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Kirsty
09-04-2005, 14:56
Hi guys

Mort was very nice to hand me a friends key for the weekend and since Celine won't be playing I will have some time to test some pvp out myself. I came up with a blinding build which isn't finetuned yet, but to me it seems to show promise. I did most damage calculations already and I will try to explain what I want to achieve with it.


The character will be Laetitia Celeste, an Elementalist / Warrior.

Energy Storage: 8 (+24 energy)
Water Magic: 9
Air Magic: 11
Tactics: 4
Hammer Mastery: 7


Skill 1: Shock (Air Magic, Skill, 10 energy, 0.75 second cast, 10 recharge)
Touched foe is struck for 48 lightning damage and knocked down. Damage has 25% armor penetration.

Skill 2: Belly Smash (Hammer Mastery, Hammer attack, 5 energy, 0 second cast, 30 recharge)
If it attacks a foe who is on the ground, a dust cloud blinds nearby foes for 3-9 seconds (unknown length).

Skill 3: Bonetti's Defense (Tactics, Stance, 10 energy, 0 second cast, 60 recharge)
For 7 seconds, gain 75% chance to block melee attacks and gain 5 energy per parry. This ends if you use a skill.
I should probably use a different stance here.

Skill 4: Whirlwind (Air Magic, Spll, 10 energy, 0.75 seconds to cast, 20 seconds recharge)
All adjacent foes take 48 cold damage. Attacking foes are knocked down.

Skill 5: Lightning Touch (Air Magic, Skill, 15 energy, 0.75 second cast, 10 recharge)
target touched and nearby foes 32 lightning damage, if suffering from water magic extra 32 lightning damage. Damage has 25% armor penetration.

Skill 6: Blurred vision (Water Magic, Hex, 15 energy, 1 second cast, 20 recharge)
For 16 seconds, foe and nearby foes are hexes and have 50% chance to miss

Skill 7: Glimmering Mark (Air Magic, Hex, ELITE, 10 energy, 2 second cast, 15 recharge)
For 12 seconds, when the target takes lightning damage, the target and all nearby foes are blind for 3 seconds.

Skill 8: Conjure Lightning (Air Magic, Enchantment, 10 energy, 1 second cast, 60 recharge)
Lose all enchantments. For 60 seconds gain 12 lightning damage on attacks.



Seemingly, all lightning damage has 25% armor penetration.
I have several possible skill combinations which I perceive as main ideas and additional ideas.

Main ideas:
Idea 1: 20 energy cost for continuous blind of all nearby opponents.
Precast Conjure Lightning before going into battle. Cast Glimmering Mark on a warrior(?) and engage. Every hit will keep it and all nearby opponents continuously blinded for a duration of 12 seconds (glimmering duration) + 3 seconds (conjure lightning last hit).

Idea 2: 30 or 45 energy cost for damage and miss chance
Cast Blurred Vision followed by Lightning Touch. This makes nearby opponents miss and lightning touch will do some decent area damage. If the target of lightning touch is still under influence of Glimmering Mark it will also add blindness. Most likely I can follow up with a second lightning touch here though that requires another 15 energy.

Idea 3: 15 energy cost for knockdown and blind
A nice combination of a swift Shock + Belly Smash combination which will knock one opponent down and blind all nearby for a so far unknown duration. Pity I can't find anything on Belly smash duration.

Idea 4: 10 or 15 energy emergency damage and blind
For a quick defense against an overwhelming amount of attackers there is the Whirlwind skill. It will do some cold damage to nearby enemies and knock attacking opponents down of which I can perhaps belly smash the nearest to blind the lot.



Additional idea:
Idea 5: Perhaps I can use Blinding Flash as additional option to blind instead of whirlwind. I have thought about this exchange before but I may already have enough options to blind.

Blinding Flash (Air Magic, Spell, 15 energy, 0.75 second cast, 4 recharge)
Target is blind for 9 seconds


Idea 6: Perhaps I can use Counter Blow as another source of knockdown for a belly smash follow up. I'm not using my adrenaline anyway.

Counter Blow (None, Hammer Attack, 4 adrenaline, 0 second cast, 4 adrenaline recharge)
If this attack hits an attacking for, that foe is knocked down.


Idea 7: 10 energy, energy gaining
During battle I hope to use Bonetti's defense to regain energy for another skill combination and to escape possible melee harm.
Bonetti's Defense would probably not be too good in combination with miss and blind of the opponents nearby, so I should pick a stance that stops ranged attacks, spells and conditions. Those are the main weaknesses I perceive. I seem to be thinking about Wary Stance or Swirling Aura here. On the other hand, energy gain of Bonifetti looks interesting to me for multiple combinations of 'Idea 2'.

Wary Stance (Tactics, Stance, 10 energy, 0 second cast, 60 recharge)
For 7 seconds, block any attack skill used against you, for each block gain adrenaline and 5 energy. Ends if you use a skill.

Swirling Aura (Water Magic, Enchantment, 10 energy, 1 second cast, 60 recharge)
For 9 seconds gain 75% chance to block arrow and magical projectiles.


I also have no form of healing so I should get something along those lines as well or rely on monks. Now I can pick Aura of Restoration because I bumped energy storage to some decent value, but I probably won't be spamming skills that much and the ones that I spam do not cost a lot of energy. Healing Signet could perhaps work, but I will not gain a lot of health.

Healing Signet (Tactics, Signet, 0 energy, 2 seconds cast, 4 seconds recharge)
Gain 70 health, take double damage while using this skill.


I have bumped water magic up for a good duration of blurred vision so perhaps I should be casting a few skills of that instead. Maelstrom looks good when a lot of opponents are nearby but it takes 4 seconds to cast which is far too much since I'm within melee range and if blind or miss ends prematurely I'd be toast... unless I have anti-interruption like glyph of concentration. It may be better to just take an armor skill instead.

Maelstrom (Water Magic, Spell, 25 energy, 4 seconds cast, 30 seconds recharge)
For 10 seconds, foes in the area are struck for 8-29 cold damage each second. Interrupts spellcasting but exhausts caster)

Glyph of Concentration (None, Glyph, 5 energy, 1 second, 2 seconds recharge)
Your next spell cannot be interrupted and ignores the effect of daze.

Armor of Frost (Water Magic, Enchantment, 5 energy, 1 second cast, 45 recharge)
For 10-29 seconds, gain +40 armor vs physical, -24 armor vs fire.



Soo... quite a bit I've been looking into and I have about 6 skills set already. The problem is what to do with the other two skills (Whirlwind and Bonetti's Defense) and how long I will last without a skill to purge conditions or a monk to back me up.
Any thoughts?

Luc

neoflame
09-04-2005, 15:30
At last check, Bonetti's Defense had become adrenaline based (8 adrenaline, if I recall correctly, so it's going to take a while to get that adrenaline with a hammer.)

Belly Smash at 7 Hammer Mastery blinds for 7 seconds.

IIRC, only lightning damage from lightning skills has the 25% armor penetration, so you won't get that bonus for Conjure Lightning.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I wince at the thought of a Warrior secondary inflicting AoE conditions without Victory is Mine!. :(

Kirsty
09-04-2005, 15:45
I had expected Conjure Lightning to do penetrating damage but I mainly get it to use in combination with Glimmering Mark.

Victory is mine could be good but it's an elite so I didn't look at it any further. Besides, I'll only inflict knockdown and blind which doesn't sound like much in terms of conditions and I should add something like bleeding, crippled, dazed or deep wound to really have it work well. That is, unless it gives you health per condition per opponent, which seems too powerful.

neoflame
09-04-2005, 15:47
I suppose you're right, especially since knockdown doesn't count as a condition (IIRC). :( Though,

That is, unless it gives you health per condition per opponent, which seems too powerful.
As far as I can tell (http://guildwarsguru.com/content/victory-is-mine-elite-id137.php),

Description: You gain 10-56 health and 5 energy for each condition suffered by adjacent foes.
Energy Cost: 5
Casting Time: 0
Recharge Time: 15 seconds
Skill Type: Shout
Linked Attribute: Tactics

Phaeax
09-04-2005, 19:18
It does give health for each condition. I used it in connection with Hamstring, Sever Artery, and Gash last BWE and would often get 168 health back.

Mortshd
09-04-2005, 19:59
I'm not fully understand about all the skill mechanics, etc... so my question is Luc, you seem to use a lot of Air skills why don't you have the Air Attunement skill to save your energy casting? Also isn't it better if you drop the Water skill (since you have only 1) to have a better attribute distribution since you don't have to spread them out for both air and water? Please enlight me :confused:

Kirsty
09-04-2005, 22:58
I should already have enough energy to continuously cast most of my combinations so I thought I wouldn't really need Air Attunement. More so, the skills that I am casting don't require a lot of energy and I won't be casting them incredibly often. Therefore I won't be gaining much back either and it would be a wasted skill slot. I perceive the attunement skills more suitable for continuous casters. Perhaps I am mistaken there though.

I picked Blurred Vision because next to blind it is the second form of "chance to miss" and it doubles the damage I will be doing with Lightning Touch. I made a typo on its description and it should read that whenever nearby opponents are under the effect of a water hex, you get the extra damage from Lightning Touch.

I put Blurred Vision to a reasonably long duration because the chance to miss is quite high and it's an area effect. As you can derive from the ideas I had I was going to try for area blind, some damage and chance to miss. If the opponents are close together it should mean that I could disable their melee and ranged attacks for quite some time, although of course I cannot stop cast spells.
I wonder whether chance to miss and blind work against skill attacks, otherwise I'd be exchanging Bonetti's for Wary Stance.


I think "Victory is mine" only gives health according to the amount of different conditions your opponents are suffering from. I don't think 5 people suffering from blind would heal you 5 x 10-56 health, but rather 1 x 10-56 health.

Isamoth
15-04-2005, 11:47
'Victory is Mine' will give the bonus for for each condition on each monster when the condition is applied via a non-aoe spell. I don't know if it would work the same for an aoe spell but i would immagine that if you're close enough then it would work the same.

Viri
19-04-2005, 19:31
This is a build to defend casters from warriors. 1 bad thing is that ranged attacks will rape you. Elementalists have low armor and ele spells doesnt help much against ranged opponents. I witnessed on my character 5 obsidian flames in 2 sec period... it was just ... deadly...half minute later same thing ... Same thing would be with lighting orbs. Id rather go ele focused on lighting and earth(melee ward owns) and add monk as secondary for some healing power. You can still carry a sword to make lighting dmg if u wish but there are a lot of better spells for ele. Its just my opinion tho.

Kirsty
19-04-2005, 19:49
We actually tried it out in tombs and it works very well to counter melee opponents from plowing over your casters. If your melee opponents are close together it's even better. The only thing we're currently worried about is taking too much elemental damage but I think we can come up with a skill or armor to counter that.

Maybe armor negation spells will be a problem but they are a problem for everyone so we won't focus on countering that. You can't counter everything.

I'm using Glimmering Mark as my elite and that's permanent. No discussion possible.

Super Emo Man
20-04-2005, 02:23
With this as it is, Conjure Lightning won't work seeing as it has been changed.


Conjure Lightning (availability)
Description: Lose all enchantments. For 60 seconds, if you're wielding a lightning weapon, your attacks strike for an additional 1-13 lightning damage.
Energy Cost: 10
Activation Time: 1 Second.
Recharge Time: 60 Seconds.
Linked Attribute: Air Magic. Increases additional damage dealt.
Skill Type: Enchantment Spell.

So you can get a sword with lightning damage, and then you won't need Conjure Lightning, but it is nice for extra damage.

Kirsty
20-04-2005, 02:33
Well, you use conjure lightning before you cast any other enchantments. At least that worked this BWE.