Curse

Divineshadows · May 30, 2006, 08:36 PM // 20:36

Me/Mo (or N secondary when not running Draw Conditions)

Crippling Anguish {E}
Conjure Phantasm
Images of Remorse
Mantra of Persistence
Power Drain
Drain Enchantment
Inspired Hex / Draw Conditions / Ether Feast (for RA)
Rez Sig

Inspiration - 15 (11+4)
Illusion - 12 (11+1)
Fast Casting - 9 (8+1)
spare points in line of choice -- prot, curses, dom, etc.

With crippling anguish, this build keeps a melee character crippled for 36 seconds and can quickly apply cover hexes. This gives your team a kiting advantage and reduces enemy damage significantly. Images of Remorse also is an effective means for punishing frenzied warriors. The recharge on anguish allows you to keep two targets crippled almost 100% of the time. By spreading conjure phantasm and images of remorse to the entire opposing team of 4, this build powers out hexes that do a lot of damage over time causing considerable pressure on the opposing team's healing base. This does not come cheaply, however, and requires the hyper energy management of power drain and drain enchantment at 15 inspiration. This level of inspiration also makes mantra of persistence that much better.

For team arenas, this build should be combined with another heavy hexer that has caster shutdown for optimal effects. If this build is run with inspired hex, then draw conditions should be run on another off monk or vice versa.

The cast times on this build are not long and allow you to move quite a bit in between casts.

For random arenas, this build works counters what seems to have become the dominant strategy in RA -- the R/N touch vampire. Just inform your team that they need to kite still. Of course, it causes massive problems for foes running warrior, thumper, and assasin builds as well, but these seem less common than R/N in RA of late. Never bother with crippling anguish on IW mesmers (or the odd ball IW R/Me), because drain enchantment just works so much better for shutting these gimmicks down. Ether feast is unfortunately a must for RA, because you never know whether or not you will be paired with a monk. At least at 15 inspiration, it heals for a lot for a mere 5 energy.

xcutioner · Jun 06, 2006, 04:59 PM // 16:59

I made up this build last night playing around in HA(great minds think alike), except I had maxed illusion over inspiration. I think running inspiration is probably the way to go though, since the energy needs are huge.

I think I had spirit of failure for the last slot, tho I'm thinking ihex might be better to get more energy.

Teleporting assasains are a bane to this, since I ran into a build that nullified my dmg pretty easily, tho thats a topic for the assasain build threads.

Divineshadows · Jun 06, 2006, 06:06 PM // 18:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by xcutioner

Teleporting assasains are a bane to this, since I ran into a build that nullified my dmg pretty easily, tho thats a topic for the assasain build threads.

If you ran into a build that nullified your damage, then your team was probably running too hex-light. Were you the only hexer? In 8v8 PvP, for degen hex builds to function well I would focus on having:

- An overwhelming number of hexes with quick re-application. The hexes should be a combination of degen and shutdown.
- The ability to interrupt the two banes of hex based degen builds - heal party and powerful hex removal skills such as expel hexes and convert hexes. Distracting shot and savage shot are your friends.

Aura of displacement sins are my favorite to face (especially since the skill update to set the recharge to 20 seconds), because drain enchantment is so much fun on them. Cloud of smoke -> drain enchant -> cloud of smoke again and still suffering from crippled and massive degen. Death's charge is a little tougher to face, but it has a massive recharge and battlefield awareness can keep you out of their teleport range. The sins that cause the most problems are those with contemplation of purity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xcutioner

I think I had spirit of failure for the last slot, tho I'm thinking ihex might be better to get more energy.

I have been trying to think of a way to work the spirit of failure/price of failure combo into this build, but I am not sure the synergy is there. After all, the goal of this build is to prevent the enemy from being in range to strike at your team. This combination would be useful against enemy rangers, but even with fast casting they should be interrupt bait for any skilled ranger player due to the long cast times. I am thinking that blurred vision and faintheartedness would be better hexes (from other team members of course) to supplement an anguish build.

remmeh · Jun 06, 2006, 08:04 PM // 20:04

nice build.

i'd normally fit in distortion for an illusion build but it's not synergistic with manra of persistence. and also your cast times will be fractions of a second (besides IoR) so i don't see any problems with interrupt rangers besides those who spam and get lucky.

Divineshadows · Jun 06, 2006, 10:22 PM // 22:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by remmeh

nice build.

i'd normally fit in distortion for an illusion build but it's not synergistic with manra of persistence. and also your cast times will be fractions of a second (besides IoR) so i don't see any problems with interrupt rangers besides those who spam and get lucky.

The best ranger interrupters are those that recognize patterns, have the recharge rates on all skills memorized, a knack for keeping time in their head, able to factor in arrow flight time, and fire off interrupts in anticipation of a spell or skill being used. Sometimes they are wrong, but more often than not they are right. I've interrupted reversal of fortune several times with distracting shot and I am sure it seems like blind luck to the opposition, but my success percentage is high enough that I know it is not. This being said, a fast cast conjure phantasm is far from being immune to interrupts by rangers or mesmers.

I have been searching for a hex build for TA that complements crippling anguish best and I think the answer lies in a little re-design of my original character and going dual persistence illusion (using Vokur's cane and the 20% recharge all spells Rockmolder):

Me/Mo
Migraine {E}
Arcane Conundrum
Conjure Phantasm
Mantra of Persistence
Power Drain
Drain Enchantment (or Inspired Enchantment)
Inspired Hex
Draw Conditions

Inspiration - 15 (11+4)
Illusion - 12 (11+1)
Fast Casting - 9 (8+1)
Protection - 3
Domination - 3 (2+1)

Me/N
Crippling Anguish {E}
Images of Remorse
Mantra of Persistence
Parasitic Bond
Shadow of Fear
Power Drain
Drain Enchantment
Rez Signet

Inspiration - 15 (11+4)
Illusion - 12 (11+1)
Fast Casting - 9 (8+1)
Curses - 3

W/Me
Devastating Hammer {E}
Crushing Blow
Fierce Blow
Irresistable Blow
Frenzy
Healing Singet
Hex Breaker
Rez Signet

Hammer - 16 (12+4)
Tactics - 11 (10+1)
Domination - 6
Strength - 7 (6+1)

Mo/Me
Energy Drain {E}
Drain Enchantment
Divine Boon
Hex Breaker
Holy Veil
Mend Ailment
Guardian
Reversal of Fortune

Divine Favor - 16 (12+4)
Domination - 3
Inspiration - 9
Protection - 10 (9+1)

The warrior lacks a speed boost, but I think this should be workable for team arenas given that crippling anguish is being used. The idea of this build is to overload the opposition with hexes to slow down the opposition's gameplan - slow their movement, slow their casting, and slow their attacking. This build applies pressure through spreading degen, the steady high DPS of a hammer, throwing off the timing of the opposition, hammer knockdown, and scores kills with crushing.

I decided on using two illusion mesmers, because it is very difficult to build a necromancer that offers good caster shutdown while still maintaining good energy management. In addition, a heavy hex domination mesmer does not offer the type of caster shutdown I was looking for:

- diversion performs poorly in a hex heavy enviroment due to the way that it interacts with inspired hex. The cast time is too long as well.
- backfire is overcosted both in energy cost and cast time for a short duration hex and completely unreliable damage
- shame and guilt are nice but their recharges did not offer what I hope

While the hex effects are more powerful than anything in illusion, they offer no damage, take much longer to cast, cost a lot of energy, and do not last long. I tried to design a stolen speed mesmer, but could not get enough good hexes to supplement while still offer some damage and monk support.

The defense in this build has a lot to do with the slow down effects as well. The rest of the defense is as follows:

- Hex breaker + holy veil. Basically makes hexers jump through significant hoops to try and land hexes on the monk. A veil cast before the start of the match further slows down the battle at the start. A diversion + backfire spammer has no hope of getting through to this guy (especially while migrained).
- Draw conditions + mend ailment. These two skills synergize really well to counter condition based teams.
- Hex breaker + a high specced healing signet. Warriors being the other common target of hexes helps prevent a high number of them from landing. Healing signet to deal with degen and help reduce the healing burden on the monk.
- Inspired hex and holy veil for any hexes that do get through.

Bloodied Blade · Jun 07, 2006, 01:37 AM // 01:37

Imo, your build is too focused on mesmers... A well thought out, more balanced team will likely beat you, but the above build should have a lot of success.

The big problem that I have with the build though is that all the other team needs is a bunnythumper, someone with hex removal (can be the monk), an anti-caster/interrupter (rangers work great for this), and a damage dealer (Touch rangers, IW mesmers, elementalists...the list goes on).

My point is that you have 1 melee character and 3 characters that are suppossed to remain at range, rely on kiting, and cast slows. If something gets close enough to you to fire, it's gonna hurt. Shadow of Fear won't affect the ranger's attack speed for interrupts because all that matters is the animation speed in their case.

I would really try to fit in Distortion on at least one of the mesmers...

Divineshadows · Jun 07, 2006, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloodied Blade

The big problem that I have with the build though is that all the other team needs is a bunnythumper, someone with hex removal (can be the monk), an anti-caster/interrupter (rangers work great for this), and a damage dealer (Touch rangers, IW mesmers, elementalists...the list goes on).

So a bunny thumper is not a damage dealer and IW mesmers, elementalists, and touch rangers are? News to me.

The idea of this build is to overload their hex removal capabilites and max out degen on their team -- a monk with hex removal is going to do absolutely nothing to this team's ability to keep multiple shutdown and degen hexes on multiple targets. Expel hexes is the biggest threat to this build. I have seen a few teams of late in TA who have their mesmer bring this elite (sacraficing an offensive elite for a support elite). I am hoping that migraine+conundrum and a couple power drains on the expel casts can help keep the hexes layered thick on the opposition.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloodied Blade

My point is that you have 1 melee character and 3 characters that are suppossed to remain at range, rely on kiting, and cast slows. If something gets close enough to you to fire, it's gonna hurt. Shadow of Fear won't affect the ranger's attack speed for interrupts because all that matters is the animation speed in their case.

From having played a ranger, I can tell you that shadow of fear or faintheartedness have a large effect on ranger effectiveness. It affects the speed at which they can spread poison (apply poison) or bleeding (melandru's arrows). It makes an interrupt arrow that follows a previous interrupt arrow that followed a regular arrow take a long time to activate. Not sure it actually affects the activation time of the interrupt arrows themselves (does it make it go from 1/2 second to 1 second?).

Kiting is simplest to achieve for casters that cast faster. The monk casts fast and the two mesmers have fast casting spells as well and are aided by fast casting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloodied Blade

I would really try to fit in Distortion on at least one of the mesmers...

Distortion would be nice, but does not fit well with mantra of persistence. The whole point of mantra is to make the hexes last twice as long for twice the effect meaning the illusion hexes do not require recasting as often (at least on the same person).