Curse

Moloch Vein · May 09, 2008, 05:43 PM // 17:43

This sounds really promising, will have to check it out when I get home.

If this is indeed true I'm going to update the sticky a lot with this, because it's a HUGE addition to a MB build.

I need a major overhaul on the sticky. I'll create this as soon as I get home. In the meantime this is the new "baseline" build for a hero Minion Bomber, for which, by now, there is NO reason to go other than /Mo which completely outclasses all other options.

[build prof=N/Mo name="Hero Minion Bomber May 2008" death=12+1+3 soulr=8+1 healing=10 desc="Weapon Set: Spear w/ 20% enchantments, Focus (Healing or Death Magic) w/ Master Of My Domain/20%"][Jagged Bones][Infuse Condition][Death Nova][Dwayna's Sorrow][Animate Bone Minions][Heal Area][Feast For The Dead][Foul Feast][/build]

Will try Infuse Health and see if the hero still infuses minions (urgh.)

cgruber · May 09, 2008, 07:04 PM // 19:04

I usually run the sabway curse and mm minons along with a healing prayers monk so I tossed dwanyas sorrow on him and it seemed to work pretty well. Not sure if he was specifically targeting the minions or another front liner but they certainly were getting enchanted with it.

Carinae · May 09, 2008, 10:34 PM // 22:34

Moloch, don't run HA on a hero. They won't use it properly, and it's very expensive. I know you just trying to get the most out of your spec in Healing, but ...

Actually, what I'd do is drop HA and ABM and take Vamps and Fiends.

[Jagged Bones][Death Nova][Animate Vampiric Horror][Animate Bone Fiend][Dwayna's Sorrow][Feast For The Dead][Foul Feast][Infuse Condition]

This is a strong build, on paper. I'm gonna have Olias run it and see how it does. Best of all worlds: Party healing, party condition removal, self-heal and e-management, NO sacrifice spells (which compensates for lacking Dark Bond), minions contribute damage, better meatshields.

On a different note: Death Nova still needs a recharge time to keep Olias from spamming it in inappropriate situations.

Hatchet Child · May 09, 2008, 10:50 PM // 22:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

On a different note: Death Nova still needs a recharge time to keep Olias from spamming it in inappropriate situations.

That is the only thing that annoys me about MBs.
The hero uses it at the wrong time nearly all the time.

Back on topic it's also the FFtD and ToD that's been updated right? Well my Livia 'Still' Refuses to use it. Moloch knows of my whining about the two skills i mentioned & the heroes actually using them, Could just be me but she's not using it.

--Justi

Chthon · May 09, 2008, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moloch Vein

there is NO reason to go other than /Mo which completely outclasses all other options.

I'm going to have to agree.

Quote:

[build prof=N/Mo name="Hero Minion Bomber May 2008" death=12+1+3 soulr=8+1 healing=10 desc="Weapon Set: Spear w/ 20% enchantments, Focus (Healing or Death Magic) w/ Master Of My Domain/20%"][Jagged Bones][Infuse Condition][Death Nova][Dwayna's Sorrow][Animate Bone Minions][Heal Area][Feast For The Dead][Foul Feast][/build]

1. I'm going to have to agree with Carinae on HA. At least, I don't see it as central to the build.

2. Why Feast for the Dead? A MB doesn't exactly need a minion heal. Unless they're using it for active minion detonation really well. Are they? And better than Taste (a pretty decent emergency self-heal)?

Quote:

Will try Infuse Health and see if the hero still infuses minions (urgh.)

I was going to ask about that. I still remember laughing my ass off the first time that happened. (Although Olias did save me at least once with infuse that run...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

Actually, what I'd do is drop HA and ABM and take Vamps and Fiends.

[Jagged Bones][Death Nova][Animate Vampiric Horror][Animate Bone Fiend][Dwayna's Sorrow][Feast For The Dead][Foul Feast][Infuse Condition]

1. Is the AI smart enough to feast the jaggies and not the expensive minions?

2. Feast can only keep a minion's delta(health) positive up through 5 degen (80 sec); after that natural degen is going to outpace healing. Is that a long enough lifespan for fiends/horrors to really fill out an army? Long enough to be worth he investment?

Quote:

On a different note: Death Nova still needs a recharge time to keep Olias from spamming it in inappropriate situations.

I'd be happy with an AI tweak that prioritized getting his minions aggroed onto an already-engaged mob over casting DN.

Turbobusa · May 09, 2008, 11:04 PM // 23:04

Minions are better meat shield without a lengthy recharge.
plus fiends don't go in melee range, so death nova-ing them isn't as efficient as doing it on BM's. Two minions per corpse also triggers the minion limit = explosions = opponent dead. I'll stick with minions any day of the week, and if I were to take another animate spell, that'd be shambling.

Hatchet, I don't know why your heroes don't wanna use FFtD, because mine do just fine.

Boogz · May 09, 2008, 11:04 PM // 23:04

[build=N/Mo dea=12+1+3 sou=9+1 hea=9][Jagged Bones][Animate Bone Minions][Death Nova][Blood of the Master][Foul Feast][Dwayna's Sorrow][Signet of Lost Souls][Resurrection Signet][/build]

dunno if i should use [Blood of the Master] or [Feast for the Dead], need suggestions

elevenfifty5 · May 09, 2008, 11:15 PM // 23:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

I'd be happy with an AI tweak that prioritized getting his minions aggroed onto an already-engaged mob over casting DN.

/signed

"Wheres Master?"

Carinae · May 09, 2008, 11:24 PM // 23:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

2. Why Feast for the Dead? A MB doesn't exactly need a minion heal. Unless they're using it for active minion detonation really well. Are they? And better than Taste (a pretty decent emergency self-heal)?

It's a minion-popper. It's this or ToD. He already has 3 healing sources and no sac spells, but no minion heal. Figured it rounded the build better than ToD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

1. Is the AI smart enough to feast the jaggies and not the expensive minions?

Probably not. But these minions deal damage before they pop, and they are better meatshields, even Fiends @18 are better than BM @14.

These should allow a hero to throw in minions at the start of a battle. Don't kid yourself, level 14 BM are not gonna last during or between battles in HM. The choices are:

Minion Bomber where you use ABM when a monster dies, and pop both within seconds...probably NOT getting all 3 enchants on them...

or... MB/MM hybrid which has tougher minions that don't pop right away, giving more time to get them enchanted, letting them deal/absorb damage and making them portable between battles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

2. Feast can only keep a minion's delta(health) positive up through 5 degen (80 sec); after that natural degen is going to outpace healing. Is that a long enough lifespan for fiends/horrors to really fill out an army? Long enough to be worth he investment?

I don't want a fulll on MM army. I want them to die fast, but not TOO fast. Feast spreads out their death rates because a meatshield is better than 30hp and no meatshield.

Cathode_Reborn · May 09, 2008, 11:48 PM // 23:48

Good update. Might have to start using Dwayna's Sorrow on an MM hero.

Still not really sure about Feast for the Dead though - small heal, bad recharge. And from what I'm seeing right now, heroes arn't really doing anything amazing with it.

Another benefit that I see about Dwayna's Sorrow is since it'll enchant a bunch of your minions, any disenchants a mob might have will be wasted on those minions.

Moloch Vein · May 10, 2008, 11:49 AM // 11:49

I'm a bit leery about bringing only one 25e minion spell with a short recharge on a minion bomber, producing a minion isn't going to contribute very well to the decoys.

Heal Area is pretty expensive, true, but the MB will at least use it while standing still with me looking on the map figuring out where to go next. It does tend to maintain the decoys some. Also, he's gaining 3e per cast of ABM, while he loses 6e per cast of AVH and 16e per cast of ABF.

I'm not too sure about Taste Of Death/FFtD. I'll have to get home to actually try these options.

Olias will spam the hell out of Death Nova. This is an annoyance, but Death Nova is so good... 105 armor ignoring damage and poisoning. Without it, the MB has no dmg output... just short-lived decoys (alright, they'll trigger Barbs some.) Still, this is a problem. This is one of my main reasons why I don't like Mind Blast all that much, either on hero or on human.

distilledwill · May 10, 2008, 12:15 PM // 12:15

This is what Im using atm:
[Build prof=N/Mo Name="Jagged Dwayna" box SoulReaping=8+1 HealingPrayers=10 DeathMagic=12+1+3][Jagged Bones][Animate Bone Minions][Death Nova][Blood Of The Master][Dwayna's Sorrow][Infuse Condition][Foul Feast][Signet Of Lost Souls][/build]

I much prefer BotM over Feast as it doesnt require my MM to kill something to heal the rest, which I feel is a little counter productive when you could have a spell which heals ALL minions for MORE and has a shorter recharge time.

Death Nova is almost always disabled on him, I only reable it when entering a large battle. The DPS from minions + barbs is usually more than enough to kill most foes anyway.

Infuse + FF allows me to take some condition removal from my other heroes and replace it when more powerful damage spells ([[Mend Body And Soul] from my N/Rt replaced with [[Ancestors' Rage])

Definately take a +20% enchant weapon, helps with the spammage.

Turbobusa · May 10, 2008, 12:55 PM // 12:55

Erm feast kills a minion, but with JB, you also create one. You basically trigger death nova, create a jagged horror, and heal the rest, for free. Ho and you trigger soul reaping.

I agree that the heroes won't use it on a JB'd minion, but you can be sure it'll have death nova on, meaning stuff will die. You can always micromanage JB in between battles.
I don't see why you would want to disable death nova since the whole build is designed around this single skill.

distilledwill · May 10, 2008, 03:56 PM // 15:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbobusa

Erm feast kills a minion, but with JB, you also create one. You basically trigger death nova, create a jagged horror, and heal the rest, for free. Ho and you trigger soul reaping.

I agree that the heroes won't use it on a JB'd minion, but you can be sure it'll have death nova on, meaning stuff will die. You can always micromanage JB in between battles.
I don't see why you would want to disable death nova since the whole build is designed around this single skill.

I disable DN between fights so that Olias can keep up, I often neglect to reactivate it when theres only 1/2 enemies as it seems a waste of energy (for both Olias and me!). However, as Ive mentioned, when anything more than a simple skirmish crops up, I always re-enable it.

Yes, I do see the logic of using Feast, it makes sense to pop a few minions to kill the enemies, and if I could take both, itd be quite nice to have Feast disabled and force cast it to pop a minion everysoften. Nevertheless BotM, I feel, is a better all round spell. It works between battles with no micro management (no need to make sure he casts it on a JB'd minion to ensure we don't lose a minion), heals for more (122 rather than 106 at 16DM) and has a shorter recharge (2 rather than 10).

Chthon · May 11, 2008, 02:18 AM // 02:18

WTH? My post got eaten.... Grrr...

XDeadboltX · May 11, 2008, 05:59 PM // 17:59

I think Ill only run this in normal mode. In hard mode [protective spirit] and [aegis] are better to have on the necro

Chthon · May 12, 2008, 01:20 AM // 01:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by XDeadboltX

I think Ill only run this in normal mode. In hard mode [protective spirit] and [aegis] are better to have on the necro

I'm going to try very hard not to laugh or cry here. The prot doesn't go on the MB in Sabway because it's a good place for prot. (It's a terrible place -- you can't spec very high and the skills have ZERO synergy with the rest of the bar.) The prot goes on the MB because you need to have prot and there's no place else to put it given what the other two builds are. There's never a reason to cram half-assed prot onto a MB hero when you have more than 4 spaces in your party. In fact, even for 4-man areas, I'm *this* close to declaring Sabway "dead," because recent updates allow the MB to take over the party healing and condition removal roles from the healer, which makes Mo/X or N/Mo heal/prot hybrids look more and more attractive for that slot.

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

On to some build testing:

[Build prof=N/Mo SoulReaping=10+1 HealingPrayers=8 DeathMagic=12+1+3][Jagged Bones][Death Nova][Infuse Condition][Foul Feast][Dwayna's Sorrow][Animate Bone Minions][Taste of Death][Resurrection Chant][/build] and
[Build prof=N/Mo SoulReaping=10+1 HealingPrayers=8 DeathMagic=12+1+3][Jagged Bones][Death Nova][Infuse Condition][Foul Feast][Dwayna's Sorrow][Animate Bone Minions][Feast for the Dead][Resurrection Chant][/build]
both work fine.

On Carinae's suggestion, I tried swapping to heavier minions.

Tried
[Jagged Bones][Death Nova][Animate Vampiric Horror][Animate Bone Fiend][Dwayna's Sorrow][Feast For The Dead][Foul Feast][Infuse Condition].
It didn't work. It just wasn't able to get the minions up and running. It usually hovered around 5 and never reached 10.

So then I tried
[Build prof=N/Mo SoulReaping=9+1 HealingPrayers=9 DeathMagic=12+1+3][Jagged Bones][Death Nova][Infuse Condition][Foul Feast][Dwayna's Sorrow][Animate Shambling Horror][animate bone fiend][Feast for the Dead][/build].
That worked, very nicely even (see below), but he did get targeted and spiked more than I would like.
So I moved to
[Build prof=N/Mo SoulReaping=9+1 HealingPrayers=9 DeathMagic=12+1+3][Jagged Bones][Death Nova][Infuse Condition][Foul Feast][Dwayna's Sorrow][Animate Shambling Horror][animate bone fiend][Taste of Death][/build]
and I was quite happy with the results. At least for now I'm going to be satisfied with this as a hero MB build.

Couple of notes:
1. Seems the AI will use FftD on bone minions quite a lot, but it really doesn't like to cast it on fiends/shamblings/jaggies, even if the whole army is degen-ing out and dying because FftD isn't getting cast. That makes FftD really only appealing on bone-minion-based builds for me.
2. I've been running a variant on Moloch's AP-MoP Bomber for vanquishing recently, and, at least in combination with that build, bone fiends are definitely worth the trouble. They offer a pretty noticeable increase in damage over bone minions, provide a couple of decoys for melee monsters that rush your backline, and, best of all, trigger Barbs/MoP like crazy.

distilledwill · May 12, 2008, 12:47 PM // 12:47

With the above post in mind, Im going to try out this hero setup for a while:

[Cursing Channeler;OAhjYgHsoO5BhmdoMs7wYV1kLA]
[Dwayna's MB;OANDUshtSLVVB4BoBGNLCJgVVA]
[Icy Prot;OANCY8zTNDqJQqHBkXXVdnA]

The final build is very very much a work in progress, I was thinking a blood/prot hybrid, but I was struggling to find blood skills that were worth the investment. Similarly, I was thinking about a second Curser to fit MoP in there, but again I was loathed to substitute more damage in for a bit less protection.

Edit: Hell, I did it. I forced MoP and Weaken Armour into the build:
[Cursing Prot;OANDY5xfO1MLxnAqFQedV1dC]

I actually have a +1+1 SR headpiece, so Icy Veins is significantly more powerful than the build above suggests.

why not?

Turbobusa · May 12, 2008, 05:33 PM // 17:33

Icy veins does very mediocre damage if used on foes >lvl20.
Extinguish...if you encounter desease maybe but otherwise the JBer will get rid of conditions, even if he's busy most of the time that shouldn't be that much of a problem.
I'd stick with a n/rt healer with either WoD (disabled) or WoR.

Cathode_Reborn · May 12, 2008, 08:15 PM // 20:15

Icy Veins basically is just a really weak SF. Hardly worth the elite slot in pve. I was usin an N/Mo prot for HM and I usually had him using Shield of regeneration - no hero monk can spam it without some hefty e-management but necs don't have that problem. Like turbobusa it does pretty bad damage at when you start fightin lvl20+ enemies.