Curse

Francis Crawford · Dec 03, 2006, 10:45 PM // 22:45

Due to computer issues, I haven't actually PLAYED much recently, so this is untested too. But it's an interesting idea.

E/Mo

Armor -- your fire hat with the sup rune, otherwise collector's armor with sup Earth and sup Energy Storage, for 255 HP total.

Earth -- 13
Fire -- 16 or close
Prot and Energy Storage -- the rest, divide up as suits

Weapon -- one of the usual-suspect enchantment extenders, such as Galigord's Staff or Rago's Flame Staff or even Kephket's.

Skills

Stoneflesh Aura
Protective Spirit

These two are the Stoneguard combo, providing perfect invulnerability against ordinary damage.

Elemental Attunement (E)
Fire Attunement
Immolate or Mark of Rodgort
Glowing Gaze

These four taken together provide tremendous energy management. Note that Mark of Rodgort triggers burning and hence energy gain upon being hit by Glowing Gaze. Note also that Immolate, MoR, and GG all have the same recharge time, so HSR caster items may be less useful than is normally the case.

This leaves two slots for damage or utility. Damage would be Sliver Armor and/or fire damage spells (note that MoR becomes more attractive if you're also dealing out fire damage). As for defense:

Aura of Restoration provides health gain if anything goes wrong -- degen, life stealing, mild enchantment stripping, KD, disruption. It's also a cover in the case of stripping.

Ward of Stability can provide heavy knockdown mitigation

I see no solution to more serious enchantment stripping, or to heavy interruption (Glyph of Concentration is unlikely to be enough, and Mantra of Resolve isn't available).

Now what could get REALLY interesting would be doing this in a team of two, presumably with Sousuke/Zhed. If you do the numbers on energy flow, it turns out that one character can cast enough Protective Spirits to protect two. If you do that, the other one can do MoR for both. (Since I don't trust the AI to use MoR properly, his job is PS.) That frees up some skillbar slots for more damage or wards. And while the AI will have a tight energy situation as well as being rather busy casting other stuff, Fireball or Liquid Flame would only cost him 1 net energy each.

The human doesn't even have to go Ele/Mo, actually. So in an area with annoying interruption, he can go Ele/Me with Mantra of Resolve and try to tank. Although I imagine the success of that tactic would be restricted by the need of the Ele/Mo to attack for energy-gain reasons. Another option is to have the human be the interrupter, if that's needed.

Francis Crawford · Dec 04, 2006, 12:28 AM // 00:28

I should perhaps add that if you're not going to use Sliver Armor, you might want to take HP even lower, in which case Earth Magic can come down too.

I haven't thought through whether it would ever make sense to max out Earth instead of Fire.

Dr Strangelove · Dec 04, 2006, 12:39 AM // 00:39

Seems like waste, kinetic armor + stoneflesh is easier to maintain and pretty much assures that you'll take 0 damage from everything.

Roughly 80 extra armor = 75% damage reduction at worst. Stoneflesh makes all attacks 33 damage and under do 0 damage. 33 *4 = original amount of damage dealt = 132. Therefore, all attacks 132 damage and under deal 0 damage. There aren't too many things that regularly his quite that hard. The actual amount would be even higher than that, considering that kinetic actually gives +84 AL, and an ele's armor is usually 70.

Francis Crawford · Dec 04, 2006, 01:57 AM // 01:57

Unless the damage is both armor-ignoring and greater than 33 while not being a critical hit.

OK, you have a point. We're talking about some pretty specific enemy skills* or enemies here.

And a lot of those enemies have enchantment-stripping friends.

*Backfire, Rend Enchantments, smiting, etc.

Captain Arne Is PRO · Dec 04, 2006, 01:58 AM // 01:58

I was playing around last night with Prot Spirit and Stoneflesh Aura with 300ish HP and 29 reduction from Stoneflesh.. I was taking 1 damage and they weren't running at all and about 10 seconds into the Stoneflesh it stopped working, even though it was still on me.

Dunno what was happening, did you test this?

Dr Strangelove · Dec 04, 2006, 02:36 AM // 02:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

Unless the damage is both armor-ignoring and greater than 33 while not being a critical hit.

OK, you have a point. We're talking about some pretty specific enemy skills* or enemies here.

And a lot of those enemies have enchantment-stripping friends.

*Backfire, Rend Enchantments, smiting, etc.

...and in those cases you may as well bring obsidian flesh.

Eles have some of the best tanking skills in the game (Armor of Earth, Kinetic Armor, Obisidian Flesh, Stoneflesh Aura, all the wards, etc.). When it comes to pure damage reduction, there's just no need to supplement with expensive, attribute leeching skills from other professions.

Not that stoneflesh can't be frickin' awesome, I love playing around with it.

EDIT:

The cookie cutter earth farmer looks something like this:

Stone Daggers
Crystal Wave
Tenai's Crystals
Sliver Armor
Kinetic Armor
Aura of Restoration
Earth Attunement
Ether Renewal [E]

16 Earth, 13 energy storage. Generally tears the heck out of everything as long as there's not enchantment stripping.

You could drop one of the crystals spells for stoneflesh to be pretty much indestructible.

Another variant uses serpent's quickness and obsidian flesh to be completely immune to spells, with kinetic armor and stoneflesh, you'd be almost totally immune to all forms of damage (unless some jerk brings one of the non-spell enchant strips, heavy interrupts, or lots of untargeted armor ignoring damage).

Francis Crawford · Dec 04, 2006, 04:41 AM // 04:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Arne Is PRO

Dunno what was happening, did you test this?

Nope. ASSUMING my new computer with the Intel 6600 Core Duo, dual GeForce 7950 1 gig card, and 4 gigs of RAM is delivered tomorrow, and further assuming the installation goes smoothly, I should have Stoneflesh Aura in a few days. But right now I'm only playing when my wife happens to be away from her computer, and I haven't gotten that far into Nightfall yet.

Francis Crawford · Dec 04, 2006, 04:45 AM // 04:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

The cookie cutter earth farmer looks something like this:

Stone Daggers
Crystal Wave
Tenai's Crystals
Sliver Armor
Kinetic Armor
Aura of Restoration
Earth Attunement
Ether Renewal [E]

16 Earth, 13 energy storage. Generally tears the heck out of everything as long as there's not enchantment stripping.

Well, yes. And if you look to find that in the build sticky, you'll see that I posted it and went off about multiple variants for different environments. (Not that I invented the core build, of course; I just seem to have been the first person to bother starting a thread about it after the introduction of Sliver Armor.) However, I usually take Armor of Earth too, and I'm looking forward to a change.

Francis Crawford · Dec 04, 2006, 04:48 AM // 04:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Another variant uses serpent's quickness and obsidian flesh to be completely immune to spells, with kinetic armor and stoneflesh, you'd be almost totally immune to all forms of damage (unless some jerk brings one of the non-spell enchant strips, heavy interrupts, or lots of untargeted armor ignoring damage).

I never enjoyed Mr. Frosty before, but now that Stoneflesh Aura makes it more versatile, it's time to try it again. (I think Mr. Frosty is in the Elementalist forum build sticky, not here.)

One trick recently posted here was Stone Striker to power the Storm Chaser energy engine.

Francis Crawford · Dec 04, 2006, 05:07 AM // 05:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Arne Is PRO

I was playing around last night with Prot Spirit and Stoneflesh Aura with 300ish HP and 29 reduction from Stoneflesh.. I was taking 1 damage and they weren't running at all and about 10 seconds into the Stoneflesh it stopped working, even though it was still on me.

Dunno what was happening, did you test this?

What part of the post title didn't you understand?

Seriously, yours is not the first report of a problematic test combining Stoneflesh Aura and Protective Spirit. See http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10077272 from post #15 onward. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...t=st oneguard has a more positive report, but that's with Protective Bond.

Bloodied Blade · Dec 04, 2006, 12:07 PM // 12:07

I really don't see a need to deviate from just using armors as your defense... Mark of Rodgort + a fiery sword would be nice though... Would also help (b/c of the sword) to make sure that things didn't use any annoying anti-caster skills on you (which they tend to use more often if you're holding a ritualist pot, wand, staff etc).

Anyway, GL with the build, I might roll an elementalist to finally try this out... (I tried stoneflesh aura on a r/e of all things...and it almost worked).

Francis Crawford · Dec 04, 2006, 04:26 PM // 16:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloodied Blade

Would also help (b/c of the sword) to make sure that things didn't use any annoying anti-caster skills on you (which they tend to use more often if you're holding a ritualist pot, wand, staff etc).

Has that been tested?

As for the fiery melee weapon -- FFS for the win!!

My Fiery Flame Spitter has a +19% enchanting mod on it. I was given that mod in trade by a guy for one scorched seed, after he ran out of gold to pay me the 1K each for the other seeds. That's what he offered, and he said he knew he was overpaying, but evidently he was REALLY frustrated trying to farm them himself ...

... but I digress.

RebelHero · Dec 05, 2006, 01:23 AM // 01:23

Yes it has been tested. Best example is the old nerfed Spirit Bond Farming at Harvest Temple. People using a staff would get hexed with shroud of silence or something like that. People using a Totem Axe for example didnt.