Curse

Shanaeri Rynale · May 14, 2006, 03:14 PM // 15:14

Hi.

Over the last couple of nights I have had the extreme honour to be invited to go on the Elite Kurzick Mission, Urgoz’s warren.

I cant say who invited me in, as I promised not to, but here are some screens and descriptions as to what goes on there.

I can’t claim any credit for the overall team build(though I had a lot of input to the mes one), nor can I say this is the best composition, but this is what the team I was in ran and we managed to get and kill Urgoz in under three hours.

2X Wa/Mo
1X Ranger Trapper with 1 interrupt
1X Dom Mesmer(me!)
1X SS necro, consume corpse is essential
1X Bip necro/Battery
1X echo nuker with wards
1X Rit
1X E/Mo
2XHeal monks
1XSmite monk or additional Ele

Disclaimer. I know I may have missed a room or 2. But these are the significant ones. With careful pulling and pop up sweeping any I may have missed or mis-ordered are easy. Should I get the chance to go back I’ll add these in and correct an errors.

A few basics.

Vent/TS is essential. Things like calling for energy, lost aggro etc etc cannot be done via the keyboard in time. I’m not usually anal about this sort of thing, but if you do not have voice com your chances of success are drastically reduced.

Team positioning is vital. The following radar map shows the optimum postions for the team in the majority of situations.Again there's nothing new or special about this, it's basic PvE play and formation.

The warriors hold the line and try and pin the mob against the terrain. Behind them the warder uses ward against foes and melee to make it easier for the warriors to hold and to slow the advance of the hoard..

The trapper ranger lays traps behind the front line, so when aggro breaks(and 8/10 some of it will) there is a fall back position for the warriors and casters.

As a mesmer you will be at the back.

Mesmer Skills And Attributes

We tried a whole variety of builds from fast cast nuke to Illusion. The optimum mesmer build in the few times we tried was as follows

Wastrels Worry. Don’t care what people say. It’s fire and forget, resists armor and 8/10 triggers. Ideal for Anti guardian wurm and Urgoz.
Energy Burn, Cheap heavy damage
Arcane Conundrum- The end bosses use Jamils gaze, which has ¾ second cast time, with the kiting that needed just to live no way in hell are you going to catch it every time.
Glyph of renewal
Power Spike
Empathy
Cry of Frustration
Diversion

A mes secondary taking epidemic and a nec with weakness drastically reduces damage received. Migraine would be of use later on, but then you lose a lot of flexibility getting there(Dangerously so imho)

Attributes
Fast Cast 11
Domination 15
Illusion 7
Inspiration 9(I use jewelled chalice for extra energy, so it needs to be this high)

General tactics

Your primary interrupts and spells will be useless against the huge numbers of mobs, so pick your targets. I found it more useful to use them against break aways to help protect the casters so the warriors and ele’s could focus on the main mobs.

Against Guardian worms
Use Acane Conundrum(AC), Diversion, power spike, WW and eburn

Against trees
AC and power spike are particularly effective.

Against Wardens of Earth
Spiking Churning earth should be your main target

Song wardens are healers, AC+power spike helps

Burning bushes
Spiking bed of coals should be your main target

Melee and assasins
Empathy

Room Overview

Note: This is from memory, so if you wipe and die don’t blame me

. I think the order of the rooms is right, and I’ll revise as and when I get the chance to go back in.

Room 1

The first room is lightly wooded and the group needs to move instantly to a safe area, as it is attacked within moments by 10 suicide bats, some insta kill you on contact while others suck your energy drain. All should turn around and head left into a clearing. Let the trapper trap the archways while a single warrior pulls the suiciders. You wont have much to do here, except energy burn any bats that escape

A whole load more dredge will need to be pulled after the bats die. Position your team as above, and fight on the stairs.

Head straight(don’t go off right or left) and take on more dredge, until you can WW and spike the guardian wurm

Room 2

Room 2 has -15 Degen after you get beyond the shadows of the door. Use your warriors and heal party to lure the dredge and blood drinkers to the corner of the wall. and kill there. When it's clear rush the tree to remove the degen. Watch out for pop ups of blood drinkers

Room 3

You will be met by loads of burning bushes. The warriors and ele’s will deal with the masses, it’s your job to kill any run aways.
comprises of more dredge, positioned onto a fallen tree, duck under the tree and nuke from safety. You may need to use consume corpse to teleport a necro to the top to open the door. No consume corpses and you are kinda stuck.

Room 4

This room comprises of a narrow bridge where your party is sniped by fire spitter flowers, attacked by 4 mobs of level 28 Thorn wolves and attacked from behind by more suicide bats. Empathy against the wolves is particularly effective

Room 5

Comprises of seemingly endless pulls of Blood drinkers. This room also has -7 health degen. So only move out to engage when required. Casters should hide behind the cliff to the right while the warriors pull and hold on the corner.

Warriors pull the Blood drinkers and dredge until you can kill the degen tree. You will then get several mobs of blood drinkers, use cry of frustration and power spike to shut them down. This is where GoR is a god send, you can usually keep 2-3 mobs shut down which will help the healers considerably.

Casters should hide behind the cliff to the right while the warriors pull and hold on the corner.

Room 6

Room 6 is one of my favourites. If more than 3 people go in, 100 dredge and wolves spawn. So send in 3 people to kill the energy drain tree and wurm. Then send them across the bridge. Only when they are safely well across the bridge should you send in 3 more, then 3 more and then the last 3.

Room 7

This room comprises of several burning bushes, just kill em

Again, your interrupts and degen will help whittle down the mobs quickly and protect the back line. Bed of coals is the prime skill to interrupt here.

Room 8

One of the tricker rooms as it comprises of 2 trees, one for exhaustion, one for weakness. These are split into two sides, exhaustion on the left, weakness on the right. They are surrounded by huge mobs which if you are lucky you will not need to fight

Ele’s should try and attack one of the thorns in the Tree to the far left. With any luck it will draw the tree closer so it can be killed. If you cant pull the tree you face a long hard slog to kill the wardens, and bushes

When this tree is down, kill the guardian serpent and repeat the process with the tree on the right(weakness tree)

Room 9

The next room is crammed full of level 28 and 30 forest wardens.

Pull the wardens into the previous room while casters camp the trapper and the right hand side wall. Watch for the remains of the previous room filtering down. Again mob them up to protect the casters rear.

Pay attention to the wardens of earth using churning earth. Try and stop as many as you can, as it’s very damaging AoE and can cause a party wipe. Song wardens are monks so cast AC on them to slow healing.

Room 10

The penultimate room spawns legions of blood drinkers, these are esp nasty as if the entire party goes in, the door slams shut trapping them in with no escape. So don’t let that happen. Have a monk with heal party stay outside the doors while the warriors pull.

Cry of Frustration works wonders on the blood drinker mobs. Use GoR with cof and power spike and the mobs will crumple under the weight of the meteor showers. More thorn wolves will spawn so the best position for all non warriors is to camp the trapper.

Watch out for pop ups all over the place. Only 1 warrior should sweep the area. Eventually the door the other side will open and it’s on the way to urgoz.

URGOZ

Go through the door and rush the -15 Degen tree. Go over the bridge and kill the other trees and mobs. The door will then open and you will be faced with Urgoz himself.

Ok, now it gets serious. Urgoz is the guy in the middle. He is protected by two lvl 30 Guardian wurms.

Surrounding Urgoz are spawns of what look like spirit Shephards. These do not move, but spawn around you and explode 5 seconds later with 300 damage each.

Urgoz himself uses a bow attack and casts binding chains. This is bad news if you are near the mines.

The Guardian worms are very resistant to physical damage, cast scourge healing and Jamils gaze.

Dealing with Urgoz.

The first thing to learn to do is to deal with the pop ups. The best way is to cast, wait for a pop up. Move out of its way, cast then move. Wait for the first one to die and move back into the space it makes and repeat. With some practice you should be able to do it. Use the safe area to the left to make sure you get it right. Whether your team wins or loses will depend a lot on your ability to do this(no pressure right)

If/When you are hit with binding chains, walk away, in one direction only from the pop ups until it wears off. If you are lucky you’ll escape.

Split your team into 2. Youself and the ranger take on worm(we went for the right side one). The rest go to the left.

The worms use Scourge healing and Jamils gaze. Jamils gives a huge heal for a ¾ second cast time and 3 second recharge,, with the kiting that’s needed just to stay alive, mixed with the random casting of it, trying to interrupt it is almost impossible. You may hit one, but you need to hit ALL so the other group stands a chance of killing the other. If you have a sup fast cast rune, equip it.

All is not lost. That’s why we bought AC, Diversion and an interrupt ranger as backup. Any kind of lag here and no matter how good you are, it gets 100% harder.

Basically your job is to shut down the worm while the other group pummel theirs. Cast AC and diversion on the worm and using power spike,ww etc keep it shut down as best as you can. You will get in a maximum of two casts before needing to move. While focussing on the worm, don’t forget about the pop ups.

With some luck the other wurm will die. Regoup to the safe zone and rez.

Now it gets easier, all onto the final wurm. Again use shutdowns to stop it healing.

Now we take on Urgoz himself.

Urgoz spams a special skill which cannot be interrupted or diverted. While kiting the pop ups, use as much damage as you can muster. Energy burn, echo empathy, and wastrels are ideal. Wastrels is a nice fire and forget in that you can cast it, kite then use another attack. By the time you have repositioned wastrels has hit(don’t ask me why his skill doesn’t cause it to fail but it doesn’t).

After lots of damage Urgoz will die and will drop 3 greens.

Use the teleport at the back and give yourself a huge pat on the back.

Avarre · May 14, 2006, 03:27 PM // 15:27

Nice guide but... I don't like your build

I would run :

Mantra of Recovery
Cry of Frustration
Empathy
Arcane Conundrum
Images of Remorse
Diversion
Guilt
Hard Res

10 FC
15 Dom
11 Illu

Alternatively Me/N with enfeebling blood (epidemic and weakness is waste!) and rotting flesh (so many nonhuman mobs!) might work well too. Shatter hex could be put it, that's usually handy..

Shanaeri Rynale · May 14, 2006, 04:16 PM // 16:16

Like I said, this is what works. We used degen, poison, bleeding etc etc to great effect. But since this is a mesmer focussed one, I stayed away from other profs. Mantra of recovery is ok, but I never ran out of energy so you are better off with the extra versitility of GoR.

Hard res is not needed. As one is in a team of 12 and with voice com and observation you wont wipe. Shatter hex would be useful but something has to give and not many hexes are thrown about apart from the end.

If you can get a ride in, let me know how you get on, as I said this is the build that worked very well and we tried over 15 while we were there. I guess the prime rule of the mesmer forum is that no matter how good a friends Avarre and I are we'll never come up with the same build -lol

Edited to say misread. Recall is ok. But 6 seconds is long wait for power spike when gor does it instantly and with a lower recharge time. Tbh not used recall much, I just kinda got used to insta-zap

Avarre · May 14, 2006, 04:22 PM // 16:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

Like I said, this is what works. We used degen, poison, bleeding etc etc to great effect. But since this is a mesmer focussed one, I stayed away from other profs. Mantra of recovery is ok, but I never ran out of energy so you are better off with the extra versitility of GoR.

Hard res is not needed, Shatter hex would be useful but something has to give and not many hexes are thrown about apart from the end.

If you can get a ride in, let me know how you get on, as I said this is the build that worked very well and we tried over 15 while we were there. I guess the prime rule of the mesmer forum is that no matter how good a friends Avarre and I are we'll never come up with the same build -lol

Recovery, not Recall!

2x recharge global on spells would serve better than a single glyphed spell, especially if your energy is lasting.

Hard res is ALWAYS needed if you can carry it, you never know what can go wrong. Shatter hex, well I wouldn't know if there were many hexes, would I

Effendi Westland · May 15, 2006, 11:00 AM // 11:00

Congrats on making the Kurzick elite mission Shan

Hella Good · May 15, 2006, 03:06 PM // 15:06

With such huge amount of mobs you should consider taking Epidemic and hitting with blind and deep wound -> both extremely effective conditions. You can also use Sig interrupts to counter the energy drain. I think a proto Rt is essential in the Warren. Shelter, Union, and Displacement under RL or some other similar fast recharge skill can prevent tons of damage. Another Rt can go Preservation, Life, Recuperation. One or two Monks spamming Heal Party under Cultist Fervor is also something to consider- this is massive heal potential.

Shanaeri Rynale · May 15, 2006, 07:40 PM // 19:40

We did use epidemic, with the E/Me, and used weakness, blinds and as poison to devestating effect. I did'nt want to give the entire team build but wanted to focus on what the mission entailed, playing as a mesmer. I guess if I had a week I could write up one for the whole build - lol

Another mesmer with the above would be ideal, with power block or ineptitude maybe but lots of people want to take more damage/heal than another mes.

RYCHER969 · May 23, 2006, 01:15 AM // 01:15

Congrats and thanx for sharing info & screens.

I am sure each mes will tweak your recommended build a bit but having insight as to what to expect is priceless.

I would be less inclined to bother with dmg. at all ( wastrells & empathy) leaving that to warr & ele & necro. This would allow a play to strength ( interupts). I am curious why , with domination set high, you didnt run with backfire ( 147 @ dom 16) for damage? With glyoh u could spread it a bit.

What weapon set did you run with? I am curiuos. Although I have yet to find better than Gorrels cane & Pre-nerfed molder for 36% recharge.

In your opinion, would there be any benefit to 2 mesmers?

I cannot wait to get in there and give this a go.

Thanx again

holden · May 23, 2006, 01:22 AM // 01:22

it's a nice guide shanaeri. people can nickle and dime the build all day long but it worked and you completed the mission. I would change some things in the build too but i've never gotten close to finishing this mission....

Shanaeri Rynale · May 23, 2006, 03:30 PM // 15:30

Thanks for the feedback.

Thing about running a pure interupt build is that there are so many monsters in the mobs it's generally impossible to shut them all down or indeed get close to many of the casters without messing up aggro. Cry of frustration is about the best interupt to take here, as it can really reduce the damage creatures such a blood drinkers and brushes.

I thought seriously about backfire but the role of the damage hexes I took was to act as quick coup de grace to any mobs that escaped to the caster line or indeed ambushed. With the ele's and wa's focussing on the front then the little extra damage I can inflict is worth it. Since most escapee's are melee not casters then backfire would be largely useless in the situation described.

In addition, since typically one runs 2-3 fire nuke ele's the knockdowns from meteor shower combined with the sheer damage inflicted limits the amount of casts they can get off so limiting backfire's usefulness.

As for weapons I use

1. Will Crusher (~48 en)
2. Korvalds Cane with desert collecters illusion Chakram (~65 en)
3. Jungle collectors cane with desert collectersillusion Chakram (~75 en)
4. Long bow for lures or an other staff

As usual (for me anyway), the build is designed around the build of the team so your mileage may vary..

Ailyrr Merlena · Jun 04, 2006, 10:25 AM // 10:25

I went on a couple of the mission with Shan, though I didn't beat Urgoz at the time. These were a couple of the first runs we all made, and we tweaked our builds as we discovered what we were up against.
Epidemic works devastingly well, as Shan can attest to, since he did run it, against the advice of the non-mesmer members.
Me? I played FC-Nuker, which also works well for Urgoz.

Arwen Granger · Jun 05, 2006, 05:28 AM // 05:28

Our mesmer build for Urgoz is mainly illusion -
Conjure Nightmare, Phantasm, Images of Remorse, Accumulated pain, ether signet, mantra recall, rez signet and Mantra persistence. Job of the mesmer is to put the highest and continous amount of degen to Urgoz, earth wardens and song wardens.