N/Me Echo SS for 5 Man Sorrows Farming

This is what I use for 5 man farming in Grenth's Footprint/Sorrows Furnace. I'm posting this because I actually had someone join our group today as an "Echo SS Necro" and they were echoing Shadow Strike. It should be used in the standard 5 man group including a Stance Tank(for holding gear/keg)/Bond Monk/Heal Monk/ and Minion Master using mostly Fiends.

Profession: N/Me
Name: Nate's Echo SS
Type: PVE
Category: Damage/Support/Interrupt

Attributes:
Blood: 10 + 1 (Base + Rune)
Curse: 12 + 3 + 1 (Base + Sup Rune + Hat)
Soul Reap: 8 + 1 (Base + Rune)

Skills Set:
1. Awaken The Blood
2. Weaken Armor
3. Barbs
4. Spinal Shivers
5. Descreate Enchantments
6. Rend Enchantments
7. Spiteful Spirit {Elite(curses)}
8. Archane Echo

The purpose of this build is to get Spiteful Spirit on every member of the enemy group as fast as you can. With the 11 points in Blood magic, your Awaken The Blood will last 38 seconds. Long enough for you to echo SS, and have it recharge twice each sometimes. This allows you to have up to 6 SS's going at once in ideal conditions. Weaken Armor, Barbs, Spinal Shivers, Desc & Rend, are all used as anti-boss spells to support your SS; and more importantly your Minion Master teammate who should have anywhere from a few to an entire screen of Fiends blasting away. IMO Barbs is the new Mark of Pain since the AoE nerf, especially helpful vs. Monk bosses like Yak, as even he can't heal through it. The equipment I use is Vilnars Glove & Claw, and before I had those I just used the collectors items for curses.

Notes & Concerns:
Some of the weaknesses with this is energy management. You usually can get enough from soul reaping, but when there aren't any minions helping yet(either by killing or dying themselves) you probably won't get off more than 3 Spiteful Spirits.


Credit:Whoever came up with Echo SS.

Comments? I wanna put this in the whole build directory thing, hence the formatting. I didn't see one for SF there.

Interesting...Barbs is a great idea...I need to try it.

My thought was that if I was going to put the points into Blood it should be used for more than Awaken....hence:

Curses 12+1+3
Blood 9+1
SR 9+1

Wep - Villnar's Staff (just dropped for me this week )

Awaken The Blood
Arcane Echo
SS
Desecrate Enchantments
Dark Pact
Vampiric Gaze
Blood Rit OR Malaise
Rez

Usually get in close enough to pop off 4 straight SS...love seeing those yellow -41s around a group of baddies...Desecrate once my SS are off to smack a large group...Dark Pact/Vampiric Gaze to help kill the peskier characters. Normally I bring blood rit (just in case - with a good team it generally goes unused) but I was considering a tweak with Malaise in order to screw with Priests/Yak etc.

Rend and Spinal Shivers are CRUCIAL. ALL Echo SS's should carry both of these when farming SF!

Quote: Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

Quote: Originally Posted by Vexed Arcanist

OK sorry for the short post earlier, I was late for a meeting.

As Nater said, Spinal Shivers is total shutdown for most SF bosses, especially the monk bosses. And it has good synergy with the MM (me). Minions will take down a monk boss in 3-4 seconds if he can't heal/Mark.

Rend is 'disaster recovery'. If they get a Mark off, or if another priest puts Mark up, you can make it (and Life Attunement and whatever else) go away.

Neither Rend or Spinal is 'Required' specifically. It's the enchantment removal and interruptions that are helpful, however you want to deliver them. But Rend and Spinal are Curses, and you're already max Curses for SS, so you can pack them for free (attribute-wise).

Tactically, Spinal Shivers is ideal for dispatching monk bosses. It's awesome, total pwnage. Best PvE monk-shutdown out there right now.

Strip Enchants? I've run it for the reasons you mention, but ultimately, it's UNSATISFYING. Rend is like an Exclaimation Point! All enchants gone, no questions.

("I say we nuke 'em from orbit. Only way to be sure!")

Why is soul reaping important if you arent using any SR spells?

Quote: Originally Posted by Sunsu Pyro

Quote: Originally Posted by Longleaf There are no SR spells. But each point in SR gives you 1 energy everytime something dies. 9 in SR gives you 9 energy everytime something gets killed. To clarify that further for Sunsu, since he doesn't seem to have a grasp of Necromancer...

...Soul Reaping gives 1 energy everytime something dies. To give you full scope of that, that means ANYTHING. If a minion/NPC/enemy/party member, anything at all dies, you get 1 energy for each rank of Soul Reaping. If you're this build with an MM necro in your party, their minions die quite often, regardless of their best efforts to keep them alive - that alone is a huge energy boost.

I feel like an idiot for asking, but I can't figure it out, so what the heck...

What is the source of the cold damage that activates spinal shivers? There's probably an obvious answer, but sometimes it's hard to see what's staring you straight in the face, I guess.

Your Weapon

Attributes:
Curses: 16
Soul Reaping:11
Inspiration:10

SKILLS
1) Arcane Echo
2) Spiteful Spirit
3) Desecrate Enchantments or Leech Sig(interupt, gain 11 energy)
4) Power Drain (interupt, gain 21 energy)
5) Spinal Shivers
6) Barbs
7) Energy Tap (gain 12 energy)
8) Ether Feast (111 point self-heal)

With this build I ALWAYS have energy to cast SS.... and the INTERUPTS really help the group!

Quote: Originally Posted by jtchans

Well, i tried this before....I Echo ss, soul barbs, then spam parasitic. Soul barbs with awaken the blood and 16 curses gives around 31-37 dmg? Plus that also works if u ss them, so bonus dmg. Just thought i could mention it since it seems to be working fairly well with me

If you are using AtB then SS does 41 dmg, if you put it only multiple adjacent attacking foes it does serious dmg... soul barbs is nice, but if u use SS properly, its not necessary! just a tip!

Hey guys, Im new here and im a necro/mesmer but i feel like a total n00b when i see this stuff. Is there no use for death magic... cause im lvl 14 and have 9+1 death magic 5+1 blood magic and 6 soulreaping. i need some help here cause i dont have any of the skills u guys were talking about.. can some1 help me plz?

Use the bone staff for cold damage, just hotkey it and switch it in and out as you need it. Don't need to have any pts invested in death magic for the cold damage.

Two questions:

1) With the Spinal Shivers, how do you deal with the nrg loss? seems like running that would either stunt your further cursing or be limited duration as you'd have a very small bank of nrg after having spammed out curses... Only saying that since I thought monk bosses were targeted first by groups rather then at the end (when nrg mgmt isn't as essential)

2) With Rend Enchantments, have you ever run into a problem with being unwilling (or able) to cast it because the health penalty would kill you?

1. Energy's not a problem, as pretty much every time you interrupt you've recharged 5 energy. If you were using an Icy sword and Frenzy it may be different, but I never do that.

2. I've never had a problem with this.

1) Your wand doesn't have a fast attack rate, and you don't need to interrupt the boss constantly. Just put Shivers on him, and stand right next to him, and bop him with your wand if he starts to cast a spell you'd rather him not cast.

2) Never. I made a mental effort to forget about the health loss. It looks worse than it is.