Curse

Bobby2 · Aug 17, 2007, 05:13 AM // 05:13

Hi guys. This is the build I'm using now for quick PvP battles like Aspenwood. If you have suggestions on how to streamline it I'd be glad to hear them. This goes for equipment as well (as in: more runes of {attribute}?).

Critical Strikes 11+2 (mask & minor)
Dagger Mastery 11+1 (minor)
Shadow Arts 5

wielding Darkroot's Daggers (zealous, +30hp, +15%/enchanted)

[skill]Way of Perfection[/skill][skill]Leaping Mantis Sting[/skill][skill]Temple Strike[/skill][skill]Death Blossom[/skill][skill]Golden Phoenix Strike[/skill][skill]Shadow Refuge[/skill][skill]Shadow of Haste[/skill][skill]Dash[/skill]

Pretty straightforward. Keep up WoP for dmg bonus and a sort of health management. SoH to dive in, and to be canceled out at any time with Dash. GPS allows for another quick Blossom after the initial chain (which features both a snare and an interrupt. I may be a noob, but I'm paying attention

)

So far, it's been reasonably successful. I find myself not often killing others before warping back. However, I've usually made them easy prey for the one following me. I guess I can live with that, but claiming the trophy would be nice!

Thx 4 trashing!

Yanman.be · Aug 17, 2007, 08:14 AM // 08:14

Equipment should be fine....Not sure about attributes.. You mean you have 11+11+5? I thought 11+11+8 was possible?

Are you sure Way of Perfection is worth the slot? Unless you're autoattacking, you don't have that much hits in your chain. Offcourse, you need it for GPS.

SotiCoto · Aug 17, 2007, 02:38 PM // 14:38

Way of Perfection?

Do you really need that healing in Fort Aspenwood?
Just a thought.... but if you go secondary Dervish you could choose from all kinds of other enchantments instead to Gold-Line efficiently.
I mean if for whatever reason you want Holy Damage (Luxon Warriors have less defense against it) then Heart of Holy Flame does nicely, even without being able to put points in mysticism... plus there is the brief burning effect at the end. I'm not much of a gold-liner, but I'll bring HoHF along anyway if I'm fighting undead... for obvious reasons.
Vital Boon could work too. Once again, no points needed for it to be useful.

More to the point though, Dervish enchants are useful for Gold-lining primarily because they often have longer duration than recharge (and often quick activation)... meaning that if they're stripped or run out, you can instantly reapply them.

Bobby2 · Aug 17, 2007, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Quote:

Equipment should be fine....Not sure about attributes.. You mean you have 11+11+5? I thought 11+11+8 was possible?

Yan, I have 170 pts to spend. Taking both Crit and Dagg up to 11 costs 154 pts. Shadow up to 5 costs 15... leaving me 1 measly point. If there's a way to gain more attribute points, I have yet to find out (hint!

)

Quote:

Are you sure Way of Perfection is worth the slot? Unless you're autoattacking, you don't have that much hits in your chain. Offcourse, you need it for GPS.

I'm not sure. The reason I took WoP is that I needed a long-lasting enchantment to trigger my daggers' dmg boost. My alternative would have been [skill]Sharpen Daggers[/skill], but that takes ages to activate. I haven't found out yet if the Bleeding is applied on top of the Daze and Blind of TS, nor do I know if adjacent enemies affected by Death Blossom also suffer from Bleeding.

If you know this please tell me, also if you have a better suggestion as to what I should use as a covering enchantment instead.

Quote:

Just a thought.... but if you go secondary Dervish...

Good idea. I don't have NF though, just Factions I'm afraid. I have no idea what you mean by Gold-Line. I'll pick up NF in the future because the Dervish seems waaay cool but it's not going to be relevant for this thread...

Anyway, thanks for the replies. Learning every day.

EDIT: btw, [skill]Way of Perfection[/skill] now only takes 1/4 to activate and lasts a base 60 seconds. Still 5 nrg and 20s r/c though.

pingu666 · Aug 17, 2007, 11:30 PM // 23:30

quests are in ran misu gardens and seitung harbour

Sqube · Aug 18, 2007, 05:38 AM // 05:38

You've only got 170 points? You're supposed to have 200. Check out the Wiki to find the two 15 point attribute quests (can't think of them off the top).

11-11-8 is possible, with 9 points left over. The optimal three attribute point spread 11-10-10 with 1 point left over, but that won't necessarily work with what you're trying to do. Check out the wiki on attribute point spending here.

And as long as I'm here, the attribute quests for a given chapter are listed here.

Ares Ainia · Aug 18, 2007, 09:00 AM // 09:00

I don't see what you wouldn't gain from having Sharpen daggers instead of WoP,
The bleeding could cover the dazed and blindness, if the next hit after temple strike was crit. Also most Sin skirmishes last about 15-20 AT THE MOST, so the 30sec duration hardly seems to make a difference.

The only problem would be that you wouldn't have a self heal, means you'll just have to know when to get out of the scrap

EDIT

I'm pretty sure the foes affected by Death blossom won't start bleeding, although (again) i may be wrong.

As with casting time on sharpen, I guess I could live with it =/

Bobby2 · Aug 19, 2007, 02:11 AM // 02:11

Sqube, Pingu; thanks for the tips! I got right to it and I've got the following numbers now:

Critical Strikes 11+2 (mask & minor)
Dagger Mastery 10+1 (minor)
Shadow Arts 10

with indeed 1 point left.
My attack skills now deal slightly less damage than before but it's negligible, really. TS' effects still last for 8 sec so no real damage was done. Upping Shadow to 10 gives me far more leeway on when to use Shadow of Haste! It lasts up to 30 sec (!) now and this makes the entire build a lot more forgiving (which is good

). Replaced Way of Perfection with Sharpen Daggers, and it indeed seems like it increased the pressure I can apply.

@Ares: I have Shadow Refuge...? Right about SD being a better choice though, but it doesn't seem like DB benefits from its effects (unfair

).

All in all, the Sin 'feels' a lot more comfortable now. Gotta love it when people are running away from you!

SotiCoto · Aug 20, 2007, 08:19 AM // 08:19

Sharpen Daggers shouldn't apply bleeding to Death Blossom peripheral targets as it doesn't target them directly.... as far as I can tell.
That is to say things like the warrior skill Cyclone Axe and the ranger skill Barrage will actually directly attack multiple enemies in the area.... but Death Blossom is just an AoE splash, essentially.

moriz · Aug 20, 2007, 08:27 AM // 08:27

that is true. the aoe effect of death blossom is not actually caused by daggers. they are just pure damage. similarily, death blossom's aoe won't trigger splinter weapon. that would just be sick.

as for your build, i think shadow walk is a better choice instead of shadow of haste. it gives you a teleport in as well as a teleport out, using dash to cancel. that should solve your "warping out before the kill" problem.

SotiCoto · Aug 20, 2007, 09:19 AM // 09:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

that is true. the aoe effect of death blossom is not actually caused by daggers. they are just pure damage. similarily, death blossom's aoe won't trigger splinter weapon. that would just be sick.

If you think about it, Splinter Weapon... if applied before the combo... wouldn't have enough hits left on it to do much once you got to Death Blossom anyway. You would need Channelling seriously pimped out to get enough strikes on Splinter Weapon to make use with Death Blossom seriously devastating if that were possible.
As it stands though, Splinter Weapon with Death Blossom does still make for some serious pressure on surrounding enemies.

If you want sick.... give Splinter Weapon to an Axe warrior (with Cyclone Axe / Triple Chop) or a Dervish. Plus of course the classic Splinter Barrage...

Bobby2 · Aug 20, 2007, 03:03 PM // 15:03

As for spreading dmg... [skill]Mark of Pain[/skill] was loads of fun to use.

Bobby2 · Aug 20, 2007, 03:17 PM // 15:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

as for your build, i think shadow walk is a better choice instead of shadow of haste. it gives you a teleport in as well as a teleport out, using dash to cancel. that should solve your "warping out before the kill" problem.

Awesome, I totally missed this! Thx!

There's only one problem: because of my daggers I run on an active enchantment. Not to mention Shadow Refuge also is one. So I'll need to rework the build a bit to support this... but it's definitely worth it!

EDIT: D'oh! I don't have NF! Yet...

I need myself a new pair of daggers!!!! Where can I find Fortitude and Zealous mods for 'em?

SotiCoto · Aug 20, 2007, 03:45 PM // 15:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

I need myself a new pair of daggers!!!! Where can I find Fortitude and Zealous mods for 'em?

On other gold daggers that you find lying around?

Just get yourself a pair of [wiki]Everthorn's Chakrams[/wiki].
They're perfect for the job.

... And do try not to double-post.
Just edit into your existing post if you want to say something new.

jesh · Aug 21, 2007, 01:59 AM // 01:59

I just craft daggers or use collector ones, and buy the mods in a town for minimal amounts of money.
As for your attributes.. you should really be hitting 12 Dagger Mastery at least.
For your build I'd use:

12+1 Dagger
11+1 Critical
8 Shadow

12 in any weapon = 100% damage.

Bobby2 · Aug 21, 2007, 02:01 AM // 02:01

Sorry 'bout that. Just got Moebius Strike off that Boss - he's well hard.

Guess it must be done... *sighs*

Thx for the tip!

@ Jesh: yeah DM at 13 would've been nice. However, I really wanted CS at 13 for the energy boost - I've weighed my options and that turned out to be the most attractive one. BTW, the other option was to drop CS all the way to to 8 (the lower threshhold - IMO there's not much difference between CS at 8 or 12). And I've been really happy with the high SA rating... it makes SoH last a long time and I love it. In time, however, I might drop points of SA to raise my DM to 13. I'd have to have a bit more experience to feel confident with that.

jesh · Aug 21, 2007, 04:21 AM // 04:21

Oops. Switch DM and CS. Makes more sense, huh?

SotiCoto · Aug 21, 2007, 08:34 AM // 08:34

Critical Strikes should be at 13 if you intend to use it for energy management... at all.

But assuming you're using a mask to up Dagger Mastery, there is no reason not to use at least two Minor runes for DM and CS. If, even with the +2 to DM and +1 to CS, you keep Dagger Mastery at 12... you should have the points left over to keep Shadow Arts up reasonably.

Personally, I use two Major Runes so I have more points to throw around.
I'm quite aware that it ends up more effective to use one Superior and one Minor now, but I wasn't when I kitted out my 15k Kurzick armour.
When I bother using Critical Strikes now, I keep it at 14 so as not to lose my energy management under Weakness..... though since I use Assassin's Promise, I don't make heavy use of CS for energy management most of the time (the extra points in it do come in handy though).

Bobby2 · Aug 21, 2007, 10:37 PM // 22:37

The easiest way to go about that is to replace my minor DM with a superior one. -35HP is a steep price to pay though...

OK I'm gonna sound real nerdy now. The extra point in DM would aid me some by:
- increasing damage on attack skills. Not taking into account splash damage from DB (ie, against a single target) an ideal chain would add +10 base damage and lengthen the cripple effect from 18 to 19 seconds.
- increasing crit prob from 28.6% to 30% (sauce: wiki)
- increase double strike prob from 24% to 26% (sauce: wiki)

It does not, however, increase the duration of Temple Strike's effects. Nor should the double strike bonus be relevant if I could help it (since it doesn't apply on dagger Skills). The increased crit prob, however, is very attractive - especially combined with the high CS rating.

But again I must ask: is it worth the loss of -35HP?

jesh · Aug 23, 2007, 12:48 AM // 00:48

You can still run 8 Shadow Arts with 12 DM and 13 CS. If that's not enough, just try using the major rune. I assume that's what you mean, as a superior will set you back 75hp.

People have different preferences on these things. If you miss the HP, switch back. Pretty simple.