Curse

ginetti · May 30, 2005, 03:53 AM // 03:53

Ok, so mes/war is not as common, but how hardcore would this be:

A Mes/war or vica versa

Step 1: Cast Illusionary Weapon
Step 2: Enable Frenzy
Step 3: Hit something with a sword or axe faster than once per second (about .8 second attack speed) and watch the damage flitter and flutter away like it was a pinball game in reverse.

Thoughts?

Oh, and the bonus of a mes/warr doing this is, who the hell expects it?
hahahaha

Scavenger · May 30, 2005, 03:58 AM // 03:58

? um are you new to the game?
this is called the illusionary warrior build and its quite well known
dont forget your defensive stance for when IW wears off
also mes/war is the IW build so yea its hardcore and som groups expect it and do an instant enchant removal and bye bye IW... those are my thoughts i guess

Minwanabi · May 30, 2005, 04:56 AM // 04:56

Well, this build has existed for a long time, and it's really no longer effective. I mean, you might get a few kills in arena or what have you, but in organized PvP, there are far too many things that can make you useless. A spell interrupt, something like diversion, enchant removal, and you're spending up to 40s sitting on your ass. Not to mention you'll be engaging as a mesmer, which is a really soft target. For instance, in HoH, if you're attacking heros or monks on the dias, and an AoE or two goes off, you could be in trouble, since you have far less armor than, say, a warrior, the standard melee. My advice to you would be to play a mesmer as a backline support, or a warrior as a melee, IW is really nothing more than a parlor trick.

ginetti · May 30, 2005, 05:54 AM // 05:54

elite skill: Monkey Grip: Allows the wielding of 2 2-handed weapons, but you do a total of -10% damag for your off hand weapon, and -5% for your on hand.

Cost to maintain this is -1 energy regen, and costs 5 energy and 10 rage to cast.

What you think, this with illusionary weapon turns you into a killing machine yes?

pHobac · May 30, 2005, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by ginetti

elite skill: Monkey Grip: Allows the wielding of 2 2-handed weapons, but you do a total of -10% damag for your off hand weapon, and -5% for your on hand.

Cost to maintain this is -1 energy regen, and costs 5 energy and 10 rage to cast.

What you think, this with illusionary weapon turns you into a killing machine yes?

Well first of all, I cant find this skill anywhere, so, are you sure it is a real skill? And if I am wrong about that, which has been known to happen, Illusionary Weapon is an elite skill, and I know that you can't equip multiple elite skills.

ginetti · May 30, 2005, 06:35 AM // 06:35

oh its not a real skill, i made it up, i would like to see it as a real skill, though for good reason, that would likley never happen lol

Monkey Grip is from a DND off shoot called sword and Fist, an expansion set with new feats, or skills.

Lim-Dul · May 30, 2005, 03:32 PM // 15:32

Well - don't forget that you could take an Arcane Echo with you as a kind of backup for IW. Just in case someone dispels it or if it runs out. =)

Btw. The trick with the IW build is the following: you have to be a sneaky guy if you want to be effective - sure, you could get inerrupted, sure, you could get disenchanted BUT the key to success is pretending to be just a regular Mesmer, n00bish enough to stand in the front lines and lure some warriors who think they would have an easy job in killing you. Then you pull out your 7-10 n00b sword (or whatever you're using) and massacre them. :-P
The thing with IW is: nobody will be surprised more than once by this build - nevertheless the Mesmer is such a versatile class, that you can easily switch your IW build into a pure mesmer/interrupt build and surprise your enemies yet again (taking some warrior stances or at least sprint to run away is also fine). All it takes is the spending of some re-gainable attribute points.
That's my strategy - I even have two Armor Sets. ^^

P.S. As a IW I wouldn't use Frenzy - the double damage will kill you (especially since you already ARE a softer target) - use Flurry - its damage reduction doesn't affect IW (har, har).

Minwanabi · May 30, 2005, 03:49 PM // 15:49

Quote:

elite skill: Monkey Grip: Allows the wielding of 2 2-handed weapons, but you do a total of -10% damag for your off hand weapon, and -5% for your on hand.

Are you just... making up skills to try and justify your build? Besides, wtf is rage? That's from WoW, do you mean adrenaline?

Quote:

Then you pull out your 7-10 n00b sword (or whatever you're using) and massacre them.

You wouldn't massacre anyone. At 16 illusion, you'll be doing 42 damage every 1.33 seconds, I believe... the numbers may not be perfect, but they're close enough. While that's not a small amount of damage, you'll declare yourself a target too fast to actually kill anyone. If we have an IW user as an enemy, and, for instance, we're just holding the dias in HoH, we'll assign either a ranger, a hammer war, or a mesmer on him, and after his enchant is stripped, he will never cast IW again. Either through interrupts, or energy denial, or just another strip, that mesmer has become deadweight. Only against an absolutely terrible team will an IW build be an effective source of damage.

Lim-Dul · May 30, 2005, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Well - you know - we could debate this forever - I actually have been successful with an IW build in PvP and the point is that you never can predict every possible situation - a IW build is a everything-or-nothing build, but so are most good builds - everything can be countered and that's why GW is such a wonderful game.
One could even say that monks are completely useless as they are weak, natural targets and can get interrupted/power drained etc. easily.
I find such a discussion pointless - I just wanted to explain to ginetti the idea behind the IW build in detail as he seems to have not much knowledge of GW - I didn't want to say, that the IW build is a wonderful total pwn4ge char (no build is in GW).

P.S. GW is a team game - never heard of enchantment stacking? You cast IW and request your monk or whoever to cast some cheap mostly useless enchantments on you and if the opposing party hasn't got any "remove all enchantments" skill or sth. then they can shove their disenchants where the sun don't shine - just as good an argument as yours.

P.P.S. Read the text more carefully - you'll be using Frenzy or Flurry so your 1.33 second figure is pure nonsense.

P.P.P.S. With a score of 9 in Fast Casting IW takes a whole of 0.68 seconds to cast (and that's INCLUDING the aftercast - compare it with a 0.07 of e.g. the distracting shot) - I LOVE to see that interrupted effectively.

rii · May 30, 2005, 04:09 PM // 16:09

Any decent IW-eer should only ever fear rend, apart from that if he doesnt have simple bases covered like shatter enchantment, etc, hes asking for it and isnt worthy of wielding IW. Rend is the end all, and to be honest it screws anything based on enchantments. Which is a lot of things.

Lim-Dul · May 30, 2005, 04:18 PM // 16:18

Ah - I forgot to mention that the IW/Hundred Blades Combo is still possible with Arcane Mimicry - you just have to have a good team and we ARE speaking of good teams here, aren't we?

Elythor · May 30, 2005, 06:11 PM // 18:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by rii

Any decent IW-eer should only ever fear rend, apart from that if he doesnt have simple bases covered like shatter enchantment, etc, hes asking for it and isnt worthy of wielding IW. Rend is the end all, and to be honest it screws anything based on enchantments. Which is a lot of things.

Exactly...and every good team in Tombs now bring Rend, so IW is pretty useless now. It might still be good in arenas, but for Tombs its quite useless.

Nessaja · May 30, 2005, 07:08 PM // 19:08

use flurry instead of frenzy

Ñaz

Lim-Dul · May 30, 2005, 08:05 PM // 20:05

Unless you use a Spellbreaker on the IW. =)

rii · May 30, 2005, 08:24 PM // 20:24

There are usually better things to do with a rend than an iW, so unless youve all got rend, dont bother.
Lim Dul, i notice your me/w, so your obviously going to defend iW with your life. And tbh, there are loads of things you could do, but pouring all those resources into around 45dps sucks hard. If you want to pour into something, pour into fragility. Its actually worth it.

JYX · May 30, 2005, 08:30 PM // 20:30

I'm really curious as to what the rest of your skillbar is, apart from IW and flurry/frenzy.

rii · May 30, 2005, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Is that so you can tell him how far superior your iW is? You dont need to answer that
-.-

Lim-Dul · May 30, 2005, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Hehe. Yeah - in my spare time I AM an IW - but usually I just play the good'ol'interrupting/energy burning Mesmer. =) The IW is far too random for PvP - either you pull it off, or you're useless. Nevertheless I'm defending that build cause it isn't as if it sucked TOTALLY - if you combine it with the right supporting skills it will still rock the house - you just have to be careful.

@ Everous - why should I tell ya the secrets of my build? ^^ I don't need any help in refining it and given the fact that you might come across me in PvP I'd better not tell you my strategy. ^^ There are LOADS of different IW builds - just 3 in the guildwarsguru builds directory AFAIK.

As far as my chars are concerned I also have a lvl20 Monk/Elementalist and a lvl14 Warrior/Elementalist (besides the lvl20 Mesmer/Warrior) - I like going through things the PvE way and then jump into PvP @ lvl20 - thus I have also no problems with unlocking stuff. My 4th slot is occupied by my girlfriend's Elementalist/Necromancer, but she will probably disappear after my girlfriend gets her own copy of the game. ;-)

P.S. I've had my fun with the IW build in PvP and rarely lost - though I don't want to hide the fact that I lost probably more often than I would with another build. =) And you're right, rii - usually the opposing team finds better things to disenchant - it's true, that ~40dps aren't THE hit, but it makes for a HUGE difference if you don't get spotted - I mean - no warrior stands a chance against you provided you use e.g. a "mystically fueled" Distortion or sth. - and the more dmg you do, the more the opposing team's monk have to heal and the more they have to divert their attention off the more important things. =) The IW is just a "trick-build" - it's good for a surprise, but you won't win battles with it - maybe just BECAUSE of it (if you are getting my point).

JYX · May 30, 2005, 09:21 PM // 21:21

Not asking you to reveal the secrets of the build. Although I've gleaned enough from what you've said here to work out that your "secondary" is pretty much a pure IW user, with a fair portion of his skills dedicated to supporting this. Thats fair enough really.

I wouldn't count what I have as a "IW Build" as such. Simply because its not a build that is made up around Illusionary Weaponry, I have that skill because it fits in with what I want to do. Likewise I feel a pure IW build is too random, and my twitch skills are better employed in constant interrupting (once every 5 secs minimum).

About your other characters, I've just started a Monk/Elementalist also. It appears we're quite the mirror image...

rii · May 30, 2005, 09:35 PM // 21:35

Good. Hurry up and level him you incompetent.
In fact, we could glean from this thread not the fact that IW is useless, its just dont friggin base your whole build around one move.. although i could be said to bo one to talk -.-, minie is justifiiable

. iW isnt, its too easy to counter.