Another untested concept -- 255 HP Burning Stoneguard

Due to computer issues, I haven't actually PLAYED much recently, so this is untested too. But it's an interesting idea.

E/Mo

Armor -- your fire hat with the sup rune, otherwise collector's armor with sup Earth and sup Energy Storage, for 255 HP total.

Earth -- 13
Fire -- 16 or close
Prot and Energy Storage -- the rest, divide up as suits

Weapon -- one of the usual-suspect enchantment extenders, such as Galigord's Staff or Rago's Flame Staff or even Kephket's.

Skills

Stoneflesh Aura
Protective Spirit

These two are the Stoneguard combo, providing perfect invulnerability against ordinary damage.

Elemental Attunement (E)
Fire Attunement
Immolate or Mark of Rodgort
Glowing Gaze

These four taken together provide tremendous energy management. Note that Mark of Rodgort triggers burning and hence energy gain upon being hit by Glowing Gaze. Note also that Immolate, MoR, and GG all have the same recharge time, so HSR caster items may be less useful than is normally the case.

This leaves two slots for damage or utility. Damage would be Sliver Armor and/or fire damage spells (note that MoR becomes more attractive if you're also dealing out fire damage). As for defense:

Aura of Restoration provides health gain if anything goes wrong -- degen, life stealing, mild enchantment stripping, KD, disruption. It's also a cover in the case of stripping.

Ward of Stability can provide heavy knockdown mitigation

I see no solution to more serious enchantment stripping, or to heavy interruption (Glyph of Concentration is unlikely to be enough, and Mantra of Resolve isn't available).


Now what could get REALLY interesting would be doing this in a team of two, presumably with Sousuke/Zhed. If you do the numbers on energy flow, it turns out that one character can cast enough Protective Spirits to protect two. If you do that, the other one can do MoR for both. (Since I don't trust the AI to use MoR properly, his job is PS.) That frees up some skillbar slots for more damage or wards. And while the AI will have a tight energy situation as well as being rather busy casting other stuff, Fireball or Liquid Flame would only cost him 1 net energy each.

The human doesn't even have to go Ele/Mo, actually. So in an area with annoying interruption, he can go Ele/Me with Mantra of Resolve and try to tank. Although I imagine the success of that tactic would be restricted by the need of the Ele/Mo to attack for energy-gain reasons. Another option is to have the human be the interrupter, if that's needed.

I should perhaps add that if you're not going to use Sliver Armor, you might want to take HP even lower, in which case Earth Magic can come down too.

I haven't thought through whether it would ever make sense to max out Earth instead of Fire.

Seems like waste, kinetic armor + stoneflesh is easier to maintain and pretty much assures that you'll take 0 damage from everything.

Roughly 80 extra armor = 75% damage reduction at worst. Stoneflesh makes all attacks 33 damage and under do 0 damage. 33 *4 = original amount of damage dealt = 132. Therefore, all attacks 132 damage and under deal 0 damage. There aren't too many things that regularly his quite that hard. The actual amount would be even higher than that, considering that kinetic actually gives +84 AL, and an ele's armor is usually 70.

Unless the damage is both armor-ignoring and greater than 33 while not being a critical hit.

OK, you have a point. We're talking about some pretty specific enemy skills* or enemies here.

And a lot of those enemies have enchantment-stripping friends.

*Backfire, Rend Enchantments, smiting, etc.

I was playing around last night with Prot Spirit and Stoneflesh Aura with 300ish HP and 29 reduction from Stoneflesh.. I was taking 1 damage and they weren't running at all and about 10 seconds into the Stoneflesh it stopped working, even though it was still on me.


Dunno what was happening, did you test this?

Quote: Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

Quote: Originally Posted by Captain Arne Is PRO

Quote: Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Quote: Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Quote: Originally Posted by Captain Arne Is PRO I was playing around last night with Prot Spirit and Stoneflesh Aura with 300ish HP and 29 reduction from Stoneflesh.. I was taking 1 damage and they weren't running at all and about 10 seconds into the Stoneflesh it stopped working, even though it was still on me.


Dunno what was happening, did you test this? What part of the post title didn't you understand?

Seriously, yours is not the first report of a problematic test combining Stoneflesh Aura and Protective Spirit. See http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10077272 from post #15 onward. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...t=st oneguard has a more positive report, but that's with Protective Bond.

I really don't see a need to deviate from just using armors as your defense... Mark of Rodgort + a fiery sword would be nice though... Would also help (b/c of the sword) to make sure that things didn't use any annoying anti-caster skills on you (which they tend to use more often if you're holding a ritualist pot, wand, staff etc).

Anyway, GL with the build, I might roll an elementalist to finally try this out... (I tried stoneflesh aura on a r/e of all things...and it almost worked).

Quote: Originally Posted by Bloodied Blade

Yes it has been tested. Best example is the old nerfed Spirit Bond Farming at Harvest Temple. People using a staff would get hexed with shroud of silence or something like that. People using a Totem Axe for example didnt.