Pumping Irony

I have come to the realization that Guild Wars is my World of Warcraft. I have no qualms about taking breaks, sometimes quite lengthy ones, but I never tire of coming back.

I recently decided to work on another character. I love all the stuff I can do with my monk Benjeth but I need a change of pace. I know I should be working up my assassin into a “PermaSin” for farming but I didn’t want to go there just yet. I have a whole repertoire of characters that mostly collect dust. Choices, choices.

The deciding factor on which character to dust off was (how’s this for out of left field) the death of Michael Jackson. Bear with me. When the Nightfall campaign released in autumn 2006 I immediately made each of the Nightfall classes, the Dervish and Paragon. With the Paragon, however, I made an interesting choice. Rather than going for the “hero dude” look, I intentionally made him appear strong yet effeminate. Michael Jackson (along with a few other celebrities) was an influence on my final choices on Korsin’s look, and the fact that male paragons do the Thriller dance was the clincher.

So I’ve had this paragon for almost three years, but I never quite knew what to do with him. He didn’t (still doesn’t) have many elite skills for me to work with. Other than the first set of max armor from Consulate Docks, he doesn’t have any great gear (yet) to synergize with a build. In short, other than being some sort of support class, I didn’t fully “get” the paragons. The closest I’d come was when I first logged him in a few weeks ago and put together a build to add a minor buff to the group’s damage output and help the group restore health and energy with his elite skill able to remove all conditions from the entire group. It wasn’t exciting, it arguably wasn’t even necessary, but at least I “got” that build. Fine, but I wanted the next step, something fun, something exciting, and something useful.

Enter the Imbagon. This build gets it’s name from being able to create an “imbalance” by drastically reducing damage the group is taking, boosting the group’s damage, and doing very nice damage himself. For a support class, this is the Total Package. It’s the reason that for at least a year or two the Imbagon is the most popular paragon build.

Benjeth, who I’ve been playing as my main character for four years and who is not lacking for resources. When I learned to 600 last month, I walked up to the armor crafter with the fee and materials and five clicks later Benjeth had a new armor set. I walked over to the rune trader NPC and a few clicks later Benjeth had all the runes and insignias necessary to turn the new armor into 600 armor. Other than account-wide bank funds and crafting materials, Korsin doesn’t have that advantage since he has spent most of his life mothballed.

Here’s the Imbagon build Korsin is currently using: OQGjUymG6SPYWYxgAh5iXFpbubA

Like all the greatest builds, the Imbagon is a multi-campaign build. It’s based on the common match of Paragon/Warrior classes, which works well since both classes have adrenaline-based skills. Nightfall (obviously), Factions, and Eye of the North are required to get all the skills.

For attributes we have: (+1 means a minor rune for that attribute is affixed to a piece of armor; headpieces can have their own inherent +1 plus a rune)

Spear Mastery: 14 (12+1+1)
Command: 7 (6+1)
Leadership: 12 (11+1)

Additionally the Imbagon ideally has a Rune of Clarity to reduce blind and weakness effects, a Rune of Superior Vigor to give +50 health, and either Centurions or Survivor insignias on all armor pieces. Centurion insignias give +10 armor each but only while affected by a paragon’s chant, echo or shout. Survivor insignias give various amount of +health depending which amor piece it’s attached to; a total of +40 health if all 5 are used. Korsin currently has one Centurion insignia and four Survivor. Being a bit of a pauper due to his noobishness (and my hard rule that each character in any game must earn his keep) Korsin does not yet have the Rune of Superior Vigor because it’s usually (always?) the most expensive rune in the game and he cannot afford it just yet, but that’s ok for now because I’m working in Normal Mode right now until Korsin gets additional reputation to make the build more effective, and because in general the AI mobs don’t target paragons as much so he’s not taking much damage at all so far. In fact, I’m debating if simply using all five Centurion insignias wouldn’t be more effective as well as less expensive, but I’ll wait until I experience Hard Mode to make that decision.

How it works. The power of the Imbagon build lies in its simplistic beauty. This is yet another example of creativity, putting together a build that is super-effective and super-synergistic. The focal point of the build is the Factions skill “Save Yourself!” which gives +100 armor to the other members of the group (but not to the one who uses the skill). Save Yourself! is also an adrenaline-based skill, so we have three additional skills to assist with adrenaline management. First the elite skill, Focused Anger which for 45 seconds gives a bonus (+120% at Korsin’s 12 Leadership). Focused Anger has a 60-second refresh, however, so we add the Warrior skill “For Great Justice!” which gives +100% adrenaline for 20 seconds, which we activate just before Focused Anger wears off. Then we have Aggressive Refrain which is an Increased Attack Speed (IAS) skill. 12 Leadership gives 21 seconds of +25% IAS. The faster we attack, the faster we build adrenaline. Combine that with Focused Anger or For Great Justice! and we’re an adrenaline generating machine. For additional damage reduction, we have “There’s Nothing to Fear!” which is a brief buff that reduces all incoming damage and then provides a minor heal when it expires. Aggressive Refrain gives a penalty of 20 seconds of “cracked armor” (-20 armor) but as I mentioned (at least in Normal Mode) the AI doesn’t target paragons much. Additionally, Aggressive Refrain is an echo and Save Yourself!, For Great Justice! and There’s Nothing to Fear! are shouts which trigger the +10 armor for each Centurion insignia should I decide to go that route.

Those skills drastically reduce incoming damage, now we add the Ebon Battle Standard of Honor skill from the Ebon Vanguard reputation. At maximum reputation it will provide a 20 second buff where each group member gets +15 damage, and if fighting Charr an additional +10.

The final consideration to great builds is energy management. Currently Korsin has 30 energy. Aggressive Refrain alone costs 25 to cast. That’s where the Leadership attribute comes in. For each 2 points in Leadership, I gain 1 energy for each ally affected by a chant or shout. Every time Korsin uses one of those shouts, that’s +6 energy. Plus there’s the natural energy regeneration. Optimally, Korsin should have a zealous spear as well, but I haven’t found one yet. Zealous would give -5 energy and a -1 to energy regeneration penalties, but provides +1 energy for each hit on an enemy. An Imbagon is constantly attacking, even if it’s merely an auto-attack, and a lot of that is under an IAS effect as well, so a zealous spear should be a big help for energy management when combined with the shouts.

Korsin is currently dealing with a rank of 4 in Ebon Vanguard and rank 1 in Kurzick. Thankfully, the Factions reputations (Luxon and Kurzick) are account-wide rather than character-specific (how I wish LOTRO and other games did that…) so I can use Benjeth and other characters who are far enough into the Factions campaign to help earn Kurzick reputation, which is a priority since rank 1 only provides 4 seconds of Save Yourself! which only helps during a spike, whereas the intent of the Imbagon is to keep up Save Yourself! as long as possible.

Builds like this, and some of my favorite monk builds for Benjeth, illustrate part of what is so great about Guild Wars. The freedom to be creative and take the hundreds of available skills and choose eight skills that not only synergize (which is extremely important) but also combine to quite a drastic effect, in this case a hefty damage reduction buff combined with a damage output buff. Most of the DikuMMORPGs out there use the skill tree system where you can create your character and before you earn a single XP you’re able to look at the skill trees and draw a progression roadmap. The potential for creativity and freedom is mostly lost when you’re limited to 1-3 skill trees to pick and choose from, leaving most characters of any given class clones of each other at level cap. There’s not even any excitement at leveling and wondering what new skills you might get anymore; it’s all there on the skill tree map. Just another aspect of cutting out any sense of adventure in favor of instant gratification…

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 12:03 am and is filed under Guild Wars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.