Oh alright then! The evening started out well enough, with me logging across to my Factions Ritualist to help a friend, who is attempting to be come a Legendary Survivor the Hard Way; i.e. playing through the missions properly, rather than find a safe cluster of mobs just inside an explorable area and repeatedly grind on them until eyes bleed. In this case it was #9(K) - The Eternal Grove, a challenging and tricky 'defend the hill' type of mission, a lot like Prophecies' Thunderhead Keep and Nightfall's Dzagonur Bastion.
To make matters even more awkward, my Survivalist friend insists on Master's completion, so it took three goes in the end as I tried to remember how Ritualists work, and also cope with the added stress of having a 'permadeath' teammate. The Survivalist is a master of the lightning '/resign' however, and deaths caused by resignation do not count as proper deaths where the Survivor title is concerned. Its an odd kind of sub-game, and one which is far too stressful for my taste, but each to their own.
Still, we'd done it and I was feeling pretty good about myself all in all, as we logged across to our main Tuesday N00b Club characters, the Mesmer and the Necromancer, reconvening in Vlox's Falls, ready to continue with the next bit of Eye of the North; Finding Gadd. This went okay to begin with too; a pleasant and enjoyable romp through Arbor Bay, although this week's Comedy Mesmer Build was beginning to cause discomfort already. More on that below. We'd made it to the south end of the map and encountered a ghost who had a quest, loitering outside the next step on the route to find Gadd, the Shards of Orr, so we clicked and grabbed that, most without reading it or thinking about it too much, and zoned on in. And that's when the real fun began.
The Shards of Orr are one of EoN's Dungeon zones, and after a considerable amount of reading around the subject, are anecdotally the most difficult one in the entire damned expansion. Cheers then! It consists of three levels, and is populated with large clusters of undead who basically OMFGBBQPWNed us repeatedly, and lollerskated over our corpses, throughout the evening.
Our first mistake, was activating that quest outside, which causes a significant number of extra 'bonus' monsters to be spawned into the place before our arrival. We weren't even trying to 'complete' the place - work out way down to the lowest level and kill the insanely overpowered boss monster. We never made it off level one, and in fact, were just trying to get through the place, to Gadd's Encampment on the other side so we could continue the story.
Its hard to pinpoint exactly where the main problem lay, as there just seemed to be so many things going wrong at once. My own build was utterly inappropriate. The rest of the team were not nearly tailored for the place enough either. We had the wrong henchmen and heroes. The monsters, despite 'only' being L24 seemed insanely powerful, with extremely damaging wizards using lightning attacks, necromancers with massive degeneration attacks, warrior zombies that hit like freight trucks and of course the mandatory chain-healing clerics and priests essentially negating our pathetic attempts at 'damage' entirely. We also had problems with secondary aggro, an unfamiliarity with the terrain and map, and for extra fun, a lot of the fighting seemed to take place around, and more usually IN, jets of green poisonous mist projected from traps.
Within minutes we'd started playing that dark, bleak and wretched variant of the game, the -60%DP Attrition Crawl. This is were even Guild Wars starts to take pity on you, and decides that it would be cruel to punish you for failure any further. Once down to -60% Death Penalty, there is literally nothing more the game can do to penalise you, and if, say, you're a pair of bloodyminded and stubborn masochists who simply refuse to give up and come back with more preparation, training, research and experience, you can then continue to throw your barely-alive carcasses at the enemy over, and over, and over again.
Of course with only 40% of your Health and Power, it becomes hit and miss whether you'll even survive the alpha strike and be able to land even one hit on the enemy before being cut down, and at these levels, most enemies can happily one-hit you at that point. But if you all time your kamakaze assault correctly, and all divebomb the healer at the same time, its just possible you might damage it a little bit more than he can naturally regenerate by the time you all return form the nearest resurrection shrine. Its wretched way to play, and can literally take hours to travel a hundred yards.
Its also extremely demoralising. How is it possible to fail any further? Answer; it isn't, and realistically, if you and your entire party have hit -60%DP, you really ought to all '/resign' back to the last outpost where the penalty is erased, and start the zone again, this time with better skills. One wipe (-15%DP) is unfortunate, but easily recoverable, and quickly worked off via xp earned. Two wipes (-30%DP) is a cause for concern and hard work, but not necessarily game over. Three wipes (-45%DP) is pretty much it though, guaranteeing the fourth, to -60%DP in short order. A typical player in GW usually has around 500hp at full health, most auto attacks do about 20-50hp, and spells and skills can easily do 200-300hp from some of the bigger Elementalist nukes, so -60%DP takes you well below the one-hit threshold for most skills and abilities, and makes the game almost unplayable. Intentionally so!
It was a shambles and eventually we did get the hint, resigning back to Vlox's Falls for a rethink. I ditched the Comedy Skillbar in favour of last week's Interruption Skillbar, hoping to be able to do something useful about the Skeleton Wizards maybe. Similar other team adjustments took place, although as it turned out, still not really tailored enough for the specific task. We then returned, pausing only to ditch the stupid Masters quest in there. This made life a bit easier - some of the monsters were now not present, but there were still more than enough to stop us getting though a very short and fairly simple route from one exit to the other. The Interruption skillbar, while a bit more useful, was still no good. Problem being that as a Mesmer, I can perhaps lock down one enemy caster at a time, but the worst groups in this place consisted of four wizards (Elementalists), two Necromancers, and two Monks - far too many casters to keep on top of at once. Meanwhile, the wizards are all using very fast and powerful lightning spells which seriously tore us up; Shock, Blinding Surge. A Nightmare, and keeping perhaps one wizard out of four out of the fight wasn't helping a lot. Dual redundancy on the chain-healing priests wasn't helping a lot either.
Before long, we were back to the -60% Attrition Game again, only this time with our Serious Skillbars on. Humiliating. The Plan when it came, was ignominious to say the least, and basically consisted of us trying to run past them, using the Heroes and Henchmen as a sacrificial distraction. This, eventually, worked, and the Necromancer managed to leg it to the far swirlery, and daylight. Gadd's Encampment now unlocked, we can map travel around that godforsaken pit of despair now!
It was no good though - I was now in a very gloomy mood indeed. Regular readers will by now have picked up that I am quite obsessed with MMORPGs. I take the above kind of thing much more personally that perhaps I ought, and I'm sure I used the phrase 'All I have are MMOs, and I'm sh*t at those too!' at one point. Deary me, self-pity ahoy! Hissy-fit alert! Quite histrionic, I'll agree, but I can be quite emo when the occasion demands! Nevermind, my friend enthused - lets just get on with the story. I agreed in a surly fashion; my friend puts up with an awful lot of this stuff on the whole, for which I am grateful. Maybe it was just a one off. Maybe it was just that place. We stepped outside into Sparkfly Swamp, and promptly got murderized by a roaming pair of high speed L28 Tyrannosaurus Rexes with Velociraptor support. WTF? I think if the hysteria hadn't taken over at that point, I'd have had some kind of nervous breakdown there and then, and quite possibly even done something Permanent to my character and/or account.
I think there were Hekets, possibly a Paragon Hero. Hayda, was it? We may have met Livia and Gadd and gone to another dungeon. Something about Bloodstones. I was really past caring at that point, but one thing and another led to us finishing that leg of the story. Gadd is one of the nastiest Asura we've met so far, caring nothing for the well-being of his minions, helpers or test subjects, giving it all that about 'Dumb Bookahs' and so on and isn't even Comical about it, like Oola, and the mood I was in, he's damned lucky it is physically impossible to kill green-named NPCs - savior of the world or no. I'd just had three hours of the game itself telling me I'm rubbish! I do NOT need to hear the same thing from some jumped-up milky-eyed bunny-rabbit....thing!...with dental problems in a stupid hat! RAAGH!
And it didn't end there! Annoyed but somewhat cooler of head, we had a Wednesday Noob Club too! Shards of Orr; This Time It's Personal! That went about the same too. Some research (The wiki talk page) showed that we were doing it entirely wrong, which we knew, and that actually, instead of, say, a well-balanced party of interlocking and complementary classes and skills, the Correct Team Build is in fact a crapload of Smiting Monk/Mesmers with Signet of Judgement, Bane Signet and Mantra of Inscriptions. A build not too dissimilar to my Signet based build of a few weeks ago, in fact. Imagine a WoW Raid Instance designed for 25-man Priest Only teams...good grief. Still, 'class' is a far more flexible matter in GW than in WoW, so everyone can be a priest if they want, when they want, which looks like what we'll have to do.
We'd tried a team build with some Smiting Monks, and me on my Illusionary Weapon Me/A setup. Trouble is...we got distracted on the way to the dungeon. Just outside Vlox's Falls, we stumbled across another Master quest; O Brave New World, which we'd got entirely the wrong team build for, again, and was a bit of a nightmare, particularly the last bit with the seemingly unending Destroyer rush. I like my IW build, but so much stuff in EoN has enchantment removal that it is debatable whether enchantments are worth using at all. Anyway, another eventual 'triumph' for the '-60%ers' which put me in another foul and despondent mood, even before we'd got to the Shards of Orr for the second go in as many nights.
We eventually arrived, with a slightly better build, which did indeed do slightly better, but still nowhere near 'effective'. We left again, spent at least 10pp on extra skills and runes and came back. This time we had a lot more Smiting Monks, and I was using something similar myself. All that effort, research and practice had raised our chances of surviving each group encounter to 50/50! Woohoo! We still didn't make it off the first level, out of three, let alone get anywhere near the big Boss of the place, and it was late, and I couldn't wait to quit and go to bed, frankly.
I'm starting to understand what Eye of the North actually is. It is not really a campaign, or story that much. There is a story there, of course, but people say it is very short, compared to Nightfall, etc, and I'd guess that despite the failures and distractions, we're about halfway through it already. No, what EoN really is, is a guided tour through a large and wide-ranging 'lobby' of sorts, which merely exists to connect together 13 or so 'high-level' Raid style instances, more in the nature of Domain of Anguish, The Underworld and the Fissure of Woe, along with a few other sideshow games - Polymock, Norn Tournament, Brawling, The Alemoot, Whatever Minigames turn up in the Vanguard storyline, and so on. And these end-game activities are designed to be very difficult, indefinitely repeatable, and last a long, long time. Long enough to keep us all occupied until Guild Wars 2, perhaps.
I think the story is just there to get all the jumping off points unlocked for all these various dungeons, and it's those that are the real meat, and each of these is a separate game in its own right, with its own demands, requirements, builds and skills needed. I expect we'll be back in time, but I suspect the whole trip through there, and the last two days of anguish and failure was simply a teaser - a taste of what things will be like when we've finished the current Story-based 'Whistle-stop tour of the Facilities'. One does not simply walk into the Shards of Orr...or, as it turned out, even through them on the way to somewhere else!
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Today's build is mostly here to show people what not to do and I list it merely for pointing-at and laughing-at purposes. It is a classic example of a consistent personal failing of mine, and that is having far too much faith in the theory, and not nearly enough understanding of the practice; it looks good on paper, so that'll do! Still, we live and learn, I guess. The basic premise was that with so many Mesmer skills which copy other skills, I could be every class at once! The Jack of All Trades! This violates the core tenet of MMO character customisation; Specialisation is Power - Diversification is Weakness, which frankly, I should know by now.
The Master of None
Mesmer/Any
Illusion 16 (Masque and Rune), Inspiration 12
Requires: Nightfall (#1), Eye of the North (#8), Factions (#4), Prophecies (#5, #6, #7)
Equipment: Illusion Staff, but frankly, its going to take a lot more than a weapon bonus to make this work.Rune and Masque for Illusion, and a team of seven other people who actually have working and sensible builds!
It all hangs off the Signet of Illusions (#1), and the large number of 'stealing' spells. Stealing spells turn into other spells, based on who you cast them on, usually for 20 seconds. These spells can literally be anything, and using any attributes from any class, and in general, you have very little control of what you actually get. Most of these stolen spells will have green numbers which improve the spell's effect, as your points in its linked attribute go up. Not having that attribute at all, can then be a bit of a problem, which is where the Signet comes in. When used, the next three spells you cast, use your Illusion score, instead of their normal linked attribute. In this case, 16, which is the maximum practical score you can achieve in any attribute. In many cases, you'll be casting the spell with greater potency than the person you stole it from!
The stealing spells work thusly:
- #2 Arcane Mimicry - Copies a teammate's Elite Skill. This is usually very powerful, but only 'Spells' are affected by the Signet, so avoid using it on the melee classes.
- #4 Arcane Larceny and #5 Arcane Thievery - Copies a random spell from the target enemy, AND disables it for their use while you have it. Two versions of the same identical spell.
- #6 Inspired Enchantment - Removes an Enchantment form the target enemy, gives you energy, and turns into that enchantment for 20s, for your own use.
- #7 Inspired Hex - As #6, but cast on teammates to remove and copy a hex spell instead. Also gives energy.
With all the above cast on different targets, its entirely possible to have a skill bar with skills form six different professions at once, and still be able to cast them with 16 Attribute. In theory anyway.
#3 Arcane Echo is handy if you snag a spell that's particularly useful. Cast this first, then the spell you like, and this will turn into another copy of that spell for 20s, letting yo have twice as many goes at it.
#8 is mostly there as a test of the PvE Rank skills (Friend of the Kurzicks, Sunspear, Lightbringer, Norn, Asura, etc). These are usually very powerful spells, so powerful in fact that they aren't allowed to be used in PvP, or be given to Heroes. trouble is, the power only really comes when you reach very high faction ranks, which can take ages and a lot of grinding. I've been plinking away at Nightfall since it came out and am only Rank 8 Sunspear. Signet of Illusions works on these rank skills also. It isn't exactly 1 to 1, like normal attributes, but 16 Illusion converts to Rank 10 PvE Faction, making most PvE Faction skills extremely potent indeed.
In this case, #8 - Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support, calls in an NPC Assassin, who attacks for a short duration, then vanishes. At Rank 0 Ebon Vanguard, he's L10 and lasts 20s. At Rank 10, he's L20 and lasts 30s. My other favourite PvE skill, Cry of Pain interrupts and does AoE damage. At Rank 0 Sunspear, its 40pts, at Rank 10, its 100pts, so clearly, grinding the rep is worth doing if you PvE a lot, but Signet of Illusions is a good way to shortcut a lot of bounty point work, albeit for the next three casts only.
An Any/Mesmer would do just as well as I did (badly), although will be capped at 12 Illusion, without runes, etc, making the stolen spells all somewhat less powerful.
It all seemed to clever, so versatile, so... complex, which as it turned out was the main problem with it all.
I did indeed end up with six different profession's spells on my bar, but alas, I hadn't actually considered what I'd then do with them all. To date I've played only three professions to the end of a campaign, and it really does take that long to become familiar with even the basic skills and spells of each. There is at least half of the Mesmer's skill list that I don't really know a lot about, hence this series of Mesmer Build experiments. Its mostly so I force myself to learn and understand what they all do. I haven't the faintest idea what all these Elementalist, Necromancer and Monk spells are for, and suddenly, they're on my skillbar, in a hectic and demanding end-game grade dungeon environment!
The random nature of the thefts is a problem as well, making it a skill bar that requires total game knowledge AND incredible versatility. There's a significant micromanagement exercise on the targeting too. Some of the spells need enemy spellcasters, some need enemies with enhancements on them, some need allies with hexes on them and some need allies with a spell-based Elite skill. And thats before they even changed ito completely alien and unfamiliar spells! #4, #5, #6 and #'7, look good in theory, and might possibly work better on an AI Hero Mesmer, who automatically knows instantly how best to use each stolen spell for maximum effect, but for me, just cause a lot of headaches. The thefts aren't always useful either - at one point I had two copies of Air Attunement, and no other Air Magic spells. Peachy!
#2 turned out to be one of the more useful skills actually, and being able to borrow my Necromancer Friend's Elite, Spiteful Spirit, a very powerful repeating AoE damage hex, or their Monk Hero's Light of Deliverance, a similarly powerful partywide heal, and cast either with Attribute score of 16 (Full Power), was very nifty. Unlike the other steals, you know in advance what you will be getting with it, and by echoing it beforehand, #3, I could have both! Unfortunately, unaided, #2 takes far too long to recharge for it to be reliably repeatable or quite as flexible as it would first seem.
#3 and #8 made a useful combo as well, something I increasingly fell back on as the general confusion of the build became apparent. #1, #3, #8, #3 (Which is now #8 as well), allowed me to call in two top-powered Ebon Vanguard Assassins, which did help a fair bit. Any other PvE Spell could be used here instead, and a better choice for the Shards of Orr would have been Light of Deldrimor, an AoE Holy Damage blast - cheap, fast, reasonable recharge, and does double damage to undead. Being able to echo it, and use it at full Deldrimor Rank (40pts at Rank 0, 80pts at Rank 10 and 160pts at Rank 10 vs Undead), twice in quick succession, might be a good way to go with the horror that is the Shards of Orr. Run into the clump, blast the 'area' with 320pts of damage per monster, then leg it back out and let the Smiting Monks mop up with Signets of Judgement. Hmm...
Another problem was the constant necessity to use the Signet every third cast. I guess I could get the hang of it in time, but time was something we didn't really have. Also, being a Signet means that Complicate, Ignorance, Panic etc, all lock this build down a treat.
I think its a build that tries to do far too much, and probably could do without the stealing spell shenanigans. It might be salvageable with more static PvE Rank skills instead. A set and known skillbar stuffed with already overpowered PvE-Only Spells, all artificially pumped up to Rank 10 via the Signet, might not do too badly. mostly though, as shown above, all it does is demonstrate that sometimes, I can be far too clever for my own good. All in all, I'd consign this to the 'Fun Builds' category; great for mixing things up and showing off with, but probably not a useful way to approach an EoN Dungeon, frankly...