Curse

McUH · Jun 03, 2006, 05:02 PM // 17:02

Hi there,

first of all I want warn you this build is not for holding halls. It is more of a fun build but ended up working pretty well, so I decided to post it for others who may want to try it. Good thing is it is not hard to run and it is possible to get decent result without voice-comm too. Also the roles are not tightly defined so people can experiment with it and find players easier. And believe me, if you are not messing up completely, you will just walk over any unorganised team, and sometimes even organised ones.

Perhaps someone else did this before too, but I never seen degen+EoE build in HA (or old Tombs) so far.

I apologize if it is formatted wrongly or anything, my first post here.

Dreamwalkers build - for HA
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1. Characters setup

2 x Me/E - spammable degen + 1 spiking skill + energy management, Res Sig, one of them takes windborne speed
1 x Me/N - spammable degen + 1 dmg skill(Deathly Swarm works well) + consume corpse + energy management, Res Sig
1 x R/? - good EoE, fertile season, choking gas, interupter, Res Sig (could use 1 damage skill to join spikes)
1 x R/? - good EoE, frozen soil, poison spam, damage, Res Sig
1 x E/Mo - Res Sig, Ether Prodigy, Heal Party, element of choice, fire works very well - fireball, immolate
2 x Mo/? - WoH/HP and boon-prot work well, but other combinations are possible

I am not going to give you all exact skills, as long as characters bring core skills and can do their role, it is fairly customizable. But to give you some idea, this is Me/E degen I run:

Me/E - degen example
Attr:
9+4 illusion (Remorse breakpoint), 8+1 Inspiration (E-drain breakpoint), 8+1 fast cast, 11 Air
Equipment:
Wand and focus with 20% chance of faster recharge of inspiration (for E-management)
off-hand -5E sword and some shield
Skills:
Conjure Phantasm, Images of Remorse (good spammable relatively cheap degen)
Lighting Orb - for spiking
Windobrne speed - for Altar capping and relic runs
Energy drain, Drain enchantement, Power drain - energy management (and 1 is also interrupt)
Res Sig
Sometimes I replace Drain Ench. and/or Power drain with something like Channeling, Insp. Hex, etc.

2.Tactics:
- Keep EoE up all the time (except if you face EoE bomb hehe), it is key skill that is why there are 2 of them
- Mesmers: cycling targets, spamming degen, replenish energy when needed. If target is called, joining in spike
- R choking gas: spam interupts, keeps EoE up, using fertile against spike groups, joining spike (if has any dmg skill)
- R poison: spamming degen, helps with EoE if other R has problems, using frosen after some kills, joining spike
- E/MO: at first, spaming fire spells for even more pressure (fireball) and degen (immolate), joining spikes
when EoE starts to trigger (after kills on either side), switches to Heal Party spam mode (with help of prodigy), until team is healed
- Monks: well, monks, heal and prot... If one has Heal Party, helps E/MO with HP after EoE if Ele cant cope (interupted etc)
- after some time pressuring when targets are low health - anyone who sees target with low health, calls spike by targeting him, others try to join as soon as possible to finish it
- E/MO is key character with HP spam after EoE, so he should stay back and dont expose himself to much danger, also monks should watch him well and not allow him die

Don't get too disappointed if you don't get high morale boost on Zaishen fight, it gets some time to get used to it with this setup. And you can still win pretty easily if you have 4%. When you get good though, it is possible to get 10%.

3.Build overal characteritics
ADVANTAGES
- different, fun to play, surprise factor (at least now)
- lot of pressure
- easy to get some fame fast (1-3 wins) since less organised teams will crumble like dust pretty fast
- easy to coordinate/run, doesn't really require voice comm or lot of skill for decent results
- you will almost always get some kills even if you lose, good for morale of your team and also Balth.factions
- some teams will confuse you with EoE bomb and so make stupid things like someone staying back
DISADVANTAGES
- lack of healing, can't really hold altars/HoH
- not much hex/condition removal (but E/MO and Me could help with it if necessary, or even R/MO)
- very dependant on E/MO, if he is down/disabled it comes out pretty bad (at best both teams EoE die at same time ? :-) )
- hard to find degen (illusion) mesmers, esp. for unranked teams where this is mostly meant

4.Some suggestions for experimenting, warning against some mistakes
What does not work well
- Conjure Nightmare, good degen but 25E cast, not worth the cost not to mention it is single hex so it is easier to remove completely
- Mantra of Persistence, good on paper, but short duration for 15E cost, and if hexes are removed it does nothing. So look at it this way - either hexes are not removed and you are happy anyway, or they are removed and then this mantra would do nothing

Some suggestions for experimenting
- different elements for E/MO, also we plan to try him to be smiting with Scourge healing spam
- Necro degeners instead of some mesmers (prob. N/Me since energy management is important)
- maybe trying to go with 1 Ranger only, but will be risky to have only 1 EoE

5.Experience with this build, some background story (not necessary to read)
Well first I would mention how I came to name Dreamwalkers. It was during late night session when we were trying this and most of the team members were half asleep already. Still with our concentration down, we managed to kill pretty well, and one guildie named it sleep walking, I liked the idea and finally named it Dreamwalkers.

As for running it, I run it only for 2 days now, since it is 2 days ago I came with this idea (after trying 4x Me degen/spike, with 1 R and 3 monk backline, worked well but was too hard to organise and harder to run too). From my experience it is hardest to find degen illusion mesmers (even when I PM R3+ surgers if they can play it, answer is usually no, even migraine/interupters who should be illusion anyway often reply they cant do it). So start with finding them, if you have friends for it it is best, since if mesmer leaves, he is hardest to replace. If you cant find such mesmers, then just let it go and try another day. Others should be relatively easy to get, even from random people.

Now from actual experience, here is what I get from last days:
- R-spike/E (or Me/E) spike, put down fertile and it is usually GG (choking helps too), never lost to them
- B-spike, it is trickier but I think you have upper hand. We lost to some but we always had them on defensive, so it was due our later mistakes
- IWAY, tricky and you can lose. Still if played well you should win, they die quite fast, just dont overextend or cluster together. Putting down frozen soil at right time is important, you will usually start killing sooner, but if you allow them to res, you may be in trouble
- dual smite, spread out and you should be fine. We usually lost when we allowed ourselves to cluster together after some time (I told you we were quite sleepy already :-) )
- balanced, depends on their setup and ability, can be easy, but can be hard, and very good balanced team will prob. kill you at last (still, some small mistakes and you can win)
- don't remember if we faced something else so far
As for HoH I can't give any tips or reports, honestly I don't get there too often (our guild plays usually GvG if together, so it is freelance or friend teams for me in HA, decent but not superB), but who of us more casual players really does get there often...

Most memorable battle so far with this build was on 2nd map (Burial Mounds). We faced balanced team and the battle raged for about 10 minutes, neither side getting upper hand for a long time. Well at last they managed to kill us and then asked us if we are ranked group. I didn't get what they mean at first (since I never make groups based on ranks, I had some R 0-2 players with me on this run too). I told them we are just few guildies and friends running some fun build, they praised us for being good players and told us they are Rank 7-8 group. Well, I know we are not THAT good players in reality (decent yes), still it felt good and it shows that even if you can't beat some very experienced group, you can certainly show teeth and bite them.

It would be interesting to know, what whould happen if some truly experienced players would run this. If they could still win relic runs or even HoH (well, holding would be prob. impossible though).

6.Contact if you want discuss something aside from this forum
Well, if you have any suggestions or would like to discuss this stuff, feel free to send mail to [email protected]

Ingame you can find me by nicks: Mc Evilsmiter, Mc Swiftarm, Mc Lorekeeper, Mc Lorefinder, Mc Chaotic or anything else with Mc in front of it... Swiftarm and Lorekeeper are PvE chars, so they should be there always (but I rarely play them).

Good luck in your fights.
Mc