Gates of Madness: some advice

Well, I passed it once with henchmen. That's my only qualification, really. Still, I hope the advice is of use to someone.

First, getting there:

-Starting out, you have two ways to get to the Shiro'ken pass: right around the valley or left over the black rock bridges.
The way to the left is populated by titans, which are quite slow to take down. Possibly, you could run.
The to the right right is populated by margonites and some demons. After the first two groups, most can actually be avoided. At the end of the valley is a bridge, guarded by a margonite group including a warrior boss. The morale boost is quite useful, so I suggest this way. Oh, beware: once you cross the bridge, at the narrow part, a previously invisible group of demons will climb from the ravine. Make sure they don't catch you unprepared.

-Both ways meet where the "road" begins to go up the hill. Avoid as many groups as possible, only the last group of demons near the torment claws can't really be avoided. Kill them away from the claws, then approach the claws and eliminate them. Right behind the claws, a group of Scythes will burrow from the ground - make sure you don't awake them before you have dealt with the torment claws.

-At the top of the hill, you will find a closed gate. After a few choice words, you know who will open the gate and waves of Shiro'ken will attack from both sides of the gate. You don't actually have to fight them - just run throgh to the edge of the valley, and only the first group will actually follow. Don't turn right, though.

-Beware empty areas - as you approach the valley, you will be greeted by the other you know who and five portals will appear. Almost instantly, the valley will be filled with enemies - don't be caught between them.
The enemies will form patrols, study their patterns a bit. Remember where each patrol started - more of the same will spawn. When most patrols are away, rush in and take out a group of portal wraiths. Focus purely on the portal wraiths, and when they are dead, retreat. If you linger, returning patrols will overwhelm you.
Note that the titan patrols are only 2 strong. Don't mistake them for other two member patrols, which take far less time to clean up!

Suggested way to eliminate the portal wraiths:

2 1
5 You at the start
4 3

1: eliminate the near portal to the right. Retreat, deal with trailing demons. Eliminate the small patrols that come to this point.
2: approach second group to the right. Wait until most margonites are away, get in and kill the wraiths and margonite guards, run away! Beware of aggroing the armageddon lord!
3: once you clean up the former, go for the first group on the left. Make sure the demons are cleared first, then go for the wraiths, ignoring the titans. Once the portal is closed, retreat first, then go for the titans.
4: select on of the remaining portals, wait for a good opportunity, then go in and destroy the wraiths. Once dead, retreat, clean up pursuit, and
5: repeat on the last group of wraiths

The final confrontation:
Both the Lich and Shiro are bound to the center of the "arena" - if they follow you too far out, they will break off and return to center. This is important for two reasons:
1: timed right, you can split up the Lich and Shiro, so you get Lich near you when Shiro is at his furthest. That's the best time to get the Lich quickly, ignoring Shiro.
2: While capturing the bonus shrines, Shiro will occasionally break off pursuit - useful to catch a break. He will not lose aggro! He will just take a quick walk to the center and go right after you.

Get the bonus. At full health, Shiro is of little danger, so ignore him completely as you clear out the shrine defenders. Keep moving, running around the shrines even after the defenders are dead - that way, your henchmen will not have the time to engage Shiro. Shrines revert to neutral eventually, but the bonuses remain for 20 minutes and you still get Masters if they stay gray.

Shiro:
The key to defeating Shir is understanding his three "modes" of combat:
-Shiro with lots of health: Shiro uses only his regular attacks and Riposting shadows. Damage output is low, healers (consider taking 3...) will easily keep up.
-When Shiro loses enough health (at about 75% to 66% by my feeling), he will decide to heal by using the stance Battle scars. This adds life stealing to his attacks equal to your best hit agains Shiro while the stance is active. This is bad, as Shiro will easily steal exactly as much life as your warriors are managing to damage him for, and will seriously increase his damage potential. Also, life steal ignores armor - previously relatively safe warriors will suddenly begin to lose health quickly! Remember, this is a STANCE! It can be broken! Three healers can about keep up, but Shiro will quickly go up in health.
-When Shiro gets low on life (at about 50% to 33% health), he activates the skill Impossible odds. This makes all of his attacks double strike and act as PbAoE. By itself, this is dangerous, as Shiro's damage output will at least double, keeping the healers hard pressed to keep up. Combined with battle scars, it is pure annihilation - EVERYONE near Shirop is hit for TWICE as much as they can best inflict on Shiro and Shiro gets healed for ALL of that put together. Plus twice Shiro's ordinary damage, but you probably won't even notice that...

So, what now? There are two possibilities:
1: Stay away. Scatter, attack Shiro at range and worry about nothing but riposting shadows. Takes a group, though. And primary warriors like me will feel useless.
2: Break the Combination of Scars+Impossible. Impossible odds is just a skill, nothing you can do about it (my henches didn't manage to interrupt him). However, you can take impossible odds without battle scars! Lots of damage, but still manageable.
Battle scars, however, is a stance and CAN be broken with 3 skills: Warrior Wild Blow, Assasing Wild Strike and Paragon Wild Throw. (Only 3 skills that break stances? should be more...) If you break the stance, Shiro will be manageable until it recharges.

The three skills have several disadvantages:
-Wild blow requires 5 energy and consumes all your adrenaline. Loss of adrenaline practically closes down all adrenaline skills (you HAVE to break the stance as soon as it appears, if you wait for half a second (one fast blow with a speed enhancing stance), half your health will be gone, and if you wait for a whole second, your party will be already gone. Also, with energy regeneration 2, your warrior will only have energy enough for wild blow as it becomes available.
-Wild strike only requires 5 energy, but is an offhand attack, meaning you have to keep a lead attack on Shiro all the time.
-Wild throw is adrenaline based and is a ranged attack. 7 Adrenaline can take a while to gain and may not be available when you need it most because you just used something adrenaline based. Being ranged may also mean the stance will be up while the spear is in flight.

As a primary warrior, I had to go for Wild blow. My experience using it:
-it will take all the energy you regenerate, so no other energy using skills will be available
-you need time to finish the blow in progress and then strike itself before it takes effect. A skill that increases attack speed is vital. Only one is not energy based, though: Flail. Take it. Trust me.
-once you take down Scars, armour comes into action again. And since you are locked in melee, using a skill that already slows you down, consider bringing Dolyak signet and Watch yourself. With these on, you WILL be able to tank Shiro until he goes for battle scars again. On the one attempt I passed, I had dolyak with me - and was wishing for watch yourself...
-I have no idea what went on once Shiro went Impossible odds. I really don't. I HAD no time to do anything but watch Shiro's skill indicator, so I could hit Wild blow immediately. Really, I was so tense, full of adrenaline and focused I completely failed to keep track of the party.
-Eventually, Shiro Managed to kill everyone in melee except me. With Dolyak, I managed to tank him, supported by three healers who also manager to resurrect the rest of the party. So, if most of you are dead, all is not yet lost!

The party I had with me included Master of Whispers with Spoil Victor and the illusionist henchman with Empathy. I honestly don't know whether they actually managed to use those skills when needed. I think they did, but can't be sure.


Well, I know it's not much, but I hope it helped.

Wish I could get it thru everyone's head that sv is not that great on this mission...stats for sv : For 1...25 seconds, whenever target foe attacks or casts a Spell on a creature with less Health, that foe loses 25...85 Health.

the problem is that he is not very dangerous until IO kicks in and at that time his health is always below that of my team so sv does nothing to him at this time...ss, wreckless haste, incidious parasite, barbs, and whatever else you want to add is a much better bar for this mission

Possibly. Still, doesn't shiro have about 6000 life? Should have spoil victor working down to his last 5%...

The ss build works way better if thats all you have but sv really does rock shiro pretty hard when he goes in impossible odds, he's taking about 100 damage per swing. I know it doesn't work the way it reads, but IO is a spell/skill/stance type thing that continually (since sv is spamable) does a really strong amount of damage.

My thinking may have been flawed, I was thinking % of health not actual health but all I know is that I have killed him on 3 characters one now has prot title and each time I had a ss neco with me...i have tried to help others get thru it and each time we have failed and not had ss because they insisted on sv. I have a build now that I am going to test tonight that has no necro at all so will see how/if it works

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as i said in earlier post, when I went with someone or hench using sv we all died...when I went with hero or someone else using ss we all lived....that is proof enough to me that ss is just as good if not better than sv. To answer your question directly...no I have not used sv myself (because when I got to him I already had ss loaded up and had no trouble so didn't see the need for sv)

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The last time I did it (succesfully 4 times now helping guildies 2x and myself) I henched and heroed it and received masters. It was also the EASIEST time I've had at it.
Setup:
me - sin (took wild blow cause wild strike isn't that reliable, trust me...)
MoW - SV/mm (minions were pretty much weak meat shields but it worked well getting there)
Olias - SS and some other anti melee curses & blood
Zhed - SF/burning gaze with blurred vision
two healer henches
Dervish hench
Illusion or earth hench (think it was earth when I got masters)

Now SF is bad in that Shiro spreads burning, but by the time he activated IO he died really really fast.

Key that I found was positioning. After capturing the shrines I ran back in. The Dervish started attacking Shiro and this is when I went about positioning. I set up my heroes individually in a circle around him and let the henches position themselves (they did fine cause they weren't flagged next to him to start). I then attacked, putting up my defenses and what not and helped dervish out while making sure my heroes kept SS and SV on him (silly lieutenant's underwear). He got down to less than half fairly quick (think I only used wild blow once at this point) and started to use IO. I backed off so only the dervish was getting attacked and just played spam the SS, SV, and SF. The Dervish died once, and was rez sig'd right away so no problems, she just kept tanking, and before I even had to use wild blow again Shiro was dead.

One hench death for Shiro, a fair trade I would say.
Instead of a SF ele I was thinking about going all water or bringing Norgu and going with anti-melee like ineptitude and clumsiness to help block those skills (wiki explains these well). Except I never had the elite so just stuck with damage dealing which worked out well.

Anyway hope that helps someone.

I used this kind of set-up:

Myself as a anti-melee necro: Spiteful, Reckless haste, Insidious, the usual.
Master of Whispers as Spoil victor necro - I think I had Empathy on him too.
Koss with Wild blow.

And the rest henchies, healers, Cynn and Devona (I think?) For me, Lich was harder than Shiro, since Lich got a few kills while Shiro went down pretty easily. I tried keeping my squad apart a bit and just loaded Shiro with anti-melee skills we had on us. For me, the mission itself was much harder than the end-fight.

I forgot to bring Wild Blow with me when I went into the mission, but it was simply a matter of disabling my heroes strongest skills and not using my own that had +damage (I being the warrior). Once Shiro got to Impossible Odds + Battle Scars, it was a little nerve wracking because of how quickly my health would drop but the henchmen kept me safe. Healing Seed, Shield of Absorption probably would've helped. Once I noticed Battle Scars wasn't stealing my health, I would unload my attack skills onto him which slowly dropped his bar. During the times where he was in the stance, his bar stayed about even.

I had a lone death on myself when I was tanking him, when mid-attack skill he used Battle Scars then proceeded to rip through my health really quick. At which point, I ordered the heroes to run around for 8 seconds~ (Battle Scars duration) so he wasn't stealing a high amount of health from them.

Well...did it 2 times last night once for guildie and once for someone who asked for help in another thread here on guru, beat it both times with 1 death each time 1st time the dervish i was helping died once at shiro and second time hench elly died AND NEITHER TIME DID I TAKE A NECRO AT ALL!!!! Heck, my ranger hero actually interrupted IO on the second run. For all you disbelievers, ask wizkid4785 on this thread http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10083233
if I didn't rape this mission with no necro

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