A Blood shield makes use of a necromancer's ability to expand and preserve his health pool and Swordsmanship skills from the Warrior's arsenal to inflict physical damage and various conditions and spikes. This build was made especially for the large scale PVP of Faction.

Attributes and Skills

Necromancer / Warrior	Attribute Rank
Death Magic	10 + 1
Blood Magic	11 + 1 + 1
Swordsmanship	10
Soul Reaping	1

Aura of the Lich

Demonic Flesh

Animate Shambling Horror

Barbarous Slice

Gash

hamstring

Vampiric Touch

Vampiric Bite

Equipment

• Tormentor's Armor, With Rune of Superior Vigor, Rune of Minor Blood magic and Minor Death magic.
• Ragged Scar Pattern
• Weapons (one of the following)
  • A +5 energy axe/sword of shelter/defense/fortitude and a Blood Knife from Attendant Nashu or Jahn Pitz.
  • A Blood Magic wand such as the one available from Karl Jakobs and Blood Magic focus such as the one available from Volsung Stoneketil.
  • A +energy weapon set with otherwise same stats as the above.
  • Milthuran's Staff for more energy

Usage

• Get close to your target and spam Vampiric Bite and Vampiric Touch.
• Use Dodge to chase down kiting targets and avoid attacks that can be harmful to the build (such as crippling attacks).
• Use Whirling Defense or Throw Dirt when targeted by warriors, rangers or assassins. This is not only important for avoiding the damage, but also the harmful conditions like crippling and Deep Wound.
• Use Offering of Blood when you can get the full benefit of the energy gain and you are not taking too much damage. Use it as often as it recharges if you can.

Counters

• Use anti-spammer strategies, such as Diversion or Distracting Shot.
• As the ranger needs to get within touch range, just stay away from them. Use any combination of snares, kiting and knockdowns to achieve this.
• The life stolen per second is not enough to overcome focused damage and health degeneration. However condition based degeneration won't work as he just uses plague touch to pass it on.
• Signet of Humility, Arcane Thievery or Arcane Larceny can be used to shut down Offering of Blood, which is crucial for the build. When used in combination with even mild energy denial such as Energy Burn, the ranger will soon be out of energy.
• Blackout is devastating to touchers.
• "Can't Touch This!" will cause touch skills to fail, but this is not overly destructive and will only waste the touch ranger 2-10 energy.
• Tease will cause the recharge of all the touch skills used in the build to increase by a certain percent, decreasing the overall DPS of the build.
  • It may be wise for users of this build to bring a melee weapon (such as a sword) as a counter-counter, since Tease ends if the target hits the caster (who will have to be within touch range to cast it in the first place)
• Because the build relies on two skills spammed consecutively, enemies with interrupts can easily time their interrupts.
• It looks like a toucher is easy to stop. However one on one (in most cases even 2 or 3 on one) with the touch ranger at full energy its not as easy. The only realistic ways to stop him is using hex based snares, diversion, heavy energy denial or out healing him until he runs out of energy. Al the other stated counters are very situational (not every build you make could make room for Signet of Humility just in case you meet a toucher). Others are just easely worked around.

Variants

• Verata's Aura can take control of all minions around for a medium-short amount of time. Highly useful for AB.
• Frozen Soil can be hidden on the Touch Ranger skill-bar, and when used intelligently, can be a devastating skill in TA, and especially RA. This requires the extra skill points to be put into Wilderness Survival. This can easily replace Throw Dirt.
• Barbed Signet can replace Resurrection Signet in AB, giving the Touch Ranger a secondary distance attack to compliment Vampiric Gaze.
• Signet of Agony and Distracting Shot with a barbed bow to replace Throw Dirt and Whirling Defense gives the build an interrupt and the ability to inflict 44 second bleeding (significant damage over time.) You can still have Blood weaponry as a secondary set.
• Blood Ritual is useful especially in a team situation as it is affected by expertise and gives an energy gain. Similarily, a group of touch rangers could be effective using Blood is Power and Blood Ritual on each other.
• Zojun's Haste, paired with Dodge, gives an almost nonstop speed boost and protection against rangers. This is a good replacement for Resurrection Signet in AB.
• Blood Renewal makes a good self heal if used properly.
• Strip Enchantment in place of Resurrection Signet for Alliance Battles or 8-Team Competitive Missions such as The Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood, where Resurrection Signets are useless.
• Use the 6 left-over attribute points and put them into Wilderness Survival, then using Serpent's Quickness as a way to increase pressure on your target.
• Touch of Agony and/or Wallow's Bite should not be overlooked.
• For players who only own Factions, a spare points Melandru's Shot could be used, with Vampiric Bite and Wallow's Bite as the damage. This will be less effective and conditional to enemies faced, however.
• Storm Chaser instead of Dodge can help with energy management, but is generally not as useful.
• In Alliance Battles, Resurrection Signet may be replaced with Awaken the Blood for more powerful touch attacks.

Template

Template Guide The Skills Template for this build is: ACJBhv8UD5ESCUjwJ1oJEAA