Ridiculously hard dungeons (HM)

I've been striving for the Legendary Master of the North title, and I'm currently at 970/1000. Although I've hit a complete roadblock.

The only three dungeons I have left are;

Frostmaw's Burrows
Vloxen Excavations
Rragar's Menagerie

But they're a special kind of stupid. >.o

I'd really appreciate some tips on how I should go about completing those three dungeons with H&H or, even better, actual aid from players. PUGing has proved futile, since most of the hardcore and serious players already have the title and are nowhere to be found. :|

Looking forward to the replies.

Frostmaw's - I've never had trouble beating it with guild groups, so I don't know what to tell you.

Vloxen - Take a splinter barrage for the last boss. I don't know how well it works since the update, but we used to just have a ranger barrage+run the boss to death. The minions break off nearly instantly.

Rragar's Menagerie - Same as Frostmaw, but I'm sure you'd be fine with a full group running Ursan.

I tried Vloxen yesterday with a guildie running splinter barrage and 6 heroes. It was going pretty well until we got the the necro Taskmaster boss guy. We agroed him then his group merged with another so they had 3 monks then we wiped him and the other necros raised tons of minions then they stayed on the res shrine. we couldn't run as the minions bodyblocked us in and couldn't fight because of the 3 monks and ~30 minions. We had to resign, it sucked.

For Vloxen's Excavations same strategy as used in Slaver's Exile should work. Frozen Soil and heavy spiking or nuking on the Monks, and be sure to lure a group Stone Summit Dwarves you want to fight, far away from other groups, or else there's chance the healers from other groups will try to help them and groups will merge, which makes it near-impossible to finish them off.<__<
The final boss isn't that hard, use same strategy as in Normal Mode, just bring more defences.=P

I also still have to do Frostmaw Burrows and Rragar's Menagerie, so if you want we could try doing them together? Ingame name [Lord Milennin]

I did all these with H/H in HM:

Frostmaw's: Do it in NM immediately before doing it in HM. The most difficult bit is anticipating the Wurm spawns.

Vloxen: The stone summit at the end of the 1st level and the beginning of the second gave me a lot of trouble. Eventually I went secondary trapper (piss-weak WS=12) and pulled them to multiple traps. Frozen soil helps a lot. That was before I discovered Sab's Team Necro build, I'd use that instead now.

Rragnar's: Trapping didn't work here because the Charr groups extend their line and the ones that get thru the traps can get quickly healed. The enormous difficulty I had here forced me to look for another solution, and that was when I started using the Sab builds. It was still hard, but at least possible.

Good luck, I'm not going back, and I'm not even trying Duncan's.......

Wait till you try Shards of Orr.


But all human party makes them perfectly managable. H/H will always be hard.

Quote: Originally Posted by Antheus

Rragar's is alright if you take the better path and avoid all the popups in that one room in the southwest on the first level. Take a BHA, a watch yourself paragon, a spiteful spirit necro (with prot spirit), the two monk henchies, guardian henchie, and another choice of henchie. Or you can be lame and do ursanway, which requires 6 mindless people and 2 monks generally, but that requires real people. And I hate dealing with idiots who think they're good because they use ursan at level 10 norn :P

Granted, you will probably still partywipe with H/H a few times, but it should get you through it.

i sent you a PM about these, but my guild would prob be up for doing them all

One way will beat all of those (if you don't mind being somewhat cheap) - Ursanway. Seriously, it's such a broken skill that beats anything...and it's not hard to find a group that does it either

Vloxen can be done if you have 2 SF and some sort of tank that can let them ball nice, rragars ist too hard, try bringing the ebon standard of courage, and at frostmaw i just have to say, done that quite easy with a good tank.

I did Vloxen Excavations the other day on hard mode after 4 attempts. Fortunately got a full 8 man team for it. I agree some dungeons are just silly and even if you manage them they take up 3-4 hours in some cases. Who has the time for that on a regular basis?!!

Anyway for Vloxen we had the following:

W/E Obsidian tank
Dervish
Ice snare Ele with frozen soil (myself)
2x SH Nukers
Mesmer
2 monks

Deep freeze worked like a charm for the boss, the tank aggravates all the minions of Zoldark that spawn, the water elemenatalist freezes them and then the fire elementalists move in and slaughter them and they can't escape. Run back immediately after the nukers are done and repeat.

The stone summit mobs are ridiculous to say the least especially when they have 2 healers. Make sure you start this dungeon from Vlox Falls and not Umbral Grotto as you skip more then 50% of the 1st level this way.

Before they changed the spawn, bloodstone was a pain. There was a spawn of 3 nobs of Incubi that would pop up right on top of the res shrine. If you wiped in that map then that was it pretty much.

None of the dungeons are that bad in HM tbh certainly not up to the same difficulty levels as some other HM missions in other areas.

Hm... not sure about that. Dungeons (and most of EoTN in fact) seem to require more balanced team builds than the rest of GW, and that in turn requires a lot more microing (of passive defense across several characters, aggro control so as not to multiaggro in confined spaces etc, locking multiple heroes onto different targets). If you're used to doing stuff with H/H, then some of the dungeons definitely are significantly harder than any other GW content. I can believe that there doesn't feel like much of a difference in human groups, but I have only done one or two of the HM dungeons with other people (including Bloodstone, which seemed like a breeze for some reason - one or two of us just ran through the incubus spawn and triggered the res shrine on the other side).

I think the length of dungeons compared to other instanced content is another factor, and yes - I personally think they're too long on the whole. Making multiple failed attempts at a 20 minute "difficult" mission like Eternal Grove HM before eventual success somehow feels a lot more palatable than - for instance - getting all the way through Shards in 2 hours before being kicked out through DP at Fendi.

Haven't finished Vloxen or Rragar's yet (PM me IG if you want to do them: Templar Kirbs), but Frostmaw's did on HM with h/h.

Myself was splinter barrage ranger (splinter, barrage, volley, warmongers, ds, savage, pain inverter, defence stance)
ran variations of 3 nec builds on heroes & heal, prot, earth, fire henchies

only hard groups are the wurms if you aggro badly, but if you know their spawns and flag all your heroes bar your mm hero half a bubble away when you aggro them onto yourself, you'll be fine. when they pop up, deflag everything and run away (they may get wurm bile off on you but unlikely), let the minions + NPCs tank whilst your party kills them.

just remember where the incubus & wurm popups are and you are fine, otherwise just pull groups away from seige wurms or clumped together (i.e. the mandragors on 4th level)

P.S. if you need minions in the final level let some party members die via the snowballs as they give no DP but are renewable bodies