Why hard mode in Ascalon was a bad idea:

In short: too many enemies.

The average amount of enemies per area is ~168 or 42 enemies per Player character/hero in all the Ascalon areas.

In the Northern Shiverpeaks that is 155 per area and 25 per character.
And in the last two big regions of prophecies we have:
Crystal Desert 195 or 25 per character.
Southern Shiverpeaks: 222 per area or 27 per character.


In Kaineng City we have around 20 enemies per character and in The Desolation it is around 35. And in EotN we have around 40 enemies per character.

So Ascalon has the highest amount of enemies per player and the smallest percentage of damage dealer in the players party. Because:
If out of 32 skills 6-8 are used purely for healing or protection, then only 24-26 skills are left over for damage etc.

If out of 64 skills 12-16 skills are used for healing and/or protection, that still leaves 48-52 damage skills etc., which makes killing the smaller amount of enemies even easier.

Just my 2 cents.

PS: The areas in Ascalon are horrible mazelike another massive annoyance.

The only Ascalonian area that was difficult was Eastern Frontier, and even now it was faceroll with a SoS Rit, PI Mes, and JB Necro with a Prot monk, My heroes dominated that area most recently like no other time, as a melee though when I last did it, it sucked ALOT of consumables

Ascalon mobs are all like level 22 though.

Only trouble I would imagine is Diessa Lowlands, all the others were a cakewalk.. I did it 6man though (Diessa) the rest 4man.. I don't see the difficulty of 4 very well outbalanced builds, including PvE skills vs groups of 3-4 MAX with shitty builds and half assed elite skills...

Also, Ebon Vanguard rank says hi.. I even did it pre-Eotn without trouble...

Also, "QQ the game is too hard" much..

Are you bacically just whining or I got you wrong? OMG, nerf Arbor Bay plz cause it's 500+ mobs and 666+ pop ups...
close?

PS. Ascalon mobs got like 4 skills on their bars, U just need Wastrel's Worry to own the area.

Agreed. Eastern Frontier was the ONLY area I had difficulty with while getting Legendary Vanquisher on my Paragon. I ended up taking a group of 6 from Yak's Bend to do it. Yes, it was a long walk but I ended up rolling it.

Yes Eastern Frontier was the only difficult part with the grawl healers. It took a couple tries to get the hero team builds right. No cons used.

Oh stop moaning.

If you want to do it easier, caravan from Yaks, or better yet TOA.

Ascalon HM is plain fun, heck I solo most of it on my Rt

** Yes grawl mob north of Frontier Gate is a pain

I have started my vq title in ascalon area, its fairly easy.. the only hard play is diessa lowlands and dargon gullents place...

P.S.
1 I'm legendery vqer
2 Bring honey and lots of it
3 Don't forget that good music gives you 100% moral boost...LISTEN TO BOMFUNK MC's

only trouble i ever had with old ascalon was eastern frontier. omg those grawl healers >< it seems like when you attack one the others come running to help. but with war horns and cons i got it done

HM in Ascalon was just fine for me. Granted, it takes a little more time to vanquish areas, but that's more probably due to the mobs being so spread out. I 4-man'ed it a few weeks ago with my WotA sin (with SY), an SoS/Resto rit and two mesmers. No consumables, no summoning stones, just plain old c-space and some micro here and there. Eastern frontier might be a little tricky, but just don't over-agrro. So that's like 3 healings skills total plus SY; that leaves plenty of room for damage.

@ Tal L - LOL you are so right about music and honeycombs as the essential accessories to VQing. I recently completed my Tyrian VQ title, just Elonia to go now.

HM Ascalon wasn't too hard and remains an enjoyable challenge in a game where you can roll through almost anything with 7 heroes. It also really makes you think about your team builds to run a four man team in HM, so the rest of your game will benefit.

Eastern Frontier was the hardest one for me with a four man team. I caravanned from Yak's Bend at first but then went back and did it four-man once I'd got the build right. I found a 3-man discord hero party with me as W/N running WE Axe build plus Necrosis worked well, and made sure the necros took Defile Flesh.

Hard mode. It's called hard mode.

news flash: Tyria was designed before we had HM, vanquishing, mapping/cartography, etc.

It's pigeonholed in retroactively

If you want to do it quicker, caravan through the whole of Ascalon from ToA. It took me around 12 hours to do (although I did skip some areas in Kryta and the Shiverpeaks). It's not hard to do if you do this and you get over 10 vanquishes out of the way. If you can't be bothered to run from ToA, just run from Yak's for a party size of six. You can't give Hard Mode to some areas and leave others out anyway

This was probably the most annoying thing about vanquishing prophecies. We got used to mobs being very close together in Factions, NF, and EOTN but in Prophecies, you could actually walk for a minute or two before you came across another group of monsters.

Diessa Lowlands is the only area I had problems with, the rest were EASY, imo Tyria is very easy to VQ...the bosses don't spike and the boss groups don't have armies around them like Cantha/Elona, also the skill set for Tyria mobs are pathetic in HM, they need to revamp it...

Same here, Diessa Lowlands was the only problem area for me also. The rest were just long but then again I did Ascalon last on my VQ-ing tour.

This. Suggesting something is hard in hard mode is a bit redundant... I actually had more difficulties with maps with Jade Knights in them then the ascalon area

Make up your mind - do you recommend good music or Bomfunk?

On topic - I found that vq'ing Ascalon was fun - partly because it required some thought about team make-up. I did most of it a long time ago (shortly after VQ'ing was introduced) so I don't recall what I did then. But I have VQ'ed some of those areas more recently as an SoS Rit, and using a half MM, half healer Necro instead of a dedicated Monk.