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My lazy days in front of the computer are about to be diminished somewhat, as classes start again for me tomorrow. I don't have any classes on Wednesday (Tuesday night EST) and it's my ideal day off as it's in between my 2 heavy class days but this week I have a job interview that coincides, so I won't be able to make it for variant.
Kind of a shame as it seems we've now finally got a full group. Well hopefully I'll be able to rejoin you next week and if this leads to having to work Wednesdays then I'll let you guys know.
Good luck!
Aarda's still throwing roses at the rain...
July 28th, 2009, 01:35
(This post was last modified: July 28th, 2009, 12:57 by FoxBat.)
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A while back we have commented on the aid a tank could be not just for damage mitigation, but more importantly to get foes more balled into AoE. I'm going to shift to a touch ranger in the blood role for that purpose. With high elemental armor, decent block stances, and immunity to shatter enchantment or pblock, I can present a good enough defense, while still managing the same piddly damage blood normally does and enabling the eles to bring their superior firepower to bear. Now some foes are still probably going to break through which makes distributed defense still important, but I aim to corall enemies a little better for faster killing.
Edit: Jude will be entering with her Mesmer on the smite role, and she has the charr primaries done so we don't have to worry about those.
Lev has a seasoned mesmer that can handle the rit role, or pick up for an absent ele.
Next stop is going to be "Against the Charr" - if we have time and people feel up to it, maybe another charr mission. For "against", typically it's run ignoring the various catapult objectives around the map because the charr base normally isn't that hard to clean and it's much faster. I did want to jog people's memories if they ever found the explosives worth it if they were struggling - best I can recall there's alot of nasty archer patrols you have to deal with to fire every explosive off and it's not clear that said approach is any easier.
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I usually just do the two near the base when doing HM.
The tower and the siege devourer.
Other than that, I bypass everything else. I really don't remember how much easier the mission is by destroying the other objectives. But yeah, there's a lot of charr to kill by doing that.
If you believe everything you read, better not read.
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I agree with Seijin. My standard tactic is to enter the mission, turn 180 and head South. Hugging the wall through the forest takes us past the Ooze Pit entrance to the beach and right on top of the Siege Devourer there, so that and the tower are both on the way.
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Assault on the Stronghold
This one will be begging for a few different tricks. I don't know how viable the long range bonder is going to be, to get the Armored Saurus to the gate, given that turning someone heavily over to this role will reduce the backline effectiveness.
I started looking at some theme-consistent utilities.
Air Mage:
- Winds. The Ebon Vanguard Ritual (if placed well) will cause about a ~15% damage reduction on the Armored Saurus on the way in by causing that percentage of shots to miss. If the blind spots directly beneath the wall can be located we have a shot at getting within reach of the gate and cover both archery groups.
- Windborne Speed. Doesn't work on the Armored Saurus. I tested this and found that the override for the speed (NPC runs down the hill, then dawdles on the flat) appears to negate any benefit that the enchantment might provide. It may still be useful if we try some kind of interference runner strategy for the archers to target on one side, instead of shooting at our battering ram.
Water Mage/Fire Mage:
The snare-and-bomb mix we had last week was working well against the Charr. It won't be very effective for the Destroyers, but I think we should try and reach the Destroyers before worrying how to tackle them.
Mist Form could be an option for an interference runner on one side (for the longevity of the Armored Saurus), although I don't know how well a Mist Form Ele would stand up to alternative damage there. Swirling Aura might even see some use.
General:
The Destroyers are going to be a pain. Given how potent the Charr are in Hard Mode I think we should try and play them against the Destroyers - Pulling the Destroyers into conflict while avoiding the Charr to let the warband do as much of the work for us as we can manipulate them to.
Heart of the Shiverpeaks
I had an idea a couple of days ago that we could do the dungeon heading into the last two primaries. It will be Oozes in the boss room instead of Cynder, but otherwise it occurs to me that it would be appropriate for us to include this dungeon in the variant.
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How about mass blinds? eruption, bsurge and blurred?
I've done this quest like twice so idk really :D
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Yeah, they'll be useful options getting the Armored Saurus to the gate. Blinding will also be helpful with the Destroyers at the end, but Blurred Vision, not so much.
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One trick within the variant's rule scope is the skill healing seed, that's fairly effective against the multiple damage triggers from ignite arrows, often offering net healing for the time it's up. As long as he doesn't have to deal with much other damage though, zed can spam infuse health near indefinitely for more pure healing than any standard monk can put out.
If you play with the devourers (switch them from bluff to gate firing) you can get them to pick off a few more archers, and the rest we'll have to catch with our AoE.
My blood ranger isn't going to do a whole lot productive damage-wise so I can run around baiting some damage my way under a stance. Even missed attacks still trigger ignite arrows so that extra elemental armor will come in handy.
I remember the charr massacring most of the destroyers, but if you want a nod towards fighting them in this mission, I'd just toss in winter. The team setup won't be ideal but it should be good enough to slowly take on the few separated groups left.
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Well after numerous attempts with a semi conventional approach (plus no bonder) we hardly got close to getting to the gate, never mind through it. People are listening to the idea that I ventured about putting an earth tank into the mix on one side, but so far this plan has only been very roughly implemented and not enough to have the desired effect.
The idea: Earth tank runs in on the left side and simply holds position drawing as much fire as possible. That should hopefully tie up the archers and warriors on that one whole side leaving the other seven of us to do whatever.
Does the earth tank need to be supported? If the answer is "no" then we might even have the option to interfere with the Charr versus Charr battle on the right. If "yes" then we try to support the earth tank without getting ourselves pounded into snot. Perhaps Recuperation and Life spirits will be sufficient to provide heals for the tank without needing another of the team in range to upset the aggro ball.
Another thought is if we can slip a bonder into the mix somehow then an earth tank could also be a bonded earth tank... 
Regarding the blind spots I mentioned. There are blind spots that the archers cannot reach at the base of the wall in near the gate. I think some people mistook what I said to mean "the entire base of the wall is safe." It's not. Just a few tight little spots that can be used to avoid missile fire. If we go with an earth tank plan we won't even worry about trying to find them.
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Yes, the charr usually massacre the destroyers in HM simply because the charr have res and healers. Although, the group of destroyers that comes closest to the stairs near that pit tend to win, so they're the only ones we'd have to deal with. And maybe a few stray deeds or hordes on the right side.
Not sure how the earth tank will hold up by itself. I think the sword wielding charr will just savage slash anything that takes 1s or longer to cast. If you don't use mantra of earth + stone striker, I don't see how the tank can maintain energy. So that means no mantra of resolve to stop the interrupts. You can try mental block, but that only offers 50% chance to block.
In HM i usually bonded the thing, but I can see how that can be problematic for our variant. I also usually had 6 of my h/h pinned against the spawn point near the left bluff. This way they could grab the ground charr aggro and hit the archers above while I set the devourer to just bombard the charr at the left gate. Meanwhile I usually assisted our charr allies on the right side and switched the devourer back and forth from bluff to gate.
Again, considering the constraints of the variant, I don't know if its possible to do it this way because I don't know how fast we can actually kill the charr. I'm used to having sabway, minions, discords, and/or spirits now. The archers aren't a big problem if you just hit them with some aoe now and again, they'll scatter. The ground charr we're having trouble killing because as time goes by, a new group ends up spawning before we finish killing the current group and thats where we end up wiping. Not to mention we need to find a way to keep that saurus alive so we don't need to have 10 of them spawn to break the gate. XD
Thats just my experience with the mission in HM. This is one mission I've always hated and is the one mission i always skipped in HM when farming books. :thumbsdow
If you believe everything you read, better not read.
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