Help with hero builds

Myria

Banned

Join Date: Aug 2005

11 Nov 2006 at 23:51 - 1

In my Guild Wars career I've played Necros and Eles enough to know those classes very well, Rits and Dervishes enough to have a minor clue with them, and I have enough vicarious experience with Rangers, as it's the class of choice for half the people I know, to have at least some idea what their skills do. Unfortunately, when it comes to Monks, Warriors, Paragons, and Assasins, I'm pretty much totally clueless with them. The latter two I'm not overly worried about, but the former are too important not to want to have my Monk and Warrior heroes optimized. I've leveled up four (out of seven) pairs of Monk/Warrior heros, managing to at least come up with builds that got them that far. I would prefer their builds be more than just adequate, though, so I'm seeking advice.

Current Builds :

Tahlkara (Protector MO/ME, AKA: Lina replacement)
Protection Prayers : 11 +1 +1
Divine Favor : 10 +1
Inspiration Magic : 10

Power Drain
Protective Spirit
Reveral of Fortune
Shielding Hands
Shield of Regeneration (E)
Mend Ailment
Inspired Hex
Resurrect

Dunkoro (Healing MO/ME, AKA: Alesia replacement)
Healing Prayers : 11 +1 +1
Divine Favor : 10 +1
Inspiration Magic : 10

Power Drain
Orison of Healing
Word of Healing (E)
Dwayna's Kiss
Heal Party
Inspired Hex
Mend Ailment
Resurrect

Koss (W/N)
Tactics : 11 +1
Axe Mastery : 11 +1 +1
Strength : 5 +1
Curses : 4

For Great Justice
Watch Yourself
Disrupting Chop
Dismember
Distracting Blow
Grenth's Balance (E)
Enfeeble (or Plague Touch, depending on area)
Res Sig

My Tahlkaras all have Kepkhet's Refuge, as I had a bunch of those. The Dunkoros all have Zinfaun's Belief, as I had a bunch of those, and a collector's 20/20 healing prayers offhand. The Kosses have a mix of various max Axes I had laying around, all with +health or +armor, and various shields. I do have one Koss set up with a hammer, as I have a bunch of green and gold hammers not being used, but axes seem better for both the shield and disrupting chop.

I'm aware that Grenth's Balance is probably a poor choice of elite for Koss, I picked it mostly because I couldn't think of anything better (the only axe elite I've got is Cleave) and in the hands of the AI it makes a decent emergency self-heal in many situations -- an important factor when leveling up a low level character in a level 20+ area. Many of the other warrior elites that I have are conditional and/or or end if a skill is used and both seem iffy with the AI as it is -- I may be (probably am) totally wrong there, though. As for the monks, I know Power Drain depends on a spell being cast by the enemy, and thus is maybe iffy as energy management, but I put a fairly high premium on it's being an intrupt and I'm not sure if there's a sufficiently better choice to override that factor.

In any event, suggestions on how to improve these builds, especially how and why other choices might be better, would be most welcome and appreciated. Mostly it's the why I'm concerned with, why one choice is bad or another one better, as without knowing that I'll never get better at adjusting a build for these classes myself.

Urfin

Academy Page

Join Date: Nov 2005

Moscow, Russia

12 Nov 2006 at 07:36 - 2

[skill=text]Dragon Slash[/skill] & [skill=text]Quivering Blade[/skill] are both good warrior elites and correctly used by the AI, even in chains in Dragon's case. Dragon gives a bit more DPS but needs 2-3 slots for attacks which it will charge, Quivering needs only itself and maybe one other expensive adren attack (cheap ones have crap synergy with it - they delay it too much). [skill=text]"For Great Justice!"[/skill] on an adren warrior is inferior to an IAS skill in my experience, unless you do both.

If you don't want the biggest possible DPS I'd go for Quivering, and throw in a bunch of useful conditional stuff like [skill=text]Wild Blow[/skill], [skill=text]Distracting Blow[/skill], the Ripostes and so on. If you don't pack a snare yourself I'd definetly give it to Koss or a ranger too, since healers kite like hell now. Basically Koss with Quivering looks like an ideal utility platform to me, much free space on the bar.

Monks look fine, but I'd replace [skill=text]Heal Party[/skill] with [skill=text]Heal Other[/skill] - AI spams till it depletes energy, and will use high-cost skills inefficiently. Lotsa Radiant insignias & Attunement runes on monks help alot too, as does elite emanagement like [skill=text]Offering of Blood[/skill] or [skill=text]Mantra of Recall[/skill]. The latter is prolly better since you can pack [skill=text]Power Drain[/skill] with it, they do use it gladly. And my monk didn't use [skill=text]Protective Spirit[/skill] correctly at all when in boon prot build, but boon prot doesn't work on them at all, so maybe it's ok in a straight prot.

Myria

Banned

Join Date: Aug 2005

12 Nov 2006 at 17:25 - 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Urfin

[skill=text]Dragon Slash[/skill] & [skill=text]Quivering Blade[/skill] are both good warrior elites and correctly used by the AI, even in chains in Dragon's case.

I note those are both sword elites. Do you feel the AI runs a sword build better than an axe or hammer?

Quote: [skill=text]"For Great Justice!"[/skill] on an adren warrior is inferior to an IAS skill in my experience, unless you do both. I'd wondered if this skill was really worth it in the long run, definitely one I'll have to rethink.

Quote: If you don't want the biggest possible DPS I'd go for Quivering, and throw in a bunch of useful conditional stuff like [skill=text]Wild Blow[/skill], [skill=text]Distracting Blow[/skill], the Ripostes and so on. Rightly or wrongly, I place a fairly high premium on interupts, thus [skill=text]Distracting Blow[/skill] and [skill=text]Disrupting Chop[/skill] were high my list. [skill=text]Wild Blow[/skill] seemed a little iffier to me, thanks to the "Lose all adrenaline" part. If not used carefully it seems like it could end up wasting a lot of otherwise useful adren. Am I wrong there, does the AI handle this relatively sanely?

Quote: If you don't pack a snare yourself I'd definetly give it to Koss or a ranger too, since healers kite like hell now. It seems like everything kites like mad now, I actually watched a desert griffon run from Alesia the other day. Yeesh.

Quote:

Monks look fine, but I'd replace [skill=text]Heal Party[/skill] with [skill=text]Heal Other[/skill] - AI spams till it depletes energy, and will use high-cost skills inefficiently. Okay, makes sense. This will probably sound dumb, but can Dunkoro use [skill=text]Orison of Healing[/skill] on himself? As there is no "other" in "target ally" there, I'm assuming he can, but skill descriptions can get to be misleading sometimes. Also, do you know if the AI uses [skill=text]Word of Healing[/skill] "correctly" -- id est, when someone is at 50% or below?

Quote:

Lotsa Radiant insignias & Attunement runes on monks help alot too, [...] Yeah, well I'm waiting on insignias until the prices come out of the stratosphere, though I'm starting to wonder if they ever will. Attunement runes are cheap enough, though, I gather you'd pick those over vitaes for monks?

Quote:

[...] as does elite emanagement like [skill=text]Offering of Blood[/skill] or [skill=text]Mantra of Recall[/skill]. The latter is prolly better since you can pack [skill=text]Power Drain[/skill] with it, they do use it gladly. I thought about [skill=text]Mantra of Recall[/skill], but it would mean giving up [skill=text]Word of Healing[/skill] or [skill=text]Shield of Regeneration[/skill]. Losing WoH might not be that big a deal, though it does seem like it's a pretty good heal if used right, but SoR I think I'd miss -- Lina has saved my little bum more times than I can count with that one.

My only problem with [skill=text]Power Drain[/skill] is that they seem to use it at the start of battle, when they don't need the energy, no matter where you put it on the bar. If I have both of them they will both use it on the same target, thus wasting an interupt. I'm generally too busy later to notice if they use it more than just the once, something I really need to check on.

Quote:

And my monk didn't use [skill=text]Protective Spirit[/skill] correctly at all when in boon prot build, but boon prot doesn't work on them at all, so maybe it's ok in a straight prot. As far as I can tell, not that that's saying much, Tahlkara does seem to be using [skill=text]Protective Spirit[/skill] effectively.

In any event, thank you very much for your ideas and suggestions!

Urfin

Academy Page

Join Date: Nov 2005

Moscow, Russia

12 Nov 2006 at 19:17 - 4

The reasoning is that swords = DPS, which is > everything in PVE. Besides, I like swords

I see no reason for AI to not use hammer & axe improperly, there are no overly tricky combos or super conditional usages there that I can think of, and the AI generally uses conditional skills properly anyway. It's using them outside of their conditions that it refuses to do

IMHO, any IAS > [skill=text]"For Great Justice!"[/skill], simply because more attacks = both more damage & adren, and as a compliment to an IAS skill it's too expensive and too short-acting/long recharge. It's a bad kind of unlinked too - quantitative, not qualitative, and the quantity isn't enough and can't be improved. So for myself I've typed it like this - if it's the best I can think of to put on the skillbar, it means the build is ideologically broken and should be shot in the head

As for warrior interrupts & [skill=text]Wild Blow[/skill], I'm lazy and inferior in reflexes to the machine, so I tend to give interrupts to AI and take wild myself when I need it

I don't think I've seen AI use it without a defensive stance on the enemy, which rings true with how it generally uses conditional skills - only when the condition is present. Gotta test on termites to see if he will cancel their frenzy, but they die so fast I can't even target half the time

Not everything kites as in actively and consistently evading melee, only the monks. The casters run a bit sometimes too, but rarely. The rest has pathfinding and/or targetting/aggro bugged to hell, it seems. This includes heroes, so they and the mobs stimulate each other into endless repositioning

Makes spikes a viable option over DPS though

Self-healing is a problem with hero monks - they do it, but it's lower priority than with henchmen, it seems. I've had Dunkoro with energy to burn stay at 20 hp for about a minute of a fight. The new AI not only has weird priorities, it frequently seems to have priority conflicts. Unless it's simulating human-like dumb stupor.

Can't say about WoH, didn't test much - I find elite emanagement makes too big a difference to ignore with AI monks. They do use orison to heal themselves.

Yeah, HP runes are usually the last choice for me, because they don't ever come into play until you're at those 30-50 HP, and that's no different than dying in my book

Either you slaughter stuff, or you improve the build

Energy is a problem though, doubly so with the awesomely effective AI MM, because monks heal minions - it's a testament to the MM's power that even with the monk weakened like that, it's still better than without MM

[skill=text]Shield of Regeneration[/skill] is sure worthy of being elite, but the 20sec recast and 15e cost means it's crap for AI, because it doesn't have the sense for the critical moment to use it, just spams. It takes too much skill to use it right.

[skill=text]Power Drain[/skill] gets used whenever it's availible and someone is casting, so not too bad really. At the start is bad, yes, but at least they use it often.

I meant usage of [skill=text]Protective Spirit[/skill] in boon prot - that's definetly broken, seems to mess up their little silicon brains. Haven't tested a normal prot monk yet. But any prot + MM would be a waste it seems.

Whoa have many letters typed I. Anyway, you're welcome