Curse

troll · Jan 26, 2007, 09:10 PM // 21:10

Hey.

Partly because I love them, and partly because they drop lots of ectos, I decided to find a good build for soloing the UW Bladed Aatxes. I came up with this Mo/W. It can also kill Graspings, but Smites take too long due to them healing. Anything else I haven't tested it on. Anyway, on to the build:

Skills
Spellbreaker
Riposte
Deadly Riposte
Bonetti's Defense
Healing Breeze
Protective Spirit
Mending
Balthazar's Spirit
If you don't know what all these skills do, find out before reading the rest of the post.

Build basics
Looking at the skills, one can almost guess that this is a so called "55-monk". That is correct. It is a 55-monk killing with ripostes, making room for Spellbreaker as elite. More on how it works later.

Equipment
Armor: Full ascetic's armor for energy with five superior monk runes (1 of each + 1 extra, which one doesn't matter). Armor level on the armor doesn't matter.
Weapons: A sword (yes, must be a sword) with +5 energy and 20% longer enchantment durations. On next slot, some kind of monk rod for killing nightmares with. Stats are not too important, just make sure it's max damage and customized.
Offhand: -50 hp cesta. This together with the superior runes brings our hp down to 55. Woohoo.

Attributes
Healing Prayers: 9 with runes and all is what I recommend, since Mending then is at +3 and HB at +7. To get one more health regeneration one needs to pump healing to 12, which is lots.
Smiting Prayers: Don't put anything here.
Protective Prayers: Enough for Protective Spirit to have long enough duration. This is pretty much personal preference, I like to keep prot at 11, giving PS 21 seconds duration.
Divine Favor: Everything you don't put anywhere else. Gives SB longer duration, aswell as giving you more health each time you cast one of your enchantments on yourself.
Axe Mastery: Nothing.
Hammer Mastery: Nothing.
Strength: Nothing.
Tactics: 12. This is the attribute that does the killing, and I don't recommend going lower than 12, which is as high as you can possibly go.

Bladed Aatxe
This is what we're up against. Here are the skills they use:
Sever Artery
Gash
Riposte
Deadly Riposte
Savage Slash, nasty, interrupts your spells.
Two more things of importance: 1. They deal lots of damage unless you have PS on, and 2. Nightmares will pop up while fighting them. They rend your enchantments, which means your death, unless you break their spell with SB.

How to use the build
Keep Balthazar's Spirit and Mending on at all times.
Keep Protective Spirit on at all times when fighting.
Keep Healing Breeze on at all times when fighting more than one Aatxe.
The riposte skills are used for killing, and should be used as often as possible. They also have a second use, and that is blocking the Aatxes' Savage Slash, which can otherwise interrupt your spells. The riposte skills are ideal for using at the same time as PS due to its short casting time, and due to the fact that ripostes only block ONE attack each.
Bonetti's defense is used mainly for energy management, but as ripostes, also for blocking Savage Slash. Bonetti's is best suited to use before HB, since Bonetti's can block attacks over a long period of time, and HB has such a long casting time.
Last, but not least, Spellbreaker, our elite, is used to break the nightmares "Rend Enchantments"-skill. The nightmares will appear while you're moving towards the Aatxes, and the Aatxes will use Savage Slash on whichever spell you use as soon as they get to you. Therefore, it is important that SB isn't used too late, because then it'll get interrupted. In case of emergency, Deadly Riposte is good for blocking eventual Savage Slashes while casting SB, since you won't have adrenaline for Riposte or Bonetti's.

Reflection
I'm pretty tired now, but I hope you like the build. I know I included lots of stuff that's very obvious to many players, but I want the build to be available to pretty much anyone, so bear with me. Also, I haven't taken any pictures or made any videos, because I'm just too lazy. Hope that's ok...

Questions, suggestions, whatever; give me a shout in game, IGN: Violence Seeker

Thanks for reading.

Crazyvietguy · Jan 26, 2007, 09:32 PM // 21:32

Nice setup of a build. I like the idea. However this must be like trying to kill an elephant with a baseball bat.. you can do it.. but it will take you forever.

novawhiz · Jan 26, 2007, 09:34 PM // 21:34

This has been around for ages and takes forever.

Just aint worth time imo.

onerabbit · Jan 26, 2007, 09:40 PM // 21:40

Yep...takes 5mins to kill 1 attxe

Levi Garett · Jan 26, 2007, 09:50 PM // 21:50

Been using 55 Riposte builds for a long time now; my monk is 18 months old! IMHO there's better ways to use a Mo/W than Ripostes but it does work just fine.

Thanks for taking the time to do a write up though (and thinking outside the box).

Also using this build is very risky in UW. You have nothing to stop the Grasphings from Skull Cracking you besides hiding behind bonetti's.

Lastly if you are using any Mo/W build and Bath's Spirit it's always in your best interest to put something into smiting. The break points are 3, 8, and 12 for the extra adrenaline gain from Bath's Spirit. I try to get 8 smiting in all my adrenaline Mo/W builds but at the least you should invest 6 attribs to get level 3 smiting (more adrenaline=faster killing).

Cheers

troll · Jan 26, 2007, 10:18 PM // 22:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeviGarrett

Been using 55 Riposte builds for a long time now; my monk is 18 months old! IMHO there's better ways to use a Mo/W than Ripostes but it does work just fine.

Thanks for taking the time to do a write up though (and thinking outside the box).

Also using this build is very risky in UW. You have nothing to stop the Grasphings from Skull Cracking you besides hiding behind bonetti's.

Lastly if you are using any Mo/W build and Bath's Spirit it's always in your best interest to put something into smiting. The break points are 3, 8, and 12 for the extra adrenaline gain from Bath's Spirit. I try to get 8 smiting in all my adrenaline Mo/W builds but at the least you should invest 6 attribs to get level 3 smiting (more adrenaline=faster killing).

Cheers

Thanks for the constructive critizism! Yeah, it's true that Skull Crack can be a problem when fighting Graspings, but if they aren't too many it's possible to survive when dazed by regularly casting PS together with ripostes.

About the B's Spirit and smiting, yes, it's true what you're saying, but with a sup smiting rune you get to 3 smiting without putting anything in it. Ofcourse though, you only need to spend 10 points to get to the break at 8, so that could be an idea, bringing down DF/prot slightly.

TeeJay · Jan 27, 2007, 10:59 AM // 10:59

I suggest using the Mo/Me with IW and Scythe, that may be slow but a lot faster than this. I'm sure it's still around here somewhere. It uses prot and soa and av/sv and the rest you can guess. It also kills the grasps and smites, pretty fast too. Still people looking for ectos always go for the smite runs, and who blames them.

Greetz Teejay

lunaticmo1 · Jan 27, 2007, 11:12 PM // 23:12

ATAwERGMEG+CIpeISkH templete for the build, post up top, gl =)

ca_aok · Jan 27, 2007, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Dude, stop spamming the forum with the build templates... post count doesn't really matter here.

Mr_Cynical · Jan 29, 2007, 07:21 PM // 19:21

Build templates are actually useful - sure, it's no big deal to do the skills and attributes yourself, but it's just easier to use a skill template if there is one.