Curse

xenoranger · Jun 14, 2006, 12:44 PM // 12:44

Oddly enough, I've never run into a CoP monk. But, I did site them as possible problems.

Still, Martyr and monks who can pull all conditions quickly are a danger.

And yes, epidemic was used (in a previous build) but found not tobe as effective. Will have to try it again in further usage.

dgb · Jun 15, 2006, 01:09 AM // 01:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenoranger

True, but they still have the hex degen to remove as well.

It's hitting one two levels. That's what makes it effective.

Sure, convert hexes can remove this, but still, people don't usually carry skills that remove multiple hexes at once.

Psychology based gamble.

Mend ailment + boon will heal for 250+ health the first time it hits. 200+ the second, and 150+ the third (if the degen is still going by then). That seems more than enough to counter the degen from hexes and conditions. Then one holy veil and all your degen is looking rather weak. Standard issue boon prot skills are looking like countering it reasonably easily. Just making sure you're aware of the problems with this.

Sacho · Jun 15, 2006, 02:14 PM // 14:14

I've been switching mend condition for mend ailment on my monk lately, as it totally owns condition-spammed pressure.

Same for your build

You're not looking at the costs of these skills.

Your main combo, plague sending + virulence gives a target 25 seconds of bleeding and 13 seconds of poison/disease. If a monk doesn't tend to them at all, that means 150 damage from the bleeding, and 208 damage from the poison/disease(Won't factor in that this is a total of 11 degen, which means one pip will be lost due to the cap) A total of 358 damage, for 15 energy - decent efficiency for degen, as long as they all sit through their max recharge - but this will happen after 25 seconds, during which the monk has ample time to act(sig of devotion ftw).If you're lucky, a monk would only drop one mend condition on your target, probably cutting off 50-60 damage(not counting the healing). If you're really unlucky, the monk would just drop mend ailments whenever the target is low, resulting in total ownage.

Basically, the reason why I don't like pure degen, is that it's too slow. Especially in AB, you really don't want "slow". You want to deal with your opponents fast, so you can focus on capping points.

With that in mind, I think you should consider another "unholy" type of build - with discord. It is almost as efficient as degen, except that it can deliver damage much faster. You would have to add some curses spec to make it work, unless you can think of another way of delivering conditions(ie through a second profession). Basically, you would still cast a life siphon(and some cover, preferrably parasitic but you could cover with vile miasma, though that's costly), then hit the target with a condition(furthering degen), then spam the crap out of discord. It would free up one slot(from the signet of agony-plague sending combo, assuming you could deliver conditions with one skill), and also, warriors on your team that produce conditions would cover the fragile part of your build(1 condition, unless again you can think up a way to produce many conditions on your target). It not only features degen(life siphon + parasitic is 4 degen, + possible degen from a condition), but spammable damage to further pressure the opponent's monk.

It would be something like this:

Life Siphon
Parasitic Bond
(Condition apply, for example enfeeble)
Discord
(4 Optional Slots for AB)

In these optional slots you could include further hexes, self healing, more condition applying skills, perhaps some off-monk healing/hex removal, etc. It leaves alot of flexibility. You could for example include more spammable degen hexes, as Virulence's 15s recharge doesn't make the previous build very spammable(Unless your opponents are bunched up for epidemic, but that's really adding a rather conditional extra skill to make it work)

xenoranger · Jun 15, 2006, 03:44 PM // 15:44

See Disobedience:
http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3055397

Works better for spike dmg and I built that one after capping Discord.
Skills:

Discord (Death) {E} 5,1,2
Enfeeble (Curses) 5,1,5
Parasitic Bond (Curses) 5,1,2
Arcane Echo (No Attrib) 15,2,30
==Option==
Putrid Explosion (Death) 10,1,5
Soul Feast (Death) 10,1,-
Rez Sig

Dmg from Disobedience is much higher than Unholy Degen. Unholy Degen was meant for taking down Turtles in Aspenwood, but also worked fairly well in AB.

Disobedience does 52 dmg/sec (54 dmg/sec when you factor in para bond) while Unholy Degen does only 20 dmg/sec (max). Yes, there are far better builds in term of dmg/sec. Unholy Degen just works best if you're softenning and applying conditions