Curse

gw_poster · May 19, 2009, 05:26 PM // 17:26

I hate Vloxen Excavations HM. I've tried 5 times: guildie group (a bit unbalanced) - failed at end of 1st level with the big mob in the tunnel; with a PUG more balanced but failed on 2nd level; h/h with balanced team failed 3/4 through 2nd level at the huge mob on the hill from the casket swamp; and finally, tried 2 different runners - one of which failed on 2nd level and quit (would have been 25k) and the second of which was an excellent runner but began having problems on 3rd level with our team getting mobbed at the rez shrine from zoldark's minions (not runner's fault)!!! Had to quit after 30 min of that.

So, I am frustrated and a bit pissed off. I've 989 adventurer points and this is the last page in my HM Dungeon Book, which will give me 2 titles (r6 adventurer and Asuran when I turn in the book)....and r5 KoabD (25 titles). I'm not a noob, just venting...

So basically, excuse the QQ thread - but, I would like to know that I'm not the only one having these kinds of problems. Tell me about how you guys conquered this dungeon, the hero setup, and if you know any good runner's names I'd rather just save the time

Thanks.

Omgopolis · May 19, 2009, 06:50 PM // 18:50

I don't recall exactly what I used on my paragon to beat it, but I think it was discord necroes and some henchies. I forgot the frozen soil for those big groups though, so my strategy to win was to pull those big mobs reeaaallly far to stretch them out and spike down individual guys and hope they didn't get ressed. Took a long time and was a pain in the ass, but it worked.

Shayne Hawke · May 19, 2009, 07:28 PM // 19:28

There's a trick to dealing with the large Dwarven mob on the first floor with H/H. Clear out the boss, and then step back to around the entrance of the room. Really, you only need to go far enough back so that when you hold Ctrl, you see none of the mob. Flag your party into where the mob is going to be. When they've been grayed out from the party window and you think they're in position, inch forward holding Ctrl very slowly and in small increments until you see a red name. Wait a little while and your party should kill it. Inch forward, reveal another enemy or two, and let those be killed. It's time consuming, but you can usually eliminate that group and a few other groups you'll find on floor 2 with that method.

Where you can't use that method, like on the first mob of the second floor, you just have to hope that your team is strong enough. I tend to need a number of DP removal items for some bad attacks, but other than the bottlenecked mob on floor 1 and the initial mob in floor 2, I find nothing too difficult about the dungeon. The boss fight is even easier than some of those mobs.

ZodiacFear · May 19, 2009, 07:31 PM // 19:31

It is pretty easy with proper wallblocking and a lot of AoE damage.

Anduin · May 19, 2009, 07:37 PM // 19:37

A non-master's dungeon should never have gotten elite monsters in hard mode, but that's another matter altogether.

gw_poster · May 19, 2009, 10:37 PM // 22:37

Thanks for the responses - I'll give some of those suggestions a try. I'm too cheap to use a con-set, but I think I might change my mind this one time. Also, I'll be sure to bring more 4-leaf clovers which probably would have helped the time I h/h'ed. I'll post if I'm successful..

Jeydra · May 19, 2009, 11:53 PM // 23:53

"Huge mob at top of casket swamp" is the 8-man Stone Summit mob with two healers yes? If so, execute a long pull and fight at their turnaround point to eventually wear them down. It takes time but it's pretty painless (no risk of death). Frankly if you've gotten further with H/H than any other non-running method, you're doing very well, it's really not that much further to the end from there - just Taskmaster Bellok's group left to worry about, and you can execute a long pull too and wipe them out where their AI is buggy (their turnaround point is at the top of the casket swamp from the side you came from).

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10344912

Don't lose hope because almost all the groups have only one healer, so wiping them out is a lot easier than wiping out the Stone Summit in Duncan HM. If you can get a second human, dual Discordway makes the dungeon pretty painless.

Bug John · May 20, 2009, 11:32 AM // 11:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZodiacFear

It is pretty easy with proper wallblocking and a lot of AoE damage.

worked for me, ray of judgment and death nova did the job, although my h/h party wiped a few times

this dungeon is a pain, and should be more rewarding in hm (imo, second to rragar, and much harder than frostmaw)

Shyft the Pyro · May 21, 2009, 08:07 PM // 20:07

I lucked out - finished with with a PuG for a Zaishen quest (Zoldark bounty). A permasin will make short work of everything on the first two levels, and RoJ smite monks are virtually required for the boss fight (perma will lose enchantments, so almost useless there).

Gigashadow · Jun 04, 2009, 08:56 AM // 08:56

(Small video at bottom of this post)

Ok after dreading getting around to this one after reading various posts about it, I did this tonight. I was surprised, this was actually the easiest and fastest of the 9 HM dungeons I've done so far. I'm not trying to be one of "those" guys that says things are easy just to annoy everyone. I'll explain what made it easy and provide a video clip.

My setup was pretty standard stuff, 2 N/Mos (one death, one curses, but both with smiting and RoJ), plus the standard Sabway N/Rt for splinter weapon and AOE heals. By the way, this was a WAY better setup than when I tried 3 ROJs; it wasn't even close. The N/Rt's 2 AOE heals and splinter weapon are simply excellent. I did NOT bring frozen soil, because it was never even remotely necessary, stuff died way too fast.

If you've been reading various H/H threads, you probably know I love the new Strength of Honor and Splinter Weapon, as these two skills put out insane damage.

I took the advice of others and brought the healer, prot, earth, and interrupt ranger (Zho). Zho was absolutely excellent in this dungeon, and interrupted a lot of nasty stuff.

Then, I took the excellent advice of Shayne Hawke above to deal with the mob at the end of the first floor. So the total time to from entering the first floor to exiting it, was about 5 minutes. Doing it that way was so trivial it was ridiculous.

Taking out mobs with 1 stone summit healer was a joke really, as you can see; I ran in with Enraging Charge, For Great Justice!, hit the healer once, then immediately knocked him down with brawling headbutt and unloaded. My attacks, buffed to ridiculous levels by Strength of Honor, splinter weapon, not to mention a ROJ or two, easily killed him and anything in the vicinity.

Where possible I tried to set things up so that I was near multiple targets for max splinterage.

On the second floor I did have a problem with that huge group with the boss at the top of the stairs. So I followed Jeydra's advice in this thread, and just pulled them back and forth, and back, and forth (all the while with my H/H way way back at max range) until the Healer was in an easier position to get to (instead of hiding out in the back), at which point I did the same as the above.

I also managed to corner block some of them, and healers just don't have a hope of outhealing the AOE damage of splinter weapon. Even strength of honor auto-attacks are pretty hard for them to outheal if anything else is going on.

Really no other fights of note in the dungeon, and it was an extremely fast run. The boss fight was just silly due to 2 smiters. Honestly it was harder in normal mode when I did that two weeks ago and didn't have any smiting skills equipped.

Ok, since I just purchased the new upgrade to Vegas 9, I decided to render a couple of clips just for the hell of it. I didn't think of fraps'ing anything until I was mostly done though, I wish I had some more interesting fights. Two of these are fighting regular 1 healer stone summit groups on floor 2, and the last fight is the boss on floor 3.

I do apologize for having consumables active on floor 2; I did this after wiping once when running head in to the big mob mentioned above (things were so easy until that point, I just got overconfident and ran head in). I thought that and the rest of the floor would be harder than it was, so I popped some consumables then and there. But as you can see from the video clips, it really was unnecessary, the party health bars were never even close to danger, and I didn't use consumables on floor 3. Never used pain inverter even once, it was a dead skill on my bar.

Oh, there's a small gap at the beginning of the boss fight, for whatever reason it didn't render video but only the sound for that section.

But pretty much every fight went like the ones in the video.

(better watched in HD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53_0UmnxuNA

Longasc · Jun 04, 2009, 11:55 AM // 11:55

An experienced player cannot beat Vloxen HM?

Come on.

Mark of Pain (Ideally you are the Curse Necro)
You Move Like A Dwarf
Ebon Vanguard Sin

MM Hero
Splinter Weapon Barrage Ranger Hero
+ any Hero. I suggest a BHA/Volley/Splinter Ranger.

Blows up the huge mob in level 1, and works for the rest of the dungeon as well.
I am pretty confident standard Sabway can do it, too.

accelerate · Jul 01, 2009, 07:17 PM // 19:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shayne Hawke

Clear out the boss, and then step back to around the entrance of the room. Really, you only need to go far enough back so that when you hold Ctrl, you see none of the mob. Flag your party into where the mob is going to be. When they've been grayed out from the party window and you think they're in position, inch forward holding Ctrl very slowly and in small increments until you see a red name. Wait a little while and your party should kill it. Inch forward, reveal another enemy or two, and let those be killed. It's time consuming, but you can usually eliminate that group and a few other groups you'll find on floor 2 with that method.

I just want a bit of clarification of how this works. You get the dungeon key. Then you go back the way you came from, so there are no red dots in your radar or while holding down CTRL. And then you flag all your H/H in the tunnel where the enemies are? Why do they not get killed immediately? Is an enemy active only when you as the player can see them (with CTRL)?

Random Scrubinator · Jul 02, 2009, 05:14 AM // 05:14

Mobs only spawn if the player gets within range of the mob (which is what made UA running so effective before the nerf), but I didn't know that this also applied to individual enemies. This sounds like a neat trick that could be used in many places with stationary enemies

ranger rothers · Jul 02, 2009, 11:37 AM // 11:37

Did Vloxen HM with a fellow guildie using the new Spiritual Discord Rit buff team build and it was a breeze

accelerate · Jul 02, 2009, 10:05 PM // 22:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by ranger rothers

Did Vloxen HM with a fellow guildie using the new Spiritual Discord Rit buff team build and it was a breeze

Could you post the build or link to the build(s) you guys used?

ranger rothers · Jul 02, 2009, 11:01 PM // 23:01

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Team...ritual_Discord

2 Players were Rangers, nothing special, just our favourite general PvE builds, found FS to be more a hindrance than a help so didn't take it.

aga · Jul 03, 2009, 01:30 PM // 13:30

I do HM vlox with h/h easily with these builds on my heroes:

OANDUshuOI1qwUANgHwruEqP
OAhiYwh8YtveDTp5krqOOvYA
OAhjYYHrIPWiyQi4aWOxYVzqKA

also with the 2 monks, earth ele and Zho for the hench. Can do the whole thing in under 40mins, without cons. I play melee mostly, so i generally micro rigor mortis but it's only a few mobs where blocking is an issue.

Joe Van Hayling · Jul 12, 2009, 05:56 PM // 17:56

I managed to do it fairly easily with these:
I was running OQojExVRKT2F8VCFNXLXiejeylA

I ran a Domination Mesmer: OQNEAqsj2xoBcb5gLgTIDQEQjA
Inspiration 10+1
Domination 11+1
Fast Casting 10+1+1

Minion Bomber: OANEUsl985sUrC4B0QVNgUPuCA
Death Magic 12+1+1
Soul Reaping 9+1
Protection 9

And an SS with FS: OAJUUKzeY8MCt8gdoMs7uOVVsAA
Curses 12+1+1
Soul Reaping 11+1
Death Magic 5
Wilderness 3

I ran with the two Monk henchies, Earth and Interrupt.
It went smoothly apart from a few mobs - but I then did the technique mentioned above where you edge closer with your team pinged where the group should be. Best of luck, it worked for me. Pm me ingame if you have any problems. My ign is <-----

Marako D · Aug 17, 2009, 04:43 AM // 04:43

I would just recommend posting in Services to get a run. Sure its 25k but now you have your book full.

toocooltang · Aug 17, 2009, 10:56 PM // 22:56

This is one of the few places that I find ele's to really stand out in HM. I find you need good consistant dmg that is sustainable. It helps to bring rend enchant to remove all the monk stuff then spike down the target you just rended. When people in my guild go normally I got SOD monk with typical prots because its pretty easy when you can pre-prot everyone.