Curse

Hippocheesebarn · Feb 21, 2006, 05:19 AM // 05:19

I've been working on this build for a little while now, and for about a solid week or more I haven't quite gotten everyone together that I want to officially test the build. It's been immensely frustrating... when I DO have the people together, my Internet decides to completely crap out on me. I no longer wish to wait until the right time comes to see if this build works. I like to know things work before I make them public, but this is an exception. Onwards to my 3 man Sorrow's Furnace build... maybe.

The classes that were used were Warrior/Elementalist, Elementalist/Mesmer, and Monk/X.

Warrior/Elementalist:
The skills I used for this are:
"Watch Yourself"
Armor of Earth
Dolyak Signet
Shield Stance
Bonetti's Defense
Stoning
Crystal Wave
Aftershock

My attribs were at:
10 earth, 15 Strength (sup rune), 12 Tactics (sup rune + helm).

The Warrior's job is to inflict severe damage reduction rather than focusing on stances. This
helps to relieve the job of a bonder monk, making a combo bonder/healer much easier. The warrior does his normal job of holding the gear inside etc. etc. Except he runs "Watch Yourself", Armor of Earth and Dolyak Signet as well as bonetti's and Shield stance to fall back on. The stances are less important here, though. As an elementalist, the Warrior will use the energy gained from Balthazar's Spirit to use the spells listed above. Stoning can easily be replaced with another spell. I use it because of the decent damage. Crystal wave is solid damage, and Aftershock is great for a relay on Meteor Shower. The Warrior is not meant as the main damage dealer and never has been, but it's nice to have the extra damage as this build probably needs it.

Elementalist/Mesmer:
The elementalist skill list used was:
Aura of Restoration
Fireball
Incendiary Bonds
Meteor Shower
Archane Echo
Echo
glyph of lesser energy
lava font

Clearly the Elementalist is the main damage dealer. Using skills like repetitive meteor shower
combined with the extra damage from aftershock, the damage will start to stack quite well. Timing your attacks with the Warrior to hit a damage peak makes this build the most effective. Using Meteor Shower, Aftershock and Crystal wave will produce nice results. The stacking fire degeneration attacks are also nice damage dealers as they add up very quickly when continually used on foes. Lastly Lava font is used as an attack to disperse the aggro on yourself in something like that should happen.

Monk/X:
Skill set:
Dwayna's Kiss
Healing Hands
Healing Breeze
Essence Bond
Balthazar's Spirit
Life Bond
Blessed Signet
Orison of Healing

The monks job is the standard protect the Warrior and heal him when they need it.
I have played around with some Monk/Ranger builds that use Symbiosis instead of Orison, which can be very nice, as well.

Grenth's Footprint:
As we all know Sorrow's Furnace builds are all well and good, except they are completely worthless if you cannot get into Sorrow's Furnace to begin with. For this build it's a little
difficult due to the messy aggros, but entirely possible, as I have done it. To start with the damage dealer should bring a longbow. I suppose a normal staff will do, but a longbow is by far preferred. The Warrior should move forward from the spawn and corner block the right-hand side of the downward slope. For those of you that don't know, corner blocking is a type of aggro control that uses different methods than normal. The warrior will never aggro when corner blocking, because it will disrupt the entire aggro. The warrior positions himself in a place that will be directly in the way of enemies that are trying to get to whom aggrod them. Thus all the
enemies, melee and ranged alike, stack up where the warrior is standing and clump together, creating a total control of the aggro. As a warrior, when corner blocking, you get into position and DO NOT MOVE. Moving causes holes for the monsters to find, and believe me, they will find them. When the warrior is in position, another person goes and attacks the monsters. The monsters, being aggro'd by that person, turn and run a bee line straight for them... right until they all clump at the warrior. It works beautifully. Anyway the warrior positions themselves at the right hand corner of the top of the downward slope. The damage dealer aggros the enemies at the bottom with a longbow, causing the enemies to charge up the slop and pile up on the warrior. Once this aggro is completed, proceed to use the longbow from just behind the resurrect point and aggro the group on the next tier down. This can take a couple times as it is a very long way for the enemies to travel to get to your group to attack, but it is entirely possible. Do the same for the patrol that moves through the area as well if it suits your fancy. Continue finding places to Corner block through the rest of Grenth's Footprint, and then, like always, when appropriate, run
in. Congratulations, you are in Sorrow's Furnace.

Good luck with the build. I'm very interested as to see where this build goes to. Feel free to change things as you wish. I have nothing set in stone, yet.
Also, I originally tried to combine an SS/MM necro, but that didn't work so hot. If you can make it work, great! and please by all means post your success. I then switched to a solid SS build
which seemed to work alright, but I am not convinced that they can deal the amount of damage needed in order to make a 3 man team work, but it is entirely possible... Again, try some different things out and let me know what you think.

Credit:
To me for coming up with the 3 man Combo.
To all who participated in creating the 5 man SF teams.
To Ubermancer for the base of the Warrior build.