Curse

aem · Aug 28, 2006, 08:50 AM // 08:50

Wow last I checked this build was still virtually unheard of. Then I saw link to a post here on my guild's forum and I see all these posts about the "600hp build??? You must be joking.

I highly doubt I was the absolute first to discover the Spirit Bond/Protective Spirit combo, but I'm sure there weren't many before me if I wasn't. I am very likely the first to have perfected it and as far as I can tell no one else is using this build correctly. That isn't to say that I made an ultimately perfect in every way build for this combo..beyond keeping a few key spells it requires a lot of tweaking depending on what you want to do with it. But I think I perfected the strategy behind making this combo as powerful as it can be.

I already replied to the post I went to originally so I'll just copy and paste here:

Quote:

I have a lot of experience with the Spirt Bond/Protective Spirit combo as I started using it very soon after Faction was released. I made this build because I wanted to chest run Nahpui Quarter and only had a Necro and Elementalist that far in Factions.

I started off using a 55 E/Mo and while tweaking it I discovered the SB/PS combo. I then used and tweaked that for a few months and I have an amazing build. Along the way I created a Monk from scratch entirely so he could use this build while wearing starting armor since the lowest you can purchase is 15.

I won't go into the details since that would take forever but.....the SB/PS combo works best with lower HP. If I read right you are one of those trying to run this with 600+ hp. This build is very crippled with high hp.

With my E/Mo I personally run 105hp (5 sup runes) but with a monk and what you want to use him for you'd probably be better off with more health. While I know there are immense possibilities with my monk, I got busy in RL and somewhat bored with GW so after getting him to level 20 I kinda stopped working on him.

But I can tell you the the strategy behind my SB/PS build. I'm just going to throw out some numbers in a couple examples.

Example 1: High HP

Let's say you have 500 max hp and SB is giving you 100hp when activated. Every hit that does not activate SB will take away about 50hp. One 100hp gain from SB will negate two hits taking away 50hp each.

Example 2: Low HP

Let's say you have 100 max hp and SB is giving you 100hp when activated. Every hit that does not activate SB will take away about 10hp. One 100hp gain from SB will negate ten hits taking away 10hp each. In other words, with each activation of SB you will gain health equal to your maximum health.

Conclusion:

You want to maintain the highest max hp you can WHILE sustaining as close a ratio as you can between health gained from SB and your max health. I'm not going to do any calculations but as I tank you'd want your SB hp gain to be at least 75% of your monk's max hp. So use the highest level of protection prayers you can afford after distributing necessary points to other attributes. See how much life you gain from SB w/ Life Attunment and use sup runes to lower your max hp close to that.

PS: I'm extremely tired so this might not have been written very clearly. Hope you understand the logic. Good luck.

You can absorb many more lesser hits with lower hp since each hit that activates spirit bond negates many more of those lesser hits.

Sneale. · Aug 28, 2006, 09:04 AM // 09:04

Urm quite a lot of this is incorrect. Firstly, Higher HP is definitelty NOT "crippled", it can be best to use the most health in farming (for retribution's sake).

Secondly, no matter how low or high your maximum health is, the spirit bond triggers AFTER you take damage, and for the rest of the fight your health is fixed at about 90% of your maximum health, as you don't gain health from SB, (glitch maybe, but even if you take 45 damage and gain 90 health, your hp is still fixed at 90% maximum health.) Therefore I guess low health can be an issue if not all monsters are triggering sb, but this normally isn't the case (for me anyways

)...

Oh and thirdly, to answer your question, you aren't the first person to find this build, in fact you are probably the 5th person on this person if not more to post something about a PS/SB build.

aem · Aug 28, 2006, 09:20 AM // 09:20

Some cases the higher health may be better but in most cases with this combo it hurts it. With Protective Spirit in the picture having a high hp doesn't matter as much with most builds since each hit is going to take about 10% of your health away. Yes there are downfalls with very low hp so you don't want to take that route either. The best way to go is to have the highest hp you can get WHILE keeping the hp gain from SB equal to at least 75% or so of your total hp.

Also it wasn't a question as to whether I was the first. Obviously it is impossible to determine who actually discovered this first. It has nothing to do with when who posted what. I discovered this combo very soon after Factions was released. But that is irrelevent to this discussion anyway.

Former Ruling · Aug 28, 2006, 06:37 PM // 18:37

Retribution - Thats way Higher HP is wanted/needed.

The Build loses NOTHING by having high health if all (or most of) the hits are triggering SB.

Which is the case in 99% of the places this build is used...unless you are trying to farm casters with it that wand you..

So theres no reason to waste retribution dmg.

ubrikkean · Aug 28, 2006, 06:53 PM // 18:53

The problem with this is there is no zone in the game where you would bother using this build and not take 60+ damage per hit, unless you do something stupid like wear 60 AL instead of 15; there's no reason to spend the extra money getting low health and reducing your ability to kill things.

tballz · Aug 28, 2006, 06:58 PM // 18:58

Well as many others have said , the higher your health is the more damage retribution (and if duo'ing holy wrath) will do to the enemy , that and you can have -10 degen and you can basically laugh it off.

Sb tank and a smite partner are quite powerful who else can kill fow,uw,wardens(and I mean all of em sunreach,scar eater,ugly stick,vera,kyril,arbor,etcetc,mursaat(hornbow and hammers anyone),sorrows furnace(some of this stuff is still good) and basically have to change only 1 or 2 skills ONLY ,to be successful its redicously easy.

edit* lemme add also if you add a third man , all of these become even more easy , but not only that you can also clear urgoz as shown in a thread on here.

Amity and Truth · Aug 28, 2006, 07:05 PM // 19:05

Actually there are Pros and Cons to the Hitpoint Topic. A high value in hitpoints works very well with Retribution and Holy Wrath (from a fellow caster). Low Hitpoints work indeed a lot better with mobs hitting you for low damage. This way your divine favor actually pays out a lot more and will probably heal you to your max hitpoints as well as once SBo triggers it will also result in a full heal.

This totally depends on who you're farming with, if you're going solo or duo. But in all honesty, the high HP version is a lot more efficient than low hp when coupled with another person. HW+Retribution just murders the mobs that actually hit for enough damage (quite a lot do) by throwing back 99% of their damage.

Zakarr · Aug 28, 2006, 07:09 PM // 19:09

You can drop your health with low cost if you use major runes. Two superior runes are good for tanking with ss necros because you can get more points to divine favor and therefore help Blessed Aura, Spell Breaker and get a bit more health from divine favor. High health is only needed if someone maintain Retribution/Holy Wrath on you. I use about 350 hp and it works fine.

Ezekiel Prophet · Aug 30, 2006, 02:19 AM // 02:19

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10031183

Read it.
Try it.
Works perfectly.

GG though.

XvArchonvX · Aug 30, 2006, 03:12 AM // 03:12

In response to the Title: I have yet to see a "fake" spirit bond build.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aem

I am very likely the first to have perfected it and as far as I can tell no one else is using this build correctly. That isn't to say that I made an ultimately perfect in every way build for this combo..beyond keeping a few key spells it requires a lot of tweaking depending on what you want to do with it. But I think I perfected the strategy behind making this combo as powerful as it can be.

I gotta stop you right here. If you think that there is only one "perfect" way to run this build, you are sadly mistaken. This build is INCREDIBLY flexible and as long as you can tank the enemies and take them down (unless you are dual farming in which case you only need to tank such as in UW) there is nothing wrong with your build.

Here's a simple way to break this down for ya:

Higher HP
Advantages:

More damage is done with Retribution to an extent since higher HP means that the 10% damage you take after Prot Bond activates is higher and therefore the potential in higher damage from Retribution is also higher.

There is more room for error since you have more chance to survive if you get interupted, forget to recast an enchant or suffer large degen.

Lower HP
Advantages:

Less HP means that the 10% of damage that you take is much lower and therefore you are more able to outheal damage you take that isn't great enough to trigger SB.

The damage taken that does trigger SB also has a greater net heal production since you still get the same amount of healing from SB, but take less damage since 10% of your health is less.

My conclusion is this:

If you are solo farming, you will want higher HP for Retribution. As long as you can ensure that you always take enough damage to trigger SB, then you should be fine to tank and will give the greatest damage output possible. If you simply intend to tank and let your partner(s) do the damage such as in a UW run, you will want less health so that your build is more stable against damage. Health regen from Mending and/or Breeze can counter any degen such as in a 55 build. It is not necessary however to have health as low as 105 to farm UW this way however since I have done it with 335 just fine using a Sup rune and 2 majors. There are several combinations that work and believing that there is only one way to skin a cat is just ignorant.

osk · Aug 30, 2006, 05:02 AM // 05:02

Every1 seems to miss out the main point of getting high HP.
It allows higher dmg dealt by Holy Wrath and Retribution -> for the purpose of duo UW farming or anything similar.

If it's just pure tanking or SOLO farming HP doesn't matter at all!
since you won't be running Holy Wrath and Retribution as your main source of dmg, lol, or else u'll hav no energy to maintain enchantments. Hence SoJ is wat you take with u when u solo farm.

1. If im just wan to stay alive in UW, i won't be bother about my HP. SB+PS will keep me alive. (usually UW farming with SS)
2. If Im farming with a smite monk in UW, Ill bump my hp as high as possible for more dmg = faster run.
3. If i'm solo faming. HP doeasn't matter much too.