Curse

mortalis doleo · Sep 13, 2006, 08:35 PM // 20:35

this guy is a great caster shutdown for RA (can shutdown almost anything, but casters are obviously better to shutdown with interruptions)

profession: N/W
name: spinal meleemancer
type: RA (TA on very specific occassions), in AB get plague touch instead of res
category: shutdown and pressure

attributes:
curses - 12+1+1
swordsmanship - 12
soul reaping - 3+1

skills set:
1. quivering blade <e>
2. sever artery
3. gash
4. final thrust
5. flurry
6. spinal shivers
7. parabond
8. res sig

summary:
your first four skills are great spammable skills that do a good amount of damage.
the idea is to choose your target (a blight, an ele, a necro or any caster), cast SS covered with parabond and start hacking away with flurry constantly renewed (needles to say you're using an icy sword). try to keep S covered at all times and your target will only be able to fire off 1/2 seconds spells. this interrupts everything from warrior attacks to res sig, so you can choose any target you want really...
if you run out of energy (you rarely do), you still have your sword attacks, so you're still very useful.

notes and concerns:
there are a few things that hurt the build, and those are snares and not having a monk on your team. since you have no self-heal, you might run into problems, so you might want to spread parabond through the entire enemy party before you start, just in case.
if you want to run this in TA, make sure you have another character with hexes in your build, since it's still not too tough for a monk to remove the hexes, even with well placed parabonds. in TA, your job will be to take out the enemy monk...

credits:
me...

Undressed · Sep 13, 2006, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Since you're melee, you can't really kite without becoming totally useless to your team (besides covering hexes for your other mates who don't care at 90% of the time). You have no defense, no hate. In a scenario where a warrior drains your monk by hitting on you, just to switch and unload (yes, that happens, I see more and more good warriors in RA ;P) on him, you serve well. A Warrior at least has heal sig, higher AL and a speed boost. Not to mention how bad flurry is I'd recommend frenzy and cancel properly. Still, the blood-meleemancer grants more flexibility.

Xaero Gouki Kriegor · Sep 20, 2006, 02:07 AM // 02:07

i think flurry + cold wand, would do best in "Shutting down", since you have 60-70 al (depending on armor) and long range seems just a teeny bit better, unless you take out a skill and put in plague touch since you got quivering blade, and quivering blade + being evaded + plague touch = dazed on target, such as when monk uses guardian, this might work well, combing Spinals Shivers, plague touch, and quivering blade

majoho · Sep 20, 2006, 06:46 AM // 06:46

Quivering Blade is a terrible skill for a caster unless you use plague touch - I think you've missed the spell description - dazed is on YOU not the target.

Undead Preacher · Sep 20, 2006, 06:58 AM // 06:58

this build is relying on having a healer dedicated to you and only you. First off compared to a warrior in WoW terms you are a squishy... and although a meleemancer is very viable when played correctly you take on damage very quickly, especially when the warrior notices that your messing with his monk..

now lets say that a warrior does't pick you off and you are able to attack and attempt to shutdown the casters... well hopefully no e-denial mesmers are on the opponents team because a meleemancer with no energy is completely defenseless...

So without a warrior spiking you to death or a mesmer draining all your energy leaving you useless... how about that pesky ranger that keeps pecking you in the back with a barrage of arrows or one that keep crippling you... not even going to think about a Touch Ranger who would completely destroy you in about.. ummm 6 seconds.

You would be able to handle a mage if none of his teamates helped him.... but even that would be a very slow battle and depending on his build he might be able to PWN this also.

Completely my opinion but in GWs Meleemancers are most efficient with blood magic... whether you invest in tactics (ripostes) or swordsmanship is your choice.

oh, and I agree.... that elite is a terrible choice not just for this build, but for a meleemancer in general.

ubermancer · Sep 20, 2006, 07:09 AM // 07:09

I wonder how many people who make Meleemancers have ever, ya know, played a Warrior.

Or a Necro.

EDIT: Err, I meant a good one.

Undead Preacher · Sep 20, 2006, 07:51 AM // 07:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by ubermancer

I wonder how many people who make Meleemancers have ever, ya know, played a Warrior.

Or a Necro.

EDIT: Err, I meant a good one.

I previously had two Warriors on my account...

I've played every warrior build in the book and then some. I was very successful with my warriors as well as my necromancers.

However... comparing a meleemancer to a warrior proves to me one thing. Although your statement is one that implies your an experienced gamer at least with guild wars, to me your statement shows your complete lack of knowledge and ignorance. Perhaps Im wrong with this, but it seems your the type that sticks to cookie-cutter builds and condemns anything different.

Meleemancer are insanely fun to play.... are they a replacement for a warrior? Absolutely not. Therefore they should not be compared to one.

As for the experienced gain through having played "with some extent of time" a warrior primary definetly gives one an edge as to how to use the warrior secondary of a Meleemancer to optimize the builds performance.

This is more of a defense for Meleemancers in general. Although I personally prefer a completely different strategy... these builds do offer there own advantages to the group, unless of coarse its some PUG with a terrible build thats just going to get WTFPWNED furthermore giving Meleemancers the reputation as a subpar build.

There was a time I had a Meleemancer guide where I was ambushed by warriors saying it was a useless build (meleemancers in general) and therefore I made a challenge. A one on one contest between my Meleemancer and ANY warrior with any build. I also turned this into a nice wager with 100k as the stake. However these quick-to-bash warrior quickly turned to this game isn't one on one and my challenges were never met.

This is a game and unlike many of the other MMORPG there is a unique limitation on your skillbar.... Theres going to be people that use things because they like them and they find them to be fun, these people should never be put down or shunned for doing something different. Anyone can run a cookie-cutter build, remember that... just because you run the same thing as 10000 other people doesn't mean your anything special. I used to prefer playing builds that may be a little less productive in peoples eyes (like yours) but non-the-less it was unique and something I enjoyed.

majoho · Sep 20, 2006, 08:04 AM // 08:04

I think Ubermance is mistakenly thinking that playing a melemancer means you are a wammo that doesn't know what he's are doing.

A melemancer isn't that at all.

If your idea of playing GW is to just go with cookie-cutter builds other people have made I'm sorry for you - making a melemancer is trying to think outside the box and actually doing something creative.

Obviously when playing a melemancer you need to have more of an Assassin attitude than that of a warrior since you take much more damage.

mortalis doleo · Sep 20, 2006, 09:04 PM // 21:04

ok... had some net problems so im only able to reply now...

i'll start with ubermancer, i dont think flaming is neccesary, that comment isn't constructive or helpful in any way. i've played both warriors and necros of all kinds for over a year and i do not appreciate it when people speak to me like that.

as for the meleemancer being bad in general, playing warriors gets boring, and the meleemancer is a nice way to escape from normal melee builds (on an RA/TA basis). the blood meleemancer is much more popular, but this character isnt for degen its for shutdown.

as for the choice of quivering blade as my elite and it being a terrible idea for a caster (and yes, i do know I'M being dazed

), i dont think the few seconds of daze will really hurt a character with two spells that only need to be cast once in a while (only when SS is removed or the enemy character dies). its a low adrenaline skill that lets your character cause a very nice amount of damage to whatever target your shutting down.

as for being easilly killed by warriors/touchers and what not, this character can very easilly beat a toucher, since the toucher will be absolutely useless always interupted. switching targets with this build isnt insanely difficult, since SS' recharge allows you to switch targets often enough. as for warriors, they arent totally shut down, but they cant use any attack skills, since thay will also be interrupted. this means that you have a higher DPS than them when you fight with them.

as for going with a cold-damage wand, that wont work since the enemy willl still be able to fire off spells and fast skills, while a flurried sword can stop almost all skills... if you still dont like the idea of a necromancer up front, you could use a W/N with spinal shivers and warrior's endurence as your elite, but that will leave you little attribute points for your weapon and still less energy...

as for everyone who bashed the build, you probably haven't run it in RA/TA. its incredibly fun and effective (obviously not always, but the same can be said for most builds). it does lack defence (except for parabond spam at the start of the match, which does come in handy 20 seconds in), but it will completely neutralize eles, necros, Blights, touchers, rangers and anything not using very fast skills.

can it be stopped?
sure, this is guild wars.

can it be made better?
probably. you could swing some attributes into tactics for a stance, a heal sig or a riposte.

but overall, the build is fun to run and will get you wins...

holden · Sep 20, 2006, 09:21 PM // 21:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undead Preacher

However... comparing a meleemancer to a warrior proves to me one thing. Although your statement is one that implies your an experienced gamer at least with guild wars, to me your statement shows your complete lack of knowledge and ignorance. Perhaps Im wrong with this, but it seems your the type that sticks to cookie-cutter builds and condemns anything different.

......

the spinal shivers idea is old news. meleemancer is as cookie cutter as anything.

http://www.gwkb.org/cBuild.php?mode=Show&ID=633

check the date spura posted his build.

mortalis doleo · Sep 20, 2006, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by holden

......

the spinal shivers idea is old news. meleemancer is as cookie cutter as anything.

http://www.gwkb.org/cBuild.php?mode=Show&ID=633

check the date spura posted his build.

you'd still have to agree my build is different from that one...

ubermancer · Sep 20, 2006, 11:02 PM // 23:02

I think Ill start with the cookie cutter comment. Ive written a number of guides, and helped shape the face of what is cookie cutter, and what is proprietary. So saying that I am cookie cutter because I use Necros as a primary damage dealer in PVE every chance I get, is a bit inaccurate, considering that I was running Spiteful Spirit before the aoe update.

Rather, what I condemn is poor builds.

Guild Wars is not a 1v1 game. Theres a reason Gladiators Arena isnt in. In part, because the Warrior is the single most easily shut down proffession, without back up of course.

And how many people do you think REALLY run the same builds as me?

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...php?t=10016625

How many people can clear Urgoz in an hour and a half?

http://gwshack.us/80273

Oh, and who was the first one to figure out how to solo Dreadnaught's Drift?

My problems here are with your shitty build, not you. Though accusational statements are a quick way to invert that.

Quote:

i'll start with ubermancer, i dont think flaming is neccesary, that comment isn't constructive or helpful in any way. i've played both warriors and necros of all kinds for over a year and i do not appreciate it when people speak to me like that.

Congratulations, thats half as long as me!

If you wanted to make good use of Spinal Shivers with a one man addition to a team, why even use a necro? So you can have an Assassin AL with 12 weapon attribute and less consistant energy regeneration (which is whats neccessary for Shivers).

Go A/N. Use 11 Curses, 13 Critical, and the rest into Dagger. Use Zealous daggers and youll be gaining so much energy back youll be able to keep Shivers up easier then a Necro would, and with higher damage.

I cant think of anything a melee mancer can do that cant be done better in another way.

majoho · Sep 21, 2006, 12:34 AM // 00:34

You have an attitude problem in my opinion, see not everyone is a 'powergamer' some people like to go with concepts (RP) and if the build works and people are having fun with them then that's good enough.

But since you're über and all I don't expect you to understand

Altrex · Sep 21, 2006, 12:38 AM // 00:38

I've run into some meleemancers before, some are good some have completely blown my mind. That one looks great for caster shutdown and as someone said earlier they aren't meant to replace a warrior. Although while playing warrior I can shamefully say I have had a meleemancer just completely rock me. He was one of those ones that likes to use Aura Of The Lich and Dark Aura with sac spells and life stealing just to deal AOE. Wasn't pretty after he surprised me in RA.

holden · Sep 21, 2006, 03:40 PM // 15:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by majoho

You have an attitude problem in my opinion, see not everyone is a 'powergamer' some people like to go with concepts (RP) and if the build works and people are having fun with them then that's good enough.

But since you're über and all I don't expect you to understand

just because your 8 man team is successful doesn't mean your individual build is good.

while monking i've saved many of asses and let many fools die, depending on the aggro they draw, skills they use and all around common sense when chatting with others on the team.

not that im great at it, even a breeze monk can make an ok build seem quality. its just pve after all. same goes for a tank that knows how to keep aggro, allowing others to pick their shots and never take any heat.

if you want to have fun at the team's expense thats cool. you blew 50 bucks on a game and ought to be able to enjoy it. but call it for what it is. you'll be at least one of the weak links on the team. if you want to be a necro primary and contribute, if not all out carry the team, run SS, MM, or Orders. cookie cutter or no, those 3 choices run things down.

and if we're talking RA.....who cares. it just doesn't matter. run whatever.