Curse

Shinsei · Apr 18, 2005, 08:18 AM // 08:18

After spending alot of time in the 4v4 Arena this BPE, just playing around, I've developed a fun little build that can outlast most things. I've been expirimenting with various builds, aiming for an all-arounder that would pull home a very good win ratio. Ofcourse, there is no sure build, since there's a counter for everthing, and I wouldn't count on a support character anymore such as a healer or protection monk, being as its become a popular role to play in the arena, and you're most likely to come into incompetent groups that can't hold their own.

Considering all the above, I've concluded that we're looking for something that can hold its own. I first turned to the war/mo which is a popular class. I thought at first the higher AL would be better than the extra energy provided by the other classes, until I realized this. Essence Bond and Balthazar's Spirit stack, aswell as Vigorous Spirit and Live Vicariously. That right there is 3 pips, which is too much for the warrior to hold, and if we want to do any damage, we'll need Strength of Honor, and use a sword with +15% when enchanted (which is a given), aswell as the shield with enchantment bonus aswell (45 hp and -2 dmg taken when enchanted i believe). I also considered judge's insight, but quickly realized it was too heavy to work with, especially with the focus a monk primary will be taking.

Now we're using 4 pips. With the attributes I'll list later, we're getting 22 hp per hit, dealing around 10-15 dmg on wars, and 20-30 on everything else, gaining 2 energy per hit taken aswell as an extra adrenalin strike. The damage could be better, however that can't be helped much if we're going for survivability. Now all we need to work on is a high defense to utilize the mass energy recieved when focused. 2 elites came to mind when considering this, and that was Shield of Judgement and Healing Hands. Shield of Judgement would indeed be the most affective, and good for warrior trains, however with the low recharge, it brings down the survivability as opposed to healing hands. Due to this, I chose healing hands over shield of judgement, however you can switch and make your own decision. They're both very fun to work with.

Now, these last 2 skills were tricky. I know I still need alot of defense if I'm going to survive the focus of 4 players. First I considered Breeze and Healing touch for the self healing. I found breeze very usefull to counter the DoT's and help on the focus fire aswell. However, Healing Touch wasn't as good as I would hope. I then realized, we're getting good adrenalin from Balthazar's Spirit, so why not take advantage of that. One skill came into mind when I thought of that, and that was Bonetti's defense. It combo's extremely well with healing breeze too, and also pulls up all your mp.

Now comes the attributes, which also were a bit tricky. We want 9 swordsmanship for the sword to be affective, aswell as tactics for the shield and boosting bonetti's. I was thinking about, and even tried doing a divine favor+divine boon for this, but it was just not enough healing to make up for the skills lost, and would require self heal spamming to be effective, which would mess up the damage dealt, and not as effective as healing hands + breeze + bonetti's. I then went for 10 healing and 8 smiting, for the 6 damage on strength of honor, 7 regen on breeze and 11 hp on vigorous and live vicariously.

As for armor, the +1 healing head piece is the most effective, judge's chest and pants for the defense, and since hands and feet have such a low ratio of getting hit, tattoo those.

So all in all, we have:

10+1 Healing
8 Smiting
9 Sword
9 Tactics
-----------------------
Balthazar's Sprit
Essence Bond
Healing Hands
Strength of Honor
Live Vicariously
Vigorous Spirit
Healing Breeze
Bonetti's Defense
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+1 healing prayers head
Judge's chest
Judge's pants
aesthetics hands
aesthetics feet
-----------------------
slot 1 - Sword +15% dmg when enchanted / shield +45 hp and -2 dmg when enchanted

slot 2 - Sword +15% dmg when enchanted / multi bonus healing prayers focus

Ofcourse, no build is invincible, but this one always has the arena scrubs wondering where to download the godmode cheat you're using

Suggestions are welcome, and I hope this helps. It certainly kept me buisy for a few hours

Manderlock · Apr 18, 2005, 08:40 AM // 08:40

Your title is misleading.

That being said, you can try that if you want. Im going to stick to my War/Nerco.

Ravidel · Apr 18, 2005, 09:00 AM // 09:00

Shin and I played this build, frequently taking on entire teams at once. One person remarked, "This guy's god," which was particularly amusing. It has its weaknesses (major DoTs, enchantment removal, elemental damage), but it survives the metagame of Arena: W/Mo. I owned most of the W/N builds I faced, as well, but Life Transfer and hex stacking can be a serious pain if the player knows what he's doing. Of course, this is Arena we're talking about...if you lose, simply restart and win against someone else!

I toyed around with a few ideas of my own this morning, and concluded that Live Vicariously is not granting enough health to be worthwhile. You're gaining 11 hp per attack from it, which isn't a ton, and you probably have regen effects. But it costs a pip to maintain, and it costs 10 to cast, so you're usually sitting in the spawn for a few seconds after everyone's out, and that can, at best, annoy people. At worst, it'll cost you the match.

Since we must have Healing Hands and Healing Breeze to keep us alive in the dire straits, those will stay. But think about how often you're recasting Healing Hands: every 10 seconds, if you're being focused (watch for Backfire!) in a bad situation. Divine Favor yields healing bonuses, and Divine Boon stacks those bonuses. You're also recasting Vigorous Spirit relatively regularly (every 30 seconds), so you'll be getting double Divine bonus for that, as well. Healing Hands falls under the same category. In fact, if you crunch the numbers, you can get over 40 hp instant heal by casting any healing/enchantment spell, which is comparable to Healing Touch and Orison of Healing (given the same rank in Healing Prayers). This is with only about 5 points in Divine Favor, mind you. As a final plus, Divine Boon only costs 5 energy, so you can rip out of the gates right along with your teammates.

So the basic strategy is to rely primarily on Healing Breeze and Vigorous Spirit while you attack a hittable target (mesmers and necros are your worst enemies, so focusing them fast would be good). When you start getting ganged, use the Healing Hands, and then Bonetti's Defense. Be absolutely sure that you use Bonetti's after you've renewed your spells because the protection it gives you will be pointless if you cancel it midway to heal yourself.

I played this build in the last half-hour of the final beta weekend, as well, and took on three W/Mo plus one Mo/E without a problem. Unfortunately, the battle never ended, and I missed all the end-of-beta fireworks right up until they closed the server.

The point is that this build takes a bit to get used to, but once you do, and provided your opponents aren't conveniently built to destroy you, you'll be practically invincible running this. And who doesn't want to be invincible?

-Rav

Shinsei · Apr 18, 2005, 01:34 PM // 13:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manderlock

Your title is misleading.

The point of my post was to share a build focused on giving you the best win ratio in 4v4 arena PvP. that's why I gave the title that name. I don't consider it misleading at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ravidal

Since we must have Healing Hands and Healing Breeze to keep us alive in the dire straits, those will stay. But think about how often you're recasting Healing Hands: every 10 seconds, if you're being focused (watch for Backfire!) in a bad situation. Divine Favor yields healing bonuses, and Divine Boon stacks those bonuses. You're also recasting Vigorous Spirit relatively regularly (every 30 seconds), so you'll be getting double Divine bonus for that, as well. Healing Hands falls under the same category. In fact, if you crunch the numbers, you can get over 40 hp instant heal by casting any healing/enchantment spell, which is comparable to Healing Touch and Orison of Healing (given the same rank in Healing Prayers). This is with only about 5 points in Divine Favor, mind you. As a final plus, Divine Boon only costs 5 energy, so you can rip out of the gates right along with your teammates.

As you know, I tried this while we were on vent together and you were trying out the original build I gave you. I wasn't feeling as big a bonus as I was hoping for with boon and DF, since I wasn't spamming heals on myself. It also spread the attribute points way too thin, and didn't allow healing and smiting to be as effective as I would have hoped.

I would deffinately want to keep live vicariously to stack over vigorous spirit. Those 22 hp per hit really make a difference, rather than the small bonus you recieve with thin attribute points on DF. With 22 hp per hit(instead of the boon monk's 8-9), breeze and bonetti's up at the same time, you shouldn't be taking any damage unless you're focused by indirect damage (hexes / conditions), or incredibly high nuke focusing. And you can keep going this way until the 10 secs are up, where you either cast breeze and healing hands, or breeze and bonetti's. You don't want to have healing hands and bonetti's up at the same time, since bonetti's is basically negifying the effect of healing hands except for the 25% damage that actually hits, which breeze is there for. Also, i felt on the original build (the one i posted), I was having enough energy problems, even when targeted. With boon requiring 2 extra energy for each monk spell, it was very hard to keep spamming heals on myself.

Personally, the original monk was more reliable, and utilizing its higher offense to provide defense, I would say it beats the boon monk. However its all up to personal preferance. The boon monk isnt "bad"

Cronos · Apr 18, 2005, 01:48 PM // 13:48

Sounds like a good build. I would have liked a ranger in there somewhere though. I don't like bashing up close.

Sausaletus Rex · Apr 18, 2005, 03:34 PM // 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shinsei

After spending alot of time in the 4v4 Arena this BPE, just playing around, I've developed a fun little build that can outlast most things.

No Shields Up!? Although, hard to see what to drop to fit it in, yeah.

I'm interested in the Divine Boon+DF idea, though. Boon got bumped up a bit over the weekend and I think it's got some decent possibilities now. Adding a good 60 health on top of your DF bonus on top of anything else makes for a lot of healing. It's an enchantment and enchantments are ripe to be removed, especially on a focused Monk. But I see a lot of good things using such a skill on, say, a Protection Monk.

Ender Ward · Apr 18, 2005, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Does the amount of energy and adrenaline you get from Balthazar's Spirit depend on your rank in smiting prayers? Or is it always the same?

Ander Deathblade · Apr 18, 2005, 08:04 PM // 20:04

Just a thought : you might wanna consider protection prayers when going for a Mo/W. some guy spamming Reversal of Fortune is really hard to kill. Having said that, the build's not very uber... steal your energy and youre done for.

Shinsei · Apr 18, 2005, 08:44 PM // 20:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ender Ward

Does the amount of energy and adrenaline you get from Balthazar's Spirit depend on your rank in smiting prayers? Or is it always the same?

No. It is under smiting prayers, however there are no altering stats in the skill. I've noticed a few of these type of skills, one of them being Defensive Stance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

No Shields Up!? Although, hard to see what to drop to fit it in, yeah.

I'm interested in the Divine Boon+DF idea, though. Boon got bumped up a bit over the weekend and I think it's got some decent possibilities now. Adding a good 60 health on top of your DF bonus on top of anything else makes for a lot of healing. It's an enchantment and enchantments are ripe to be removed, especially on a focused Monk. But I see a lot of good things using such a skill on, say, a Protection Monk.

I think Bonetti's outranks Shield Up in so many ways, especially when considering this build is centered around itself. It's built to survive and not to aid party members.

Like I said before, Diving Boon+DF was interesting, however not enough. The only skill I could see to take out for DB was Live Vicariously, and that pretty much destroyed everything for me. Especially when having to spread all your attribute points very thin just to fit in some DF that would be worth using. This monk is designed to get most its healing from hitting, and I don't want to hit without doing atleast some damage to outlast your typical warmo, and that's what it was doing perfectly with strength of honor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ander Deathblade

Just a thought : you might wanna consider protection prayers when going for a Mo/W. some guy spamming Reversal of Fortune is really hard to kill. Having said that, the build's not very uber... steal your energy and youre done for.

Again, it'd be spreading out the attributes way too thin for the build to handle, and like I said before, this character survives by hitting, and not spamming things on itself. For one, spamming reversal means I'm not doing damage, and secondly, I'm not gaining the nice 22 hp while doing damage.

I never said the build was "uber", I said it was good. I also never said it couldn't be countered, since every build can be countered. I'm saying this build is most likely to bring back one of the best win ratios in the arena. It's a fine tuned version of a surviving warmo, and it does its job good. I however cannot see how you could think of energy denial to be it's counter. I would say this build's worst fear is high life degen + backfire + enchantment stripping. Energy denial is quickly fixed with a few hits from the focused fire (balthazar's + essence bond). And there's hardly much energy denial in the arena anyways. Sure, there are many builds that bring energy stealing skills, but none really focused around energy denial, since people are thinking of survival, and want to be able to do decent damage aswell. It could be effective however, but not as effective as one would hope against a build like this.