Necro/Mesmer Fragility/Condition build.

I've been playing around with my necromancer/mesmer for a while now, specifically with the idea of fragility/condition builds coupled with some shutdown and soul reaping for extra energy.

So far this is what I have come up with

Death Magic: 1
Illusion Magic:12
Inspiration Magic:9
Domination Magic: 9

I use the following skills:

Mantra of persistance
Energy Tap
Diversion
Fragility
Phantom Pain
Shatter Delusions
Arcane Echo
Virulence (E)

Before I confront the enemy I use Mantra of persistance increasing the length of my illusion magic skills by 68%. Next I target a foe and use Fragility which for 18 (+approx 12.25) seconds does 28 damage each time a foe suffers or recovers from a new condition. Next I cast Phantom Pain which causes health degen of 3 for 10 seconds after which the target suffers from deep wound reducing the targets max health by 20% for for 17 (+approx 11.5) seconds. Since I'm more interested in the condition I next cast Shatter delusions, which removes on mesmer hex from foe (last one cast) and does 55 damage. Note 28 damage is also done due to fragility. Next I cast arcane echo, which when cast will be replaced whatever spell is cast in the next 20 seconds, this spell then remains for 20 seconds. I then cast virulence. Virulence will cause the target foe to suffer from posion, disease and weakness for 5 seconds if that target foe is already suffering a condition(note poison is not included in the description). The effects of this are several-fold. Firstly arcane echo is replaced by virulence effectively reducing its recharge time by half, allowing fast multiple casts. Secondly the 3 new conditions will cause 3*28=84 damage and due to the low number of points in death magic, the conditons wear off very quickly (but do some damage through degen) and cause another 84 damage. Now the arcane echo virulence is brought into play. This results in another 84 damage for suffering and another for recovery. This can be carried out 4 times in all doing a total 84*8=642 damage over about 20 seconds. Finally the disease condition will hopefully spread to other magic casters. After about 30 seconds I will have hopefully dished out 753 damage.

The next stage in my attack is to regain energy. Hopefully I will have killed my target and gained energy from soul reaping. However I need more energy. So I find myself a new target. I now lock this targets skills using diversion. I keep stealing energy and using diversion until arcane echo is recharged. After which I repeat the whole above process.

Some games have been harder than other and I have found myself using arcane echo to lock out anti condition monks. This works quite effectively since I can effectively lock out most skills in over the 20 seconds I have arcane echo.

I would like to note this build is not an original concept. Well not all of it. I have just added my own touch.

I was wondering what others thought of this. Constructive comments please!

The various other mechanics of this setup as found in a few other threads in these forums. I'd recommend you read those if you want to better grasp the Fragility/Virulence build.

One thing I will say though, there is absolutely no reason to be a Necromancer instead of a Mesmer. Mesmer is better in every way...unless you're counting on some bizarre thing like more armor against piercing...

Chain of Events in actual play:

You cast fragility on monk.
Monk begins casting inspired or smite hex during your cast of fragility, or during fragility aftercast.
You cast phantom pain
Monk begins casting selfhealing
You shatter phantom pain. Monk suffers damage from shatter and also suffers a deepwound.
You cast arcane echo.
Monk casts mend ailment
You cast virulence. Monk suffers from deepwound, disease, weakness.
You don't see monk's health spike, you scratch your head.
Monk casts mendailment with 3 conditions on and heals himself back to full.
You continue to scratch your head.
You die.

Or...
You cast fragility
Monk casts remove hex, or is slow and casts inspired or smite hex a little late
You cast phantom pain.
Monk finishes casting, removes phantom pain from self. Monk suffers deepwound and recieves dmg from fragility.
You cast shatter delusions, removing your own fragility. Monk suffers dmg, and selfheals.
You cast virulence. Monk suffers disease and weakness, and casts mend ailment, with 3 conditions, healing himself massively once again.
You don't see monk's health spike down, but rather up.
You scratch your head.
You die.

Virulence spike works against 2 kinds of people
1) slow people
2) stupid people

It is for this reason I carry diversion. If I find I am being stopped, I start locking out monk skills. I don't proclaim to be able to take out a team on my own. What this build is meant to do is cause a lot of damage quickly. And I find this build has worked very effectively apart from once when I played a 4v4 and was in a 30 minute stalemate against 2 monks a necro and a ranger, with an ele, warrior and monk on my team. As for the necro part. I am a primary necro, simple as that. I like to play with necros and find that mesmers are weaker. Also I like being able to have soul reaping skills. I know that really this build should be mes/nec but meh I didn't do it this way. Oh and every tactic has a counter, I'm aware of this. However not every monk takes the right skills.

Because monks never carry hex removal or condition removal, god that is blasphemy on another new level.

-edit-
Well I'm not flaming virulence builds, but you gotta realize that it takes 2 people to run it.

But not every monk does take such skills. If they did I wouldn't be able to kill them so easily. By the way my build isnt only based on fragility. Like I said it's also for shutdown. There no point me soley concentrating on fragility if the Monk is good and does have the above skills you mentioned. Also being in a small guild means I have to join random teams in PvP. This makes it incredibly difficult for me to co-ordiante with other team members. Especially since I always ends up playing with non-english speakers due to the times I play.

I have spent a while looking for decent skills for this build and ways to make it more effective. You still haven't critiqued the skills I have chosen. So effectively you are flaming.

Oh, I wasn't talking about teammates. I was talking about the fact that the monk will often have to play right into your hand. If I were to revise the build. I'd get rid of the arcane echo, and mantra of persistance, add an interrupt, and a res sig. Here's why.

Only 1 skill benefits from mantra of persistance: Fragility. Your duration without it? 18 seconds? Plenty to do your fragility spike.

As for arcane echo, it's clever to echo that virulence and spike twice with it, but if you leave the monk to his devices in the time between the start of the spike, and the end of the spike, he's going to interrupt it in 1 way or another. Arcane Echo? that's 2.75 seconds (-4% with 1 fastcasting) between shatter delusions and virulence, giving him ample time to remove the deepwound, or run and wait its duration out. What then?

Interrupt would be much better, because it's common for monks to carry a hexremoval, but rare for a monk to carry 2.

Fragility builds aren't meant to be used on monks, they're supposed to be used on what would usually be a low priority targets, like warriors and rangers(who are often stacked high with superior runes). Let the shutdown character deal with the monk, the rest of your party with the main assist, while you rapidly kill everyone else.

Yes, the mesmer attacks the warrior or the ranger while the SHUTDOWN character deals with the monk...

...err...hang on a second.

I still don't see why you are a primary necro. I can understand you doing it if you just like it, but if you like it, make a character that's sensible to have a Necro primary, and take advantage of Soul Reaping. What your doing is like if I made my Melandru's Resilence/Draw Conditions char a R/Mo instead of a Mo/R, there is a severe dropoff in effectiveness.

1.) You do more damage. Virulence is best at 0 for this build so a rune does not help it at all. Having Mesmer runes to increase Fragility/Shatter, etc. really increases damage.

2.) It's faster. Fast-casting is a huge deal for this, or else they simply have too much time to remove the hex.

And you aren't even using Soul Reaping...If Necros are your favorite class, great, have fun with them. If you posted a 'fun' build, then I would understand. But you posted a build and wanted critiques relating to its effectiveness, so I must point out that it is severely gimped.

Quote:

I'm going to do a mes primary as a PvP character at some point soon. I do realise Nec primary isnt the best way to go but its the character I chose at the start of the game. With regards to the 1 in death magic, thats just because the head pattern I got has a +1 on it. If I were to do this properly I would put Sup runes for Dom, Insp and Illusion along with vigour runes into my armour. So I understand what you are saying. However I must say this is the most effective build I've managed to get out of my necro, apart from a few blood based ones. Oh and I found echo works pretty well. Well better than without. I can deal damage a lot quicker. Also if I keep the monk tied up, surely this is a good thing.