Elemental Team

[Zed-F]

I think part of the problem is our melee/archer hate isn't consistent enough. Yeah we have wards, but they don't help if people aren't in them, and a lot of the time they won't be. We don't have enough blind to consistently blind them either.

I think next time we may want to consider bringing Enfeebling Blood. It's a nice reliable AoE counter to melee and archers in general. Yes it's out of spec for our blood guy, but for this mission it's fairly critical to have lots of anti-melee/arrow mitigation and we just haven't had anywhere near enough of it. If people are dying in 3-4 hits, that's a problem; healers can't always react in time if 2 people get in trouble at once, and it greatly linits our ability to help the saurus as well.

I'm not at all sure how the weapon spell build worked for our Rit. I got the impression it wasn't faring any better than a more conventional energy management + life + weapon of warding + direct heals build would have been, but I wasn't running it so I don't know for sure. I know it seemed to me I was doing nearly all the healing, but the weapon build may have been trying to take more of a mitigation approach.

Agreed that a bond would be nice... but it's not going to be on the monk. I simply can't afford to give up any of my existing off-healing skills for it. If one of the air/earth/fire/water eles wants to sacrifice a out-of-element skill for bond, cool beans. Those eles are generally the ones who can have whatever secondary is convenient.

And yes, faster killing of the warriors would certainly help. Not sure what we can/should do differently there though. If we bring an earth tank and said tank can hold all aggro... wel and good. If not, we're going to be missing the extra firepower. Most of us are not exactly bringing builds optimized for maximum damage output, on account of the variant restrictions.

[Seijin]

Unless there's a way to stop interrupts, the earth tank isn't going to work. I don't know if there's a way to stop both physical interrupts and have energy management on the earth tank. Of course I don't know if I know every earth tank build. So there could be a way I'm not aware of.

Are we worried about the archers for our own sake or for the sake of the saurus? Its easy for us to not aggro them for the most part and I think they choose to target the saurus over us if the saurus is in range. Also you might stick the air ele with blinding surge + epidemic. This can easily hit all the archers on the bluff with blind, as well as any melee that group up on someone. You might then be able to stick the left devourer on the archers on the gate.

Might try air ele:
Blinding surge (E)
Epidemic (no attribute)
Shell shock (for cracked armor)
Lightning bolt (we almost always have things moving around)
Lightning javeline (since most things are attacking when not moving)
Shock arrow (energy management)
Air attunement (energy management)
Util (res, pve skill, etc.)

So the build offers blind, some damage, and cracked armor which helps out everyone do extra damage. If he pings the enemy being shell shocked, we can also try to spike it.

Epidemic initially would be used to just blind a group, like the archers. If he can, he can also shell shock a warrior in a group and use epidemic, get them snared with the water mage, and then have the earth ele and fire ele AoE them.

I guess this would take a lot of coordination though.

[WarBlade]

Agreed that a bond would be nice... but it's not going to be on the monk. I simply can't afford to give up any of my existing off-healing skills for it. If one of the air/earth/fire/water eles wants to sacrifice a out-of-element skill for bond, cool beans. Those eles are generally the ones who can have whatever secondary is convenient.

Actually, what I'm thinking is turn the Light Mage into a full blown bonder.

Protective Bond goes on the Armored Saurus first and then the other big damage mitigators. Finally the life regenerative bonds. That mix generally holds up the beastie so well that I've often had it with me fighting at the stairs. The problem is that I normally run this kind of mess as a third backline unit and we only have two. But we do (as you mentioned) have a few people in the party who might stretch secondaries to cover...


Protective Bond
Life Barrier (Elite - May be impractical)
Life Bond (Could go on anyone)

Mending (Maybe impractical - Could be handy on a Healing Protection split)

Watchful Spirit (Useful no-spec from another Ele)
Succor (Possible no-spec from another Ele)



Bonders

1.) The Light Mage bonds the crap out of the Armored Saurus, mostly to protect, but maybe to heal if Mending can fit. Spare energy regeneration could be bonded to the earth tank's survival.
2.) Ele #2 puts Watchful on the Armored Saurus, the earth tank and anyone running Life Bond.
3.) Ele #3 puts Succor on the main bonder bringing the base energy regeneration up to +5. Up to three more Succor can be extended to the earth tank, the Armored Saurus and any Life Bond casters.

Supporters

1.) The Dark Mage switches more towards the red bar duty. Scary I know, but we'll be aiming at focusing incoming damage on two targets, so hopefully the downsides of Restoration Magic shouldn't be quite so troublesome.
2.) Blood Ritual. Doesn't need explaining really.


Now the trick is to figure out who does what. Normally I'd run a Monk for a primary bonder, pack it with signets and leave it at that, but in this case we'd have to sling bonding duties around a bit...

I'm up for running Succor or Watchful Spirit.

Thoughts?

[Seijin]

Post the bars you're suggesting (just post the skills the bars should have to make what you're suggesting possible) because this seems complicated.

Also if one person goes down the whole thing may fall apart. I'm also curious about the energy required to maintain all this and kill the charr.

[WarBlade]

Post the bars you're suggesting (just post the skills the bars should have to make what you're suggesting possible) because this seems complicated.

It is. As a result I don't really have suggested bars, but suggested skills and roughly where they would go.

Also if one person goes down the whole thing may fall apart.

Correct.

'm also curious about the energy required to maintain all this and kill the charr.

The energy required is a problem. I've never done this from a platform of a non-Monk bonder for Protective Bond before and that puts us automatically into the realms of -4 energy per hit instead of -3. But then again I've seldom tried offsetting the minus numbers using Succor as well and it will also be interesting to see what we can cook up with the Blood Necromancer.

As for killing the Charr, I've just come back from a Normal Mode experiment with some positive news: The melee spawns appear to be limited to two packs per side at any given time. That gives a whole lot more weight to a 'sit back out of range' tactic.

The bad news is maintaining bonds on the Armored Saurus means getting as close to the gate as standing our toons on a line directly between the two Siege Devourers. The result is occasional aggro from marauding Charr, however these solo stragglers don't appear to be linked to packs, so we'll be able to pounce on them and rip them up piecemeal if they find us. The trick is not to kite and still kill them efficiently without attracting more hate.

If we can run an earth tank on one side it may be easier to stay close enough to maintain bonds, albeit with a different set of risks.

That gives rise to another point: What about staying over on the right instead? We could opt to reinforce the Charr allies and leave the left side to rot, whether we modify our previous build strategy or go with a new one.

[Zed-F]

Given the amount of incoming damage and widely dispersed damage distribution we had last time, I really doubt that turning the light mage into a full-time bonder is going to be practical.

Even assuming we could keep the saurus alive that way long enough to break past the gates, the next part requires us to kill a whole bunch of charr that surround the narrow passage we have to climb up. It'd be nearly impossible to have a single tank draw all that aggro, and even if they did our charr allies would be certain to position themselves badly and draw enemies into the backline to slaughter us. A bonder is useless if the damage is not coming in on a predictable target, and while we might maybe be able to arrange that for the saurus part of the mission when our enemies are mostly in front of us and our allies are mostly stationary, I don't think it will hold for the duration.

I would think it would be better to first try a more conservative approach with more blind/weaken in the group and just stick life bond and/or life barrier somewhere on our air/earth/water/fire eles. We don't have to break through the gate with the first saurus. If it takes a couple tries that's ok, as long as we can keep ourselves up and fighting; it's the latter that is the biggest concern.

[Seijin]

actually once we're through the gate, our charr allies don't even follow us. I think maybe 1 might, but the majority of them hang back outside the gate. At least they always do for me.

Also, once inside the gate, you do not have to go through the center passage between the two charr groups on the hills. You can go the the left or right through other paths and take one group out from behind, and then go on to kill the group on the opposite side.

[WarBlade]

Given the amount of incoming damage and widely dispersed damage distribution we had

Which is one of the reasons why I'm proposing abandoning the left Siege Devourer and letting the Charr allies do the tanking for us on the right.

In fact some of the squishies could hang out on the ledge above and if the need arises aggro can be broken by escaping up the entry corridor.

[FoxBat]

Me and Sej did a run through this mission with this approach.

1) We followed our charr allies and wiped the forces at the right devourer.

2) We sat around but nothing happened, archers hadn't even spawned yet. Progress was halted.

3) We pulled the left devourer forces and they followed us to the right devourer.

4) Once those died, the fighter spawns started coming in. We hung out by the right devourer and ignored the left one.

5) By the time the saurus spawned, most of the archers on the right had been killed by the devourer. I talked to the devourer to switch him from bluff targeting to gate targeting and we ran forward parallel to the saurus.

6) The party was situated near the right spawn point, while I hugged the right wall to get in range of the saurus. I primarily kept him alive with shield of absorption and seed of life. There were just 2 or 3 archers on the right side, but it seemed like I could mostly hide from them, and I had the other nearby backline healing me when needed. I generally was able to stay out of range of the numerous left archers.

7) The wall fell and we proceeded leisurely.

8) We sat back and watched the charr and destroyers duke it out. A whopping 2 destroyers survived from the fights.

So what might apply to us:

- Aside from the very beggining, we can completely ignore the left side, and fall back on our charr allies on the right as needed.

- Shield of Absorption + some seed skill is all that is needed to keep the saurus up, but you need to keep that char in casting range with that plan. The saurus has very high armor and health, even with no prot he gets an enormous health gain from a seed skill, shooting his bar up like a rocket. It's just an inordinate number of small damage packets picking away at his life total, which these kinds of skills are superb at negating.

- The wall there is a great spot to hide, as long as our party can handle the few warrior spawns at that point. Very few archers survived but they can still hit for alot if you aren't careful. I would suggest sticking a "tank" in the spawn circle, and wrapping the rest of the party farther up the wall to cover the saurus healer.

- Destroyers are basically a non-issue, and even our lamest of golem attempts could at least manage to kill groups of 3-, which is all we are facing here.

I know space is tight on the ether renewal healer, here are some thoughts on how to get the skills in.

- Last smiter build I set Jude up on already had a decent prot investment, that could easily take a decent shield of absorption. We could even try shield of judgement, it probably won't kill the charr rangers, but it will slow them down. On the other hand Ray of Judgement is basically our best damage and wipes a pack of anything very quickly.

- We ought to be able to find a way to fit healing seed on Zed's bar. One option is to drop glyph in favor of an enchantment, with the large elementalist energy pool and an enchanting weapon you should be able to tide over till the next renewal cast. Aura of restoration is a conventional choice with good healing recovery after an infuse and a little energy management, but the newly buffed selfless spirit is even stronger for covering the ER downtime and requires no investment beyond a single faction rank. My real concern with loading this on zed is we may rather position him further back from the saurus so he's focused on the rest of the party, people might end up dead in the 3s he's tied up seeding the saurus.

- Vort could also get away speccing prot or healing for either one of these skills, and supporting much of the party through party heals from his position. Selfless spirit is also now a strong energy resource for ritualist healers if you spare the non-elemental spot.

I think that much should take care of the saurus. Next we need consider how to deal with the charr warriors which seemed to be causing trouble last time.

- I HOPE hureg is capping blinding surge. :p

- Courin wasn't there last time, but usually our earth ele had unsteady ground, eruption, and ward vs melee which were pretty solid against warriors.

- Beyond that this can be made much easier (in theory) with good aggro management. Since the groups are pure warriors, we ought to be able to throw a prot or two on the R/N tank and have them run ahead outside of aggro range of the rest of the party to securly establish aggro. This isn't just for safety purposes but more importantly to get all targets hit by aoe at once, so they are quickly wiped before the next wave spawns. Fortunatelty it didn't seem like there were more than one or two waves once the saurus started moving, and we can hang back with our charr allies until then.

[Zed-F]

My usual bar for this variant is 5 healing skills:
- Heal other
- Heal other clone
- Infuse
- Vigorous Spirit (needed for enchant at the moment)
- Breeze (needed for enchant at the moment)

And 3 non-healing skills:
- Prot Spirit
- Glyph of Swiftness
- ER

I have no problem swapping in Selfless Spirit for Glyph of Swiftness, at least for this mission (even though I try to avoid PvE skills.)
I should then be able to swap Healing Seed for Vigorous Spirit (or Breeze, but breeze is more generally useful.)

I like this idea a lot better than the 'spec Zed as a bonder' idea.