Fragility+Virulence madness, part deux

arredondo

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: May 2005

30 Sep 2005 at 03:33 - 1

Well, the party had to end sometime. For those of you who've made easy faction since reading my original Fragility+Virulence thread, a good friend has now been nerfed:

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Fragility – Decreased Energy cost to 10; decreased recharge to 5; decreased damage to 5..20.

That's a significant drop from the 34 it used to do at L15 before. We lose 15 damage each trigger, or 30 less total damage from each Condition. That's 105 damage we have to make up from before since Deep Wound rarely wore off to get its second hit in. Not impossible, but it makes the build a bit weaker if played the same way.

But before you get too depressed, check out this new skill buff!

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Epidemic – Transfer all negative Conditions and their remaining durations from target foe to all foes adjacent to your target. Decreased casting time to .25 seconds. Here's my new idea that makes use of the new properties. This isn't a perfect build by any means, but an illustration of what's now possible:

- Use Illusion Haste and run to an enemy #1
- Cast Fragility on him and Illusion of Haste should be at an end now.
- Use Plague Touch to put your Cripple on him
- Cast Conjure Phantom on top of that.

- Cast Fragility on a nearby enemy#2 (it's cheaper and recharges FAST)
- Cat Phantom Pain-->Shatter Delusions-->Virulence on him
- NOW cast Epidemic on the enemy#2 and you'll instantly send Deep Wound, Weakness, Poison, and Disease to all surrounding foes including the Cripple enemy #1 who still has Fragility on him.

That first target receives 20 damage at L15 each time he gets/loses a Condition. That's five Conditions or 200 total Fragility damage, plus Conjure Phantom's -5 degen for around 300 total damage to him in ten secs or so, plus Deep Wound taking 100 from him for 400 total damage.

The second target had DW, Poison, Weakness, Disease triggering Fragility for 160 damage, plus longer Virulence degen for 3 seconds (-48), and Shatter Delusion into a Deep Wound for, say, 160 damage. Roughly 370 damage total.

Less damage overall for Fragility builds for sure, but now you can try to harass multiple targets which was impossible before due to costs and recharge issues. This one is expensive right now. IoH let's you recharge all of its energy with timing, but you still spend a lot. Just remember again this is just a rough draft to show all may not be lost. Having two enemies suffering is indeed a nice bonus.

EDIT: Switch in Signet of Agony for IoH and you have added 20 fragility damage and a minimum of 60 Bleeding degen damage in 10 seconds for no extra cost 9SoA bleeding lasts 25 seconds though!). Total damage for enemy #1 is now 480. This adds 20 Fragility with minimum 60 degen to the other build too for 450 damage to enemy #2. Actually, with 25 seconds of Bleeding, they'll still die if not healed/Condition helped. It just takes longer now unless you help out with wand spam or another skill.

See? It's still decent since you can now spread the misery.

heist23

Journeyman

Join Date: Jul 2005

R/Mo

30 Sep 2005 at 03:35 - 2

this is going to hurt....

AtomicMew

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Apr 2005

N/A

30 Sep 2005 at 04:32 - 3

I think ditching the domination line would be for the best. Fragility is more a extended multi target DoT now rather than single target spike. So points in death magic are probably a good idea now. Also, death magic has some energy management skills, most noticeably consume corpse - combined with faster casting, you'll almost always take the cake.
Getting in melee range just to cast plague touch is probably not a good idea. Plague sending is probably better in its stead, especially with fast cast.