Advice On next HoM Step

Okay.

Here's my HOM: http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=m... ABAAAAAAAAAA

As it stands, I'm not quite sure what to do next, I've hit a bit of a wall in regards to being able to get through my next quests.

Awhile back, I picked up a couple cloths of brotherhood cheap, and so one of my main goals in EoTN content was to beat everything to get to the central transfer chamber. I did that, but was limping through at -60% death rates the last several quests. The destroyers got a lot easier when i switched to water ele instead of fire, but even then, had to get help for cyndyr.

On the last quest before the central transfer chamber, I wasn't able to finish it until GETTING RID OF ALL MY HEROES and taking only henchmen. The henchmen were much more effective than my 7/8 team.

Figured I'd just continue my travels with henchmen and leave it at that, my next goal was to do the war in kryta to get a weapon for the HoM. I'm doing these quests now trying to get an amulet for gwen, which I'm pretty sure lead sto that chain. However, I'm not able to keep the spirit guy alive when we call for the ghost, no matter if I take henchmen or heroes.

Decided to try to debug my heroes and make them not suck - and started looking at some new builds. From what I saw, a MM Necro would help - but my Livia doesn't have the right spells.

I saw a lot of stuff about ritualists too - figured I'd get the ritualist you have to beat the ritualist in the norn arenas - however In the norn arena's you're solo and I can't beat anyone. Which is a bit disappointing as I need the black moa journal from there too.

Anyways - what do you guys recommend? I have the following heroes:

MOX
Ogden
Livia
Vekk
Pyre Fierceshot
Jora
Gwen

They have default skills right now.
Ogden and Livia have upgraded brotherhood armor.

Any easy to get suggested builds for these heroes to make them not crappy?

Getting skills for them is a bit of a pain in the butt- I'm trying to save up for ancient armor and each new skill is like 550 now.

Any advice would be appreciated, Thanks.

Play through Prophecies and Nightfall as well (you did only Cantha so far). With this, you have access to every outpost and you can capture every elite skill you need. Do capture elite skills you need. Give your heroes decent builds. Give your heroes and you decent equipment (weapons and runes and insignia). If you have all this, continue with hom-grinding, but not earlier.

If skills cost you 550g currently, you bought almost no skills so far. This is very sad, because skills are the most important aspect of Guild Wars. Without good skills, the game is almost impossible to play and certainly no fun. There is a cap of 1k per skill. Look at http://www.gwpvx.com for builds for you and for your heroes.

Apologies in advance for the rather large wall 'o text to follow....

In regards to skills, unless you have shelled out real world money to buy the skill unlock packs, you and your heroes are limited to whatever skills your toon has learned/unlocked.

As Silmar and cosyfiep (from your other Q&A thread) advised, finish the other two campaigns to get access to more areas where you can capture skills. Doing so will also earn you a bit of plat. Take advantage of being Ascended and unlock all the secondary professions for your toon if you haven't already (go to the Great Temple of Balthazar and speak to the Profession Changer, 500g per change). I believe that just changing your toon's secondary profession will unlock some basic skills that your heroes can use. If you have time, also take advantage of the other character slots on your account. Create a toon of each profession and play through for a bit. You will unlock profession-specific skills that way for your account as well. Your main toon would still need a skill tome to learn the skill, but they will be available to your heroes immediately.

Other random thoughts:

Does your toon have all their attribute points? You should have 200 once you reach level 20. If not...go back to Shing Jea Island and pick up/complete the two side quests to get your final 30 attribute points.

How do you have your attribute points spread out for yourself and your heroes? Keep in mind that although you will acquire skills for all your attributes during the course of gameplay...it doesn't mean you should have all of them on your skillbar. Good rule of thumb is to not spread your attribute points across more than 2-3 attributes. One of those attributes should be your character's primary attribute (Soul Reaping for necros, Spawning Power for rits, etc.)

What settings are your heroes on? Are they set to Attack Everything in Range, Guard or Avoid Combat? Spellcasters and your upfront heroes should be set to Guard, your healers should be set to Avoid (because if your healers are busy wand-attacking red dots, they're not healing your party).

Do you carry a basic ID kit, salvage kit and maybe an Expert Salvage kit on you at all times? Once off the starter island, ID'ing drops will increase their merch value (sometimes alot, sometimes only a bit but it adds up). ID-ing blue, purple and gold drops will reveal hidden runes/insignias/mods that you can use the Expert kit to salvage for use on you or your heroes. The basic salvage kit can also be used to salvage drops for common crafting materials, which can be used toward your toon's armor fund.

For runeing up yourself and your heroes, make sure to read the description of the rune/insig before buying or applying to a piece of armor. Some have effects which do not stack, meaning you will waste them putting multiples on the same toon. Some have negative side effects (a small or very large decrease in your base health or energy). And some have effects which apply only to the piece of armor you put them on (+__ armor against physical damage for example).

If you would like help with your skillbar or the skillbars of your heroes, there is a forum on guru where you can ask for build advice.

Finally....GW is a *multi-player* game. While it is entirely possible to hench/hero your way through all the content, I would suggest at least try joining a guild for awhile. A good guild means a GH for a base of operations (with a merchant, materials traders, etc.) and some ppl who are willing to lend a hand to help you through a tough mission or quest. You can find guilds recruiting in the major towns such as Lions Arch, Kamadan and Kaineng. Don't be afraid to ask the recruiter questions about their guild and what they expect from members.

Dude, skills man. Seriously. Buy the PVP unlock pack, at least that way your heroes won't suck.

The easiest way to beat the Norn Fighting Tournament is this

http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Any/Rt_Spirit_Farmer

If you don't do that, Livia can be made to not suck by going N/Rt and buying skills from Michiko in Kaineng Center. Run her as this

http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:N/Rt_SoLS_Healer

Also, Necros/Rangers can run almost any Rit spirit build because of Soul Reaping/Expertise, so if you can't get Rit heroes, Necros or Rangers can be almost as effective.

I wouldn't advice you to use any irl-money to unlock skills. It's much more fun and rewarding to do it by playing the game.

What you need to do is to play through prophecies and nightfall campaigns earning mission bonuses on your way (and thus points for honor monument.) While doing it, pick up all the loot foes are dropping, identify blues, purples, golds etc.)

After having done prophecies and nightfall (use henchies if your heroes are still terribad) you should have plenty of gold at your disposal. Use this gold to equip yourself (max armor, wep, runes/insignias and skills) and then, to unlock more skills for your heroes too (including capping the elites you wish.)

All of this doesn't have to happen in an instant. For example you can priorize that MM like you said, cap the elite for hero and unlock the required skills. Then provide the hero with necessary weapons and runes. Then focus on next etc.

After having, say, 3 optimized (armor, weapons, skills-wise) heroes at your disposal, the rest of the game and hom (including hm vanquish and missions) are all available and actually pretty easy to do. Then you can spend rest of your gold to fine-tune your builds/equipment, and buy minipets + other stuff for additional hom-points.

TL;DR Play through prophecies and nightfall with henchies -> use gold acquired to get skills for your heroes -> win guild wars pve

This http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_Ba...ishen_Trappers will be the solution to aquiring skills for your heroes. Just Create a PvP-only ranger (or ele) and farm zaishen elite (can be tricky to find a team, mostly people there at peak-times) for 6k balthazar factions every day. That's 2 elites or 6 normal skills per day from a priest of balthazar which your heroes can use.

Getting decent builds and runes on your heroes should be your first priority. Don't make the game more dificult than it needs to be by gimping yourself in terms of builds.

As for the hom, beat all the campaigns first (staring with NF for more heroes, razzah and norgu are very good). Aim for protector's so you'll get more titles.That'd be 3 points for beating Proph + NF with protector's.

The luxon/kurzick armor gives 2 points for you for a pretty small investment. If you enjoy pvp I'd advice you to do AB/JQ/FA on zaishen days in order to get all the amber/jade you need.

War in kryta + hearts of the north + some more warsupplies will net in 3 oppressor weapon for little to no money.

Completing dungeons or something might be a fun way to work towards a destroyer weapon if you find that fun, then it's just 1 weapon from the 5 weapon point. Buy 1 tormented weapon (armbrace of truth) if you can afford it.

The fellowship monument isn't really dificult and it's quite fun to do all the challenge missions. If you can beat Glint's challenge with ease it should be a breeze. I suggest you do this after completing the proph/nf storylines.

Buy a rare and unique mini is two relatively cheap points.

Okay. Understood on not buying enough skills - I've got a pretty full set of Water spells now though, when I switched I also went and got the Trident Elite skill from EOTN.

So last night I did two things.

First, i started nightfall. I have a level 17 dunkoro + other nightfall heroes now.

Next, I really looked at all my hereos skills. I had like 15 unlocks available at the hero skill trianer in kamadan. I tried to really optimize the skills there.

I've made Livia into a bit of a MM, she raises the dead alot now. and bought a bunch of various other skills for my guys. I also gave them all a signet of resurection.... can't believe I didn't have them equipped with at least that.

I spent hte most hero points on the monk skills. I decided to make Odgen my Healing Monk and Dunkoro my Protection Monk.

Also, I found out I can get 50 free tournament keys, and sell them as Zkeys. So I did that.

Finally got my imperial phoenix to 20 as well, so loaded him up into the HoM. Then I decided my best bet would be to upgrade the armor of 4 more heroes, as at 3k/cloth it was a cost effective way to get another HoM point and would also make my team stronger. So I did that and upgraded Pyre, Jora, Vekk, and Gwen.

So the next items on my battle plan:

• Now that imperial phoenix is finally levelled, get a new secondary profession that is better than E/R and works well with water magic.
• Maybe give the phoenix or black moa to Pyre. I've been not giving him a pet because it would steal exp from the phoenix.
• Get Dunkoro to 20, he's a big part of the team now
• Get Ancient Armor (I still have enough from the zkeys even after getting 4 more cloths) will have to get pretty far in nightfall story to do this.
• While working on nightfall, hopefully get lots of freebie runes from drops for my heroes and upgrade their skills more
• Take my stronger team to the war in kryta for oppressors weapon
  

If I do the above, I should be able to pretty easily get 3 more points which will mean 15/50 - I'll have the Black Moa ranger pet for Guild Wars 2 which will be awesome - I really liked the Black Moa chain in Factions.

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I think I will try working on this strategy. Something that helped me out a lot with Ogden and Dunkoro's skills last night was that I had been messing around with Monks by making a PvP only Monk last week in Random arena's. I bought several monk skills with the points I earned.

The RA were definitely fun - had a couple 5 game streaks. But man, folks really are quick to shame new monks in RA... got a lot of heat. But last night I was glad I did that for the new skills.

Doing the above sounds like a really quick way to earn a lot of points so I think I'll try it.

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Thinking about Pyre has me with another question....

How beneficial is a level 20 pet even if you have no points in Beast Mastery?

For a hero that has an extra skill slot and doesn't have an important secondary profession, would it be beneficial to give him a /R and give him a pet? I'd have 2-3 pets in the party if I did that I think.

With no points in Beast Mastery....and no specific BM skills to buff the pet or it's attack, it is very likely that the pet will die at some point during a battle. And when the pet dies...all the skills of the hero/character running the pet are disabled for up to 10 seconds at Rank 0 BM. While it sounds cool to have two or three or your whole team of heroes running with pets....it can be disastrous if the pets all die and your team is left defenseless. It's entirely possible that this won't happen if you're careful about aggro and your team's skills are sufficiently balance, or that in lower-level areas that the pet will be fine, but you should ideally put some points into BM and may slot in a pet-specific skill or two as well. I'm not an expert on heroes-with-pets since none of my ranger's heroes have pets, but you can always wander over to the builds forum and see if anyone has advice for you on heros-with-pets builds

Remember that your heroes' armor doesn't become better by upgrading them to a new skin, it's just cosmetic (and give points towards the hom). What upgrades hero armor is the hero's level and the runes and insignias attached to the armor pieces.

I'd advice you aquire the cloth of the brotherhood and the like yourself because they are not that dificult and it's pretty fun and fast. Your money is better spent on armor, weapons and minipets.

The balthazar factions from zaishen elite can, when you have enough skills, be used to unlock runes and insignias for your pvp-only characters, and maybe more importantly, be traded for zkeys which are good money as you've found out.

Regarding finding runes and insignias in the world, just identify every single drop (including whites) because when you merch it it will sell for more (does not apply for stuff with a value below 10g or something along those lines, but for most stuff after the starting area), and if you find a rune you want you can always salvage it, cheap and very useful. Even when you're fully runed, keep an eye out for survivor and stuff like that because they net quite some money.

I think you're on the right track, work your way through NF and aquire every single hero in the game and then move on to WiK. Don't forget to use the wiki to look up skills and constantly tweak your teambuild. Don't be afraid of swapping a skill for another on one of your heroes just to find out if it's good or not. For example Dwayna's sorrow works really well with a lot of minions, as does Death Nova.

Oh, I just saw something, you don't have Olias yet. Go get him before you do anything else, necromancers are always good, and he is really easy to get. Just go to LA and complete a relatively easy and short quest.

I don't think anyone have emphasised just how good mesmers are, take a look at these builds: http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_Mesmer_Hero_Midline and try them out. PvE experience should be much smoother with two mesmers (I run a Panic and an Ineptitude). Speaking of mesmers, read up on how to aquire Norgu, you'll have to chose between two quests, and you need to pick the right one or you won't be able to get him until you've beaten the campaign (further info: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Brains_or_Brawn "You get the hero that you do not recommend to Zerai. If you want Norgu, recommend that he take Goren.")