Lytha's Blog

HM DZAGONUR BASTION
Stubborn? YES.

Alright. By repeatedly banging the head against a wall, either the head or the wall will break. I broke both today.

small recap
1. doing it in NM for the protector title, failing masters
2. getting master reward in NM, but still without any clue
3. studying wiki
4. trying it in HM, repeatedly (always with minor changes in the builds)
5. getting guildie to help. starting fights about viability of certain builds and skills. couldn't be bothered to travel to a training zone to show the difference between "adjacent" and "nearby" and "in the area". couldn't be bothered to travel to a hero skill trainer with actually useful skills (except for eternal aura.)
guildie getting totally mad at me for "trying to mess up his build", and then for "pinging all the time" (I did, at first. HM frustration pinging spree. Later I only pinged the priests who he conveniently always attacked last. I still got accused of pinging all the time. It's the game itself that pings. GRRR.)
6. going on a illusion side trip. Accidentally in NM - yeah, we did it. Too bad that it was only in NM - and suspiciously slow for NM. Tried in HM and it turned out just how sucky illusion (clumsi, inepti, ai+conj nightmare) is. Back to regular MoR Domi.
7. calling it a night for guildie when he (repeatedly) managed to aggro the margonite mob of the Mo-Boss when the bosses spawn - and that's not the fight I want to do first.
8. doing it again with H+H.
9. "alright. I'm going melee." Hunting down skills for "Norgu - IW" (Me/D). Doing it in HM, and failing miserably. Melee sucks even worse than inepti+clumsi. 38 damages every 3-10 seconds (spending most time refreshing the enchantments and chasing monsters all over the place)? Is this build of Lord Helmos meant to be a joke?
10. Back to regular MoR Domi - yes, dear 1337 PvP mobsters, empa + CoP pwns more in HM than Clumsiness or whatever. Even though it's only a placebo, as wise Shawn the Divine tells the world. I should count again how often the HM foes trigger Empa for the raw numbers, hm? Last time I counted, it got up to 8-10 times trigger on a HM wammo thing. ~500 damages. Placebo indeed.
11. flagging MoW accidentally to the east, next to Oli&Xandra. We did quite well w/out him, so I ...
12. ... did it again some more, this time, without flagging mistakes.
13. ... replaced Res Chant with Signet of Disenchantment. Back to the head-against-wall-bashing.

Actually, (13) did work.


So, we're looking at the following:

builds, teamsetup
Me - CoP, Diversion, Empa, MoR, ETap, DrainEnch, Guilt, Sig of Disenchantment

MoW - Spirit Bond, SolS, SS, Parasitic Bond, Reckless Haste, Enfeeble, Blood Rit, Res Chant

Xandra - Vengeful w, w of remedy, resilient w, blind was mingson, ghostmirror light, life, recuperation, flesh of my flesh

Oli - minions, JB, DN, botm, db, ps, aegis, res chant.

Khim, Mhenlo, Herta, Cynn.


LB rank: 7.


skill/hench choice discussion
CoP is more effective than LB gaze. Both deal 140 damages + AoE or something, but one targets everything instead of just margonites, and it's casting faster, and the recharge is boosted by MoR - the other isn't. Downside of CoP: can't use it through Spellbreaker.

Diversion instead of anything else, because of versatility. Diversion is useful to harass the kournan priests AND the healsig of the wammo boss AND the lifesiphon madness of the kournan necro health regeneration tanks AND some of the attack skills of the rangers. Pain Inverter deals more damages (useful on rangers, warriors, bosses), but offers less utility, and makes the team more vulnerable to those blasted priests and necros. Other skills just don't cut it anyway.

Drain Enchantment instead of another selfheal is the thing that could be improved. Not all mobs at all bring enchantments, but all mobs hit hard. I dunno, I liked the energy management+selfheal+strip shielding hands/dervish enchs/E-boss enchs utility.

Parasitic bond on MoW. His bulid had enchantment hate recently, and price of fail before. Problem is that Spirit Bond is massively draining his energy, spammable as it is. So I couldn't go back to the 15e of price of fail. Envenom enchantments didn't find enough targets. Pbond probably was the reason why he only hit like -40% DP in the whole mission instead of -60% dp in the first fight.

Enfeeble instead of Enfeebling Blood - no health sacrifice, and the mobs aren't huge enough to justify him cutting himself.

SB instead of PS on MoW - with these giant damage numbers, I wanted more healing. The two henchmonks were utterly outclassed most of the time, and his SB helped keeping the team alive.

Signet of Disenchantment instead of a Res on me - the monk boss was trouble and would have been worse without this skill, but maybe this wasn't justified. After all, at one point, everyone with a hard res was dead (or flagged to the eastern bombard or refusing to resurrect so close to the red dots), and things looked extremely bad until I dragged Xandra closer to us. Without the signet, we couldn't have killed that Mo-Boss so fast. I'm not sure if it was necessary, but it helped that one fight. A little bit, at least.

Cynn instead of Eve or Devona or Sogolon or whatever - damage. Cynn helped a lot.

Mhenlo instead of Sogolon - more healing output on Mhenlo than on Sogolon. Both are outclassed by all that damage, but Mhenlo kept going somehow. Sogolon is too often just too erratic.



strategy
Alright, here it is in detail.

1. enter mission. make sure it's HM.
2. talk to the prince
3. talk to the 3 whisper dudes and send them to the east. All of them.
4. flag Oli next to where the whisper dudes will camp
5. flag Xandra a bit behind Oli
6. approach the approaching mob of Kournan scum (it's a "2xW, Mo, margo-N"-variant.)
7. suggested approach for that kind of mob: hex something with anything, ping the priest, diversion the priest. Priest will walk into the diversion trap. Priest won't attack (much), so don't waste empa on him. Anyway, priest will die. Then his wammo friends will die, and finally the margo-N.
8. wait for the approaching next mob near the central bombard. it's a "2xR, N, margo-W"-mob. Suggested approach: diversion on the ****ing N, Empa on the margo-W, help out the vabbi guards with the Rs with some more empa. In this case, you'll want to leave the Rs alone before they're dead, because mob 3 is...
9. ... at the western bombard now. A funky "margo-R, N, 2xW" mob. Diversion on the necro, empa on the rest.
10. When done, the next mob will approach the central bombard. Priest mob again.
11. Depending on where you flagged Oli, he is now either already done with his mob or one R is still alive. If the R is alive, flag Oli a bit behind the vabbi guard mob, so that they can take that R down. If the R is already dead, you'll be engaged in a double-mob with (10); another "margo-W, N, 2xR" is approaching.
12. anyway, that latter mob is the last before the bosses spawn. I recommend to leave one R at half health and walk to the far right (if the vabbi guards are still alive and kicking, that is). Just out of aggro range of where Dorian, the W-Boss will spawn. He will do so as soon as the last member of the previous mob is dead.
13. Try to pull Dorian from his merry margonite scum friends. If it doesn't work, just focus on Dorian and try to pull him down the hill. His friends don't like to walk too far. Empa, CoP, Diversion when he's dropping in health, to catch his healsig. He should go down fast. Ignore the merry margonite friends of his and retreat to the bombards.
14. there are now 3 kournan mobs. 1 from the P-Boss, 1 from the Mo-Boss, 1 from Dorian (they spawn while you're killing him.). The first 2 aim for the central bombard, the other for the western. It's a natural time for YET ANOTHER wipe, but try to kill them all.

Now begins a very merry phase. Whenever a Kournan mob is fully wiped out, it will respawn after a few seconds. If the old mob isn't wiped, they won't respawn. That's a clue to avoid getting overrun by kournan babies just when you approach a boss.

Oh, and when a boss is dead, his portal will close and there will be no more kournan babies for that boss.

The margonite friends of the boss just hang around near him. They won't actually move downhill (until the bombards are taken.) If you've taken out the boss but not his margo pals, you can ignore them safely. They'll just hang around where they are and go for a smoke.


15. it's a desperate fight for the central bombard now. Oli and Xandra still should do fine, by the way. I wiped the P-Boss' kournan baby mobs and left 1 of the Mo-Boss' kournan baby mobs alone while engaging the margonite scum pals of the Mo-Boss one by one. They were camping infront of the Mo-Boss. No way to take out him first or without his pals. Approach, hex one (suggested order of doing this: 1. the margo-W, 2. the margo-D, 3. the margo-R - they were willing to chase me away from their pals in this order). Kill one margo, retreat to the bombard, take care of the kournan babies of the P-Boss who are busy capping the central bombard. Repeat.
16. At one point the Mo-Boss was alone and his kournan babies weren't wiped yet. I charged at him, took out his spellbreaker with my signet of disenchantment (!), and he was down before his surviving (and with the remaining vabbi guard fighting) kournan baby.

YAY, go me.

17. Same for the P-boss, really, without the need to retreat to the bombard. It's possible to position myself in a way that he won't hit me (he will throw the spear at the wall like the moron that he is), but it's necessary to be extremely careful of his kournan offspring - also the E-Boss' kids may get involved in this.

18. taking out the kournan kids of the E-boss from Oli's and Xandra's position, losening their flags.
19. All onto the E-Boss. Hitting him with whatever available. He took out Khim once, but that's it.


I had wipe issues at the P boss, by the way: Khim was dead, and so was MoW. I had no res, and neither had the surviving henchs. I had to drag Xandra over to us to FomF them back up, and flagged her closer to us afterwards - she could still reach Oli, but could also help us out a bit.


conclusion
Anyway. Anet, you scared my tomcats, pissed off my guildie, and made me bang my head against this roadblock until the roadblock and the head were broken.

I don't approve of this.


I also don't approve of the difficulty variance. Normally, you'd think that "early missions are easy, later missions are tough". It's totally different in Nightfall, so far. Difficulty rating 0-10 (0 = ridiculously easy, 10 = too hard)

misson - difficulty rating - comment
Chakbek Village - 1 - surprisingly hard, because I was doomed to take Koss with me
Fahranur mission - 0 - easy as in NM (smiters ftw)
Blacktide Den - 2 - quite easy
Consulate Docks - 5 - nasty, because of E-boss
Cemetary - 3 - quite easy
Kohdonur Crossroads - 7 - omg, very hard.
Rihlon Refugee - 6 - difficult and required jin+gwen
Pogahn Passage - 9 - OMG
Moddok Crevice - 6 - well, have had worse - required specific skills though
Orchard - 0 - extremely easy
Dasha Vestibule - 6 - not too bad
Dzagonur - 10 - OMFG

What's with those (extremely) easy missions between the "OMG" madness? They totally put me off my guard.

Alright, it wasn't a linear difficulty curve in the other chapters, but putting a difficulty: 0 right in between the tough ones...? WTF.