Less Max Health = Good? Please tell me more...

I've made a build that actually takes advantage of the -health stacking of superior runes. It's a monk build that's supposed to take any amount of damage, problem is that something's missing to really make it work.


Armor:
Whole pattern set for more energy, armor rating means nothing in this build.


On that armor:
Head- +1 Protection, +3 Sup. Protection
Body- +3 Sup. Healing
Pants- +3 Sup. Divine Favor
Hands- +3 Sup. Smiting
Feet- +3 Sup. Smiting (Cheapest to buy from trader)

This equals a -375 health penalty. Dropping your health from 480 (at level 20) to 105.


Base Attributes:
Divine Favor- 10 (Or highest you can make it after spending att. below) (+3)
Healing Prayers- 5 (+3)
Protection Prayers- 12 (+4)
Smiting Prayers- 0 (+3)


Skills:
Blessed Signet
Essence Bond
Mend Ailment
Mending
Balthazar's Spirit
Protective Bond
Hex Breaker
(Empty Slot, thinking Spell Breaker or a spell to help allies/rez)

Note: Sorry, I haven't been updating the original post with my current build. Now it's updated.

Basic Concept:
The idea is to be a build that can take on two roles: The stereotypical Life Barrier build, and a new build I've come up with that should deal with everyone attacking you first.

With your health at 105, Protective Bond on you makes you take a maximum of 6 damage with a two energy penalty for each prevent. With a +3 Mending, 6 damage bursts are healed instantly, making you invulnerable. You use Signet of Devotion to heal others or your signet when another monk dies.

The problem lies in when everyone on the other team attacks you at once. The damage is prevented, but you lose 2 energy each time, and that adds up incredibly fast. And herein is my problem. Could any of you help?

---
Icy Master Healer- Mo/Me

You are screwed once you get hit with rend enchantment. Or nature's renewal. Since you're a monk, you're going to be one of the first targeted, so you WILL be stripped and then you will die in 1-3 hits.

This build does not work with PVP and on PVE it works pretty well agianst any enemy that are melee and has no skills that strip enchantment. What I would do is raise your healing a bit so that you can get mending +4, and add balthazar spirit and essence bond so you can always regain that 2 energy lost from protection back.

Monks typically have 4 regen pips, and you will need to have 4 enchantments to fully take advantage of the protection bond....

Balthazar Aura - +1 energy
Essence Bond - +1 energy
(negates the protection bond usuage)

Protection Bond (lvl14 attribute it takes 2 energy)
Mending

From here you can recieve energy back by using blessed signet...+3 or 4 energy depending on your DF, per enchantment..

Good luck on figuring out how to do damage though..

Interesting idea and I think some people are trying something similar with necros and aura of the lich. The problem with your build is that if you get hit with a few life degen spells- say life transfer and poison, you are going to be screwed. With 10 degen, you would be losing life at a rate of 20 health a second giving you an estimated 5 seconds to stay alive and if one of your spells gets interrupted, ouch!
Your purge conditions has a recharge time of 30 seconds. You might get the first poison shot, but not the second, Maybe mend ailment would be better?

Ranger Seconadry or Primary help's a lot. Basically you need level 14 in Wilderness Survival or level 14 protection to make this build work well. Now I'm leaning twords monk based...

What you do is Use Greater Conflagration with Storm Chaser. Storm chaser last 18 seconds and has a 30 second recast time so you need another spirit like quickening zephyr to to reduce the recharge time. What storm chaser does is gives you 5 energy every time you are struck(or 4 if you are monk based).

Using just monk skills(Balthaza/Essence) with Blessed Signet also seems very viable. The key to remember with this build is you have only 180 life(9 damage per attack). So Bleeds/Poisons are very dangerous. Just keep Healing Breeze up and use healing touch for spot heals, along with Zealots fire and you can kill aynthing that doesn't disenchant.

Quote: Originally Posted by mamluk

Quote: Originally Posted by IcyFighter

Quote: Originally Posted by zemelett

You can negate the loss of Protective Bond with just Balthazar's Spirit.
You do so by using Protective Bond in conjunction with a +1 to protection prayers item (+X%). Recast protective bond over and over again before getting into a fight until the +1 kicks in, and when it does, that means you hit 17 protection prayers, and THAT means you only lose 1 energy per hit. Tried it successfully before after I noticed the pattern in energy loss amounts. (You can verify this for yourself easily. Take a PvP char, max out protection, and just keep recasting+cancelling the enchantment on yourself until it works.)

Has anyone else tried this to solo mobs? I'm interested in whether it might work well or not, as said above, is it quick enough to counter health degen?

Degen spells would skin you alive. Throughout my entire PvE and PvP experience, I've seen conjure phantasm, poison, bleeding, being used fairly quickly. By the time I remove a condition from myself, I find that it has been recasted on me.

Quote: Does mend ailment/condition work on yourself? Ailment is for yourself, condition is for other players.

IcyFighter, could I have the official word from you whether this build is surivable against degens? I'm looking at this from the solo/pharming side, so you're not going to lose energy due to the Essense + Spirit mentioned. I was thinking of the Divine Boon spammage along with smiting.

Sorry for a long time. Just wanted to update you guys on this build.

My skill list has changed so:
Signet of Devotion > Balthazar's Aura
Purge Conditions > Mend Ailment (Yes, you can cast it on yourself)
Life Bond > Essence Bond
Divine Spirit > Watchful Spirit
Ressurection Signet > Mark of Protection (To save teammates' lives)

Like what most of you predicted, health degeneration is very dangerous to me. Especially Conjure Phantasm (Which I see alot in the mesmers I meet). What's nice though, is that since I've added Watchful Spirit, my health regen is 5 which lets me cancel out Conjure Phantasm if it happens to me. And since I'm usually expecting a condition to hit me by then, Mend Ailment heals up the damage I lose. It's not so bad anymore.

What I had in mind, was to switch out Mark of Protection for Spell Breaker, and cast it right before they swarm me, so that rends and phantasms are broken. I don't have spell breaker, so I can't test it yet.

Mend Ailment is nice now, and since I have all those enchantments on me, Blessed signet lets me use some spells on my teammates if they need it.

Another fairly rare problem is mesmers who steal energy. It really hurts when I can't come up with the energy to keep my enchants up.

Thanks for the feedback! And just for the record, Icy Master Healer made this build.

(And I've also found out that slapping a Retribution instead of a Watchful Sprit makes a killbot >_>)

Bump I guess. Seems I posted way too early in the morning to get some people to see this.

Wouldnt it have helped to get some runes of vigor instead of the smite (To get some of the health back that u lose from the other runes)? Just an idea

once again, hes trying to lose as much health as he can

Quote: Wouldnt it have helped to get some runes of vigor instead of the smite (To get some of the health back that u lose from the other runes)? Just an idea The whole point of the build based on the health reduced from each superior rune.

The main idea for this build is to NOT HAVE HEALTH so that each hit, you can only be hit for 5% of your total HP. If you look at one of the skills being used (can't remember which) you will see what I mean.

DISCLAIMER: I did not design this build and I hereby take no responsibility for any drop in IQ points as a result of reading my post.

This is an old build idea that monks have been using for a while. It works wonders. Great for soloing.

see subject