Curse

Urfin · Nov 09, 2006, 11:10 AM // 11:10

Here's a couple of rather scary hero builds that I'm having fun with currently. And a thousand thanks to Ensign for his incredibly sexy MM/OoP build that's the base of my Olias - the world feels a better place when people think like that

The skills are given in the order they're on the heroes' skillbars after testing AI priority.

N/any BDSM Horde

Attributes

Blood Magic: 9 + 2
Death Magic: 12 + 1 + 3
Soul Reaping: 9 + 2

Equipment

Bloodstained Insignia/boots is a must. The rune setup is a bit masochistic, but fits with the build's spirit, and isn't really critical anyway.

Skills

[skill]Order of Pain[/skill][skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill][skill]Animate Bone Horror[/skill][skill]Blood of the Master[/skill][skill]Offering of Blood[/skill][skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill][skill]Signet of Sorrow[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

Pangalactic ultrabombastic steamroller of doom is a shameless understatement with this one. He's not even as suicidal as you'd expect, and boy does he mutilate things. The original build had [skill=text]Rotting Flesh[/skill] - doesn't fit with the crazy flow, sadly, he's indeed capped on casting time more than energy, and it takes too much thought on when to use to be effective with the AI. [skill=text]Blood Ritual[/skill], the other thing Ensign suggesed, works well, but I'd rather he spent all the time/energy/health on minions and the order, hero monks are good anyway. [skill=text]Signet of Sorrow[/skill] is obviously an optional slot, but I find it works neatly.

There one choice you'll want to make about his usage is to turn off horrors or not. If he casts both summons, the minion cloud will obviously be full sooner, refresh faster, and have about 40% fiends and 60% horrors. With horrors off, you get a slower-refreshing cloud (still keeps it full in most situations), more pressure on him and monks for minion healing, less of a meat wall, but higher damage, better focusing and insane spike when they decide to spank the same target. From my experience, if you can safely afford fiends only, it means you got more people in your party than you need.

W/any Dragon Biceps

Attributes

Strength: 12 + 1
Swordsmanship: 12 + 1 + 3
Tactics: 3

Skills

[skill]Tiger Stance[/skill][skill]Galrath Slash[/skill][skill]Silverwing Slash[/skill][skill]Sun and Moon Slash[/skill][skill]Dragon Slash[/skill][skill]"Watch Yourself!"[/skill][skill]Endure Pain[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

I've heard people type Koss more than once as a low-damage hero. Yeah right.

As for others, Zenmai works wonderfully as crit barrage/interrupt (although she's got high standards for what's worth to be barraged), Jin tears things as a touch ranger, and monks can boon prot. We're surely in heaven, for heroes are a Good Thing

9th Requiem · Nov 09, 2006, 11:56 AM // 11:56

Looks like a pretty standard Sword warrior for Koss.

The MM build looks somewhat solid, but you do know that Order of Pain is party members only, not minions, right?

Urfin · Nov 09, 2006, 12:22 PM // 12:22

If OoP worked on minions it would be totally and absolutely unbalanced, obviously. The point is that at full speed the build actually does have the energy to run OoP 1/2 to 3/4 of the time. A good plain MM build has too much energy, and OoP is a wonderful use for it. Naturally, it works best with a physical party, and since OoV doesn't work with OoP, you don't really need a dedicated orders necro anymore.

As for Koss, I didn't say the build was omginnovative or anything, did I? It's just good, solid and does great damage, which is what people generally think AI warrs don't do.

Zubey · Nov 09, 2006, 05:54 PM // 17:54

MM without max Death? Am I reading it right?

Urfin · Nov 10, 2006, 06:06 AM // 06:06

Yeah, my mistake, death's max of course.

CHUIU · Nov 10, 2006, 06:16 AM // 06:16

Your MM is very prone to dying by sacrifice with all those sac skills and both your tank and MM lacks utility skills and self heals. I wouldn't get caught using either builds.

Suggestions:
W/: Healing Signet, Distracting Blow, Savage Slash
N/: Blood Ritual, Mark of Pain, Barbs, Heal Area

Urfin · Nov 10, 2006, 06:54 AM // 06:54

It's called team dependencies. Self-heals impair build efficiency and leech attribute points on most professions, unless it's a dervish. Having a good monk is more efficient and existentially correct

And heal sig's got to be the worst self-heal possible on the frontline. It took me some time when I started playing GW to kill the wammo inside me, and I've been nothing but better off for it

Self-heals in group PVE are a waste of slot mostly, though in PUGs you'd want one or two or three

The MM nowhere near dies by sac, I never see him at lower than 2/3 health unless he's getting pounded. Then again, you can always give him [skill=text]Taste of Death[/skill] of something if you feel he's too fragile.

[skill=text]Endure Pain[/skill] is a better skill than people give it credit for, really, and I'd take it over heal sig any day. [skill=text]Lion's Comfort[/skill] could easily replace it in more paranoid builds, though.

[skill=text]Distracting Blow[/skill] is a thought, I run that on my own warrior with this build sometimes, but for Koss I'd rather he spent time damaging things, and have my A/R or E/Me heroes interrupt.

[skill=text]Mark of Pain[/skill] I will definetly try, haven't thought of it. The downside here may be that they'll run around from AoE too much, they run too much as it is

[skill=text]Barbs[/skill] might be nice too, but in typical mass murder PVE things just die too fast for it to be really effective. It's good for boss killing though.
[skill=text]Heal Area[/skill] would be overkill and potentially dangerous as a self-heal, and it sucks royally to [skill=text]Blood of the Master[/skill] as a minion-heal.

CHUIU · Nov 10, 2006, 07:09 AM // 07:09

I dont like being completely dependent on another person for any specific role. When you share jobs, like energy management and healing, you generally make your team more flexible.

Taste of Death is ok, but you might want to consider Taste of Pain instead. Or you can just replace Taste of Death and BotM with Feast for the Dead because you're basically doing the same thing with that skill as both of them combined.

Endure Pain doesn't do anything, it just displaces damage. At best it can save you when your monk is under pressure, but I dont know how heroes use it.

Put as many interrupts as you can on your heroes, trust me on this. The AI is the best with interrupts and losing 1 or 2 damage skills just means he'll be able to spam his other damage skills more often. Personally I refuse to set up a sword hero because I can get more damage and interrupts out of an Axe using skills like cyclone axe and triple chop and give him 3 interrupts to work with.

Mark of Pain doesn't spread enemies as much as it used it since the AI change, its actually incredibly useful right now.

Heal Area is just a suggestion and Its intended for out of battle healing, I've observed hero behavior and he typically chains BotM and Heal Area properly.

And healing signet is far better than you give credit. It has nothing to do with Wammos either, wammos use mending and healing hands and healing breeze like its god mode or something.

Urfin · Nov 10, 2006, 09:09 AM // 09:09

You see, these builds are not for playing with humans in the party, so I rely alot on the predictability of the AI's use of skills. AI monks, especially proper heroes, are way better and more reliable than most humans, so I use that and rely on them. Besides, efficient dependencies is what team builds are about, and what makes heroes or competent humans so much fun.

I meant wammo as a self-heal heavy warrior

Which is ineffective in typical PVE as far as opportunity costs go. And using [skill=text]Healing Signet[/skill] in combat (which is where you will need it most of the time) means you gotta have some tanking, or you loose more than you gain. That means 2 slots and assocoated attributes for a slow and not that powerful self-heal. And 2 sec is simply a killer. I'd rather have it cost 10e and do the same thing in 1s.

[skill=text]Taste of Pain[/skill] doesn't have the synergy with the minion engine that [skill=text]Taste of Death[/skill] has.

[skill=text]Endure Pain[/skill] buys you time, alot of it, and cheap. Which is all that you need, really.

[skill=text]Heal Area[/skill] would be a good idea if the damn monks didn't heal the minions so much. As it is now, however, there's way too much healing coming their way already. That's the "problem" with AI monks in general - they don't know when to not heal, so self-heals usually mean a waste of energy on the monk's part.

Sword vs Axe can go on forever

Both are useful, but since I'm into historical fencing I like swords more

As for more interrupts, I'll try that, but it needs alot of testing to see the difference with warriors, and I'm lazy

Urfin · Nov 10, 2006, 11:01 AM // 11:01

A quick note on [skill=text]Mark of Pain[/skill] - just tested it, doesn't feel like it's worth it, being both in Curses and dependent on keeping the target alive. It might work well in an MM/Curses build though, just gotta find a suitable replacement for [skill=text]Offering of Blood[/skill].

Guildmaster Cain · Nov 10, 2006, 11:18 AM // 11:18

How about a Flesh Golem as replacement? Since its prob the best combination for a MM. MinionMasters shouldnt really need energy maintaining skills, since their Soul Reaping should be high enough to give them infinite amounts of energy.
I also wondered about a hero, for instance W/N with Grenth Balance. This should make him almost invincible, since the Facet of Darkness AI can also use this skill wisely.

Urfin · Nov 10, 2006, 05:26 PM // 17:26

I have to agree with Ensign again on [skill=text]Animate Flesh Golem[/skill] - it's an expensive, albeit shiny toy, and it's worse for the minion engine (seen as a constantly renewing mass of meat with interchangeable parts) than another fiend or horror. It's too strong to contribute to renewing and too weak to justify this and the 1337ness/being alone. I see its recharge time and elite status as a broad designer's hint of this.

Actually, now that I think about it, I've read a good article on how cards in TCGs/CCGs are made, conceptually, that talked about this. In that article, several conceptual types of cards were described (can't remember them all exactly now or how they were called), and how they were made with different kinds of players in mind. The "plain" ones, where usefulness is apparent, the "tricky", combo-prone ones for the creative players, and there were also the "big" ones, for players who like their stuff big and sexy. Flesh golem is made for those players, and its value is more in its fun factor than functional effectiveness.

There's nothing derogatory implied here, I myself am far from being the results-oriented play-to-win type, and I find as much fun in form as in function, but flesh golem just isn't my kind of form, otherwise I'd use it despite it's inefficiency and be a happy camper

As for [skill=text]Grenth's Balance[/skill], it's always looked interesting to me, but I've yet to come up with a way to safely keep a warrior's current health low enough for it to be effective as offence, keeping in mind the good-natured monks' efforts to heal him. It would probably require using a high-sacrifice skill or two, meaning points in them, and the AI would have to chain them correctly. If only it wasn't elite... Guess I'll go cap it and test

-.- · Nov 11, 2006, 05:35 AM // 05:35

No need to change the build for the Minion Master/Orderer. Olias performed wonderfully without flaw. My one-man warrior party ripped through hordes of enemies quickly and efficiently.

Urfin · Nov 11, 2006, 09:24 AM // 09:24

Glad to see someone has fun with it

Gotta make an even nastier curses MM now

-.- · Nov 11, 2006, 09:29 AM // 09:29

The only place the build really stops to a halt is the Realm of Torment. Olias keeps getting spiked.

Urfin · Nov 11, 2006, 10:42 AM // 10:42

I'd suggest [skill=text]Dark Bond[/skill] in place of [skill=text]Signet of Sorrow[/skill], that should mitigate the spikes, and, although minions will die faster, that also means more energy

kazjun · Nov 12, 2006, 05:47 AM // 05:47

MM is good pretty much regardless of build. Not sure about your sword warrior though. Tiger stance ends pretty much as soon as you hit any ranger enemies since they have evade stances, same with getting blinded. And if you're using dragonslash why not have "for great justice" too, though haven't tried to see if the AI can sword chain. Axes are good, though I can't get Koss to use cyclone axe, though he spams triple chop fine. Good with wings axe and leaves adren for lions comfort, which is great for AI. Allows your monks to take an extra interrupt or so.

Urfin · Nov 12, 2006, 07:26 AM // 07:26

That warrior build is almost exactly like the one I use, save for having a snare and switching the distracting for wild blow when I face rangers. Yeah, tiger stance is prone to ending, and I wouldn't take it for PVP, but there's not that much warrior hate going on in PVE anyway

The good thing about this build is damage, not uber versatility, which is always a tradeoff.

Wacky · Nov 12, 2006, 12:22 PM // 12:22

I used a MM/Curses running Parasitic Bond and Mark of Pain. Seemed to work quite well with multiple melees - especially assassins running Black Lotus and Black Spider strike.

Edit: Oh, and Winnowing goes veeerry well with minions.

cloudbunny · Nov 12, 2006, 04:05 PM // 16:05

I have a Olias using:

Fiends, horrors, shambling, BoM, Sig of Lost Souls, Death Nova, Icy Veins (E), heal area, rez (disabled). He seem to handle heal area well, but I still experiment with his self heal.

I myself go Curse/MM-support: SS+barbs+MoP, very high damage if you get the crowds nicely gathered, MoP give insane AoE damage on a fiend volley. Barbs is really nice to take out nasty bosses pretty quick.

Regards,
Cloudbunny