Thoughts on physical buffing and SoH bonders in particular

I was firstly tempted to put this in the Monk's subforum, but then i realized that there are also some generic questions, so i put it here.

*******************

So, i wanted to try a physical teambuild and i thought about two options. The first is the classic physical buffing system, with Barbs, MoP, SoH, OoV, GDW and possibly other buffs (Paragon?). Since the basic idea of this build is to add buffs to every single damage packet, it seems that the better option is to use one or two Locust's Fury assassins as damage dealers, because they can reach the highest attack speed possible, thanks to double strikes.

So i need a smiter who maintains two SoH's on the assa's, and i was wandering what would be the best profession to perform this role. I tried to use a monk in this way:

Mo/Rt: 12+1+1 Smiting, 12 Channeling
Ancestor's Rage, Splinter Weapon (or GDW if human), Bloodsong, SoS, Spirit Siphon, Castigation Signet, Smite Hex (or Ress), Strength of Honor.

Basically, the smiter spams Ancestor's and Splinter (or GDW), and uses spirits for minor damage and energy management. My concern with this build is that it seems to have poor bar compression: spirits are there mainly for energy management (few spirits without Armor of Unfeeling deal little damage and can't tank in hm) so i have 4 skills for energy management. Also, Smite Hex seems a bit weak, 70 holy damage in the area every 12 seconds (only if a hex is provided!).

The questions are: (1)how would you improve this build? (2)how can i replace SoS maintaining a decent energy management? (3)would a ritualist with the same build be better than a monk and why? (4)would you bring this kind of build in a HM dungeon, and if not, how do you bring Ancestor's, GDW (yes, i know ER Healers ), and SoH?

********************

The second option isn't technically "physical" because it's based on AoHM. The damage dealers in the frontline are now two scythe wielders with AoHM (probably assassins). The first thing to say is obviously that we lose Barbs, MoP and OoV, so i feel that this second option could be weaker than the first one.

However, the basic idea is to try to abuse armor penetration to boost damage in HM. Armor penetration is provided by: AoHM, Judge's Insight, Weaken Armor (well, this simply reduces armor).

My doubt regarding the use of assassins is this: assassins have critical strikes, but warriors have another 14% armor penetration. In this particular case, where we are trying to bypass monster's armor as much as possible, (5)do you think that Strength would be better than Critical Strikes? (Remember that the same armor reduction produces better effects the lower the base armor is, so i'm thinking at this 14% on top of all the other armor debuffs).

As far as the smiter's build is concerned, now our smiter has to spam ancestor's and splinter/GDW and maintain SoH (it doesn't add AP, but it's always 20 more damage), but now he has also to spam Judge's Insight (10 energy) on the two frontliners. One solution is to add Judge's Insight to the previous bar (maybe removing Smite Hex), hoping that the energy management would work. The second solution i thought about seems really awful..however here it is:

Mo/Rt 12+1+1 Smite, 12 Chan, 3+1 Divine (3 seconds of downtime for Scribe's)
Ancestors, GDW, Blessed Signet, Castigation Signet, Scribe's Insight, Smite Hex (or Ress), Judge's Insight, SoH

Ok, i admit it: i was looking for a way to use Scribe's Insight. However again: (6)how would you improve this build? (7)Do you think that this kind of buffing system (AP) is so much worse than the classic physical buffs, or maybe it has some uses?

And, more generally: (8)what are your suggestions about which classes and builds can use effectively SoH, Judge's, GDW, Ancestor's? (9)Am i missing some other nice buffs (like paragon's) that we can throw in?


Thank you very much for the patience you had reading this wall of text. As always, i apologize for my terrible english.

Is this meant to be a hero hench build? Are you running with humans? Are humans running the sins etc... lots of more important questions... however to answer the basic fundamentals, I like to buff my war when going in HM, and since I like SoH, splinter/arage, AND barbs/mop etc I need to bring 2 chars to buff me. I like to bring a N/Mo with barbs, mop, SoH, Smite Hex, Signet of lost souls, and 3 optionals for elite, more support skills, rez, etc. And the other I usually bring SoS with splinter and a-rage. Hitting 14 channeling for splinter is nice for the 5th attack buff.

However that is when going with heroes. I then bring an MM coz they take advantage of barbs mop like insane.

If I was going with people, and was putting up 2 SoH bonds id probably bring a Monk/Rit with SoH, Life Bond, and Balth Spirit. Life Bond because I dont like the concept of a sin in the frontline that much and bond atleast transfers half the damage to the monk. Furthermore through balth spirit that'll probably give the monk enough energy to spam GDW on the 2 sins, with a free elite slot and options. The second I would bring would either be an AP MoP Nuker, or a Blood/Curse necro with MoP/Barbs/Orders.

So to specifically answer your questions without a wall of text:

1) See up
2) Bonds turned into yourself for balth spirit energy, or the smiting elite hex (a dodge option, but an option nonetheless)
3) Depends, the 14 channeling is nice but it depends on what else the monk is doing
4) Yes, and with more then 1 character
5) Yes, especially since the buff to fear me... could make it similar in terms of crits to a sin, not the same but more.
6) Pass... id revamp entire build
7) MoP aoe + Barbs for single target is soo powerful thats y I prefer it over scythes... however scythes are very powerful. Both good options
8) Ancestors can be thrown on anything with no secondary and a couple of att points to spare. GDW anything with good e-manage, necro, ele, some monks, some mesmer. Judges gets exponentially better in HM due to more armor and would probs run that on a monk to get the most out of SoH.
9) Not really... id probably throw an imbagon into the team build for survival, and if using the phys buffs it buffs the gon 2. However the few remaining phys buffs keep getting pvpnerfed.

Quote: Originally Posted by Luminarus Is this meant to be a hero hench build? Are you running with humans? Are humans running the sins etc... I'm sorry if haven't been clear enough on this point in my OP. However i was mainly thinking about a team of human players, maybe with some heroes. In particular, the Locust's Fury build has to be played by humans, to use Critical Agility as a permanent 33% IAS, otherwise that same elité becomes meaningless, because it isn't true any more that these assassins can reach the highest possible attack speed. For similar reasons, the scythe wielders frontliners have to be human, to use AoHM, and also the player who has GDW, being it the bonder or the ER infuser.
If the bonder doesn't have GDW, i think it could even be a hero, unless the build is difficult to be used by a hero for some reason. So, let's pretend that all party members are human (in the best of all worlds ).

Quote: Originally Posted by Luminarus

Locust's Fury is a complete waste on humans, jb->ff->db is going to pump many more hits/time. Some people played around with them on sin heroes who aren't as reliable at spamming attack chains.

The scatter from a single RoJ is not a big deal, they will take 4 or so pulses before running, unless you are lining people up for MoP->100b explosion.

Quote: Originally Posted by FoxBat

My 2 cents

1. the N/Mo suggestion from Luminarus is pretty good. also giving you a better Rit bar for the Sprits
2. Defender's Zeal is pretty good imo, keep Castagion Signet 2
3. That kind of depends. The breakpoint of Splinter is 14, and provided (the majority of) foes are nicely balled up most of the time, that would add alot more damage then Strength of Honor @ 14. If you don't bother getting the mobs in a nice ball and go with single targets, then monk would be better.
4. Most of the time I bring some kind of damage buff. When I H/H I usually have to bring counters to the biggest threaths on my heroes, sometimes leavin little room to take all those nice damage buffs. With a good prepared human team, there always is multiple buffs.
5. Crit Strikes > Strength. Although I havn't tried a W/D yet, I was amazed of the A/D damage
6.Defender's Zeal I think
7. Damage buffs like Barbs ignore armor if I'm not mistaking, so yes i think thats better then armor penetration. on top of that. if HM monsters have alot of armor. so you get: Alot of armor - AP = decent armor.
9. Paragon Buffs usually only apply to 1 attack (making it pretty big). I don't think that fits in what you are trying to do. The only other damage buff I can think of right now is Ebon Battle Standard of Honor

Also what fox bat said is true I think (not sure). Let me clarify
If you have 2 sins.. 1 with Locusts and crit agility.. and 1 with js>ff>db and crit agility.. and you let them attack a target for 1 minute.. the second sin will have dealt more hits then the first sin.. not to mention more damage because of the actual attack chain

why are you going channeling? spend the rest in divine favor and use blessed signet of e-management. Use smiter's boon +reversal of dmg. If you want someone for utility instead, take a signet smiting mesmer w/ soh.

btw from my experience playing sin, I would say that the only reason I would play locust over crit scythe is for SY! The dmg of crit scythe is still going to be better. If you got a target w/ a lot of health, yeah, locust might be better in the long run, but that's not going to be the case a lot of the times when you just want a short burst of large dmg

Quote: Originally Posted by upier

Posters have shown (in the thread you linked!) that LF in fact hits a lesser number of times than JB-FF-DB in the same amount of time (due to the increased attack speed of JD and FF).
That's why you don't want to run Locust's. This, plus you also loose out on the inherent +damage and extra effects of the attack skills..which stack with the +damage from the outside buffs too.

JS+ff+db > locusts, for its own +damage, compressed attack speed and ability to proc buffs more often than locusts anyway. The math in the other post covers it all.

Quote: Originally Posted by upier

Quote: Originally Posted by Tenebrae

EDIT:

You posted while i was writing, so read the next things remembering that i didn't read the last 4 posts . However, i don't want another discussion over LF, which would be totally off topic. Thank you.

ORIGINAL REPLY:

Ok very nice replies, thank you all

First of all: the LF subject. I read the thread i've posted before and i've seen a lot of quote/theory war, and in the end it seems that both LF, MS and WotA would be useful. This really makes me remember the endless Armor vs. Health war . What i've learned from the latter is that when two sides fight against each other with all those arguments, calcultions and such, probably both are good options, and trying to decide which one is absolutely better than the other becomes silly.

So, for the first kind of build (the "physical" one), i think that two assassins with Moebius, WotA or Locust's, buffed in the way we are saying, can all be good choices. Choose what you prefer.

Quote: 5. Crit Strikes > Strength. Although I havn't tried a W/D yet, I was amazed of the A/D damage Luminarus seems to disagree . As before, however, let's say that both warrior and sin are good choices as scythe wielding. Maybe you can choose warrior if you want to bring sy, as already said.

Quote: btw from my experience playing sin, I would say that the only reason I would play locust over crit scythe is for SY! The dmg of crit scythe is still going to be better. If you got a target w/ a lot of health, yeah, locust might be better in the long run, but that's not going to be the case a lot of the times when you just want a short burst of large dmg Agree, but i was comparing two different build concepts: the first based on buffing every physical damage packet (this synergize good with barbs ecc.), and the second based on providing the highest Armor Penetration possible, through AoHM, Judge's etc. If a sin wielding a scythe can outdamage easily a sin with daggers, when they are alone, what about the same two sins with the buffs framework (provided by the entire party) i described before?

*******

Now for the casters:

Quote: 1. the N/Mo suggestion from Luminarus is pretty good. also giving you a better Rit bar for the Sprits Wouldn't be better an AP MoP caller? This means that the barbs/mop necro can't carry SoH.
Let's suppose that the party consists of all human players. If we agree that one necro is fine as an AP MoP, what about a second necro going N/Mo OoV+SoH? Soul reaping+SoLS should kill any energy issue.

N/Mo 10+1+1 Blood, 12 Smite, 8+1 Soul Reaping
OoV, SoH, SoLS, Mark of Fury

And why not this one:

N/Mo 10+1+1 Blood, 12 Smite, 8+1 Soul Reaping
BiP, OoP, Dark Fury, SoH, SoLS, ...

with a little help for the assa's adrenaline gaining. Maybe also Strip Enchantments if needed. GDW could be in the ER infusers bars (where it belongs imho).

Quote: Originally Posted by Swahnee So, for the first kind of build (the "physical" one), i think that two assassins with Moebius, WotA or Locust's, buffed in the way we are saying, can all be good choices. Choose what you prefer. Sure. Even an auto-attacking Elementalist will do nice damage buffed well enough; Locust's, Moebius, and WoTA are all high enough efficiency each would work well.
Quote: Agree, but i was comparing two different build concepts: the first based on buffing every physical damage packet (this synergize good with barbs ecc.), and the second based on providing the highest Armor Penetration possible, through AoHM, Judge's etc. If a sin wielding a scythe can outdamage easily a sin with daggers, when they are alone, what about the same two sins with the buffs framework (provided by the entire party) i described before? This is about what you can expect from your standard WoTA Blossom spammer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqvkFNa7Ys0&hd=1

Quote:

Wouldn't be better an AP MoP caller? This means that the barbs/mop necro can't carry SoH. Let's suppose that the party consists of all human players. If we agree that one necro is fine as an AP MoP, what about a second necro going N/Mo OoV+SoH? Soul reaping+SoLS should kill any energy issue. N/Mo 10+1+1 Blood, 12 Smite, 8+1 Soul Reaping OoV, SoH, SoLS, Mark of Fury And why not this one: N/Mo 10+1+1 Blood, 12 Smite, 8+1 Soul Reaping BiP, OoP, Dark Fury, SoH, SoLS, ... with a little help for the assa's adrenaline gaining. Maybe also Strip Enchantments if needed. GDW could be in the ER infusers bars (where it belongs imho). Yeah, ER infuser can spam GDW on recharge, which means keeping it up on four party members or so if he's good enough to cast out of combat. Cultist's Fervor + OoP works well enough if you want effectively infinite e-management with SolS and Angorodon's. Heroes will use the blood magic build perfectly, though they can run down if out of combat too long with 4-5 SoH. Quote: I only wanted to see if traveling along the armor penetration route would be effective, i don't mean more effective than the physical one, just a nice alternative to it. Yep. Shards of Orr was truly lol with scythe / dagger users and all the holy damage buffs. Quote: This brings up another problem with channeling. If we use GDW, splinter isn't required any more, so the only channeling skill left is Ancestor's. Do you think it's good to invest 10 points in channeling only for this skill? Maybe not. Agreed.

Quote: Originally Posted by Malician This is about what you can expect from your standard WoTA Blossom spammer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqvkFNa7Ys0&hd=1 If this is to say that the best choice for the "physical" teambuild is the daggers sin, then i fully agree with you. As said, the scythe is for the second way.

Quote: Originally Posted by Swahnee

If this is to say that the best choice for the "physical" teambuild is the daggers sin, then i fully agree with you. As said, the scythe is for the second way.



Really nice suggestion. I have to try it.

So for the physical teambuild we are now at:

1. A/W SY Dagger Sin #1 (Locust's, Moebius, WotA)
2. A/W SY Dagger Sin #2
3. N/A AP MoP
4. N/Mo Order Smiter
5. E/Mo ER GDW Infuser

It seems that with 5 players we've got all we need: nice bar compression, i think. Maybe we can add a minion bomber hero to tank and make barbs+mop damage burst into the sky, and another ER if needed, and maybe a spirit spammer (with Ancestor's, yes ).

However, nobody is saying anything about the second route. Do you think that boosting armor penetration the way i said would be useful (obviously i'm talking about HM, dungeon etc.) even if we can't bring all those nice physical buffs? Will you be brave enough to run through DoA HM without our beloved physicals buffs, but with two "holy reapers" instead?

And...uhm...there's no room for my little monkette here!! :'( The only real difference between the two is the substitution of AoHM and JI for Orders and the MoP nuker; the real cost here is the loss of Rigor Mortis, which is awesome antiblock. You still have SoH and GDW. If it's the second or third spell, Barbs often won't have time to cast before the target dies anyway, even with Mindbender.

Two phys isn't enough imho; I like three; four is nice if they're untrustworthy.

Quote: Originally Posted by Tenebrae So yes , for autoattacking heroes and stacking buffs , LF > JS+FF+DB. Words are cheap , try yourself and youll see. Quote: Originally Posted by Swahnee

However i was mainly thinking about a team of human players, maybe with some heroes. In particular, the Locust's Fury build has to be played by humans So with That information, JS+ff+db+free elite > locusts auto attack spammer, as its for humans.

Although you are correct in the fact that, IF you for some stupid reason to run sin heroes, then LF is indeed an easier option for heroes to run effectively as they blow donkey balls with attack chains in general and dont use then to max potential.

1. To conclusively settle the question about LF, I offer cold, hard math.

Also, keep in mind that the only person arguing in support of LF happens to believe that 3 times 1.8 equals 6, so I wouldn't pay him much heed.

2. Generally, yes on Orders-SoH to replace the Splinter-SoH. If you have either (a) GDW on your team, or (b) at least 3 physicals with decent packet-spam abilities, or both, then it's definitely a better choice than Splinter-SoH. I'd only consider Splinter-SoH for a H+H team. (Also, Rt/Mo is clearly superior due to the huge scaling on Splinter above 12 channeling.)

In areas where cleaning is more important than pure damage, Me/Mo is also a viable choice.

3. On the overall team build:
Quote:

1. A/W SY Dagger Sin #1 (Locust's, Moebius, WotA) 2. A/W SY Dagger Sin #2 3. N/A AP MoP 4. N/Mo Order Smiter 5. E/Mo ER GDW Infuser Looks fine. I'd round it out with a second ER so they can safely bond (4 is a lot easier to hold than 8), a third physical for more damage, and a MM. (In UW balanced clear, the MM is swapped for a SoS or a number of reasons. There's other conceivable situations you'd want to replace the MM with something else as well.) Two thoughts on the MoP that go in opposite directions: A. As buffed melee damage increases, the usefulness of MoP decreases. When the physicals are averaging over 100dmg per hit, things don't last long enough for MoP to do much. A team with good buffs on good packet spammer physicals who do their jobs well requires some pretty big mobs (Urgoz, DoA, some parts of UW...) to justify a position for a MoP. It's a case of an anti-synergy which had traditionally not been an issue getting driven to the surface by power creep. B. A 100lols warrior is a MoP's best friend. That should probably be the third physical if the MoP is staying. 4. I'm not a big fan of WotA sins. Unless you're doing so much damage that everything is dying before you can execute JS-->FF-->DB-->MS-->DB, a MS build is still going to have superior damage. WotA adds trivial damage, e-management you don't really need, and a free PvE slot, which usually gets used for BuH, which doesn't impress me without AP. To be clear though, WotA is a perfectly viable build that I just happen not to like. (LF, however, is pure junk.) [edit: 5. Oh yeah, Scythes. Forgot about those. Two points: A. Perfectly compatible with standard buffs if you just remove AoHM (and any other damage type conversion skills) and run EBSoHonor instead. The damage is comparable with a couple other melee along, and superior with minions along. The micro-AoE on an attack-spam build more or less matches sin attack chains for packet spamming in its way. B. I've forgotten what I was going to write for point B. Maybe it will come back to me.

Quote: Originally Posted by Swahnee

I really can't see anything really useful, amongst these elites, that belongs to this build. Well, to be honest this is actually the problem i found when i started thinking about a good, balanced smiter build: the lack of a good elite for a support build. Anyone has some idea on this subject? Ehh, how 'bout Signet of Judgement? ...kd's target and (?) adjacent foes take holy damage?

holleratchalater,

Fellfoot

Quote: Originally Posted by Chthon 1. To conclusively settle the question about LF, I offer cold, hard math.
Also, keep in mind that the only person arguing in support of LF happens to believe that 3times 1.8 equals 6, so I wouldn't pay him much heed. Still dropping that BS lies ? even in the posts you have in favorites ( lol how lame is that ) i NEVER said specifically that 3*1.8 equals 6 , you should cut the crap.
Instead of waiting for any key word to drop your sht , read that i said here that LF is a very good option for SIN HEROES wich happen to get double strikes most of the time or 80% of the times because like we all know ( except you ofc ) 1.8 hits dont happen in GW , only 1 or 2.

Quote: Originally Posted by Chthon