that was back before a lot of new skills were added and knockdown was drastically reduced in effectiveness.

A Hammer just isn't worth considering now. Firstly, Hammers are slow. They swing slow, so while you deal more damage with one you deal it less often. However, the order of the day when dealing damage is to stack a lot of additional damage on each and every hit. Hammers are the worst melee weapon to do that with because you won't get as many hits, plain and simple. When you add, say, +20 damage to each blow you don't care if you're doing an average of 18 damage or 30 daamge, you care about how many times you can multiply that +20. As long as Order of Pain, Conjures, Judge's Insight, Warrior's Cunning, and who knows what else can be stacked on top of a weapon's damage then Hammers are going to be subpar.

For that matter, hammers charge slowly. Look at the recharges on some of their skills and compare it to other weapons. Staggering Blow takes a whole 30 seconds to recharge. It causes Weakness and Weakness is all but useless because while it does reduce weapon damage it does nothing against those aforementioned damage adds or even spell-casters. Compare that to Hamstring which will cause Cripple, a condition any Warrior can like, and will recharge in 15 seconds. Even the adrenal skills are poor because of the hammer's greater swing time. If axes and swords swing at 1.33 seconds and hammer's swing at 2 seconds then a skill that takes a hammer 6 hits of adrenaline will take a whole 12 seconds to charge for a hammer. That's the equivalent of 9 strikes of adrenaline for a sword. And the Hammer line has skills that take 8, 10 strikes of adrenaline! And, there are plenty Warrior skills outside of the weapon lines that use adrenaline. A Hammer will take longer to charge those skills than any other weapon. If, say, Defy Pain takes 7 adrenaline, that's 7 hits no matter what weapon you use but that's only 9 seconds with a sword or an axe but 14 with a hammer. A Hammer wielder won't be able to use that skill anywhere near as quickly and it just gets worse as the battle wears on. As long as the adrenal gain from all weapons is the same (A Hammer would need to get about 1.5 adren per hit to make things equal, time wise, by the way.) then those adrenal skills are sub-par with a hammer.

Also, hammers are two-handed weapons. That means you can't use a shield. So, already a Warrior trying to tank is at a disadvantage by taking a hammer because they'll have lower armor. So they're not as good as other weapons at taking damage nor at dishing it out. Not only that but by giving up a shield your character misses out on an additional modifier or bonus from that shield. Sure, Warriors get Stonefist Gauntlets but compared to the sort of things you can find on a shield, it's a poor substitute.

Finally, there's knock down. It *was* too good at one point but now it's pretty poor. They've reduced the duration of knockdown and also tweaked those skills that cause knockdown so that they're harder to make work together so there's no more infinite knockdown loops, hopefully - the so-called "knockdown lockdown" that was popular during E3 (popular with me, anyway, not so much the people who got caught by it...) - so that knockdown is no longer "king of all conditions" but in doing so they've cut hammers off at the knees. What hammers have going for them is that they're a very disruptive skill line. Knockdown is excellent disruption because it's an uber-interrupt, not only does it stop someone from doing whatever they're doing - and stops them from doing *anything*, attack, move, skill, whatever - it also keeps them from doing anything else for a little while. Imagine how bad Power Leak would be if it also kept a character from casting any spell for a further three seconds, that's what a knockdown is. But, it's like Cleave, when Cleave is good, axes are good. When knockdown is bad, hammers are bad, because hammers are built around doing knock-down. Now, those bulky, slow, high adren cost knockdown skills will drain the adrenaline from each other so that you can only rarely knock someone down and the knockdown you do get is hardly worth it thanks to the decreased duration. I understand that knockdown needed to be made less dangerous but it's gone too far the other way and needs to come back. I favor making a character that's knockded down lose any stances they might be using, especially now that those Mantras are all stances now, but something needs to change.

So, hammers are teh suck. Don't use hammers. If you're not too worried about dealing damage then take an axe with your War/Mes. You'll get Disrupting Chop and you'll also get Dismember which will give you a Deep Wound that's not dependant on another condition sticking around - and Deep Wound is a killer condition because of what it does to healing - otherwise you'd want a sword.

But, if I haven't scared you off enough, here's a hammer Warrior build here. It's Ran/War, not War/Mes, and it uses the cheat of swapping to a sword for Flourish, but it's along the lines of what you're looking for. Otherwise, since I'm planning a column on Dwarven Battle Stance - an abysmal skill, don't use it - I've been kicking around this War/Mes hammer build, it could use some tweaking and changes but here you are :

Str 12 (10+2)
Ham 12 (11+1)
Ins 10

Dwarven Battle Stance {E} (Str)
Bull’s Strike (Str)
Sprint (Str)
Hammer Blow (Ham)
Distracting Blow (Un)
Inspired Enchantment (Ins)
Leech Signet (Ins)
Power Drain (Ins)

Hammer

WNxTyphoon · Mar 07, 2005, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Many Hammer lovers play Hammer Warrior/Earth Elementalist. The added defense of the earth line plus Aftershock are what people are drawn to.

Rellok · Mar 07, 2005, 10:15 PM // 22:15

Quite a bit of good information.

I had heard about these "infinite knockdown loops" and I thought that I had heard with stonefist gauntlets the duration of knockdown was good. Apparently not.

The general hammer w/e that I had heard about was the knockdown/aftershock combo. And I had been interested in the hammer warrior for the blindness condition, not so much for the knockdown (but you need the knockdown for the blindness). Anyway, thanks for the info. I'll shy away from them for now, and hope that the balancing eventually gets everything right.

Matt (currently W/N)

Whosa Skylore · Mar 07, 2005, 10:16 PM // 22:16

you think you could give some details on the w/mes build??

Im a w/mes, i use a hammer now and im trying to get a good build but i might switch to sword

(if you cant its ok, i got one of my guildmates working on one

)

Ensign · Mar 07, 2005, 10:34 PM // 22:34

The hammer warrior / earth elementalist combo is pretty amusing. Basically you're spending your energy on damage spells to make up for the fact that your melee damage is awful - you're using defensive spells to make up for the lack of shield. Basically the secondary is being used to bring your primary up to par, not push it to even greater heights.

The only reason people use hammers on that combo is to make better use of Aftershock. The irony is that by the time you can knock someone down and hit them with Aftershock, a sword Warrior/Elementalist would have already dealt *more* damage with Conjure + weapon.

Basically for all the synergy that there appears to be between hammers and earth, the net result still isn't as good as just using a sword with Conjure. In an ideal world where things were balanced the hammer/earth character would be a great choice, but as is it's just a second-rate, flavorful also-ran.

Peace,
-CxE

FireMarshal · Mar 08, 2005, 12:59 AM // 00:59

In regard to Hammer Builds, I am suprised I havent seen Heavy Blow mentioned yet. Judging from the skill descriptions, this looks like a good combination:

Sure, you lose all adrenaline, but, look at it this way:

wa/nec OR nec/war

12 Hammers
some in curses
some in whatever

Take these skills:

Enfeeble (5 energy cost)
Target suffers from weakness for 5-17 seconds.

Heavy Blow (lose all adren, cost 6a)
Lose all adrenaline. If this attack hits a foe suffering from weakness, that foe is knocked down and you strike for 1-24 more damage.

Crushing Blow(5 energy cost, plus I dont know where to find this)
If this attack hits, you strike for 1-16 more damage. If you hit a knocked-down enemy, you inflict a deep wound, lowering your target's maximum health by 20% for 5-17 seconds.

This combo sounds pretty powerful to me.

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 08, 2005, 01:48 AM // 01:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rellok

I had heard about these "infinite knockdown loops" and I thought that I had heard with stonefist gauntlets the duration of knockdown was good. Apparently not.

With the gauntlets it's *better*, sure. But, say knock down lasts for 1~2 seconds now, with the stone gaunts it'll last about 3. So, you get the difference between one free hammer blow you can land while your opponent can't do anything and...one free hammer blow. Yeah, you'll get further along in your swing and will probably land that second hit before they can do anything about it but still...

Back when knockdown was four, five seconds, maybe six with the gaunts, that was a sizeable amount of time. Now, it's little better than just an interrupt.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rellok

The general hammer w/e that I had heard about was the knockdown/aftershock combo. And I had been interested in the hammer warrior for the blindness condition, not so much for the knockdown (but you need the knockdown for the blindness). Anyway, thanks for the info. I'll shy away from them for now, and hope that the balancing eventually gets everything right.

Ah, yeah, Belly Smash. Yeah you need knockdown for that to work and it can be hard to time since knockdown last so long. That 2 second swing time on a hammer means you also have a 2 second casting time for any skill you use. It's AoE Blindness which is good against those Rangers and Warriors just like Weakness but not for much else. Also, 30 second recharge. Bleh. Ah well, could be worse, could be adrenal meaning you'd have a hell of a time using it with Hammer Bash et al...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Typhoon

Many Hammer lovers play Hammer Warrior/Earth Elementalist. The added defense of the earth line plus Aftershock are what people are drawn to.

Many people think cucumbers taste better pickled. Many people are also idiots...

Hammer/Earth War/Ele have beena round for a while, sure. But knockdown takes forever to get and Aftershock isn't all that impressive.

But, I think Charles already covered all that. Still, if you want defense, stay away from Hammer. That lack of a shield is hurting you. And there are better skills in other, more efficient, lines to help you defend yourself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whosa Skylore

you think you could give some details on the w/mes build??

Im a w/mes, i use a hammer now and im trying to get a good build but i might switch to sword

(if you cant its ok, i got one of my guildmates working on one

)

What, that build I posted earlier? It's trying to spin gold out of trash, really, it's not that good.

Dwarven Battle Stance is a stance which causes your hammer attacks to interrupt for the next feew seconds. However, it also ends on skill and is canceled by any other stance you might use, and, again, hammers swing slow so you only get a few swing's worth of use out of it. It's an awful skill, don't use it, I'm just tryign to find some way of making it work.

Anyhow, the point of the build is disruption. It's all about knocking down, interrupting, or otherwise messing up the target. I'd use Heavy Blow for my big knockdown skill but that requires a target to be Weakened and there's no good reliable way to Weaken someone here (Yeah, Staggering Blow is trash but it does let you use Heavy Blow which is Hammer Bash+ as it knocks a target down and causes extra damage, but only if they suffer from Weakness, at the same adrenal cost. If you could use Staggering blow, say, every 10 seconds it'd be perfect, but you can't so you need to use something like Enervating charge on a War/Ele which, meh.) so I go with Hammer Bash instead. The all-adrenaline gone doesn't matter when it's the only adrenal skill, after all. Bull's Strike will stop a target from running away with more knockdown - actually from when I've used it, it knocks down any target that's just moving, not necessarily moving away from me, but I haven't tested it in a while. Since this is a build that looks to be eating up a lot of energy I dip into Inspiration and pluck out Power Drain which is both a low-cost interrupt, but should restore enough energy to completely refill a Warrior's energy bar. And while I'm there Leech Signet is a nice no-energy way of likewise refilling my energy bar with the added benefit of stealing some energy from the target, it's another under-rated skill I like that nobody else seems to.

Now, that's all constructed with DBS in mind and since anyone in their right mind should steer well clear of that skill you'd want to pick up another elite in its stead. There's not a lot in Inspiration, really, you could get Energy Drain - which isn't very playable without Fast Casting - or maybe Mantra of Recovery - but there's such a thing as too much energy management when you don't have anything to spend it on. You could go with Backbreaker or Earthshaker, maybe but 10 adrenaline charge times with hammer make me frown (that's 20 seconds without any external aid). There are some marginally nice pick-ups in the Strength line, if I had to pick one I'd pick Bull's Charge - faster attacks and knockdown. Getting rid of DBS also means you can do some other things. With their slow swing rate hammers beg for constant attack rate buffs like Flurry/Frenzy or beyond but DBS doesn't play well with other stances, you'll want one of those, too.

Anyhow, the point being that you're not out to deal damage, so DPS is a plus but not an overriding concern here. What you want to do is find the skills and tactics that are going to let you mess up other characters the best. Warrior/Mesmer means you can manage your energy while you're doing that disruption. I'm not too convinced it'll be more effective than a sword war/mes with a similar load-out, but that's the direction I'd go in, anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FireMarshall

This combo sounds pretty powerful to me.

It does to me, too. That's why I use a Stagger+Heavy+Crushing+Belly Smash chain in that aforementioned ran/war hammer build. Running Tiger's Fury and swapping for Flourish that's something you can pull off roughly every 9 seconds. You really need the stone gaunts, though, and even then timing is going to be pretty critical.

But, the counter-argument, of course, is that a sword or axe Warrior is just as capable of dishing out nasty punishment in that same amount of time while doing more damage besides. As with any knockdown+Aftershock combination it's good but someone following another path can do much, much better.

torry · Mar 08, 2005, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Rex,
hope I dont post this in the wrong thread..but reading your W/E builds. (brushing through them, didnt read every detail

);

Why do you pump up Str to 12 every time?

- you dont use any Str skills
- str armour penetration bonus is only applied to each SKILL used, not each hit?

Charles said somewhere else that 7 tactics will give you a 15 shield. Okay, why not pump it to 7 at least; And VIMine is Tactics,,,

Ensign · Mar 08, 2005, 10:18 PM // 22:18

Well, if you just want a shield you can pump either Strength or Tactics - there are shields linked to each attribute, so you can choose which attribute you want to pump. In the case of a primary Warrior, that means Strength. Note that 7 Tactics (roughly, subject to change) is what you'll need for a generic 15 AL shield - the really high end stuff will require more, like 10+ Tactics or Strength. Once you're pressing up into that range you'd much rather have Strength.

The armor penetration is just a nice bonus.

The reason you pump Strength, though, is because a two attribute build is pointless, especially on a weapon user who just wants to stop at 12 Swordsmanship or whatever anyway. A minor rune and +1 weapon helm is just obvious, meaning that realistically you just want a 10 in your weapon attribute - which immediately has you looking at the 11/10/10 and 12/10/8 attribute configurations. So even if he's only using two attributes for skills, there's really no reason not to pump Strength - it's a passive bonus and the APs aren't going to be put to better use elsewhere.

I can agree that making Strength the highest natural attribute is a waste, though. On the builds with zero Strength skills, like his Air builds, I'd swap into a 12 Air, 10+2 Swords, 8+1 Strength configuration. The 12/12+2/3+1 setup is going to deal more damage on average, but the 12/10/8 build is going to have an easier time dealing with the high ALs that you get when people start stacking buffs. You can argue it either way from a raw damage perspective, but once you take shields into account you really want to be in Strength.

Peace,
-CxE

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 09, 2005, 12:04 AM // 00:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by torry

hope I dont post this in the wrong thread..but reading your W/E builds. (brushing through them, didnt read every detail

);

Why do you pump up Str to 12 every time?

- you dont use any Str skills
- str armour penetration bonus is only applied to each SKILL used, not each hit?

Charles said somewhere else that 7 tactics will give you a 15 shield. Okay, why not pump it to 7 at least; And VIMine is Tactics,,,

Because, as Charles says, you don't need Tactics to get a shield. You can use Strength just as easily because there *are* shields that are tied to Strength, too. Since I'm also not using any Tactics skill I care about pumping (The point of ViM! is not the healing but the energy gain. The energy gain isn't linked to Tactics. I don't care about healing, I trust my Monks to do their job rather than a skill I can only use once every fifteen seconds and only if I'm surrounded by conditioned enemies. But, that's just me.) that 12% armor penetration is pretty attractive.

That's the equivalent of an extra 10~20% damage on every attack skill - the equivalent of using a customized over an uncustomized weapon - on a character that should be using a lot of attack skills (The lone exception to this is the Clay Soldier, but there I'm using Warrior's Endurance which is linked to Strength in a significant way.) so for a character that cares about squeezing out a lot of DPS, high Strength is a lot better than high Tactics.

As for why it's 12 and to Charles point that a base 12/10/8, Strength 8+1, Swords 10+2, Element 12 build makes a lot more sense as far as damage is concerned...why didn't I think of that? I guess it's a holdover from when Strenght was actually really good. It was 2% penetration per rank or something along those lines which made for a big differrence. Realistically, all you need isenough for whatever Str-shield you want to use. The general idea is that you want Weapon at 12 and no higher, the Element as high as it can go, and Strength pretty high, too. No, whether it's best to go Str12/Swd12/Ele10, Str9/Sw12/Ele12, Str11/Sw12/Ele11, or whatever else, I'll leave up to the number crunchers.

At this point, though, Strength probably needs a boost. Compared to some of the other primary attribute's 1% armor penetration on an attack skill isn't cutting it anymore. Not when ther'e's insane things like Expertise floating around. Making it give a base penetration to your attacks every time you swing a weapon not just use a skill would work for me. And so would a change to, perhaps 1.5% per rank.

torry · Mar 09, 2005, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

That's the equivalent of an extra 10~20% damage on every attack skill - the equivalent of using a customized over an uncustomized weapon - on a character that should be using a lot of attack skills (The lone exception to this is the Clay Soldier, but there I'm using Warrior's Endurance which is linked to Strength in a significant way.) so for a character that cares about squeezing out a lot of DPS, high Strength is a lot better than high Tactics.

At this point, though, Strength probably needs a boost. Compared to some of the other primary attribute's 1% armor penetration on an attack skill isn't cutting it anymore. Not when ther'e's insane things like Expertise floating around. Making it give a base penetration to your attacks every time you swing a weapon not just use a skill would work for me. And so would a change to, perhaps 1.5% per rank.

Yes...
as it is now, you get say 8% armour penetration on each adrenaline skill. Which each are say 3 DPS.
With say 3 A-skills, that is 9 DPS x 8% = 0.72 DPS added.

Hardly worth the effort is it?

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 09, 2005, 07:08 PM // 19:08

No, each adrenal skill is worth a lot more than that.

Those adrenal skills will first hit for normal weapon damage, which with a decent sword is about 18DPS. Then, they'll be improved by the use of an attack speed buff, raising that DPS to, say, 25DPS or so. Next, there'll be a Conjure running, which should be another 10DPS easily for something like 35DPS. So the roughly 10% boost from armor penetration (it, of course, depends on the target you're attacking) is about 3~4 damage per second. Not huge, but where else are you going to put the points, Tactics so you can use a shield? You already get a shield from Strength and you also get that extra damage. And that's before considering the results of each skill. Sever will add Bleeding which is an extra 6DPS. Gash adds a bit more damge itself. Galtrath or Pure about double the initial damage of your weapon every so often. And Final can about tripple it. It's a small bonus but enough of one that it can be important to your overall damage.

Zonzai · Mar 15, 2005, 02:35 AM // 02:35

My first war/ele was air and my second was earth with hammer. I'll probably try out a water build, because I really like the Ice Trident spell (one of the best in the game imho). But I was thinking about maybe switching out some of the skills you have listed.

At first I thought I might switch out Galrath Slash for Power Attack . I was mostly thinking this because I hate the 8 adrenalin cost for Galrath but now I'm not so sure. Power Attack costs energy but at close quarters I don't figure I'll be spamming Ice Trident much and Power Attack is a simple and efficient skill. It really does do more damage than Galrath too.

My problem is, and this is what made me reconsider, I was also considering switching out Final Thrust for Hamstring . I love this skill, mostly because I hate it when my targets try to run. I know, I'll have Ice Trident to knock them down and sprint to help me catch up too but I just like to keep my targets close - call me eccentric.

My concern in doing this is that both of these skills cost energy. I know I'll want to work Hamstring in but maybe someone could give me some advice on what, if anything, I could or should use in place of galrath slash/power attack. Maybe Frenzy would work better, though I hate the double damage effect that it causes. Any advice would be appreciated.

Weezer_Blue · Mar 15, 2005, 02:39 AM // 02:39

sorry to go off topic, but Rex, wtf happened to yoru avatar? is that a super hero's alter-ego or have you gone nuts?

anyway... ahem... builds... yes... very good review... (actually i found it quite useful)

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 15, 2005, 07:26 AM // 07:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zonzai

At first I thought I might switch out Galrath Slash for Power Attack . I was mostly thinking this because I hate the 8 adrenalin cost for Galrath but now I'm not so sure. Power Attack costs energy but at close quarters I don't figure I'll be spamming Ice Trident much and Power Attack is a simple and efficient skill. It really does do more damage than Galrath too.

Power Attack will deal more damage but it's not very sustainable. Let's assume your'e being smart and are using some sort of attack speed buff to drop your sword's attack rate to something like a second. That means Galrath will recharge in 8 hits in 8 seconds (And there are ways of dropping it even further, although it's hard to say without knowing more about your build which is best for you.). Power Attack will take a second to go off and will recharge in another 4 for a total recycle of 5 seconds. That means every 5 seconds you'll be spending 5 energy or the equivalent of 3 pips of energy flowing out of your character. 30 seconds of that, casting nothing else, and you'll be out of energy. Toss in the occasional Trident and you'll be down even further. And that attack speed buff isn't free, you know. But you can Galrath all day long without losing energy. That's where it earns its keep.

Not that Power Attack is bad it's just that I, and other wars, prefer to keep our damage flowing while leaving our energy available for those emergency skills that are either goign to put a target down or bail us out of trouble. But, if you can find an energy gaining sword upgrade then Power Attack is certianly sustainable and you'll have a bit of energy left over, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zonzai

My problem is, and this is what made me reconsider, I was also considering switching out Final Thrust for Hamstring . I love this skill, mostly because I hate it when my targets try to run. I know, I'll have Ice Trident to knock them down and sprint to help me catch up too but I just like to keep my targets close - call me eccentric.

If you're using Final you'll want to avoid Galrath Slash and vice versa. Galrath can be used right before Final but you're still crippling your adrenal gain with Final's lose all adrenaline and coupling it with a high adrenal skill.

Hamstring is okay, but not great. It's too much energy if you're going to be using Water Trident a lot. Take Bull's Strike or Sprint if you want someone close.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zonzai

My concern in doing this is that both of these skills cost energy. I know I'll want to work Hamstring in but maybe someone could give me some advice on what, if anything, I could or should use in place of galrath slash/power attack. Maybe Frenzy would work better, though I hate the double damage effect that it causes. Any advice would be appreciated.

Conjure Frost, if you don't have it already.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Weezer_Blue

sorry to go off topic, but Rex, wtf happened to yoru avatar? is that a super hero's alter-ego or have you gone nuts?

Gone nuts? No, I don't think I've ever left.

Kids today. No sense of culture.