Curse

freekedoutfish · May 10, 2007, 02:25 PM // 14:25

My view about Hard Mode, in terms of giving advice is simple.

Hard Mode is played out in an instance or mission, that you have (hopefully) done before. This means you know 75% of the time, what to expect.

The last 25% is the increased damage, improved healing, hexing and general builds and reactions of the creatures.

But since you should already know the mission, instances and areas, you should know what creatures to expect. They may have buffed skills and different reactions, but you will still know what to expect and what to expect to have been buffed up.

If its a monk, then chances are its healing is oober effective. If its a mesma, then chances are its hexing, interupting, and head-aching if oober effective.

So on and so forth.

Basically, aslong as youve done that area already, and your not one of these people that comes to a continent to starts it in HM before NM, you should be able to handle it.

As for specific advice on certain creatures. Obber monk in HM are a pain in the a**! If your able to, my advice is single them out, wait for everyone to have full regen on skills and engery and just give them everything you can.

Plus interupt their protection and healing like crazey, and try to have someone interupt the other monk to stop them healing their team.

But if you focus on one, it should eventually go down.

It took my PUG ages just to take out a single guard in a tower in one of the prophercies missions in HM. I had to wait for full regen, to NUKE it and it only just killed him combined with degen and hexing.

william1975 · May 10, 2007, 03:05 PM // 15:05

I tend to agree with the rest, best way to deal with two monks is set one interupter on one, and pile on the damage on the other, then quickly take out the other, as they tend to quickly rez,

The problem i can't cope with is when there is a paragon that can rez, by the time you kill the second monk the paragon tends to have rezzed the first one, this has been particularly problematic for me in Joko's Domain, where you have an ele boss, two Acolytes and two cavaliers, and no ability to draw them to wurms

Nekretaal · May 10, 2007, 03:17 PM // 15:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

I'm not fond of MMs in Hard Mode, as one AoE seems to eliminate the entire army. Every time. Stupid overpowered damage.

.

I have Guardian of Cantha, am 2 missions away from guardian of Tyria, and have vanquished 18 areas in Elona (I will never get guardian of Elona because I cant beat the miime in tihark orchard mission).

In all of these areas I have steamrolled them with Minionmaster.

Yeah Minionmaster is no good in (1) areas where mobs have verata gaze (2) any place where mobs use a lot of AoE, commonly firestorm or churning earth, but these areas are few and far between. Most mobs dont have AoE damage, so minionmaster works great.

And the vulnerability to AOE is not a matter of Hard mode... The vulnerability to AoE happens because of the SOUL REAPING NERF. Before the soul reaping nerf I did lightbringer runs in the depths of Madness (which had difefrent spawns then). The creatures in the depths of madness include AoE from dervishes, Barragers, Searing Heat, and Firestorm.

Before you could count on your soul reaping to re-raise an army in the middle of the fight, because soul reaping triggered on deaths. You still had a chance. After the nerf, soul reaping went according to a timer and a firestorm caused a party wipe. Minionmaster was no longer viable in an area with heavy enemy AoE (fortunately, not most of the game).

Now the spawns in Depths of Madness were also changed when hard mode came out, so you no longer have to face titans and torment creatures at the same time... so its not the best place to test anymore... But I assure you the vulnerability of minions to aoe is equally troublesome in normal mode.

Guildmaster Cain · May 10, 2007, 04:07 PM // 16:07

I guess all areas for Vanquishing title have sort of their own tricks to them.

In general, I would not go for AoE stuff, like Searing Flames and such. Unless you get a team with like 4-5 SF eles, scorching away.
My approach is, interrupt them and spike 1 target at a time. Hopefully you can take down their firepower before your monks get overpowered. Meteor Shower doesnt do much dmg compared to other skills, on one single target. It does good dmg against groups, but most HM groups scatter fast. So it is better to have some good monks and spike them one by one.

Make use of their 50% increased attack speed. Reckless Haste takes care of their hits, so does Well of Darkness. Combine that with Price of Failure, Spirit Shackles, Spiteful Spirit, Spirit of Failure, Insidious Parasite and Enfeeble and any HM monster will be turned into a fluffy kitten. While you mitigate their damage and your monks prot/heal, your interrupter ranger can siege the annoying targets. A fullly hexed monster in this setup, has a 97% chance to miss, does about 130 dmg per second to himself and cant do any annoyin healing or AoE spells.

Ofc, you can still get overwhelmed, so pay attention to patrol-routes and stuff.

Mylon · May 10, 2007, 06:20 PM // 18:20

Also, to the best of my understanding, elemental damage is possibly more gimped than physical damage thanks to level differences. A level 30 monster will not take much damage from a nuke, but will still take decent damage from a sword.