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*PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION* Barrage/Pet (aka b/p, barrageway, petway) is the general appellation of a class of "speed" builds for the ruins of the Tomb of the Primeval Kings. Overview A barrage/pet build is possibly the quickest way to complete a Tomb run, and is therefore also the most popular build for people wishing to farm the unique items dropped by the final bosses. This build utilizes the synergy between Barrage, Favorable Winds, and Winnowing to inflict high damage on multiple foes, with a wall of pets and minions to defend the party. This build requires only loose coordination between players, and a large spectrum of variants are viable. Barrage/pet builds are resilient to dropped players, as only two roles, the monk and the minion master, can be said to be essential. The most common barrage/pet team consists of: Membership This is one of many possible variations. The builds noted below are suitable for pick up groups, but it is by no means definitive. A more complex alternative can be found here. Barrage Rangers Variations: - At least one ranger must carry Favorable Winds (FW). A FW Barrager should replace Troll Unguent with Favorable Winds, and move all points from Wilderness Survival into Expertise.
- At least one ranger must carry Winnowing (WW/Winn). A Winnowing Barrager should replace Troll Unguent with Winnowing.
The purpose of the pets is to tank for the group (at least until the minion master raises a sizeable army) and to provide an endless source of corpses for the minion factory. A dead pet with an exploited corpse serves no purpose, so it is important for the rangers to raise their pets at every opportunity. For additional information, see R/any General PvE Barrage Ranger. Minion Master The purpose of the minion master is to raise a large undead army and keep the attention of the foes. Unlike many other minion builds, the minions here are not intended for pure damage, but rather to body-block the Grasps of Insanity from reaching the ranger line. Rotting Flesh can be swapped for Dark Bond (with the points in Protection Prayers switched to Blood Magic) for a more durable build. For additional information please see the general minion mastery guide. Orders Necromancer The Orders Necromancer doesn't deal direct damage, but drastically increases the effectiveness of the barrage team due to the guaranteed damage of the Order skills. This character should stay well clear of combat; their low health and reliance on enchantments makes them vulnerable targets. Note: Well of Blood should only be used in the rare cases where the minion master disconnects. An Orders Necromancer more comfortable with the idea of sacrificing large proportions of their health can bring Blood Renewal, Order of Pain, Blood is Power and Succor instead of Healing Breeze, Order of the Vampire, Blood Ritual and Mending - this variation allows the Orders Necromancer to stay even further back, and give more energy to the party Monk and minion master, at the cost of losing the healing element of Order of the Vampire. For additional information please see N/Mo Orders Necromancer." Healing Monk A pure healing Monk. Use of enchantments is generally discouraged, since most monsters have some form of enchantment removal. Variants and DiscussionCritical Barrager Variant In this variant, any number of Rangers can be replaced by Assassin/Rangers. Even though they can only resurrect teamates with the signet, they do deal greater damage using Sharpen Daggers to cause bleeding to foes when a critical hit is made. The benefit to the use of this bleeding will diminish if the group has more than two A/R barragers in the group, because the Rangers with their high level of Marksmanship do deal out greater damage on impact. For additional information, See A/R Critical Barrager. Six Barragers Variant In this variant, the Orders Necromancer is replaced with a sixth Barrager. All Barragers either use elemental bowstrings, or one Ranger brings Greater Conflagration instead of Barrage. The foes in the Tomb Ruins, being mostly of the Warrior and Mesmer classes, have no additional defences against elemental damage. Analysis: An Orders Necromancer with maximum Blood Magic gives a guaranteed damage bonus of 17 (or 19 if aided by Awaken the Blood) per arrow that hits. In the worst case, with each of the five barragers hitting just one target each, this translates to an additional damage output of 85 (or 95) for the team. A sixth Barrager with maximum Marksmanship will do around 40 damage per arrow with an elemental string; he will thus have to hit at least three targets every time to outperform the Orders Necromancer's worst case damage output. In even a slightly better case, where each barrager hits three targets each, the damage output of the Orders Necromancer is 255 (or 285), which is more than the sixth barrager can achieve even if all his six arrows connect. Of course, if the team has no Orders Necromancer, then it is free to use elemental bowstrings, which increases the damage output of every arrow by around 5-10 points. It should be noted that Order of the Vampire offsets some of the healing pressure from the Monk, and the Orders Necromancer doubles as a battery for the Monk. Fevered Dreams Variant In this variant, either a Ranger or the Monk brings Fevered Dreams and coordinates with the conditioners in the team to spread conditions around using very effective combinations. One possible combination is Fevered Dreams Enfeeble Virulence: all foes in the area become weakened, poisoned and diseased. Another possible combination is a ranger/mesmer using Fevered Dreams on a target, and then adding conditions with Pin Down, Apply Poison and Throw Dirt. Analysis: While potent, this build takes some coordination between the players, and so is most likely not suitable for loosely organized PUGs. Minionless Variant In this variant, the minion master is replaced with a different Death Necromancer build. The plethora of corpses are used for Wells of Suffering and Putrid Explosions instead of the minion factory. This variant depends more heavily on the pets forming a sturdy front line, so it is common to have all Barragers have 8 or 9 in Beast Mastery and bring skills to aid the pets such as Otyugh's Cry, Call of Protection and Symbiosis (which synergizes with the Death Novas on the pets to give them lots of HP). The Monk in this variant also tries to keep the pets alive for as long as possible. Analysis: This variant requires very careful aggro management, and is therefore most likely unusable by PUGs. Monkless Variant This variant replaces the healing Monk with a sixth damage dealing character. All healing in the build is done by Predatory Season and the Orders Necromancer who brings Heal Other and Heal Party for emergency healing. Predatory Season makes minions more durable. This variant is essentially a 100% damage-dealing build. Analysis: This variant is risky, but when correctly executed, can be among the speediest Barrage/Pet variants. Clearing times of 40 minutes or lower are not unheard of. Winter Bringer Variant This variant involves one of the rangers bringing Winter. This spirit helps against the Terrorweb Dryders which are using Mark of Rodgort, efficiently preventing it from triggering. In addition, the Winter spirit acts as a decoy, as it is more expendable than the other spirits when no Terrorweb Dryders are around. Historical notes Historically, the six barrager variant was one of the earliest barrage/pet team compositions. Before Order of the Vampire was modified to make it ineffective together with Order of Pain, the Orders Necromancer was always the clear winner in terms of raw damage output, so the six barrager variant fell into disuse. Its popularity has resurged after a March 2nd 2006 update changed Order of the Vampire, because a well managed six barrager team can match or outperform an Orders Necromancer.
HERE IS SOME OLDER INFORMATION THAT I ORIGINAL HAD POSTED READ FULL BRIEF THERE | Barrage/Pet (aka b/p, barrageway, petway) is the general appellation of a class of "speed" builds for the ruins of the Tomb of the Primeval Kings. In the current PvE metagame, playing a barrage/pet build is possibly the quickest way to complete a Tomb run, and is therefore also the most popular build for people wishing to farm the unique items dropped by the final bosses. The build requires only loose coordination between players, and a large spectrum of variants are viable (though not all variants are equally efficient). Additionally, barrage/pet builds tend to be resilient to dropped players, as only two roles (the monk and the minion master) can be said to be essential. This article will first describe the build idea in generalities, then present an example build, and finally discuss some of the math behind various choices. |
The most stereotypical barrage/pet team consists of: - Five rangers, usually all R/Mo.
- One healing monk, usually Mo/N.
- A minion master, usually N/Me.
- An orders necromancer, usually N/Mo
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Rangers As the name suggests, the rangers form the core of the build. Each ranger has, at a minimum, Four of the five rangers commonly have maximum Marksmanship (12 1 3) and Expertise (12 1). One or more of these rangers brings Favorable Winds. The fifth ranger has Wilderness Survival at an attribute rank of at least 7, and brings Winnowing. All five rangers use non-elemental bows, with commonly zealous or vampiric strings. The following Collector bows are good choices for being able to modify a bow the way a player wants: Crystal Desert Southern Shiverpeaks The following unique bows are also seen often: The purpose of the pets is to tank for the group (at least until the minion master raises a sizeable army) and to provide an endless source of corpses for the minion factory. A secondary purpose of the pets is to be walking bombs (using Death Nova). A dead pet with an exploited corpse serves none of these purposes, so it is important for the rangers to raise their pets at every opportunity. |
Healing Monk The most common monk build is a pure spot healing monk. Healing or protecting enchantments are, in general, a bad idea in these arenas because they are stripped by Fingers of Chaos, shattered by Banished Dream Riders, and rent by Chained Souls. Good energy management for the monk is extremely important. Monks can be hit with energy draining skills such as Energy Surge or Power Drain, and being the sole healer in the team can add a lot of pressure. One common strategy is to bring only 5-energy heals (with Word of Healing for the elite slot), and swap foci for quick energy boosts. Another popular strategy is to use the elite skill Offering of Blood for a dependable energy boost every 15 seconds. The primary healing target of the monk is the minion master, who must stay alive or the minion army will turn on the other players. The order necromancer, who should be standing far behind the monk back-line, has the lowest healing priority. The other members of the team are equally important. It is common for the monk to bring at least one spammable hex removal skill to counter Empathy. Remove Hex and Holy Veil are the top candidates
Master Shi Has a Special Build That varys from the publicly listed buids
Brohns Holy Rod and THE StoneHeart
Heal 16
Divine 13
Protection 4  Dwayna's Kiss |  Orison Of Healing |  Healing Breeze |  Word Of Healing ELITE |  Jamei's Gaze |  Heal Party |  Remove Hex |  Resurrection Chant |
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Minion Master The purpose of the minion master is to raise a large undead army and keep the attention of the foes. Unlike many other minion builds, the minions here are not intended for pure damage, but rather to body-block the Grasps of Insanity from reaching the ranger line. The following skills are commonly seen: During combat, the minion master will be raising minions non-stop. It is, therefore, important for there to be a large supply of energy — Soul Reaping at 9 or 10 should be plenty. The minion healing spells are for the times between skirmishes. When the minion master is not raising and maintaining his army, he can participate in combat. Luckily, Death Magic has a number of useful combat skills. Death Nova is one excellent choice to do AoE damage and spread poison. Another popular strategy is to spread disease, either by Tainted Flesh on the pets as they charge into battle, or using Rotting Flesh to explicitly target a foe. The occasional corpse can be exploited for Well of Suffering for additional health degeneration. If the Minion Master has access to Factions campaign skills he might consider using Animate Flesh Golem or Animate Vampiric Horror The Enfeeble Virulence combination should be used for single targets such as Chaos Wurms to bring them down faster with -8 health degeneration. Death Nova should be used on pets that are under attack. |
Orders Necromancer The orders necromancer doesn't deal direct damage, but drastically increases the effectiveness of the barrage team because of the guaranteed damage of the following "order" skills: Only one of these skills is worth bringing because the damage of Order of the Vampire is prevented when Order of Pain (or any other necromancer enchantment) is active. Order of the Vampire helps offset the healing pressure from the monks, but also sacrifices the elite slot. Order of Pain has no healing side-effect. Both orders last for only 5 seconds, so having an item with a 20% enchantment bonus is a good idea. Because these orders sacrifice 17% health, it is important to have some self healing spells; commonly: A secondary function of the orders necromancer is to keep the monk well stocked with energy using Blood Ritual or Blood is Power. The order necromancer will be casting 10 energy skills essentially non-stop. It is, therefore, important to have a high Soul Reaping rank. Using two (or more) superior runes is a good idea, as lowered health will ease the life of a saccer (less health is sacrificed, and heals are more effective). This necromancer uses a total of four superior runes to bring his health below 200, so Blood Renewal completely heals all damage when it ends. Five runes and an additional health reducing item makes even Heal Area become a full heal. Awaken the Blood is used to boost the damage bonus from the orders to 19; the increased sacrifice is not really an issue because the low maximum health makes the regeneration of Blood Renewal more effective. Succor is to give the monk four pips of energy regeneration (counters Divine Boon), and Blood is Power and Heal Other is used to keep the monk fully stocked with energy and health. Most of the energy used by the orders necromancer comes from Soul Reaping instead of energy regeneration MASTER SHI LIKES THIS ORDERS BUILD VERY MUCH |
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