User:JackBlackserpent/Skills

= Disclaimer: "This ain't PvX...!!!" =

I'm not the kind of guy who likes going to the PvX wiki and just grabbing a cookie-cutter build for whatever job is required of my character; for me, half the fun of Guild Wars is designing builds and experimenting with them. In the course of these experimentations I happen to have come up with some builds which I've found very effective... but I doubt they'd be to the taste of the sort of people who run straight to PvX when their current build doesn't cut the mustard.

As a result, I've put them here - maybe they'll inspire the reader to come up with their own versions, or (more likely) people will just come to point, stare or laugh. But these builds worked for me and my personal style of play... I accept no responsibility for character death, player frustration or epic failure if someone else uses these builds and finds them wanting.

That's why these are listed here in my personal area of GWW for your amusement, rather than on PvX claiming to be 'legitimate' builds.

Incidentally, if anyone does feel the urge to give any of these whacked-out builds a try and wants to give some feedback, please feel free to leave a comment on the Discussions page.

The (in)Famous Conditions build
''This one is probably my most famous, and the closest I have to something worthy of sharing. It's done the rounds of many of the Rangers in my alliances past and present, most of whom had reasonable success even if they didn't adopt it permanently. Me, I use it for almost everything in PvE (sadly PvP fans, there are 3 PvE-only skills, and I'm not sure it would do much good against real people anyway). After one beta-version based around Volley & Melandru's Shot and some subsequent tweaking, I think I've managed to squeeze every last condition out of the Ranger and Necro skill sets; simply hitting the buttons from 1 to 8 in turn, this build causes Poison, Burning, Cracked Armor, Bleeding, Disease, Weakness and Dazed to the poor hapless target (that's seven out of ten conditions, folks - omitting only Blind, Crippled and Deep Wound), with only Bleeding not being shared by at least two of his mates nearby... and since that's basically only a delivery method for spreading Disease anyway, that's not much of a problem.''

The aim of this build was simply to spread as many conditions to as many targets in one aggro group as possible; having done this, it's usually a simple matter for your heroes and henchies to finish them off, maybe with some help from repeated use of Incendiary Arrows (your go-to attack if there's anyone else left standing) or Body Shot (for energy mangement, if you're starting to feel the pinch). Jack has 40 energy with two pips of regen by way of various upgrades to his armour and his Flatbow, and the high Expertise means that Incendiary Arrows, Deft Strike and Body Shot only weigh in at an energy cost of 3 instead of the usual 5. With the extra 9 energy he gets back from Body Shot, this is usually enough to keep him going through even the hardest combat. Self-heals are noticeable by their absence; Jack only has 446 health, and I find that taking my Sabway Necros with me normally provides enough healing to keep me alive even in Hard Mode, along with the common-sense Ranger tactic of staying back and shooting over my allies' heads so that some other poor fool takes the melee damage. And talking of Sabways - one of the builds includes Splinter Weapon, and I find that telling my Master of Whispers to cast it on me just before I fire the Incendiary Arrows adds a little more fun to the mix...!

7-second Blitzkrieg build
''I came up with this one on a whim - having seen how many conditions I could spread in one build, I then decided to see how quickly I could decimate an aggro group through raw damage instead. Sadly though, the name mentioned doesn't refer to their estimated lifespan (although in limited testing, it wasn't much longer than that...!); the downside of the build is that it requires 7 seconds' preparation before it's ready to cause carnage.''

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Fort Aspenwood Gunther Defense build
''This build was created on-the-fly while playing the Kurzick side at Fort Aspenwood; I was stuck with a team who all wanted to charge into battle and be heroes, which left nobody looking after Gunther and the two Gatekeepers. Frustrated that the Luxons were breaking through the lines every time, charging in and killing Gunther to win the match while all the Kurzicks were still out there happily hacking away at turtles, I slapped a quick bodge-job build together from what skills I had lying around. The result was something which was just about up to the task - with the help of a Monk or two - of keeping the Master Architect alive for just long enough that God's Vengeance could be completed.''

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Spirit Wrangler build
''To all intents and purposes, this is a pretty simple Spirit Spammer build; the reason I'm so proud of it is that it's very nearly energy-neutral - because of the energy that Boon Of Creation and Essence Strike give back between them, it's possible to have used all the skills and still have almost as much energy as you started with! Yes, I can now spam spirits to my heart's content with virtually no carbon footprint... it's my way of giving back to the environment.''

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Kamikaze Bomber build
''Playing Muerta tends to bring out my crazy side when it comes to builds... something about playing a Rit makes me get all lateral-thinky. Once I spotted the skill Cruel Was Daoshen I saw the potential for a hit-and-run bomber - someone who could flag his heroes back, run straight at an aggro group, drop a lightning bomb and run back to the Monk's healing embrace before the enemies' attacks killed him. It looks a little worrying when you see this build in action, but in reality it's a sound - if risky - tactic.''

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Mass Summoning build
''I already have a pretty standard Aura Of The Lich-based Minion Master build for Muerta (whose name literally means "Explosion Death" in Spanish, as I originally created him to be a Minion Bomber), but having seen the Asura Summon spells available the "crazy Rit" gear kicked in and I decided to see just how many things I could summon at once... given enough corpses, this build can raise a small army, which will happily swarm over anything before it. Although it hasn't been as extensively tested as some of my other builds, the "en-masse" approach seems promising - helping out a guildie in Vizunah Square local (admittedly in Normal Mode) resulted in 8 minions, a Vanguard Assassin and a Ruby Djinn running around destroying Afflicted left right and centre, plus my faithful Vampirism spirit keeping me safe and stealing little nibbles of health for me, which technically - if you counted all the summoned creatures, as well as the foreign-side players - gave us a total party size of 27... more than enough to even the odds against the swarm of enemies. In fact, my guildie DC'd about halfway through and I ended up finishing the mission with Masters, despite being four men down!''

The main thing to remember here is that this build is not designed for direct confrontation - while it's undoubtedly fun to get the rush of being a one-man army (commanding up to 11 summoned creatures in addition to your three heroes), it can get pretty boring just sitting on the backline pressing skill buttons instead of joining the fight. But the lack of actual combat skills means that the best you can hope for is the occasional wand- or staff-shot while you're waiting for various skills to recharge, and really your downtime is better employed moving to a different position anyway to overwhelm the latest hotspot. If you're looking to go head-to-head with the enemy, I would suggest something more like the Kamikaze Bomber build above, but if you're content to simply stand back and watch the chaos ensue this build is hard to beat. Needless to say, the first three skills need to be constantly applied, so keep an eye on them to ensure that you're getting the most out of each summon, then just keep spamming the spirit, the Djinn, the Assassin and the minions as soon as they recharge. It's also a good idea to stay within earshot of as many backline party members as you can (especially healers) so that the health buff from Spirit's Gift benefits as many as possible - it's not going to save your party in itself, but a little health top-up plus the removal of a condition might well keep a Monk alive for long enough to make a bigger difference to the party as a whole. So long as Spirit's Gift and Boon of Creation are both constantly active, your health and energy shouldn't be a concern - about the most energy you're likely to use in one hit is about 35 (which will soon get replenished with some sensible use of Aura Of The Lich), and with the double health bonuses each time you summon something plus the little top-ups from the Vampirism spirit mean that you're unlikely to take any serious damage. The most important thing to remember is to keep spamming those skills - as soon as a skill becomes available again, use it, because distracting yourself will cause the whole chain to break down and leave you open to damage, energy loss and eventual death. Oh, and one more thing - be sensible with the minions; while you want to use Aura Of The Lich at the earliest opportunity, you also want to make sure that you're raising more than one or two minions at a time, so try and position yourself around a big buildup of corpses before triggering it... and I'm sure I don't even need to say that Putrid Flesh is a skill which should not be used against human enemies, unless you're sure they are going to stay on the backline - there's nothing worse than watching that Warrior you just infected running straight into the middle of your group and spreading Disease to your own troops.

Evil Mesmer Minion build
''Although I already had a Mesmer character, Proserpine Mortis was made for a special purpose: I wanted to see how powerful the combination of Fast Casting and Aura Of The Lich could be. The one thing that always annoyed me before about playing Minion Masters was the fact that those little undead fellas took ages to get up and start fighting, and I wanted to see if I could improve on that. Although I'd previously not enjoyed playing my other Mesmer, Minerva Ducharme, I found that the Mesmer/Necro combination gives a lot of good area-effect hexes and a couple of conditions... although the most devastating part of the build has to be when a random minion explodes, and spreads Disease throughout the enemy's ranks.''

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Caster Guardian build
''This hero build for M.O.X. originated in a complex party's-worth of interdependent builds designed to cause serious carnage for my ex-girlfriend's character, a Necro/Ranger. Originally I started out with my Paragon, giving him a Rit secondary so that I could pile lots of miscellaneous buffs (including Splinter Weapon and Anthem Of Flame) onto her character while she used a bow and Barrage for maximum area-effect; once I'd come up with a build I liked though, energy was a problem - which required a BiP Necro hero. With a second hero slot taken up by the healing Monk, I was left with one slot left and a huge problem - with all these ranged people, what if an Assassin or a melee tank gets past the hail of arrows...? We'd be slaughtered! Realising that I needed someone who was both an auxilliary healer and a defensive tank rolled into one, who could defend the party from melee aggro if necessary, I created this build for M.O.X. which is pretty much a jack-of-all-trades - there's some handy heals in there, a couple of area-effect melee attacks, and of course a scythe to take on several opponents at once if needs be. While the original set of builds (which I collectively called "Chain Reaction") was never actually used - due to the ex having real-world commitments which prevented us playing at the same time - the Caster Guardian build works well for any mostly-ranged party; for example, Proserpine always takes a M.O.X. with this build out with her otherwise full-caster heroes to counter any close-quarters aggro while she's playing with her minions (see her build, above).''

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