User:Zaq/Build Ideas

Titles
Some build names which are so good (or so mind-bendingly bad) that they really, really need to have builds based on 'em.


 * Jumpin' Jack Flash. No idea what this one could be. Some kind of shadow-stepper with blinding flash? Dunno. Alternately...
 * Crossfire Hurricane. From the first line of the aforementioned Jumpin' Jack Flash. Tell me that's not a badass name. Maybe something with Mystic Twister?
 * Divine Bane. This was more appropriate when Divine Boon monks were everywhere, but it still strikes me as clever. Whether it's the opposite of a Booner (i.e. something that can kill a Booner easily) or a Monk dealing some unsavoury damage (Smiting? Curses? Both? Why not?) is yet to be determined.
 * Iron Man. What? MORE song titles? Yes. Bite me. Has he lost his mind? (echo mending.) Can he see or is he blind? (Sight beyond sight.) Can he walk at all, or if he moves will he fall? (Fleeting stability.) Maybe this is more of a team build.

Concepts: Silly
Some build concepts which are more silly than practical. Note that this does not necessarily preclude them from being AWESOME.


 * All-in-one Pantheon. A dervish build with one, and exactly one, reference to each and every god in the Tyrian pantheon. Lyssa's Haste. Balthazar's Rage. Grenth's Fingers. Dwayna's Touch. Melandru's, um, Resilience. I dunno.
 * Mirror image. Maybe this can be the Divine Bane mentioned above. So many Curses and Smiting skills parallel each other that we need to make a build out of 'em. Consider the following: Barbs is a hex which adds damage on hit, Strength of Honor is an enchantment that adds damage on hit. Sig of Mystic Wrath is a sig that does damage for each enchantment you have, Sig of Suffering is a sig that does damage for each hex they have. Scourge Enchantment punishes them when they become enchanted, Pain of Disenchantment punishes them when they become disenchanted. This build practically writes itself.
 * Hammer and Sickle. So many Scythe Mastery skills are melee attacks, not scythe attacks. Why not shove them in a hammer build? It'd be more useful than the joke that is Strength. (Why a hammer, not an axe or a sword? Because it gives the build the coolest name, duh.) Tell me Twin Moon Sweep, Eremite's Attack, and the like wouldn't be fun on a hammer.
 * OK, I'll give YOU my word. The disadvantage of Assassin's Promise is that you can't really be sure if your target will die in that time, or if they'll be spike healed, get some hex removal, etc. Well, bring Malign Intervention, or alternately a standard Animate Bone Horror, Verata's Aura, and something to remove the enchantment. Either way will leave you with a weak, hostile bone horror on the field, which you or your Assassin teammates can freely use Assassin's Promise on and kill. Hell, let's make this a full team effort; you can Swap it into position, then have a dervish use Banishing Strike on it to kill it and trigger some AoE holy damage. ...It could work.
 * Stonefist Spirit. Warrior/Ritualist. Buncha points in Communing, then Wanderlust and maybe Brutal Weapon, then the rest in, oh, I don't know, let's say Hammer Mastery. The Stonefist Insignia will let Wanderlust KD for 3 seconds instead of 2 (ZOMGHAX).
 * Tank Buddy. Warrior/Necro. 16 points in Swordsmanship or Axe Mastery, 10ish in Death, remainder in Blood. Your only necro skills: Flesh Golem and Dark Bond. That'll let you divert a hefty 75% of your damage to your golem (or "tank buddy"), and when it dies, just make another. This could also conceivably work on an Assassin/Necro, or maybe even a Dervish/Necro.
 * Minimalist Caster Monk Let's see what happens when you cast Divine Boon, Healer's Boon, and Holy Haste in that order. 1s spells become 1/4s cast that have a really whopping huge bonus to 'em. For example, at 16 healing 13 divine, Orison would cast in 1/4s and heal for 42 + 54 + (73x1.5= 109.5, round down to 109) = 205 health. At 16 Div 13 Heal, that total's even higher, at 208 health, with a 1/4 second cast. And that's with Orison. Use Dwayna's Kiss, Ethereal Light, Healing Whisper and you'll get heals of upwards of 250 depending on your point spread. The problem, naturally, is that you have to maintain two enchantments, one of which is the energy-guzzling Divine Boon. So you have these incredibly overpowered near-instant heals, but you have to have nerves of steel and reflexes to match in order to use them effectively. If you overuse them, or use them too early, you're in trouble. You'd cast maybe when the target was around 50% health at the very earliest. You'd only need one or maybe two casts to catch a spike, though. I have yet to meet a monk who could so finely balance the obscenely buffed over-heals with the inflated costs to match, but I would be DAMN impressed if I saw someone using this, wouldn't you? I don't even want to think about what kind of heals you could churn out with the extra investment of Infuse. I bet you could hit 600, which is overkill by any stretch of the imagination, with "stance-with-aftercast" type speeds. Then of course you'd have to spend the energy to heal yourself, but oh well. Point is, if you had AI-style reflexes, you could cast that sucker on, like, the Guild Lord, even with four assassins on him. I'd like to see it done.

Concepts: Less Silly
Some build concepts which warrant a little more scrutiny. If you come up with a viable build from one of these, I won't necessarily ask for credit, but let me know that you did so, would ya?


 * Siphoning Dervish. Siphon Strength is a great skill, but it seems kinda wasteful on an assassin. Why not put it on a Dervish? We already know from builds like the A/D Way of the Assassin scythe user that scythe crits hurt like a mother (by which, of course, I mean that the pain you feel when you are struck with them is comparable to that felt by women giving childbirth. What did you THINK I meant?) with 12 scythe mastery. This would be a way to get some fairly reliable crits with 16 mastery.
 * Holy Backbreaker. Berserker Stance -> Burst of Aggression -> Backbreaker -> Crushing Blow -> Holy Strike -> Stonesoul Strike -> Renewing Smash -> Repeat. Only problem is the really, really high (by warrior standards) energy costs. Taking suggestions.
 * Overzealous Axe. Dismember -> Critical Chop -> Protector's Strike -> Magebane Strike is a pretty nice one-man spike by any standard, but the energy costs are absurd. I think the solution lies in Zealous Renewal, which requires no Mysticism to use for strictly energy management. Just cast it, whack away a few times with a Zealous axe to get your energy up to full, unleash your spike, and cap it off with Twin Moon Sweep (which does not require a scythe and the damage of which does not vary with scythe mastery) to pop your energy back up to full.
 * Energy hate team. This is a team build. Let's pretend it's HA, so a six-man group. You've got three warriors without a single energy skill on their bars; I'm thinking a Decapitator, a Crippling Slasher, and let's say a Dragon Slasher just for kicks. Then you have an R/Rt with 16 Expertise and 12 Communing, laying Infuriating Heat, Soothing (to counter it out for the other team) and some various defensive spirits, Union/Shelter/etc. Then you have a severe energy hate ranger, with 16 Expertise and 13 Wilderness Survival, bringing Quicksand, Roaring Winds, Quickening Zephyr, all that neat stuff, to really screw with the other team's energy management. Finally, to offer some modicum of healing, we have an E/Mo Ether Prodigy/Heal Party spammer, with Glyph of Lesser, Sig of Rejuvenation, and some other generic heals. This team would follow a definite "steamroller" strategy, kill-or-be-killed. They'd have a crazy huge advantage over the other team in terms of energy (i.e. they don't need it, the other team needs it but doesn't have it.), and the warriors would be unaffected by Quicksand et al. but would be feeding off Infuriating Heat for some really nasty damage. It needs cleaning up but I think it's a viable premise.
 * The return of Dark Apostasy. Everyone falls all over themselves to gush about how crazy wonderful Avatar of Grenth is supposed to be, but I contend that a smart (that's important, so I'll repeat it: SMART) Dark Apostasy user can be just as effective. It doesn't have a downtime, it doesn't become completely useless if you die, and Assassins are pretty much always better damage dealers than Dervishes, especially in the downtime when their precious Avatar is recharging. An assassin with DA can remove a stack of enchants just as fast as Grenth can, given the attack speed, especially with guaranteed crits like Critical Strike (not one, but two), Malicious Strike, and so on. Also, Shadow Steps are crucial. The problem: Dark Apostasy CAN be stripped. In the past this was less of a problem thanks to Assassin's Remedy and Sharpen Daggers, but Anet nerfed them to hell and back in the Feb 01 update (Remedy's nice in that it can remove Blind now, but the fact remains that these two skills no longer last the entire duration if you're spamming attack skills, as any good assassin should be). Also, Wild Blow is as lovely on a DA user as on Grenth, so using enchantments from your secondary is out, since we want A/W. So that leaves us in a nearly IW-esque situation... much less so than IW itself, of course, but still a sticky problem. Anyone can come up with a solution to this, let me know and we'll conspire in an exaggeratedly sneaky manner about how to make people forget about boring, overrated Grenth.

Builds that need REAL testing before wikifying 'em
These builds are more than just ideas, they're real, fleshed-out bars (to some extent or another) that need to be tested by me or by others.

Mystic Cultist
Alternates: Consume Corpse, Taste of Pain, or Soul Feast instead of Pious Restoration or Vow of Piety; for more offense, Test of Faith or Mystic Twister instead of Lyssa's Haste or the res.

Equipment: Radiant armor or Undertaker's armor, Staff with +20% enchanting mod

Usage: Cast Cultist's Fervor, Dark Aura, and Vow of Piety and go snuggle up close to your enemy. Spam Dwayna's Touch, Pious Restoration (replacing Vow of Piety each time you do so), and Mystic Healing. Doing so will cost almost no energy thanks to Cultist's Fervor but will trigger Dark Aura from the health sacrifice, however, you'll also be constantly healing yourself. The health lost from Lyssa's Haste sadly is not a sacrifice and will not trigger Dark Aura, but it's still an excellent skill for kiting, anti-kiting, and energy management.

Strengths: Good armor-ignoring damage, good energy management, constant powerful self-healing, party support via Mystic Healing.

Weaknesses: Losing Cultist's Fervor hurts. A lot. There's about a natural 6 second downtime that you can't do much about, and you have two good cover enchantments, but if it gets artificially stripped, your offensive power drops to zero and your defensive power is, while still good, far from fantastic. I bet this would be fun in AB, at least, and probably in some areas of pve.

More to come.