Imbagon skills?

vader

vader

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2005

P/W

I know the Imbagon seems to be a fairly popular build for Paragons so I looked it up on PvX:

Spear Mastery 11 + 1 + 1
Command 8 + 1
Leadership 11 + 1

"Save Yourselves!"
"There's Nothing to Fear!"
Ebon Battle Standard of Honor
"For Great Justice!"
Focused Anger
Aggressive Refrain

The last 2 skills are optional but PvX mentions a bunch of other skills and a couple of attack skills to put there. If you are running an Imbagon build, are you expected to be dealing damage? What skills are Imbagons running in those last 2 slots?

Eragon Zarroc

Eragon Zarroc

Atra estern?? ono thelduin

Join Date: Jan 2008

Madness Incarnate

[Duo]

W/P

spear of fury and anthem of flame for 6 adrenaline every 10 secs. this will force u to remove ebon standard since spear of fury is pve only. replace it with a sig or something else interesting. i've been using "go for the eyes" lately since it no longer has a recharge and charges every 2 hits with double adren.

12+1+1 leadership for 7 energy back everytime u use shouts. spear mastery being that high isnt all that important since ur not a dmg dealer like u said.

[Morkai]

[Morkai]

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Oct 2007

Heroes of Elonia [HE]

W/Rt

Yes. Yes you are.

This build is capable of dealing Warrior DPS at range, grab your favourite two energy based attack skills, and throw em on your bar. Sit back, enjoy Godlike gameplay.

zelgadissan

zelgadissan

Forge Runner

Join Date: Feb 2008

The Warrior Priests [WP]

Me/Rt

BTW, if you can get your hands on a 15 AL/7 Command shield, the ideal setup is 12+1+1 Spear, 11+1 Leadership, 6+1 Command.

The two attack skills that seem to work best for me (and suggested in the sticky) are Vicious Attack and Swift Javelin.

IronSheik

IronSheik

Forge Runner

Join Date: Mar 2008

Wolfenstein: Goldrush

Zombies Go Nom Nom [Nom]

N/

I prefer being more support, with the recent buffs you can get a damn near close to maintainable stand your ground, 24 armor. I run Soldier's Fury with spear of fury for better adrenaline management. With Stand your ground as my chant for soldier's fury

Unreal Havoc

Guest

Join Date: Dec 2007

If you're running Command at 8+1 then I see no reason to not bring "Find Their Weakness!" on your bar.

Racthoh

Racthoh

Did I hear 7 heroes?

Join Date: May 2005

Scars Meadows [SMS], Guild Leader (Not Recruiting)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Eragon Zarroc View Post
spear of fury and anthem of flame for 6 adrenaline every 10 secs. this will force u to remove ebon standard since spear of fury is pve only. replace it with a sig or something else interesting. i've been using "go for the eyes" lately since it no longer has a recharge and charges every 2 hits with double adren.

12+1+1 leadership for 7 energy back everytime u use shouts. spear mastery being that high isnt all that important since ur not a dmg dealer like u said.
Your bar then consists of:

Aggressive Refrain
"Save Yourselves!"
Focused Anger
"There's Nothing To Fear!"
"For Great Justice!"
Anthem of Flame
Spear of Fury
"Go For The Eyes!"

Leadership: 12 + 1 + 1
Command: ?
Spear Mastery: ?

You have way too much energy with that setup. There is no reason to run 14 Leadership with two adrenaline shouts.

Quote: Originally Posted by IronSheik I prefer being more support, with the recent buffs you can get a damn near close to maintainable stand your ground, 24 armor. 24 armor for yourself is not worth wasting a skill slot. If you plan on being attacked there isn't a point in running "Save Yourselves!" now is there.

Quote: Originally Posted by IronSheik
I run Soldier's Fury with spear of fury for better adrenaline management. With Stand your ground as my chant for soldier's fury Aggressive Refrain, Focused Anger, and "For Great Justice!" provides nearly a 100% uptime for "Save Yourselves!" with just auto-attacks on a faction rank lower than 4. Slotting a bad/useless shout with a mediocre elite and an okay PvE skill to replace what auto-attacking with three other skills can do doesn't seem logical.

Quote:
Originally Posted by zelgadissan
The two attack skills that seem to work best for me (and suggested in the sticky) are Vicious Attack and Swift Javelin. Spear of Lightning over Swift Javelin if Order of Pain/Vampire, Barbs, etc... aren't present. I'd also consider "Find Their Weakness!" over Vicious Attack now as well. Even at a 6 + 1 Command split (if you have the 15 AL shield) the additional damage is still decent, the ability to pre-cast before combat, but more importantly the guaranteed deep wound.

Helix Dreadlock

Helix Dreadlock

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jan 2009

Imperial Sanctum

Legendary Drunken Masters [DUI]

E/Me

Imbagons are ment to save your party...literally.....forever lol

Lishy

Lishy

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2008

Oh, flame does work. I never knew that. Weariness is still better though :P

The Riven

The Riven

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2007

None worth mentioning

P/

Anthem of Weariness and Vicious Attack, Weariness is just better than flame. Vicious attack... deep wound is handy.

Tzalaran

Academy Page

Join Date: Mar 2007

Lincoln, NE

{MERC}

P/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Racthoh
View Post
Aggressive Refrain, Focused Anger, and "For Great Justice!" provides nearly a 100% uptime for "Save Yourselves!" with just auto-attacks on a faction rank lower than 4. QFT
With an orders spamming Dark Fury you can get near total coverage with the Soldiers Fury build, but if you want maximum efficiency FA FGJ + AR > SF + SoF + another shout. (This is especially true when working with 8 other players, where you don't get your heroes working for you.)

if you're running with other people that are focusing on defense (another Para...), you can get away with Soldier's builds, but if your role is the primary damage reducer go with what Racthoh says. i liked the extra 8% attack speed with no cracked armor too, but after testing myself i found Racthoh's method keeps the party alive better because of Spear of Fury's recharge time and SY!'s subsequent down time (For me it was always about a 4 second gap, and i was r3 at the time). 33% adrenaline gain just can't compete with 100% (i think it maxes there), even if you are attacking every second instead of every ~1.12 seconds.

i personally run wild throw (and only use it to end blocking stances) with Find Their Weakness/swift Javelin (i'm with heroes) or Sig of Return (with alliancemates). i find ending stances to be more important than additional damage or DW (other characters supply DW for me). the last two slots are really what you are most comfortable with anyway.

Smarty

Smarty

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Mar 2008

England

Me/

I think I'm more confused after reading this thread than I was before I started.

Questions:

Is the att spread in the OP/on wiki still optimal for someone with a q9 command shield? If not, what should it be changed to, and why?

Do people take EBSoH on their imbas, or do they take Spear of Fury as their third PvE skill instead, which is what I've been doing as I haven't done the charr quests yet?

What are the best two skills for the last two slots? I've been taking Anthem of Weariness and "Go for the Eyes!". Would I be better off dropping GftE for a second attack skill eg Vicious Attack if I stick with Spear of Fury over EBSoH, or should I only drop it if I keep EBSoH? Would I be better off dropping one of the chants for the newly-buffed "Find Their Weakness!", and if so which one, and when people say it's bugged and only applies to the next attack do they mean the +dmg or the deep wound part? Thanks.

The Riven

The Riven

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2007

None worth mentioning

P/

If you have a r9 Command Shield then you have no need to change attributes.

The question of Spear of Fury over EBSoH is basicly a matter of taste and playstyles, both are viable but EBSoH is handy if running with other ranged phys.

Dropping GFtE for Vicious is again a matter of personal preferance, i personaly use Vicious as i like having at least 1 attack skill, relying on auto attacks is all well and good but i would rather aply a deep wound sometimes.

Life Bringing

Life Bringing

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2008

Fissure of Woe

[LOD]/[GS]/[DL]/[LOD*]

N/P

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister Smartypants View Post
I think I'm more confused after reading this thread than I was before I started.

Questions:

Is the att spread in the OP/on wiki still optimal for someone with a q9 command shield? If not, what should it be changed to, and why?
Yes, if you have a Q9 command shield, the attribs on wiki are exactly what they should be. However, the optimum shield for an imbagon is a Q7 15AR shield so you can spec more heavily into spear mastery.

Quote:
Do people take EBSoH on their imbas, or do they take Spear of Fury as their third PvE skill instead, which is what I've been doing as I haven't done the charr quests yet? If you don't have access to EBSoH, or if you have a really low kurzick rank, spear of fury might be the better choice. However, EBSoH is a much more beneficial skill than SoF.

Quote:
What are the best two skills for the last two slots? I've been taking Anthem of Weariness and "Go for the Eyes!". Would I be better off dropping GftE for a second attack skill eg Vicious Attack if I stick with Spear of Fury over EBSoH, or should I only drop it if I keep EBSoH? Would I be better off dropping one of the chants for the newly-buffed "Find Their Weakness!", and if so which one, and when people say it's bugged and only applies to the next attack do they mean the +dmg or the deep wound part? Thanks. You should basically listen to Racthoh here, as he is crazy good with paragons(wave to Mallyx everybody). Before the buff to FtW!, the best choices were Vicious and Spear of Lightning(swift javelin if running with an orders bot). Since the buff, FtW! can be a good replacement for Vicious, since it's a guaranteed DW. As the the bug on FtW, it's more of a miswording than a bug. When reading the skill, it seems like DW should trigger on the first attack, but the +damage should continue for x seconds. In reality, the skill ends after one attack.

Smarty

Smarty

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Mar 2008

England

Me/

Thanks for the clarifications, both. I went out and did the EBSoH quest so I'll rejig my bar some more and see how I get on with it compared to my usual version in tomorrow's zquest.

Life Bringing

Life Bringing

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2008

Fissure of Woe

[LOD]/[GS]/[DL]/[LOD*]

N/P

Vicious has a shorter recharge(I think) but swift javelin gets the bonus of being unblockable. Your second question is somewhat difficult to answer. The bet solution would be to run bladeturn on your standard Commandgon. If you really want it on an imba, you could drop Spear down to 10(plus runes), and pump up command.

Puzur

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Nov 2007

Clan Wolfsbane

P/W

Since a Imbagon can get tons of energy I used to have Song of Power as something nice to give to casters between battles.

Chthon

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Apr 2007

I was fooling around with FtW the other day and I noticed two more reasons to strongly consider slotting it in place of an attack skill:

1. Spike. Stack it on top of the remaining attack skill (+ EBSoH + Orders + etc) for a very, very big hit. Yeah, I know that spiking is nowhere near as valuable in PvE as PvP, but it's sill worth something.

2. Prevents AR failure. After about the third time I found myself thinking "damn I'm lucky; I could have sworn I was too late on that TNtF, but AR is still up," it finally dawned on me: FtW is a self-targeting shout, so it renews AR. This gives a significant safety buffer against both poor concentration (that's me!) and things monsters do to interfere with timing TNtF.

FtW indeed.

MercenaryKnight

MercenaryKnight

Forge Runner

Join Date: May 2006

Wolf of Shadows [WoS]

P/

My suggestion is that even though ftw is decent the recharge is too long. The 15 seconds mean you may get it onto 1 or 2 people before the battle is over (if your team is good). Ok if you precast as your entering battle maybe 3 enemies but upwards of 4 + would be rare unless your aggroing more during battles or it's a hard group.

At 7req ftw does 26 damage which would result in 14 in spear and slayer's spear does 24 damage with a 4 second recharge. It is almost a give in that every monster out there will have more health then you especially if you use it as an initiating attack. The deep wound lasts a nice 19 seconds which should be more than enough to finish them off.

With the sy spamming you will have the energy to be able to use slayer's spear quite often and thus spamming deep wound.

Racthoh

Racthoh

Did I hear 7 heroes?

Join Date: May 2005

Scars Meadows [SMS], Guild Leader (Not Recruiting)

It'll depend on which version of the bar you run. Some have the luxury of more energy some do not.

MercenaryKnight

MercenaryKnight

Forge Runner

Join Date: May 2006

Wolf of Shadows [WoS]

P/

My bar was basic imbagon. 2 attack skills, fgj, fa, ar, ebon ward, tntf, sy.

Even if you have some energy problems, you'd have the same problems trying to "spam ftw". I am pretty sure you'll have enough energy enough of the times to get more uses out of it throughout the area than ftw just due to recharge alone.

Most older bars consistently spammed lightning spear and vicious attack. If it did have some kind of energy problems I wonder if bringing slayer's spear and go for the eyes for added energy replacement would be better than running 2 attack skills.

Save yourselves would require a bit higher rank cause you'd be adding an adrenaline skill with go for the eyes. But the extra energy would result in spamming deep wound a whole lot more.

Will have to take a damage comparison to see if it'd be worth it. I don't have my comp working atm so if anyone else would like to test them out feel free. Otherwise when I get my comp up and running I will try it out.

Racthoh

Racthoh

Did I hear 7 heroes?

Join Date: May 2005

Scars Meadows [SMS], Guild Leader (Not Recruiting)

With Dark Fury I'd have the energy to hit Swift Javelin and Vicious Attack on recharge, as well as everything else (although I'd save EBSHonor until Dark Fury was up again to maintain the uptime of "Save Yourselves!"). Without Dark Fury I'd slot Spear of Lightning instead (assuming you have Order of Pain alongside Dark Fury) of Swift Javelin which made mashing the skills on recharge no longer an option as a result of the faster recharge and lack of adrenaline shout spamming. Occasionally I'd find myself swapping weapon sets for "There's Nothing To Fear!", Focused Anger, "For Great Justice!", and EBSHonor when I'd get overzealous with the two attack skills as I tried to make something die. "Find Their Weakness!" has a second less than twice the recharge of Vicious Attack at twice the energy cost so making the shift after the update was a simple transition. The only thing I noticed, hard mode specifically, was a lot more deep wounds coming from myself and my paragon heroes.

Slayer's Spear is twice the energy cost at half the recharge of Vicious Attack with a deep wound conditional that I'm not too fond of. If I can't get the deep wound and can't make something die I'd regret having it because +damage per energy is less than Vicious Attack and "Find Their Weakness!" (when you factor in the guaranteed deep wound). If you were to use Slayer's Spear I wouldn't use another attack skill with it, especially if con sets are a factor. In which case I'd consider... Bladeturn Refrain in the other spot? I'm not sure what could really replace the slot personally, at least with the mindset I have when playing the character. Maybe some kind of utility like Wild Throw just to speed up those annoying enemies with dodge stances.

"Find Their Weakness!" just has so much about it that I like. Pre-casting as already mentioned and peace of mind with Aggressive Refrain as Chthon brought up. While swapping head pieces to get a 25 second Aggressive Refrain is simple enough using "Find Their Weakness!" would definitely help newer players to the role who have troubles maintaining the echo. Another thing I really like about it is how it gets around Blind, by which I mean if I get Blinded I can shout at someone else and they'll get the deep wound on. A unique trait that I've grown quite fond of. Not only Blind mind you, but when I need to swap targets to maintain "Save Yourselves!" I can still get that deep wound on the real target I want dead. It's quite a handy skill to have around.

G Marci

Pre-Searing Cadet

Join Date: Sep 2009

Milky Way

P/

I didn't read the whole thread, i just want to say, that if you're playing with Heros & Henchman, You should bring Ebon Battle Standard... EBS effects minions too, and with a nice ebon rank, it can boost minion's dmg output nicely. It also effects spells (wich are not armor ignore-ing, so it doesnt effect discord) and normal attacks, and henchmen like to wand a lot.

In my oppinion Spear of Fury's only good use is to build up enaugh adrenaline for SY when the battle starts... in normal case you should be able to spam SY constantly without Spear of Fury.

And of course there is the all time favourite, Drunken master, i always use it if im lazy to spam Anthems for AR.

MercenaryKnight

MercenaryKnight

Forge Runner

Join Date: May 2006

Wolf of Shadows [WoS]

P/

I wonder if that battle standard ward would increase damage from the spirits. If so arkfenway + imbagon with battle standard would pump out a great deal of damage. Especially with signet of ghostly might to make them attack faster.

I also have to figure out if I am gonna be lazy or not with my voltaic spear. I usually never weapon swap from being so lazy, so I don't know if I should stick vampiric, furious or sundering mod on it. I will most likely add the vamp and switch, but it'll be annoying to go from an ugly spear to the voltaic all the time.

Ccat

Ccat

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Apr 2008

Quote:
Originally Posted by MercenaryKnight View Post
I wonder if that battle standard ward would increase damage from the spirits. If so arkfenway + imbagon with battle standard would pump out a great deal of damage. Especially with signet of ghostly might to make them attack faster.

I also have to figure out if I am gonna be lazy or not with my voltaic spear. I usually never weapon swap from being so lazy, so I don't know if I should stick vampiric, furious or sundering mod on it. I will most likely add the vamp and switch, but it'll be annoying to go from an ugly spear to the voltaic all the time. Ward Spell. You plant an Ebon Battle Standard of Honor at your current location. For 14...20 seconds, non-Spirit allies in this area strike for +8...15 damage and an additional +7...10 vs. Charr.

No Dice.

MercenaryKnight

MercenaryKnight

Forge Runner

Join Date: May 2006

Wolf of Shadows [WoS]

P/

Yeah I guess I never realized the tntf heal would help keep it up. I also shouldn't post when i'm tired since I may have realized the non spirit allies thing.

I kind of wish for pve you could have multiple offensive rit spirits and that the ward would increase their damage. That would be the most insane damage ever, bosses like duncan, mallyx and the like would go down so quickly.

MasterSasori

MasterSasori

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Dec 2007

USA

[Thay]

R/Mo

Thought that someone should mention Barbed Spear

because it can speed up discordway which is of course, all the rage.

And I like GftE just because I like spamming it and watch the blue bar go up. Not that it's necessary by any means.

MercenaryKnight

MercenaryKnight

Forge Runner

Join Date: May 2006

Wolf of Shadows [WoS]

P/

The only negative about barbed spear is no added damage. Generally gfte isn't needed because of save yourselves on the generic imbagon build is easy to spam. Just to add to the discussion.

MasterSasori

MasterSasori

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Dec 2007

USA

[Thay]

R/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ccat View Post
just to add, for 4second Imbas GftE! is a big nono because it subtracts from SY! which will need another hit to activate after the use of GftE!..
True. But not if ur 6 sec

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ccat View Post
Barbed Spear is kind of a waste. It doesn't work against non-fleshies, and if you are using Discord, Jagged Horrors should be spreading all the conditions you need with bleeding and Novas. It is also worthy to mention bleeding is the worst condition ever. Not necessarily. Not every Discord build runs Jagged Horrors and if u want to target a few specific monsters, I find this skill useful. Sometimes the condition spread doesn't go fast enough anyway. And yes it is the worst condition - but its still a conditon.