Curse

Dean Harper · Oct 13, 2006, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Im basically new to curses, since i have never used it before, so bear with me, and dont hate me if this sounds stupid. I know that Barbs has basically gone away, and no one uses it, but im gonna try and bring it back with a shutdown build.

N/Mo

Attributes:

Curses: 12+1+3
Soul Reaping: 9+1
Healing Prayers: 9+1

Skills:

Soul Barbs
Defile Flesh
Weaken Armor
Suffering/Faintheartedness
Feast of Corruption{E}
Mark of Pain
Vigorous Spirit/ Heal Area
Res Sig/Res Chant/Restore Life/Ressurect

Purpose:

The purpose of this build is to solo, and cause greater damage to the enemy while not allowing them to be healed for as much health. First, you would cast Weaken Armor, Then Defile Flesh, then Soul Barbs, and then Suffering/Faintheartedness. You can cast Feast of Corrution whenever you need it, as well as Mark of Pain. Use Vigorous Spirit to heal yourself,and res fallen allies with your chosen res skill. I think this build could totally dominate on the battle field, especially in soloing. Also, you could use Mes as your primary and have energy management with Inspiration, and Fast Casting, making your skills cast faster, which might be a problem. But, using Soul Reaping might provide more benefit than inspiration, especially if you use this build in PvP, like AB or GvG.

Criticizm is greatly appreciated, but dont be too harsh ppl, remember, im new to curses and necros. Thx!

-Dean

Honor · Oct 13, 2006, 06:16 PM // 18:16

Actually and maybe I am way noobish too, who knows...

with my SS build set up as so, which has been very successful for me anyway, haven't been yelled at, dropped/kicked or made fun of during any missions/quests so.... worked well on Glint and 2/3 in the Ring of Fire so far... See how Hells Precipice goes tonight anyway

Attributes:

Blood and death have +2-3 from Runes and offhands, weapons
Curses: 20+2
Soul Reaping: 20+2
Balance out the remaing somewhere with either blood, death or sword, tactics depending on my mood at the time and what area or mission I'm in.

Soul barbs
Spiteful Spirit
Barbs
Insidious parasite
Price Of Failure
Suffering/Mark of Subversion
and the other 1-2/3 depends on what mood Im in and the group Im with etc..
Anything from Blood Rit, Well of blood, minions, a stance or sprint maybe.

Energy Management is key timing of casting etc, but usually cast them in the order as above, and then watch the recharge time. Everything is ususally recharged before group has moved onto the next enemy if not cycle again as needed, can be varied based on recharge and group effort.

Pick Me · Oct 13, 2006, 06:29 PM // 18:29

First off, you mentioned Price of Failure, unfortunately, its not on your build.

The energy it would take for you to do this is enormous. By the time you cast all of them, the monster(s) will be dead (unless you solo).

Not everyone uses physical attacks, so Barbs isn't used that much (that and there are other spells that allow for more damage).

I like Faintheartedness over Suffering as well (but if you think the enemy will cluster, then sure, it works a bit better)

I would suggest dropping Shadow of Fear and getting Mark of Pain.

Interesting otherwise.

Hella Good · Oct 13, 2006, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Soul Bind... *rolls eyes* A common pathology of GW fans is to try to make useless things seem useful and claim originality. Choose a better elite. In the case of SB, anything will be better...

Dean Harper · Oct 14, 2006, 03:26 AM // 03:26

Ok, i meant to put Shadow of Fear instead of Price of Failure. Srry about that. Anyways, lets try a different elite, how bout Feast of Corruption? Might work, but to your other suggestions, Mark of Pain seems better than Shadow of Fear, so ill change that, and barbs could be switched with Soul Barbs, as for the fact of using this for pvp, it could be better in soloing now that i think about it, so ill change it to that. Thanks for ur suggestions, greatly appreciated!!!!

Dark Tykane · Oct 14, 2006, 03:58 AM // 03:58

Lately barbs to me seems like the only time I've used it in a looong time was for shiro....get a lot of mele fighters and a good ranger spiker and bring in barbs its an automatic masters

Soul bind right now it seems like it could be use nicely for total shut down in pve no pvp...
If shiro could be knocked down it would be sick to use soul bind but other bosses can be and you could easily shutdown anything in pvp with it...even though there are easier ways more than likely but it works.

Scherzando · Oct 14, 2006, 04:06 AM // 04:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Tykane

Lately barbs to me seems like the only time I've used it in a looong time was for shiro....get a lot of mele fighters and a good ranger spiker and bring in barbs its an automatic masters

Soul bind right now it seems like it could be use nicely for total shut down in pve no pvp...
If shiro could be knocked down it would be sick to use soul bind but other bosses can be and you could easily shutdown anything in pvp with it...even though there are easier ways more than likely but it works.

I wish Wail of Doom would work on Shiro. Whenever I cast it I never noticed any change. Grenth's Balance was a fun one to try though.

Dean Harper · Oct 15, 2006, 06:19 PM // 18:19

Plz comment on the build now that it has been changed, not its original skills , thx

Bloodied Blade · Oct 16, 2006, 10:23 AM // 10:23

...wait, is this for pve or pvp? If it's for pvp, I would drop the monk secondary and bring Cry of Frustration (domination points don't matter) to interrupt or something.

For pve, I think you're going overkill by having defile flesh. I would swap it for insidious parasite so that you can get some easy healing.

Pick Me · Oct 16, 2006, 02:23 PM // 14:23

With your new build, I still see a lot of energy consumption.

To get the most out of your elite - Feast of Coruption, Use Suffering, Shadow of Fear and Parasitic Bond.

Parasitic Bond is spamable, it works as a great heal and it does nice damage with Soul Barbs.

I would drop Vigorous Spirit/Heal Area for PB.

I would almost ask you to think about Malign Intervention (even with 0 Death Magic). Cast it when the enemy is almost dead. Suffers from your current health degen hexes, and soul barb. Enemy dies, a weak bone horror arises and gets killed. You get twice the energy from your foe and if you cast PB on the Bone Horror (masterless) you get more health.

But it may not be as usefull as it sounds.

So don't bother.

Glasswalker · Oct 16, 2006, 06:38 PM // 18:38

The good:
Defile Flesh and Weaken Armor pair nicely.
Suffering and FoC are a classic combo that still work nicely.
Soul Barbs does a fair amount of extra damage in a hexcentric build.

The bad:
Mark of Pain punishes the enemy for grouping up (something you want them to do) and only works with Physical Damage (which you are unlikely to use).
Heal Area is just plain bad. The only acceptable use for it is in MM builds, and that is just barely (I'm not in favor of it even then).

The fixes?:
Parasitic Bond is a great cover hex because you will LOVE when it is removed.
With a Minor Rune of DM, you should never have 0 points for Malign Intervention, and I actually like Pick Me's proposed strategy with it (despite his lack of confidence).
Shadow of Fear > Faintheartedness for this build, but remember that for FoC to fire at full damage, you only need one hex on all adjacent foes. Since you only get one FoC every 20 seconds, don't waste too many skills on this maneuver.
Barbs aint so bad, depending upon the makeup of your team. I LOVE it with Ranger groups. 11 extra damage is more than any prep will give them, it goes on top anyway, and works sooooo nicely with Dual Shot. Plus it would be hands-down better on this build than MoP (of course, you don't have to take either).

Finally, do not try to solo with this build. Enemy mobs will outdamage your ability to heal, will interupt you constantly, and your massive death penalty will mean you don't have the Energy to pull off any combos. Rely on allies to make Barbs worth something, and to heal you as needed. This is a support build.

Hella Good · Oct 16, 2006, 08:38 PM // 20:38

Well, here is the thing. SB needs a fast chain of hexes to follow. You dont do SB + 2/3 cast hex, you go like SB + 1 cast hexes. In this case, no one is going to wait for you to chain SB + Weaken Armor + whatever else. You gotta do it like... SB + Faint + PB, or you can extend it to like SB + Defile + Faint + PB. The more hexes you stack in the chain, the more likely it is the last hex you cast will be removed. I try not to extend my hex chains beyond 3-4 hexes. That's that.

Now SB has a great affinity with RI, and if you really want to max out Barbs, I'd go either that route, or use Sig of Suffering at the end of the chain (once NF comes out).

If you want to hex spam, SB isn't your best choice. Combining Life Siphon + Faint + PBond and using OoB as nrg management (you can do this with Reaper's Mark in the chain, too) and spreading the hexes around is far more potent. You can use Suffering to make it even more damaging (Siphon+Faint+PB+Suffering = 9 degen).

Suffering and FoC as was noted already is an old-school combo and that's all great but see... I think you are trying to achieve way too many things on the same character. Suffering/FoC doesn't work well with SB-hexing, which doesn't work well with the likes of Weaken Armor.

What I would suggest:

- Go SB/RI and use Faint, Conjure, PB
- Go Weaken Armor + Defile + PB
- Go Suffering/FoC
- Go Siphon/Faint Hex spammer (LSiphon/Faint/PB/Suffering/OoB)

Sir Moak · Oct 18, 2006, 11:57 AM // 11:57

I've seen various replies and approaches to your build. If you're just discovering the curses line, you'll see it's very versatile. What I'd suggest is deciding what you want to do in your group (1vs1 shutdown, mass shutdown, 1vs1 degen, group damage, all these are possible with just curses spells) and choose the skills accordingly.

If you want to protect your party then I would choose:
Shadow of Fear
Enfeebling Blood
Mark of Pain (yes, it does trigger AOE AI in PvE which could be used to scatter groups in difficult situations to buy time)

For mass damage (can be combined with mass shutdown skills):
Suffering + Feast of Corruption (one time huge damage with minor group degeneration)
Spiteful Spirit + Reckless Haste (maybe the greatest "nuke" in the game if there's no hex removal on the enemy team)

1vs1 degen/shutdown:
Wither
Faintheartedness
Malaise (if you don't mind the -2 health degen)

Parasitic Bond is your all mighty heal/cover hex/spammable hex so it's good to take it whenever possible.

If you want to use (Soul) Barbs I would recommend a 1vs1 build because you need to spam hexes for Soul Barbs and Barbs only affects one enemy.
Both Barbs skills have a high recharge (20 secs if I remember right), so target switching is not ideal.

As it was said before, Barbs skills are great for bosses but otherwise they lack the versatility of the above mentioned skills.

Weaken Armor, Defile Flesh, Insidious Parasite and some other slow recharge spells are in the same category as Barbs. Not spammable and highly situational. Nice hexes against individual foes but they lack the ability to switch targets and should only be used in certain specific situations.

There are other utility/damage spells worth mentioning and using, like Enfeeble and Price of Failure.

Enfeeble is one of the most versatile skills in the curses line. It's a low cost, quickly spammable spell (spell, not hex!) which is ideal for defense (especially with the 1vs1 spells I mentioned)
or as a trigger for other necro lines (even with minimal points in curses). Just two quick examples: Virulence and Discord.

Price of Failure has a very similar Mesmer counterpart, Spirit of Failure which already suggests combining Curses skills with Inspiration skills, which proved to be extremely effective.

There is one skill in the curses line which needs no attribute points to work and that is Plague Sending. This is a great utility skill, but it's usage could be tricky. It's certainly not a lifesaver so I would suggest using it combined with skills that inflict conditions on you. (Like Blood Drinker from the blood magic line.)

The most important thing in building your cursed necro is to decide which way you want to go and then choose the skills accordingly. Want to dish out huge damage? Use SS and PoF and since these are enemy triggered spells, use Reckless Haste to increase the damage with at least 25%.
Want to cripple the enemy's ability to dish out damage? Use spells that give 50% attack speed reduction and weakness. Pay attention not to mix these two perspectives and your necro will be the greatest support character in the party.

I know I failed to mention some skills here, but I list them mainly as utility skills which should only be used as complementary options in certain areas of the game

I hope I helped a bit, have fun exploring the possibilities of the cursed necro