On another note, chests are nice.. they are NOT worth blowing the run for. People need to stop being greedy little twits and concentrate on first making the area safe, and then running ahead to get the chest. Not vice versa. Monks aggroing huge spawns of oni or an aspect because they're running past a tank to get a chest is not the way to conduct a successful run!
WHAT YOU NEED! :
The run group for the deep is quite large and very variable. It can be done with 6 men and I have screenshots to prove it, but for now I'll deal with a standard 12 man group and a variant. If possible, everyone, especially the tanks, should bring an icy weapon. You'll need it for fighting Kanaxai at the very end.
Tanks - Three Warrior/Assassins will be required. Tanks are precisely that in this run. They pull things, and then they make walls to protect the casters. Teamwork is utterly critical to this, as is patience. Don't attack the onis whatever you do.. that just messes it up. Any other variant on the warrior class is guaranteed DP early in the game and just isn't worth the hassle. Also, things like riposte builds DO NOT WORK! Even if the person swears they've done 20 runs this way, be very wary. A standard riposte build will get the tank killed unless the monks are healing just them and ignoring the rest of the party. These warriors will also need an ICY weapon.
Recommended Skillset : Shove (elite), balanced stance, shield stance, defensive stance, dolyak signet, healing signet, endure pain, recall
Nukers - Three Elementalist/??? are needed. The build can vary, but meteor shower, rodgorts invocation, meteor and fireball are critical. As a mesmer secondary, echo and revealed enchantment are very useful in here. Dual attunement builds work as well. Just remember.. firestorm is not a skill :P And will get you yelled at if you use it.
Healers - Four Monk/??? are also needed. The standard build here is healing breeze, healing seed, Word of Healing (elite), Heal Party, Rebirth, protective spirit, heal other and one last skill of monks choice. Smiting doesn't work well, protection doesn't either. If you don't have heal party at the least, don't bother with the run. When the tank requests you to spam heal party, do it! There is no reason for any death penalty in this run outside of bad aggros or stuck groups of enemies. If you can't heal a dying player, why are you even playing a monk class?
Necros - A Spiteful Spirit necro with SS, arcane echo, reckless haste, defile enchants, desecrate enchantments, blood ritual, well of blood, and spinal shivers is needed. Spinal shivers is absolutely critical. If you get into the run and your necro doesn't have this, just resign. Kanaxai is killable without it, but not by the average group.
- Also a Blood is Power necro is required. Necro/Monk is a good class here to mitigate damage taken from the saccing for BiP. Skillset is mostly optional, with well of blood and blood ritual being good choices to bring.
Variants - Ritualists rock in here! Bring disenchant and Wanderlust (elite) and the aspects will barely be able to stand up let alone keep something like demonic agility on :P Ashes of Lively Naomei makes for a nice emergency rez too. Feel free to toss an ele and bring a rit instead. Despite what people say, a competent ritualist can clear any of the beginning 4 rooms, and is an excellent addition to any group.
HOW TO GET THERE :
Pretty easy.. go to Cavalon and either be a member of the alliance controlling it, or message for a ferry to the deep until you get there. Be sure to tip the person who takes you! They don't have to provide a shuttle service for you, so make it worth their while. Once there, go to the international districts... there's almost never any people in the rest of them.
Once you form up a group, reorder them from top to bottom as W,W,W,E,E,E,M,M,M,M,N,N with the BiP on the very bottom, then enter the mission... Don't forget your keys!
MISSION WALKTHROUGH!
Ok, you're going to need about 2 hours to do this. If you have to eat dinner, do homework, go to a movie, or anything else in that 2 hours don't join a group and waste their time. Be prepared for this time expenditure or a little more depending on how competent the group is.
When you enter the mission, there are 4 portals that open one at a time from right to left as groups of 3 enter them. This is where the 134 134 134 222 concept comes in. Those are room designations from right to left, and if the party is going in standard order as mentioned above, this tells people where to go. Essentially, the first warrior, monk and ele of their respective sets are in the furthest to the right room, and so on. Room 2 is a special case. The 2 necros and last monk of the list are in there. They sit tight and let the other groups come rescue them.
First Rooms
For each room there is a different environmental aspect. None of them are difficult to overcome, so back out of the aggro bubble of the tank (I'll mention this again as we go on. It's not a hard concept to grasp. In the compass, if your white bubble is touching the tank, that means his is touching yours, and when he or she aggros, the critters will come after you as well, making it very messy) and let them pull some of the ripper carps. Once these are dead, move onto the Darkeneds or Scourge mantas. Try to interrupt the darkeneds and keep them from casting restoration, but if they do manage to get it up, either kill the spirit IF THERE ARE NO DEAD MONSTERS NEAR IT, or just ignore it as usually the corpses will decay before it dies(please refer to guildwiki for a description of the skill spirit of restoration so you can understand what is going on here). Alternatively pull the aspect back and kill it.. you'll have to eventually anyways, so all that matters is when. These aspects reflect Kanaxai himself. Killing them ends the environmental aspect of that area, but they need to be knocked down three times during the fight (they will start taking zero damage from all attacks, this is your cue to hit them with Shove or meteor/meteor shower). Killing the carps and other enemies in each room will open the gate, killing the aspect will keep it from munching your casters as you run past it.
Past each gate there is an open area with a series of patrol groups. There are 2 strategies here. Firstly you can pull a patrol into a chokepoint in your own area and tank it, allowing your ele to nuke them. Secondly you can run to another open room, join forces, and then do this. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses depending on the competency of your players, so choose your own path. Once the patrols are dead, pick off one or two of the blessed mantas, then engage the Aspect of Pain. Kill it then finish off the rest of the mantas. This will open the remaining gates, including room 2 (with the trapped necros and monk) and any rooms where a mistake has lead to the death of 1 or more players. Go and rescue these guys, and reform as a 12 man group.
Aspect of Lethargy
Advance to the next gate, and form up your tanks 3 across as a moving wall. Have them arc to the left, pulling the aggro of the various leviathan arms and minds there. Alternatively, wall the gate into this area and pull them all back to that point and nuke em. Do not attack the arms! If they move, the tank will move with them and the wall will shatter. Instead, the casters want to nuke these. Once the arms are dead, the tanks can charge in and engage the minds then the heads. Once these groups have died, you'll note a fireflower and some rocks to the right of it. Form another wall with 2 tanks between those rocks and the wall, and one outside. Aggro the Arms, and repeat the process. ONE person should use the flower, disabling it. Once the arms die, move onto the minds, then the 10-12 heads. Then aggro the aspect of lethargy and kill it. After this, the nukers should kill off the closest group through the gate. Now, here is where some confusion arises. Warriors need to set recall, preferably on a monk, then go stand on the closest of the 5 wooden pads, one person per pad. The necros need to stand 1 each on the furthest 2. This will open the gate. The rest of the group moves through and ONE person will start a countdown. At a decided number, the three warriors cancel recall, and will appear with the rest of the group on the other side of the gate. The gate will then swing shut. Necros need to run up to the gate and sacrifice to death using blood ritual and blood is power. Don't heal them while they're killing themselves!
Aspect of Depletion
Rebirth them across the gate and then engage the closest group of enemies. As a tank, use balanced stance to prevent gust from knocking you down. It is critical that the monks use heal party here. Once they die, the tanks should advance along the left edge causing the left group to run down and engage the party. It may have been possible to pull the aspect before this depending on where it spawned, so if you can, get the aspect out of the way first. Otherwise, kill the one group then pull the aspect. It is absolutely critical that the necros use Well of Blood here, otherwise the outcast deathhands will have an unlimited supply of flesh golems and the damage will really start to rack up. Use WoB to remove these corpses and heal your party at the same time. Kill the rest of the groups and move up to the gate with the casters on the left side behind the wall and the warriors forming a barrier across the open gate.
Aspect of Failure
This can be a deadly room. Spells do not work under this aspect so your casters need to stay out of it as much as possible. Don't offer to rebirth someone who dies in here because you can't, end of story. You can use a rez sig on them, but since there are no real bosses in this area, you won't be able to recharge it. One experienced tank should set recall, then go down into the area and pull the outcast reaver groups back to the gate. Using defensive stances works well for this, and the monks MUST use heal party to keep the puller alive. If the puller dies, the monks weren't doing their job, or the puller didn't use a defensive stance. Nuke them once they reach the wall, then pop in and kill the few ritualists that hang back. Now pull back, don't be a hero and run on ahead. One tank should run in and attract the attention of the first 5 outcast archers, then hide behind the wall beside them. This way they can't be peppered with arrows and the archers will ignore the rest of the group. The remainder of the group should run past, ignore all the critters and go down the first set of stairs, ending up in a corner where the aspect doesn't reach them. Do NOT go down the 2nd set of stairs! Once the group is clear the last tank should engage a stance, and run to join them. If there is a chest up by the archers you have 2 choices. If you are not a competent group, don't try to pull the aspect! It's just asking for trouble. If you're a good group (not you think you're a good group, you are a good group), then one tank can pull the aspect back down the stairs (casters stay in that corner and don't move!) and kill it, then the group can take a few moments to recharge their energy and then go in and kill off the archers. The 1 tank to distract 5 of them strategy works well at this point. In either case you'll end up back in that safe corner with the 3 tanks forming a wall across the very top of the stairs.
Aspect of Shadows
Two important notes here first. Don't attack the Reborns.. as the name suggests they just come back to life. Secondly, don't attack the Leviathan or get anywhere near it. You will die. Period. He can hit casters for over 700 damage depending on armor and critical hits, so don't bother with him. Now, with the three tanks at the top of the stairs, one of them needs to set recall, then run down and irritate the oni spawns by the little pool, pulling them back up so they can be nuked. Once they die, that single tank runs ahead down the left side. This is called solo aggroing, so stay OUT of the tanks aggro bubble. There are 2 groups of oni on the left side, so aggro and eliminate them as needed. Then aggro and kill the aspect, stopping at the next corner and walling up again for another 3 batches of oni. When they are clear, proceed to the edge of the stairs, just outside of the next aspect and wall up with casters behind the wall to the left. Do not kill the reborn, but kill the spirit of disenchantment if it appears.
Aspect of Scorpions
This is by far one of the hardest aspects of this run, and where the vast majority of deaths will occur, especially if people don't listen to the experienced players. In this aspect, every 30 seconds, each enemy in compass range will randomly teleport one player to them. You can get teleported 5 times in a row if you're unlucky, as the 30 seconds does not apply per person, but instead per enemy. The tank line at the top of the stairs needs to stay clear of the aspect, and a single tank will have to set recall, and go pull the groups of onis that patrol to the bottom of the stairs. There are more than several groups of these, and you'll know you have them all when the gate at the far end of the area (visible from the top of the stairs) swings open. If you can't seem to find any more and the gate is still closed, set recall, then run down, using endure pain and balanced stance with the monks using healing party. Run as far towards that gate as you can and recall will automatically bring you back (or trigger it if you're dying) and this will often get the last groups of oni moving. When the oni are dead, attack the patrol at the bottom of the stairs and kill them, then run back up and reset the aggro. The next part is tricky.. you have to run down the stairs turn right, and run to the next fire flower (it's visible by holding alt). Behind this flower is an area safe from the aspect, so get there. If ppl die, rebirth them and then get back behind the flower. When you've reset the aspect and the patrol at the bottom of the stairs is in a good position, attack and kill them, then run along the edge towards the gate, attacking and killing the next patrol. This will put you in a corner with the closest enemy being the aspect. Once everyone gets there, pull the aspect immediately so when the teleport kicks in you get pulled to the aspect rather than a random patrol. Kill the aspect and run through the gate.
Aspect of Fear
Run down through this area to a corner before the first bridge. Experienced players will know where to go. Tuck the casters into the corner and wall them in with the tanks. There are several groups of nightmares and onis that will assault you, but they're easy enough to deal with. Just stand there, cast away and don't attack anything with a weapon. There's no way to block the nightmares because they teleport, so ignore them and nuke everything in sight once it engages the group. Once all the groups have been dealt with (fun eh?) advance to the middle of the next bridge and make a tank wall that will advance to the end of the bridge, aggroing another dozen or so oni. Kill these and have a single tank move out and make sure all of them are finished off, then move to the next bridge, and the next, repeating as you go. At the last bridge, deal with the oni, then pull the aspect and kill it the same way. Be sure in this area to turn off the turret flowers as you advance.
Aspect of Decay
This aspect is loads of fun if done properly. Wall up at the entrance to the shadowy misty area. Casters need to stay back out of range as usual. Then one tank can run in and aggro a whole pile of sapping nightmares. They don't move all that fast and can't do much damage to warriors, so bring as many as you can back to the gate and have the casters nuke them. For the casters, if the nightmares cast chaos storm, don't stand in it :/ You'll die, so move out of the way. Once the nightmares have all been dealt with, ignore or kill the aspect as you see fit and advance to the next room.
Aspect of Poison/Bleeding
Wall up at the entrance to this area, with one tank popping in and attracting the attention of two groups of onis just inside of the entrance. Once the onis are dead, the party needs to decide either right or left path. Then one tank needs to set recall, and run down either the right or left edge of the chosen path, disabling flowers, and recalling when they become trapped or manage to
turn most of them off. Then repeat on the other edge of the chosen path. At this point you should be able to safely run in and kill first the group of onis, and then the group of outcasts. Disable the rest of the flowers and again, either kill or skip the aspect. As you advance into the next area be careful of an oni spawn right by the tunnel entrance.
Aspect of Skills
There are two paths here and two options. I'll outline the easiest and fastest one, but it's the choice of the party in general. Let one tank run ahead down the right hand path and solo aggro the groups of oni one by one. If more than one player gets involved in the aggro the onis will move around and make it hard for the nukers to pin them with a meteor shower. Advance down the right hand path until you come to the aspect. Lure it back and kill it, then engage and kill the group of outcasts.
Aspect of Degeneration
Congratulations if you made it this far! You're almost done, and the hardest part is yet to come unfortunately. This room has -8 health degeneration so the monks will have their hands full. To start off, two warriors need to set recall and then run in towards Kanaxai from the left hand side, and knock him down twice (one shove per warrior, a defensive stance will help avoid his knockdowns when he hits you). This will spawn a total of 16 sapping nightmares. Both warriors should then recall. At this point, your most skilled warrior needs to set recall and arc into the left, drawing the nightmares into a ball in the bottom left corner of this room. As they do this the rest of the group runs into the right of the room along the wall to a point where there is a gap in the ridge. Casters stay at the upper edge of this ridge near the edge of the gap. You'll want to pull Kanaxai up to the edge of this gap, and then bodyblock (pin with your characters) him so he can't run away. The runner who was drawing the nightmares should be back at this point, and will need to set recall again on one of the fighting tanks when they get the energy. The runner needs to keep and eye on the nightmares, and if they start to get too close, go and draw them into a ball again and then recall back and repeat throughout the fight as needed. Otherwise, make certain that spinal shivers is cast on Kanaxai at all times! This will allow for interruption of his nightmare refuge skill. Keep healed, keep hitting him, and good luck with the green drops
After he dies, you can always retrace your path to the start filling your inventory with loose items to earn a bit of extra cash
Hopefull this helps make this challenging run a bit easier for all involved
Having an idea of what to do certainly beats running in blind, and remember, have fun! Feel free to comment/question as you wish, just keep the flames to yourself... this is here to help people.
