Build:D/any Reaper's Conviction
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This is a PVE build that was designed to provide sustainable offense and defense. It avoids the non-sustainable Avatar skills and does not require the user to maintain several enchants for defense.
[edit] Attributes and Skills
 Dervish / Any |
Attribute Rank |
|---|---|
| Scythe Mastery | 12 + 1 + 3 |
| Earth Prayers | 12 + 1 |
| Mysticism | 3 + 1 |
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- Optional Skills:
Wild Blow, Irresistible Sweep, Lightbringer's Gaze, or open slot for a Signet of Capture
[edit] Equipment
- Radiant Insignias for the extra energy.
- Any good scythe will do, you may want a zealous scythe for energy management. Lengthens enchantments, while normally a good scythe mod, is not a very useful mod in this build. HP +30 or armor +5 will work better in this case.
[edit] Usage
This build is designed for sustainable defense + offense. With four attack skills, you can be spamming them constantly, and Conviction is a stance, hence no activation time, and can be maintained constantly with variable benefits, and the benefit duration vs. energy cost makes it very effective.
Keep Conviction up whenever you're in battle for +4 health regen. Generally, if the fighting is light to medium, this is enough regen to keep your health up, especially with the periodic healing from Victorious Sweep (+83hp if you have more health than the foe). When the fighting gets heavier, or if you're in a more dangerous area, toss up Vital Boon - this will give you +92 health, and Conviction's bonus will switch from health regen to +24 armor bonus.
If you need to heal yourself, make sure you put up Vital Boon before using Signet of Pious Light. This way your signet will be immediately recharged and ready for use again if necessary, and you will gain a ridiculous amount of health (291 total). Also if you put Vital Boon up immediately before using Signet of Pious Light, you avoid stripping beneficial Monk enchants that might be on you.
You can also use Signet of Pious Light to heal allies if the party is having serious problems, to give the monks a little time to get to them. Generally it's only a good idea to do that in emergency situations though.
Eremite's Attack does extra damage to groups of foes, but it also has the benefit of having a 3/4 second attack time, so use it immediately after another attack skill for a nice spike.
Reaper's Sweep is at its most effective used when a foe has about 25-30% health left, as the combination of damage dealt + deep wound will often kill them off. Don't be shy about using it though, as it does a healthy amount of damage regardless, and will cause Deep Wound whenever the foe is below 50% health.
[edit] Counters
General anti-melee counters, Blindness, Empathy, etc. Also energy denial would hurt the damage dealing ability of this build pretty severely, as it does not have any energy management built in and all of its attack skills are energy based.
[edit] Variants
Wild Blow is a nice attack, guarantees a critical hit, useful in areas where a stance breaker is important (killing Shiro for instance). It does have a longer recharge, though, making it slightly less spammable.
Irresistible Sweep still hits for the extra damage if you are not enchanted, and can be used effectively if you are not trying to maintain Vital Boon on yourself.
Lightbringer's Gaze works well when you are in an appropriate area.
You can always use Mystic Sweep in the optional slot for its quick attack speed, if none of the other optional skills seem appropriate or useful.
