B/P groups getting as bad as IWAY groups now

My BP build:

Barrage
Distracting Shot
Dust Trap
(insert spirit here)
Charm Animal
Comfort Animal
Troll unguent
Rebirth

Sometimes I like to have 1 ranger without a pet as a dedicated puller/spirit spammer (sometimes pets will screw up your aggro when you pull). The dust trap is emergency protection for the casters in the rear (plus dusting a wurm is always funny)

I havent BP in a while, the PUGs must be going downhill :/

I feel your pain... all of you.

I gave up on ToPK B/P teams when I joined a team and was called a n00b for not bringing any Traps...... That was it for me.. BP teams do NOT need traps.

Ive now turned to ToA and making FOW B/P teams. This works great and the money is better. After 12 runs in clearing FOW with BP rangers ive made many a convert for this type of build for FOW. If you have not tried it Barrage Pet builds work almost anywhere.

I have to disagree on not putting any points into Beast Mastery however. Many times my Pet has dealt 145 on a Menzie Elementalist or Monk when maxing out my Beast Mastery. The Pet skills are pretty deadly when used properly.

Trust me, they are...(at least they have been for me anyway.)

Although he shouldn't have ragequitted, it IS the groups responsbility to ensure everyone knows their role. Not everyone plays Guild Wars all the time, and there is nothing wrong with teaching time something new, and you have to remember that at one time you were a noob too.

I'm pretty sure all of us were noobs at some point. And when compared to someone who knows far more in some way or another, many of us still have some noobness in us. This thread fails.

but atleast when iwas noobish i would surrendeer when i was proven wrong.

recently i have had 2 things happen to me in b/p groups because of the outragous amount of noobness inb/p groups.

1. I was kicked from a group because i told the leader his apply poison didnt work with barrage.

2. I pointed out that because of grasping fingers popups are immune to blindess when they attack rangers, so a stance is better than bringing dust trap or blinding dust. Needless to say i was kicked out of this group because of my "noobness".

Its not really the noobs that annoy me in particular. The noobs have an excuse, they are new but they have the skills.

Its the morons who refuse to learn. (this applies to anything) like the monks who run into battles first or go along with the tank to heal him, forgetting that the army of berserkers will then go turn him into mince meat. Then the next group doing the same thing!

My B/P build for FoW: (if your 2ndary isn't Mo you better be using the damn thing for somet!)

Barrage (This skill should practically replace your normal attack command)
Savage Shot
Throw Dirt
Judges Insight - 13 seconds (Can you do 250 damage in a single savage shot with orders?)
Spirit or some possibly Veil
Charm Animal
Comfort Animal
Rebirth

Problem is the lack of selfhealing from Unguent, but surely Vig Spirit + OoV do that?

My Order:

Order of Vamp
Order of Pain
Blood Ritual
Enfeebling Blood (Seriously, berserkers hate me!)
Heal Area
Heal Other (Could probably replace this with Breeze)
Heal Party
Rebirth

My Monk (pure healer):

Healing Hands/WoH (depends on my mood)
Orison of Healing
Dwaynas Kiss
Healing Touch
Heal Other
Vigourous Spirit <---- Any monk without that for barrage ideally needs to be kicked
Holy Veil <---- Any monk without some form of hex removal should too
Restore Life <---- If they screw up so bad you actually need that rebirth its there own damn fault!

Holy Veil & Vigorous Spirit are very bad for Tombs. When they get stripped, and they will every time, it hurts - A LOT! Any enchantment down there will suffer the wrath of the chained soul's "rend enchantments."

This thread in NO way fails.2-3 great builds posted in this thread alone,any "noob" should take knowledge posted here and learn.But there is always the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOy Tard that doesn't listen and go with the team. Some players dont even know basic movement.I can't hold noobs hand and teach him to become a Jedi

LOL....

Fingers of Chaos is kind of like warrior's cunning, it will hurt you through evasion or blocking stances if you are part Ranger. However, being blind is being blind. You cant hit anything while blind. Fingers of Chaos does not negate the effect of being blind.

Hi, Orders are enchantments.

Bye.

Thanks for pointing that out, but they only last for 5 seconds anyway. So Rend Enchantments is not really threat to them...

Fair enough - I revise my statement: Prolonged enchantments will suffer the wrath of the chained soul's "rend enchantments."

i have a funny story about new people doing b/p in tombs..this R/e brought firestorm instead of BARRAGE because he said that it would do more damage..lmao..go figure..

Judges Insight ftw. I love it and it works great with Barrage. I take it almost everywhere I take barrage now.

Just dont use it (or conjure anything) when using an orders necro.

Why not? Order of the Vampire only doesn't work with other necro enchants. Then again, I've never tried a B/P party myself so I'm not entirely sure. Any suggested builds for an orders necro?

Judge's Insight converts damage to holy. Orders only work on physical damage.

Oh, that's right...thanks for the clarification.

Comments: this MM wasnt pulling anything, he was just an idiot.

On the Terrorwebs on both sides part of Scarred Earth this is where alot of rangers die, sometimes teams die.

I like to:
First take out any Grasps and etc from long range standing outside the archway. The Terrorwebs standing there do minimal stuff this way.
Then when the area is decently cleared on the ground floor, rangers pick their Terrorweb they want on, and the rangers rush into the pathway there and get on their assigned terror. Once every terror's Metoer Shower has been interupted, we can call a target and finish them off.

On beforeplanning: In that group we DID do beforeplanning and made sure every b/p knew that b/p meant BARRAGE SLASH PET, and made sure the MM and Orders knew their job.

On Pets:
1) I was called a "noob" one day because my pet was lvl19 at the time. That was dumb.
2) People trying to heal their pets make me mad, goes right along with my pet being lvl19...the point isnt for the pet to be there all the time tanking, its point is to DIE to give the necro minions and soul reaping.

This happend to me once a couple weeks ago.

Leader: "spirit check"
leader's guildy: "Winnow"
Me: "backup win"
leader: "we dont need backup"
Me: "Its good to have just incase"
leader: "He's my guildy, he wont quit"
Me: "But the spirit sometimes gets killed after getting put down then you are left without a spirit"
Leader: "OMG"
/kicked

Me: .....lol

I was actualy typing "alright then I'll bring something else if you insist" at the time but he didnt even give me the chance before he kicked me.

Then I had a couple groups after that where someone quit in the first level so we started over and a couple times where someone forgot spirits/pets. I went about 3 hours before I got a group that made it to the 3rd level then we all died because the remaining survivor tried 1vs1 a terrorweb instead of running.

Yeah you do all realise that every single build i posted up there was for use in the FISSURE OF WOE!.

Perhaps you should also of read my comment after it, do Order stack with Judges Insight?

'Judges Insight - 13 seconds (Can you do 250 damage in a single savage shot with orders?)'

No, i knew that moron. My point is that Order do jack shit in comparison to Judges Insight vs Skeletons. I have never once done 250 damage to an Icehand with orders, or even close to it. Plus its a nice started, cast it before the fight and get a few barragers in before the order necro gets going and you'll still own.

I would also like to know Kook:

'Holy Veil & Vigorous Spirit are very bad for Tombs. When they get stripped, and they will every time, it hurts - A LOT! Any enchantment down there will suffer the wrath of the chained soul's "rend enchantments."'

Rend Enchantments gets cast so rarely down there that i really don't see that entering into anything. If you think Holy Veil is bad for the tombs then i think you need to use it properly. Vig Spirit will surely be covered by Orders anyway. And just incase you didn't get it earlier. FISSURE OF WOE NOT TOMBS!

Well to be fair you don't NEED a 2nd Winno. FW is vital since you'll miss all the sodding time if your using a long/flat bow, winno just gives it that extra kick (in the nuts).

In FoW earlier i found yet more 1337 Barrage teams. The good ol' Apply Poison ranger. This skill can be made useful if you spread it around then barrage but no, this idiot was attacking the same enemy with Power Shot over and over before using Barrage to no effect.

2 N/E. Order and MM. Order didn't use it, MM used Flare and Meteor and Meteor Shower. Making me wonder how much of those skill points he had left on Soul Reaping... Also he kept running in first, fair enough you say it sends the minions in to block... Agreed but the tit didn't run away afterwards or any other time in fact so i ended up spending most the trip healing his sorry ass.

Then in the forest both the MM and Order left within 5 minutes of each other..................

Preface:

Some of this I posted before, but I decided to expand on it into more of an overall B/P group guide so I included it again. Sorry for the redundancy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A suggested typical B/P build

5 B/P Rangers, 1 Orders Necro, 1 MM Necro, 1 Healing Monk

B/P Ranger(R/Mo)

Attributes:
Marksmanship: 16 (12+3+1)
Wilderness: 9 (8+1)
Expertise: 11 (10+1)
Beast: 0

Gear:
Armor - Drakescale is the best. As a barrage ranger, energy isn't an issue. Barrage is completely spammable, and having the added fire protection is a lifesaver when dealing with multiple terrorwebs.
Bows - any fast short-medium range bow is fine - the BEST bow (IMO) is Elswyth's Recurve Bow (5:1 Vamp, 15%>50, +30 health) or any other 4:1 or 5:1 vamp fast bow. Remember to bring a second NON-vamp bow, so you can switch back and forth and not have the constant -1 health drain. I use Drago's Flat Bow (sundering) but to each his own.

Skills:

Keep in mind this is MY particular build, which works for me. Others may prefer slightly different skills, but there are a few key skills everyone needs to have:

Barrage (Elite)
Charm Animal
Comfort Animal
Rebirth (or Res, but B/P rangers SHOULD be R/Mo)
Concussion, Savage or Distracting shot (some interrupt) for wurms in levels 3 and 4 and terrorwebs everywhere. I prefer Concussion because it deals with the terrorwebs very nicely.

That leaves three skill slots you can tailor, BUT:

One slot needs to be either a spirit (Favorable Winds or Winnowing) *OR* Throw Dirt. Throw Dirt will save your life.

For my last two slots, I carry Ignite Arrows and Dual Shot. There are plenty of times where barrage isn't the ideal skill to use when killing monsters. Wurms for one. Single monsters, or when the enemy mob scatters and barrage is only hitting a single target. Terrorwebs in level 2 sitting up on mounds that can only be hit singly. When the monk is running around impersonating a chicken with no head being chased by a monster and someone needs to kill it for him. Long range sniping.

I also use Ignite Arrow/dual Shot when I rez my pet and my skills are blacked out, especially at the beginning of a map, so the MM can reuse my pet's corpse repeatedly. I normally don't rez my pet immediately, I usually wait until most of the pets are dead, then I will apply preparation, rez pet, and continue doing single shot damage until my barrage is available again. It makes the whole team more effective, at least from my perspective.

Other rangers bring something like Apply Poison, or a trap, that's up to them.

Orders Necro (N/Mo)

Attributes:
Blood: 16 (12+3+1)
Soul Reaping: 11 (10+1)
Curses: 9 (8+1)

Skills:

Order of Pain
Order of the Vampire (Elite)
Blood Ritual
Life Siphon
Faintheartedness
Shadow of Fear
Shadow Strike
Rebirth

The core skills for an Orders necro are Order of Pain (OOP), Order of the Vampire (OOV), and Blood Ritual (BR). You simply alternate orders. I use life siphon to spread degen around so that I'm gaining at least 3-6 pips of health regen as I'm taking health hits from sacrificing. Blood Ritual is simply for the monk, as needed. If you're good enough to keep up with casting Life Siphon on several targets, cast orders, cast BR for the monk then you can cast the other three spells to simply hurry up the death process and slow down the monster atttacks.

While it's true that ANet nerfed OOV a bit in a recent (March 2006) update, I'm not quite sure why suddenly builds abandon one or the other (OOP or OOV). There is no problem bringing BOTH order spells as long as you don't try and stack them, and both have their uses in certain situations. With both the MM and the Orders Necro, the position in

Tombs (old HoH) is fairly one demensional so there tends to be extra slots for extra skills. Since both the MM and the Orders Necro only are required to bring 3-4 skills as a minimum, the rest if personal preference, at least from my POV. I prefer to use both orders, BR the monk as needed, and cast life siphon to regen health as I sacrifice it. Casting BR allows the monk to also keep you alive, but it's not 100% neccessary if you play this build correctly. In other words, the monk and the orders necro need to work closely together as a team to compliment each other's skills.

MM Necro (N/Mo)

Attributes:
Death: 16 (12+3+1)
Soul Reaping: 11 (10+1)
Blood: 9 (8+1)

Skills:

Animate Bone Fiend
Animate Bone Horror
Blood of the Master
Verata's Sacrifice
Offering of Blood (or Life Transfer)
Life Siphon (or Order of Pain or Order of the Vampire)
Heal Area (or Blood Ritual)
Rebirth

First, the core skills for a MM are the two Minion spells, Blood of the Master, and Verata's Sacrifice. Again, everything else is personal preference. The main considerations for Tombs are the fact that there are very large # of mobs with exploitable corpses, pets will be dying constantly, and if you're in a good pick up group (or a guild run) you will have endless amounts of minions and energy. On the other hand, because of the terrorwebs and siege wurms, your minions can also die just as quickly. The end result will be lots of energy to spend. I bring Order of Blood (OOB) to use at the beginning of a map only, to kickstart minion creation. After that, you'll be swimming in energy, and you'll only need OOB if all of your minions die at once and you'll need to rebuild your army.

The MM can be a self perpetuating killing machine and can make the entire trip a breeze. I personally think the MM is the key to a good group, much like Oro Farming in SF. A good MM can make or break the party with it's sheer damage output. Tombs can be done in as little as 30-40 minutes, and most of it because of the MM and correct pulling/aggro by the ranger assigned that task.

The key is to alternate casting Horrors and Fiends to quickly build up your army. MMs that only bring one or the other are not nearly as efficient in exploiting corpses, and horrors are vital in acting as meat shields.

Generally, I've seen MMs only bring Fiends, which is a mistake. They die very fast, and cost a ton of energy to raise. While it's true they do frightening amounts of damage, they need to stay back out of melee range. Horrors provide this service. You can't count on the ranger's pets to act as shields as they die even quicker than fiends.

Cast Verata's Sacrifice as soon as it is recharged. Use blood of the master between battles. One trick some MMs miss - gather your minions closer together if the minions spread out in a circle by moving slightly. The minions will fall in to rank close around you, and makes your blood of the master much more effective. You can also cast Heal Area between blood of the master for additional healing, but I normally don't need it. There is also a widely held myth that monk healing accellerates minion death - this is pure bunk. Minion's health degen is a linear progression and isn't effected by the healing the minions receive.

But because of the nature of Tombs, healing may not be much of an issue for your minions. There are so many corpses to exploit, and so much damage that will take out your army, that you'll find your minion army constantly suffering from turnover anyway.

In Life Siphon, OOP, OOV, BR, etc. The single reason why I bring these skills is in case the OTHER necro drops for some reason. As a MM in Tombs, you're only creating minions, and only need 4 skills to do so. Life Siphon is only to offset OOB. If you aren't having energy issues, you can drop OOB and simply run Life Transfer (the best elite in the game, IMO) for adding degen to offset your own sacrifice if you have to start casting OOP/OOV for whatever reason.

Monk

I am no monk expert, so I can only provide some basic info for any monks joining a B/P group for Tombs.

DO NOT bring a boon prot monk to Tombs! A simple, standard WoH (Word of Healing) Monk is all that is needed. There are only two additional spells besides your typical Healing Breeze, Dwana's Kiss, Orison of Healing, Heal Party, Heal Other build you should consider - Protective Spirit and Inspired Hex. Protective Spirit will get stripped, but it's a lifesaver versus massive damage - for the puller for example. Inspired hex (Mesmer Spell) is for energy management. There are so many hexes being bandied about, finding an ally you can remove a hex from is easy. Since you're a basic healing monk, you can pour all of your attribute points into Healing, about 8-9 in Inspiration, and the rest in Divine Favor. You don't need points in Protection as prot spirit will not last longer than a couple of seconds anyway, it's basically there to save someone's life that makes a mistake. Do not bring healing seed, divine boon, or other enchantments as they will be a waste of energy.

Comments are welcome.

Wow, I haven't done that run in a couple months now, and you guys have made me scared to do it again! I remember an "idler" on one of my last runs (I call 'em leeches myself), and got him killed so he couldn't get any greens. I remember one run we tried a balanced group, and the leader grabbed a W/Mo instead of W/Me, and sure enough he had -150 worth of superior runes AND used Mending. Nice to know it's only gotten worse.

I'm not reading 60 comments on this, but I simply find any statement that correlates "B/P" to "skill" to be downright silly (at least when used in the context of the Tomb ruins). In my opinion, the real skill involved in B/P is staying awake through the boredom.

Frankly, the comparison of B/P to IWAY is offensive to me. IWAY (at least the good kind) has always required more skill than even the best B/P teams can manage, and I don't even consider IWAY all that complex a team build.

So there are people who don't even have the minuscule amount of skill required for B/P now? All that shows is that the average quality of PvE players has dropped even lower than I would have thought possible. Go solo or duo farming in the FoW -- it requires a modicum of skill, so you'll find the better PvE players there. And the rewards will be many times better than the Tomb ruins.

Another N/Me Orders today. I actually sat and watched...why are they /Me? I have no idea...but they aren't using Mesmer skills...

Someone tell me please why are they going N/Me all of a sudden?

Wait til we have 8 man Ritualists Spike Groups in PvP....

Rend enchantments is the main skill of them Chained Souls. They spam it. And most B/P groups that I've ran with ignore the CS when dealing with other enemies. And since RE targets all foes, it can do a lot of damage quickly. And yes, I saw that you said "FoW build." But as this is a GENERAL chat about B/P groups, I thought I'd mention that about Tombs, since it's possible that others may have missed it.

B/Ps forgetting pets is bad enough, but party members leaving when the tough gets going is something that really grinds my gears.

I started a b/p party with a typical group, then ending up with 5 members at the end which screwed us up and therefore failing...

Have done this b/p run months ago with my ranger and monk. I always asked the rangers to bring throw Dirt since it saves lifes not only theirs but also the monk&necro's. It essentially shutdown the graps who slipped through the minions wall. Throw Dirt beats the rangers stances handsdown in tombs.

The key to a successful tombs run is a strong leader. You are going to have newbies join with you occasionaly and they wont fess up to it. So a good leader at the start with state the rules, ie..spirits,puller whatnot. One rule I always tell the monk and necros is to call target if they get into trouble. I dont mind taking 1st timers on my runs, so if your new to it and i'm there, give me a shout! I'll show You the ropes. I think this is a fun run.

I always have one R/Necro in the group for enfeebling blood and mark of pain.

Enfeebling blood > throw dirt (if the crasp happens to hit twice in a row its bye bye ranger, not the case with enfeebling, enfeebling is also ranged so you can safely cast it from the backlines)

Mark of pain will make the big groups fade away quickly.


On topic:
What i don't like about B/P nowadays is that everyone wants to be the lurer and has haste. To these people: Want to lure? Form your own party. Want to stay back and chill? Join a party. It's very irritating to fill up last spots of a guild group with knowitall people.

That's true except when a necro or monk is the one starting the party. I'd rather iron out just who the hell is going to pull instead of having 5 different people doing it.

Normally, if the question comes up as to who is pulling, I'll volunteer, if someone else wants to do it, fine. But it SHOULD be decided - just like who is bringing spirits - before you even start. Everyone should know who is pulling, and not to interfere with them in their job.

And everyone has their own opinions about HOW to pull. That yours differ from someone elses doesn't make them wrong and you right, just different. Arguing about it is stupid. Watch the other puller, and maybe you'll learn something new. It may be learning what not to do, but you'll learn something.

Maybe you're running Death Nova in a less then effective manner. Think of it as a spirit that you prep prior to battle and not as something to be done during.

I run my MM far too much in Tombs.... and I always bring Death Nova. During the down time between fights, all I do is cast DN on pets. Then once that's done I cast it on the horrors around me (by this point they've formed that nice spread out circle so its easy to pick). I can see the first pet's DN come off and I have a rough guide to when my horrors will start losing the enchantment.

Pets are easy to pick out for casting, so I'll tink them with DN during battle. OR if we're getting overrun, I cast summon Horror and then as it pops up, its stationary for a short second. Plenty of time to click it and start casting DN. I've stopped many a breakthrough with this "instant" bomb.

I almost never try to target summons during a pitched battle, and summoning takes precedence over DN.

Why are many Necros going N/Me? Cause they also dual farm in ToA with the monks and monks are far more picky about you being N/Me then a pug B/P group is about you being something besides N/E or N/Mo or N/R.

I'm an N/Me Minion Master and I don't use a single Me skill, its all necro all the time:

Vamp Gaze
Deadly Swarm
Death Nova
Blood of the Master
Verata's Sacrifice
Order of Blood
Summon Bone Horror
Summon Bone Fiend
Max Death, 11 Soul Reaping, rest in Blood.

I usually bring Divine Boon when I monk. I figure that for 2 extra energy with each spell, I'm healing for an extra 70 hp or so. When people take massive damage and they are hanging on by a thread, that extra 70 hp makes a lot of difference. I've had lots of success with just a simple Boon Healer build, but your ideas are interesting Mimi Miyagi, so I'll give that a try.

Why do some Orders necros tryo to act like healers? In the last group I was in, the Orders called each and every time she cast a healing spell. Usually it was just after I healed the group and then she would call Heal Party. After a particularly hard part was finished with no deaths the team congratulated me on a job well done; the Orders necro then started complaining about how nobody was thanking her for her heals. And she didn't bring BR either. Needless to say, it was exhasperating.

The best Orders Necro I was ever with told me before we started that he would keep BR on me the WHOLE time if I kept Healing Breeze on him constantly. It worked out so very good, that I ask Orders Necros to do that every time now. Of course, usually they refuse, saying they can heal themselves. I can't seem to grasp why they don't understand that that isn't the point...

A lot of Necros are expected to be able to heal themselves. Not their own idea, but because the PUGs they have joined expected it. As I mentioned, order necros and monks need to really work together to make a successful Tombs run. I always ask the monk to stick close to me (as an Orders necro) so that I don't have to run far to cast BR when they need it. And the monk needs to make sure the MM Necro never dies. Nothing like having a huge minion army suddenly turn hostile at the worst possible time.