When Kappa Attack HM

kunder, what builds do you use with 2x MM? i'm assuming that AotL would eat up too many corpses for 2 MM to be able to maintain, but, discord or flesh golem coupled with other minions? i guess really, i'm just curious about the elite.

Quote: Originally Posted by mortenya

kunder, what builds do you use with 2x MM? i'm assuming that AotL would eat up too many corpses for 2 MM to be able to maintain, but, discord or flesh golem coupled with other minions? i guess really, i'm just curious about the elite. eww not discord, Jagged Bones. Or if you're positive you have great healers OoU.

I used 2x Order of Undeath MMs because I didn't want to deal with AotL taking 4s to cast and wanted maximum damage. That said, AotL certainly doesn't require a ton of corpses, I run it pretty much everywhere else (where I don't need to micro for maximum damage). OoU really doesn't need all that much extra healing, in some cases you actually get more health back then you sacrifice (keep in mind vamp horrors +damage means +health per hit). Also Dark Bond makes necromancers completely invincible anyway, its the equivalent of +80 armor that also works against armor ignoring damage so long as a minion is alive.

Myself:
AP/Auspicious/Arcane Echo/EVAS/Snow Storm/FH/Hex Eater Signet/Mantra of Resolve

MM skill sets:
OoU/Bone Fiend/Vampiric/Masochism/BotM/Dark Bond/SoLS/Prot Spirit or Spirit Bond

SoS:
SoS/Bloodsong/AR/Painful Bond/MB&S/Spirit Light/PwK/Spirit Siphon

SoGM:
SoGM/Pain/Shadowsong/Anguish/AoU/EoE/NR/BoC

Panic:
Panic/Wastrel's Demise/Unnatural Signet/CoF/Shatter Hex/Power Drain/WnWn/Hex Eater Signet

FD:
FD/Frag/Weaken Armor/Oppressive Gaze/Barbed Signet/Wandering Eye/Power Drain/Hex Eater Signet

(note: aim for 4-5s duration on the condition inflicters to maximize frag damage)

HB:
HB/Patient Spirit/Signet of Rejuvenation/Cure Hex/Power Drain/Hex Eater Signet/Elemental Resistance/Dwayna's Sorrow

Fairly standard builds overall, only a couple tweaks to suit the area and the use of NR. Only "special" build that you don't see run often is the FD (and why it isn't run often is something I don't understand, considering how well it combos with AP builds).

As I mentioned earlier, running it again I would probably go with EVAS/Snow Storm/EBSoH. Snow storm will easily do ~165 damage AoE before scatter gets them out, the full 270 if they get caught casting a spell when it triggers. Accumulated Pain getting switched in somehow to continue the AoE deep wound spreading would probably be good, not sure where I would put it though. Trying to fit Elemental Resistance on a few more characters would probably be a good idea too, Spirit Rift @ 100 damage is a lot less painful than Spirit Rift @ 200 damage.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kunder

Also Dark Bond makes necromancers completely invincible anyway, its the equivalent of +80 armor that also works against armor ignoring damage so long as a minion is alive. Dark Bond is one of those skills which I believe is ridiculously powerful, but every time I advocate it, it gets shot down by people that are convinced it is utter crap (apparently, only ultra-offensive builds are 'good'). It even works fine at 0 Blood magic.

That being said, this HM mission is a -lot- easier with FD daze interrupt spam. Fortunately for me, the Dwayna healer (being more or less hexproof) is still immune to any crap they can pull off. Scourge Enchantment is really nasty on EMos.

Funky build. No hard resses at all seems to leave very little room for error indeed. Still it contains a fair bit of interesting ideas.

I'll try it and see.

EDIT: Build did not work. Damage output was way lower than what I expect it to be, and the build collapsed and died once I lost AP (which tends to happen at least once a run, thanks to the Kappas' million hex removals - and I usually have both Norn shouts + EBVAS backing up AP). It doesn't help that Nature's Renewal interferes with Panic, Fevered Dreams and AP in addition to Painful Bond.

Either you are a lot better at micro than I, or there's something you're doing that I'm not.

Quote: Originally Posted by LexTalionis

Dark Bond is one of those skills which I believe is ridiculously powerful, but every time I advocate it, it gets shot down by people that are convinced it is utter crap (apparently, only ultra-offensive builds are 'good'). It even works fine at 0 Blood magic. Yes Dark Bond is actually a good skill. The problem most people see with it is it can shit on your minion army if the MM comes under constant fire.

i've tried running OoU before on MM heroes but watching their bar they rarely used it, or if they did it was at the end of a fight, do you micro that?

how well do heroes use FD without micro?

Quote: Originally Posted by Swingline

Yes Dark Bond is actually a good skill. The problem most people see with it is it can shit on your minion army if the MM comes under constant fire. Yes but you are saving your MM so it is working as intended. I like Dark Bond too.

What is interesting is, you can exploit the monster AI which causes them to target team members with lower hp. If your MM has a superior death rune and sacs with BoTM with Dark Bond, it would draw fire away from your other team members. You still have to watch out for AoE and enchant removal though.

Guys this is a Kappa, not Dark Bond, thread.

Anyway assuming the spawns don't get easier if Oroku dies, I can see some light at the end of the tunnel now: in the third spawn, I did end up wiping to the third wave, but only three Kappa were alive and a big part of that wipe was because I unluckily lost AP right at the start of that wave (z). The third wave is difficult because two waves hit at the same time. Though I didn't count the waves before the last run, this seems to be the wave that consistently wipes me. After that the remainder of the spawns were no trouble; the last wave especially was simple cake because they came from one direction.

I'm running my own builds now though; I'm quite doubtful Kunder's build can do the quest because of no resses + the fact that FD sucked in my run, but I did take a few ideas from it.

I wouldn't suggest running FD on heroes anyway, they're really terrible at it and chances are it'll get hit by hex removal before they follow it up with conditions.

AI use for FD is similar to any generic hex - it has no special priority and the AI doesn't seem to make special priority for the FD target for conditions. It is also highly counterproductive in caller AP spike builds; you ideally want the FD target to stick around as long as possible so that it can spread daze repeatedly. Calling a single target for FD and then spiking it to death in 2 seconds won't really faze a caster group badly.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jeydra I'm running my own builds now though; I'm quite doubtful Kunder's build can do the quest because of no resses + the fact that FD sucked in my run, but I did take a few ideas from it. I ran res scrolls myself. 2 deaths throughout the area. I'm sure you could integrate a few hardres skills if you wanted.

Quote: Yes Dark Bond is actually a good skill. The problem most people see with it is it can shit on your minion army if the MM comes under constant fire. The great thing is that BotM/animate skills are the best heals ever. Hero takes 1k damage -> minions take 750 damage -> BotM heals 130x10 health or animate completely remakes a 500 HP minion.

Its true that Dark Bond usually isn't needed. Casters sitting around at max range with 75 armor (often 85 armor if I bother to arm my heroes) don't get targetted often. But when you go up against strong AoE casters, especially ones that can come from behind, you want to protect against those random spikes that just coincidentally occur after the MM sacrificed half their health.

If you wanted aoe daze and cracked armor and don't intend for FD to last more than 5 seconds, I'd suggest Technobabble/Extend Conditions instead. It recharges faster and dazes faster.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kunder

I ran res scrolls myself. Lol

Quote: Originally Posted by LexTalionis

If you wanted aoe daze and cracked armor and don't intend for FD to last more than 5 seconds, I'd suggest Technobabble/Extend Conditions instead. It recharges faster and dazes faster. Doesn't inflict Cracked Armor or Deep Wound. Adjacent/Nearby AoE vs In the Area AoE (which is approximately 5x bigger). Requires a PvE skill slot (Technobabble isn't better than anything the AP already has).

Fevered Dreams recharges in ~6s after fast casting, you can't be much better than that. Just make sure you are running a Silencing spear for an extra second of daze if you feel the 3s isn't enough.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kunder

Doesn't inflict Cracked Armor or Deep Wound. Adjacent/Nearby AoE vs In the Area AoE (which is approximately 5x bigger). Requires a PvE skill slot (Technobabble isn't better than anything the AP already has).

Fevered Dreams recharges in ~6s after fast casting, you can't be much better than that. Just make sure you are running a Silencing spear for an extra second of daze if you feel the 3s isn't enough. Using your logic, FD doesn't inflict Cracked/Deep wound either. You get Cracked/Deep wound off Finish Him, which you could run with Extend anyway. FD takes 10 energy to cast, takes much longer to cast, and is kind of pointless when running around Kaineng with multitudes of Mesmers spamming Expel Hexes (which recharges in ~4s for enemies in HM, compared to your 6s recharge for FD) all over the place (or Hex Breaker Vortex, any other strong removal) etc etc, while Extend doesn't suffer from the same problem.

As I said, I'd normally pick FD, but only if I wasn't running an AP spike build. 3 seconds of daze (as you're spiking the target) isn't that much more effective than one cry of frustration. The range really isn't an issue since Extend recharges quickly and you could chain targets anyway.

Going Finish Him -> Extend Conditions is a lot harder than Fevered Dreams -> Finish Him, because FH kills the enemy most of the time. Not killing your target with FH greatly increases the risk of AP not triggering quickly enough.

The point about FD being removable with hex removal is valid, but the same is true for AP itself. FD only has to last for about ~1s to trigger correctly. When I play FD usually hits just as soon as my AP lands and the enemy dies off from FH (+YMLAD if its barred) .5s later, the risk of hex removal should be slight.

@Kunder

Well, you'd be right in most cases, it's just that this thread was talking about WoC and I really really hate Expel Hexes because I've never managed to run a smooth AP around anywhere infested with the jade brotherhood.

Btw, just a small math issue, but regarding something you brought up, "in the area" being 5x the size of "nearby" is a piece of bad math (usually "calculated" by substituting in 2 and 1.5 into　pi*r^2 which would give you 4 pi - 2.25 pi = 1.75 x 3.14 = 5.495pi or so), it's using the wrong benchmark (in factors of 1x radius), because to express it as a factor of the area of "nearby", you'd need to divide by nearby, not subtract, so the increased area would be 4pi/2.25pi = , making it only 1.778 times the size of "nearby".

This isn't really relevant to Jeydra's thread, and it isn't constructive at all, sorry

Edit: Oh, I see. WoC removes expel off the Mesmers. Ignore the above then.

All Kappa must die.




As always, tactics + micro > builds. I think I got lucky this time as well, as the first spawn of the third wave balled a bit too much and died quickly to the mass Fire Eles, which left me with enough time + room to set up spirit walls for the rest. I had quite a few deaths, but thanks to the UA, I lived through them.

FWIW I consider Res scrolls a consumable. Not only does it take a skill slot to fit in a hard res / Res Sig, the hard resses all carry major drawbacks, and the hero takes time to cast the res as well (or maintain in the case of UA). I was going to try Technobabble + Extend Conditions at some point, but it was never needed.

The difficulty of this quest is on par with or perhaps even harder than 4H / Foundry.

Quote: Originally Posted by Oroku

Ugh. I hate Kappas. Now I can finally go get Zei Ri

Grats! Very well done!

I didn't post my work-in-progress HM solo-WoC build, because it honestly wouldn't have helped you much - I use 3 Rit Heroes and quite high defense/low offence. Also, I didn't solo that Kappa quest, it's much more impressive that you could (Teamed with friends for Splinter/GDW abuse).

I'll have to try that fire magic build sometime, it looks interesting, especially the random Li Ming. Unfortunately, I kind of gravitate towards defensive builds, so it might not stick.

I gotta try Jeydra's team setup...
other guys' posts seem doubtful, since they don't post actual screenies of third cleansing spot win without cons on.

I personally always die on the one before the last wave at the third cleansing spot. It's just too many of em...
This is the setup I'm running