Curse

Ashraven · Aug 18, 2005, 04:25 PM // 16:25

Nice DFrost! Hopefully I'll be in your boat soon! These days I've been working on a new build, just for a change of pace. Maybe you've inspired me to try again

hmm.... looks like just 3 intelligent people and 3 henches may work out much better, judging by your success.

Mike Legend · Aug 18, 2005, 04:35 PM // 16:35

Thirsty River is a bitch, but as was posted above - my Pyromancer just stood outside the little enclosure that the priests stand in and happily meteor showered the crap out of anything inside, with the support of the rest of the team occupying the enemies.

On the Monk boss we just called targets and took out all the cronies outside, then one warrior attacked the Monk while the rest of us pounded the priest. Seemed to work quite well - however we had (thankfully) a decent PUG, and it was my 7th or 8th attempt. Nightmare!

Night Daftshadow · Aug 18, 2005, 04:45 PM // 16:45

in my opinion, thirsty river is the hardest out of the acension missions. i finished elona by myself just running through it. finished dunes with henchies. but thirsty river, man it's fraustrating. but it's possible to do it with henchies and a lot easier with human players. the trick is to kill the priest before it can res and you must know the timing when to attack.

DFrost · Aug 18, 2005, 05:27 PM // 17:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ashraven

Nice DFrost! Hopefully I'll be in your boat soon! These days I've been working on a new build, just for a change of pace. Maybe you've inspired me to try again

hmm.... looks like just 3 intelligent people and 3 henches may work out much better, judging by your success.

Yeah, definitely. We had a warrior that tanked, a mesmer that apparently prevented spellcasting very well since the monk/priests went down fast, and I was casting meteor shower and firestorm plus spamming bow attacks.

Less people can mean less hassle, just make sure you have enough firepower in your group, since damage-dealer henchies' AI can be pretty useless in this mission.

Happy hunting!

Epinephrine · Aug 18, 2005, 05:38 PM // 17:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by coolsti

Thanks for the tip. Anyone know the strategy for doing this particular kill with mesmer plus 5 henchies? I am thinking here that once I target the monk boss to cast spells, my henchmen will also automatically go after the boss instead of the priest. I probably would need to cast backfire on the monk boss and then immediately shift my attack to the priest again to keep the henchies focused there, right?

If you are trying this with a mesmer I would advise against backfire alone - Diversion is SO much better vs these guys - as is Power Leak and Energy Tap and Chaos Storm - the pries t does not move, so the Chaos storm hurts him and he casts spells, losing energy evry time he does so with Chaos storm on him. Power Leak one and hit him for an energy Tap and you've got 40 or so of his energy, he's not going to be as big a threat. Use Diversion liberally - it recharges every 5 seconds, re-apply it. The monk boss was really tough for us for the first 30-40 seconds of the fight and then suddenly went down like a sack of hammers - not casting a single thing. Divesion had removed every single one of his skills - I din't hit him for energy once, while the priest I diod nothing but energy denial to, and use power leak twice to stuff his spells. I even Ether Feasted him every time I could. As soon as the diversion has eliminated a good heal or two the priest starts going down fast, and once the monk has nothing left to cast he just sits there looking stupid and dieing - problem is how many diversions it takes - since hexes only last 50% of the duration on a boss it's only 3 seconds in which it'll catch the spell, if you get the timing right I'm sure you could get him faster than I did, but with the spells gone for a minute (well, 54 seconds or something?) he goes pretty easily after that.

Diversion is great - I'd take it over backfire in a heartbeat - backfire is 140 damage once or so... maybe twice (remember, it only lasts 5 seconds on him) and then nothing for 30 seconds. Diversion you have a shot at shutting down his healing every 5 seconds or so.

Jhyphi · Aug 18, 2005, 11:40 PM // 23:40

I've done this many times with bonus w/o even a rest break between sets w/ henchies and leading inexperienced PUGs.

I find it very simple but of course I've played PvP and beaten all the missions + bonus to date mostly w/ henchies. (All except Dunes, that thing is fairly hard b/c of huge time constraint about 4 minutes to kill everything south and those scarabs are annoying, anyone want to make a group for bonus only let me know.)

Anyways, I'm a R/Me. What everyone doesn't realize is how powerful a Ranger interrupter is. I can make bosses, siege worms, etc. all into pretty useless things. Distracting shot done right kills a skill for 20 seconds, then you have choking gas which shuts down any spellcaster for 8 seconds (depending on attribute points allocated could be more or less). Those two alone are enough to shut down. Throw in savage shot(I think it's that one, another interrupter) just for kicks but the 1st two alone should do it.

Go for priests at 1:20 mark or so.

At monk boss,
With henchies, I targetted the priest(easier to kill than boss) and just choking gassed the hell out of him and also distracting shot. Went down quite easily.
With random PUG, I just instructed them, you all go for priest, I'm shutting down monk boss. Was even easier.

I had the entire group spamming me saying how great I was and asking if I could do Elona's and others with them. Haha.

Lesson to learn. Tanks and monks alone are overrated.
Grab a good interrupting ranger for any mission. Plus it only takes up 2-3 of their skills leaving free 5-6 others for damage dealing, DOT, healing(self-troll unguent, group-healing spring), or something from secondary class.

Ashraven · Aug 19, 2005, 01:42 PM // 13:42

What elation! Plus the bonus to boot! Go figure!

I joined up with 2 W/Mo, 1 R/E, 1 Mo/W and Lina. No spiker!!!

I died once (the priest was almost down, so I needed to stay on him, knowing I'd die, but also knowing it would be a strategic sacrifice). We always went from left to right. Tried to get the casters first, but if the warrior enemies were in the way, we'd focus fire on them first.

I couldn't believe how fast we took down the priest/boss monk combo. Tanks concentrated on the boss monk. Me and the other ranger focused fire on priest. A barrage of distrupts. My mesmer side is domination, so I used backfire, power spike. Ranger distrupts were distracting shot, debilitating shot. I also had savage shot, apply poison and throw dirt.

On the priest, I first shot poison to start DoT, then backfire, throwing in debilitating and distraction for distrupts. Savage shot to increase damage to supplement the poison DoT. Actually, the nice thing about debilitating shot is that it drained 10 energy and it recycles very quickly.

Throw dirt was great when the our warriors surrounded by 4 warrior enemies.

After that mission, I went straight to dunes and completed it without a hitch!

Wow...I was amazed!

Calimar · Aug 19, 2005, 02:01 PM // 14:01

uhm... mesmer side, try: Power Leak, energy drain, debilitating shot, then only damage. With my ele/me, I steal or dry up 40 energy in a few seconds... no monk can heal after that

I just love energy denial.

spamdummy · Nov 08, 2005, 08:34 PM // 20:34

This mission was driving me absolutely mad! I've been trying to progress through the game with henchman and thus far only had to get a group on one mission (the one with the crystals and the portals) which I think is probably impossible with henchman.

Anyway, I'm W/Mo20 and had been trying for ages to beat the last priest/monk combination. I probably failed on over 10 occasions to beat them and given it takes quite a bit of playing to reach that point I was getting really frustrated.

I'd tried taking out all apart from the priest/monk but that didn't seem to work because they just healed each other until they resurrected the rest of the team. I'd tried to lead the whole team out to the king and then double back to the priest/monk but that didn't work because the team came back and found me before I'd killed either the priest or the monk. I'd tried all different skill sets and builds and just couldn't find any way. I'd tried all different combination of henchman but none of them worked. I'd tried getting together with real people (other than henchman) but none of them were disciplined enough to even get to the monk/priest!

Well, tonight I've finally done it and just wanted to share what worked.

1. Build: as much as possible into smiting and hammer mastery with the remainder going on strength
2. Skills: wrath, balthazar aura, all the hammer attack skills and distracting blow.
3. Henchman: alesa, lisa, stefan, little thom & claude
4. Strategy: kill the first group of 3, kill a couple of the second group and then rush in and attack the priest with everything (leaving henchies to do whatever and the monk boss to try and heal a few different people).
5. Luck: yup, I'd tried the above strategy a few times and it worked on the 3rd or 4th (I forget). There's a bunch of stuff going on outside your control so you've just got to hope to get the right combination of henchies attacking the priest, henchies distracting the monk boss and you've got to hope that you kill the priest just before he's going to be healed.

Phew!

Mister Overhill · Nov 09, 2005, 01:02 AM // 01:02

My R/mo had trouble completing this mission with henchmen until I made a few changes and left the tanks at home. I previously had my points in markmenship, beast mastery, and smiting prayers. Dropped markmenship and divided the points between the other two, with a couple left over.

This was awhile back, and I'm not playing this character at the moment, so I can't remember the staff I was using. Took my level 20 cat as usual, and had charm animal, comfort animal, scourge healing, bane signet, holy strike, banish, smite, and judges insight in the bar.

Took Lina, Alesia, Reyna, Orion, and Dunham (plus the cat). Mission went like a charm. Took the advice of others on the timing, and left one enemy standing besides Josso and the priest.

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Jumped right to the Doppelganger with the same build, just to get a feel for it. Of course the cat didn't show up. Just rushed in, unloaded the smites, and the doppelganger went down like a big tree in way under a minute. Couldn't believe it.

Anyway, as far as Thirsty River goes, and as others have said, there are a lot of different combinations to bring to the mission. With the henchmen tanks, I could almost but not quite take it. I think the addition of Dunham here did the trick.