Endgame fun

[Raveneye]

Figured I'd start a new thread for comments/planning of our new endgame endeavors.


So last night was interesting. Seems the EotN Dungeons are somewhat more of a challenge with lots of concentrated groups of mobs and a higher percentage of healers and interrupts in the mix. Still, I think we did fairly well once we got the park'n'pull system down. Had we started a bit earlier we probably could have knocked off Justicar Thomas or whatever his name was. Next week we'll be able to zero in on him a lot faster. Hopefully once we kill his group of followers we'll get credit for him that lasts even if we need another week to kill the other guys. I'd hate to think you need to kill ALL the nameds in one session.

I'll look at the Wiki entries for the dungeon(s) and familiarize myself with them a bit more. The Flourish build I ran last night (which I'd been perfecting in Factions) seemed to work fairly well, allowing me to refill my power bar several times per fight and keeping me alive longer in big fights. Still, I suspect my heroes may be a bit lacking in the weapons and armor department, so I may investigate having some superior stuff crafted for them if I can.

REMEMBER : Thursday nights starting next week due to LOST. :lowsmile:

[GravenStone]

Looking at the wiki, it seems each of the portals to the nameds are considered sub-dungeons of Slaver's Exile as a whole, so we only need to do one a week. Which is fortunate since dungeons reset when exited.

[GravenStone]

Sorry guys, my satellite crapped out and I wasn't able to get it to reset before work. We'll see if it's in a better mood come the morning (I hope).

[Raveneye]

We figured as much. Olias reverted to my command (well, semi-command) and we tried to forge ahead without you. It did not go well, and we decided to give up after a pair of quick and ugly TPWs in the big chamber right before the boss guy.

We really need an interrupt build on that mission, and I need to be able to call targets better. We need to concentrate on Priests, Warders and Summoners, and half the time I can't even see when one is there through all the clutter on my screen (mobs, meatwall, heroes, etc.). I'm going to try playing in a view that's scaled back as far as possible, but that makes it a lot harder for me to target stuff effectively.

[Erudite]

We had a couple of pitfalls last night that should be easily correctable.

First, we got hammered by the initial group. It's particularly brutal because of the tight confines of the passage we start in coupled with the Warder(s?) dumping Sandstorm on us. We probably need to concentrate our fire on the Warders first there, maybe even before the healers.

Second, we pulled from a bit too close to the rooms we were trying to break. This caused the meatwall and heroes to engage early and drag group adds into some of our fights. It seems to me that the mobs there have a pretty long aggro trail, so we really don't need to be that tight. (A note on pulling in general as well - I think longbow pulling is the most efficient way to split close groups. It has the longest range in the game, so the puller can almost always plunk the closest mob while being outside of their attack range and run back to the group with one angry mob of bad guys instead of two. There's no special skill needed to pull with a longbow, as you're only looking to create aggro rather than produce an effective attack.)

Our team build could use some rethinking. We definitely need the minion master, a pair of tanks and (at least) a pair of monks. Struggling with the casters as we did last night, I think a dedicated interrupter is needed. Not sure whether it should be a domination mesmer, or a ranger with Choking Gas or Broadhead Arrow. I'll do some build digging (and maybe some testing) this week.

One other thing I noticed last night. As with a large portion of the rest of the EotN areas, the mesmers tend to carry a hard rez as well although it's pretty inefficient. The rezzee pops back up at about 25% health. Something to keep in mind.

[GravenStone]

I'm really doubtful for tomorrow, and possibly a bit of time going forward. My internet connection has been down far more than it's been up. I think my modem may be on last legs (I hear occasional clicks/zaps). If I can't get it to reboot once I get home tonight (I let it power down all day after it decided to go into an infinite reboot loop sometime while I slept yesterday) I suppose I'll call the provider and see how many freaking hoops I have to jump through this time to get a service call...

[Raveneye]

I may be iffy for tomorrow as well, though not because of any ISP issues. We have an open house at my son's school tomorrow around 7:00pm, so I may not even get home until 9:00, then I'll still have some things that need to be done (lunches made, kids put to bed, etc.) making it close to 10:00 before I get a chance to relax.

On the other hand, with all the snow/ice we had the last two days, I would not be surprised if they postphoned the open house into next week.

EDIT : OK, school is now closed for the day again (these kids will be going to school until July to make up days at this rate!) so no Open House tonight. Though it looks like we're still a no-go due to GS's ISP woes. Sorry man, hope that works out for you soon. :(

[GravenStone]

I am officially without home internet until further notice. *sigh*

*twitch*

*jerk*

*spasm*

[Erudite]

I'm assuming GravenStone is still out. I'm out either way - family stuff going on tonight. Sorry guys.

[Raveneye]

Yep, I think we're operating under the assumption that Guild Wars is officially on hold until we are notified of the return of the interwebs to Gravenstones house via this thread. :smile:

It's cool, I was kinda starting to burnout on GW a bit anyway. Fallout 3 and M2:TW are eating all my playtime right now, and I recently purchased Mass Effect as well so I'm pretty much set for some time to come.

[GravenStone]

I'm supposed to have a tech coming out Saturday to look things over. After two weeks of fruitlessly calling/waiting for the local clowns to get back to me about this I went to the national provider this morning and they hooked me up with a different tech provider. We'll see.

[GravenStone]

I would appear to be back in business.

[Asharad]

HOORAY!

[Drax]

HOORAY!
Says the guy who hasn't played an MMO since mid-fall... Tsk tsk tsk. :|

[Asharad]

that doesn't mean I don't care about you all!

[Drax]

that doesn't mean I don't care about you all!
But look at how sad and lonely he (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Trollbane&n=Gyddeon) is...

[Raveneye]

GTFO of our Guild Wars thread unless you plan to play! Don't make me make this forum private! :lowrazz:

[Drax]

GTFO of our Guild Wars thread unless you plan to play!
But look at how much greener the WoW grass looks! So inviting! So relaxing! So fun! :lowcool:

[Asharad]

I was actually thinking about what a good deal Guildwars ended up being.

[Raveneye]

Yeah, I've spent around $100 total on all four versions (Original, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North) and I've been playing regularly for over 3 years now. At first it was like any MMO, I was playing nightly or close to it, but for the last couple of years or more it's just been the once a week deal for me, like a weekly D&D session with old friends. Had I been paying monthly, I'd have cancelled long ago, and thus never purchased the expansions. I suspect it's the same with the majority of Guild Wars players.

[Raveneye]

So are we on for tonight again then? We're still trying to take down the first boss in the Slaver's dungeon if I recall correctly.

[Erudite]

I'll be around.

[Raveneye]

That worked rather well, even if it did get a little hairy at the end with Justicar Thommas. Playing in zoomed out mode made it much, much easier for me to identify targets and call them correctly, though at times I felt like I was playing a tactical RTS instead of a MMORPG. :smile: I think having the candy canes to mitigate DP early on and the scrolls to boost xp gain when we had minor DP were a big help.

The larger groups with priests, warders and dreamers are simply going to give us trouble no matter what. There were a couple of times that a pair of warders would setup an AE and DoT chain that was megadeath for anyone caught in the radius, such as Koss and myself. There's just no getting around that, even with an interupter on your side. Too many damn casters.