Thirsty River Tips?

I've only been through this mission once with NPCs to check it out before I go and actually do it with some real players. Anyone got any tips for this mission? It seems pretty hard. I lost with my henchmen on the first round because they agro'd everything. I know one thing, to kill all of the sand giants!

Thirsty River was definitely the hardest of the three ascension missions. Took me about six hours to finally fight through it with the joys of pickup grouping. The next day, some guildies needed to do it and it only took us three tries to nail it.

My advice is to take it easy, by that I mean, move quick, but don't overextend yourself. Try to time things with the respawns--I.E. kill one force, but wait on the next until after the spawn. In the last sequence, I recommend taking out the left most team first--it has a healer boss and that team will likely make or break you whether you do it first or last, plus you'll probably have to fight the patrol there anyway when you first enter the arena thing.

Don't forget to Focus Fire, of course. But, the best advice I can give is to plan--if you fail, figure out why and come up with a better plan, don't just leave the party (unless you feel that there's no possible way you could accomplish it with that party), and try to encourage everyone else to stick around as well.

Take bows. In the first part kill the priest quickly then after the ghost opens the doors to the next area leave him there. Have your group go up to the gap and pick off the enemies. You can kill 5-6 this way. The group on the left and one on the right. Then take the ghost, open that area and charge the first priest (who should have very few mobs guarding it). If you have enough time you can charge the second as well.

Once you are done with the second part take the priest to the top of the wood bridge stairs and keep him there. You can then use magic to take out the first group of wandering mobs on the right and bows and magic to take out the group of mobs on the left. After you kill those get the ghost again to open that area.

Immediatly go to the right and take out that priest. After that wait for the 2 minute mark and go to the camp to the left of the doors you came in. EVERYONE must charge the priest. The named guard can heal and so can the priest so you must have EVERYONE on the priest. After you take out this priest finish with the rest of that team and do the same thing for the third priest.

This is the layout I suggest to win.

1-AoEr, 2-Tanks, 2-healers, 1-Mesmer (anti-caster build with backfire, conjure phantasm, and chaos storm)

The AoEr and Mesmer can cast through the walls and take out the priests in all except the last team in the third part.

If you have any questions IM Etias Axson in game