Monsters are distracted by minions, but players usually slip through to get the Necro. They're good for stealing their health and sharing your damage... and for making an intimidating mob of dots on the enemy's radar. One decent minion build I saw was half Discord, half MM. You had your backup, but could also spike pretty hard.

The mm option sorta ends up like everything else: depends on what people are throwing at you. If you happen to get a hot-stepper and probably some rock-hoppers,your minions will be toast; similarly, if someone's sneaky enough to take Verata's Aura/Gaze whatever it is (*coughSHEEPcoughcough*). Someone with a good monk (and in particular someone throwing lots of blocks or alternatively Shield of Absorption) will be able to stand up to a pile of minions (done this often enough myself, and giggled through the whole thing). And there's always the people who bring other corpse exploitation skills which tend to go through the corpses faster than an mm can, thus limiting the intake of your mini-army. That said, MMs are a fairly standard means of solocapping once you get your mini-you mob rolling, though not necessarily great at holding out indefinitely because it seems to be that there arent' enough bodies dropping. (The beauty of an MM in AB being that wherever you go, there's 2-3 bodies just waiting for you at a shrine, plus whoever else you can pick off). Some notes on builds Jet's mentioned: Turret ranger: Expert's Dexterity, Read The Wind, a couple of spikes (I like Keen Arrow and Hunter's Shot), an interrupt or two (I take Savage Shot for the damage), a run (Dodge), Pin Down, and Something Extra. Because I'm a mean and terrible person who gets grumpy when other people throw block spells, I take Rend Enchantments for that pesky Guardian, Critical Defenses, and whatever other silly enchantments people thing will help them :P. Usage: Spike targets, use a flatbow for dist+ speed, and keep them away (or in your range if you're on a hill, *evil grin*) with Pin Down. Yes ED got a smidge of a nerf, but it's still a fantastically viable skill. Simple, nasty, fun fun fun. Fire Ele Capper (AKA Some Like It Hot): Great for capping shrines, a little harder to get going (or rather, prolong) vs small mobile teams. Basis is as follows: heavy aoe fire damage (can be aoe or pbaoe, depending on your level of intrepidity; I"m a wuss, so not so much for me), and Assassin's Promise, which gives you an energy boost and recharges everything when the target carks it. This is best synergized with, as Jet mentioned, a Glyph of Sacrifice/Meteor Shower combo, as it more than negates the doubled recharge time that glyph requires, and allows the benefit of not getting interrupted with that long 5-second cast, and you can frequently beat the opposing npcs to their casts, such that the KD will keep them from annihilating you. Some will use a shadow step/pbaoe combo after throwing MS (aka a Hot-Stepper, using stuff like Inferno, Lava Font and Bed of Coals, though Phoenix is pretty good too, since you get a double hit when targeting stuff right next to you), but as I said, I'd rather be off in the distance a bit. I tend to go with Breath of Fire, Liquid Flames, and some sin self-heal if I don't trust the monk, Smoldering Embers if I do. /end verbosity

Some advice I was given for AB is to clear the shrines, and let the Mobs cap them. Seems reasonable, for the time spent waiting for the one pip you get.

(Okay, so I'm about to make a liar of myself for thinking I could stop with the verbosity.) I'm not sure what you mean, Cyv. Do you mean clear a shrine and then move on without capping it? If you don't, that's one thing, but if you do, there are in my opinion, a couple of flaws. 1) Even if there's no npc on a shrine, so long as it is capped in favour of the other team, the other team will be gaining points towards a win, not your team. So you might as well cap it. 2) Reliance on mob mentality is generally not great. It never appears when you want, and it does when you don't, not to mention the fact that even if there is a mob, they might not come cap the shrine you cleared anyway. And mob tactics are generally rated poor anyway, since the speed of a shrine being capped is only affected by up to four players in the cap range. So if there are 5 people capping a given shrine, that's one person who's completely superfluous (note that this changes when there are opposing players in the range but for the sake of argument let's pretend there's not) and could (and indeed should) be off capping something else. Therefore, having a whole mob cap a single shrine means there's at least a full team that could be capping something else or taking out an opposing team for extra points. And while simply focusing on capping is a better tactic than mobbing, it's been my experience that if need be to get some quick points on the board, being able to hold a shrine vs an incoming team, or taking out at team in between shrines is even better (provided your group can actually roll the other team, of course). This removes a team from play for a short time, gets points on the board, and keeps a team out of your backfield, the purpose of which is to ensure that nobody's capping behind you; further, if you can get all the enemies out of backfield, you can keep them in front field and sort of just pick people off as they come out the gate. Impolite, perhaps, but fun as all get out and can lead to a quick shut-out finish.

Clear it, kill the NPCs, but don't waste time capping. That was the idea. The suggestion was to break away from mobs, and kill the easier NPCs. The other idea is that the other team is not as likely to notice an uncapped shrine.

Hey, Canmore Have you ever tried the ele armor buffs along with the pbaoe skills? Kinetic armor gives you up to +80 (phys and ele) for, potentially, the whole skirmish. That's a tank, if I ever saw one, with just one skill...

I would like to see how that does against the blood build I have been using. Life Transfer, in its latest state, is pretty powerful.

I would add one more thing to Necromancer: Gaze of Contempt. :twisted:

I have Strip Enchantments on my blood bar. I will look into Gaze though, for some other builds.

Kilgore: I have not personally, because I just don't favour that style of play -- too much set up for me, not enough mobility, and sometimes too hard to take out opponents who see you coming. However, I have seen it done - terra tanks and rock hoppers do make use of the earth armor buffs and can be a pain in the neck. But as Jet says, it's a matter of who can do what to you. Some people play with the intent of tying up a group of opponents to prevent capping, even if they don't manage to actually kill anyone. Or hoppers will do it just for shrines. But it's viable to the degree that any build with counters is viable. And really, that's everything in the game has a counter.

Yeah, there is a counter for everything (if ever there isn't, a nerf is on the way). One way to avoid them might be to run non-standard builds that concentrate on secondary professions: warriors with enchantments, rangers with scythes, healing necromancers, dervishes with AK-47s. Few players would be sharp enough to cast against secondary vulnerabilities, don't you think?

From my experience, it seems that people do pay attention to secondary professions. There are some out there that have memorized hundreds of builds, and then watch you for a few seconds and instantly know what you are using, and whether they are able to counter it (if they see something they don't recognize, they will just click on you to see what skills you are using and then bring a build to counter yours the next time around). Using secondary professions as a primary method of damage has been used for a while. Example #1: Touch Rangers (Ra/Ne) - they use necro touch skills to compete. Example #2: Bunny Thumpers (Ra/Wa), they use war hammer skills to do damage. Both of these builds grew in popularity once people recognized their effectiveness, but then slowly waned when people began to counter them. Using "Can't Touch This" or skills that drain/steal energy will neutralize a toucher, while bunny thumpers are vulnerable to crippling, curses, or anti-adrenaline skills. As the counters grew in popularity, the builds became less effective, and far less popular. Of course, some people do still use their secondary as a primary method of dealing damage, and it can still be very effective. For example, you can often find a Me/El that is set up as fast casting spiker. People know about these fast casting builds, but they are still effective when used wisely. IMHO, while builds are defintely important, the key is not a single player's build, but being in a team with builds that go well together. As a really plain example, take a team with 2 Rits, each with the same spirits, Their builds may be good, but they won't be effective at all, since you can only have one friendly spirit of a specific type in range at one time (this happened to me once in RA). Similarly, an ele with water spells who is using Ice Prison, they will be far less effective if there is a second ele on the team who does fire damage. So a good build in a poorly organized team can make things far more difficult. Having a decent build with a team that is in sync is an excellent place to start, as it allows you to then focus more on tactics/strategy. And of course, when you are on a team with complimenting builds and everyone plays smart and sticks together (following the leader), it makes PvP MUCH more fun. :D

I have found that a bunch of the old builds are effective again. Using the current, popular, builds give a greater chance of running into counters. Touchers live, but be ready for the grief.