Desert Nudity

[FoxBat]

This is starting tonight at 8:30 Eastern folks, lets rally! The team stands as follows for now, barring any substitions:

Fox - Mo/Me
Wyrm - N/Me
Seijin - Mo/?
Hawkmoon - E/?
KingOfPain - N/R
Zedf - E/?

Rules refresher:
Non-elite core and prophecies skills only.
Starter weapons, if you don't have I can farm them for you easily.
Holiday headwear is the only thing you wear!
Warriors (primary or secondary) may use starter shields.
Eyeglasses (+energy equip) allowed for ressurect if DP'd.
Leave 15 attribute points unspent. (Still need to do one more att quest)


Previously, our intrepid heroes had just finished a grueling trek to Thirsty River. While some of them may be eager to take on the challenges therin, I suggest we prudently prepare ourselves for the obstacles ahead and go get 15 attribute points from the quests leading out of majesty's rest and down into the Arid Sea. From there we can cut west to get to the Dunes of Despair outpost. Then if there's time we can make a quick jaunt from Majesty up to Elona Reach. This way all that will be left is the three missions, which we can take one session at a time if need be.

The trip to Arid is going to run afoul of Centaurs, Hydras, Jade Scarabs, and Sand Giants. So we'll need a non-enchantment tank to soak up those Jade chillblains, and preferably some caster disruption for the hydras. Also need to watch for knockdown on the giants.

Any extra time in these coming sessions after some (zedf/seijin?) have to duck out early can be spent doing skill quests for those in need. Or Wyrm can just make us AB as he is wont to do.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Or Wyrm can just make us AB as he is wont to do.

Nah, nudist GvG.

[mucco]

Nah, nudist GvG.

Which makes me think... nudist scrimmages could be fun to try out.

[Lurker Wyrm]

One thing I wanted to post now that I (finally) remember it is that enchants take effect in the order they were cast/take effect. This really only matters to the bonder because it means if you cast prot spirit and then life bond, the bond damage will be half of what the prot spirit damage was. However, if you cast bond first and then prot spirit, or if you reapply prot spirit (i.e. cast prot spirit -> life bond -> prot spirit) then the bond damage will be resolved before the prot spirit kicks in and the bonder will take more damage.

On a side note, I'm pretty sure the same thing happens with nature rituals (i.e. the QZ/EW combination).

[FoxBat]

After a far too late start, the Nudist team did assemble. As planned we went out from Destiny's Gorge to do The Forgotten Ones quest, which then lead to the +15 attributes from Ancient Secrets in the Arid Sea. Hydras and Sand Wurms were no detriment to our intrepid team! Well, as long as Hawk held aggro and had Prot Spirit on her. Otherwise, everyone (mostly Seijin) died alot. But still, our kill speed was relatively respectable, and we made it all the way to Dunes of Despair before calling it a night. Good times were had by all.


Still, it was a bit rediculous that we had everyone on by 9:00 but didn't get moving until closer to 9:30. We should try to clear up any such confusions beforehand to avoid a repeat. To that end, please post ahead of time if you aren't able to make it to a session. Seijin wasn't sure about which character to use, if he likes I'm glad to help his nudist character catch up, though playing his regular monk with nudist rules works just as well.

A few issues came up with items, so here's how I'd like to handle it. It turns out that A) the Factions staves, despite Wiki's claims, do come with energy mods, which is a big no-no in terms of game advantage. As well as B) Starter weapons from Factions/Nightfall are *not* customized. Given that, there's no reason we can't hand newcomers/people who lost their weapons proper starting ones. I have a free slot so I can get these for any profession and hand them off. I'll be sure to get a divine wand for Seijin, and although this will probably be argued, those half-rangers in the party using bows really ought to be using starter ones as well.

There was a little debate on how to handle skills/etc after ascension, but I think that deserves its own thread, and perhaps a little later on after we've undergone some more challenges under the current restrictions.


Finally, let's get into a strategy discussion. First off, you earth tanks need to be aware of this: "Armor enhancing skills do not stack beyond +25 armor. This means a single skill can still bypass this cap, but using further armor enhancing skills will have no effect." In other words, Kinetic + Armor of Earth don't do a whole lot together, it will simply use the armor of the highest skill. According to Wyrm's logic there's also interaction issues with life bond and armor of earth, IE typically hawk was putting on armor before life bond. To minimize damage to myself, I'd have to cancel that and put it on *after* the armor enchant goes up. It's obviously not too feasible to keep prot spirit under life bond for very long, so I'll have to consider not using life bond at such points.

We need to decide which of the three desert missions to tackle first. They all have the added difficulty of some kind of time pressure for our nudists; Elona Reach must be completed in under a half hour, Dunes of Despair you need to kill fast enough to keep the Ghostly Alive, and in Thirsty River you have to kill a team's priest within 2 minutes before the team ressurects.

All missions have bosses with the same six elites avaliable (Word of Healing/ Mantra of Recovery/ Marksman's Wager/Order of the Vampire / Ether Renewal / Warrior's Endurance) Of these, only Mantra/Wager/Word of Healing are really useful with our current team composition. In both Dunes and Elona reach the spawning is random and unpredictable as to which you will face where. In Thirsty River, we have to face down each of the bosses in set order. So I'm not sure there's any particular advantage in choosing a mission based on elite, although it's more likely we will get some kind of elite from a mission, thus it's optimal to pick the "easiest" one first and hope to cap some there.

In that regard, Dunes (minus the bonus) is probably the easiest, although there aren't too many capping opportunities. Thirsty just has that problematic Word of Healing boss + priest at the end which must be shut down or we probably will not outdamage them. Elona is probably the hardest and the one I've wiped enough with a normal team simple catching too much aggro near the end.

So let's get some opinions on which mission to start in, and then we can tailor specific strategies for it. Then we can spend our game time well, actually playing, with most of this already worked out.

[mucco]

Wow - actually, for me Dunes has always been the hardest, and Elona the easiest (by far) of the desert missions.

In Thirsty River, the priest killing might be sped up by combining Defile Flesh (curses) and Malign Intervention (death magic). If those hexes stack, the healing is essentially halved. Since I saw a lot of necros on your team, I believe it could be a viable option.

[Seijin]

I'm in class and I'm sooooo bored right now.

Sorry, just had to share with the rest of you.

I don't care which one we do, next week (assuming I have the time) I should be ready sooner if I just use my current monk. I don't really want to take the time to move my original one through the game. This will at least allow me to pick up wherever you guys are just in case I can't make a date.

[FoxBat]

Wow - actually, for me Dunes has always been the hardest, and Elona the easiest (by far) of the desert missions.

We aren't necessarily doing the bonus mind you! How to even attempt dunes bonus will be its own debate if that one is chosen, but will probably end up completing just the mission on the first go, and maybe attempt bonus if there is more time after.

[Lurker Wyrm]

We aren't necessarily doing the bonus mind you! How to even attempt dunes bonus will be its own debate if that one is chosen, but will probably end up completing just the mission on the first go, and maybe attempt bonus if there is more time after.

If you take out the wurms on the side and wait for the 4 min mark or so (when the regular enemies stop swarming) to go after the bonus then you can just forget about the ghostly as the spawns that appear when you kill a boss won't have time to kill him before the timer finishes. You have to cut it close, but it's easier than trying to figure some split up. As for the rest of the mission, the ghostly probably won't be the target since he has high armor.

[FoxBat]

Given the overwhelming flood of opinions I'm inclined to start with Dunes of Despair tonight. We can easily do the mission; attempting the bonus is the tricky part.

Siege Wurm attacks are unfortunately armor-based, and do about 150 damage to a nude character. Distracting Shot is enough to take care of them if a ranger can get near. Interestingly enough the attack is a spell, so you can power drain it or whatnot.

The first boss before you enter the compound is always a Mesmer with Mantra of Recovery, so /me can cap that if needed. Backfire is handy both against the Stoning-spamming Arcanists, and the Word of Healing monk boss in case that shows up.

Minions are about useless, so necros should focus on cursing enemies, and perhaps blood ritual on the monks. Enfeebling Blood may be welcome to control forgotten constructs that get past our tank.

If you take out the wurms on the side and wait for the 4 min mark or so (when the regular enemies stop swarming) to go after the bonus then you can just forget about the ghostly as the spawns that appear when you kill a boss won't have time to kill him before the timer finishes.

I've just tried this twice, taking out all the wyrms and everything up to the boss that spawns on the right at the 5 minute mark. After that baddies stop coming until the 1 minute mark. I can go and clear out the generals with a minute on the clock, but then the ghostly falls under attack. He doesn't survive for the last minute.

Supposedly there was an AI bug at somepoint that caused enemies to not attack the ghostly as long as you stayed in the fort, since the players were too far away for the AI to activate. That seems to have been fixed though.

Under the 2 minute mark there are two groups of three that spawn on either side of the general's fort, I don't know if your idea was to catch them while there. That might reduce their firepower enough to make a difference.

It could also be that if you kill the generals extremely quickly, said spawns stop happening. I don't think there is much chance of us pulling off what 3 SF eles can't do though.

Anyways, the popular "cheesing" option is technically a little too cheesy for us nudists. That is, to prevent the Ghostly from taking his throne and starting the timer, get a lucky Jade Scarab spawn outside the walls, kill it, necrotic traversal over, and then that character rebirths everyone else over. The problem is usually, these characters kill themselves with a vampiric weapon.... an item nudists normally can't equip. Unless everyone goes necro secondary and has the right sacrifce skill, we won't be able to suicide to make this trick work.

The old "rush out after 5" approach might work for us nudists to catch the bonus, but I think we forfeit the mission in that case. If we choose to go this route, we should probably do the mission once normally, then again just focusing on the bonus.

One thing that does work is to leave a bonder monk behind at a certain point. This is quite doable even with nudists, except for the fact that we only have two monks on the team. One monk would have to keep the strike team alive as they went after the generals. This might be doable if enough shutdown is brought, say curses and domination spells, as well as blood ritual to help the sole monk. A plus to this approach is that the general strike team can afford to wipe out, as long as the bonder monk keeps the hero alive, and you will get the mission if not bonus.

Or we could skip the bonus entirely, and see if we can try Thirsty River in the alloted time to keep things moving. As I recall, dead teams respawn in the base on the 2 minute mark if the priest is up; rather than trying to make a mad dash as usual and have monks scrambling to keep everyone alive, another approach might be to inch up slowly with an earth tank. We clear the outside and then start to approach the doorway. We can let the team revive as long as we keep most aggro on the tank and the tank stays well enchanted. Casters can disable/kill the priest at range then.

To defeat the Word of Healing boss, we need shutdown on both the priest and the boss. Best I can think of is this means trying to d-shot WoH on the boss until getting lucky; then Backfire the priest and finish him off. The other option would be to bring two Backfires (or arcane echo Backfire...good luck with the energy though...) and put them on at the same time; we need to watch for the half hex/condition duration on the boss though, so the kill must be made quickly.