Curse

br0thergr1m · Oct 05, 2006, 04:27 PM // 16:27

I'm trying to piece together a new build PVE and AB and I thought I would get some feedback from you guys here at guru. Right now its in the testing phase over at Guild Wiki. I dont get quite a response as I do here. The objective of this build is to kill foes one at a time as quickly and efficiently as possible. You will not outlast a decent tank in a drawn out fight. Any help would be great.

N/W

Blood 11+3+1
Soul Reaping 6+1
Tactics 9
Swordsmanship 10

Equipment

Hit-Point-increasing Revenant's Armor to increase your maximum health as much as possible.
Runes of Superior Vigor, Superior Blood Magic, and Minor Soul Reaping.
A Blood Magic offhand which gives Health, such as The Shadestone. Offhands which decrease Blood Magic cast time are equally useful.
The ideal sword requires 10 or less, increases enchantment or hex duration, and gives additional energy.
It is suggested a N/W also carry a Truncheon or some other ranged weapon in case of fleeing foes or high Death Penalty.

Skills

Riposte
Deadly Riposte
Vampiric Touch
Vampiric Gaze
Life Transfer {E}
Vile Miasma/Rez Sig
Bonetti's Defense
Demonic Flesh

Directly before heading into the fray, cast Demonic Flesh. It will give you 200 additional hit points for one minute or more, based upon equipment which increase enchantment length.

Demonic Flesh has a one minute recast time. This means if you time it properly, you should maintain it at all times unless the enchantment is removed.

Spam Riposte whenever your adrenaline is up.

Try to retain Deadly Riposte when you have the energy. This skill causes bleeding, so follow up with Vile Miasma for maximum degeneration!

When engaging a foe, cast Life Transfer to degenerate her health and maintain your own.

Use Vampiric Bite and Vampiric Gaze to steal a significant amount of health from your foe.

If you run low on energy, use Bonetti's Defense to protect yourself and regain as much as possible. Soul Reaping will assist with this in most environments.

All melee casters are some degree more intense work for healers. Make sure monks you are playing with know what's going on, and that you have over 700health, not 200.

The Bad

Demonic Flesh can be removed by a perceptive Mesmer or Necromancer, causing you to instantly lose 200 maximum health.

You can only focus on one foe at a time, and you your armor is inferior to that of melee classes, so even with Riposte you can become overwhelmed by large groups.

One on ones battles with R/N Touch Rangers can be close calls. They tend to be able to spike lifedrains more frequently, but your lifedrains do more damage. If they use a bow, however, they are vunerable to riposte.

Credits: Ideas off Death's Shadow and Bloody Blade Builds

Pick Me · Oct 05, 2006, 05:52 PM // 17:52

I may be missing something, but isn't Swordsmanship at 10 just too high? From what I've read, you don't need to put any points into a weapon in order to get the benefits from it (ie: enchantments lasts 10% longer). However, if you want the most out of your sword, you should boost swordsmanship to 12. But since it doesn't seem like you want your sword to do anything but give you adrenaline, so it would seem that 10 is too high.

I do not like Life Transfer simply for the fact that its an elite with a long recharge time.

I must admit, I'm surprised you didn't go the curse route instead of the blood route, but whatever.

Otherwise interesting.

br0thergr1m · Oct 05, 2006, 07:18 PM // 19:18

@Pick

Thanks for the feedback. I too admit that LT is a hard to work with elite due to the long recharge time. I guess I'm having a hard time filling the Elite spot and the LT does well because I'm more focused on the Warrior skills. Plus I'm trying to stick with blood magic. I picked Blood magic Mostly for the Demonic Flesh HP and the small spikes I can incorporate.

You do raise a good question...my swordsmanship might be a little high when I step back and think about it. I was just thinking the Higher it was the better sword I could use for melee, and the more damage output.

Thanks, I'm going to try tweaking it some more.

br0

Blackhawk · Oct 06, 2006, 03:38 PM // 15:38

I've used something similar to this and using Blood makes a change from the usual Curses route when it comes to N/W.

Found a Vamp sword (Victos Blade) can be a very useful tool to have when engaging in melee when you've got plenty of regen going from Life Transfer, plus as your energy pool is normally pretty much double what a Tanking Warrior has, you can afford to lose the energy sword and just be that little bit more annoying with the life steal, or Sskai's if you'd rather the 10% of Double Adreneline.

Suggesting the Greens as Victos can be picked up pretty cheap and Sskai's a pretty easy enough farm.

Looking promising compared to some N/W builds I've seen