Curse

semantic · Sep 27, 2007, 08:18 AM // 08:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cowboy Nastyman

i was somewhat disappointed with how easily i was able to roll through it with 6 heroes, cant really say its hard, not with paragons anyway. ran 5 paras a necro and 2 rits

ROFL Not even Balthazar could stop that group, assuming it's setup and played well.

tmakinen · Sep 27, 2007, 08:18 AM // 08:18

Having H/H melee characters in the party poses an additional challenge when pulling. It's usually better to set them on defense and flag away when doing a delicate pull. I'm usually trying to find out just how far away monsters are willing to get pulled, even integral mobs can sometimes get broken when some of them are more persistent than the rest, and in any case when you are fighting at the edge of the 'comfortable zone' for the particular mob, they use most of the time running back and forth instead of mauling you

RazorEdge · Sep 27, 2007, 08:31 AM // 08:31

It's just careful pulling. Done right, it's the easiest of all the boss dungeons. And tanks are not a requierment either. Did it with guildie, he a monk, me a mesmer, and 6 heroes. No warriors, no minion masters.

In the start, let the first group pass. Then kill the 2nd. Should be easy enough. Frozen soil to speed things up. Then just sweep for Restless dead, take a group at the time. Duncan himself is a pushover.

Longasc · Sep 27, 2007, 08:46 AM // 08:46

Did it with a party of 3 players and heroes first. Later even with 2 human players only.

So please, be a bit careful with "near impossible" statements, it reminds me too much of the lamentations about Shards of Orr...

Hints:

1.) Frozen Soil. But take in mind, it is a double-edged sword

2.) Neutralize enemy melees with Wards, Reckless Haste and let your hero rangers throw dirt if you have any. Careful, they often try to waste it on spirits!

3.) Go for PRIEST/DEFENDER, then for WARDERS, then for SUMMONERS. I pick the Warders before the Summoners, as their Earth DoT AoEs require me to flag the heroes manually, they often take great damage in them.

4.) Skills/Classes you should bring: a.) SS Necro with Mark of Pain, Enfeebling Blood and Reckless Haste shines in this dungeon. MoP works especially well with Paragons and Rangers. Make sure they do physical damage. TBH, the whole dungeon is a SS Necro's wet dream, they clump together enough to take a lot of damage from the hexes. b.) Splinter/Barrage Rangers, I also prefer to bring a pet with low (6-7) beast mastery. They make great "frag bait", while their Rangers wreck the enemy with Splinter Weapon themselves. c.) Ideally a human channeling ritualist and d.) Blood Necro with Order of Pain, Spoil Victor + Pain Inverter. As you can see having two necros makes me lean towards a more physical and hex damage oriented team. Ideally I would like to have a Dervish doing holy damage to the enemy minions. Hint, Holy Spear works also wonders vs them. Some people recommend to bring corpse exploiting skills so that they can raise less, but it worked without that, too.

5.) Careful pulling as mentioned. Especially right at the start of the dungeon WAIT till the mobs separate before attacking!

6.) You can pass some of the groups without having to fight.

7.) Use the described trick with the necros hiding below the stairs outside of spirit range to kill Duncan.

Cowboy Nastyman · Sep 27, 2007, 09:02 AM // 09:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by semantic

ROFL Not even Balthazar could stop that group, assuming it's setup and played well.

he's welcome to try ;D

Sheriff · Sep 27, 2007, 09:59 AM // 09:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cowboy Nastyman

i was somewhat disappointed with how easily i was able to roll through it with 6 heroes, cant really say its hard, not with paragons anyway. ran 5 paras a necro and 2 rits

Interesting setup! Care to share more details? :-)

lordpwn · Sep 27, 2007, 11:02 AM // 11:02

Did the whole Slavers' Exile in one sitting last weekend with some guildmates. I think our team build was something like this:

W/E - Earth tank
R/Rt - Splinter Barrager (Me)
+ Mo/Me - Dunkoro, pure healer w/ LoD
R/Rt - Splinter Barrager
E/Me - Air Spiker with Invoke Lightning
N/Me - Spiteful Spirit, Pain Inverter
+ E/Mo - Vekk, Dual Attunement fire nuker
+ Mo/Me - Dunkoro, pure healer w/ LoD (AI plays most Prot or hybrid builds too badly to bother with)

A bit generic, but we'd used similar teams for a long time so teamwork certainly wasn't a problem. The tank could easily hold the Summit group in place for a few seconds without being in any danger, which was quite enough for the Splinter Barragers and the eles to lay waste to most of them. Once the Summit numbers were too thinned down for Barrage to be effective the Rangers started to focus on interrupting to prevent any survivors from rezzing.

You could probably replace some of the players with heroes if you don't mind micromanaging their skill use and positioning. Oh, and the AI is absolutely retarded with weapon spells.

Retribution X · Sep 27, 2007, 11:18 AM // 11:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordpwn

You could probably replace some of the players with heroes if you don't mind micromanaging their skill use and positioning. Oh, and the AI is absolutely retarded with weapon spells.

Quoted for truth.

They seem to do ok with Weapon of Remedy though

darktyco · Sep 27, 2007, 12:45 PM // 12:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

On nerfing the corner:

1. The corner is so incredibly obvious that, IMO, it had to be intentionally designed that way.
2. Even if it's not, given the amount of effort that a-net seems to be dedicating to GWEN, I wouldn't expect to see a nerf anytime soon.
3. If it gets nerfed, so what? The spirits can still be killed/swapped and a few extra wand hits aren't really going to matter to the prot-ed necro(s) doing the killing.

2. Sad but true. There have hardly been any bug fixes yet, and there are other things that need attention more than Duncan's corner.

3. I would like to try taking him out without using the corner, but I highly doubt any pug on the face of the planet would be up for it.

TabascoSauce · Sep 27, 2007, 03:16 PM // 15:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celestial Beaver

There is another post about completing Duncan' Dungeon just here.

General concensus seems to be "Careful Pulling = Win".

QFT. Plant the flag and pull, and a decent build for heroes. IIRC, I used dual touch necros for armor ignoring damage and a motivation paragon, with the usual Mhenlo/Lina/Zho/Herta.

YMMV, of course.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

lizards · Sep 27, 2007, 04:02 PM // 16:02

It is an Elite after all...

roflcopter2445 · Sep 27, 2007, 04:50 PM // 16:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by dargon

3 words

Very careful pulling

best advice you'll get for it

Cowboy Nastyman · Sep 27, 2007, 07:56 PM // 19:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sheriff

Interesting setup! Care to share more details? :-)

basically this was myself and a friend both playing our paras each with 3 heroes.

He was a spear para with theyre on fire save yourselves theres nothing to fear and burning refrain.

I was an axe para doing most of the tanking, also with save yourselves and theres nothing to fear. burning was maintained on me while i tanked the mob, keeping most foes burning for the entire fight.

as for the heroes, 2 were motivation based with finale of restoration and chorus of restoration while the other was command based. Between the three of them was a song of restoration and 2 defensive anthems.

Both rits were resto channeling, with spirit light and mend body along with ancestors rage and splinter weapon, one of which carried frozen soil.

Finally the necro was on orders, keeping up order of pain and dark fury while fueled by masochism.

Hope that helps, its a very straightforward setup that bulldozes everything.

RazorEdge · Sep 27, 2007, 09:05 PM // 21:05

Trick for the Warders. Cast Pain Inverter on them asap. They should go down with their first AoE spell.

MBP · Sep 27, 2007, 09:27 PM // 21:27

typical groups i've been in consisted of

1 OF or Ursan Blessing Tank
3 Savannah Heat Nukers with meteor shower
2 Monks each with protective spirit
2 Necro: 1 SVer with signet of sorrow and 1 SSer with blood ritual and secondary ranger for frozen soil.

Also be sure to put on your lightbringer title if you have it because it does work vs the stone summit.

Having a few people take lightbringer's gaze helps as well vs the stone summit.

Once you reach Duncan have the OF tank go within melee range of him and die in order for the SV necro to constantly spam [skill]signet of sorrow[/skill] on Duncan.
Also have the monks maintain [skill]protective spirit[/skill] on the SV necro while he takes Duncan out.

The Nukers can kill Duncan's spirits on the left side of Duncan to help slightly.

Crom The Pale · Sep 27, 2007, 09:53 PM // 21:53

This is what I ran, and it did work...

Mind you I did need a Consumable to cure some DP by the end.

As stated before 8 live people will get this done in about 1/8 the time it took me.

Trx · Sep 28, 2007, 02:32 AM // 02:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by MBP

Also be sure to put on your lightbringer title if you have it because it does work vs the stone summit.

Having a few people take lightbringer's gaze helps as well vs the stone summit.

Wow that's interesting, didn't know that.

And with carefull pulling its not extremely hard, I went in there pretty poorly prepared (no wards/frozen soil) with just 3 heroes and 4 hench and was still able to get to Duncan and kill him. Took forever tho, will definately take frozen soil next time to speed things up.

Krusnik The Second · Sep 28, 2007, 02:41 AM // 02:41

It's really not "Near Impossible"

Me and friend did it with 6 heroes, I think our builds were...

2 Humans -

MM
SV

3 Hero eles -

2 SH
1 SF

3 Hero monks -

ZB Prot
WoH Heal
LoD Heal

We didn't really use anything tricky either, hardest part was simply Duncan, but if you get in the corner past the stairs, but spread out of spirit rift splash, then you should take him down pretty quickly with the SV. Also, keep the monks back so they aren't attacked.

Phantom Gun · Sep 28, 2007, 02:47 AM // 02:47

Well for the group I was in I had switched from rt/p to rt/r for splinter barrage, and fs. When we got to duncan, we sent the ele tank, "yes I said ele tank", to die next to duncan. Then we flagged master of whispers on the stairs and he only used SV,SOS while the monks healed him.

The rest of of just stayed back. It felt kinda cheap, but we did help them get to duncan, so i guess it's ok.

cliffchai76 · Sep 28, 2007, 06:43 AM // 06:43

I need some advice too. I have been to slavers' just twice. Both times I was attempting to H/H Justicar Thommis' dungeon. However, there is a huge group of enemies in the central chamber where I have problems breaking up. I tried pulling very carefully but always ended up fighting a group of 15-20 at the same time. The result is inevitably a wipe.

Can this group actually be separated? Or is it meant to be this way?

By the way, I have H/H all the other normal dungeons (18 I believe) and never had problems with pulling until now.