GrindwaY h/h build for rep farming and general

PvE is serious business guys.

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Ok i couldn't resist posting again. I'll try to keep all points short and sweet despite the apparent wall of text

If Zho did her BHA job properly you wouldn't need 3x Savage Shot. Most threats are down within BHA's recharge, so we have a lag on the next target before Dazed is applied. On-demand, fast-charging Dazed via Stunning Strike is better and makes your own bar significantly stronger, it can be banged out every 5 seconds. Given you should be calling targets, everyone will be attacking a Dazed target, potentially interrupting with each attack, meaning Heroes don't need interrupt skills. It also acts as skill compression, it's a straight one skill for three swap.

Volley at 9 Marks in HM is weak. Without Barbs / MoP on the target, Volley at 9 does very little damage in HM. Volley combines well with Splinter Weapon, without it i wouldn't bother. With Stunning Strike on the W/P, Heroes / Pets / Minions interrupt on auto-attack, so we don't need Savage Shot nor 4 att lines. Increasing points in Death/Curses/Soul/Beast means stronger spells / Pets, speeding things up.

Mark of Pain has a long recharge and causes AI scatter in HM which slows things down. It's a good skill on a Promise Curser but not on a Hero.

CoH increases Pet damage by 25% and the speed boost improves their ability to change targets. The IAS also increases interrupts from Dazed, CoH has been included AS the Necro interrupt.

You said yourself 'my Pets die frequently', CoP enhances pet survivability in HM. It's inclusion has nothing to do with my Pets being level 13 at the time. Given you don't need CoP, this is the slot i'm suggesting you could take Disrupting Lunge / Bestial Pounce / Bestial Mauling. That effectively gives you 2 interrupt slots per Necro - one passive, one active.

There is only ONE -75HP sup rune in the entire build, Death for 10 Minions on the MM. Thanks for the runes 'tip', try reading next time. The fact that the Warrior is no longer gathering agro, you run with fewer and weaker minions, and the tendency of Pets to hang around the backline is the cause of agro spread, not the single sup rune in the build. I did forget to wear the Norn title (I was farming Raptors for Birthday Cakes), it adds the same +HP to all party members thus making no diff to agro.

I've seen Pets stand idly by their masters instead of attacking a called target, again questioning their value in the build unless your Hero is set to Aggressive, which is bad. The 15% DP on the SS was from experimenting with Aggressive.

Anthem of Flame / Anthem of Weakness were suggested to trigger the conditional requirement of Spear of Fury and Stunning Strike. Given the SS is casting Weakness+Cracked Armor, neither AoF / AoW are needed, but you sometimes need to wait for a condition to be applied before hitting Stunning / SoF. You could always take Barbed Spear to get the ball rolling.

Of course the first build will be slower without the appropriate skills on the W/P. I can only assume you ran your RotN bar not the one i provided. According to you Splinter Weapon, Weapon of Fury, Stunning Strike, Spear of Fury, Cruel Spear are all bad and Rage of the Ntouka is good. You refute the value of these skills because you stubbornly refuse to recognise the weakness of RoTN and are unwilling to change it. You're attempting to run RotN on the same bar as Save Yourselves, a skill you don't have nor seem to understand! RotN slows the bar down, hence the 'quicksand' comment - it's difficult to use Flail, GFTE, Anthem of Envy and Merciless Spear more than once in the 15 sec recharge. Your bar has terrible energy management and IS slow as a wet wig due to RotN, no wonder you can't slot in Spear of Fury.

Rage of the Ntouka is a weak elite and your bar does very little damage in HM (10-ish vs Physicals), it really is a mixed bag of lollies. Spear of Fury charges Stunning Strike or if preferred, Cruel Spear. Both are incredibly powerful elites, to suggest otherwise demonstrates a lack of understanding of the Paragon. The adrenal engine of SoF+EH+FGJ makes the adrenal skills spammable - the bar is very active in comparison, there's always something ready to go.

Weapon of Fury powers EBSoH and increases spammability of adrenal skills. EBSoH increases damage from everyone in it including Minions, Pets, auto-attacks and spells. To make the most of WoF on the W/P, take only two Physicals in the team so it's not spread around too much. This is what you're doing, hence the suggestion. Again, you seem to lack an understanding of the skill, dismissing it as BAD. Sab's included WoF as a variant in Sabway, see here or go to Page 25 of the thread and keep reading.

You don't need Blood Ritual so there's a spare slot on the third Hero. Mark of Fury is an option to power the player bar if Weapon of Fury isn't taken. Strip Enchantment has a longer recharge than Rip Enchantment, take it instead.

I had less trouble maintaining a full pack of 10 Minions in my build. You move quickly from mob to mob in VF, so while BoTM is desirable on a Mission, it's not in easy Vanq zones thereby reducing minion lag and speeding up the run.

The N/Rt restorer can take Icy Veins and Splinter Weapon, outdamaging your third hero's bar with only two skills while providing significantly better HM party buffs and support. Better party healing and no-DP battle rezzing is preferable in HM. Less party wipes (strategic wiping...lulz) means faster zone clearing and less running from Shrines. Less DP means more damage inflicted, also resulting in a faster run.

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All posted screenies are valid within their context, given you've questioned their validity and relevance let's do a direct comparison -

I had another crack on the Master of Damage with the W/P Stunning Strike & Cruel Spear versions, + N/R Curser + N/R MM + N/Rt Resto/Channel with two lvl13 Pets. I still average 200+DPS, the result was recorded on the second 180 sec pass to account for a full set of Minions, the damage is the average per sec for the full 180 secs. As you pointed out, this doesn't factor in the damage from Spiteful Spirit, Splinter Weapon, and Putrid Bile, all of which are at higher atts in my build, so add a ton of DPS to the build in the wild. Nor does it factor in the greatly beefed-up defense and improved interrupts. I'm r5 Ebon Vanguard, r4 Kurzick, max them and the DPS bangs up again. Note also that it's a full 30DPS less than the D-Slasher i posted...you're only gimping your damage by using a Warrior as a Paragon.

I took the liberty of adding [[Anthem of Envy] for the damage buff back into your build. After an hour of tweaking atts and customised equipment I did manage to squeeze 160DPS on average on the second pass. Where are you getting this 200DPS average from?!? Surely your BM 9 lvl 20 Pets aren't adding a full 40DPS compared to BM 10 lvl 13's. If that's the case, make mine 240DPS! I'm gonna call BS buddy, I can back all of this up with screenies and i haven't intentionally gimped your build to do less damage. Even more telling is i can take my team build, stand there auto-attacking with just Flail on the bar with atts of 11 Str & 11 Spear and pull 5DPS less per second than your build.

Given you have doubts about Weapon of Fury, i went back in with the Cruel Spear build, dropped EBSoH for Anthem of Envy, dropped the N/Rt for a BHA Splinter Volley with it's lvl19 Pet. I also slotted [[brutal strike] onto both Necs for more damage. DPS was 190 on average on the second run. Shock horror...the build did less damage when i dropped the Healer for a damage-dealing Physical with a Pet (10 Minions + 3 Pets total).

You've accused me of theorycrafting yet you've only tried a few of the weaker suggestions or gimped them by running your own bar, and dismissed the rest with no understanding of why the skills have been selected. You Sir are a hypocrite (no offense). I understand perfectly why you've chosen the skills on your bars, i've also demonstrated there are much better options.

In summary -
High atts > mid-range atts. 3 att lines > 4 att lines. 1 Stunning Strike + IAS auto-attacks > 3 Savage Shots. 1 Splinter Weapon > 3 x Volley. Skillbar compression > redundancy. Human-controlled spammable Dazed > non-spammable AI-controlled Dazed. Adrenal engine > 15 sec recharge Adrenal spike. Adrenal skill spam > disabled skills and a slooooow bar. WoF + EBSoH > gimped Anthem of Envy. Less deaths > more DP. Class-specific weapons > Necros with Bows. +dmg easy to meet conditional Dazed or Deep Wound > no +dmg conditional Deep Wound on a half-dead foe. 10 strong Minion bombs > 9 mid-range Minion bombs. Strong useful Pets > mid-range Pet meatshields Fast recharge > Slow recharge. No AI scatter > AI scatter. D-Slasher + Sabway at 230+DPS > My build at 200DPS > Your build at 160DPS.
All of these factors combined add up to a faster run, I don't see how you fail to see the logic nor how you can deny the numbers. You're doing about 2/3rds of the damage you could have done by just sticking with Sabway. Sab's has much better defense, is resistant to over-agro and can recover with battle rezzes. You'll bring up the interrupts again in which case recall that spammable Dazed > hard interrupts.

Your bars are all weak in HM, i've improved your year's worth of experimentation within a few hours which either tells me you really didn't try that hard, or you're always right even when you're wrong. At the very least dump the W/P bar, it's utter rubbish. You could take Stunning Strike, drop Zho, work Epidemic into the build as use Volley as an AoE interrupt. See how that works? Think outside the box you've cornered yourself into.

With all of this in mind i'll simply restate there's a million ways to skin a cat. Some skills are definitely stronger than others whilst others are chosen for no other reason than personal preference. Maybe the difference is the teams i build are for HM, your's is weaker and slower than it could be in HM but is effective in NM. Our goals are both the same however Vanq'ing VF with a higher damage, stronger defense build with The Path to Revelations active will get you the Norn title faster than weaker gimmick (there's that word again) builds based on the principle of 'strategic wipes'. Submitting HM Books will get it even faster, so this whole thread is obsolete.

This is not a personal attack draugr, i'm interested in improving the build. My intention is not to make myself look good, you look bad or start a shitfight but to offer logical, well-reasoned and argued alternatives that i really shouldn't need to explain. Instead of restating the same thing over and over and over, i'll just refer you to the DPS numbers and the list above. Opinions are variable, facts are indisputable. I'm not trying to be a pratt, but reasoning with a brick wall is tiresome when the facts are plain as day. Your reasoning and supporting arguments are weak and given the alternatives your skills selections are clear as mud.

I mean no harm, spite, malice nor to be uncivil or condescending. I'm not trolling nor have i been pwned by you in RA. A forum is a place to argue, there's nothing wrong with a little passion in the debate and participating beats the pants off being passive If i've given you the wrong impression I apologise, but bad builds attract criticism just as good builds attract praise. There's lots of the former and not much of the latter in this thread. You can put it down to my deriding your build and influencing other's opinions. I'm more inclined to believe it's considered a meh build and not worth the effort to post.

Thanks for considering the feedback and for posting the build, despite our disagreement. If nothing else i've found myself a working Stunning Strike / Cruel Spear W/P build.

i agree with all that has been said expect for one thing antithesis...10 high-ranged minions vs 9 mid range? its just 1 lvl difference

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