Curse

WildmouseX · Apr 23, 2007, 06:57 AM // 06:57

For the weeks leading up to the release of hard mode, i decided to work on one of my protector titles, and farm some gold items out of tomb to id for my wisdom title. - i was in a weird mood and when i'd get to the outpost's i'd type out " MM LFG", instead of just filling the party with bots. it's been a good year and a half since i was on the looking for a group side of a pug (ususaly have guildies with me) - and noticed that it's become alot easier for MM's to get into groups then it used to be. - ussualy geting an invite after only one looking for post.

this suprise, i learned, is because people who don't normaly play MM's have finally learned that we kick all sorts of arse...unfortunetly, they have attributed the addition of fleshy to being the reason for our awsomeness . this fact was learned by every group asking me to ping my build, and then watching as they bitched, whined, and complained because i don't bring fleshy.

This character turns two, two weeks after the game does... and about 95% of the miles she's logged, has been as a N/R beastmaster MM. i started with the standard vamps and feinds through profs, and ran fleshy from his cap in cantha all the way until i caped OoU in the relm of tourment - i'm fairly confident that i've figured out how the play the role of MM a long time agao.

now i understand that all the whineing and complaining is comeing from people who don't play mm regularly, and that they only know what they learn about build's from what they read in forums and what not - so i have decided to put together a thread to educate them on one of the many alternative MM builds that are out there.

currently my build is as follows
[skill]blood of the master[/skill][skill]feral lunge[/skill][skill]order of undeath[/skill][skill]Animate Vampiric Horror[/skill][skill]Animate shambling horror[/skill][skill]comfort animal[/skill][skill]charm animal[/skill] + sunspear res

for areas with mobs of mes's with interupts, or rangers with Quickening Zephyr - i'll swap shamlings with bone horrors for the reduced E cost and faster recharge time. - and i do bring fleshy for area's where bodies are scarce.
also, if we ever get the reduction to the E-cost of feinds that is due us, to even out the skill after the SR nerf, they will be my second minnion type.

now i know that fleshy is big, lvl 27, does a good chunk of damage, and has lots of health... pluss he leaves an exploitible corpse. - and yet with all those bonus' i choose not to bring him.... i must be crazzy, not quite.

while fleshy is awsome, seen here dishing out 68 damage to a level 22 hulking stone elemental in regant valley hard mode

he has some dis-advantages. he can only dish out that dmg to one target, and when mob's figure out that he's a threat, they gang up and take him out lickety split.

let's look at some lvl 18 OoU minnions at work on the same monsters

with OoU, you spread out your added damage accross all ten of your minnions - so when you're fighting a big mob, you can hurt all of the enemies good at the same time, without giveing them a chance to focus their attacks aginst just one of them. - and as your team reduce's the group, you can focus your dmg more and more , dealing huge dmg to the last man standing.

what's the difference in dmg you ask? well with 9 minnions dealing their avg 10 dmg, and fleshy pulling off the 68 shown above, we're looking at 158 dmg from the group as a whole when they attack.. and while i didn't seem to get my screen caps timed right, fleshy did get some 98's pulled off on some devour's on the way to that spot, so that brings the group dmg as high as 180 -------- however, if we average 10 OoU minnions to the low 27 that is shown twice there (also found by takeing normal minnions avg 10 dmg + 17 that is added in the OoU discription) - we have 270 dmg easy.
{ please note that while the pics don't have equeal number of minnions, the math here figures with full sized armies}

so for those of you runing a pug and are worried that a MM with OoU isn't dishing out as much dmg as fleshy is - you can relax because it's simply not true.

OoU's other benifit includes that there is no single minnion for the enemies to bring down. while each of them do individually die faster then fleshy, the group as a whole is strong and not dificult to stay ahead of.

the other concern that often come's up, is the health sacrifice......and it has been my exerience that 4 vamp horrors are enough to counter the sac's in normal circumstances and any of the bot monks (hero's or hench's) or any semi-competant human monk can keep you up durring the heavy flow times. - have even ran in groups where both botmonks were protects, and had no health concerns.

working outside of fort ranik on hard mode is one thing, but can OoU do the job in the big time? - here's a screenie from hard mode LB point farming in the relm of torment.

- due to arms of insainities constant upkeep of Quickening Zephyr, i replaced my pecker with SoLS. and then brought along dark bond which saved my rump a time or two... by the time i was done MMing this run, i had replaced SoLS with energy tap and res sig with channeling from the mes's inspiration line - and that was plenty to make up for the stupid spirits.

if you want a bottomline, here it is - OoU minnions dish out as much)if not more) dmg then fleshy, OoU minnions can't be gang-raped like fleshy is, and OoU minnions are more versitile and able to adapt to many different situations.

please keep in mind that I'm not writeing this thread as an argument for OoU builds being beter then fleshy... everyone plays differently, i like to orcistrate the army as a whole and rock on my skill bar through the whole fight - so this build plays well for me ...... and there are others who like to have one big dmg dealer to watch and just use the rest of the minnions as bullet spounges, so fleshy builds will be the better choice for them. - - this thread is mearly an educational refrence so that people makeing pugs with the belief that there is only one usefull MM build can become informed to the fact that it's not.

----------------------------------------------------

and to save the forum of me starting another thread, by the ending runs of our LB farm, we had morphed into a team of 2 mes's and me - so i switched over to the hexing build that i've posted recently... after working the build with some carrear mes's, we cooked up a wicked hex build off my core set up.

[skill]channeling[/skill][skill]Spiteful spirit[/skill][skill]reckless haste[/skill][skill]accumulated pain[/skill][skill]epidemic[/skill][skill]desecrate enchantments[/skill][skill]defile enchantments[/skill] +res

it plays pretty much how it looks, couple of different ways to dish out good sized AOE spikes..... the three of us + bots were clearing out the area of all the boss's + bounty creatures in 40 min runs ( 3,300 pt avg per run)

vespertine · Apr 23, 2007, 12:22 PM // 12:22

i would NEVER EVER dare to look for a group w/o self heal especially with a self-sac skill like OoU.. that's just a NONONONO..

Utaku · Apr 23, 2007, 12:33 PM // 12:33

Well, the sacrifice is nicely compensated by the health coming in through vampiric horrors.

OoU> Fleshy, I agree with that.
Bringing a pet instead of having 13 soul reaping, taste of death, death nova, signet of lost soul; I just don't get it...

WildmouseX · Apr 23, 2007, 05:11 PM // 17:11

well first off, i didn't go looking for the groups because i needed them. i've done every area with bots without a problem - getting into these pugs was more for a change of pace then anything.

secondly, the vamps are a self heal. like i said above 4 of them are normaly more then enough to counter both OoU and BoTM. and in the big fights monks usually ony have to hit me up once, maybe a second time when it's all over.

-----
my attributes are
death:16 (12 + 1, +3)
soul reaping 13 (11 +2)
beast mastery 6.

i use a major vigor to ignore the negitive health of the major soul reaping. - although makeing up for that lost health isn't too much of a big deal seeing as how the lower your max health is, the less you sacrifice with those two skills.

my resoning for a pet is threefold

1) a pet adds to the front line count when you are just starting an area out, or when low on minnions. also, whenever the baddies target a pet, they are not targeting anyone else in the group.

2) there are times when a rusher will get past your war and your minnions, with a pet i can still get a mele spounge between me and the enemy without kiteing through the front line, or bothering anyone else in the group.

3) when the pet gets dropped, you get a useible body. if he dies quickly when you res him it doesn't shut down your bar - i've built many armies just by resing him and sending him in to die again quickly (baddies will go after him first because he's an easy kill)..- this is also a SR trigger to boot.

before i caped the black moa (which starts at 20), i use to replace my pets often and go into the high end areas with lvl 5 pets just so they would die over and over to get my minnions and keep SR charged. - since i've had a lvl 20 pet,i've brought fearl lunge so i can start bleeding and koss can go streight to gash to apply deap wound sooner.

again these are all just differences in the way we all play, no real way to say which build is better, side by side each build is going to perform roughly the same . - i will say before the SR nerf i used vamps and feinds and was able to keep 10 minnions without BoTM, and I had Dark Bond in that slot for dmg reduction when i'd get rushed.

Osi Ri S · Apr 23, 2007, 09:47 PM // 21:47

OoU>Fleshie (dont think people can really argue that

)

Your build looks fine, basically as long as you have minion spells, BotM, and maybe a self heal youre fine, everything else is just fluff. So i really dont see the point in people arguing about the pet.

The build i run 90% of the time is:

Blood Magic: 5+1
Death Magic: 12+1+3
Soul Reaping: 8+3
Healing Prayers: 9

[card]Order of Undeath[/card][card]Animate Shambling Horror[/card][card]Animate Bone Fiend[/card][card]Blood of the Master[/card][card]Karei's Healing Circle[/card][card]Signet of Lost Souls[/card][card]Dark Bond[/card][card]Resurrection Signet[/card]

I think the skills are pretty self explanatory, Karei's Healing Circle is for me when saccing gets too much and also for minions.

Personally i ALWAYS bring Dark Bond, especially since i run 2 sup runes (i have 380 HP when i MM) so im not so easy to kill.

Overall OoU is definetly better than Flesh Golem imo.

Glints Bane · Apr 24, 2007, 01:54 AM // 01:54

the build I run with OoU is as followed

16 Death
12 SR

[card]Deathly swarm[/card][card]Blood of the master[/card][card]animate bone fiend[/card][card]animate vampiric horror[/card][card]order of undeath[/card][card]glyph of lesser energy[/card]

IMO OoU is alot better then Fleshies because in what I've seen the overall DPS of 10 minions hitting with OoU is greater then 9 minions and one fleshy.

Ishtar Serket · Apr 24, 2007, 04:50 AM // 04:50

Yes, Animate Flesh Golem has become overrated. Too bad most groups have no idea the advantages of Order of Undeath over it (one of the many reasons I play as every profession primary in the game).
I bring Shambling Horror and Vamp Horror automatically with it. If the area doesn't allow much time for waiting around for skill recharge, I'll bring Bone Horror to help speed things up.

Usually something like this:

[skill]Order of Undeath[/skill][skill]Animate Shambling Horror[/skill][skill]Animate Vampiric Horror[/skill][skill]Animate Bone Horror[/skill][skill]Blood of the Master[/skill][skill]Karei's Healing Circle[/skill][skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

With the Vamp Horrors, Karei and Sig of Lost Souls, it easily counters the health loss and lets the party monk(s) move their concerns over to another party member.

robu · Apr 24, 2007, 04:43 PM // 16:43

where did you post your hex build at?

WildmouseX · Apr 24, 2007, 04:51 PM // 16:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by robu

where did you post your hex build at?

i posted it in the post sr nerf thread
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10141345

but i've replaced that with the hex build i have up in the first post... they both have the same core spiteful spirit, reckless haste, accumulated pain, and then epidemic -- my origional build then had some single target mes hex's; the new one replaced them with other aoe attacks and replaced energy tap with channeling which is proveing to be better for energy managment.

Destinyy · May 10, 2007, 01:07 PM // 13:07

I agree as well... ever since capping OoU I kinda feel like poor fleshy has been neglected...

lol

OoU is awesome, and can be spammed and kept up constantly with ease...

Some nice builds up there, SoLS is one i overlooked...