Curse

Mercury Angel · Mar 13, 2006, 12:23 AM // 00:23

Wither Away:
Degen Team for a spirit spam environment

Spread Panic
Mesmer/Ranger

Fast Casting: 8+1
Domination: 11+3+1
Inspiration: 9+3
Wilderness Survival: 8

Panic {E}
Shame
Power Drain
Energy Tap
Drain Enchantment
Signet of Weariness/Signet of Humility
Serpent's Quickness
Resurrection Signet/Signet of Humility

Draining Shutdown
Mesmer

Fast Casting: 6+1
Illusion: 12+1
Inspiration: 11+3

Migraine {E}
Conjure Phantasm
Phantom Pain/Power Drain
Arcane Conundrum
Spirit Shackles
Mantra of Persistance
Drain Enchantment
Energy Tap

Inefficiency Expert
Mesmer/Necromancer

Fast Casting: 8+1
Curses: 12
Inspiration 10+1

Lingering Curse {E}
Shadow of Fear
Enfeeble
Price of Failure
Power Drain
Energy Tap
Drain Enchantment
Resurrection Signet

Degenerator
Necromancer/Ranger

Blood Magic: 11+3+1
Curses: 10+3
Wilderness Survival: 8
Soul Reaping: 6+1

Offering of Blood {E}
Life Siphon
Faintheartedness
Parasitic Bond
Suffering/Enfeeble/Enfeebling Blood
Rend Enchantments/Enfeeble/Enfeebling Blood
Serpent's Quickness
Resurrection Signet

Spirit Spam Hybrid
Ranger

Beast Mastery: 6+1
Expertise: 11+1+3
Marksmanship: 8+1
Wilderness Survival: 10+1

Oath Shot {E}
Energizing Wind
Quickening Zepyhr
Whirling Defence
Throw Dirt
Dust Trap
Apply Poison
Resurrection Signet

Spirit Healer
Monk/Ranger

Divine Favour: 12+3+1
Healing Prayers : 10+3
Wilderness Survival : 8

Divine Spirit
Blessed Aura
Orison of Healing
Word of Healing {E}/Infuse Health
Healing Breeze/Healing Hands {E}
Healing Seed/Infuse Health/(Hex Removal)
Healing Touch
Serpent's Quickness

Spirit Protector
Monk/Ranger

Divine Favour: 12+3+1
Protection Prayers : 10+3
Wilderness Survival : 8

Divine Spirit
Blessed Aura
Reversal of Fortune
Guardian
Shielding Hands
Restore Condition {E}
Protective Spirit
Serpent's Quickness

Spirit Support
Monk/Ranger

Divine Favour: 12+3+1
Healing Prayers: 5+1
Protection Prayers: 9+3
Wilderness Survival: 8

Divine Spirit
Blessed Aura
Infuse Health
Shielding Hands/Mark of Protection {E}/Spell Breaker {E}
Mend Ailment/Restore Condition {E}
Holy Veil
Aegis
Serpent's Quickness

===

Premise of the build:

Using Quickening Zepyhr and Energizing Wind to help manage energy costs and recharge times, this team is designed to subvert the opposing team, draining their health and energy, while reducing their offensive output.

The cornerstones of the build are, of course, Quickening Zepyhr and Energizing Wind, allowing all of the other characters to play much more smoothly. To that effect, caster hate (Migraine+Arcane Conundrum) and warrior+ranger hate (Shadow of Fear+Faintheartedness+Spirit Shackles+Soothing Images+Weakness+Dust Trap+Throw Dirt) are present to help protect the spirits, while Whirling Defence and Oath Shot are there to help the spirit spammer keep them out more often.

How to play:

Spirit Spammer- Energizing Wind->Quickening Zepyhr in that order. It cuts down the cost of all spells 15-25 energy down to 13 cost (and raises 5->7 and 10->13) [And this reduction stacks with Expertise as well, making your skills extremely cost efficient]. Quickening Zepyhr is a lot more manageable with Energizing Wind. Whirling Defence is there to help protect against ranger and warrior interrupt attempts, while Oath Shot allows you to try again if they fail. You should choose Oath Shot targets carefully to ensure that you don't miss.
Throw Dirt and Dust Trap are there to help you protect your spirits, as their deaths are NOT desirable. Spirits should ideally be spread apart enough to avoid AoE deaths, and set such that they're difficult to get a line of sight on by enemy rangers.
When your spirits are safe and sound, you can spread degeneration using Apply Poison.

Spread Panic Mesmer - This mesmer does exactly what its description says. Taking advantage of 13 cost Panics that recharge in about 4-5 seconds, this mesmer shares it with the opponents to lower their energy efficiency. Various energy management skills make it run more smoothly.
Signet of Humility/Resurrection Signet/Signet of Weariness are a 3-way toss-up. 2 of the skills are intended to further your shutdown ability, while one is rez signet. As a thing to note, Humility should recharge in about 8-9 seconds, while Weariness should recharge in about 12-13. If Humility is used, you may want to redo the attributes slightly to up the duration anyway.
Swapping out an energy management skill for another shutdown skill would also likely work.

Draining Shutdown - This mesmer spreads around debuffs to cause foes to lose health, and also to lose effectiveness. Phantom Pain's Deep Wound is good, but since the premise of this build is mainly pressure damage while reducing healing effectiveness, another energy management would work too.
With Mantra of Persistance and Quickening Zepyhr up, it should be fairly easy to keep up casting debuffs on multiple foes, reducing their ability to heal themselves or harm your allies.
Spirit Shackles removes the ability for attacking foes to use energy skills often, whether they're Warriors or Rangers, while Soothing Images removes the Adrenal section of a warrior's skill bar.

Inefficiency Expert - This mesmer takes advantage of Fast Casting and mesmer runes to use with long casting time necromancer curses. Using this mesmer, you can heavily reduce the effectiveness of attackers, causing them to deal minimal damage, and you have a powerful effect in the form of a cheap Lingering Curse, which removes all enchantments on the foe, in addition to decreasing the effectiveness of healing on them by 50%, dropping their effectiveness even further.

Degenerator - The standard Necromancer hex spreader, using Offering of Blood for energy management, and a variety of necromancer hexes to give foes degeneration and help shutdown their attackers.

Spirit Monks - The 3 following monks make use of Quickening Zephyr, Blessed Aura, and Serpent's Quickness to get long lasting Divine Spirits that reduce the cost of most of their spells to 2. (5x1.3= 7 cost -5 = 2 cost) Enchantment covers should be thrown up immediately following a Divine Spirit to reduce the chance that it is removed immediately.

Spirit Healer - This monk is intended to provide powerful, but slow, heals, in addition to taking advantage of the Blessed Aura in use. Whether you opt for Word of Healing for the strong, though slow heal, or Healing Hands for its duration (and ~10 second recharge), ideally, with all of the disruptive and shutdown skills on the foes, healing shouldn't be much of a problem.

Spirit Protector - This is a standard protection monk, albeit, not a boon prot. Spike heals should quickly become largely unnecessary with the heavy attacker hate, though ideally, with Protective Spirit and Shielding Hands to handle large and small packet damage spikes, it shoudn't be a huge issue.

Spirit Support - This monk doesn't bring much healing to the table, but they do have the obligatory spike heal, and they fill in the gaps the other monks left. Thanks to the spirits and SQ, Aegis can be kept up permanently. The elite of choice is open to a variety of good options, offering immunity to spells on a single target (Spell Breaker is made perma as well), invulnerability to direct damage on a single target (Mark of Protection is made perma as well), or additional elite condition management.

===

Additional Comments-
The biggest vulnerability of this builds is most likely the dependence on a few conditions being met, ie, the spirits being up constantly. A few melee/bow hits and they die in most circumstances.
Additionally, though perma-Divine Spirit is a nice effect, there's no promise that it won't be removed, leaving a monk without energy management.

The ideal is that this build's debuffs will counter both of those effects, causing the enemies damage output to be too minimal to matter, allowing the rest of your team to focus on spreading mass degeneration, along with reducing their healing effectiveness sharply as well.

It's a bit of a gimmick build, but I just wanted to find a way to make use of those annoying 25 cost spells that ideally could be useful, but without the elite energy management, actually running them seems like a far off dream.
Panic was the initial block of the build, inspiring the degeneration theme, cutting the effectiveness of foe's skills down. Quickening Zepyhr counters the negative effects of Energizing Wind, while synergizing well with the shutdown aspect, and the rest cenetered around those 2 skills.

Even if it's not practical, or optimal, I hope people enjoy the concept anyway. I can't run it. I can't even play in the RA anymore, I err=7 that much lately x_X

Suggestions for improvement, other than pointing out the obvious fallibility of spirits is welcome. Spirits are annoyingly weak and easily killable, I've said it a handful of times in there. You can work to reduce that factor, but you can't eliminate it entirely. The question is whether or not in practice, with the debuffs and good positioning, they can live.

Edit: As an afterthought, I just felt I should add- I'm perfectly aware that spirits can neither be enchanted nor healed. The spirit X monk name theme was based off of Divine Spirit, not the ritual spirits. No need to offer that tidbit of information.

The Real Roy Keane · Mar 13, 2006, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Nice in theory...but how does it fare in practice?

kai_yasha · Mar 13, 2006, 04:16 AM // 04:16

i would like to try this build, sounds fun, but would be tricky to use.

PM Zabers Fury, if you need some1 to help try it ^^ Rank 8.

audioaxes · Mar 13, 2006, 04:29 AM // 04:29

how do you actually kill stuff though?

Mercury Angel · Mar 13, 2006, 04:40 AM // 04:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Real Roy Keane

Nice in theory...but how does it fare in practice?

Wouldn't know, it's purely a concept build, and since one of the recent patches, I've been d/cing very frequently. Not sure if it's my internet connection or what, but I haven't been able to do anything but test individual parts to see how effectively a player can manage their energy and perform under limited control aspects. Not very good testing.
I just figured I might as well write it out and get some feedback on ways to improve it as long as I can't actually play it x_x

Quote:

Originally Posted by audioaxes

how do you actually kill stuff though?

Theoretically, spreading max degen (Conjure Phantasm, Migraine, Life Siphon, Faintheartedness, Parastic Bond, Apply Poison, possibly Suffering+Phantom) among 8 people and preventing them from effectively healing. Panic removes the effectiveness of Healing Signet, while Lingering Curse and Migraine/Arcane Conundrum cut down spell-based healing significantly. With enchantment removal, only a few effects will really work for healing away the degeneration well.
Stacked with a bit of energy denial, and boosted costs from QZ, it should be difficult to recover.

I do have concerns for the lack of direct damage. Short of wanding people to death, there's not much the team can do. I'll probably go through it again and try to fit some in to remove the complete reliance on degen and wanding. (Joking Note: Though those hits of 3-9's on wars and 10-20's on caster armor sure do add up! XD)

Vermilion Okeanos · Mar 13, 2006, 09:13 PM // 21:13

I almost choked on my food when I see "wither", for a sec I thought you were trying to use that necro elite.

Anyway.

If your purpose for signet of humility is to stop monk, then drop it, it doesn't work nearly as good as it seem (good luck catching them using MoR or OoB). For other purpose, considerable.

I suggest you a rend enchantment -> backfire combo, this way you can have all the time you need to slap every hex on them. If backfire isn't around, after monks get rend then hexed, they would quickly cast guardian/RoF/etc and CoP it almost immediately.

Migraine interrupt mesemer sux pretty bad against good players, just a warning (acceptable build most of the time). If someone use it on me, I would simply target the mes and cast-cancel rinse and repeat; all 3 interrupt wasted in 2-3 sec. Chance of you catching prot monk casting without longer casting time, quite slim. Chances of M. and AC. to stay long on monk without backfire, very slim.

I prefer cry of furstration over other interrupt, since this is HA, there are chances that blood/obsidian spike will come out somewhere.

Your biggest weakness would be people who try to finish things fast while not clustering together.

You going to need ALOT more degen/dmg to kill anyone. Unless you are prepared to be able to stop every warrior from using healing signet/IWAY and every ranger's troll ungent and every necro's health steal.

JR · Mar 13, 2006, 09:44 PM // 21:44

I was so glad when I saw you weren't using Wither at all.

tafy69 · Mar 14, 2006, 08:33 AM // 08:33

I have ran a panic+QZ build a lot few months ago and they work very nicely.

I would strongly recomend a warrior for damage tho

Something like this would be good

Ranger Spirit Spammer
Panic Mesmer
Surger
Curse Necro
Warrior
3 Monks

Glad to not see wither but disapointed when no warrior