Build:R/Me Famine Farmer

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This build has been designed for the following use:

PvE
farming

1 Attributes and skills
2 Equipment
3 Usage
4 Counters
5 Variants
6 Notes

The Famine Farmer is a Ranger build meant to easily solo many bosses in the Factions and Nightfall campaigns by using Famine combined with energy denial provided by Mesmer skills.

[edit] Attributes and skills

Ranger / Mesmer	Attribute Rank
Wilderness Survival	12 + 1 + 3
Inspiration Magic	10
Domination Magic	8

[edit] Equipment

Druid's Armor, with a Rune of Superior Wilderness Survival and a mask with +1 Wilderness Survival.
For the weapon set I suggest both of the following:
- A weapon that provides Activation Time and Recharge modifiers for Inspiration magic, such as the Handsmasher.
- A flatbow or longbow on which the modifiers do not matter (this bow is merely to pull some bosses with).

[edit] Usage

Run to the boss and pull him into a location where he and his mob cannot hit you with their attacks (Behind a tree, around a ledge, etc).
Set Famine and put Spirit Shackles, Spirit of Failure, and Empathy on the boss. Refresh these as needed.
If the boss can cast spells on you, keep Troll Unguent up during this time.
Once the boss is out of energy due to Spirit Shackles begin to spam Mind Wrack on him in addition to the hexes.
Most bosses fall very quickly after their energy is gone, in under a minute.

[edit] Counters

Because of the nature of how the build works it is only effective against bosses that use ranged attacks and have poor spell damage.

[edit] Variants

Replace Storm Chaser with Illusion of Haste and allocate some attributes into Illusion magic if the threat of being Crippled on the way to the boss is high, as in Arborstone (Explorable)
Drop Troll Unguent and/or Whirling Defense for more pressure if you know you won't need them for the run.
Some replacements include:
- Serpent's Quickness (spam Mind Wrack faster)
- Wastrel's Worry (more spammable damage)
- Backfire (for spell caster bosses)
- Energy Tap (for quicker draining)
- Diversion (for Zarnas Stonewrath, to disable his Stone Daggers)

[edit] Notes

This build has been used to farm the following bosses:

Chkkr Thousand Tail

Razortongue Frothspit (Pull his group to ledge infront of the Shrine and use Empathy to kill the Creeping Carps under the Priest's heals) (UPDATE: You can now merely kill his mob with henchmen then flag them off)

Byzzr Wingmender

Chkkr Brightclaw (Be watchful of the Undergrowth/Dragon Moss patrol that goes by the stairs every minute or so)

Craw Stonereap

Zarnas Stonewrath (He commonly has a huge energy pool and spams Stone Daggers instead of attacking with his wand. Because of this it is quicker to take Backfire on this run and kill him that way, noting that he will not kill himself through Backfire so you have to use Empathy on him when he is low. Diversion can also work, as Zarnas will resort to attacking when his Stone Daggers is disabled. His energy can be drained quite easily after.)

Meril Stoneweaver

With the Advent of Henchman Flagging (killing the mobs around the boss, then sending them off your screen to solo the boss and get the drop) there are probably many more bosses that can potentially be farmed with this. So far the following have been tried and were successful:

Chidehkir, Light of the Blind (Use Ignorance for faster kill, sometimes his energy regen is unnaturally high and Shackles isn't enough to keep him down)