Grenth's Balance Build

I've been trying to work on a build that uses Grenth's balance to deal massive damage to kick of the battle with. I've always liked the skill, but since it used to have such a long recharge time with it, I never used it. Now, the recharge time is only 15 seconds which is very reasonable to me.

So, basically I am trying trying to come up with the best way possible to deal massive damage with it. Necro's have a lot of sacrifice life skills that can tailor to this skill nicely if used right. I've been thinking that I need a way to sacrifice massive amounts of my health to then use Grenth's Balance to cut someone's health pretty much in half with it. There are a few things around this tough, Once we (my enemy and I) each are at half health, I will still need to do more damage than him to kill him. Regardless of whether we both start off at 200 health or 500 health, it is still a matter of damage dealing. So, I've continued to keep this in my mind.

Then, I started thinking, what if I don't necessarily have to do more damage than him, but just live longer or have more health. So I've put together a nice little combo that does just this.


Skills for the combo:
Grenth's Balance
Illusion of Weakness
Blood Renewal
Awaken the Blood


What I do is start off with Awaken the Blood before battle. This will make the sacrifice for Blood Renewal that much more damaging to myself (it sacrifices about 222 health with the added 50% to it). Just before going into battle, I cast Blood Renewal. I follow that up with Illusion of Weakness. Together, both of those skills just took away 424 of my health away. I always stay back and let the others charge first so that I am never targeted first. Because at that point I will have only about 40-60 health left. I then charge in and quickly cast Grenth's Balance on a target with full health. This does about 210 damage to them in one shot. But not only does it do that much damage to them, about 2 seconds after that, the Blood Renewal ends and I gain about 190 health back from it. So, now I about about back to full health, PLUS I have Illusion of weakness on me. This means, I have in actuality about 600 health, where as the enemy now has only 200-250 health. I can now follow up with my other damage skills to finish him off.

This works great against warriors as it cuts right through there armor. It is also a great panic inducer (Seeing half your health cut away in one shot will surely strike fear in anyone).

I usually never go for monks though. What I do is target someone (usually the monk) for my team to go after. Then I will go for someone else on the enemy's team so that none of my team's damage decreases the effectiveness of my Grenth's Balance. This also helps spread the damage so the monk has a harder time healing. It is great in PvP, but also works really well in GvG when starting off a spike attack. I usually lead the spike attack to bring the target to half health. It then only takes a couple Orbs to kill him off. Great Stuff!

Great defense and a strong attack all in one! The few down sides to this is, it is hard to pull of once you have the IOW on you from the first strike. You can't sacrifice that 202 health again if you already have IOW on you. So that is why you want to fill out the rest of your skills with some decent attacks as well. Vampiric Gaze, Conjure Phantasm, Phantom Pain, whatever you see fit.

Also, you want to REALLY make sure you aren't the one targeted for that split second you have 40-60 health. Thankfully Grenth's Balance has a really quick cast time. So basically as soon as you finished casting IOW, you are already casting Grenth's Balance to get that health back.

Let me know if you have any suggestions. So far it is working really nicely. It gets that first quick kill that is a lot of times the hardest to get.

lol, when i skill capped grenths balance i was thinking that it was such a useless skill, cause with differences of hp usually not too high (100-200), 50% of that would be a brush off their shoulder.

HOWEVER< i skill caped it in the Dragon Lair, and so was able to use it on Glint!! LMAO!! i was at 50 hp i panicked and hit the only skill that was recharged, brought him to UNDER 1/4 of his total hp!! it was so so sweet. glad there is more use for it..heh

now that is creative thinking! props to you. I not sure how effective it will be, but good luck testing!

Wouldn't the +3 health reg from blood renewal counteract the health saccing? I suppose you could use Signet of Agony to self-induce bleeding, thus counteracting Blood Renwal and saccing more health as a bonus.

As a N/Mo what if you were to use Vital Blessing to increase your max health for more damage? You could also use Infuse Health to instantly lose half of your health too.

EDIT: Actually, Infuse Health combos excelllently with GB. It has a 1/4 casting time and 0 recharge.

Sorry for the double post, but here's the build I've been experimenting with:

N/Mo

16 Blood Magic (12+3+1)
10 Soul Reaping (9+1)
9 Healing Prayers
3 Protection Prayers

Infuse Health
Signet of Agony
Grenths Balance
Healing Breeze
Vampiric Gaze
Barbed Signet
Vital Blessing
Ressurection Signet

-Weapon-
Truncheon (9 blood)
20% Improve Blood Magic recharge
-Offhand-
Idol (9 blood)
Armor +5 (while enchanted)
Health +45 (while enchanted)

Start the match by casting Blessing for a total of 572 health. As you are charging the enemy, cast Infuse Health on an ally to drop to 286/572. Then use Signet of Agony to lose another 58 health and self-induce bleeding. Let your health degenerate down some before Balancing your enemy target. Cast healing breeze and then Gaze/Barb the target to taste. Repeat.

Actually I use it sometimes on a variant of my monks that I play, For that particular build I have one spirit Spammer that puts down mass Spirits that raise HP, there are a few and you can get hp to over 1200hp if you wanted, anyways 4 Spikers, another Monk/Necro and a Prot Monk.
The Monk/Necros Run Infuse Health + Grenths Balance, Infuse drops health down to as low as you want while still healing for 400+ hp to allies, when HP gets low you switch to target and Grenths Balance, with all spirits up this usually strikes for 450+ damage every 15 seconds, and self healing yourself that much.

I tried doing this without a spirit spammer and yes its safe to say it works, but however putting yourself at such a dangerous HP level without those spirits makes it very easy to get killed, while still possible I Wouldnt Suggest using it.

Lynxx Clan Monk [SF]

Here's an idea for rapid fire Grenthing...

N/R

10+2 Blood Magic
10+1 Soul Reaping
11 Wilderness Survival

Serpent's Quickness
Strip Enchantment
Plague Sending
Awaken the Blood
Blood Renewal
Signet of Agony
Plague Sending
Grenth's Balance {E}

This is a bloody whacko build designed to bring you down to nearly nothing, heal up using Grenth's, bring yourself down again, heal up using Grenth's, and then Serpent's Quickness ends...

That should effectively spike 2 healthy enemies on their team and what's more, you can cover them in mass bleeding using Plague Sending and Signet of Agony. Quite a nasty surprise for some HIGH armor ignoring damage.

I call this build, Bloody Venom!

I like some of these ideas. I'll have to try out that infuse health to lower my health in half. I've thought about increasing my health for more damage, but my health is never the limiting factor in determining how much damage I do. Most people have around 400-600 health, so GB never ends up hitting my max health again. That is where Blood Renewal comes in. A few seconds after hitting GB, BR ends giving me that extra 190 health back (which usually puts me back to my max).

I don't have an issue with the regen of Blood Renewal either. It actually helps. When I cast it with Awaken the Blood on, it takes away about 222 of my health away, which is half my health. Then I cast IOW which is about half as well. So that regen actually helps a lot of times in the instances where disease might have been spread to me. And the whole combo only takes about 2-3 seconds, so in that time I only regen about 24 health anyway (BR has a +6 regen now and not +3 regen).

I like the idea about workin' with a spirit spammer to increase everyone's health though. I'll have to try that. But I use GB to get that quick kill. If I increase everyone's health to higher amounts and I do about 400 damage with GB, then they will still have about 400 health left. So I only see it helping in a war of attrition type scenario because of the fact that degens are now not nearly as effective. Where as if you used it on a foe with only 400-500 max health. You will bring there health down to about 200 and now they are in danger. So when I put phantom pain on them, I can let that run for about 2 seconds, then remove it with Shattered Delusions (putting the Deep wound into effect), then follow up with Vampiric Gaze (which does 60 damage with the Awaken the Blood on) and now they are down to double digit health if not dead. I like to go for the quick kill. And if they have any degens on them, having only double digit health left you can consider them dead. PLUS, I have now just effectively put the Illusion of Weakness on me making my health about 600+.

I may look into that infuse health, but I always like to decrease my health with the idea of giving myself a bonus in the end by doing so. That is why I chose the Blood Renewal and IOW. They both give me something back when I lose that health by using them.

I'll try some of these ideas out tonight and see how they work. Thanks.

hmm, I wonder if a warrior with Endure Pain, Demonic Flesh, and Blood Renewal can outright KILL an enemy due to the stupendously high hp count he'll acquire...

edit* doh, forgot Awaken the Blood

I've been a happy Grenth's Balance user for a few months now. Here's where I included it in a summary of damaging PP builds I was running back in July. As for now, my GB build looks like this:

--------------------------------------------
Illusion - 15
Blood - 12
Fast Cast - 7
Domination - 3
Inspiration - 2

Grenth's Balance
Phantom Pain
Conjure Phantom
Illusion of Weakness
Blood Renewal
Leech Signet
Hex Breaker / Distortion
Rez

Enchanter armor with Virtuoso pants for +15 AL protection while casting. A 64E +3 regen cane and focus in one slot, 45E +4 regen staff with +5 armor/ +7 melee armor in the other slot.
---------------------------------------

Proof that it works well (at least for me) is the 36 odd wins I got using it last week, including three matches where we started 3v4:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...tuff/gw035.jpg

We had no monks the entire time, which is fine since they often screw me up in PuGs running this build (DON'T HEAL ME PLEASE!). I found a way around this problem for when you do want a heal - tell your Monk (if not on TS) to heal you ONLY when you Alt+click your health bar.

I disagree that Awaken the Blood is good for an already risky elite. With AtB on, you will always die if your health dips below 0 when sacrificing. With Blood Renewal by itself, you will usually survive the dip to 0 when you cast it, as it will instead leave you at 1HP if your current health is <33%. 1HP-->GB gives you the most damage possible, but unless you have added protection (I use Distortion sometimes), you may not survive the 1 second needed to complete GB (.75 aftercast of BR-->.25 cast of GB). Takes practice to do it consistently.

My common cast order on a fully healthy enemy if not targeted is Phantom Pain-->IoW-->Blood Renewal-->Grenth's Balance--> Conjure Phantom.

Phantom Pain's -100 Deep Wound kicks in right on time while the -8 degen is working on him. If I'm targeted or chased, I play it by ear. You can wait until you're at about 40% - 50% in a melee fight, Distort and cast Blood Renewal (takes you to 10% - 20%), then Grenth's. This way you can survive at least one solid hit during the cast. When not using GB, simply spread PP+CP around as it does 260 damage after 10 seconds on anyone.
And the killer insult is to Leech interrupt their predicted Troll/Healing Sig/Healing Breeze/Orison attempt when near death. Besides Rez, I only use Leech as a desperation heal stopper.