Domain Of Anguish

What is all this 'it's another deep mission' commentary. The Deep was ROCK, the Deep is where I found my current guild, and filled up my friends list. I still do the Deep. Put the same attitude in other places hmm?

"Creating this game is too hard, I can't do it in the first four hours, I don't have $100,000 to prove I'm awesome. I quit" Goodbye EVERY good game EVER

"Guild battle builds are too hard. We lost right away and no one knows our name. I quit" Goodbye ALL top rank guilds.

Why does everyone keep looking at it from the downer perspective. Look deeper and find something under the surface. Anet had put the 'giants' of all the great areas throughout guild wars into this place. It is a culmination of the monsters that we thrashed through the storyline, and now it's time for us to take it to another level to do it again. Or.. everyone can whine more.

I love a good challange and this is it, but there are problems with it.

This is set up so that only certain builds will be able to work here and that means that certain classes will never be allowed into groups

I only have my Dervish there so far and it can hold out pretty well, but since most people don't trust dervishes to know what there doing I cant find a group.

Im sure my guild and alliance will be able to push through it with some effort, but its not every day that we have enough people online and willng with enough time to tackle this place.

Id not want them to make this a simple point a kill area, but they should balance it so a pug team stands at least a chance of killing the first few groups, then hit them with the true force of this place.

Make it more fun and less, you enter and then you die if your not in the perfect build for this map.

Note: This is not the elite mission, its just the entrance to the elite mission and a means of acuiring Razah!

See, that's just it, I have 0 zero desire for a cookie-cutter build. The fact that one seems to be the only option at the moment is the entire source of my disappointment in the area.
Hard, a challenge = fun.
Annoying, frustrating, and requiring a cookie cutter build = not fun at all.

I also only have a Dervish there and after a few hours the only thing I've been able to figure out about the Domain of Anguish is that I'll never be able to get into a party.

T

Exactly.. that's my only problem with this area (the only a few builds working.) Sure it's fun to figure out what they are.. but it's not going to be fun for players who don't have those types of characters.

So far I've only seen one gem drop.. sadly it wasn't for me

Edit: Anyone know what the thingy at the Rewards guys is/does? And what drops the things for the gold weapons

Perhaps Anet has finally created an area where you need to think?

For instance there is an area (Stygian Veil) where there is heavy melee and fire damage, what combination would work well in that area?

Greater Conflag/Winter/Ward against Elements/Mantra of Frost/Dust Trap
Using that combination you would take a minimum of damage while you could still bring Ele's etc

Another Area is heavy hex, what about Divert Hexes on 3 monks? or even Hexbreaker.

My Point is that there is a viable counter to almost all of the areas

Trapper Groups work, Yay! (sorta)

This is for the Margonites during the first part of the Mallyx quest.

Build:

3 trappers:

smoke trap trapper
Spike trap trapper
Trappers focus trapper

2 Searing Flames Eles

1 Minion Master (they do help, not in very first mob but in mobs to come)(bring br)

WoH monk

Life barrier/life bond bonder

have one trapper bring ew + sybiosis + vipers nest + eoe + standard traps

have another trapper bring qz + standard traps

Everyone should bring Lightbringers Gaze (even monks). Always kill the monk enemies first and then move on to whoever has lowest health (they all do tons of damage so if you can limit the damage output of any of them by killing them, do it)

The enemies that are on the top of the cliffs (once you get past the first few groups) are still trappable from below them, the z axis is crap in gw, lol.

just pull stuff and kill it, you wont kill entire mobs on a single pull and sometimes you have to abandon your efforts and just retreat in order to stay alive, if 3 or more people die at a time, start running away and lose agro, then rebirth them (its a good idea to bring rebirth on everyone.)

when I did this i had a full group on vent so the communication was solid, you may want to do the same. If you don't have vent, go download it, its free.

We actually didn't complete the quest (we died on the last mob that we had to fight before enterying the portal). The resson we lost is because we had an error 7 and also out monk stopped healing/went afk and all our rezes were burnt, lol. I know this build work and, in my eyes, it is still very credable even though we didn't actually win with it. I hope you feel the same way too and I hope it helps you guys out a little.

p.s. we didnt have a ranger with trappers focus but i think it might have been a good idea to bring one. we had 2 spike trap rangers. We also didnt have 2 eles, we had 1 ele and a paragon but the paragon was useless because of vocal minority, he even said he was useless .

If this place becomes cookie cutter heaven, I'll be vastly disappointed -_-

I was looking forward to this opening today. I am actually very disappointed. Wasted maybe 30 deaths over 3 hours and have maybe killed 10 foes in that time. I consider myself to be quite an experienced player but this is just too hard.

I still visit FoW and UW as these two places are good team areas and are enjoyable. The Domain of Anguish is just frustrating.

Unfortunately, any area that is popular will spawn cookie cutter builds no matter what. People just cant think for themselves.

Has anyone beaten that main quest with the Stygians?

if after a few days we discovers that the DoA, as i suspect now,
is all the way as ugly as the rest of the torment
is as boring as urgoz
need a specialized group as the deep
and as 'rewarding' and time consuming as both faction' elites...

No matter how many people will say that's what a elite quest should looks like, i will think about it as a failure.
the UW, Fow and SF had a unique feeling about them, they were rewarding and without a retard in your group and with just a little thinking, they were fun.

Agreed.

Make a good elite area:
Average time:
- Around 30 minutes each quest.
Average monsters:
- Nasty gatekeepers
- A bit easer after them
- Wipe out in less than 1 minute if players do not do anything
- Harder the further in you get there.

This mission:
Average time:
1-4 hours depending only in the build.
Average monsters:
- Harder than a god, each and all of them, no matter where you go or what you do.
- One hit killing.
- 90% chances of wipe out in less than 1 minute no matter what you do.
- Harder... well... I've never seen anything harder than this.

This is not an elite mission, this is the "Ha-Ha! You can do it!" mission.

Listen, Margonites do a lot of lightning attacks. Work off of that.

You could do Winter / Mantra of Frost
or Mantra of Lightning, or even Elemental Resistance, since the really heavy hits are elemental.

Protective spirit would be nice, or even some rit spirits.

Look at Light of Deliverance. grab a couple monks that spam that, and your entire spiking party won't drop instantly because you have to divide your attention. As long as you're keeping distance, you're fine.

Why don't people ever think of a new way to go about doing something, they immediately revert to Prophecies power builds and get pissed off when they don't magically work again.

I've been running this with trusted friends using good communication and have been getting fair success without cookie cutters. I've ran it with pretty much the whole gamut including Mesmer and Ritualist (which seem to be getting the most abuse here).

So in my opinion, don't wait for a cookie cutter, it's not a requirement. Just figure out your own character's strengths and build a Build accordingly.

Sure it's tough, grueling and quick deaths at times, but what's the fun in an easy ride? I like the challenge and even just killing two or three groups of mobs feels like a great accomplishment in here. It's in stark contrast to some of the other areas where my henchmen could easily clear the map without my help.

So thank you Anet for something to wrap my brain around! I'm sure there'll be pleanty of cookie cutter builds coming out soon but I much prefer balance and skill in here.

Rits are in demand right now. Dont know about future, but right now, theyre wanted.

Just make Razah easier to get (AND NOT REQUIRING THOSE GEMS) and I'll be happy.

It's mainly him I'm after anyway, the rest I'll live with.

An ELITE mission should be difficult, should take time to figure out, should present a challenge everytime you go in. It requires teamwork and good communication. It usually requires thinking outside the box. The players who persist and work out the requirements to beat the mission should be praised.

But the GW community's growing dependence on "waiting for a team build to be posted" is not good. While I don't think that you need to re-invent the wheel everytime, you also don't need to stop thinking for yourself. Every mission build out there was developed through experimenting. There are other builds that work, probably less efficiently, possibly more, but they do work. Saying something like "warriors will be useless" only hours after the mission opened is ridiculous and self-defeating.

I was reading this thread when the mission opened. I think the first post was at 2:55pm EST (GMT -5). According to a later post by Gaile, who was in the game at the time, the first scream of frustration came about 10 minutes later. And the complaints started in this thread.

I believe that ANet has given players just what they have been requesting for months. A difficult mission with easy to meet requirements (finish NF) that is not dependent on favor or ferrying. Now it seems that those same players really wanted complete instructions supplied for beating the mission.

That I can agree with. And I dont understand what a Factions Hero is doing in a Nightfall Elite mission anyway.

Sure its viable. But whatever character you are playing isn't viable in all areas. So while your build might be the champ in one area, you will have trouble getting that player in a group for another. In a sense, we're all pretty much screwed unless we go monk.

Wow , a challenge for the masses and all that happens is 33 pages of whining , me im just about finished the game and really looking forward to DOA ill die over and over again but its a challenge , something new Anet thankyou for the wakeup call to all the LEET 1337 im invincible players out there , come on guys you are the ones who spend hours figuring out build and defences now you have a chance to really show you are elite , step back take a breath and look at what is happening when you fight what could you have done to stop or avoid that , take this as it is.........A challenge for the serious player , help out the rest of the community and get that "LEET" title by thinking not complaining

I've tested b/p - doesn't work, don't live long enough to raise minions.
Trapping - poor group, but even then too risky, since a single mob or two will wipe you

Overall, the area doesn't seem gimick friendly (the city).

The furthest I came were balanced groups. Body blocking against walls, nukers, combination of party heals, prot and straight heals, paragon magic, wards, stance tanks.

Lightning hammer hits a squishy for 300+, for example. Bonding, enchant have builds don't last long. A 300 damage spike will kill a bonder.

For the city, pulling and managing agro seems to be the key. More than two warriors seem an overkill, simply because no ammount of monks can heal them. A single nuker, glyph or echo isn't enough to kill a group, even with support from SS. It may vary depending on how fast the monk goes down, but having two pure AoE damage classes seems minimum.

Mob AI seems to be reasonable as I've never seen it scatter, or at least scatter much. Pulling must be done carefully, but it's very possible. As long as puller know how to do it. Ward against elements is great for backline, as long as everyone stays in it.

The area is so hard, since all the usual builds don't work. A daze+virulence on entire group, along with DoT AoE would probably shut down entire caster group. Not really sure on elites, but perhaps diversion, humility spam would cut the damage potential in half. Incoming works. E-denial seems to hurt player group much more than mobs.

One thing is sure, even with very limited experience, the missions are not only doable, but should provide to be reliably doable. The greatest problems right now are in the basic tactics.

Some examples:
- A healing monk with 3 superior runes
- Not knowing how to body block
- Too many melee
- Always not enough dps
- Not prepared for various aspects (interrupts, spike damage, e-denial, AoE damage, ...)
- Groups entering area for the first time
- Not knowing the patrols, not knowing safe spots, people running around
- Nobody is leading since nobody knows the area well enough, resulting in confusion

Add all that together, and area becomes considerably harder than it really is.

And for some reason, everyone is fixated on the city, whereas others are somewhat easier, or at least a bit more forgiving. In city, every other group pulls 3 groups, dies 3 seconds later.

This are tests the skill. LB8 alone won't save you. It helps somewhat with killing, but unless you understand all the other aspects, you'll wipe anyway.

So yes, it's an area that does require skill. At least for now, a semi-gimmick build may apear down the line, although I don't think it'll ever be quite as extreme as b/p.

I have all the elementalist, monk and mesmer skills.
I already tried many possible combinations. Most of them keeps me alive, but the balance between our defense and their attacks is unreal. If we manage to stay alive, we can't deal anough damage to prevent them form healing. Only my burning could get some kills.

And nothing protect against the holy damage some of them seem to deal (poor olias and with torturer insignia :P)

EDIT: This was reply 666. And it was one of those annoying rants. This is a insgina... I mean... a signal!

I've no problem with the difficulty that has been presented. Rather my problem is the fact that simply put overpowered creatures inside with a skill that is abused beyond belief.

The fact that everything in the DoA is level 28 means that each monster has apparently about a 20-22 in its main attribute. Case and evidence, had a Mesmer hit a friend with Cry for over 66 damage. At 16 it does what maybe 43? Now combine this with "Enraged". In my honest opinion it's either broken, or so abused that it should either be nerfed or taken out. The fact that any caster has a all around base damage increase of 25% and up to another 25% based on it's health is unbelievable. These monsters are already 5-6 attribute points higher then any player in the game and now have up to an additional 37.5% damage. This means that an Ele can simply take any character it wishes down in a minimum of 2 skills.

I was just agreeing with him regarding how certain classes might be alienated.

Well said. Let's look at ways to crack the challenge, it's what PvE'ers have wanted for months. It should take more than 10 hours to complete it.

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. But at least you are admitting it.

I wouldnt mind a challenge of the close to impossible kind if there was a way to do it with real people. But Anet chose to make NF THE singleplayer experience of all 3 chapters and now they are expecting us to team up and play cooperative like mad?

I remember that Anet thought about introducing voice chat at some point but that good idea seems to be dead and unless you are one of the few chosen that have the luck to be in a more or less professional PvE team guilds/alliances i can only wish you gl with DoA.

Can you even say what the enemy skills did? Did you even look? Every single skill they have put into this game has a counter, every enemy a weakness, every zone is beatable.

Now I'm no hardcore player. I play a few hours a week and am still on the quest "And A Hero Shall Lead Them" near the beginning of NF. I'll eventually make my way to the end and give the elite mission a try. What I can say is that all of you complaining that it's too hard should do things that are more fun for you.

You loved the game yesterday and were having fun to no end until suddenly they introduce a new area you don't like....so now the game is crap? C'mon guys, this is a no-brainer. They have areas upon areas and missions upon missions that are easy and slightly difficult. They add 1 (frikkin' ONE!!!) really difficult one and you're all ready to wet yourselves about it.

If you like a challenge and want a test of team building skill, here it is. Sounds like they did a great job of making you work for your victory. If you don't want to spend the time (and who knows, I might not....I certainly never enjoyed the Deep because of the time it required), then do something else. If you were already planning to quit the game and expected one set of quests to pull you back to loving it, well, welcome to reality

I sincerely hope they don't nerf this area before I get there. I may not play much but I can't wait to test my building skills when I finally arrive.

EDIT: Well said, Antheus. Working the scenario instead of tear ducts ftw

I'm thinking Ward Vs Elements will not be optional for long here.

THe enrage skill is what needs to be fixed, there isn't one possible way a regular old beating nightfall group wil be able to beat this, even elite groups of elite people have trouble

I wonder if a bunch of necros would do well? Do the old Halls trick and have one or two sacicide constantly with a fast casting rezzer. Build up an army of 20 minions and draw a pack to them.

The damage seems spiky so far, so minions *might* survive a couple seconds.

The dmg is jsut too much, and dping the necros would be a waste of room, the minions would die instantly, and whats funny is that as a warrior i was tanking, but suddenly i died, look at the dmg monitor, i had ten times famine, lightning strike, hammer, enervatiung charge and invoking lightnign, i think hammer and famine mostly killed me tho, the necros would kill themselves because of that air spike

The only thing I wish would change about this area is for it to be easier to get in a group. I can deal with the deaths, I can deal with the many tries it is going to take to get thru even just one area. I am having trouble dealing with the hour long (or longer) wait to get into a group only to lose half the group when we fail. I wish people had more patience to give it more than one try.
Anyone else having this problem? I am playing a warrior, maybe its time to bring the monk thru the game now.

finally an area that will separate the boys from the men (and the girls from the women)!

real, diverse groups who will actually use their heads will be open to all classes and groups while the little boys will be constantly whining on the internet for that premade and pretested build so they can rush to their gems/rewards and what-not.


you see the exact same thing in fow/uw. You have the groups of diverse classes who are there for the challenge, versus the greedy glob hogging whiners who just.. well, whine whine and whine some more

the internet makes things too freaking easy these days

anyone here actually remember how rpg puzzles and challenges were before the net? where they actually had phone tip lines you could call if you got stuck? =)


i grouped up w/ one other person for some nf mission last night, just us and heroes.. and the guy wouldn't go until he had looked up the entire thing on guildwiki! man.. i told him we'll learn in the mission. it fairly tells you what the bonus is etc.. it's really not that hard.. players no longer have the stomach for any challenge at all

it's frankly, pathetic

I'm not an uber player, but I have 3 characters at least up to the Realm of Torment and my survivor character made it past Abaddon (currently enjoying a leisurely stroll through Echovald Forest). I'm comfortable switching builds as necessary, but that's life for a Mesmer primary.

Domain of Anguish reminds me of Ultima Online, you know, back when you could trap Ogre Lords and Balrons behind tables and blade spirit/energy vortex them to death while having a friendly conversation with the other Glorious Lord Grandmaster Mages who were sharing the spawn with you. The servers, for whatever reason, weren't able to handle the load for decent AI and the only way they could make high end challenging monsters was to give them 1000+ hp (while you are stuck with max 100), 200 dex to make them swing uber fast (again, max 100), and 200 magery (max 100 for players). The only way you could melee these bad boys was to run by and take a swing at them, hoping they didn't take too big of a chunk out of you because you sure as hell weren't going to live long standing toe to toe.

I want a reasonable challenge. Giving monsters uber stats and skills is not a reasonable challenge, it's just silly. Give them less shitty skill bars instead of 4-5 skills that only vaguely have some sort of synergy, give them better AI. Fighting NPCs with cheater abilities is no more fun than fighting against people in FPS that are running headshot/shoot through wall hacks.

Yes i am having trouble with that thargor. I am easing my frustration by ranking up in lightbringer(52 till rank 3).

So far not a single Elementalist or monk skill can keep the party alive, I have them all, I've tested many of them. No results.

Has anyone gotten past that quest with the Stygian enemies? Because that area isnt' even the elite mission, it's just an elite area.

dunno if this may or may not help anyone but pulling here is key (durrrr)

here is a pretty good 2 man pull build ive gotten, which fits in well with the B/P group thing people r doin n stuff.

just bring.......

monk with....
Spell Breaker - avoids rending of ur 2 enchants to keep puller up n alive.
Spirit Bond
Protective Spirit

ranger with....
Longbow for pulling...

ya i bet many have figured this one out
im not ingame atm just thinkin up how to do the things. but. when u enter city of tc'agnaw or whatever its called, the groups will behave like this...



green dots = team members.
purple dot = quest giver guy
blue line = farthest any group seems to pull
blue square = inside is the firt group u pull
red dots = enemies (dunno if thats how many there r per group)
big yellow dot = where the two (maybe 3?) groups behind the first group meet up. dont pull when they bunch here cuz more than 1 group usually = gg
yellow arrows = path enemy groups seem to follow.
blackness = areas u cant go cuz they r walls.

i never rlly got past first 3 groups cuz i got off at about 4:30 est to go sleep cuz im tired. and now im up n gonna get me a torment sheild, or whatever its called

ya prolly just stating the obvious but i figure this might help a few of u having trouble getting just 1 group or nething like that in the city place.