Curse

Frost · Nov 11, 2005, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Many people have said that since AOE is nerf, nukers are useless..
I've tried air spiker n Water deep freeze nuke with essense bond on tank for SF. [E/Mo].
In my opinion, fire nuker is still the better even though it is tougher in Grenth footprint, once kegger grab a keg , things still go fine and fast.

I haven't tried earth yet, any elementalist out there who tried all those builds think likewise?
By the way my new build of ele is as follows E/mo

Fireball/Flare
Incendiary Bonds/Rodgort Invocation (lower recharge and does burns)
Meteor shower
Maelstrom (still useful vs monk boss in SF)
Mark of rodgort
Fire attunement
Essense bond (on kegger for energy)
Glyph of renewal

Using mark of rodgort and spamming fireball/flare does faster dmg with less mana than air spike, since both deal with single creature.

Ghastly · Nov 11, 2005, 09:10 PM // 21:10

As a Stance tank or Monk, my preference will be to go with Eles who don't use AOE spells. The use of AOE doesn't only do less damage as the guys run outside of the effect, it also causes the tank to be hit less, thereby limiting the effectiveness of Essence Bond and other spells, like my personal favorite, Shield of Judgement.

pagansaint · Nov 12, 2005, 10:14 AM // 10:14

They run from sustained AoE not burst AoE. So Fireball, Phoenix and such work well, and most PBAoE work well.

job4125 · Nov 15, 2005, 03:38 PM // 15:38

I play an earth elementalist to great success. The only problem are Taskmasters who will shatter your enchantments. I am trying to capture Obsidian Flesh to cope with them. I like earth because you can protect yourself and others while still dealing decent damage.

Volarian · Nov 15, 2005, 06:01 PM // 18:01

Bring 2 Necros - 1 Curses/Blood, the other Minions/Blood:

Curses: Spiteful, Enfeebling Blood + whatever you want, key is that he/she also brings Blood of the Master * Veratas to assist in keeping minions up.
Minions - Veratas, Blood o Master, Lifesiphon, Both high lvl raise spells, Spiteful (att lvl 6), Blood Rit

The Necros keep each others energy up as well as monks, both using Spiteful on diff targets and keeing the minions alive.........easy trip....don't need Ele's (sorry not trying to make ele's less useful in this area....I play one as well)

Cam_Payton · Nov 15, 2005, 06:11 PM // 18:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Volarian

Bring 2 Necros - 1 Curses/Blood, the other Minions/Blood:

Curses: Spiteful, Enfeebling Blood + whatever you want, key is that he/she also brings Blood of the Master * Veratas to assist in keeping minions up.
Minions - Veratas, Blood o Master, Lifesiphon, Both high lvl raise spells, Spiteful (att lvl 6), Blood Rit

The Necros keep each others energy up as well as monks, both using Spiteful on diff targets and keeing the minions alive.........easy trip....don't need Ele's (sorry not trying to make ele's less useful in this area....I play one as well)

I've monked for both the standard team and the 2 necro build last night, and found both just as effective. Ele's just need to leave firestorm at home, everything else works fine. I dunno if I'd be up to monk for minion masters much, the groups I was in expected me to heal the minions frequently, so annoying.

Enix · Nov 15, 2005, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Playing with my minion master, it is nice when monks heal the little critters, but i dont expect it. I think it depends on who you play with, not what their char happens to be. :P

2_fingers · Nov 21, 2005, 01:15 PM // 13:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cam_Payton

I've monked for both the standard team and the 2 necro build last night, and found both just as effective. Ele's just need to leave firestorm at home, everything else works fine. I dunno if I'd be up to monk for minion masters much, the groups I was in expected me to heal the minions frequently, so annoying.

Well look at it this way, either u heal the minions, and we have a much faster run, or u dun heal and we take around 15 min longer.

Cam_Payton · Nov 21, 2005, 01:22 PM // 13:22

or I could just find an ele group, and gg.

XvArchonvX · Nov 21, 2005, 02:03 PM // 14:03

Fire nukers still work fine, especially in conjunction with a good minion master. Being able to chain together 4 meteor storms has become a good skill set to bring as you can keep knocking down foes before they can run away. I have found that minion masters with bone fiends can dish out a good majority of dmg to groups well, but ele are still very necessary when it comes to bosses. If the MM is low on or has no corpses, then the ele is your only chance at killing a boss faster than he can heal.

Speaking of bosses, when there is just a boss left and all the surrounding enemies are dead, a good tactic for a nuker is to get the group to get close to the boss and box him in. This allows the nuker to nuke away without fear of the boss fleeing (also works well for getting the double dmg with phoenix when you are standing close if you use that skill.)

Admittedly, I have never farmed with an ele in SF, and have only farmed there with my necro since the update, but I have done so succesfully with a fire ele on many occaision and know that fire is still a viable option for SF farming.

Makkert · Nov 21, 2005, 02:05 PM // 14:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2_fingers

Well look at it this way, either u heal the minions, and we have a much faster run, or u dun heal and we take around 15 min longer.

well look at it this way: a good master takes care of its minions, eh?

XvArchonvX · Nov 21, 2005, 02:08 PM // 14:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2_fingers

Well look at it this way, either u heal the minions, and we have a much faster run, or u dun heal and we take around 15 min longer.

As a MM myself, I don't find that healing minions slows down the group much if at all. Usually it is I waiting on the monks or ele to regen energy. However I also find it really unnecessary for monks to help heal my minions. With death magic at 16 and the use of Verata's Sacrifice and Blood of the Master, my minions will stand strong as long as the monk can heal me after I sacrifice health. Also the 2 man MM team is a a big waste, unless you just want to have two MM with you. A MM and a battery would be a much more efficient use of the extra necro, but even then is still unecesary if you have a good nuker and tank to get the corpses rolling.

Elsydian · Nov 21, 2005, 06:09 PM // 18:09

Not too sure about burst AoE being safe, I've had enemies run from me after an inferno, before I can follow up with flame burst.

Shaun · Nov 21, 2005, 06:30 PM // 18:30

Like the earth eles or air spikers myself. Earth can keep up wards and use stuff such as crystal wave,eruption,aftershock. And with air they can do lots of quick spike dmg killing them off quickly.

2_fingers · Nov 22, 2005, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makkert

well look at it this way: a good master takes care of its minions, eh?

yes, but there's a limit to how much u can keep alive. Verretta sac, and Blood of the master only go so much. A necro with heal area works too but at times we cannot sustain the energy requirements for all 4 spelss to go constantly - i.e. multiple corpses. If a monk helps out while there is no battle going on - that is there's no one to heal, a short burst of 10 energy isnt exactly so difficult considering that you most likely bonded the warrior and have energy when it matters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elsydian

Not too sure about burst AoE being safe, I've had enemies run from me after an inferno, before I can follow up with flame burst.

If u use 2 rapid burst in close succession, they disperse. If u wait say 1sec or 2 before releasing the second one, they do not disperse.

saphir · Nov 22, 2005, 02:40 AM // 02:40

i have no problem keeping my minions up w/ lvl 16-17 sacrifices:
blood of master (120-122) + verata's sacrifice (regen) + 120hp heal area

i think it's ridiculous to expect a monk to heal one's minions. it's nice, but it shouldn't be expected. monks can't fight the degen in the end anyway, the only skill that would be effective for a monk to bring would be heal area for the minions.

the only issue i've found that makes it tougher to heal the minions is when i have 16+ undead, as then my heal skills can't reach the ones in the tail end. then what i do is, move, they all group in behind me, i hit "x" to spin around so they try to cross paths thru me to get to where they are "supposed" to be behind me again, then use heal area or blood when they're all tightly packed around you trying to rearrange themselves. do that once or twice and your entire army will be good to go.

when you have about 20 minions it doesn't really matter if 1 or 2 die, i use the +10 energy per off of death to cast heals for he rest my army. a noble sacrifice from my pet indeed.

also heal area heals keeps me up after i sacrifice health. i also pack taste of death for when i'm being spiked in battle or if things go bad.

chippxero · Nov 22, 2005, 03:04 AM // 03:04

SF requires

1 warrior (Takes the beats and does some damage)
2 monks (Healing and protection)
1 fire nuker. (Does huge damage)

We only take eles that are fire, the AoE change didn' really effect it to much as the warrior has them agrro'd and AoE's are really just used on bosses, with all 4 players holding him in place for max effect.

XvArchonvX · Nov 22, 2005, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2_fingers

yes, but there's a limit to how much u can keep alive. Verretta sac, and Blood of the master only go so much. A necro with heal area works too but at times we cannot sustain the energy requirements for all 4 spelss to go constantly - i.e. multiple corpses. If a monk helps out while there is no battle going on - that is there's no one to heal, a short burst of 10 energy isnt exactly so difficult considering that you most likely bonded the warrior and have energy when it matters.

With a good MM that has 16 att in death, sustaining minions is no problem. Yes some will die, but as long as you maintain a healthy sized group, this is of no convern. Of course if the MM is using animate bone minions, then you have something to worry about. Since they are lower lvls they die faster, and since they are melee based, it takes them longer to attack and if you have too many of em, some will just end up standing around when they can't fit in close enough to attack their enemy. Fiends are the obvious choice for any decent MM worth their mettle, heh

Sereng Amaranth · Nov 22, 2005, 06:19 PM // 18:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elsydian

Not too sure about burst AoE being safe, I've had enemies run from me after an inferno, before I can follow up with flame burst.

I've found that doing it in reverse order works better. Burst then Inferno. They still move away, but only after the ~200 dmg each.

And yes, once everyone in my team sees the AoE going off, we instinctively bum rush him to block exit.

Crispy boss.

Nessaja · Nov 23, 2005, 09:53 PM // 21:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by XvArchonvX

With a good MM that has 16 att in death, sustaining minions is no problem. Yes some will die, but as long as you maintain a healthy sized group, this is of no convern.

you can not keep up more then 30 minions without help from outside, I doubt the others are talking about low numbers here. instead about groups of minions that rip through any group of enemies in less then 10 seconds.

It's not a huge issue that you have 20 minions instead of 30, but it's not a huge issue that you deal 110 damage instead of 100 damage (with meteor shower, for instance) either. We're looking at maximum effectiveness here.

When you are doing your job as a MM no-one other then your minions are being damaged so your monk doesnt have anything to do to start with.