Curse

Incandecree · May 12, 2008, 06:20 PM // 18:20

I too do not like the status quo on team builds. I have experimented with running a Raven with 5 Ursans and 2 monks in FoW. It worked very well. One of the biggest damage sources is Mark of Pain. In a perfect group sure you are going to have the physical damage dealers on their butts all the time but in a PUG it is sub-optimal at times. One of those warriors with Hundred Blades hits an Ursan with Mark of Pain on him in the middle of the Ursanball and all of them are in for a serious hurt. Blind that same warrior and you have essentially nullified the threat while the Ursanball takes them down. Raven does not have the health or armor bonus that Ursan does but that is why the main attack is at range.

MisterB · May 13, 2008, 01:40 AM // 01:40

No need for Raven because of Mark of Pain from the Shadow Beasts. Ursans can just AoE KD everything so nothing ever hits them, hence it shouldn't trigger. Or the monks could, I don't know, remove Mark of Pain?

Incandecree · May 13, 2008, 03:15 AM // 03:15

I never thought of removing a hex. Wow a great idea. 2 monks with Cure Hex and oh say half of the Shadow Beasts all casting Mark of Pain and covering it with with SS. 2 Cure Hex's every 9 seconds and you may catch a couple hexes. You know that in an ideal world they will be on their collective butts all the time but PUGs are not the ideal world.

As I said I like to buck the status quo and try different things. Raven does become viable when the Ursanball gets the melee grouped up. You can hit them with 100 damage AoE and blind them. Seems a reasonable alternative but I wouldn't run all Ravens because of the knockdown from Ursans. One Raven in a group of Ursans is a good option.

kev read · May 13, 2008, 04:43 AM // 04:43

[skill]Divert Hexes[/skill]

Clunky, but it workes well...

Incandecree · May 13, 2008, 07:11 AM // 07:11

Funny that you should mention that. I have a N/Mo build built around Divert Hexes. If she is in the group she usually makes the monks bored. with 3 hexes on someone when I use Divert Hexes it is a 201 point heal.

I Can Cure Cancer · May 14, 2008, 11:09 PM // 23:09

Ursan has amazing damage while disabling the enemy at the same time with AoE knockdowns and weakness. It outclasses the other blessings and not to mention it's easier to use.

Miss Puddles · May 16, 2008, 05:37 PM // 17:37

i was doing a quad run in doa with my alliance, but had low rank in norn at the time.
i ran with raven blessing instead of ursan, and it worked fine. the block chance helped us take on bigger groups than usual, so it actually went faster than normal. the only thing i didn't like was that i didn't have an armor boost so i died a few times at the end in foundry.
would like to try volfen sometime though. mix it up a bit.

Arutima · May 17, 2008, 04:41 PM // 16:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by kev read

[skill]Divert Hexes[/skill]

Clunky, but it workes well...

unfortunatly, ub groups usually take two hb monks instead of one healing monk and one prot monk

Randvek · May 18, 2008, 06:19 AM // 06:19

Raven and Volfen aren't serious competitors with Ursan, but I could see maybe taking one in an Ursan team.

Raven is decent, but geared towards fighting against melee, which isn't particularly great. How often do you have trouble with melee groups, even without blessings? The block chance is miserable, even at r10, and the damage output is good, but not what we have come to be used to.

Volfen's inherent buffs are the weakest of the three, with only health regen. The skills are respectable damage, again way below Ursan, but respectable. The trick with Bloodlust is that it's pretty sweet, but one Volfen at high rank can keep it up near constantly with Agility, so I can't really fathom taking more than one wolf.