DoA: Stygian Veil completed - strategy and build

Hi, just completed this fourth part of the Mallyx the Unyielding quest in Domain of Anguish, and wanted to share the info.

I won't get into too in-depth, as I think it can be quite flexible.
We went in there twice, with slightly diffrent members and builds, and both seems to work fine.

The important part of this build is: 1 Trapper Ranger, 2 Elementalist with Meteor Shower.
We also had two Warriors, two Monks, and a hero monk.
Build details for each aren't too importnat, I'll list the essential skills.
For the trapper, a standard trapper setup. Trapper's speed, Spike Trap, Barbed Trap, Flame Trap, Dust trap.
Elementalists bring Meteor Shower, and your choice of damage spells. Searing Flame/gaze works fine. However, do not bring any other AoE spells that will cause the enemies to scatter. This will be fatal if the enemies scatter, and pour through the walls your Warriors are maintaining.
Life Barrier on one of the monk. All he will be doing is maintaining Bonds, and using Bless sig.
Your hero is more than capable of doing this.

I was playing the trapper, and with alliance friends (as well as newly made friends/strangers), since I don't like doing hard, lengthly missions in a PuG.
I brought Tahlkora (The only hero in this run) as the Life Barrier monk. Do not give her any energy using heals, as it will hinder her ability to maintain.
You can maintain enchantments by disabling the skill, and using manually yourself.

The first part is, obviously, clear out the initial area full of Darkness and such.
This part, I'll omit, as you should be able to clear them through.
The basic strategy is to use the corners of the walls and place your tanks there, trap, and pull the enemies to you. Casters should stay behind, so the enemies are completely bodyblocked.
I'm sure if you have any experience with other Elite Missions from the past, you are aware of the importance of tanks bodyblocking the corner of walls.
I'll continue under the assumptions that you are.

The first "tough" part, as you may have experienced, was the touch necro mobs that comes in charging at you in droves.
If any of your team member talked to the Whispers NPC in the center with a big "!" over his head, maddening mobs of these touch necros comes charging in from the gates that opens.

Make sure and DO NOT TALK TO THE NPC until you are ready.
This means you cleared out all the Darknessess in the area, and your guys are positioned at the wall.

Here's the picture of where to pull these creatures to.

This is the the West of where the Whispers NPC is located.
Before coming here, use your eles and Gaze to clear out the mobs in the trench aside. Don't worry, they can't get to you.

Then on the curve that's sticking out (where I'm standing on the radar), have a Warrior lined up next to your trapper, and have the trapper trap the area.
Have another Warrior go an aggro a mob of the necros.
Then, the puller proceed to come running back to the trapper, and make sure he RUNS ALONG THE WALL and not come pulling them in angle.
The Warrior will then join with the other warrior to make a "wall".
The mobs will chase them, and gets bodyblocked by the warriors.
They cannot figure out a way to get around them, so they will proceed to attack the warriors.

At this time, all the traps will trigger, knocking them down, bleeding them, etc.
Have the two Eles commence fire on them, with Meteor Showers.
After casting MS, you can proceed to spam with your choice of attacks. Searing Flame works well, but it could be any AoE attack spell that doesn't scatter them.
Trapper will proceed to place more traps.

Repeat this method until all mobs are clear.
The ones you need to be careful are the Stygian Fiends. They are ranged, and use crippling shot, so they could be fatal to the puller.
trapper and bodyblockers needs to be very careful with them.

Once all the mobs are cleared, the quest will update, and ask you to kill two Stygian underlords. Use corner-blocking method to clear the mobs in indicated area. In these areas, the mobs are independent groups, so you can actually pull them 1-2 at a time.

The east side of this is trickier... don't rush in because you see no mobs. They are underground, and will spawn when you get near them. This can wipe your team easily if you aren't aware.
Use the bodyblock trapping method, and have the puller spawn 1 mobs at a time from the ground.

Once both underlords (very weak, lv26 bossess) are slain, you are asked to kill FOUR more.
They are in the trench passages near by, and are quite a bit more powerful.
The four lords are Lv30 Mesmer, Necro, Elementalist, and Monk.

Becareful... the entrance to these trenches have enemies hidden!
These enemies are spawned by the quest update, so it can catch you by surprise and wipe your team.
make sure and position your guys for the bodyblock and trap, before you send off that Warrior to pull.
There are Water-eles that can cast snares on the puller, as well as more fiends with cripplig shot.
Yes, the puller may suffer the most counts of deaths in this run. Oh, the poor soul...


As you make your ways through the trenches, make sure every corner you come across, you set up a wall, and send your poor puller to investigate ahead of you. There are powerful patrols near the Underlords, so make sure to clear them out when you come across them. Do not, ever, have the whole team charge in at any mobs, as there could be more hidden or patrolling.

The bosses are actually independent from the mobs around him, and is possible to pull the mobs off them, or the just the boss himself, and take him out. It should be noted that these bossess do drop GREEN unique items. Here's a picture of a the boss (which looks like a monk torment creature)




And this is one of the green dropped by a Stygian Lord.
It's a Paragon spear, but dropped by a Mesmer boss.
Very nice Paragon spear.


After you killed all four Lords, you then return to the center where the Whispers NPC was. When you do this, be careful when taking passage you haven't taken before... those mobs at the entrance of the trenches are still there.

Once you come to the center and talk to the NPC, it may scare the living daylight out of you, as loads of Torment Claws will spawn from the ground around. They can't hit you unless you are next to them, so don't worry.
There are white Claws among them, called Smothering Tendrils.

Your goal is to kill all of these Tendrils, and the Stygian quest will be completed.

But wait.... before you do kill the tendrils, make sure to go back to where the first image was, where you killed those countless touch necros.
When you kill one of these tendrils, MOBS of creatures will spawn, and comes charging at you. When you get a Tendril life down to nothing, make sure your trapper and Warrior are stationed there, and Eles Meteor Shower are fully recharged. Have the eles kill a tendril, and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
Make sure to run along the walls, to bring the mobs at the trapper, and to have them bodyblocked by Warriors.


For every tendrils killed, a massive mob is spawned.
And all the Torment Claws comes back too.
This takes time to clear, but be patient... pull them and kill one by one, do not rush to kill more tendrils, as these mobs will trample you.

It should be noted, that these tendrils also drops green unique items!
Here's one of the item that a friend got from one of these tendrils.


Once you have cleared the area of the tendrils, the quest is updated, and you have finished this part of the Mallyx quest!
But before you zone out... look carefully around where the tendrils were.
There should be a Stygian Chest. You do not need any keys to open this chest, and it contains a Stygian Gemstone for every member of your team!

Congrats, you now have a gemstone. And no doubt a few have dropped on the way here too, as this mission has insane number of stygian creatures.

Cheers, hope you have fun with this quest.

Now, we must go conquer the two Mallyx quests we have left...

Gratz. Just curious though--

How long did it take you to finish?

zomg

ok if somebody wanna do it..
my IGN Satella Harvenheiht (echo nuker)
i'm from EU so i can play EU servers and international

Nice walkthrough. Thanks.

BTW, the first stage has like 15 groups of mob before you're cleared. In total, budget like 5 hours for this if you're trapping.
Next, does anyone know if you get another gemstone if you do these quests the second time?

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Can a SS or BiP Necro fit in this party?

A better question: How would a Necromancer fit into this build?

A battery will be very useful for the trappers, ele and monks.
The team I did this with had:
4 trappers, 1 br/ss necro, 1 nuker, 1 communing rit and 1 heal monk.
Good tanks are difficult to find so we just trapped the h*ll out of it.

You can have only 1 Warrior if you want to. The Trapper must join in as a wall.
The problem with this is, the trapper has chance of getting interrupted (you do NOT want to use dodging skills here, because of enviromental effect), even with Dust Trap going off.
However, we did it first with 1W and it seems to function just fine, as long as you don't pull overwhelming numbers of mobs (more than 2 sets at once).

This will leave a position open for your choice.
The first time we did it, the profession we had in the team was Ritualist.
You can fit Necro, Mesmer, etc, into this build no problem.
A critical barrage A/R could help the Eles dish out damages to the stuck mob.
There are non-melee mobs that gives you the most trouble, namely the Fiends. (and a few Arms of Intensity looking barrage torments).
Your extra member could bring skills to counter these mobs.

Just be careful to not use type of AoE that scatters the mobs horizontally.. or they could wander off, then decide to walk past the W and R to come wailing at the back.
You don't want to use Minion Masters either, as that's extra targets the monsters will wander off to, causing break in the front line of defence.

If more than 1 mob gets past the front line, you will see a few deaths of your fellow members. I can pretty much guarantee it. These mobs do insane amounts of damage with even their regular attacks, and skills can often inflict instant death.

Remember, try not to use evade/block skills in this area, for its enviromental effects. Instead, tank well.

5 hours!!!!

sod that for a game of soldiers

Excellent work

wow! 5 hours and no res shrines? So if you wipe at 4:45 you're just s.o.l.?
Congratz on getting through this!

/offtopic a bit/
I think Anet will have to change those "Please take a break" notices. Of course those are designed to keep people from getting carpal tunnel and sueing them. Now they add content designed to keep you at your keyboard for 5 hours? Interesting to see how that plays out.
/end offtopic/

Again great job and thanks for the tips etc!

thanks for your help...5 hours?? Guess I won't be beating this any time soon...

Great work.

As a side not, the early Urgoz runs were rather long as well. After we became familiar with the area and the teams build, we shaved a substantial amount of time off of it. That may not happen here, but in all probability will.

Super congrats.

The wall technique, proper nuking, proper healing, proper aggro knowledge, proper pulling and proper trapping.

Wow....thats not so "elite" ;D

THanks for this great guide and proving that the DOA aint so tough.

We just dont know it yet

Thanks for the great walkthrough! Any sort of information on what to expect is greatly appreciated. I only wish I had enough time in the evening to complete this quest but I guess it can wait for the daytime where hopefully enough people will be on.

Anyways, awesome walkthrough and congratulations.

Nice walkthrough, Grats on making it thus far and Thanks for sharing the info. Good luck on the rest of the quest.

just were trying that we finished first quest easy.. than we came to the secound 30 min later we are all dead cauz some overpowerd mobs owend us.. seriously it isnt fun when u spend like 2,5 hours for the first quest and than get owend :/

Yes. It was insane that the mob actually chases you for like the whole map and will only stop when they kill you. I was rit and had to put on a lot of decoy spirits to loose them.

Thanks for the guide. Just tried out Stygian Veil earlier and got killed during the second quest. The mobs just wouldn't stop chasing us...

I'm hoping to try it again tomorrow. Thanks again for the guide!

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Could a dervish fit in ?

Given enough distance and time to cool down, they do actually eventually stop chasing you.
The best kiting method when you're in "omfg frontline defence is breached....PANIC TIME!" mode, is to scatter.

One being chased nees to run to the opposite direction than the rest of the team, and give up his/her life for the cause of the team.

Once separated enough, they will stop chasing, and situate themselves in a area.
However, they are locked on to you, with long-range aggro.
You need someone that's a good runner, to pull them away from the corpses, and use Rebirth to pull together your team, while the few runners confuse the aggro. The rezzed guys needs to run to far, far, off the radar, and gather.

Once all your members are rezzed and gathered in far corner of the map, the pullers needs to kite with speed buffs, to break off the aggro.

Gather your guys around, set yourselves up on a corner for walls, and carefully pull that aggro.
Revenge is Sweet.

However, once in a while, a single enemy splits off from the mob, to chase indefinitly.
To deal with this, simply have the puller run in circles to keep it busy, while your guys are rezzed and ready to bring him down.


I know all this sounds easy in text, hard in practice.
But trust me, our team went from clueless band of misfits to Grand Master of Kiting (8) in no time.
We got better at running away for our lives, than actually killing the enemy

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Please has anyone done these quests twice? Do you get a second gemstone?

You recieve a gem everytime you complete a quest.

be were kiting in corners but even if we waitet like 3-5 min. after we moved together again the came and chase us o_O arena net must be drunker as the setup up the ki`s for this mobs ^^

It's unfortunate that these zones require you to use "secondary-cause-effect" game mechanics (like bodyblocking against the wall) in order to do the missions efficiently.

I see a parallel to the Legendary Defender of Ascalon title; death-leveling in order to get the title? Laughable. Fabricated.

What about SS? Does it make enemies scatter?

Nice!!! Thanks for the awesome walk through.

Nice job!

Question though: can you give us the skill bar for Talhkora please? When you mean don't give her any energy using skills, so does she only have life barrier and signet of devotion, and the rest signets as well?

Sorry if that's a dumb question, but I'm just a bit confused there.

Thanks!

#%@!$£% aaaarghhhhh xD

why oooohhhh whyyyy

As an alternate build to trapping, the group I was in used:

W/E stance tank with ward against foes
4 SF/MS nukers
Barrier bonder, protter (might have had SB), healer

I brought GoS for rez, but it proved to work really well for getting the first MS off as well.

We wiped after accidental overagro around 3rd Lord, and we also lost bonder even before going after the lords, but by that time it didn't seem to matter, the greatest help came for the first few mobs.

With the abundance of MS the touchers aren't even remotely a problem, neither is anything else, since with ward and 4 MS keeping everything knocked down nothing survives for long.

I guess you could do this entire area with simple overkill tactic of one tank, 5 nukers and two monks. Despite not getting to last part, there didn't seem to be anything even that would be a threat to this build. And with just a little caution, everything can be pulled, including the touchers, as well as various popup mobs.

I made the idiot mistake of not realizing that pop up mobs appear in the area that unlocks after you beat the first part of the first quest. I was thinking it was some new area afterwards and while we were clearing the pits from above we ran into them and got our asses handed to us. Sucks!

Word to the wise, there are pop ups on the easternmost ledge. No joke! Anyways, Stygian Veil seems easy, I've had no trouble with it at all aside form the idiot mistake of running into some pop up mobs. :/

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well i dont have any comments anymore.. did this now 6-7 times owend 1 + 2 quests easy.... than those claws spawns if u kill 1 mega mob spawns .. ok tank couldnt run away fast enough so he died... i though np we arent in aggro range and werent ever been in there aggro range before but no we 7 were splitet up over the whole area and those mobs huntet us over those whole area too ( even that we never had aggro) after the owend any one of us 1on1 since the didnt stop chasing it was gg 5 hours for nothink arena nets ki ftw no comment endless aggro and 100000000 m aggro range ftl ( in city and gloom wich i finished the dont have those kind of mega agro maybe stygian bug??)