Curse

Moskel · Mar 06, 2006, 10:17 PM // 22:17

Ether Mesmer - Elementalist/Mesmer

Energy Storage: 14 (10+4)
Inspiration Magic: 11
Illusion Magic: 10

Conjure Phantasm (Illusion Magic)
Phantom Pain (Illusion Magic)
Arcane Conundrum (Illusion Magic)
Soothing Images (Illusion Magic)
Inspired Hex (Illusion Magic)
Ether Prodigy [Elite] (Energy Storage)
Mantra of Persistence (Inspiration Magic)
Resurrection Signet ()

Ether Necromancer - Elementalist/Necromancer

Energy Storage: 12 (8+4)
Curses: 10
Blood Magic: 12

Malaise (Curses)
Life Siphon (Blood Magic)
Shadow of Fear (Curses)
Faintheartedness (Curses)
Rend Enchantments (Curses)
Ether Prodigy [Elite] (Energy Storage)
Suffering (Curses)
Resurrection Signet ()

Dominate That - Mesmer/Necromancer

Fast Casting: 9 (8+1)
Domination Magic: 15 (11+4)
Inspiration Magic: 9 (8+1)
Blood Magic: 9

Diversion (Domination Magic)
Shame (Domination Magic)
Panic [Elite] (Domination Magic)
Shatter Enchantment (Domination Magic)
Power Leak (Domination Magic)
Power Drain (Inspiration Magic)
Blood Ritual (Blood Magic)
Resurrection Signet ()

Make Them Pay - Mesmer/Monk

Fast Casting: 9 (8+1)
Domination Magic: 14 (10+4)
Inspiration Magic: 9 (8+1)
Smiting Prayers: 10

Energy Surge [Elite] (Domination Magic)
Energy Burn (Domination Magic)
Power Leak (Domination Magic)
Drain Enchantment (Inspiration Magic)
Scourge Healing (Smiting Prayers)
Backfire (Domination Magic)
Remove Hex (Monk other)
Resurrect (Monk other)

Ranger Whee - Ranger/Warrior

Expertise: 14 (12+2)
Wilderness Survival: 9 (8+1)
Marksmanship: 11 (10+1)

Punishing Shot [Elite] (Marksmanship)
Savage Shot (Marksmanship)
Distracting Shot (Expertise)
Debilitating Shot (Ranger other)
Apply Poison (Wilderness Survival)
Flurry (Warrior other)
Favorable Winds (Marksmanship)
Resurrection Signet ()

Ether Elementalist - Elementalist/Monk

Energy Storage: 10 (9+1)
Water Magic: 13 (9+4)
Healing Prayers: 10
Smiting Prayers: 8

Deep Freeze (Water Magic)
Ice Spikes (Water Magic)
Armor of Mist (Water Magic)
Scourge Sacrifice (Smiting Prayers)
Ether Prodigy [Elite] (Energy Storage)
Heal Party (Healing Prayers)
Convert Hexes (Protection Prayers)
Resurrection Signet ()

Pure Protector - Monk/Mesmer

Divine Favor: 9 (8+1)
Protection Prayers: 16 (12+4)
Inspiration Magic: 10

Reversal of Fortune (Protection Prayers)
Guardian (Protection Prayers)
Restore Condition [Elite] (Protection Prayers)
Shielding Hands (Protection Prayers)
Protective Spirit (Protection Prayers)
Inspired Hex (Inspiration Magic)
Drain Enchantment (Inspiration Magic)
Contemplation of Purity (Divine Favor)

Pure Healer - Monk/Mesmer

Divine Favor: 9 (8+1)
Healing Prayers: 16 (12+4)
Inspiration Magic: 10

Word of Healing [Elite] (Healing Prayers)
Heal Other (Healing Prayers)
Healing Touch (Healing Prayers)
Healing Breeze (Healing Prayers)
Vigorous Spirit (Healing Prayers)
Inspired Hex (Inspiration Magic)
Drain Enchantment (Inspiration Magic)
Contemplation of Purity (Divine Favor)

So the theory here is pretty simple, spread more hexes than the enemy can remove. Figure out quickly what their offense hinges on and assign the appropriate shutdown to disable it long enough that your degen will kill them.

The monks are theoretical buids, not battle tested together in the build at this point. We were running 2 Mo/N "typical boon prots" in this before the update along with a Gale Hammer Warrior. Its changed up a bit now with the skill update.

For where the hexes go, spread the Malaise/Life Siphon on physical targets because they can't really focus swap to end the Malaise very well. Load up on tons of the fast/cheap degen based early to start overloading their hex removal and get their healers cranking.

Try and steal Migrane {E} as much as possible with the Inspired Hex on Ether Mesmer, if you can get that its usually GG for the other team -- make sure whoever on your team gets it calls it and says how many layers its covered with, you should be able to coordinate and remove it.

The build sucks pretty bad at running flags so hopefully you don't have to too much. It can actually split 'ok'. Each of the squads can overwhelm half of another team with hexes, figure out how to split to suit your situation. The "flag runner" is the E/Mo, use Armor of Mist for speed boost.

Foppe · Mar 07, 2006, 08:07 AM // 08:07

You know, what I like about warriors is their ability to finish things off. Uve got some nice degen, now I miss some hard dmg.

Patrograd · Mar 07, 2006, 10:29 AM // 10:29

Attrition builds really need a finish, a mini spike of 250-300 to kill off weak targets, otherwise you're going to run into alot of frustration chasing some guy with 100 health around the map. Trust me, I've been there :-)

I also think that relying purely on hexes, or purely on conditions is weak. You end up putting in hexes or conditions that dont actually do anything useful just for the sake of it. While hexes are beyond doubt harder for the other team to deal with than conditions, they also typically cost alot more energy for the same sort of degen and are much harder to spam around. Conditions, while being typically easier to remove are much easier to apply and stack

The strongest attrition builds IMO mix hexes and conditions. This type of build should, in my opinion, be looking to apply what might be called "redundant" degen, degen which is greater than the cap of -10, onto as many targets as possible for as much of the time as possible. In an ideal world, a convert onto the target doesnt take away too much degen, and neither does draw/martyr, that even after the casting of these skills the enemy are still suffering. This is perhaps the Holy Grail of the degen build designer, to do this, have a finishing spike, and have a reasonable defence, all in 64 skills. Easier said than done, thats for sure

Moskel · Mar 07, 2006, 01:10 PM // 13:10

You can swap the Ranger for a Warrior -- there is your finish if you can keep him clean but there is a lot of Warrior hate going around these days. You could swap one of the Domination Mesmers for a Melandru's Arrows {E} Ranger with Dual and Savage -- there is your finish with the 2 Rangers together and Poison + Bleeding now. I don't think either of those changes are making the build better though -- different: yes, better: no.

The reason I specifically didn't commit much energy to conditions at all is we're going to see a lot more Restore Conditions {E} now with the changes to the Monk "energy management" elites. If you run conditions you just fuel their healing engine (and in this case we've given up 1 skill slot on a non-elite if they don't have it and if they do have it [or Martyr] they've wasted an elite). There is not a comparable hex healing engine available (Heal Party is not a hex healing engine, its an invitation to death here).

This build actually has a mini-spike of 250-300 if it needs one, you don't need a Warrior to do that, everyone assumes you do. You have Shatter Enchantment, Surge/Burn, Punishing/Savage, Deep Freeze/Ice Spikes. If the targets 'run away with 100 health' then we keep pressing forward gaining territory -- if they give up the flag stand then they lose the match. As soon as you start getting DP and can't get any morale against a degen team its big trouble (bigger in most cases than even against spike because against spike Protective Spirit gets a lot stronger as you pickup DP, the only comparable regen enchantment is Healing Breeze and its not maintainable on as many targets).

I also don't see any hexes in the build that "don't actually do anything useful just for the sake of it". There are plenty of good hexes out there and each one in this build is going to be used heavily almost every match. The only two you may lay off of in some matches is Soothing Images and Panic {E} but in the ones they help it can be a huge difference maker. If the enemy has Warriors SI is huge, if they have overextending Warriors or a split squad that relies a lot on Healing Signet Panic is huge. If they have a Signet Mesmer (or even just Signet of Weariness and/or Purge Signet) or a Bonder (who would try to maintain 8 Holy Veil in a match like this) then he has to pay too.

Assuming the enemy team has a Restore Condition {E} Monk so we aren't using the poison the enemy will average around -7 degen across the entire team. You can actually stack well past -10 with this build....

Conjure Phantasm: -5h
Phantom Pain: -2h
Malaise: -2e
Life Siphon: -3h
Suffering: -2h
Panic: -2e
Total: -12h -4e
Total w/ Poison -16h -4e

Both of the replies speak about major changes or generalities and not how this build will be shut down in a match. This build spreads over 90 hexes per minute with an average duration of over 20s per hex (and that is just between the Ether Mesmer and Ether Necromancer). Typically teams have the ability to remove around 16-30 hexes per minute...

[Numbers here rounded to just 60s/recharge not counting casting times]
2x Inspired Hex: 6 hpm (hexes per minute)
2x Holy Veil: 10 hpm
1x Convert Hexes (assume it gets a stack of 3): 9 hpm
1x Purge Signet (assume it gets a stack of 3): 6 hpm
Total: 31 hpm removal which means 60+ hexes are going to run their full duration.

LightningHell · Mar 07, 2006, 01:47 PM // 13:47

Panic is -2e. Other than that, I can't see anything wrong, actually.

Cold · Mar 07, 2006, 01:49 PM // 13:49

Nature Renewal ftw

Patrograd · Mar 07, 2006, 02:53 PM // 14:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskel

I also don't see any hexes in the build that "don't actually do anything useful just for the sake of it". .

My apologies, i didnt mean to infer that was the case in your build, just a more general comment on hex only builds that I have seen and been in. In general terms my experience has been that teams heal party happily over hexes (there seem to be alot of teams running two heal parites currently), and alot of monks these days are carrying COP, certainly the boon prots are. My guess is that as hex based degen becomes more popular monks will start to use dwaynas kiss again too.

Dont get me wrong, hex based builds are nasty, I was just stating my personal preference for builds that mix the hexes and conditions. Tbh, even when running pure conditions based builds in the past I found that restore conditions didnt do much to stop things, as long as you sat tight on the other monk(s). The biggest issue I have always found when running similar builds is how to cope with heal party spamming, although this is perhaps less of an issue post-patch than it was before as the skill is now pretty easy to interrupt and you have it covered with the scourge anyway

wheel · Mar 07, 2006, 03:52 PM // 15:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskel

[Numbers here rounded to just 60s/recharge not counting casting times]
2x Inspired Hex: 6 hpm (hexes per minute)
2x Holy Veil: 10 hpm
1x Convert Hexes (assume it gets a stack of 3): 9 hpm
1x Purge Signet (assume it gets a stack of 3): 6 hpm
Total: 31 hpm removal which means 60+ hexes are going to run their full duration.

You really do need to include the casting time in calculating the raw hex removal per minute. It's inaccurate, otherwise. Also, if you're trying to show that your hexes will overwhelm their removal, showing the recycle instead of the recharge will only help your case.

Moskel · Mar 07, 2006, 04:08 PM // 16:08

Yeah, lets look at Holy Veil as example in detail for a removal skill.

Holy Veil // 5e 1s 12r

So assuming you have infinite energy and you're just standing casting this on a fixed hex target trying to remove them....

0-1: Casting first HV
1-13: HV recharges
13-14: Casting second HV
14-28: HV recharges
28-29: Casting second HV
29-41: HV recharges
41-42: Casting third HV
42-54: HV recharges
54-55: Casting fourth HV
55-60: HV partially recharges effectively removing 4.61hpm not 5.

So yeah the hex removal is less effective than I stated by a fractional hpm for each of the removals.

With the regarding to Mo/x running Contemplation of Purity, if thats the case the hex spreaders will just not hex them as CoP can become a very efficient method of removal -- Surge/Burn one one of them and Debilitating Shot/Punishing/Savage on the other and who cares if they don't have hexes, their life will be miserable enough and they won't be able to help the rest of their team with removals or healing too well.

Nature's Renwal is a double edged sword against this build, sure you're going to slow down the hexing some but many of them are 1s casts as it stands. You're also doubling up the casting times of your Holy Veils leaving the door open for the Dom Mesmers and Ranger to pound them. Also you can't really have boon prots on your team anymore because now they're paying 2e pips to maintain that boon (note that the monks in the build above aren't boon based specifically to be resiliant in NR situations, I expect to see people trying that and having a miserable time). If your team has NR and many interrupts that case the Ranger whips out a long bow and drops the spirit -- Rangers are great spirit killers because of how physical damage exponentially grows with level gaps and they can reach very far without having to extend too much.

Honestly the best way to shut this build down is a couple of Signet Mesmers (which is why the Panic is so critical) using Humility and Weariness to shut down the Ether Prodigy and energy on the 2 hex machines. If they don't have energy the hexes stop flowing -- if the hexes aren't flowing you don't have to worry about removal. This is why we have a few shutdown characters in the build because we have to absolutely be able to stop the enemy shutdown so our hex machines can keep pumping them out.

wheel · Mar 07, 2006, 04:28 PM // 16:28

Scourge sacrifice doesn't seem all that useful. Mo/N monks are pretty much done for in terms of efficiency or ease of use, so you'll be seeing a lot less OoB. Another copy of Scourge Healing would be nice.

Also, one thing you could consider is bringing Energizing Wind. Both Deep Freeze and Panic receive a huge buff through it, as well as the fact that their hex removal is slowed down that much more.

You would just then have to focus on shutting down Heal Party in a big way.

glountz · Mar 07, 2006, 05:03 PM // 17:03

With all these hexes, with some of them AoE, why don't you use Feast of Corruption?
It doesn't work or isn't worth it?

wheel · Mar 07, 2006, 05:16 PM // 17:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

With all these hexes, with some of them AoE, why don't you use Feast of Corruption?
It doesn't work or isn't worth it?

It's kind of hard to fit in due to only having one curses guy who already has his elite taken by Ether Prodigy. Overall, it's not worth it anyway. There are better skills to serve the same purpose.

mortalis doleo · Mar 07, 2006, 05:35 PM // 17:35

only one of your characters have condition removal - diversion / sig of humility or other spells may cause your team to be severely damaged by conditions.
also, is one healer and one heal party spammer enough to heal an entire team?
also, you have low spike protection (only one monk that is able to do anything about spikes), and your monks may run low on energy, although that is debatable.

overall the build is good, but i dont think the monks will be able to handle any kind of pressure and most spikes (spike teams often carry a way to shut down a monk, like gale or blackout. if that is used on your prot, the spike is sure to work).

glountz · Mar 07, 2006, 05:35 PM // 17:35

I understand the point with Ether prodigy.
EDIT: Forget what I said in my deleted post. FoC is crap.

Symbol · Mar 07, 2006, 05:41 PM // 17:41

FoC doesn't scale with additional hexes. If it did it'd be a totally awesome skill.. As it is it's kinda lame.

Epinephrine · Mar 07, 2006, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

FoC doesn't scale with additional hexes. If it did it'd be a totally awesome skill.. As it is it's kinda lame.

FoC is not lame. It's an area damage spell, at a range, ignoring armour and capable of hitting 140 or so damage. FoC spike is nasty. 4* FoC = dead unless you have reductions or protections up. FoC spiking however is too slow to be a powerhouse in the game - it isn't "lame" though, just not absurdly overpowered.

mortalis doleo · Mar 07, 2006, 08:39 PM // 20:39

FoC spike is really fun when played with a water ele, three monks and four N/Me (5 N/Me also works...).
when arcane echoed, and combined with desecrate, FoC spike has a pretty good spiking capability. also, if used right, it can take down a team in less than a minute (but it's very conditional).

problem is, you rarely see these is HA

Moskel · Mar 07, 2006, 11:08 PM // 23:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

Scourge sacrifice doesn't seem all that useful. Mo/N monks are pretty much done for in terms of efficiency or ease of use, so you'll be seeing a lot less OoB. Another copy of Scourge Healing would be nice.

Also, one thing you could consider is bringing Energizing Wind. Both Deep Freeze and Panic receive a huge buff through it, as well as the fact that their hex removal is slowed down that much more.

You would just then have to focus on shutting down Heal Party in a big way.

Yeah I debated on a second copy of Scourge Healing there on the E/Mo, it could be either really. For this post it was sitting at SS and not SH I like the idea of totally destroying Mo/N but as you said they're pretty much gone now so it may be one of those skills that doesn't get used much and should be changed to more Scourge Healing which will always have a home here.

The Energizing Wind idea is interesting since a lot of our stuff has a very fast recharge but what skill do we dump on the Ranger for it? Maybe give up on Fav. Winds?

Quote:

Originally Posted by mortalis doleo

only one of your characters have condition removal - diversion / sig of humility or other spells may cause your team to be severely damaged by conditions.
also, is one healer and one heal party spammer enough to heal an entire team?
also, you have low spike protection (only one monk that is able to do anything about spikes), and your monks may run low on energy, although that is debatable.

overall the build is good, but i dont think the monks will be able to handle any kind of pressure and most spikes (spike teams often carry a way to shut down a monk, like gale or blackout. if that is used on your prot, the spike is sure to work).

This build has so much spike protection its not even funny. Spike protection is not the job of the monks, that is why spike works so good against most Am regional teams -- they blame the monks for dying to spike. I could pontificate in detail about how various spike builds completely fall apart against this build but I'll just stick with a few of the common ones.

Ranger Spike: Ether Necromancer starts right away by loading all of the rangers up with Malaise + Life Siphon, their energy regen is now down to 1 and they can't focus swap to break it until the point they don't have enough energy left to spike (they don't have the option of running +15/-1 equipment while spiking). Make Them Cry then Surge/Burns one of them to ensure he's out of the first spike, Dominate That loads the other one up with Diversion so if he does get shots off he won't be getting more off after that. Ranger Whee fires a Distracting Shot at another Ranger while Dual Shot is charging up. Ether Mesmer if he can safely reach will be right in on the Orders guy loading up Arcane Conundrum, Phantom Pain and Conjure. By this point in time our monks can be played by 3 year old blind chimpanzees and we aren't dying.

Air/Obsidian Flame Spike: Similar to Ranger spike, the Malaise here though only serves to lower their maximum energy down to their -energy/max energy focus swapping difference. This will then set them up to be interrupted even through Mantra of Resolve, if they aren't E/Me with then GG, we assign the shutdown Mesmers and Ranger to 3 spikers and wait for the degen to win -- If they are E/Me with resolve they'll potentially get off a decent spike or two and maybe kill somebody before their energy situation is messed up bad enough or a enough skills are distracting shotted/diversioned to stop it.

Rainbow spike: See the two above, figure out who to assign where to shut down each person in the most effective way.

Warrior spike: Shadow of Fear + Faintheartedness = GG , your Word {E} monk better be able to walk over and use healing touch between hammer/axe swings. If they are timing a Convert Hexes just before the spike the Warrior may be able to cause some problems as long as its all adrenaline based (oh wait we have Sympathetic Visage so he can't get adrenaline and malaise so he can't use energy attacks).

Stopping spike is not the job of the monks, its the job of the rest of the team. If the rest of your team has no spike stopping skills or ways to help them out it's a crap shoot and no matter how good your infuse monk is he will fail from time to time and you'll take deaths. If you actually stop their spike from working then you don't have to play the dice, you can just roll over their team. Stop blaming your monks, start finding ways in your builds to counter the spike things you're likely to run into.

I actually prefer to play spike teams with this build since once their spike is shutdown they generally just stand around and die because they don't know how to tactically handle situations where they aren't killing you putting pressure on via the spike. Most spike builds are also horrible at splitting and applying any sort of DPS to overwhelm a 2 monk backline.

The builds that really scare me with the above build is a very well played iQ style build because its hard to contain 3 warriors with the amount of warrior hate hexes we have -- one of them will be "free" in a lot of cases and causing problems for our backline. Our backline is also somewhat weak in the hex removal department so if our shutdown guys don't do a good job of keeping their hexers offline we'll start to have issues pretty quick.

Regarding the monks running out of energy, thats what the Blood Ritual is for, hopefully by the time they are low we can spare one of our shutdown characters to help keep them pumping out healing.

chiefnoshow · Mar 08, 2006, 08:42 AM // 08:42

my god, such long posts here. we ran a build very similar to this many times and it worked well. lots of pressure and the other teams freaked out. our problem was killing people. you need direct damage dealers. on lower ranked teams it was no contest. but when we ran into guilds that actually had good monks, we got owned by CoP......and i mean owned. it was a damn long battle though. if you can diversion CoP you have a good chance, but that's situational and theoretical.

we also had a problem with split builds - not enough hexes to make one monk really worry too much.

again all of your tactics for the spike teams are situational. don't get me wrong, they are all probable, but that's assuming that all the skills you need to use aren't recharging/diversion-ed. a good ranger spike can kill a target before you get a chance to shut them down. and frankly, malaise is crap when cast on ele's. its too much mana/too easily removed.

you can never say, "they may get of a decent spike or two before we have them." if an enemy team gets of 2 decent spikes, you don't rez and kill them, you run back to npc's. and at that point they have advantage.

it can still work. yes, hex removal is weak atm. still, when we tried this we actually brought one eviscerate warrior and he couldn't finish off the targets himself. i must say though, we ran into a heavy hex build yesterday in gvg, and we got owned. part of the problem was that we don't do that particular hall often and some members on our team were beginning to fight before the match(monks, oh god). but our main problem w/ gaining advantage was simply attacking the right target. we worked too much on monks. if we'd have taken a hexer then it would have been easy.

EDIT:

oh and one prot one heal? you have alot of soft targets....more advantage to spike.