Curse

Drakharran Zealot · Jun 06, 2005, 02:09 PM // 14:09

I finished it on my 6th try with what was basically a 5-man team and without the morale boost from giants. Let me explain,

This was our party.

Lets just call person#3 Smith. As you can see, we don't have two monks (everyone and their grand mother is screaming 'WE NEED 2 MONK!!' in every party I join), we have 3 warriors (2, but we'll get to that later.), an Elementalist and a Mesmer. Despite what some people may think, its a very balanced party.

So why do you think I say that we have a 5-man team? Your answer: Smith. All he did was: rush into monster group, die, said "rezzzzzzzzz me", and when we're done with one of the tasks he takes the Hero and begins the next challenge without us. Even if we scream "STOP! GODDAMNIT! STOP!" He ignores us. So on top of having a useless warrior in our party, he litterally made it harder for us. Aggroing almost every mob in sight and rushing to first task right from the start (preventing us from getting the sand giant morale boost), Smith was a pain in the backside.

Now that we've cleared that up, here's how we did it;

The first test was a piece of cake, the only unnexpected problem we had with it was that the outer monster group took the central path instead of the left (forcing us to aggro the inner group too), Smith is dead by this point, by the way. Anyway, that done, we try to catch up with smith to keep him from screwing up (cost us some loot we didn't pick up) and enter the Second test.

The second test is where something went wrong, big time. We killed the first group (the left one) pretty easy, but then, not waiting for a clean 2:00, Smith aggroes the outer and inner groups of the right team. I think we killed off one of the groups before the timer hit 5:25 (35 seconds before ressurection) and before I ran into the shrine and started my own little frenzy at the priest. At exactly 5:57 I killed him, alone. But then I noticed that most of my party was dead (Only ones left alive were the Monk and the Elementalist) and that there was a forgotten swordsthing bashing me. I die. But the Monk managed to raise everyone and we killed the two remaining foes. (swordsthing and Illusionnist). Onto next challenge with the usual pursuit of Smith.

The third test was (despite what many people say) the easiest. All we had to do was to go from right to left and we were done. (The healer wasn't a problem, we just all started going crazy on the priest and he was dead in no time). From right to left means:

Like I said, its not so hard, I did it with a 5-man team, thank you can surely do it with a full party.

Thanks for reading,
-Drakharran.

Creston · Jun 06, 2005, 02:54 PM // 14:54

"As you can see, we don't have two monks "

I may be blind, but I think you have three.

Why do people always ignore secondary monks? Okay, a W/Mo isn't going to be much help healing the party, but an E/Mo can potentially make a better monk than a primary Monk. I should know, I'm playing one. With 70 energy, I can keep spamming those heals a lot longer than most of the monks that I've played with.

I'll ask them sometimes why they stop healing halfway in the battle, and it's because they're out of energy.

Ofcourse, if someone plays an E/Mo and then doesn't put any points into healing, well, then they're just selfish. It's so easy in this game to switch skills around, I really don't understand why people feel the need to keep their smiting skills when they do a PUG for a mission.

Btw, why didn't you just leave Smith dead? I've done that before with an annoying player. Goes off, aggros a huge mob, dies, begs for rezz after we barely kill the mob, I warn him that if he does that crap again, I'll leave him dead. He goes off, charges into a mob, we just keep walking. He was cussing for quite awhile, but the ignore function is so useful

He left after about ten minutes when he really figured out I wasn't going to rezz him, and neither was anyone else.

Creston

Lasher Dragon · Jun 06, 2005, 03:34 PM // 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Creston

Btw, why didn't you just leave Smith dead? I've done that before with an annoying player. Goes off, aggros a huge mob, dies, begs for rezz after we barely kill the mob, I warn him that if he does that crap again, I'll leave him dead. He goes off, charges into a mob, we just keep walking. He was cussing for quite awhile, but the ignore function is so useful

He left after about ten minutes when he really figured out I wasn't going to rezz him, and neither was anyone else.

Creston

I was wondering the same thing... especially on pain-in-the-ass missions such as Thirsty River, I give 1 warning to people like Smith - "If you go off and aggro anything else on your own, you are not getting rezzed, period." They rarely listen, so I have gone through quite a few missions down a man.

Iffy Shot · Jun 06, 2005, 03:42 PM // 15:42

I did this mission with no monk in our group it was easy as long as you take one group at a time and at least 2 of the group can res

Drakharran Zealot · Jun 06, 2005, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Nah, the secondary monks were pretty much focused on healing themselves. And we did leave Smith dead at the beggining of the third task. I thought he would still be useful as a meat shield at the end of the first mission and at the end of the second one, we just needed someone to hit on the two forgotten for a few seconds, he did exactly that.

But you fail to see the point of this thread, many people are complaining and getting to the point of whining about this mission, and they have full teams, Monks and all.

Lasher Dragon · Jun 06, 2005, 05:43 PM // 17:43

I saw your point... I beat Thirsty River first try (barely, but we did it). Elona Reach was the one I got hung up on for 30+ attempts.

Weezer_Blue · Jun 06, 2005, 05:57 PM // 17:57

It's not the mission itself that is hard in any way, really. It's the idiots that I seem to be a magnet for. I couldn't tell you how bad some of the groups I've had have been. Imagine a party with 5 smiths and 1 person that knows what he's doing, for the most part, and you'd have my experience with nearly every PUG I ever see! Oh.. And it only gets worse when I log on my smiter. Sure, I get 10 invites a second, but you think any of them are intelligent? How bout how many of them understand the concept of "smiter"?

As for Elona and Dunes... any idiot can hench those... I thought groups were supposed to be better than henchmen... I see I was sadly mistaken.

Creston · Jun 06, 2005, 06:10 PM // 18:10

"But you fail to see the point of this thread, many people are complaining and getting to the point of whining about this mission, and they have full teams, Monks and all."

Oh no, I understood what you were getting at. I haven't gotten that far yet, so I can't make any arguments about that mission. I was just wondering if 2nd monks were being ignored for a reason

Btw, if every 2nd monk would just use Heal Other (which heals a frightening amount of health for 10 energy, instant cast, very fast recharge), I don't think any team would really ever have problems with dying?

Actually, last night I was doing a mission with a PUG (the one where you have to kill Justiciar Hablicion at the end), one lvl 20 guy left, then two dropped quickly saying "we don't want to finish". That left me E/mo 18, one lvl 18 E/N and one 19 W/? to finish the mission. Needless to say, while it was slow going, we did it without ever really getting in danger of dying.

It's sad that so many people have no clue what they're doing, and just WON'T LISTEN to someone trying to give them advice. If I go into a mission first time and somewhere is there giving me advice, I'M WRITING THAT STUFF DOWN!

If anyone ever wants to help me get through that annoying timed mission btw, I would be more than glad for any help. Shauna Wolfsclaw is (one) of my characters, and the only one in danger of getting close to ascension by now

Creston

hellraisin · Jun 06, 2005, 06:43 PM // 18:43

I've done Thirsty Rivers and Dunes with hench, got both on first try. I'm a Ranger/Monk, so getting in group isn't easy.

Key for thirsty river is mend ailment+interrupt+some backup healing, unblind your warriors so they can actually kill, Alesia is okay at healing, but she doesn't unblind at all. Then there is timing, with hench, there is no urge in the group to rush forward. Lastly being a Ranger, bring savage shot, distracting shot, interrupt the priest so they won't heal. Once the final priest is down, the battle is won

Dunes is just easy one in comparison.

CtrlAltDel · Jun 06, 2005, 07:15 PM // 19:15

yep mission isnt that bad
its having to party with complete idiots that have no idea how to work in a team

Drakron · Jun 06, 2005, 09:13 PM // 21:13

Oh yes.

First time I tryed it we failed but we keep going and managed to get a grasp of how to do it and we became better and better at it, I am sure that if we had time for trying one or two more times we could have done it.

What pisses me off is the groups that try, fail and simply fall part with everyone leaving the group ... it takes some time to understand how other people work and just because we failed at first does not mean we will not get it at a second or third time.

I finaly done River with a group at first try but from what I seen we all done at least some parts of it and knew how it worked, it was a good team that worked and nobody go nuts, we run into some deaths but overall we did not panic.

Funny thing, we also got the bonus and we were not even trying.

I find the ascension missions really tough but also easy, if you end up with a good group its going to be fine and relative easy but it only takes a idiot to screw it up (like SMith), worst is the mission after ascension since there are a lot of idiots that run it to get elite skills and log off after they got then ... at least they sould keep in the group until its over since we carried then across it so they could get their elite.

xakia · Jun 06, 2005, 09:55 PM // 21:55

You know, people farm thirsty river. You're right, it's not hard at all.

Draken · Jun 06, 2005, 10:03 PM // 22:03

you are all almost lvl 20 why??? this of course would make it easy not that it was ever that hard.

Rajamic · Jun 07, 2005, 04:58 AM // 04:58

You should've intentionally all died, then kicked him out and started over. Rather, than letting him use you as a crutch. I know, it's that bastard thing to do, but really, the later missions will be better off for it.

As for secondary monks being not counted as monks, it's because only Elementalist can even come close to matching the healing power of Divine Favor, which is required to be a team healer.

Ellestar · Jun 07, 2005, 05:28 AM // 05:28

I can made all but Priest+Monk Boss with just 4 henchmans (not enough damage/disruption to kill two healers in short time). But it should be possible to kill them too with the right professions.

eA-Zaku · Jun 07, 2005, 05:49 AM // 05:49

You're right, it isn't hard. Any decent party with a good damage output can breeze past the mobs + priests, and all you need is a little knockdown/interruption for the monk boss.

MaglorD · Jun 07, 2005, 07:12 AM // 07:12

Any mission is not that hard provided you have ppl who will listen and someone who knows how to get through the mission. The problem for many rangers is that they have more trouble getting into a group than say warriors or monks. Doing Thirsty River with henchies is a lot harder partly because of their lower level(less hitpoints) and poor AI - they will do stupid things like stand in a chaos storm.

However, this mission is harder than all the missions before, most of which can easily be done with henchies.

Aka · Jun 07, 2005, 04:56 PM // 16:56

I did Elona and Dunes with henches, and was starting to wonder what all the fuss was about. But Thirsty is a real challange, at least compared to most other missions. Still, I got through it on the second try with the first PUG I tried, after getting a lot of henchmen killed.

What was hilarious was the shock of two of the people in the group. They were practically hysterical with relief. One of them had been trying for days. The other for 6 hours straight. They each said the same thing you have all said. People are idiots.

psycore · Jun 07, 2005, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Malestrom > monk boss of any kind.

Samra · Jun 07, 2005, 06:32 PM // 18:32

I thought getting TO Thirsty was harder than the mission itself. I beat the mission on the first try.

Of the three, Elona seemed the toughest, to me. Dunes was the easiest.