05 Sep 2008 at 20:02 - 12
I've messed around with many Spirit Bonding builds, for Mesmer, Necro, and Ele, but none where too effective to farm with due to limitation of good farming Elites. SS is ok, but not that great to use in HM because enemies flee, and won't affect casters. Visions of Regret for mesmer is a great skill, but also has same effects of SS, except it only triggers when enemies use a skill. I've made a pretty good VoR Mesmer Spirit Bonding build that can be pretty fast taking down melee enemies that spam attack skills, but it is quite limited to the places or enemies it can farm. I never bothered to post any of these other Spirit Bonding builds because they just weren't as useful as the usual monk and rit builds. SoJ and Vwk are the best to work with when using Spirit Bonding.
If you wanted the build be a bit more effective, use as high as health as you can... or use 400+hp like I did with necro and mesmer. Higher the health, the more damage from Retribution.
With the necro build I put together, I used major degen with only retribution for damage, and it seemed to work pretty good.
This is one of the Spirit Bonding necro builds I was messing around with when the Elite skill changes update arrived. I used 460hp with 15AL (of course). THe only place I tested it was outside Marketplace, farming Jade Brotherhood Knights. It was able to kill the first 2 groups fairly quick, ending a quick 1 minute run. I am sure this build can be used in alot of places, even with casters... but groups with casters you might want to gather up in a tight ball so they go down fairly quick.
I also haven't fully tested it out...
[build prof=nec/mo blo=10+3+1 pro=10 smi=10 soul=5+1 box][Life Transfer][Radiation Field][Protective Spirit][Spirit Bond][Shield of Absorption][Retribution][Essence Bond][Balthazar's Spirit][/build]
The build is actually fairly good... Has good regen for extra help with degen on yourself, and has really good energy management since of course when u kill enemies you gain energy. It will do 15 dmg from retribution, which can add up fairly quick along with 8-12 degen on enemies. Good thing bout the degen is, if the enemies flee, their life still goes down... even though u can always just wand or staff them to come back.
btw, Life Transfer hexes target foe and nearby foes... the description on the skill pic isn't updated. Try that build out there, see how you like it. Of course Radiation will be best to have a higher Asuran rank... think I have Rank 5 on my Necro.