Curse

FrogDevourer · Dec 05, 2005, 01:20 PM // 13:20

Profession: Monk / Necro
Name: Spiteful Monk Farmer
Type: PvE
Category: Solo-farmer
Attributes:

Curses: 12 [max for spiteful spirit]
Smiting: 12 (8+3+1) [as high as possible for Zealot's Fire]
Healing: 9 (6+3) [for Healing Breeze]
Prot: 9 (6+3)
Divine: 9 (6+3)

Skills Set:

Protective Spirit (>15s)
Healing Breeze (+7)
Guardian (~40%)
Spiteful Spirit {Elite}
Essence Bond
Balthazar Spirit
Mending (+3 <-- bwahaha, I'm invulnerable!!!)
Zealot's Fire (~40dmg)

Summary:
My old builds are still working but their killing speed has been drastically reduced by the ping-pong running (read: AoE panic patch). New variants of old builds have been published here and there. They generally rely on Shield of Judgement (with A.Echo) or Gladiator's Defense to kill the enemy. I find both options really slower than old builds, so I've decided to use my favourite PvE curse: spiteful spirit. I've been using this build since the AI upgrade, and I like like this safe, smooth and efficient build.

Now that duo farming (monk + spiteful necro) is prevalent in the UW, it's no longer a secret build, and I expect Spiteful Spirit to be altered in the next upgrade.

Spiteful spirit has the following pros:
- 29 aoe damage per attack at 12 curses (~23dps per copy of this hex)
- doesn't trigger AoE panic from mobs
- 18s duration and 10s recharge (you can have 2 of them almost permanently)
- only 15e (as opposed to 25 for balth aura)
- it is triggered by attacks *and* spells *and* non-spell skills

It's not as powerful as the pre-patch skills because:
- it's a hex (removed quickly from bosses due to their special ability)
- if your target dies early, you must cast another hex to deal damage
- you need to pick the right target which makes it a bit more difficult to play than mind-numbing farming builds
- 2s casting time (somewhat dangerous against interruption)
- you need to herd your preys before killing them (as opposed to SoJ, which works well against devourers)

The core of the build is a 55hp monk. Pretty resilient against most of forms of damage (for instance, you can safely go through Avicara packs). You can be killed by only four things:
- severe DoT coupled with a lot of damage
- enchantment removal
- protective spirit locked (or interrupted three times in a row)
- breeze *and* your spam spell (I like to use guardian) both locked

We're talking of a Mo/N, so the energy source cannot be Bonetti. I'm using the classical Balthazar's Spirit + Essence Bond duo. I usually have more energy than I need (even against only one enemy).

The last slot is pretty flexible (you can use whatever favourite spell you want). Symbol of Wrath or Desecrate Enchantment are good candidates but I settled on the good ol' ZF. You can easily and safely deal 120+ dmg with zealot alone. As long as you use your monk spells slowly (read: 1 every 3/4 seconds) it doesn't trigger AoE panic. It's also perfect if you *need* AoE panic to flee or to cast a spiteful spirit safely when guardian is locked, or if you need a quick burst of AoE dmg to finish mobs off. In short, ZF is a good robust and flexible source of offensive/defensive AI control.

Note that you can also recast Mending or Essence Bond, as bait for interrupts (wait until disrupting chop/shot or savage slash is charged, use a slow spell, get it locked, then cast spiteful spirit).

This build is able to solo many places (Augury Griffons, Hydrae, Droknar trolls, and even the UW albeit dangerously) almost as fast as old builds. The only weakness is heavy interruption. Guardian is able to help, but it's far from perfect (40% vs. 75 for bonetti). Keep it up at all times against heavy interrupters, and always spam 1/2 quick skills before using a slow one (especially Spiteful Spirit) to make mobs miss their interruption and to cast your slow spells safely.

You can basically take:
- as many griffons/minotaurs as you want (even if 2 devourers are nearby, but you need a good timing to avoid their disrupting shot)
- 6/7 hydrae (spam your monk spells, synchronize with meteor waves, and cast spiteful spirit between 2 waves of meteors)
- huge groups of trolls (against 10+, you need practice and a good timing to avoid deadly skill locks)
- UW beasties (small groups of aatxes only)

Notes & Concerns:

Dying nightmares

They cast a rend enchantments as soon as they spawn and they die in the process. Unfortunately if they successfully cast their rend, you're dead in one hit. There are three solutions to this problem:
- to kill them very quickly as soon as they spawn (with 2 wand attacks or with a zealot burst). This technique requires some knowledge of spawn points, a good practice, and good reflexes.
- to use a longbow and to pull aatxes and to stay away from nightmare spawn points. It's quite a dangerous strategy since you'll often miss a nightmare spawn, and you don't have much time left to kill it.
- to use spellbreaker to gain an immunity long enough to wand 2/3 nightmares to deaths. Unfortunately, this solution is incompatible with the above build (you lose the elite slot).

Aatxes' Savage Slash

Contrary to the trolls' Disrupting Chop, Savage Slash doesn't lock your skill for 20s. So it's not as deadly as a well-timed chop on Prot.Spirit or Breeze. On the other hand, it's a bit hard to cast a long spell because S.Slash recharges in 10s (just like Spiteful Spirit), and because using bait spells (to trigger the savage slash) doesn't always work. Against 3 aatxes, it's not a big problem, but against 5+ it is hard to cast a spiteful spirit through a swarm of fast recharging savage slashes. Bonetti would be a precious protection but guardian is strong enough to help much. In short, solo-killing 3 aatxes is ok, but you'll need a lot of time to kill 5+ aatxes.

2 man farming

The fastest and the safest option is the popular 2-man squad able to slice through the UW beginning. The 55hp tank (Mo/W) can use spellbreaker for safety, at least until he's fast enough to insta-kill nightmares with a wand/zealot burst. During the fight, he'll concentrate on staying alive. Once he's fast enough to kill nightmares before the rend, he can use a damage dealing elite. SoJ is not the best option because the k/d reduces the efficiency of the necro's Spiteful Spirit.

His partner is a N/Mo with high curses and some protection. Awaken the Blood and Spiteful Spirit are his main source of damage (spamming SF every 10s would require all his energy), and he can use Protective Spirit and Rebirth if things go wrong. In terms of dmg output, a spiteful necro is able to reach 18+ curses for a spiteful spirit with 41dmg per attack, and you can have 2 curses active almost permanently (so we're talking of ~70 armor ignoring AoE damage per second). That's much faster than most popular options: Spiteful Spirit doesn't k/d like SoJ so the enemy can keep killing itself very swiftly.

Bubba Lips · Dec 05, 2005, 02:09 PM // 14:09

woah very nice

Sharpe_116 · Dec 05, 2005, 05:09 PM // 17:09

The dying nightmares are still a large concern of mine.... But if you can time it right, u can put prot spirit on right when they strip you, but this leavesa wide gap for the attxes to kill you, due to your lack of energy

Suuk · Dec 06, 2005, 10:22 AM // 10:22

Good post! Hope you are wrong on the anticipated alteration of this skill though...

Azn D · Dec 06, 2005, 03:23 PM // 15:23

I got it working on my monk against the desert griffins lol, Only i don't get as much energy

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer

You can easily and safely deal 120+ dmg with zealot alone. As long as you use your monk spells slowly (read: 1 every 3/4 seconds) it doesn't trigger AoE panic.

you might want to change that to VERY SLOWLY

Nice avatar frog

Apple · Dec 06, 2005, 03:40 PM // 15:40

I tried an alternate build of N/Mo with
prot. spirit,
mark of pain,
Spiteful,
blood renewal,
mending,
watchful spirit,
essence bond,
balth. spirit

just because I wanted to see if it works, and it does so, rather well. Especially against aatxes(although, I hate riposte beyond belief). The trick is, to use a vamp sword or vamp axe with mark of pain for some additional healing/damage and constantly keep up blood renewal for constant 10 regen, and prot. spirit for... protection
One problem is the fact that MoP causes AoE scattering...
Anyone got advice on something i could use instead?

It's a far cheaper method of soloing UW than a monk, as the runes cost about a 10th of the price...

striderkaaru · Dec 06, 2005, 04:04 PM // 16:04

insidious parasite might be worth taking a look at. at 12 curses, it heals you for 17 hp every time the hexed target attacks, effectively healing you from 3 hits. if you have enough insidious parasites in the right sized group, you won't even need breeze.

besides, mending makes you invincible.

FrogDevourer · Dec 06, 2005, 06:14 PM // 18:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Azn D

you might want to change that to VERY SLOWLY

One burst of Zf every 3 or 4s shouldn't trigger the AoE panic. If you have to recast multiple spells consecutively, your enemies will flee and come back in a few seconds. With practice, you'll be able to time your spells to deal more damage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by [Apple]

One problem is the fact that MoP causes AoE scattering...

There are very few skills able to deal AoE (or group) damage without trigerring AoE panic, and MoP isn't of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by striderkaaru

insidious parasite might be worth taking a look at. at 12 curses, it heals you for 17 hp every time the hexed target attacks, effectively healing you from 3 hits.

Staying alive with a 55 monk is not very hard (breeze+divine favor = nearly invulnerable) but parasite is a good source of healing, especially for a primary necro. The problem is: which slot would you reserve for this curse? Mending or Breeze. The former is good when you're running to the next group, and the latter works particularly well with divine favor and zealot. Moreover parasite has the same drawback as most long hexes. If the enemy stops attacking (stuck, panic...) you can die very quickly. All in all I prefer the standard monk setup for its resilience.

Imho, the best way to improve this build would be to increase its damage output, and to reduce its relative weakness against interruption. When you compare this build to the classical SoJ/A.Echo (or SoJ/Bonetti), you can see that a SoJ build is somewhat slower. This is especially true when SoJ gets locked or interrupted (45s recharge is long and boring) whereas Spiteful Spirit recharges very quickly if it's hit by a meteor/slash. However, if you are patient and if you carefully prepare each combat (let energy regen, precast prot.spirit and arcane echo...) the SoJ build is probably safer.

Emerald Mist · Dec 07, 2005, 05:01 AM // 05:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer

There are very few skills able to deal AoE (or group) damage without trigerring AoE panic, and MoP isn't of them.

have u tested it before u said that?

at least I did, and MOP does trigger AOE panic

====

A suggestion for Apple

Try to deal AOE dmg every 3 sec, shorter than 3sec will trigger AOE panic

Which means, when u slash the target foe that has MOP, stop and wait 3sec
then slash again

Halen_George · Dec 20, 2005, 08:15 AM // 08:15

Is this with all superior monk runes?

-Father Takakura

Maiyn · Dec 20, 2005, 11:31 AM // 11:31

Hahaha, nice. I've been soloing with my N/Mo using the same sort of build. Hadn't thought about adding in awaken the blood. That might be interesting. The biggest weakness I found was interrupts.. and there isn't much a nec can do about that unless I used guardian and that would be a bit of a waste i think. I was mostly just farming griffons for a change. It's fun stuff. I just run away from rockshots :>

I think instead of using two monks for UW as I have been with my fiance I'll start taking along my necro. Should be good times. We'll have to find a replacement for SoJ though, because that seriously does reduce efficiency. It would be nice if all classes had a nice evading skill.

Only thing is, beasties DO run when they take damage from zealots, and it's rather annoying. So I can't really think of any skills that a monk could take to be honest. What a stupid update, I realize why they did it and everything, but man come on, just let us farm already ;P

edit; oof! I just figured something out, instead of the monk being a Mo/W or a Mo/Me and relying on SoJ and smites, they could switch to your build here, and I think that would be MUCH better. You'd have to call out targets for SS just to make sure there are no duplicates, but holy shit.. could you imagine how fast those aatxes would drop? I'm going to try this out later, as me and my fiance are done school now

Thanks for the tips, I'll have to see how this works!

yesitsrob · Dec 20, 2005, 02:28 PM // 14:28

Quote:

There are very few skills able to deal AoE (or group) damage without trigerring AoE panic, and MoP isn't of them.

Ach, MoP sadly does cause AoE panic - Very rarely will you be able to cause much damage with it before the mobs flee

Maxiemonster · Dec 26, 2005, 01:58 AM // 01:58

Thanks for the wonderful build! Still need to get the hand of it, but I'm starting to figuring it out

In my opinion, way better then the Mo/W builds with SOJ, since it's way faster, which makes it way more effective when it comes to farming.

Keep up the good work!
Max.

XtrmEend · Dec 29, 2005, 03:52 AM // 03:52

Amazing, I can take on 9+ Mountain trolls with this, stil dying in the UW though.

I3loody · Jan 04, 2006, 10:59 PM // 22:59

dosnt they interupt ur spitefull ? because it has 2 secs cast time ...

remmeh · Jan 04, 2006, 11:24 PM // 23:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by I3loody

dosnt they interupt ur spitefull ? because it has 2 secs cast time ...

Disrupting chop requires 6 adrenaline to use. Also, they only use it first after battle rage (which goes on their 2nd or 3rd hit)

I3loody · Jan 04, 2006, 11:38 PM // 23:38

ehm i were talking about uw farming with spitefull ^^

Linsys · Jan 05, 2006, 12:06 AM // 00:06

The only place where this is needed is in the UW.

The old SoJ and Balth Aura still works everywhere elese for me, yes the mobs run, but if you get enough on you they kida body block them selves ontop of you.. with the old SoJ Balth Aura Mo/W build i still farm griffins, Hydras, and Mountain trolls.

The reason the old build doesn't work so well in the UW is because everything has positive health regen, which means if the ataxes run by the time they come back they are back at full health.

Just my 2 cents.

Indian · Jan 05, 2006, 04:08 AM // 04:08

wouldnt Holy Veil or Hex Breaker give us some time in UW to avoid the Rend Ench?

Vincent Ritz · Jan 05, 2006, 04:19 AM // 04:19

rend would eat holy veil for breakfast

and rend is not a hex... so nope HB is no good