Before setting out on the next leg of our journey, in search of Vekk's Asuran compatriots and the magical knowledge they hold, we spent a fair amount of this weeks session filling in the gaps in the quest log for the various snowy Norn lands.
Many of these quests give out entirely new skills, in new tracks that any profession can use, and which work of reputation rankings, rather than attribute levels, a bit like the Sunspear skills. My own Cry of Pain is now prodigiously powerful, due to my PvE grinding of bounties during Nightfall and subsequent Sunspear Rank 8. I still work at rank nine in my spare time too, although this is only possible via Hard Mode bounties now. An AoE blast for 99pts is definitely helpful though, so it's worth putting the effort in.
The Norn and Deldrimor title track skills look to work in a similar manner, costing no Attribute point spending to be effective, and after a sufficient number reputation points have been secured, these skills will always be powerful, regardless of build. Handy things to have on-board then, and we spent much of the night romping about the snowdrifts proving our Norn worth and Dwarven fortitude in a variety of minor ways. I've yet to sit down and have a serious look at them, and am purely in the magpie collector stage just now. Ooh! New Icon! Gotta catch 'em all! I suppose it might be eminently possible to come up with a Me/Norn build, or a Any/Dwarven build. Certainly a lot of skills there - mini extra professions, rather than the odd extra.
Eye of the North also features 'Dungeons', and one quest sent us in to one of these; the Sepulchre of Dragrimmar. These seem more structured mini-zones, of multiple levels, with no worldmap coverage. Traps and switches abound, giving it a bit of a puzzle element, although nothing quite as specialised as DDO, and mostly it is still a game of Guild Wars you're playing... the same large areas, multiple mob spawns and hectic combat. We killed the boss we'd been sent in there for, with not too much difficulty, but it turned out that this wasn't the real boss, who is the 'point' of the dungeon, I guess. We carried on in to find him on the next level down, which is where the fun began.
Indeed! Another nightmarish Boss Monster; a L29 Remnant of Antiquities, complete with incredibly overpowered Monster Skill; Diamondshard Mist, an extremely large, brutal and frequently cast AoE nightmare, which he seems able to cast a phenomenal range away from himself. If he is in view, rendered, he can hit you with it, making getting to him difficult enough, let alone fighting him! We gave it our best shot, but I suspect that our eventual failure and resignation was mostly down to me. Here is a monster that needs a LOT of interrupting; usually the Mesmer's or Ranger's job, and I had some Comedy Skillbar (see below) containing nothing like that at the time.
Still, unlike Shiro, this monster does seem to be beatable in a methodical and planned way, but it looks to be very much a case of tailoring the team's skillbars to match him, rather than just sauntering in with Standard Overland Skillbar #1 equipped. We poked our heads in one or two other Dungeons too, and they all seem to be very specific destinations in themselves, rather than things to just pop in on your way somewhere else, requiring very particular forethought and planning for each. This made me a bit cross; if I wanted elaborately choreographed specifics and repeated goes at the same deliberately difficult boss over and over, I'd probably have not given up WoW at L60, and the whole thing does have a faintly suspicious whiff of raid-like "WWBD?" about it, which personally, I thought Arenanet were above, frankly. Mind you, saying all that, I've still never given 'The Underworld' a go yet, the original Prophecies-based 'raid' zone. I think it's the 1pp admission fee and lack of henchmen that put me off.
Annnnnyway, The Remnant does seem doable, and isn't a huge hardship to get to; distance, attunements, anything like that, so I expect we'll be back! With Interrupts!
Dejected, I followed along as we got back on with The Story, and we trekked down out of the mountains, passing through high alpine valleys, into a lush tropical basin, and into Asura country. Lovely zones to romp through that cheered me up a bit. Kept expecting to be assaulted by a cluster of Von Trapps. (Watch the Paragon variants...particularly nasty Arias!) Passing through the Umbral Grotto and into another mini tree-root themed dungeon, we found the Asuran Gate we were looking for and suddenly found ourselves half way across the world, in Vlox's Falls, on the Tarnished Coast, another new addition to the Tyria map, this time in the large green bit to the south of Maguuma Jungle.
Here Vekk arrives to find his people deep in argument about The Plan. Some order is restored by our arrival, and The Plan is revealed. Using a variety of Magical Engineering disciplines, the Asura want to build some kind of super-weapon, with which to fight off the Destroyers. Given that every interaction with any Asura so far has left me with the impression that this bunch of rabbitey eared crazies are essentially Gnomes in a particularly successful disguise, I have my suspicions about The Weapon already. The exception to this slightly comical cavalcade of diminutive eccentrics, is Vekk, who actually seems to Have A Clue. Unfortunately, Vekk has had some kind of falling out with the others which complicates matters a bit. Old friends show up again here too, in the form of Livia, a Necromancer from the Shining Blade, the band of bandits and/or freedom fighters who feature heavily in the Maguuma Jungle bits of Prophecies.
Anyway, our job now is to track down and round up all these eccentric madmen and get them to work on The Weapon. No doubt there will be a great deal of new lands to discover, and depopulate, along the way!
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Okay, so here's what I thought; some of the Insignias are open to all; the Survivor, The Brawler, The Radiant, and so on. But, some of them are only wearable by a particular Primary Profession. So... one way to capitalise on the strength of being, say, a Mesmer/Something, as opposed to an AnythingElse/Mesmer, would be to look at the class specific Insignias and work with that. The Mesmer gets three; Prodigy's (+Armour per recharging skills), Virtuoso's (+Armour while activating skills), and Artificer's (+Armour per equipped Signet). This suggests that the Mesmer is supposed to; have lots of skills recharging, be casting stuff a lot of the time, or be using Signets.
A Signet is a special type of skill, one that uses no energy at all to activate - a 0 mana spell, in other words. Conceptually, I guess it is meant to represent a powerful and reusable magical item - a ring in fact, rather than an innate spell, weapon attack, stance, etc. To balance this obvious over power, the Signets all have very long recharge times... much longer than normal spells, and can be quite slow to actually cast. However, in the Mesmer's Fast Casting pool, are a number of spells that improve Signet use. Coupled with the Artificer Insignias, how far can you get with a predominantly Signet based build? Here's the Fist of Bling I came up with:
The Rings of Artifice
Mesmer/Monk
Fast Casting: 12, Smiting Prayers: 12, Inspiration Magic: 3
Requires: Prophecies (#6, #7), Factions (#4), Nightfall (#1), Eye of the North (#5)
Equipment: Artificer's Insignas; the more the better. Inspiration and Fast Casting Runes and Masque. Fast Casting Req Weapons with 'of Enchanting' can help with #1, or 'While in a Stance' for #6. Avoid '+Energy' bonuses - you won't need it. Look for +Health instead.
There's five Signets in there, which gives +15AC via the Artificer's Insignias. The build is in two bits again, the Setup, and the Run, and the whole thing revolves around the Elite, #7, Keystone Signet, allowing the Mesmer to spam out 0-cost attacks as fast as they can be clicked for a good three goes through the skillbar.
Start with #1, Symbolic Celerity. This almost halves the casting time of the signets, greatly increasing the spamability of the build.
Now pick a target and launch into the first pass of The Run; #3, Bane Signet, #4, Signet of Rage, #5, Castigation Signet. Then hit #6, Mantra of Signets and #7, Keystone Signet. #7 makes #3,#4,#5 recharge instantly, and having hit #6 immediately before, makes #7 recharge instantly. Ready for the second pass; this time, #3, #4, #5, skip #6 as it won't be ready yet, hit #7. This recharges #3, #4, #5 instantly, again. Now take your third pass; #3,#4,#5. Annnnd relax! Nine direct damage attacks, most of which will hit for 50pts of Holy, in about as many seconds, for a total cost of 15 Energy (#6, once).
So, it's:
#1, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7,
#3, #4, #5, #7,
#3, #4, #5,
cha-cha-cha!
Quite frantic stuff, and although bigger damage is had with other builds, few are quite this efficient, giving the Mesmer large reserves of energy to spare, and making them quite immune to Energy Denial tactics. A Mesmer usually has +4 Energy Regen, and with the Monk Secondary, now has access to the Maintained Enchantments. These are buffs that last as long as the buffing Monk can pay the -1 Energy Degen constant upkeep. With most of the attacks costing 0 energy, I found it was easy to keep Retribution (#2) on three different tanks, indefinitely. Strength of Honor is a good alternative here, but do use something to put the spare excess energy to good use!
#8 is my usual optimistic trawling for Elite Skills, although Signet of Capture is still technically a Signet, so will count toward the Artificer Insignias, as would Resurrection Signet in this slot. Alternatively, swap this for Signet of Mystic Wrath, another Smiting Prayers Holy Damage Signet, making a run of four attacks, times three!
A Monk/Mesmer would have difficulty with this build, not having access to Fast Casting points, OR Artificer's Insignias, although a Smiting Rune would up the actual damage a bit, per Signet. Divine Favor is not used even indirectly here.
Most other professions have signets; here is a list, and often these are unattributed, which can help fit them into a busy build. I went with Monk's Smiting Prayers, as this seemed to contain the most Signets that do straight damage. Most of the other profession Signets are more utility based, although the above 'Runs' principle ought to work just as well for more support based Signet spamming in specific circumstances; e.g a 100% Mesmer Interrupt Build perhaps, ensuring that as many interrupts are available as often as possible. Interrupt Signets are by necessity, very quick to cast already, 0.25 sec typically, so #1 will help even more to be 'first to the draw' for that.
A bit of juggling to use the Monk Elite Signet of Judgement instead of #7 Keystone Signet may make for a more potent, if less repeatable, damage output. Fast Casting has a number of other Signet related skills, and experimentation with these, and Mantra of Inscriptions, might yield an even more rapid fire or flexible Signet assault.
Downsides include a long 'down cycle' between Runs, where all the signets are recharging normally after the third Run. During this period, you are left with the staff/wand autoattack, and not much else. There are a number of specific anti-signet skills out there too - Complicate, Ignorance, etc, and although rare, encountering monsters with these will almost totally shut you down. While it is an efficient build, but not many PvE monsters try for energy shutdown, as a rule. How it would work in PvP, I couldn't say.
Mostly though, players are best tasked to damage, and AI to support/healing, in small Hero-based PvE groups at least. This damage output is less than apocalyptic overall, compared to say, a straight Domination Blast build, or even my Crazy Imaginary Assassin one. However, it is in the form of Holy Damage, which is usually armour ignoring, and very difficult to specifically ward against. Also, added bonus, it does double damage against Undead. This was really noticeable in a number of specific places during last nights adventure. Trouble is, it was hard to notice my contribution anywhere else, making me a bit too specialised, I think.
I think in general, Signets are a useful 'extra', and many builds could benefit from one or two, for those occasional 'oom' moments, but I'm not really sure a build based entirely on Signets is a good idea; even if you are a Mesmer...