Guild Wars 2

Someone needs to tell WP & Boots that the mother of all Mad King Rune builds just rolled into town!

Soulcleave’s Summit is an AoE group buff that adds lifedrain to every attack you or your allies make with no ICD, much like the necromancer’s vampiric group buff but much stronger – in the PvP area with Mad King Runes and a Viper’s amulet equipped the combat log states the attack does 756 damage per hit before might. It is also an elite skill, and heals the user of the skill for a similiarly substantial amount of damage (386 per hit when healing power = 0). Mad King runes summon three swarms of birds when you cast an elite skill, each one dealing 16 hits to its chosen target.

If therefore we combine rune and buff a single cast of Soulcleave’s Summit will deal 16*756=12k damage per target, before taking into account the base damage from the birds or any other effects that might proc on the bird attacks (and renegades can have a lot of effects that proc on hit: Ambush Commander to buff damage; Rampant Vex to inflict torment; poison on torment; Mutilate Defences to inflict vulnerability; Focus Siphoning to drain more life; Razorclaw’s Rage for bleed, etc.).

Have tested this against golems, fake players and real players in the PvP lobby and it shreds them all. Dunno how strong Renegade is in PvP, but this might be an option to consider.

That’s awesome, although I’m sure that’s gonna be nerfed in no time. The one saving grace the class has and it will probably get the hammer. =P

Although I hope not, it sounds like a fun build to play with.

We can but hope that it will survive. What’s particularly interesting is that Soulcleave has negligible power scaling and seems to not be affected by +% damage buffs – this means that the trick will do nearly as much damage on a healing amulet as it will on a DPS one. Given that Renegade looks to be stronger than Herald for a Ventari support build and such a build would want to buff bleeds to power Razorclaw, this might be a strong choice for both such build types.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Listen here I’ve been using mad kings FOR OVER A YEAR I LOVE THE BULLD . The elite on renegade is awesome but honestly the heal on the renegade is terrible so mad kings is a must

The Elite has an internal cooldown.

The rune has an icd. The Elite doesnt. But it is still impressive spike dmg every 45 seconds

OH SNAP he actually pipped me to the post here and posted a stream https://www.twitch.tv/videos/168015740

Good work Mr World of Enders!

His video seems to show that the effect does not trigger once on each of the three targets, but instead the lifesteal triggers randomly on only one of the three targets. Unfortunate. Hope this is a bug, as depending on what’s going on at the code level that could cause problems for other multi-target skills.

On the plus side if you use the Vindication trait and have a decent amount of precision (tested using Mender’s rune) then you will hit 25 might stacks. So you can use the elite as an opener to a longer combo if a target survives the initial damage.