Having completed the necessary spiritual preparations of the 'Weh no Su', previously, we're now worthy enough to consult with the deceased spirit forms of various long gone ancient heroes of Cantha. These spirits reside in the Tahnnakai Temple, in the east of the sprawling metropolis of Kaineng. After an bracing slog through a cyclopean sewer system, crawling with the Afflicted, and of course Kaineng's more regular supporting cast of ninja street-gangs and very angry samurai types, we arrived at the temple.
There is one hero in particular that we want to have a bit of a chat with; Vizu, a long gone Assassin who legend tells, managed to originally kill Shiro, in a mighty battle two hundred years ago. Clearly then someone who might have a few good ideas about tactics in our present difficulties. However, as we're depressingly coming to expect on our travels, all is Not That Straightforward as we arrive, and Shiro looks to be trying to shut her up for good. It's up to us to sort things out once more.
Cue the next mission - #5 - Tahnnakai Temple! This is a full-on timed exercise, even for the Standard completion, and consists of us having to deal with eight large clusters of Afflicted plague mutant things, with Temple Guardian dragon statues (animated, of course), and at each of them, a twisted and corrupt 'Bound' version of an ancient hero, taking on the role of Boss mobs. At the far end of it all, poor Vizu is slowly succumbing to Shiro's evil magics and will be lost in ten minutes, unless we can get to her first.
It's actually a pretty straight-forward mission, with one easy-to-see route through it all, and is mostly just about the fighting. Quite hard work though, and it took us three goes in the end. The first time through was my fault. I fall for the ticking clock ruse every time, and seeing the ten minutes counting down mercilessly top centre of the screen tends to make me rush and make stupid mistakes, and I think I ended up prematurely aggroing everything in Room 3, which gradually wore us all down. Doh.
Despite the clock ticking, and only starting at ten minutes, I didn't realise that you get bonus time for killing each successive Boss, four minutes a piece, so as long as you don't dawdle too badly and keep a steady pace through the rooms, the mission actually gives you 38 minutes, in total. In that amount of time, you'll either do it, or you'll wipe, and you'd need to be wilfully laggard to fail on the time basis alone. Things are different if you're after Master's or Expert's though; 20 minutes and 25 minutes respectively.
The second go wiped somewhere around Room 6 or so, mainly down to an unlucky pull bringing the entire room down on us, coupled with the Temple Guardian reducing my 'fort' of spirits, (and me), to a sticky mess on the floor with a quadruple hit of some nasty AoE circular burnination thing they did; Breath of Fire probably. For some reason I'd assumed they were Warriors, rather than Elementalists, and suddenly there's whirling rings of fire everywhere, and it took me a few roastings to realise that perhaps I ought to actually move out of the ring. A somewhat obvious thought, you might think, but in general, I don't move around a lot in my line of work - ranged support and spirit maintenance.
Anyway, third time lucky and all that. The third go saw us a lot more successful, and although we had a few deaths they were easily resurrected by our healing henchmen. We rescued Vizu perhaps two or three minutes over the Master's time limit, bagging an Expert, again. In general, I'm finding Factions missions to be a lot more tricky than Nightfall or Prophecies, although this could just be not having Heroes on board, and using only standard Henchmen instead. In particular, I remain dubious of our ability to simply put out enough raw DPS to be able to bag many Masters in this campaign. I'm happy with Experts this run-through though.
Our Tank-Ranger seems to be doing very well, particularly after we went out and found them Triple Chop, an axe based Warrior Elite skill, last time. It's an interesting build, which seems to use the best of the Ranger's evasion and avoidance, coupled with the Warrior's energy-using axe attacks, rather than the adrenaline fueled skills they get. Having a high Expertise (Ranger Primary) seems to be reducing the casting cost of these attacks to around the 2-3 energy mark, and as a Ranger, he gets +3 energy regen per second anyway. Extremely efficient and allows for almost constant spamming of attacks, limited only by the recharge timers of the skills themselves. Survivability can be further enhanced with a decent solid shield in offhand, and use of various Insignias to bulk up the AC a bit.
Our Assassin seems to be having a little more trouble - I think mostly down to the unfamiliarity of the class, and a continuing experimentation with builds. I suspect the biggest trap is to look at the Assassin class and think 'Ah, melee class! Rightoh!' and just go charging into the fray, when it's likely to be a more subtle thing than that. Still, I've never tried one, so have no idea. Our Assassin does seem to be a bit more fragile, and susceptible to damage, than would otherwise be optimal though, and went down several times during the mission. I'm wondering if there's some school of damage reduction or avoidance skills they get, that ours hasn't got to yet? Possibly something from Necromancy, their current Secondary, could work well here? Anyway, I'm sure it'll come together in the exploration and missions ahead.
My own spirit work went as usual; raise Pain, raise Bloodsong, open with Spirit Boon Strike, and then alternate between Essence Strike and Spirit Boon Strike as available, waving my little staff at them as I go. I've started experimenting with Weapon Spells as well now. This is another type of Ritualist art, and involves imbuing an ally's weapon with one of a variety of different spirits. A kind of buff really, and there are a number of different effects to be had. Thought it might help, but all of these buffs seem very short-lived, either lasting for a handful of seconds, or 'for the next X attacks'.
All very well, but this makes for some insanely hectic micromanagement of targets, the likes of which eventually drove me from being a Domination/Motivation Mesmer/Paragon in Nightfall, to being a straight Domination Mesmer, and leaving the buffing to the AI henchmen. It's something I ought to try and get good at though, so for most of the mission, in addition to my spirit-keeping duties, I was throwing Splinter Weapon about as often as I could manage. A handy buff, it causes the blade to explode on impact, severely damaging all enemies near to the original victim as well, and in the dense and hectic melee of this particular mission, I like to think it was helping!
My skill of the night also works well with it too; Ancestor's Rage. Similar in many ways to the Spirit Rift time-delayed lightning blast, this one has a shorter fuse, (one second instead of three), costs less to cast (five instead of ten) and does a similar amount of damage, over an identical area. The crucial difference is that it's an enchantment, to be cast on an ally, rather than using a fast-moving enemy as the target. This means it can be used well offensively, and with far more accuracy; drop it on your favourite up-front tanking friend as they wade into the melee, wait a second (which you can be spending constructively by also giving them a Weapon Spell buff), and then watch the hilarity from afar. It can also be cast on yourself, making it an ideal defensive measure for fortification Ritualists, and a nasty shock for those pesky Warrior mobs that like getting in close and mashing up the spirits. Zap!
Vizu thanked us, and let us in on the secret of Shiro's defeat, all those years ago. The secret being that 'She Had Help', and has now pointed us in the direction of two powerful artifacts, each possessed by the spirit of the two chaps who actually finished Shiro off last time around - an urn and a spear. Of course nothing is ever easy for us, and it seems that these two items are heirlooms, one held by the leader of the Kurziks and one by the Luxxons; the 'Factions' of the title, who happen to be at war with each other. No problems there then, just your usual run of the mill Centuries-Old Internecine War in the way of us trying to...you know...save the WORLD and all!
After three missions, a number of weeks and a lot of architecture, we're finally out of the city and into the countryside of the continental mainland, on our way to get the Urn from the Kurziks. Luckily Brother Mhenlo is an old friend of these folks, but I don't doubt something 'orrible stands between the urn and us, next week...