Curse

King's Spectre · May 30, 2007, 07:17 PM // 19:17

Disclaimer: This guide is all about soloing with a Paragon. If you want the fastest and easiest way to farm an IDS, stop now. I'm posting here because I'm hoping to add a little conversation to the paragon community and get the creative juices flowing a little.

Still here? Even with the disclaimer above, the build seems to be about as fast as a warrior (since you don’t have to run from imp-to-imp) and slightly slower (but much more durable) than a ranger. It looks very gimpy on the offense, but offers constant degen and spear criticals every 3 hits or so.

Team build:

For IDS hunting (which I focus on here), this build uses the heros and henchies to get you to the imps, and then allows you to solo them with the henchmen flagged out of radar range. This takes longer, but avoids problems where the Avicara are too close to the imps or all the imps are near the Seer behind the ice beast. See the link below for the details on the IDS and the path to the ice imps:

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Icy_Dragon_Sword

For hydras, sand drakes, devourers, and the like, just walk out the door and have at it!

Character Build:

Command: 13
Motivation: 13
Spear: 9
Protection Prayers: 8
Smiting Prayers: 4

I like to run with a superior command *and* a superior motivation rune, along with either a command or motivation headpiece. 13 motivation is the break-point for a 4-pip mending refrain and 3 is an adrenalin break-point for Balthazar’s Spirit. Command could be reduced at the cost of SYG! coverage if you want to run with a single or no superior runes.

Skills:

Barbed Spear
Stand Your Ground!
Enduring Harmony
Go For the Eyes!
Final Restoration
Mending Refrain
Shield of Regeneration (E)
Balthazar’s Spirit

Gear: Nothing too key here. I use a shield with a leaf on the wind inscription, +7 vs elemental damage spear upgrade and the standard centurion’s insignia. A fiery spear is helpful against pesky golems and trolls. Imps are equally weak to fire or physical damage.

Usage:

Again I'm focusing on imps, but the build could be used on most monster packs that don't do armor ignoring damage or have self healing.

Before you engage the imps, fire up Balthazar’s spirit. Wait for the imp cluster to spread out a little and engage the imp closest to you. Fire off SoR right away, followed by Mending Refrain and Final Restoration. Use Enduring Harmony and Stand Your Ground as energy becomes available.

Balthazar’s Spirit will give you quite a bit of adrenalin, so you will be able to spam GFTE! enough to really boost your damage output and top off your health. At this point, you just refresh SoR and your chants while picking off imps one-by-one.

SoR has a ¼ second cast time, but it *will* be interrupted from time to time. You can minimize this by watching your damage screen to see when maelstrom has stopped or cast SoR *right* after the next damage gets registered to avoid the interrupt from the next one. Don’t panic if you get interrupted! Just make sure you have SYG up, your chants refreshed, and spam WYS like crazy!

Ice golems and trolls are no problem. About the worst thing a troll can do to you is to black out final restoration. This is a pain but if you are careful with your SoR castings, you should be fine.

Once the main part of the cave is clear, use your party to kill the Ice Beast and Azure Shadows without agroing any imps near the seer. Flag them away and finish your run.

Alternate Builds:

You can drop command altogether and dump the points into spear. Instead of SYG! and enduring harmony, you could bring a pair of energy-based spear attacks. This would significantly speed up your killing speed, but leave you exposed if you over-agro or get multiple SoR casts interrupted.

I’m *sure* that this is not the only way to farm an IDS with a paragon or even the fastest way. I know that P/Me will work, but I find this build to be more resilient (must post screenie with 200+ maelstrom hits). I hope you enjoy trying this and look forward to your ideas in improving it.

Credits:

I puzzled this one out myself, but I have noticed that a SoR build is floating around the warrior forums. So kudos to the warrior folks.

Inspiration:

I'll leave you with a photo I floated in the screenshot forum a few weeks ago. I was using an older build then. I'll post a screenie with a pretty gold one shortly.

clawofcrimson · May 30, 2007, 10:21 PM // 22:21

great job spectre, If I didn't already have my IDS I would try it out.

master of cookies · May 31, 2007, 12:05 PM // 12:05

nice build. I take it the route used is the one on the wiki?

King's Spectre · May 31, 2007, 01:16 PM // 13:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by master of cookies

nice build. I take it the route used is the one on the wiki?

Since you are taking a hero/hench party with you, you can take either the north or the south route. Most folks will say that the south route is faster, I usually mix it up for variety.