User:Malokai92/Guide Index/op

Overpowered skills
This is for general PvE for the most powerful/overpowered individual skills. This does not include game-breaking skills like Shadow Form or combinations of skills that are powerful. That's more suitable for a top ten in builds.
 * 1) - Mass interruption every time an enemy uses a skill. This skill literally breaks any mob in PvE. You can face a group of 30 enemies and take them down without retaliation. This makes this an extremely powerful offensive and defensive skill. You can safely take on groups that would otherwise nuke your team to death in seconds. Healers completely disabled and you're free to take them out at your leisure. It's also maintainable with enough investment in Fast Casting and Domination Magic. Stick that with other Domination Magic skills and you have a very powerful build.
 * 2) - Spam spirits that reduce all incoming damage to nothing and render all incoming attacks useless. This is used for spamming Shelter, Union, and Displacement. It's primary purpose is spamming Shelter, which acts as an AoE Protective Spirit. The other spirits help reduced damage to minimal amounts. The main reason it's so powerful is this reduces any damage to nothing unlike "Save Yourselves!" Since spirits have very long recharges otherwise, they're only extremely powerful with this or Ritual Lord. It means your party is immune from wiping (invincible) while the spirits are up. The only major drawback is they affect minions, but the areas you use this will be ones where you drop the MM anyways to control aggro and ball better. Otherwise you're just being a shitter using it when you don't need it.
 * 3) - Reduce most incoming damage to a fraction at almost all times. One of the mandatory skills for melee players to bring. The Imbagon is devoted solely to spamming this skill. It reduces all damage by 82.32%, which means your group can't die from anything except a massive armor-ignoring AoE damage like Energy Surge. One of the points players miss is that you don't need this up constantly. You really only need if your entire group is about to be spiked by Elementalists or bosses. You should be able to manage perfectly fine without it in any other situation.
 * 4) - Deal massive AoE damage when used on any melee player constantly. I can't say enough about how this is my favorite skill for melee and any player using melee class has to use this skill. Splinter Weapon deals armor-ignoring damage, which means a crap load of AoE armor-ignoring damage. Ball any group together and use an AoE attack to trigger Splinter Weapon all 4-5 times. It's always used with Signet of Spirits Healer on melee characters since you get the high spec and as a result, the SoS healer is a mainstay with any melee player. There's a huge difference between 10/12 spec compared to 14/16 spec that's only possible with a Ritualist. See notes for teh damage from Splinter Weapon.
 * 5) - Create a mobile wall with one skill that deals significant damage and takes forever to kill Signet of Spirits is the basis of spirit farmers and extremely popular in all formats of PvE. The skill is free, summons three spirits at once, and can be used every 30 seconds. You literally take 3 skill slots of spirits and stick them into one. SoS can act as a buffer between you and enemies all by itself and lends the term spiritwall when used with or without other spirits to block enemies, just like minions. It's a small army stuck into one skill. See notes for details on it and use with other spirits.
 * 6) - Spamming skills gives you unlimited energy and health Ether Renewal is the primary skill for an Emo, which is very popular in pug groups because the large energy reserves and limitless energy supply from Ether Renewal allows for the abuse of Protective Bond. It's used with Aura of Restoration for obvious purposes. Because Ether Renewal also heals large amounts of health, Emos can also abuse Infuse Health. This lets an Emo literally provide all the healing and protection for a group. The hero version of emo proves to be adept at spamming skills appropriately but can run into problems since Ether Renewal can't be maintained without micro or cons. It uses expensive Protection Prayers skills like Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond that would otherwise be absurd to spam. The result is a broken build that can spam heals and prots without negative effects (like energy loss).
 * 7) - Mitigate any amount of damage to manageable amounts. This is the pinnacle for high end PvE teams. Protective Spirit is the best way to survive pulling groups with dangerous nukes or bosses. It allows any player to act as a tank and prevents instantaneous death. The skill is an integrable part of and a requirement for playing PvE.
 * 8) - Redbar with the most powerful heal in the game. Spirit Light heals more point for point than any other skill unconditionally and is comparable to Healing Burst. Except Spirit Light isn't an elite skill and in an attribute line with other extremely useful skills. This is the basis for the N/Rt healer and it's ability to redbar. It's spammable, cheap, and returns gratuitously on its investment. In the face of how weak Monk heals are in comparison, the healing power this provides in Restoration Magic is benign.
 * 9) - Cut melee damage in half and mitigate some damage from casters. Enfeebling Blood infilicts Weakness on all nearby foes, which is more than enough for any melee. It's why you're not using Enfeeble. It requires a very small investment to be effective due to the short recharge. The key part of Weakness is that it prevents training and spiking of party members. You'll notice a significant difference with and without Enfeebling Blood if you face hard-hitting melee groups. This is often used with Shadow of Fear, which is almost as good, and together mitigates melee damage multiplicatively. Enfeebling Blood is essentially free, so any hero available can afford to bring it. There's no reason not to.
 * 10) - Abuse skills with normally long recharges and provide energy to do so. Everyone will recognize Assassin's Promise from Discordway. AP serves a few purposes in the build. It provides the hex requirement, it allows spamming of "You Move Like a Dwarf!", Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support, and "Finish Him!", and provides energy to spam them. This works well enough alone, but designing a build around using it to spike with Discord was simply ingenious. "You Move Like a Dwarf!" fills the condition requirement instantaneously and even gives armor-ignoring damage and KD. Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support provides an additional KD and damage, the long recharge would make it useless for spiking if it wasn't recharged from AP; with AP, it becomes abusive. "Finish Him!" inflicts DW instantaneously and deals armor-ignoring damage to finish the foe off. In combination with Discord, everything literally dies instantly. Compare that to just spiking with AP and hoping for a kill or only filling Discord requirements for killing things. I'll make it clear that AP is strong by itself and overpowered wen used in spiking, specifically Discordway.

Dungeons and Elite Areas
All areas will go by their HM versions. All is based off of using hero builds to clear the area (except UW...) without use of cons. I do use alcohol for FoW, but that's because it's such an inconvenience to run without cons or alcohol after the second or third time. HM quests will have a separate section and then listed all together.
 * 1) Underworld - Underworld is extremely tedious in NM and is no better in HM. The main problems come from 4H, Dryders, and Dhuum. 4H has you defend from two opposing sides of enemies. The groups consist of Dryders spamming Meteor Shower and nukes with Ghost Riders spamming Energy Surge and all that goodness. This makes it nearly impossible to defend the Reaper at the center when you have enough trouble trying to stay alive yourself. Other quests pose similar problems of threading your heroes through Meteor Shower spam and waiting for invincible patrols to move. Dhuum is a story in and of itself on how to set up your heroes. Go look at the thread on Guildguru on the lengths EFGjack goes to clear it with a Warrior. I think the main point is that Underworld seems to be specifically designed against the use of heroes.
 * 2) Foundry - Foundry of Failed Creations is at the peak of difficulty for any player wishing to use heroway. You're faced with quite a few different obstacles. The environmental effect hurts you while you move, based closely on Shameful Fear. Nothing is more aggravating than having to heal whenever you move around. The Tortureweb Dryders pose the biggest threat, they can wipe you out in 2-3 uses of Rodogort's Invocation and they hit damn hard; they have the unique obstacle with the fact they use Glyph of Concentration and standard Panic interruption isn't so godly. The next threat is Titans. Titans spawn new enemies when they die. All of the forms are painful in their own way. Groups of Misery Titans will spawn Rage Titans and they tend to die rather quickly, overwhelming you with Rage Titan spawns. Rage Titans fucking suck. They spawn Churning Earth and Eruption, which means if your heroes are balled, they can't simply kite away with "Fall Back!" They also rush your group (That means run next to you) and use Shockwave/Aftershock. A Rage Titan with Enraged bonus from low health will 1-hit kill squishies with Shockwave and can almost kill full health warriors. You don't want them at a distance and you don't want them close up. When Rage Titans die, they spawn Dementia Titans; with the Dervish update, these guys are flash enchantment douchebags from Hell. There are two areas where about 20 Dementia Titans will spawn, in the 4th room and while saving one of the Forgotten. They spike your group with Dust Cloak, it's an instant death. What they do is they all ball up on one person and then decide to activate Dust Cloak. Unless you're a Warrior or have prots, you're dead. They wipe out your whole team in a flash. Also, Panic doesn't work against flash enchantments, so you have no way to avoid it except increase party armor with SYG, SY!, War against Elements, etc. The other Titan family aren't nearly as bad but they have their own set of grievances. Anguish Titans have Inspired Hex and can steal your spells. They can use Inspired Hex on Panic. They can use Panic on your party. See the problem? Despair Titans spawn from them. They constanly dtrip your party with Chilbains and subsequently pressure and spike it with Suffering/Feast of Corruption. Fury Titans spawn from these guys and the main problem with them is getting hit with Twisting Fangs can usually force a death and snowball from there. In the main room you have to deal with Margonite groups with 2 healers, where Margonite Healers are insanely strong in HM. You have groups of Misery Titans (Say hello to Rage Titans), groups with Rage Titans, and groups without Rage Titans. And of course patrols of Tortureweb Dryders and Dream Riders who spam Cry of Frustration and shutdown casters with Power Block. Then you have Fury group. I think everyone can figure out the problem with the final group.
 * 3) Urgoz -
 * 4) Forgewright - Forgewright is a sub-dungeon of The Last Heirophant and you don't even have to do it in HM. Which only tempts masochists to do so. This was formally the most difficult area to clear before the 7H update. The primary reason being Fire Magic fucking hurts. Flame Djinns spam Searing Flames on your party, they prioritize balled groups, which your heroes are kind enough to form. the Flowstone Elementals use Savannah Heat and Rodgort's Invocation and also prioritize balled foes. Add in Roaring Ethers that spam Energy Surge and the balanced Stone Summit groups, and this dungeon is a pain even now. The main feature is the enormous concentration of foes on the way to Forgewright, you're only options are to kill them all or make a run for the res shrine, neither is a pleasant experience.
 * 5) Gloom
 * 6) Veil
 * 7) City - The main problem with City of Tor'qua is the environmental effect. You lose 2 energy every time you attack or use a skill. Heroes autoattack with their weapons while they aren't casting. The Rangers also use Quickening Zephyr, which saps your energy very quickly and makes using
 * 8) Deep
 * 9) Shards of Orr
 * 10) Rragar's Menagerie
 * 11) Frostmaw

Splinter Weapon
Let's do the math on Splinter Weapon; at 14 Channeling Magic, it will trigger 5 times and hit 3 closest adjacent foes to the foe hit. For using an AoE attack, we assume it triggers on each adjacent foe. That means each foe will get hit by all the triggers except the one hitting him, which is the same for all the foes; this is definitive for a group of 4 enemies, the damage is distributed among 5 or more enemies and lost in groups of 3 or less. So the number of triggers hitting a specific foe is #triggers(5)-1=4. Each trigger hits three foes, so Splinter Weapon hits a total of 15 times against 5 adjacent foes. That's a total of 705 apparent AoE damage.

Each foe will be hit 4 times in a group of 4, 4-1 times in a group of 5 times, etc. In a group of 4, each foe takes (47*3) 141 damage, for a total of (188*4)=564 plus another trigger of Splinter Weapon. In a group of 5, if we assume the enemies are distributed in an arbitrary arc. The 3 center foes get hit 4 times, one edge guys get hit twice, the other gets hit once. The center guy will hit his two adjacent center foes and a random edge foe depending who is closer. Each adjacent center will hit the other center guys and his adjacent guy. The edge guys will hit the 3 center guys. The way the damage is distributed depends on which enemies die and if the enemies aren't in an arc. We can assume the damage is normally distributed among the enemies though. This was different when there was no limit to the number of adjacent foes hit in the past!

Splinter Weapon has a recharge of 5 seconds and takes 1 second to cast. This means it can be used every 6 seconds. This ignores the fact it can be precast for up to 20 seconds. That's 705/6=117.5 damage per second. This is really only useful to comparison of other AoE skills such as Energy Surge. Assuming 11 Fast Casting and 14 Domination Magic, that's 81 damage per foe every 11 seconds (15/1.33=11.278 truncated). To reach the same dps, it has to hit 16 foes [117.5/(81/11)=15.956 rounded up]. This damage isn't distributed though, so it's guaranteed damage rather than apparent damage. Ineptitude and Wandering Eye will take less enemies to reach the same since they hit harder. In fact, Clumsiness has a really high dps assuming all enemies trigger attacks.

The reason this isn't comparable is the fact you can precast Splinter Weapon. We can pretty confidently assume that in a group of 5-6, 3 of the foes will take 188 damage. This essentially doubles the dps. If precast and you can hit two AoE attacks (Use one AoE attack, then Whirlwind Attack), those three enemies are going to get royally fucked. Then you could give a shit about dps. That's the true power of Splinter Weapon. You can literally spike down most groups within two casts when combined with other AoE skills. It's not even an elite skill and you don't even need to go out of your way to bring it since your using another overpowered skill: Signet of Spirits.

Signet of Spirits
The reasons why spirits are so overpowered in PvE include: All this means is that even if you are the worst player in the world, the spirits will kill everything for you. So when you put Signet of Spirits together with a bunch of other spirits, shit will die. Since enemies won't use hexes and conditions on spirits, you can attack them while they're distracted as well. Spiritway abuses the use of spirits in this way. You can also use them to pick off enemies where you normally would fail combating. Jeydra details this in the guide in the main index.
 * 1) They can't be hexed or inflicted with conditions.
 * 2) They are high priority targets since they have low health.
 * 3) They bodyblock, providing a "spirit wall" similar to a meatwall from an MM.
 * 4) They deal armor-ignoring damage.
 * 5) They attack from a very long range; longbow range.
 * 6) They will all attack the same target most of the time until he dies.
 * 7) They can be set up before battle.
 * 8) They can kill enemies fucking fast.