Opinions Wanted: Outside-the-Box builds.

I have a legitimate question and I'd like to know what your opinions are on the subject. I posted this once before in a thread but the thread was shut down for other reasons before I got an answer.

First, I don't want to start a flame war. Answers like "that guy was a moron" or "you're a moron" or "PUGS are for losers" are just childish. If you can't reply with a decent viewpoint, then don't bother replying.

Ok, now here's the question. How do you feel about so called "creative builds"? Do they have a legitimate place in guild wars outside of the beginner areas or are the people running them just noobs or bad players.

Here's a situation I was in at Elona Reach. This is one of the 3 Crystal Desert missions and it's a fairly tough mission. Not on the Elite level, but not an easy no-brainer mission either. I saw a PUG group looking for more players so my Ranger joined them. We had 2 warriors, 2 Elementalists and me.

I suggested that we get a monk for the 6th and last slot when one of the Ele's spoke up and said he was a monk. I laughed and replied, "Uh, no you're an Elementalist". He then pinged his E/Mo skill bar. It was pure healing spells. I asked him to change to an Ele build but he insisted that he was a monk and not an Ele and that he does not play Eles.

This was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. No, scratch that. I've heard worst. Anyways, it sounded pretty far-fetched to me. I asked him why he didn't just create a monk and again asked him to switch to an Ele build. The rest of the folks in the group told me to shut up, I didn't know what I was talking about. They defended him and said that an Ele is far better at monking than a monk due to the Energy Storage attribute. (Hmm, there are definitely times when I wish my monk had 100 energy)

Well, I shut up because I was clearly outnumbered and besides I was too busy laughing to type. We grabbed a hero and started the mission. I must say the pseudo-monk was pretty good at his job and he surprised me with his abilities. We swept thru the mission with ease and achieved mission + bonus with lots of time left on the Ghostly's clock.

Personally, I've always been against using more than 1-2 skills from your 2nd profession while in difficult PvE or any PvP arena. I think any build is valid for lower end areas, (Yes my monk can solo The Great Northern Wall with Flare and 7 empty slots) or whenever you just wanna have fun with a build, but for competitive "gotta finish the mission or else!", stick with your primary. However, I haven't been playing long and I could change my mind on this if a valid argument can be made for using a 2nd profession as primary. (Something a bit better than "just shut up, he's a monk!")


Here's another situation I saw last week. I was doing the Consulate Docks mission with my warrior. I was bored and didn't really need the mission. Just trying to fill in my "masters" gaps. I joined a Necro and 1 other people. The rest were heros. The Necro pinged her bar which was:
Spiteful Spirit, Arcane Echo, empty slot, empty slot, empty slot, empty slot, empty slot, empty slot.

I laughed and said I thought she was missing a few skills. She said she didn't need any other skills and just wanted to try a creative build for a change. I didn't say anything since this is a low level mission and we started the mission. The necro was very good and we flew thru the mission easily.

It's fun to go with crazy builds sometimes. I think alot of people need to let go of the "this class does this" mindset. Sometimes missions are boring but if you're doing them in an out-of-the-ordinary way they can be alot more fun.

I can see the Ele monk thing working...sorta. Just for the energy. Tbh I hardly run out of energy with my monk and don't use a secondary prof for energy management. (GoLE etc). The only reason I would say it's a bad idea is that in some situations you really need that extra 4 attribute points. But I guess if it's played well then yeah, *unconvetional* builds do work. If used in the right hands, and from experience my honest opinion is that alot of PvE'rs should stick to the gimmicky, cookie-cutter, "wiki" builds.

I've seen some real shockers too. Meteor Shower necros, Water Trident+Fireball Rangers. When I started out my Warrior had Eruption and MS too. I soon realised how fataly stupid that was and created an Ele

I was in a GvG battle a few months ago. Everyone in my team went Necro primary, for a blood-spike, and had secondary profs like Ele (flagrunner) Monks (obviously to keep us alive). Needless to say, we won, we didn't play against a very good team. Against a organized guild we would've been pwnd.

So, what I'm really trying to say is: "sure, be daring....play whatever build you like.. it's just a game" but also be able to play something conventional..depending on what your team needs. And brace yourself for the name-calling, coz it's gonna happen

Anything works, but I want the best.

its not that unusual for an E to do some monk support, mostly when theire flag running. Now as the main healer... meh its pve everything works there, to a certain extent. I guess its ok as long as each team member takes care of himself.

ps: Elona reach is not that hard to run with a ranger, bonus included.

there are alot of times when a primary goes better with the skills of another class - storage monks are a good example and are nothing new. a E/Mo + a 55 necro tank use to be all you needed to farm UW, way back when it was proficies only.

necro primaries also use to make good monks because of the built in energy managment and a couple of supliment blood skills (well for example); but A-nets 5 sec screw up has changed that for now.

msemers are a good choice for throwing necro curses, since the nerf makes soul reaping pointless anyway.

i personaly use a Ele primary as a sin E/A - they are the same armor class, and you have more flexibility with your build with alot of energy storage. - and in PvE no one expects the el to run up and stick a dagger into them, so you get that element of supprise.

You can run outside-the-box builds in pve all the time, because it really doesn't matter much.

Just in PvP formats, I despise seeing them because I know the person behind that dark aura build or whatever the hell it is, doesn't know how to crunch numbers, hidden values and game concepts (and their effectiveness, max energy comes to mind) that come into play when determining if builds are viable.

And well in pve, they could use spiteful or life siphon, we'll probably still beat the mission.

There are already creative builds: Some of them include Thumpers, Touchers, IWAY (Though they are annoying), 55HP, Healing Emo's and many more.
They may not be original anymore, but they are creative.

Eventually, creative builds that are good, turn into cookie-cutter builds, and therefore you no longer see them as creative.

Um that's not creative. That's called not using your primary attribute for anything. All energy storage is, is a frontloaded cannon. Unless you run ether prodigy or get BiPed, there's no reason to go full heals.
The reason why an ele can heal as well as a monk in some cases, is when the monk only spams skills that don't benefit from divine favor (LoD, heal party, Aegis, healing Seed, Infuse health, Convert hexes, etc.).

BTW, that is not nearly as bad as:
-A Mes/E nuker with a healer hero with MENDING and healing breeze.
-A W/ who had all attack skills and a res
-A N/ with meteor shower
-A W/E with METEOR and FIREBALL.

There's thinking outside of the box, and there's thinking off your rocker.

I run a Water Ele and not everyone thinks Eles should do anything but Fire Nuke,but they are pleasantly surprised when they see how well Water controls what the mobs are able to even do....

For the Most part, if you are Monk/xxx you are a MONK, period, end of discussion. You might have a 2nd prof that you can use some skills for energy management or whatever purpose, but using your 2nd prof as your primary is no where as effective as someone running that as their 1st.

There's a difference between "outside-the-box" and "just plain bad." 99% of the builds you see fall into the later catagory.

It's just apparent because PvE is already incredibly easy as it is.

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That necro's build wasn't "Out of the Box". It was bad. He had 6 empty slots. Not even a res sig. I'm sure somewhere, out of all the skills he knows, he could have found 5+a res sig to round out the build.

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Personaly, I aplaud people with fun and creative/crazy built.

The only thing I ask is that you be able to play.

I was doing Naphui quarter, and one of the ele we had was a geomancer, he use +armor enchament and crystal wave, but was very good or carefull with his built.
I aplauded him for his unique built, but I also wish he could improve it.

So to sum it up, play what you want, as long as you can play it well.

rt/r barrage + splinter weapon == gg

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I don't consider it particularly crazy or even out of the box to use a second profession in a game that lets you have two. The only differences in most cases are maximum attribute level and interactions with the primary attribute. Considerations like energy regen and armor levels also come in with a few cases, but are equal across any caster pair.

When I decided I wanted a spear chucker hero, I made one of my rangers a /Paragon because Expertise and an extra arrow of regen makes spamming spear attacks extremely efficient to a greater extent than a few extra points in Spear Mastery would. When I wanted a shouter, I made it a Paragon primary for Leadership. This is the principle that makes Thumpers work as well.

As for /Monks healing, it depends on how they want to operate. You can't be as efficient at single target healing spam without Devine Favor, but you can be more efficient in other ways, such as access to better energy management elites in the Energy Storage or Spawning Power lines. If you've never seen a good Rt/Mo using Spawning Power energy management with Healing Prayers and Restoration, you really should.

It's simply a matter of finding useful synergies between the primary of one profession and the skills of another. There are millions of terrible builds that randomly combine two professions, but there are also plenty of thoughtful combinations that work far better than you might expect at first glance.

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For me the PUG is always a crap shoot. Even when you get someone with the supposedly "best" cookie cutter build for their primary and that mission there's no guarantee they know how to use it.

I've been in a group where there was a N/Me that loaded up on interrupts and did a fantastic job (surprisingly) due to the (pre-nerf) effect of Soul Reaping. The problem is you never know what you are getting. Mesmers and Assassins are still avoided like the plague by most PUGs, but every once in a while you find someone who really understands the class and is an amazing asset to the group.

The bottom line for me is it's just a game and I'm always favorably impressed with anyone who can use whatever build they bring effectively for the benefit of the whole group. You'll never get to see some of the impressive oddball stuff if you always insist on the "cookie cutter" build.

I get sick of seeing groups that advertise "GLF Spoil Victor Necro" or other such nonsense. There's more than one way to get through most missions and the widely accepted way isn't always the best. I henched/heroed through all of Nightfall several times without ever using Spoil Victor or any Lightbringer skills that many groups insist on. I was able to get Masters on most of them as well. But to be fair, we know the skillbars for the henchies and we can set up the skillbars for the heroes to compliment the team, so it's no big wonder that it works better than the average PUG.

So once again, if you have the time and patience I'd recommend giving some of these "outside the box" builds a chance. You'll be disappointed frequently, but you'll also see some impressive builds run by competent players once in a while.

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Interesting thread.

I remember, almost two years ago, my husband taking his first character, an e/mo, through the desert missions. It was also the first character from our guild to reach the desert, so none of us could help him out! In order to join a group for Thirsty River, he ended up being healer. It did not seem so unusual at the time.

I imagine this sort of build-making happens most prevalently in Prophecies, seeing as how you get all these tempting skills for your secondary all the way through. (*Conveniently forgets about the P/E she met casting meteor shower*)

I like using out of the box builds. I have an Axe Ritualist using Splinter Weapon, Triple Chop and Cyclone axe. It's pretty impressive AoE output.

I've played a support Ele/Mo before...sometimes there just aren't any monks around. (this was pre-heroes though...)

I've seen nuker-necros before. (pre SR nerf)

I don't mind if people use a unique and fun build as long as it's at least somewhat effective in PvE.

It makes the game more interesting and fun for me to play with a more creative or experimental build, however I tend to keep it to guild/alliance events these days.

I don't particularly enjoy the cookie-cutter mentality of many (not all) PUGs, but I understand that rightly or wrongly it happens because most people are there to just get the job-at-hand done. I don't personally enjoy having to argue my corner or prove a point to strangers.

If other people have the chutzpah to PUG with an outside-the-box build, then kudos and very best of luck to them!

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I have an opinion. people who come up with new "outside-the-bux" builds are creative and thats a good thing, people that continue to use the less-effective ones are noobs.

2 examples

1. I have a N/Rt Orders/BiP build that can rez itself and runs at 1 hp, and i love it to death. It works well, so i use it. (http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/User:Coloneh/PuG_Orders)

2. The other day i played in a group with a A/N using an jagged/wild/repeating strike with no dual attack, and 12 death magic, flesh golem, bone minions, taste of death, and death nova. It was a semi-decent looking idea on paper but worked terrible in practice yet he insisted on using it. thats the bad example.

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