Curse

bumbi · Sep 27, 2006, 03:36 PM // 15:36

This is a Hybrid 55 Spirit Bond tank build that utilizes Elemental Resistance to take more damage and cope with a pretty nasty degen and a LOT of physical damage.

Mo/Me
Divine Favor ......... 16 (12+3+1)
Healing Prayers ..... 13 (10+3)
Protection Prayers . 11 (8+3)

Skills:

Protective Spirit - (Lasts around 28 seconds with the modifiers)
Healing Breeze - Nice with a bit of HP regen while e.g. bleeding. (Lasts around 16 seconds with the modifiers)
Spirit Bond - Good for tanking heap loads of monsters. (Lasts around 13 seconds with the modifiers)
Elemental Resistance - To take more physical damage.
Spell Breaker - A bit of defense against those pesky enchantment removals. (Lasts around 28 seconds with the modifiers)
Blessed Aura - To get get a longer Spell Breaker as well as longer Spirit Bond.
Mending - Some ambient HP regen is nice.
Balthazar's Spirit - To keep that blue bar up in the highs.

Equipment:
-A Sword, Axe or Spear with a 'Enchantments last 20% longer' mod, like a Totem Axe or Rajazan's Fervor.
-The -50HP Grim Cesta from Cities of Ascalon.
-Ascetic's Armor, but be sure to get the 15 armor one as it is vital to this build.
-A Divine Favor headgear, can be a 60 armor one if you already have one and want to save some cash.
-5 Superior Runes as usual.

Usage:
This build can be used for any kind of high level monster farming, as long as you have a nuker. I mostly use it to farm UW with a SS Necromancer or Famine Ranger. As soon as you enter an area use Blessed Aura, Mending and Balthazar's Spirit. Activate Protective Spirit before aggroing up enemies and as soon as you start tanking them use Spirit Bond and Elemental Resistance. Healing Breeze can be used if you suffer from any kind of HP degen like Bleeding or Poison.

A few notes on Two-Man-UW:
-You can pull pretty much all the Bladed Aatxe you can get but be sure to activate Spell Breaker before aggroing anything as the Bladed Aatxe will interrupt you if you try to activate Spell Breaker when the Dying Nightmares pop up.

-Elemental Resistance is NOT needed against Bladed Aatxe but Healing Breeze can be nice as you will be bleeding almost constantly.

-When taking on the Grasping Darknesses make sure your nuker knows that you don't have Bonetti's Defenses and that he has to use SV on you.

-When you get to the Smite Crawlers you can pull as many as you can get but be careful not to aggro any Coldfire Nights while you have Smite Crawlers on your tale. I recommend killing off the two Coldfire Nights that patrol the first area before pulling any smites as it will give you a bit more room to move around.

-After you've cleared the first half I recommend killing the two or three Coldfire Nights that patrol the other side but after that you should be all clear to kill off the rest of the smites.

Other Notes:
I made an interesting discovery when playing around with Physical Resistance against Fire Imps, They did 99dmg with Immolate when I had 0 Inspiration Magic that brought my armor vs. elemental to -9. But when I put a few points in to Inspiration Magic so that I had 0 armor vs. elemental they only did 85dmg. This proves that having less than 0 armor WILL increase the damage you take and therefor do NOT put any points in to Inspiration Magic.

Spirit Bond is a very fast spell to cast and will not get interrupted by any warrior or ranger skills unless they get lucky, as they all have longer activation times than Spirit Bond's 1/4 second.

Healing Breeze can be swapped for Watchful Spirit for a higher ambient HP regen if you like or if you don't need HP regen you can swap it for something else.

The beginner's armor is very good as it only has 5 armor but it doesn't give the extra 7 energy.

I've personally tanked around 15 Smites Crawlers with this build and I believe you can tank a LOT more as my HP never dropped below 50.

The only con I have found with this build is that when you tank only a few enemies you easily run out of energy, so I don't recommend using both Healing Breeze and Spirit Bond when tanking less than 5 enemies. You can also swap Healing Breeze for Blessed Signet to fix this energy problem. (I've tested this several times in UW now and it turns out it's a lot better with Blessed Signet than Healing Breeze)

If you're farming something that does elemental damage you can swap Elemental Resistance for Physical Resistance to take more elemental damage.

cerb · Sep 27, 2006, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Thank you for reposting the same build that's alrdy been posted a gazillion times! ~

Warpy · Sep 29, 2006, 02:49 AM // 02:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by cerb

Thank you for reposting the same build that's alrdy been posted a gazillion times! ~

Geesh thats a little harsh... I reckon bumbi post would have taken sometime to write, regardless of whether it's similar to previous posts. Why not add value to the thread instead of commenting like you just did?

I'm actually going to try this build tonight, thanks for the info bumbi

cerb · Sep 29, 2006, 02:58 AM // 02:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warpy

Geesh thats a little harsh... I reckon bumbi post would have taken sometime to write, regardless of whether it's similar to previous posts. Why not add value to the thread instead of commenting like you just did?

I'm actually going to try this build tonight, thanks for the info bumbi

Sorry, it's just that if you took the time to look at the farming forum, this build and many of its variants has been posted so many times already