Curse

Sythion · May 21, 2005, 08:13 PM // 20:13

Greater Conflageration: Create a level 1-8 Spirit. For creatures within its range, all physical damage is fire damage instead. This Spirit dies after 30-126 seconds.

Winter: Create a level 1-8 Spirit, all Elemental damage is Cold damage instead. This Spirit dies after 30-126 seconds.

Mantra of Frost: For 30-78 seconds, whenever you take cold damage, the damage is reduced by 26-45% and you gain 1 Energy.

Please tell me if this works:
If I understand this correctly, this would make ALL attacks on the field Cold damage attacks. Physical attacks would become fire damage elemental attacks because of conflag, which would then become cold damage attacks because of winter (along with all normal elemental damage). A primary ranger with Fur lined armor would have 115 armor vs cold (70 AL +30 Elemental, + 15 cold). Include Mantra of frost, and it seems to be an incredible way to defend against almost all attacks (aside from those that ignore armor).

According to the A Treatise on Combat Mathematics guide on this site, 115 armor = 38.6% damage. A sword from a 12 swordsmanship wield dealing 15-22 damage would be reduced to 5.79 - 8.49, an average of 7.14. Mantra of frost could reduce this by 45%, putting it at 3.93 average damage!

A lvl 20 character with 12 fire magic would have phoenix at max damage 91 + 75 = 164 total. The armor would reduce this considerably 164 * .386 * .55 = 34.82 average total damage!

Plus mantra of frost would be add to energy gain as well, which could theoretically allow a ranger to bypass expertise and focus on mesmer skills, or ranger marksmanship attacks.

In a group build, only one member needs to carry conflag and winter to make this work.

Do you think this is worth investing time in on organized PvP?

Lucius Sejanus · May 21, 2005, 08:46 PM // 20:46

Maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't you just use mantra of flames?

Edit: Nevermind.

Mercury Angel · May 21, 2005, 09:31 PM // 21:31

The Winter + Greater Conflagration + Mantra of Frost combo is inside the Prima's Official Mini-Strategy Guide everybody who pre-ordered got, just so you know.

On a side note, since the blunt of damage will be elemental (until your Greater Conflag spirit is slain, which is very likely to happen, in which case you won't be able to resummon it for a while...), Storm Chasers is an excellent energy management skill. At 14 Wilderness Survival, you'll gain 5 energy every time you're hit with elemental damage.

Edit:
On the killing of the spirit note, that's the primary weakness to the whole idea. If you're interrupted, or the spirit is killed, you have to wait 1 minute to resummon it again, and when an organized team knows what you're doing, I think they can handle interrupting a 5 second cast skill pretty easily.

Beta Ray Bill · Jun 24, 2005, 05:35 PM // 17:35

Add Echo and/or Arcane Echo to the mix and resummoning shouldn't be terribly difficult. It does take a lot of time to maintain, tho, and your team would have to hold their position to defend the spirits. Not a great PvP tactic, but I'd be interested to see how it really works.

Minwanabi · Jun 24, 2005, 05:50 PM // 17:50

If you can focus a group build around it, spirit teams like this can work, with multiple instances of every spirit on various characters, as well as oath shot on the rangers that don't have greater conflag (IE, 3 rangers, 2 with conflag, one with every other needed spirit and oath shot, etc.)