E/Mo Avicara farming using Protective Bond/Stoneflesh Aura

Profession: Elementalist/Monk

Type: Solo farming, Avicara

Category: Stoneguard

Attributes:

Earth Magic: 15 (11 + 3 + 1)
Air Magic: 5
Energy Storage: 5 (4 + 1)
Protection Prayers: 12

Skills:

Storm Djinn's Haste
Glyph of Concentration
Stoneflesh Aura
Crystal Wave
Teinai's Crystals
Sliver Armor
Balthazar's Spirit
Protective Bond

Equipment:

There are probably any number of combinations that will work; however, there are relations between your levels of armor, hit points, and Earth Magic that should be heeded (more on this later). I use Pyromancer's Armor and a Stone's Eye fitted with a Superior Rune of Earth Magic. The other runes in use are: one Minor Energy Storage, one Superior Vigor, and two Vitae. For my weapon set, I use a Totem Axe and a shield with -2 damage (while enchanted) and +45 health (while enchanted) modifiers. So, I can vouch for this set, although it's not necessarily the best possible option.

In any case, whatever weapon you choose should have a +20% enchantment duration bonus, if at all possible. Also, you must have an extra offhand that provides +1 Protection Prayers 20% of the time.

Summary:

This build developed from the ideas put forth in these two threads and, more than anything else, is an investigation into their feasibility. It works by combining Protective Bond and Stoneflesh Aura to create a situation where you take zero damage indefinitely. Although the results are not unique or even optimal, they tend to indicate a certain amount of potential.

Videos:

Getting to Mineral Springs
An Avicara battle

Walkthrough:

Getting to Mineral Springs:

Start from Granite Citadel and exit into Tasca's Demise. Switch to the Protection Prayers offhand and cast Protective Bond. Then, check the icon on the effects bar to see whether the energy penalty is three or four. If it's four, re-cast Protective Bond until it's three. Switch to your health/armor offhand as appropriate.

Then, run out into Tasca's Demise bearing hard to the right. Use Storm Djinn's Haste to break away from the Stone Summit Dwarves that attempt to ambush you and head down the chute which leads south-eastward. Continue running down the chute until you approach another set of dwarves. Cast Stoneflesh Aura and then another Storm Djinn's Haste as you make contact with them. Run straight through this group, avoiding the Ice Golems that patrol to the left. Head uphill and use Storm Djinn's Haste to stay ahead of the Gnashers that pursue you. Eventually, they will break off.

As you reach the top of the hill, turn left and skirt the dwarf groups in this region. Continue until you are just beyond the bridge which extends over the cave and leads north. Wait in the safe spot here until a dwarf patrol passes you heading back along the route you just ran up. When you are clear of them, cross the bridge and continue north. Then, once the bridge is behind you, delay a minute and wait for a group which includes Ice Golems to emerge from the pass in front of you and head westward. When they move off sufficiently, enter the pass.

At this point, you'll need to assess the spawns. The warp is about 200 yards ahead and to your right. However, there are two groups you need to look out for here: one spawns in this area, and one patrols from the warp to a point to the south and east. If you have enough room to run around the first group, then do so and wait for the second to clear. Then, run through the warp. If the first group is right in front of you, it will be impossible to clear them, as the Heretics will slow you with Crippling Anguish then break your enchantments with Shatter Enchantment. So, what you need to do is die. There is a resurrection shrine very near the warp which will allow you to respawn on the other side of this group. So, once you resurrect, you can simply run into Mineral Springs, just be sure to time it so that you don't resurrect in the middle of the second group. The trickiest spawn to deal with is the one where the first group spawns on top of the resurrection shrine. In this case, you'll need to pull them away from the shrine as you are dying and hope you wind up with enough clearance.

In any event, you should be able to enter Mineral Springs at not more than 15% death penalty with most spawns. If you die twice, it's probably better to travel back to Granite Citadel and try again.

Fighting the Avicara:

When you emerge in Mineral Springs, you probably want to take a few steps back towards the warp to avoid the nearby Avicara for now. Cast Protective Bond as before, making sure that you wind up with a three energy activation penalty. Switch to your armor/health offhand and wait for your energy to come back to about 30 or so. Then, cast Balthazar's Spirit and Stoneflesh Aura and aggro the Avicara.

Ideally, the group will contain more Fierces than Braves. If not, then you probably want to pick off a few of the Braves at this point before aggro'ing any more Avicara, although, in general, you want to work with as large a group as possible. You'll need to work carefully while there are Avicara Braves around as they will Savage Slash your spells if you don't cover them with Glyph of Concentration. Also, they tend to drain your energy rather than replenish it; so, don't cast too quickly in the early going. Finally, if there are four or more Avicara Braves in a group, they will tend to scatter from Sliver Armor. If you are quick, you can hold them in place by attacking the one that Sliver Armor picks out (this might only work if you are using a melee weapon).

With Protective Bond and Stoneflesh Aura in place, the only damage you will take from Avicara will be from the occasional Vampiric weapon. Also, note that taking zero damage is the same as not taking any damage; in other words, as long as you aren't attacking you will heal over time through the natural healing mechanism. So don't worry too much about being a bit late with Stoneflesh Aura -- unless you are fighting a huge group; you'll get the health back.

So continue taking out the Braves with Sliver Armor and the occasional Crystal Wave/Teinai's Crystal. Also, add groups to your mob where feasible, just stay clear of any that contain Guiles as they have Strip Enchantment. Apart from the two groups which spawn near the entrance, there are large groups of Fierces on both the northern and eastern routes. Additionally, there are several Brave/Fierce spawns along the trail heading east from the entrance. Finally, if you have a fair number of Fierces aggro'ed, you can take out Pinesoul groups, as well. The bleeding from their Barbed Traps will hurt you, but you should be running enough hit points that it won't be enough to kill you.

When you have whittled the group down so that only Fierces remain, you'll want to group them up to get better efficiency. You can do this by dragging the mob against a convenient wall, then doubling back on it. Generally, you won't be able to work them into one compact ball because they attack at different ranges, presumably because some have longbows, some shortbows, etc., but every bit helps. Generally, I like to use Sliver Armor on the isolated Avicara and Crystal Wave/Teinai's Crystals on the clumped ones, but do what you have to do. You won't need Glyph of Concentration anymore, incidentally.

How the build works:

Feel free to skip this section if you aren't interested in all the rigmarole and are willing to use the default equipment setup (or don't mind experimenting a little).

The first, obvious question to address is: why doesn't Protective Bond drain your energy away? To answer that, consider the damage you take in a battle. Broadly speaking, sometimes you get hit for a lot, and sometimes you get hit for comparatively little. If you get hit for "a little" with this build, Protective Bond won't trigger because the damage will be below its threshold. In this case, you will gain one energy as a result of the damage -- from Balthazar's Spirit. If you get hit for "a lot", Protective Bond will trigger and deduct its three energy fee. Considering Balthazar's Spirit's contribution, the damage will result in a two-energy drop in your reserves. Note that in either case, you will take zero damage as Stoneflesh Aura will absorb whatever damage results.

So, if you get hit with twice for "a little" for every time you're hit for "a lot", then you energy reserves will stay constant. If the ratio gets larger, then you'll actually accrue energy. The important thing, then, is this ratio, not the actual amount of damage in question. In other words, it doesn't matter if you would have gotten hit for 400 damage by an Elementalist boss so long as his companions keep pinging you with 20 damage wand attacks.

Now, we have the flexibility to define what "a little" and "a lot" are by using equipment and runes to change our maximum hit points, since Protective Bond always looks for damage exceeding 5% of that number. Therefore, to protect your energy supply, you want your hit points high, unlike Protective Bond builds of the past. How high? Well, the absolute maximum would be twenty times the damage reduction supplied by Stoneflesh Aura, plus rounding error. Any more than that and Stoneflesh Aura won't cover the damage that Protective Bond filters through. At 15 Earth Magic and with a further two-point damage reduction from a shield or offhand, the number would be 670 (or possibly 679, depending how Guild Wars rounds fractions).

You won't need that many hit points necessarily, however. Remember, the important thing is to establish that 2:1 ratio. If there are a lot of minor sources of damage, you can go significantly lower. In the case of the Avicara, the Fierces use Ignite Arrows and Dual Shot, both of which result in multiple low-damage hits. So, 500-550 hit points is usually sufficient, even if you work in a 15% death penalty.

You can also go about it the other way by using armor buffs to change some big hits into small ones. Adding another 20 armor will reduce incoming damage by 30%, and a 30% damage reduction is as good as a 41% increase in hit points for the purposes of this build. Armor improvements will take the form of an appropriate insignia, inscription, or creature-specific shield. From a numbers standpoint, it probably makes sense to seek armor modifiers before hit point ones; however, there doesn't seem to be much of a market in these commodities so far, and hit point modifiers aren't so narrowly useful as, say, a "The Riddle of Steel" inscription.

Notes and Concerns:

The profitability of this run is hurt by the amount of time it takes to get from battle to battle and then to finish off the Avicara. Still, you can expect to make about 7k an hour, although the variance is large. Most of the big payoffs are in runes, not the drops themselves; so, you might consider packing some salvage kits to break down anything that is taking up inventory space. That way you can pursue those superior runes longer without altogether abandoning the money you might make through ordinary drops.

I suspect this build can be adapted to other uses. However, it might be necessary to run Essence Bond in addition to Balthazar's Spirit -- this changes the required ratio from 2:1 to 1:2. Also, the equipment set will need to be tailored from situation to situation. The other possibility is to use Protective Spirit instead of Protective Bond; in fact, this approach has proven successful for others. The only real problem with that solution is that you cannot currently achieve total protection 100% of the time, at least not to my knowledge. That is, there are periods of time when you take some damage from ordinary sources. So, you will have to bring some healing with you.

Lastly, it should be observed that there already exist both Elementalist and Monk solutions that protect you as well as Protective Bond/Stoneflesh Aura, if not better. Elementalists can run a combination of Stoneflesh Aura and other armor enchantments and be shielded from all but the most damaging sources, and Monks have the new Shield of Absorption spin on the venerated 55 build. So, there is a certain question as to where this build might fit in. Personally, however, I find the prospect of being completely immune from all sources save life stealing and health degeneration too enticing to dismiss out of hand.

Credit:

darrengordon, Francis Crawford, and the various posters on these threads