Freyas Theme Builds #2
Originally Published by Freyas
This week, I decided to concentrate on Fragility, an interesting Mesmer skill that can be somewhat useful, but can be incredibly powerful given the right circumstances. First, let's look at the skill:
Description:For 8-18 seconds, target foe takes 5-28 damage each time that foe suffers or recovers from a new "Condition"
Energy Cost:15
Casting Time:1 second
Recharge Time:15 seconds
Skill Type:Hex
Linked Attribute:Illusion Magic
When looking at the skill to begin with, it looks alright, but not something too powerful, considering the difficulty of inflicting lots of conditions. The key thing that made me start thinking about the skill is that it deals damage whenever the foe recovers from a condition. Thus, if you can inflict conditions that have a short duration, you can trigger fragility twice on a single condition. With a 15 energy cost, this skill will need to have a significant effect for me to take it into battle, but with the right setup, it can deal incredible amounts of damage.
The skill I found that would work best with Fragility is Mark of Rodgort. This skill is a hex that will give your enemy the "On Fire" condition whenever they are struck with fire damage. The key advantage of this is that with low levels of Fire Magic the burning will last for 1 second before wearing off- which will trigger Fragility twice in a second. Unfortunately, Mark of Rodgort is rather energy intensive, costing 25 energy to cast. I would recommend using this skill with 2 points in the Fire Magic attribute, giving you a 10 second duration on the hex.
So we now have Fragility and Mark of Rodgort to start off the build. Next, we need some way to trigger Mark of Rodgort so that we can set our enemy on fire as many times as possible within the 10 seconds that Mark of Rodgort lasts. To inflict the fire damage necessary, we could use a spammable skill such as flare, but that will eat at our energy, and with our low Fire Magic attribute, do negligable damage. Another option is to use a weapon that deals fire damage, which can be found on wands linked to Divine Favor or Fire Magic, and on melee weapons and bows using a fire damage upgrade. As our Fire Magic attribute is low, we wouldn't be able to bring a very high damage wand that is linked to Fire Magic, and the other weapons are all linked to other classes than Mesmer or Elementalist, this option leaves us with dealing little damage with our attacks. The final option, and the one that I like best, is using the skill Conjure Flame, which will add a small amount of fire damage to every attack. This way, we can use a nice weapon, and still deal fairly decent damage with our attacks.
At this point, I'm getting concerned about energy. Conjure Flame will cost you 10 energy to cast, Fragility 15, and Mark of Rodgort 25. 50 energy is more than any character besides a primary Elementalist will generally ever have, and using it all in a matter of a couple seconds is not going to make for a very efficient build. Therefore, it's time to look at energy management. Let's look at how often we will need to cast these skills. Fragility lasts 18 seconds with a 15 second recharge, so we could possibly keep this up indefinitely, given the mana requirement. However, the limiting skill is Mark of Rodgort which has a 20 second recharge, and we will be having about a 10 second duration. Thus, we'll want to break even on energy every 20 seconds. Fortunately, Conjure Flame lasts for 60 seconds, meaning we can use Fragility and Mark of Rodgort three times before needing to renew Conjure Flame. So, every 20 seconds we'll need to be managing 40 energy and every 60 seconds we'll need to get an additional 10 in order to break even from just these skills. In 20 seconds of regeneration you will regenerate 26 energy, leaving us 14 energy shy of keeping even with Mark of Rodgort and Fragility, and we'll need to get an additional 10 energy every 60 seconds to keep even with Conjure Flame. To look at our energy options, we can choose what to take from Inspiration Magic on the Mesmer side, and we can use glyphs and Energy Storage skills from the Elementalist profession, though the Energy Storage skills will require the character to be an Elementalist primary.
In Inspiration Magic, we have Energy Tap, Energy Drain{E}, Power Drain, and Leech Signet for gaining a good amount of energy. Energy Tap and Energy Drain have the advantage of being able to steal energy without requiring you to interrupt a skill. However, Energy Tap recovers the least amount of energy, and Energy Drain costs our elite skill slot. Power Drain can give us possibly 20 energy every 25 seconds, so long as we can find someone to interrupt, and Leech Signet can give 13 energy every 45 seconds, also requiring a spell to interrupt.
From the Elementalist profession, we can use Glyph of Lesser Energy, Glyph of Energy{E}, or Ether Prodigy. Glyph of Lesser Energy will gain 10 energy from the cost of a spell(costs 5 to cast the glyph, and it reduces the cost of your next spell by 15, giving a 10 energy benefit), and Glyph of Energy gains 15 energy, but we need to use it on a spell costing 20 or more energy to use, meaning Mark of Rodgort. Ether Prodigy can give us 3(4?) extra arrows of energy regeneration for up to 15 seconds, gaining 15(20?) energy, but costing 5 energy to cast, and causing exhaustion. I had thought Ether Prodigy gained 4 energy, but the site says it is 3- in any case, it's not too great of a skill for this build.
Overall, at this point, I would probably say to use Glyph of Lesser Energy, as well as one or two inspiration skills. We will most likely be wanting some extra energy to use for other skills, meaning if we can gain more than we need to break even with our current skills, we can use some additional skills to increase our damage output. My choice would probably be to bring Energy Drain{E} and Power Drain. This gives us some straight energy gain by using Energy Drain, and if we can land an interrupt with Power Drain, we'll have plenty of extra energy to throw around.
So, looking at our current setup, we have:
Mesmer/Elementalist or Elementalist/Mesmer
Fire Magic: 2
Inspiration Magic: ?
Illusion Magic: ?
Fragility
Mark of Rodgort
Conjure Flame
Glyph of Lesser Energy
Energy Drain{E}
Power Drain
?
?
So- we have 2 more skills that we can add, and we can either choose from our current skill lines and specialize our attributes highly, or we could choose to add another attribute line. With how it looks currently, I would generally choose to stick with the current attribute lines, and be able to invest in a primary attribute or specialize only in these two lines with 12 points each.
Since we get extra damage for inflicting conditions thanks to Fragility, let's look at the other Mesmer and Elementalist skills that we can use to inflict conditions. For Mesmer skills, you only really have Phantom Pain and Signet of Midnight. Signet of Midnight is elite, which gives us problems with Energy Drain, so I would discard that option. Phantom Pain gives us some decent damage over time, and inflicts deep wound at the end, which is attractive to me. On the other hand, Elementalists can inflict blind or weakness using the Air Magic attribute, so if we decided to go with Air Magic, we can gain access to two conditions. Unfortunately, the spells that cause these conditions can be energy-intensive: Blinding Flash costs 15 energy to inflict Blind, and Enervating Charge costs 10 energy to deal damage as well as inflict Weakness.
Looking at the options, and keeping our energy situation in mind, I would probably choose to go for Phantom Pain, as we already have the linked attribute and the deep wound will help us kill our target by reducing their life total by 20% as well as reducing the effectiveness of healing. In addition, it's a hex, so if it's put on top of Fragility and Mark of Rodgort, we can make our important hexes more difficult to remove. This leaves us with one free skill, which could be nice to include some defense with. I would probably choose to go with Ether Feast, which will give a rather nice heal for only 5 energy, especially with our high level of Inspiration Magic.
Ok- so now we've got a probable skill setup: As our attribute points are mostly in Mesmer attributes, and we should be able to manage on a Mesmer energy pool, I would choose to go with a Mesmer/Elementalist rather than an Elementalist/Mesmer, in order to gain the benefits from Mesmer armor and runes.
Mesmer/Elementalist
Illusion Magic: 14(12+2)
Inspiration Magic: 13(12+1)
Fire Magic: 2
Fragility: Illusion Magic
Mark of Rodgort: Fire Magic
Conjure Flame: Fire Magic
Glyph of Lesser Energy: Unlinked
Energy Drain{E}: Inspiration Magic
Power Drain: Inspiration Magic
Phantom Pain: Illusion Magic
Ether Feast: Inspiration Magic
Now it's time to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the build.
Strengths:
This build has the potential for an extremely high damage output. At 14 Illusion Magic, Fragility will be dealing 32 damage each time it triggers. For each attack with Mark of Rodgort, you will be doing your normal wand damage and 7 fire damage, which can be reduced by your targets Armor Level. This will end up being probably around 25 damage to most casters, and about 15 damage to Warriors or Rangers. In addition, you will deal 64 damage per attack via Fragility, which ignores armor, and 7 arrows of health degeneration for one second each attack to deal another 14 damage. For every attack while Mark of Rodgort and Fragility are active, you should be dealing approximately 90-100 damage! Phantom Pain will add 6 damage per second and another 32 damage from Fragility when it ends. On the downside, when you are waiting for Mark of Rodgort to recharge, you will be limited to the 15-25 damage from your normal attacks, and possibly the damage over time from Phantom Pain.
Weaknesses:
The damage output of this build is very much dependent upon hexes, meaning that if your hexes are removed you will be doing rather poor damage. Phantom Pain can help protect your Fragility and Mark of Rodgort from most single-hex removal spells, but spells that remove all hexes, or enemies with multiple hex removal spells will be able to severely limit your damage output. Unfortunately, there's very little that can be done to stop this by making changes to the build. Another possible weakness is protection spells decreasing your chance of hitting your target, as you need to deal your damage in order to trigger Mark of Rodgort. One possible change would be to bring enchantment removal instead of one of the skills, most likely trading Ether Feast or Phantom Pain for Inspired Enchantment in order to remove such skills as Guardian or Shield of Deflection.
Overall, while having a weakness to a team with a lot of hex removal that has the opportunity to remove your hexes, this build can be rather impressive. If there is another character in your party that can help protect your hexes, either by covering them with other hexes, or by preventing the other team from using hex removal, this build should be able to really shine, dealing more damage per second than pretty much any other character.
Feel free to discuss this build, and other of my "Theme Builds" in our forums, in this thread.
Description:For 8-18 seconds, target foe takes 5-28 damage each time that foe suffers or recovers from a new "Condition"
Energy Cost:15
Casting Time:1 second
Recharge Time:15 seconds
Skill Type:Hex
Linked Attribute:Illusion Magic
When looking at the skill to begin with, it looks alright, but not something too powerful, considering the difficulty of inflicting lots of conditions. The key thing that made me start thinking about the skill is that it deals damage whenever the foe recovers from a condition. Thus, if you can inflict conditions that have a short duration, you can trigger fragility twice on a single condition. With a 15 energy cost, this skill will need to have a significant effect for me to take it into battle, but with the right setup, it can deal incredible amounts of damage.
The skill I found that would work best with Fragility is Mark of Rodgort. This skill is a hex that will give your enemy the "On Fire" condition whenever they are struck with fire damage. The key advantage of this is that with low levels of Fire Magic the burning will last for 1 second before wearing off- which will trigger Fragility twice in a second. Unfortunately, Mark of Rodgort is rather energy intensive, costing 25 energy to cast. I would recommend using this skill with 2 points in the Fire Magic attribute, giving you a 10 second duration on the hex.
So we now have Fragility and Mark of Rodgort to start off the build. Next, we need some way to trigger Mark of Rodgort so that we can set our enemy on fire as many times as possible within the 10 seconds that Mark of Rodgort lasts. To inflict the fire damage necessary, we could use a spammable skill such as flare, but that will eat at our energy, and with our low Fire Magic attribute, do negligable damage. Another option is to use a weapon that deals fire damage, which can be found on wands linked to Divine Favor or Fire Magic, and on melee weapons and bows using a fire damage upgrade. As our Fire Magic attribute is low, we wouldn't be able to bring a very high damage wand that is linked to Fire Magic, and the other weapons are all linked to other classes than Mesmer or Elementalist, this option leaves us with dealing little damage with our attacks. The final option, and the one that I like best, is using the skill Conjure Flame, which will add a small amount of fire damage to every attack. This way, we can use a nice weapon, and still deal fairly decent damage with our attacks.
At this point, I'm getting concerned about energy. Conjure Flame will cost you 10 energy to cast, Fragility 15, and Mark of Rodgort 25. 50 energy is more than any character besides a primary Elementalist will generally ever have, and using it all in a matter of a couple seconds is not going to make for a very efficient build. Therefore, it's time to look at energy management. Let's look at how often we will need to cast these skills. Fragility lasts 18 seconds with a 15 second recharge, so we could possibly keep this up indefinitely, given the mana requirement. However, the limiting skill is Mark of Rodgort which has a 20 second recharge, and we will be having about a 10 second duration. Thus, we'll want to break even on energy every 20 seconds. Fortunately, Conjure Flame lasts for 60 seconds, meaning we can use Fragility and Mark of Rodgort three times before needing to renew Conjure Flame. So, every 20 seconds we'll need to be managing 40 energy and every 60 seconds we'll need to get an additional 10 in order to break even from just these skills. In 20 seconds of regeneration you will regenerate 26 energy, leaving us 14 energy shy of keeping even with Mark of Rodgort and Fragility, and we'll need to get an additional 10 energy every 60 seconds to keep even with Conjure Flame. To look at our energy options, we can choose what to take from Inspiration Magic on the Mesmer side, and we can use glyphs and Energy Storage skills from the Elementalist profession, though the Energy Storage skills will require the character to be an Elementalist primary.
In Inspiration Magic, we have Energy Tap, Energy Drain{E}, Power Drain, and Leech Signet for gaining a good amount of energy. Energy Tap and Energy Drain have the advantage of being able to steal energy without requiring you to interrupt a skill. However, Energy Tap recovers the least amount of energy, and Energy Drain costs our elite skill slot. Power Drain can give us possibly 20 energy every 25 seconds, so long as we can find someone to interrupt, and Leech Signet can give 13 energy every 45 seconds, also requiring a spell to interrupt.
From the Elementalist profession, we can use Glyph of Lesser Energy, Glyph of Energy{E}, or Ether Prodigy. Glyph of Lesser Energy will gain 10 energy from the cost of a spell(costs 5 to cast the glyph, and it reduces the cost of your next spell by 15, giving a 10 energy benefit), and Glyph of Energy gains 15 energy, but we need to use it on a spell costing 20 or more energy to use, meaning Mark of Rodgort. Ether Prodigy can give us 3(4?) extra arrows of energy regeneration for up to 15 seconds, gaining 15(20?) energy, but costing 5 energy to cast, and causing exhaustion. I had thought Ether Prodigy gained 4 energy, but the site says it is 3- in any case, it's not too great of a skill for this build.
Overall, at this point, I would probably say to use Glyph of Lesser Energy, as well as one or two inspiration skills. We will most likely be wanting some extra energy to use for other skills, meaning if we can gain more than we need to break even with our current skills, we can use some additional skills to increase our damage output. My choice would probably be to bring Energy Drain{E} and Power Drain. This gives us some straight energy gain by using Energy Drain, and if we can land an interrupt with Power Drain, we'll have plenty of extra energy to throw around.
So, looking at our current setup, we have:
Mesmer/Elementalist or Elementalist/Mesmer
Fire Magic: 2
Inspiration Magic: ?
Illusion Magic: ?
Fragility
Mark of Rodgort
Conjure Flame
Glyph of Lesser Energy
Energy Drain{E}
Power Drain
?
?
So- we have 2 more skills that we can add, and we can either choose from our current skill lines and specialize our attributes highly, or we could choose to add another attribute line. With how it looks currently, I would generally choose to stick with the current attribute lines, and be able to invest in a primary attribute or specialize only in these two lines with 12 points each.
Since we get extra damage for inflicting conditions thanks to Fragility, let's look at the other Mesmer and Elementalist skills that we can use to inflict conditions. For Mesmer skills, you only really have Phantom Pain and Signet of Midnight. Signet of Midnight is elite, which gives us problems with Energy Drain, so I would discard that option. Phantom Pain gives us some decent damage over time, and inflicts deep wound at the end, which is attractive to me. On the other hand, Elementalists can inflict blind or weakness using the Air Magic attribute, so if we decided to go with Air Magic, we can gain access to two conditions. Unfortunately, the spells that cause these conditions can be energy-intensive: Blinding Flash costs 15 energy to inflict Blind, and Enervating Charge costs 10 energy to deal damage as well as inflict Weakness.
Looking at the options, and keeping our energy situation in mind, I would probably choose to go for Phantom Pain, as we already have the linked attribute and the deep wound will help us kill our target by reducing their life total by 20% as well as reducing the effectiveness of healing. In addition, it's a hex, so if it's put on top of Fragility and Mark of Rodgort, we can make our important hexes more difficult to remove. This leaves us with one free skill, which could be nice to include some defense with. I would probably choose to go with Ether Feast, which will give a rather nice heal for only 5 energy, especially with our high level of Inspiration Magic.
Ok- so now we've got a probable skill setup: As our attribute points are mostly in Mesmer attributes, and we should be able to manage on a Mesmer energy pool, I would choose to go with a Mesmer/Elementalist rather than an Elementalist/Mesmer, in order to gain the benefits from Mesmer armor and runes.
Mesmer/Elementalist
Illusion Magic: 14(12+2)
Inspiration Magic: 13(12+1)
Fire Magic: 2
Fragility: Illusion Magic
Mark of Rodgort: Fire Magic
Conjure Flame: Fire Magic
Glyph of Lesser Energy: Unlinked
Energy Drain{E}: Inspiration Magic
Power Drain: Inspiration Magic
Phantom Pain: Illusion Magic
Ether Feast: Inspiration Magic
Now it's time to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the build.
Strengths:
This build has the potential for an extremely high damage output. At 14 Illusion Magic, Fragility will be dealing 32 damage each time it triggers. For each attack with Mark of Rodgort, you will be doing your normal wand damage and 7 fire damage, which can be reduced by your targets Armor Level. This will end up being probably around 25 damage to most casters, and about 15 damage to Warriors or Rangers. In addition, you will deal 64 damage per attack via Fragility, which ignores armor, and 7 arrows of health degeneration for one second each attack to deal another 14 damage. For every attack while Mark of Rodgort and Fragility are active, you should be dealing approximately 90-100 damage! Phantom Pain will add 6 damage per second and another 32 damage from Fragility when it ends. On the downside, when you are waiting for Mark of Rodgort to recharge, you will be limited to the 15-25 damage from your normal attacks, and possibly the damage over time from Phantom Pain.
Weaknesses:
The damage output of this build is very much dependent upon hexes, meaning that if your hexes are removed you will be doing rather poor damage. Phantom Pain can help protect your Fragility and Mark of Rodgort from most single-hex removal spells, but spells that remove all hexes, or enemies with multiple hex removal spells will be able to severely limit your damage output. Unfortunately, there's very little that can be done to stop this by making changes to the build. Another possible weakness is protection spells decreasing your chance of hitting your target, as you need to deal your damage in order to trigger Mark of Rodgort. One possible change would be to bring enchantment removal instead of one of the skills, most likely trading Ether Feast or Phantom Pain for Inspired Enchantment in order to remove such skills as Guardian or Shield of Deflection.
Overall, while having a weakness to a team with a lot of hex removal that has the opportunity to remove your hexes, this build can be rather impressive. If there is another character in your party that can help protect your hexes, either by covering them with other hexes, or by preventing the other team from using hex removal, this build should be able to really shine, dealing more damage per second than pretty much any other character.
Feel free to discuss this build, and other of my "Theme Builds" in our forums, in this thread.
