Curse

Ept · Oct 01, 2006, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Can someone give me a comparison of SS/SV vs. Famine/SV builds when 2-manning Underworld?

brute blake · Oct 01, 2006, 11:08 PM // 23:08

When i went Famine with my friend he said he had more energy and prefered it to SS/SV

Scavenger Rage · Oct 01, 2006, 11:15 PM // 23:15

SS does more DMG then famine...A LOT more dmg!!!

One because you can cast it twice using arcane echo...

Two because as a necro you can use Reckless Haste that increases the dmg a WHOLE lot....

Third because you dont need to use VISAGE to drain axtaxess energy, whitch means they use more skills...whitch mean SS kicks in a lot more...

-----------------

If that is not enough SS is more versatile cause you dont have to cast / walk / recharge / cast....you can just go non stop...

Also there is the fact thata RH whith curses at 18 (aweken of blood) gives enemys 60% miss....whitch means easier time for the 55 / 600 monk... And off course....you can always carry blood ritual as a necro to speed things up.

Bottom line....SS necro is still the best (a lot), but famine is a fairly nice build as well

Latter.

Amity and Truth · Oct 01, 2006, 11:22 PM // 23:22

I'd say they're pretty even in their situations.
SS/RH will shine with small mob sizes while Famine shines with larger mob sizes.

The reason behind this is that you will have to cast/recast spiteful spirit every 5 seconds (if you're using arcane echo) or every 10 seconds if you're going x/mo for a permanent res. The innate damage of Spiteful Spirit is larger plus it triggers on adrenaline skills. Doesn't matter if they hit or not (41 Damage every 1.33 seconds (with RH)).
Famine on the other side has lower innate damage (37 Damage every 1.66 seconds) but has the advantage of not having to be recasted. It is like you've put Spiteful Spirit on every single enemy. For famine (And Mindwrack for that matter) it doesn't really matter if your energy is 0.001 or 0.1 or 1.0. Once you drain it, you reach zero and thus trigger the skills. That is why larger mobs favor Famine. Though the comparison isn't really that fair, simply because Awaken the Blood boosts the Attribute.

Both variants take a multitude of skills to work:

Spiteful Spirit [E]
Reckless Haste
Arcane Echo
Awaken the Blood

Famine [E]
Sympathic Visage
Ancestors Visage

So the Famine Variant uses one skill less but it has to be a Ranger Primary, thus sacrificing one pip of energy regen. So basically, tank large numbers of enemy (which is no problem with Spiritbond) and Famine will work out slightly better. Tank medium to small sized numbers of enemies and Spiteful Spirit will work out better by large margin.
In the end it all depends on the other spells. The curses line has some insanely powerful spells in it like the Enchantment desecrating ones while probably the Ranger/Me is somewhat gimped in his skill choice.

So, Elitewise: Famine wins by a small margin with large mobs.
But Buildwise: Your Average SS/RH Necro will win due to more efficient OTHER spells. Plus he is free to chose his secondary class while the Ranger is forced to go R/Me.

makosi · Oct 02, 2006, 12:24 AM // 00:24

With famine, you can only kill melee attackers. I like to kill terrorwebs too so I choose SS necro. A good SS/SV necro will kill the smites as fast, if not faster, than famine from experience (whice i have a lot of

)

cerb · Oct 02, 2006, 01:54 AM // 01:54

ss/sv can handle anything in UW, unlike Famine. Sure, you could, for instance, tuck a group of smites into coldfires, but if one (or two colds) are not adjacent (don't get affected by SV, AV or Fear Me), what do you do once everything is dead? wand it to death? What about Ice King, Unwanted Guests?

And like Makosi said, a good ss/sv will kill smites just as fast as a famine, while being able to handle any group size (may it be huge or small)

Apple · Oct 02, 2006, 02:42 AM // 02:42

Ermm :
Famine kills a lot quicker than SS. Anyone who's played both knows this. It takes next to no skill to put up SB, then get an absolutely MASSIVE group and tank the whole lot until they die. To kill coldfires, you just grab their aggro, run them into a manageable position then revert back and tank next to them. It's a lot, lot quicker.

Scavenger Rage · Oct 02, 2006, 04:10 AM // 04:10

Another reason why SS does a lot more dmg then FAMINE (probably the main one...dunno how I forgot): SS's STACK!!!

Each time you put SS on one enemy, ALL the surrounding ones takes the dmg...whitch means, that casting it on 3 diferent ones (its the usuall ammount I can handle before I run out of energy or the first SS ends) you are doin 41dmg (aweken) times 3....whitch is 123dmg each....famine build can't even get close to this number...not even gonna mention the +1 curses that makes 43 dmg each since it triggers 1time each 5 casts aprox. (20% chance).

And APPLE....how so FAMINE is "a lot quicker" then SS?!?!? PLEASE explain to me whith facts ok?!

Latter.

Blaze Emup · Oct 02, 2006, 04:20 AM // 04:20

I don't see how famine could kill faster than SS. With each attack with famine monsters are doing 37 damage to themselves. With SS each monster takes 41 damage each time the hexed monster attacks OR uses a skill and that is multiplied by the times you cast SS. So if you cast SS on 2 monsters that are adjacent (which any good SS necro can do) then in essence that is really 82 damage per attack (41 to the first hexed monster and all adjacent monsters + 41 from the second monster and all adjacent monsters. With coldfires its not even a contest. Hands down SS is better.

LoKi Foxfire · Oct 02, 2006, 04:30 AM // 04:30

SV triggers on adjacent enemies as well though, so doesn't that mean each time SV is triggered it also triggers the damage from Famine? Instead of having to cast SS multiple times you can just use SV and a huge group like [Apple] said to do a good amount of damage.

Someone should time their runs over a set of 10-20 runs with each build and see which does it faster (assuming their using each correctly) -

Carboplatin · Oct 02, 2006, 04:30 AM // 04:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amity and Truth

I'd say they're pretty even in their situations.
SS/RH will shine with small mob sizes while Famine shines with larger mob sizes.

The reason behind this is that you will have to cast/recast spiteful spirit every 5 seconds (if you're using arcane echo) or every 10 seconds if you're going x/mo for a permanent res. The innate damage of Spiteful Spirit is larger plus it triggers on adrenaline skills. Doesn't matter if they hit or not (41 Damage every 1.33 seconds (with RH)).
Famine on the other side has lower innate damage (37 Damage every 1.66 seconds) but has the advantage of not having to be recasted. It is like you've put Spiteful Spirit on every single enemy. For famine (And Mindwrack for that matter) it doesn't really matter if your energy is 0.001 or 0.1 or 1.0. Once you drain it, you reach zero and thus trigger the skills. That is why larger mobs favor Famine. Though the comparison isn't really that fair, simply because Awaken the Blood boosts the Attribute.

Both variants take a multitude of skills to work:

Spiteful Spirit [E]
Reckless Haste
Arcane Echo
Awaken the Blood

Famine [E]
Sympathic Visage
Ancestors Visage

So the Famine Variant uses one skill less but it has to be a Ranger Primary, thus sacrificing one pip of energy regen. So basically, tank large numbers of enemy (which is no problem with Spiritbond) and Famine will work out slightly better. Tank medium to small sized numbers of enemies and Spiteful Spirit will work out better by large margin.
In the end it all depends on the other spells. The curses line has some insanely powerful spells in it like the Enchantment desecrating ones while probably the Ranger/Me is somewhat gimped in his skill choice.

So, Elitewise: Famine wins by a small margin with large mobs.
But Buildwise: Your Average SS/RH Necro will win due to more efficient OTHER spells. Plus he is free to chose his secondary class while the Ranger is forced to go R/Me.

Your calculation is flawed.

SS has an aoe effect. Doesn't matter if they hit or not (41 Damage every 1.33 seconds (with RH)). multiply that by the number of enemies in the area, square that for each thing that has ss on them.

SS very quickly becames the highest damaging skill in the UW(cumilative). might be able to compare with wrath/ret.

-edit
i guess sv/av have a similar aoe effect, but colds/terrors are not affect by sv/av.

Sekkira · Oct 02, 2006, 06:16 AM // 06:16

As said before, SV is an enchant which will trigger each time the person is hit in melee. So -3 energy per hit, if you have a group of 20 smites who are hiting once every 1.5 seconds, you have a loss of 20 energy per second and of course when they reach zero energy (which takes about 3 seconds), they're now taking 493 damage per second on EACH of them, not spread out.

SS will do, say you get it off on 3 targets, each one will be taking 74 damage per second.

493dps vs 74dps or to put it realistically times it by 20, 9860dps vs 1480dps (oh and I forgot about reckless haste, but you'll be casting it on a single target. It wont even bring it up to a third of the dps the famine build can deal).

Mistical miss · Oct 02, 2006, 06:59 AM // 06:59

I all depends on how much u can lure,
If any of u have farmed Shiroken around harvest temple, you'd know SV+!! AV can kill the lvl 28 shiroken there in less than 5 seconds if u lure them all together. Thats WAY quicker than 3 SS can deal in the time.

However when there are 3-7 enemies I recon SS is significantly quicker as it deals more dmg than the famine by using reckless haste and being able have 3 enemies attack under ss...

But if you have a super monk, who's able to lure loads.. then Famine all the way.. ( you can easily kill casters by luring a bunch of smites to them, but as they are rather weak, the ranger could basically just kill them with his spells/bow)

When an

Katari · Oct 02, 2006, 07:23 AM // 07:23

Famine +AV/SV triggers each time energy is reduced to zero. Once energy hits zero, it will trigger each time energy would have reached 1e. If the energy drain from SV/AV hits a target with 0e, nothing happens. This is clear, because if that were the case, this thread would have no reason for existing, the DPS would be roughly 1000DPS for a group of 5 smites. Clearly this isn't the case, and you can prove it in Elona's Reach.

Damage per second from Famine is determined purely by the rate of energy regen.

Aataxes regenerate energy at a rate of 0.66e/s. Each famine trigger only hits one Aataxe, that's a blazing 24.42 DPS per target.

Smites regenerate energy the same as any other caster class, for 49.21 DPS per smite. It's good DPS, but it's at roughly half of what a SS nec can achive by simply casting SS twice. Against a mob of 5 smites, two casts of a 42 damage SS will deal 558.6 total DPS, Famine hits 246 DPS. The damage would not scale in a way that favors Famine as the mobs get bigger. I was also ignoring RS (Which would clearly swing the balance further in the favor of SS), simply because I don't feel like calculating attack speeds. Aataxes attack slower than Smites, but not twice as slow, howerver, they *do* regenerate energy twice as slow.

I could perhaps be wrong in assuming that monster caster classes regenerate energy at the same rate as player caster calsses, but I don't think I am. And at anyrate, it would require stupid amounts of energy regen to make Famine compairable with SS.

Avarre · Oct 02, 2006, 07:24 AM // 07:24

How does SV/Famine kill Terrorwebs?

AscalonWarrior · Oct 02, 2006, 08:07 AM // 08:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scavenger Rage

Another reason why SS does a lot more dmg then FAMINE (probably the main one...dunno how I forgot): SS's STACK!!!

Each time you put SS on one enemy, ALL the surrounding ones takes the dmg...whitch means, that casting it on 3 diferent ones (its the usuall ammount I can handle before I run out of energy or the first SS ends) you are doin 41dmg (aweken) times 3....whitch is 123dmg each....famine build can't even get close to this number...not even gonna mention the +1 curses that makes 43 dmg each since it triggers 1time each 5 casts aprox. (20% chance).

And APPLE....how so FAMINE is "a lot quicker" then SS?!?!? PLEASE explain to me whith facts ok?!

Latter.

With Famine, when SV/AV is triggered, all adjanced foes lose -3 energy, and that means when a smite/aatxe/grasping hits you, all ajanced enemies lose -3 energy, so that means if they have 0 energy, they take -37 dmg every time the tank got hit.

Let's do some maths, shall we?

You got 12 smites on you, smites have 0 energy thanks to AV/SV, when smite hits the tank all adjanced smites take -37 dmg. How much damage do they take if all smites hit the tank once?

12x37=444

Answer: Smites take -444 damage if they hit you once.

SS:
You got 12 smites on you, they take -41 (with Awaken the Blood) damage every time 3 smites with SS hit the tank. How much damage do they take if all 3 smites with SS hit the tank once.

3x41=123

Answer: Smites take -123 damage if 3 smites with SS hit you once.

I think that will prove that Famine is faster?

Kuja · Oct 02, 2006, 08:43 AM // 08:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by AscalonWarrior

With Famine, when SV/AV is triggered, all adjanced foes lose -3 energy, and that means when a smite/aatxe/grasping hits you, all ajanced enemies lose -3 energy, so that means if they have 0 energy, they take -37 dmg every time the tank got hit.

Let's do some maths, shall we?

You got 12 smites on you, smites have 0 energy thanks to AV/SV, when smite hits the tank all adjanced smites take -37 dmg. How much damage do they take if all smites hit the tank once?

12x37=444

Answer: Smites take -444 damage if they hit you once.

SS:
You got 12 smites on you, they take -41 (with Awaken the Blood) damage every time 3 smites with SS hit the tank. How much damage do they take if all 3 smites with SS hit the tank once.

3x41=123

Answer: Smites take -123 damage if 3 smites with SS hit you once.

I think that will prove that Famine is faster?

No, because of obvious flaws in your math...For starters, for SS you only have 3 smites taking damage from SS as apposed to 12 for Famine.

Start with 12x41=492 not to mention any overlap of SS

Orinn · Oct 02, 2006, 08:58 AM // 08:58

actually, he was assuming 3 sources of damage (3 x damage done by SS) to EACH smite.

and he did the same for famine. however, in his example, he had 12 smites hitting. that will trigger famine 12 times (assuming only SV or AV, but you CAN stack them) but will only trigger SS once for each smite that's actually hexed with SS.

the larger the group hitting you, the more effective famine gets.

AscalonWarrior · Oct 02, 2006, 09:09 AM // 09:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kuja

No, because of obvious flaws in your math...For starters, for SS you only have 3 smites taking damage from SS as apposed to 12 for Famine.

Start with 12x41=492 not to mention any overlap of SS

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orinn

actually, he was assuming 3 sources of damage (3 x damage done by SS) to EACH smite.

and he did the same for famine. however, in his example, he had 12 smites hitting. that will trigger famine 12 times (assuming only SV or AV, but you CAN stack them) but will only trigger SS once for each smite that's actually hexed with SS.

the larger the group hitting you, the more effective famine gets.

That's right. You can't cast 12 SS's, can you?
So that is 3x41

Amity and Truth · Oct 02, 2006, 09:23 AM // 09:23

Well it looks like the only way to settle this argument would be to test it out with around 10 runs each and using the average time it takes to clear the same amount of enemies.

About the Dryder comment, they're actually quite easy. You just tank them along with the rest of the chamber and abuse the melee fighters to drain them along. Discussion won't get this anywhere as there are too many factors and "probables" to include to make it accurate enough to come to a conclusion.