Skills - Spinal Shivers

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Wow, no comments yet on this great skill? Let me shed some enlightenment.

This is a GREAT interrupt that's not just for spells like most of a Mesmer's options, but ANY type of skill. You just need some cold damage for the trigger. Unfortunately, of all the Cold damaging skills he has Deathly Chill is the fastest at 1 second (5 sec. recharge) which would be less with my Mesmer's primary Fast Cast. At over .5 cast time and requiring the Spinal Shiver cast first, it would not be the most efficient use of an interrupt. Still, you can easily get three attempts before SS ends.

No, there is a better option... your Necro primary attack weapon! Grab any weapon that causes cold damage and you're in business. For me, I bought a great weapon on the Lion Arch black market to test this idea out:

Deadly Cesta, 11-19 Cold Damage, +5 Energy (when >50% Health)

So, I beef up my Curses line to 12, cast Spinal Shivers on a Monk, and guess what? For almost 30 seconds I'm snuffing out many of his heal spams as he tries to cast them. If he doesn't cast, fine, I'm still tagging him for wand damage as my energy recharges.

This is too awesome, so I build around it with my MeNe. I cast Backfire first, then a beefed up Life Transfer (E) and Life Siphon combo to max out degen. He has to wait out the 10 second Backfire (which DOESN'T dissapate when triggered), so my degens aren't quickly removed or regen countered with Healing Breeze.

By the time I've cast Spinal Shivers as the fourth skill (near the end of Backfire), I can start spamming the Cold blasts at him for a nice duration of time to interrupt almost anything he tries.

I also messed with Migraine (E), which I casted first, and it makes an AWESOME combo with SS. It doubles all cast times (with Arcane Conundrum it is 4x as strong!), so you can easily stop any and all spells with your custom interrupt as it does it's -3 degen.

I next went to PvP custom for another test. For kicks I grabbed a Warrior primary and put a Necro on as a sub and geared up with a Cold-hitting Cesta +15E -1 degen and a off hand with the same stats. That's +69 energy with NO regen, lol. Freaks out your teammates in arena seeing a Warrior announcing +69E, but I was testing.

I go at their monk with Life Transfer, Spinal Shivers, followed by Frenzy/Flurry barrages. SS with Flurry/Frenzy is indeed the most dominating interrupt combo in the game. That monk couldn't cast ANYTHING of a second or more. I stuffed like five heal spell attempts in a row before I solo took him down. Too funny to see his comments later... "WTH?!?!"

So, with a WaNe able to do that, surely a NeWa is much more suited for the ttask of having a secondary job of being a caster interrupter (besides your normal build). If they catch on and start kiting, they are still doing nothing for quite a bit of time. You can slip in some degen casts as you wait for him to get brave or run away from you. You are in total control with this setup. Since you get the idea, try it out yourself and see what kind of experiences you get.

Lol, good thing I dropped AC for another skill in the last hour. Thanks for the info.

For MeNe's and NeMe's, Wastrel's Worry is just a really nice compliment to this skill (along with Migraine). They are casting slow while WW is threatning damage three or four times before Spinal Shivers ends. They can TRY to cast, but they get stuffed for wand damage (11-22 in the PvP-only mode) as well as WW connecting nearly 100% of the time.

The beauty is, this is also an energy denial combo of sorts since they lose their casting energy everytime you interrupt. You have plenty of room on your skill bar for other applications of your build, making it pretty versatile. You can go pure Illusion and still have a viable interrupt ability (along with Curses of course). Domination doesn't have to be the primary line a Mesmer uses.

It takes 17 curses to drop the energy loss down to 4. That means 15 Curses and Awaken the Blood at least. However, if you do, your energy pool will most certainly thank you. Taking into account regeneration and wand/staff attack rate, your energy will last the entire duration of the hex. Even if you swap to an icy mod sword or axe, it should still last the duration. With speed buffs, not really sure, since you have to pay for those as well.
A very nice aspect is that since it isn't elite, you could have a mesmer secondary and take Energy Drain as your elite (and use mesmer skills to complement the build), or perhaps stick with blood and use Offering of Blood (Although it'd require you to sacrafice 15% if you used Awaken the Blood), and keep this up even longer.

I like the way you think.... this would have to be a primary Necro idea, but how about matching Aura of the Lich with Awaken the Blood? You take only -25% extra damage for your blood donations instead of -50% extra.

BTW Warrior sub class speed buffs are only 5E every 5 seconds. Not too taxing at all, most of the time you can regen energy since you are simply using your basic weapon after the initial setups.

Im gonna see if i can try this with a Ranger using marksmens wager to keep the energy cost up... someone suggested this on the forums...

try this:
R/N
Bow with Icy Bowstring

take these:

Quickening Zephyr
Marksmans Wager
Tigers Fury
Spinal Shivers

Zephyr will allow you to spam Wager and Shivers (if its removed).
The only things that can stop you from firing your machine gun are: blindness (easily removed though), price of failure and other hexes that cause you to miss, but nobody uses 'em (well, almost).

I got 25+ wins in a row in random 4x4 arena with this one like month and a half ago. Havent been playing for a month... Dont even know the current trend.
Anyway, try this

"I got 25+ wins in a row in random 4x4 arena with this one" . He is exagerrating or lying, you can't win 4x4 over 10 times in the random arena. You will switch to team arena after.

He said a month and a half ago... which would be before you were forced into team arenas after 10 wins.

I don't get why people don't use this more often...

I mean *slap* it's on! And then you can alternate with attacks and switch to a cold spell/attack to interupt for min of 6 energy...unless someone removes the hex.
But seriously this skill has much potential but is very underestimated.

I've been playing around with it a bit, and based of a build posted by Spura, I think it's really effective on a N/W. Unfortunately though, I was limited to testing in Competition Arena. I think if I had gone into Teams Arena with though, it would've been more effective....so the potential is there on a N/W, but I don't know how much in terms of 8v8.

Two months ago, I made a build with an E/N using this spell, and I was paired with a ranger friend. It was something like this:

E/N

Ice Spear
Desecrate Enchantments
Parasitic Bond
Spinal Shivers
Aura of Restoration
Water Attunement
Ether Renewal
Ressurection Signet

Notice I said this build was from two months ago :P This build went pretty well with Ether Renewal in terms of energy management when I had the entire thing set up properly. I had Energy Storage at 15 or 16 to get 4 or 5 energy back per enchant. Ice Spear was good for triggering the hex and Ether Renewal. And because I was second class necro, I could only get Curses up to 11 because that was the least amount to reduce the energy loss to 6 per interrupt. However, if I forgot to keep renewing enchantments, lost the hex, and ran out of energy before Ether Renewal was recharged, I was pretty much useless until I got enough energy back to do the combo.

Most casters were screwed once they got hit with this, though only in ONE battle did the targetted monk strafed left and right, and ice spear couldn't hit him. I plan to try this build again, though Ether Renewal's modifications deeply depressed me :P

If a E/N Casts it and a R/E (Cold) partners up with you it could get interesting

this is definitely a very powerful and highly unused skill.
i was thinking of going me/n with this and having illusion/curses/inspiration.
with inspiration stuff you can alternate interrupting with power drain/leech sig or put something like mantra of recall (or just any good energy management skill). this would keep your energy pool from being depleted and if you were wielding a cold weapon you could keep the target on lockdown while spamming stuff like phantasm and keeping migraine/arcane conundrum on your target. other ideas.......curses and illusion has great stuff to shutdown wars, so if you wanted to you could take some of that stuff to help keep them down, although then you might run the risk of draining your energy.....

Geez, this is indeed a very, very powerful skill. If you ask me, it's pretty darn close to being an elite...way too powerful to be a non-elite. Then again, perhaps it's not powerful enough to be an elite...? Bah, just my two cents.

Do you loose the E every time you hit the hexed target with cold, or only when you hit with cold and interupt?

It is indeed powerful. I've run SS in CA and TA quite successfully - it does however have weaknesses - you can run out of energy or the hex can be removed for example.

To answer the above, you only lose on an interruption.

This skill is great for farming the Furnace, as it shuts down the monk bosses and their MoP's.

Are there any quests where I can get Spinal Shivers or do I have to buy it in Ember Light?

Every non-elite can be obtained before Ember Light Camp somewhere. I don't happen to know where this one is, though.

It's in fisherman's haven sadly...good for those up there, bad for me right now. Dunno about quests though.

Can any one tell me which one of these work to interuppt using this skill
1. Use skill which deals cold damage
2. Use a staff/rod which uses gold dmg Cold dmg eg 16-24 cold dmg and shoot the basic blasts through the staff/rod.
3. Or cast any spell skill using a cold dmg staff/rod

Either 1 or 2, but not 3. You can also use a bow or melee weapon that deals cold damage, if you want to.