URSANWAY - the complete guide

I think that another possibility has been somewhat overlooked.

Whilst a 5 ursan, 3 monk team may be quite adequate, has anyone considered the possibility of swapping the 5th ursan for an Rt/Me or and Me/Rt with Splinter Weapon, Sympathetic Visage and Ineptitude/Epidemic ?

Let's do some calculations, based on teams of rank 10 Ursans (Norn title track rank 10), and groups of enemies of size at least 4.

Firstly consider the damage output of 5 Ursans, each using the standard Ursan attack skill, presuming also that these strikes are made under the influence of the Ursan Roar shout skill.

5 Ursans dealing 180 dmg per attack four times.
Total damage output = 20x180 = 3600dmg

Now consider the potential damage output of 4 Ursans, each using the standard Ursan attack skill under the same hypotheses, whilst under the effects of Splinter Weapon (cast at lvl 12, for the sake of argument).

4 Ursans dealing 180 dmg per attack four time.
Total damage output from attacks = 16x180 = 2880dmg
4 x Splinter Weapon Effects affecting 3 targets each strike for each of 4 Ursans.
Total damage output from Splinter Weapon = 16x3x41 = 1968 dmg

Total potential damage against groups of size 4+ using Splinter Weapon = 4848 dmg.


The build involving an Rt/Me ( or Me/Rt ) would therefore have the potential to do up to 1248 more damage over a set of 4 hits from each Ursan than the team with 5 Ursans. This would be increased with an Rt primary, since the damage output from Splinter weapon would be increased per hit and the effect would last for 5 hits per casting rather than 4 at 16 channeling, doing 53dmg per target rather than 41.

Since this has the potential to increase the damage so significantly through the use of arcane echo with splinter weapon to allow the caster to chain the splinter weapon spells on all 4 Ursans over an extended period of time, this should surely merit consideration.

Moreover, the Mesmer skills Ineptitude and SV/AV are useful in their own right, potentially reducing the monk's healing workload against large groups including high damage spellcasters, and blinding anything that strays onto the monks to give them improved survival chances, or time to flee.

Energy is an issue at first glance, but my Mesmer character, on which I run a build based around these skills, has 66 energy at +4 regen and has no difficulty maintaining the chain of Splinter Weapons. I include energy drain and energy tap in my build in case of emergencies, but have not had to use them yet.

This type of group has been tested and worked fine with a team in the City of Torc'qua despite one of the 4 ursans leaving.

I suggested this to one pug in the DoA, but was laughed at, even after explaining the calculations. I hope that it will attract more serious and constructive criticism and debate here. You forget that splinter weapon can only be cast once every 8 seconds, thus you cannot keep it on 4 people at once. Also, ursan strike is like Vamp Touch, it won't actually trigger splinter.

K well, i actually have a question... what Norn rank would you say would be great for fighting. I just capped this skill, but realize i have only norn rank 2 O_o, the lowest of all the titles i got. Will i get booted from a group right away? Or will i be able to do decent damage? I would recommend you getting to r5. That's the req. to buy the armor. Most groups ask for r5/r6+ i belive