Curse

chris_nin00 · Dec 16, 2005, 09:16 PM // 21:16

Hello Mesmer goers!
You asked for it, you begged for it, you even prayed for it. May I present the Stoneway Build!

Profession: Mesmer/Elementalist

Name: Chris_nin00's Stoneway Build

Type: General PvP/PvE

Category: Damage Dealer / Havagreatime

Attributes:
Fast Casting - 10 + 3 + 1
Inspiration Magic - 9 + 1
Earth Magic - 12

Skills Set:
Channeling
Elemental Attunement {Elite}
Earth Attunement
Kinetic Armor
Stone Daggers
Drain Enchantment
Ether Feast / Energy Tap / Hex Breaker
Resurrection Signet

Summary: What is stoneway you ask? Stoneway is very much like Flareway. It uses high Fast Casting to do a continual barrage of Stone Daggers, which is the equivalent of spamming flare with a couple of differences. Flare is one ball of fire while stone daggers are two stones. Also, Stoneway utilizes Kinetic Armor to buff up your defense. I've seen warriors do 40 damage at the most to this build. Get it? Lets move on.
Battle Preperations: Get your skills set up. Team Arena, If you have a monk in your group screw Ether Feast and replace it with a skill that fits your playing style. Other than that, lets get on with this battle.
In the Arena: Use Channeling, Elemental Attunement, and Earth Attunement. Don't use Kinectic armor until you are ready to attack. Choose a target, squishies(Mesmers, Elementalists, Monks) first

. When you are close, in this case, within 8 seconds, to attacking use Kinetic Armor. Then, suprisingly, spam Stone Daggers at the chosen target. After that there is not much to it. Renew Attunements and Channeling when needed. Drain Enchantment for energy while taking away an enchanment. Kinetic armor will work by itself if you keep using spells. Ether Feast for Healing. Res Sig when someone is dead.

Notes & Concerns: Ah, Stoneway, the cream of the stones. There is no thread about Stoneway at all in this thread. So here it is. At 40 damage per second Stoneway isn't that easy to pass up. I'll list the pros and cons so you can decide for yourself.

Pros:
- Great Defense / No gankers are going to take you down.
- Throwing Stone Daggers are fun.
Cons
- NONE!

Just kidding.
- Enchantment renders will make you into a dancing male mesmer in a heartbeat.
- Damage output can be trimmed down by high defense
- You, sir, are the first target!

Enchantments are everything in this build. Without them you are screwed. Remember that this build is for fun only and not 'serious' PvP. Who knows, you might improve and it may become the flavor of the month. You decide the build. Good Luck and remember to brush your teeth.

Credit:
SilenceWeaver for pushing me over the edge to post this build. Darn you! My rep is ruined! Just kidding
Guild Wars Mesmer Goers
Guild Wars / Arena Net
People who played PvP extensively in April/May/June
Pokemon
Avarre for pointing Elite out. And because the name is cool
ME!
Chris_nin00

EDIT
December 16, 2005 - Fixed Credits and Skill Set. Edited grammar.
December 18, 2005 - Added Seal of Quality.

Avarre · Dec 17, 2005, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris_nin00

- Damage output can be trimmed down by high defense

This is, ah... quite a con. The lowest armor you'll face (60AL) won't take anything like the listed (20x2) 40 damage. More like 20, maybe slightly more/less. That's not taking into consideration rangers (70+30AL) or warriors (80+AL). Sure, youll still cause havoc in Comp Arena, and maybe quite effectively at times, but once you run into a monk with a clue, <20dmg/s isn't exactly that hard to counter

Of course the build is still fun to play, because spamming stony death at things is always interesting. On the plus side, you'll have +68AL from kinetic armor, and your total 128AL won't allow much damage in. Probably closer to 10~. This means if you're the primary target, the rest of the group will have more time to attack the enemy team unhindered while you tank the enemy assault, dancing in the air with stone toothpicks bombarding your foes.

When compared to flareway... your damage is still lacking, but you lose the KD / interrupt factor of meteor. On the other hand, you gain huge armor...

My Notes :

Ether Feast/Energy Drain <-- should be /Energy Tap, Energy Drain is elite

There is a way to kill this build in one spell... as you only have 1 spell to actually cause harm, and you HAVE to spam it (or kinetic goes down), what oh what do we do against Diversion?

Shwitz · Dec 17, 2005, 12:19 AM // 00:19

I whipped up a Stone Daggers fast-caster about 2 weeks ago and tried it out in the Competition Arenas. While it was super-fun bashing my 4 key as fast as possible and seeing a steady stream of daggers shoot toward my target, I found that anything higher than the base armor for a caster could *severely* reduce my damage output. I really didn't know what to do other than keep spamming daggers... didn't really hurt the other team much. It was fun, but it got old quick.

chris_nin00 · Dec 17, 2005, 01:24 AM // 01:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

My Notes :

Ether Feast/Energy Drain <-- should be /Energy Tap, Energy Drain is elite

There is a way to kill this build in one spell... as you only have 1 spell to actually cause harm, and you HAVE to spam it (or kinetic goes down), what oh what do we do against Diversion?

- Ack! Thanks for pointing that out

- What do we do against diversion? Type /dance

Well the best thing you can do is bring hex breaker or have a monk take diversion off you.

NatalieD · Dec 17, 2005, 02:45 AM // 02:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

This is, ah... quite a con. The lowest armor you'll face (60AL) won't take anything like the listed (20x2) 40 damage. More like 20, maybe slightly more/less.

On the contrary, a target with 60AL will take exactly the listed damage. 60AL is sort of the baseline, the point at which everything does its listed damage.

E Power · Dec 17, 2005, 02:47 AM // 02:47

I suggest obsidian flame, maybe a little spike in their with the low cooldown time. Even though it causes exaustion, it is only 5 energy.

Avarre · Dec 17, 2005, 03:57 AM // 03:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatalieD

On the contrary, a target with 60AL will take exactly the listed damage. 60AL is sort of the baseline, the point at which everything does its listed damage.

Really? Oh, that;s cool too!

*bonk self* Disregard me!

Still, its kinda low dps against anything else, as was mentioned.

Lou · Dec 17, 2005, 04:32 AM // 04:32

It may be fun but a half-way competent monk will have no problem at all dealing with your damage.

TGgold · Dec 17, 2005, 03:01 PM // 15:01

Hm, I'd say the 14 FC is a bit high,even if this is for fun. 1 second casts are pretty fast to begin with, and I think that at 16 FC they only go down to abou7 .5 seconds. Of course, it's all up to you, but maybe those points could be used to bring up inspiration just to make those insp spells you decided to use just that much better.

Just a thought. ^_^;

Oh yeah, isn't this basically the same build that the boss outside of Yak's Bend uses for the Mesmer quest?

rii · Dec 18, 2005, 12:02 AM // 00:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Azeroths Hammer

It may be fun but a half-way competent monk will have no problem at all dealing with your damage.

I thought that the whole point of this was that you have 8 wayers... and therefore 8x40 = 320dmg every 1.5s

I am also under the impression that fire is actually more defensive... 8xflameburst craps all over anyone really.

SilenceWeaver · Dec 21, 2005, 01:46 AM // 01:46

lol chris what did i do to make you write this build?
nice build though ill have to try it out if i can somehow rustle up enough people with the necessary skills for it. gar.
just a note flarewayers in a stoneway team can be very nice for the extra damage they provide via MoR and KD via meteor. common knowledge but yeah.
i wish this game showed spells better. lol imagine 16 stone daggers flying into a monks head at the same time, that would be great lol.

also i pulled a 201.3 in 24:16 on my 6k erg test today, so i am one happy sexily dancing skinny mesmer right now. r00t.

SilenceWeaver · Dec 21, 2005, 10:17 PM // 22:17

sorry for the double-post.
im thinking spearway could be as good or better than stoneway or flareway.
one, it would cause more damage due to ice spears extra damage.
two, it would bring snares and slows into the mix.
three, it would provide more effective use of channeling due to the half range of ice spear.
four, if someone brought spinal shivers, it would be EVIL shutdown on them.
yes the half range of ice spear is bad, but its not so bad when you can snare your opponent and combos quite well with channeling so you dont have to manually walk up for channeling to take effect.

ehehe, hint hint chris.

Rico Carridan · Dec 23, 2005, 11:45 AM // 11:45

I tried this build out in CA, and I have to say, the real problem is your damage production, even on a regularly armored target, is SO low, that it isn't really workable, other than as a gimmick. You're really not doing significantly more damage than you would with your wand, I don't think. Even a monk who just puts on healing breeze every so often will have no trouble keeping up with the damage you produce.

This build should really be run as E/Me, I think. The cast time on stone daggers is probably fast enough that the diminishing returns on fastcast is probably stupidly bad, and having 16 earth would improve the damage considerably (still probably not enough though).

Also, alongside diversion, I will add that in one of my CA matches, I got backfired... that really messes up this build.

Rico