Archive:E/R Mist Form Farmer

The Invincimentalist is an Elementalist/Ranger farming build designed around the idea of permanent Mist Form. The name is inspired by the Invincimonk builds.

Attributes and Skills
[build prof=eleme/range waterm=12+3+1 energy=3+3 wilder=12][mist form][water attunement][frozen burst][ice spikes][deep freeze][serpents quickness][glyph of lesser energy][optional][/build]

Equipment
This build requires an item with a +20% enchantment bonus. Using the collector 20/20 Water Staff from Claw Tallfeather with a +5 energy Insightful staff mod and a 20% longer enchantments mod works best. The following unique items are also suitable for this purpose:


 * Tarnok's Recurve Bow
 * Galigord's Stone Staff
 * Rago's Flame Staff
 * Rajazan's Fervor
 * Totem Axe

Usage
The "invincibility" in this build centers around keeping Mist Form up at all times. This is achieved by repeating the following casting protocol indefinitely:


 * 1) Serpent's Quickness (at 12 Wilderness Survival lasts 27 seconds)
 * 2) Mist Form
 * 3) Wait 24 seconds: Mist Form at 16 Water Magic lasts 21 seconds; +20% enchantment gives 25 seconds. One second is required to recast Mist Form in the next step; you can start casting it soon after the first Mist Form starts to blink.
 * 4) Mist Form
 * 5) Wait 24 seconds; 50 seconds have passed since the first Serpent's Quickness, so it should be recharged.

There should be no energy management issues with this infinite loop, as the long waiting periods are more than enough to recover the spent energy. However, Water Attunement and Glyph of Lesser Energy should be used for the damaging spells Frozen Burst, Deep Freeze and Ice Spikes as often as possible. Note that none of the AoE spells cause damage over time; even with the Hard Mode AI, very rarely will monsters break aggro. Even if some decide to break away, the damage spells cause slowdown, so they won't get far.

Variants

 * If a +20% enchantment item is not available, an alternative is to use Glyph of Elemental Power before casting Mist Form. At 18 Water Magic, Mist Form lasts for 23 seconds, which leaves a gap of 1 or 2 seconds without the invincibility every 21 seconds. You only need Serpent's Quickness for 25 seconds, so you can get away with Wilderness Survival at 10. Invest the extra points in Earth Magic for Armor of Earth. If you have nimble fingers, you can also use Whirlwind to knock the foes down just as the gaps begin.


 * This build can be adapted for a |tanking Geomancer. Replace Mist Form with Obsidian Flesh (which has the same progression as Mist Form), and add Armor of Earth and Kinetic Armor. Together, at 16 Earth Magic, the Geomancer has an impressive +166 AL bonus (which reduces damage by roughly 94%), not to mention invulnerability to all spells. Galigord's Stone Staff is the ideal weapon for this build. There are only a few enchantment removing skills in this game that are not targeted spells, such as Well of the Profane and Signet of Disenchantment, and necromancers can defeat any amount of armor with shadow damage caused by Dark Aura and non-spell skills such as Touch of Agony. Stay out of "touch" radius from necromancers. Also note that this requires constant casting to keep kinetic armor up, resulting in a large energy management problem.


 * Another variant of this build would be to change the profession to E/Me. Your skill set would be the same except you would add Arcane Echo instead of Serpent's Quickness.  The attributes points you save could be put into something else.When using that form you would cast Arcane Echo 10 seconds before you cast Mist Form. You would then recast the copied Mist Form 17 seconds after casting it the first time.


 * Yet another variant is based in Fire, this works immaculately for farming outside Drok's on Normal Mode (as of 5/28/08) using Armor of Mists for a running skill, mist form, Sympathetic Visage, Channeling, meteor shower, searing heat, lava font, and pheonix. For this variant I suggest using a Rajazen's Fervor or Totem Axe in coordination with a Lian's Lantern, (Eye of Flame as head [full Ice Forge], Attunement on Chest, Superior Fire on Wrists, Attunement on Legs, Minor water on Boots,) (Usage: Armor of Mist to get to mobs; run into the trolls, pop Mist form, Channeling, and then Sympathetic Visage, Meteor Shower, Searing heat, Lava Font, Pheonix [note a lot of the time they will not all die, pop armor and run in circles for around 3 seconds for mist form to recharge, re-gather the remainder, symapthetic visage, lava vont, pheonix, and searing heat as needed to kill]) I have used this build to farm over 40 platinum over 1 weekend. It may take getting used too but is an extremely effective build.