Illusionary Weapon Illusion idea

[arredondo]

Since IW+Sand Shards doesn't work, here's an alternative... this build looks and acts like an IW build, but without using the IW elite - it's all an illusion. I need to test it, but here's the idea so far:

===========================
Illusionary Weapon Illusion (De/Me)

Earth: 15
Wind: 11
Inspiration:10

Mantra of Inscriptions: Signets recharge up to 45% faster
Signet of Midnight: You and foe are Blinded for 15s
Whirling Charge: Stance lets you attack and run 33% faster for 8s

Sand Shards: Enchant does up to 25 damage per whiffed attack
Twin Moon Sweep: Swing twice if you lose an enchant

Vital Boon: +100 to max health, heals for 150 when it ends
Signet of Piety: Cancels an enchant, heals for 120. Recharges instantly if you lost an enchant
Rez
===========================

With Sig of Midnight on me, Sand Shard does damage all day long. The bonus is my enemy is Blind as well. With MoI, I can Blind someone every 8s or so, making it a nice combination of offense and team defense.

I'd bring Daggers for this setup and a scythe. +33% IAS on Daggers from Whirling Defense could give me almost normal IW damage per swing easily on a single target, and the IAS boost on the scythe can be used effectively in mobs if I switch. I like that it is a speed boost as well. Twin Moons is a double damage spike, like Double Attacks on an Assassin.

I have two great heals, one of which costs 0E. If I have Vital Boon sitting over SS, I can use Sig of Piety three times right after each other, and my net HP gain would be 410 (120+120-100+150+120). The enchants recharge fast, so I never need to be without them long.

The cool thing is Sig of Piety instantly recharges when an enchant is dropped, so the third time I use it, it would take 20s to return. Not a big deal to me because with MoI, it takes only 11s to recharge. You can get huge heals this way whenever you need it.

Of course you always bring a Rez!

[Shadowleaf]

Darn you beat me to it. I was running a build with the same concept (SoM + SS) and it's pretty awesome, though I have a very different skill set. It's easily as good as IW since the AOE damage gets so high when people try to gang up on you.

Anyway, good find. Let's enjoy it till it gets nerfed! XD


EDIT: Oh, you haven't tested it yet eh? Here's something really awesome about it... Say there are 2 enemies adjacent to you... Sand Shards will trigger for both of them, dealing 50 to each of them and to any nearby foes... If there are 3 enemies adjacent, 75 damage to each nearby foe! (And so on)

[logik]

i wasn't gonna post that and keep it as a secret uber build:( lol, but yea i had a similar idea about signet of midnight, IW, and Sand Shards

[Shadowleaf]

*Sigh* It's gonna get nerfed for sure... Imagine it in PvE with like 7 enemies around you.

[Servant of Kali]

wow how did Anet missed this skill? As soon as i saw sand shards i was like "wohooo looks so abusable" :P

[Bobross]

Only got to play for like 20 minutes last night...so I may be missing something, is every scythe attack aoe?

[Azgalon]

Lovin' the Sand Shards! :D

[recklessdriver]

Only got to play for like 20 minutes last night...so I may be missing something, is every scythe attack aoe?


Yes, and the attack speed is comparable to Hammer speed.

[halfthought]

hey, I saw u with this build... u totally pwnt me :)
(my name was extinction sync, I was the fragilty mesmer assasin)

[CanthanPeasant]

It's an interesting build but I think any attack skills that remove enchantments should not be here. Twin Moon will cancel either your Sand Shard or Boon enchant, and if you only had one enchantment left when u used Twin Moon, you would lost the Shard ability and go back to being a regular blind melee fighter. Being Blind for 15 secs is a long time.

[arredondo]

Heh, you must not have read the stats on those enchants yet....

http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dervishskillguidemt3.jpg

The reason why my enchant cancelling combos work well with Twin Moon (and Sig of Piety) is because both Vital Boon and Sand Shards recharge really fast. VB is an 8s recharge and SS is a 5s recharge. By the time you use Twin Moon, both of those enchants will have already been recharged long ago and can instantly be re-applied.

[I XM]

Oi. DOn't read my mind and steal my ideas Arredondo! :p
6 skills in common. And there I thought I was being original. :(

[Telkandore]

What if you had a Mo/E smiter smiting off of you and you just spam Pious Attack?

Could you have something like...
IllusionaryWeapon/SandShards/PiousAttack
And as the smiter smites off of you with Reversal/Guardian, you just spam Pious...
would that trigger both, IW and SS?

[Rustin]

Nice. I was also runnin a build very similar. i realized though that it's not as good as the dual attack spamming one in PvP because there is less of a chance you will be surrounded with enemies as in PvE. However, if you're taking on a few guys, the damage is incredible.

[releasetheweasel]

I've been using IW and SS, I'm pretty sure they both activate. Though I use a little different build. Illusion of Weakness, Mirage Cloak, and Faithful Intervention made it in my build.

[arredondo]

They don't. SS requires a miss and IW simply does 'no damage'. I'll re-check though since Arena.net gets stealth-update happy at times.

[Patccmoi]

SS-IW is nearly the first thing i tried after reading SS this friday morning =p

It doesn't work. It doesn't with Scythe, or with anything else (well, i didn't try Hammer to be honest... =p)

[Devilish Evangelist]

Yes, it's possible. And SoM is an non-attribute skill (correct me if I'm wrong). I used to play it with my Ranger. I think it's the "SS" combo for Dervish.

Even more, we can cast one more enchantment to cover SS. Look, there are so many enchantmants for Dervish. It's okey for us use them.

IF Anet really want to nerf this, they will increase the Recharge time, or increase the energy cost.

Just my two cents.

[arredondo]

Illusionary Weapon Illusion update!!!!!

People, before the weekend ends or Arena.net nerfs this, you HAVE to make this IWI build!!! Check out these numbers. The first pic is a screen cap from Twin Moon's double hit on four nearby targets! The second picture shows one extra hit's total damage...

.
.
.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v369/larshaun/Game%20Stuff/gw14056.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v369/larshaun/Game%20Stuff/gw14156.jpg

.
.
.

Ain't that awesome? I changed the build around as you can see from the pics because of stance conflicts (no more Mantra of Inscriptions). It now looks like this:

===========================
Illusionary Weapon Illusion II (De/Me)

Earth: 13
Scythe: 11
Wind: 10
Mysticism:9


Faithful Intervention: +102 HP when this enchant ends
Signet of Midnight: You and foe are Blinded for 15s
Whirling Charge: Stance lets you attack and run 33% faster for 8s

Sand Shards: Enchant does up to 22 damage per whiffed attack
Twin Moon Sweep: Swing twice if you lose an enchant

Vital Boon: +92 to max health, heals for 140 when it ends
Signet of Piety: Cancels an enchant, heals for 121. Recharges instantly if you lost an enchant
Rez

I wear anti-Earth damage armor and a scythe with +5E and a +20% enchant mod. No more Daggers allowed since the nerf!
===========================

My stats are different than the screen shows because you need Scythe points to do damage 1v1 without SS up.

All you need to do is make sure you have an enchant up over SS. Vital Boon is perfect since I keep Faithful Intervention at the bottom for healing emergencies. So it's FI->SS->VB, go to a crowd and hit Twin Moon for crazy damage. Then turn on Whirling Charge and spam IWI melee AoE-style to put them in their graves. These hits are adjacent attacks to three foes as you can see by the pics, but the damage is always nearby AoE, so a fourth enemy gets the full damage to the far right. If all four foes were adjacent, you'd see eight 25s floating there for every enemy. Are you taking notes PvE fans?!

I now get +27 HP for every enchant that ends, and +4E as well due to Mysticism bonus. The healing is pretty crazy because of this. I get +148 HP for every use of Sig of Piety that takes away an Sand Shards (only +121 for SoP alone and it takes 20s to recharge). If the enchant was Vital Boon, my net health gain is +196. If it takes away Faithful Intervention, my HP gain is +250. The awesome thing about all of this is that with SoP's instant recharge, I can get four heals in four seconds if I need it (with all enchants up). Remember, there is no aftercast with Signets.

The total heal in four seconds is +715 AND +12E!!!

OK people, I've done my part so get to faction farming!

[CanthanPeasant]

Did you buy all 4 runes of minor to get those attributes? seems rather high for 4.

[arredondo]

You can do it a number of ways if you have all the runes:

11+2= 13
8+3= 11
9+1= 10
8+1= 9

(1 left over)

+++++++

I made a switch in the skill set. I now use Pious Restoration instead of Faithful Intervention. I didn't like FI disappearing at only 50% HP, and I didn't want to keep monitoring the 15E Watchful Intervention, which kicks in at 25% max health but runs out every minute.

Pious Intervention is one of the best defensive skills in the game. It heals you (for 70 HP in my build) and takes away an enchant of yours. However if you still have an enchant on you after one is taken, you get two Hexes taken away from you. How great is that? Plus it's a 5E skill with a .25 cast and it recharges every 4s. Since my two enchants are always up and recharge really fast, I never have to worry about Hexes at all.

Here's an update on the build after playing it awhile. It is not cheap surprisingly. When you are attacking a crowd around you, it is one of the most devastating attack setups in the game. All armor-ignoring, nearby-AoE range and several times I've taken off over 50% health from 4+ targets with one Twin Moon Sweep attack. But the negative is that your damage is hardly menacing if you are attacking 1v1. It is only decent when it's 2v1. That's why it is fair.

There was one round where a Rit had planted all his spirits close together and a bunch of us from both sides were fighting around him. The Twin Moon IWI attack triggered so many '23s' (spirits and pets are included!) that the center third of my monitor was almost completely covered with numbers. It is too cool to see. But later in the fight when I am going against one enemy, even my normal melee attacks under Whirling Charge needs time to take some one down. Hopefully Arena.net doesn't nerf it.

[I XM]

The version I am using since yesterday:

Blind Storm (Yeah it's a cheesy name, as is naming builds. But this is a nice description.)
D/Me
12(11+1) Mysticism
15(11+1+3) Earth Prayers
10(9+1) Wind Prayers
Rest in scythe for the rare occasions when you hit, or something else if using skills from a third tree.

Weapon: Sundering Scythe of Defense.
Since you have so much healing and regen, +AL is better than +hp. Dervish armour has 25 more hp than all other class armours so you still have 480hp. Sundering because you aren't hitting so vamp and zealous are useless. The sundering will trigger 2% of the time, lol since you are blind too, but there is nothing else to use. Especially since all the dervishes will have armour with +AL v/s elemental. Mod of choice +5E, for the same reasons (+dmg is useless since you aren't hitting anything).

Signet of Midnight {E}
Whirling Charge
Sand Shards
Mirage Cloak
Vital Boon
Signet of Piety
<optional>
Rez/Mystic Regeneration

Good skills for the optional slot: Mystic Regeneration, Spirit of Failure(2 inspiration for +2E works nice on idiots with blind), Blackout, Pious Restoration.

With 12 Mysticism, doing Vital Boon + Signet of Piety heals you for over 300hp and nets you +1E overall. You can comfortably drop Mysticism to 10 and boost another attribute higher. 12 Wind Prayers gives 1 extra second of IAS and 1 extra hex removed by Pious Restoration.

I was able to tank and kill 2 warriors, an assassin and a dervish at the same time with this set up. Since they were all in adjacent range attacking me, it was 3x24 dmg every miss. It's like farming, but farming wammos instead of vermin. The problem is after people start dying, your DPS falls. I might bring a pbAoE or degen skill do deal better with single targets, although it's not really the point of this build.

This build is good against attackers, against degen, against hexes like SS and Empathy, ignores all defensive stances/enchants etc... The only problem is if you are attacking only one target it's pretty poor pressure. So I try to get into a big melee and spread so much damage that the monks don't know what to heal anymore, and waste protection spells. Only had time to play a few hours since the start of the event. I'm gonna try it in the massive melees of AB now. :shocked:

[arredondo]

You're missing out on big damage without Twin Moon Sweep. For the slow scythe, it piles on the damage as a huge spike in crowds. My only free slot is Pious Restoration, but since it handles Hexes so well, I doubt I'd replace it with something else. Maybe a Scythe skill for when SoM is down.

Your damage is low 1v1, but you should pump up scythe points and use your normal weapon. You can get almost twice as much damage on 60 AL that way. To do this you can keep up all the enchants and use Whirling, but just don't Sig of Midnight anyone.

One thing that's clear is that a single Vamp Ranger can't hurt this build. I can kite with the enchants up, and when he uses Dodge to catchup I can easily out heal the damage then re-encant myself again. And one thing I didn't know is that Pious Restoration heals every 2s without any enchants up. You just get 70 HP without the Hex removal. This is a very sturdy setup. I wish all non-healing classes could hold up so well.

[Furinto]

*raises hand*

Okay, I may have missed a lot of things here.. but in my personal opinion, I don't see what's *so* great about this Sand Shards damage.

At maximum, it will only be dealing about 25 damage to surrounding enemies. Granted, this 25 damage is guaranteed, however this little combo requires at least two skills to pull off as well as additional ones to make maintaining it easier.

If i'm understanding the entire concept behind this, the purpose is to simply deal 25 unblockable. unevadable damage.

Well.. what about Wild Blow? 5 energy, 5 second recharge. Cannot be blocked or evaded, and results in a critical hit. Critical hits with a scythe will be much more than a mere 25 damage, won't it? Not to mention removing stances from everything it hits, and the fact that it isn't tied to any attribute, unlike Sand Shards, which might be weaker depending on personal build.

So can somebody please tell me what makes these Sand Shards combinations so special? Sure, it's good if you become blinded, or if something else causes you to miss, but deliberately missing just to activate the effect of the enchantment just doesn't seem worth the trouble.

[arredondo]

Fair questions... but its something that once you get the hang of using, it just does crazy damage. I've gotten four Glads in the short time I've used it. My last one was with this team (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v369/larshaun/Game%20Stuff/gw1493.jpg), and the fellow Dervs were amazed when I would solo charge into an entire team on bridges or in aisleways, etc., gutting them all to <50% in a few swings. Rit's Resilient Weapon gave me padded protection to do so BTW. You see those four dead bodies around me? That's what I'm talking about. And it only took a minute before the match was over.

The team asked where I posted it, so maybe they can comment if they come here and read this thread. It's a LOT of damage that doubles as AoE when you lead off with TMS as my earlier picture vs. the dummies on page 2 shows.

The damage is 100% armor ignoring, which makes a huge difference over normal Derv damage, and when you are tagging 3-5 entities (enemies, pets, spirits, etc.) you just see piles of bodies stack up. Monks seem to have trouble healing 3-4 people simultaneously, lol. That's why the damage is potent. What I think you are missing is that it isn't just 25 damage, but 25 damage per swing, per entity in nearby range. So TMS is two swings on 3-5 enemies for 150-250 unevadable, unblockable, AoE armor-ignoring damage. Every swing after that is under IAS and does half the amount of TMS. So it's 75-125 AoE damage every 1.5 seconds or so for 8s.

The balance is that it is weak as a 1v1 attack (I use physical scythe damage then), but it even works decent enough 1v2. I purposely go to mobs or have my purser follow me to another target to "make" a mob. I don't spend time chasing Monks, etc. unless the team has them on the ropes. As long as I canattack bunches, it is very effective. On teams where they spread out (i.e. caster teams), it isn't as effective.

[I XM]

Well yes I agree that I miss the double damage of twin moon. But I don't like the cooldown on it. And while I can see how it's nice for a quick 150pt AoE, I was running mine as pressure in TA overextending when needed and harassing people. So I was better off with a different skill. You need to cast an enchant before using it, so I'm not sure it actually increases your DPS over time. I kept the same setup build when I went to farm some faction in RA, but I can see how it's better to have Twin Moon in there since your aim isn't really pressuring.

Gonna try Chilling Victory + Avatar or Melandru next. But the range is adjacent on it, not nearby. :(

Btw, it's sick in AB. Did massive damage on the bridge in the middle near that elementalist shrine. People are clumped up and it's easy to hit (or rather miss) 3 adjaccent targets. Decimated some melee and minions like that. But you really need a monk then, because you need to be in the thick of things against more than what is thrown at you in 4v4. The 70Al really sucks then, but Mirage cloak helps some. The main damage you take is elementalist spells.

Edit: Signet of Piety is nice for giving a quick heal to people and is very energy efficient with Mysticism. Boosted earth to 16 since most of my skills are from that tree and decreased mysticism to 10.

[arredondo]

The enchant I allow TMS to release is Vital Boon (SS, VB, SoM, TMS, WC). After Whirling Charge I just put VB right back on. Think of it this way... against four targets in your attack range, using TMS dishes out an amazing -800 HP of team damage. by not using it, you are losing -400 HP in team damage every mob you go after. That's why it is worth it, if only for one use per mob. And if it comes back fast from your +20% recharge mod, you can use it twice.

As for armor, I have this globally...

+70 AL (normal)
+10 AL vs. Elemental
+10 AL vs. Earth
+5 AL (scythe mod)

So against earth-damage attacking Dervishes running around everywhere, I have 95 AL to protect me before counting my heals. I usually Blind a Warrior or Assassin since I am only 70 AL against them, and I hold up well otherwise.

Speaking of healing, I rarely used Pious Restoration since there are more Paragons and Dervishes than Mesmers and Necros these days. Besides, I can heal through any degen easily with just VB and SoP. With that in mind, I am playing with different offensive skills for that slot. I don't want something unusable when I am Blind, so I am now testing Aura of Thorns.

This 5E/.25C/12R enchant instantly Cripples all nearby foes for 9s and when it ends in 30s, everyone Bleeds for 14s. Of course enchant removals will make them Bleed earlier, so I use this now as a great snare and for my TMS donation. I cast SS->VB early, get in close, SoM->AoT->TMS->WC. This way allows Vital Boon to stay on me at all times, my targets can't run far once they see the huge life chunks I'm removing from them, and they all Bleed. It's worked out as you can see on this random team (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v369/larshaun/Game%20Stuff/gw1523.jpg) with no healer.

One thing though, we eventually went against a 4x DeMo team in TA and they destroyed us. I think Pat was warning me about them earlier.... I know they had Balthazar's elite and they spiked with Grenth's Fingers->Heart of Holy Flame, but that's all I saw before we died. Anyone know the full build?

[Scrangos]

I dont know the whole build but ive been hearing about this in the tourneys...

Has to do with what you said and using CoP to strip them all and spike the end of enchantment things. Its gotten ugly :p

Theres some other extra enchants that i dont know which are used, but probably easy to figure out. This is gonna get hit with the nerfstick until its unrecognizable on release though...

[CanthanPeasant]

hey arredondo,
thanks for the tips on alternate sharder build. Don't think it's as ridiculous as the Sin trick people exploited earlier but sure was fun when I used it on RA and some ppl go "WTF?". But I have noticed most groups now spread out so this build starts to lose some of it's spark... heh heh! :grin:

CoP build is another crazy thing ppl are talking about in-game. Check that one out before the weekend is over. Looks like ANet is gonna have to look over this monster they have created before going gold with it.

[arredondo]

Yeah, I've read about CoP now in the other thread (after being blasted by it a few times). Sure it'll get adjusted, but hopefully this one doesn't because it feels strong but not overpowered. Just spread out or strip enchants and the opponent will be fine.

[Scrangos]

Yeah, I've read about CoP now in the other thread (after being blasted by it a few times). Sure it'll get adjusted, but hopefully this one doesn't because it feels strong but not overpowered. Just spread out or strip enchants and the opponent will be fine.

I found enchant stripping to be not so useful, since they want the enchantments off anyway... Unless its shatter enchantment.

Only way ive found to successfully do it is kiting and degening or energy denial/interrupts.

[critical vengeance]

wow those pictures were crazy, i missed most of the event so i didn't want to dump out all my bath faction with skills likely to change, still awesome screeny :P

[arredondo]

You actually see a lot MORE numbers when in a match with spirits and pets around the enemy groups. It causes some huge Twin Moon Sweep spikes that just wipes out multiple enemies at once with a few extra swings. Hopefully it's not nerfed since you can only abuse the damage if they crowd.

BTW, I settled on Dust Cloak for my final skill. It does 92 Holy damage AoE, and then Blinds when it ends. I used it as my initial attack in a crowd, followed by TMS to cancel it. It worked VERY well and I was happy with the results. I made six Glads in all this weekend, four from this build. I'm sure they will PvE test NF in the future; hopefully we see some more PvP action too.

[CanthanPeasant]

While playing in tonight's final PvP event day, I noticed most teams are adapting to the D/Me Shard build. The moment I start laying the AoE effect, they spread out! Fighting one on one, or even against two opps really don't do any justice to this build... of course I had fun when spirits or minions start appearing and occasionally some players don't realize what I am doing.

I have been with a couple of D/Mos who were on CoP build but they must have not been good players cause they got owned real fast by the opp.
Event's over, lets wait and see what comes out on the next NPE.

[arredondo]

I agree, which is why it doesn't need a nerf. Still, think about it - enemies spreading out hurts quite a few team builds who use pack hunting as a tactic with their melee builds. It's like a portable Meteor Shower, they all gang up on a target until everyone starts getting ripped apart and they scatter (iff smart).

The good thing is Twing Moon Sweep->two melee swings in a crowd brings everyone near death, so you don't need them to bunch up for very long. When I added Dust Cloak, it provided the unconditional damage spike I needed (full damage even if on only one target). Altogether, it balances out.

[Ringsgold]

:cry:
And I come up with this today :(

i wasn't gonna post that and keep it as a secret uber build:(
same here...


anyways this beats all PvE meleers :) imagine 20 minos(or other meleers as long as there are 5 or more, just takes longer) standing around you swinging at you blindly, you activate sand shards and kill them all with a twin moon sweep :D

well, too bad I wasnt the first who thought of this, time to check out the paragon's skills :wave:

[santiroberts]

i tried it out and was only getting 22 dam on all nearby, rather than 22*x. or am i doing something wrong? THanks.

[Echo Darkwynd]

i tried it out and was only getting 22 dam on all nearby, rather than 22*x. or am i doing something wrong? THanks.

They changed scythe attacks so that they only hit foes adjacent to your target. In order to get the damage multiplier, you need to "miss" the target, which requires them to be in front of you. You will still damage nearby foes behind you, but they don't add to the Sand Shards damage.

I hope that clears things up a bit.

This combo still works, and works very well. I've been using this to solo on my Mesmer as discussed here (http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=433159). There's a even video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64NkbfnvKkg) from that thread demonstrating it. Note how I kite the mobs so that they're all in front of me.