Taking out the Drought.

I was taking my ranger through NF today (just beat Refuge) and I saw a bunch of people asking for rangers with BHA. Now, I quit when Factions came out, and came back around August, so I never capped it or anything. Then I remembered concussion shot. Well, it's biggest drawback, is it's energy req. So I was looking through my skill list, and I found Marksman's Wager. Given that The Drought barely ever moves, or enough to dodge arrows anyway, and the interrupt arrow moves very fast too, I figured "might as well try it". So I packed in this, and it worked pretty well.

R/Mo

Att:

13 (10+3) Expertise
8 (7+1) Wilderness Survival
13 (12+1) Marksmanship

Skills:

Savage Shot
Distracting Shot
Concussion Shot
Marksman's Wager {E}
Whirling Defences
Read the Wind (for when you're not using Marksman's Wager)
Favorable Winds
Rebirth

Use: Basically, this is just a very simple interrupt build. Cast Favorable Winds and/or Read the Wind to help you a bit with damage since you don't really have any attack skills, Marksman's Wager when you need to bring out some dazing (in the final battle) will get you 9 energy per hit, plus the cost reduction from Expertise, should bring about a nice finish for you when you're taking out the boss.

This build isn't really ground-breaking, or useful really at all in most situations, I just noticed that it helped a ton when everything was interrupted mid-cast by a sword swipe or such from the dervish or warrior. It was definetely easier than when I went through the mission on my Dervish, so I figured I'd post this for anybody looking to be a little more effective in Rilohn Refuge or so.

Note: Marksman's Wager is a Prophecies-only skill, so I beleive, so you'll need to have capped it in one of the 3 main desert missions to use it.

There is a much much easier way. Just take Winters with u cast it before u attack the drought. Once u attack use Mantra of Frost.
The drought does Earth Dmg and that get increased due to the effects. Now with Winter up all elemental dmg gets converted to cold dmg, which doesnt get increased. With Mantra of Frost u even reduce that dmg. Its basically what everyone is using in DoA now. But its an ancient trick, and probably the easiest way to get Masters for this Mission. Hope this helps
Tane

Having some use Boardhead arrow on him as well is very important.

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Mantra of Frost is just icing on the cake. The main thing is for Winter to have the boss only do double damage on you and nullify the +50% to Earth damage global effect of the level. The mission is pretty easy and you can beat it with any old ranger build.

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Take Winter

Don't be stupid and send your hench in to get nuked by a Sandstorm, run in first and waste it

Just wait till it starts spamming Stone Daggers and distract it

Or yeah, BHA/Concussion Shot. Its quite easy.

As long as you have winter, the mission shouldn't be too hard to master. BHA could be nice, but you are probably better off taking a X/Me or Me/any with Backfire to cast on the boss. Backfire + stone daggers = one masochistic boss. Bosses won't usually kill themselves with backfire, but they will usually spam through it until they are almost dead.

If you do decide to build to interupt, then Concussion shot would be fine. Ele enemies generally are pretty easy to interupt. If it was a mesmer boss or something, then I could understand using BHA, but it's best left to the ranger to decide based on their experience at interupting upon which they should choose.

Ebon Hawk is a very easy-to-interrupt skill that he uses. The suggestions of Winter are interesting too, since I had the elementalist we had bring WaElements with us. Winter is probably way more useful than Read the Wind, in retrospect.

lmao...


i have master in this mission with Master of Whispers as MM (elementals can't give minions) and three monks and two B/P rangers + Aidan + Sogolon(Motivation hench)...


first kill the Droughtlings and then spread the henchies and such...

killed Drought in less than 30 seconds (i counted it....)

EDIT: forgot to mention that i was the only human... ;-)

I was the only ranger in our group - no Winter (she's Elonian), no Broad Head Arrow. Took Concussion Shot in but we killed the Drought so fast that I didn't even use it!

We had a rather unusual team. I think we had a MM (but wouldn't swear to it) and several dervishes. Whatever mix we had, we got Masters .

Did it twice with heroes/hench only for masters on my warrior and ranger.

On my ranger, laid down winter, got necro hero to lay spinal shivers on the drought and sent hench warriors charging in. Drought dead in no time. Team set up was Ranger (myself), Curse Necro hero with Shivers thrown in and Zhed as Searing flame Ele. Henches included warrior, 2 monks and motivation hench.

On my warrior, had Jin lay down winter, necro hero to hit drought with spinal shivers and for extra measure had Jin hit drought with broadhead arrow. Charged in myself, Drought dead in less than 30 secs. With ranger hero, the trick is to disable winter manually until you finally face up against the drought as it has a long recharge time and its annoying to wait for starting the final battle on account of the skill recharge. Team set up was Warrior (myself), Curse Necro hero with Shivers thrown in and Jin as broadhead/winter/interrupt. Henches included Earth hench, 2 monks and motivation hench.

The key is to coordinate the attack all at once i.e. click on hero bars, lock in drought as their target and click on the skill they are supposed to use. So all 2-3 heroes will launch their attacks on the drought at once. With winter up and spinal shivers on while hench warrior is slashing away at the drought, it will not be able to get a SINGLE spell off.

Only done it twice so far. They went a bit like this

3 Punishing/Distracting/Savage Shot - Me, Jin, Marge - Master of Whispers running as OoP/WoP - Winter, FW, RtW and Winno... boss died very quickly.

1 Triple/Cyclone Warrior - 1 Strength of Honour/JI Smiter - 1 BHA/Winter Ranger - Since it appeared to be stuck had Jin BHA it before running in and slicing and dicing it extremely quickly.

Vorian you do know that with Stone Daggers been 1 of the spammable 0 recharge skills having Spinal Shivers on it is sorta begging for your necro to have 0 energy in milliseconds?

Aslong as your hench don't get trapped in its Sandstorm you can't lose. If the Searing Flames Djinn boss could only hit single targets it would be worthless (ie Stone Daggers). The fact it can wipe out an entire team in 3 seconds is because it hits nearby foes, not because of its stupidly high damage (although that Lightning Surge Naga boss was a pain in the ass!).

As long as we’re bragging…

When I went through NF the first time I did not read any hints about any missions and did everything with heroes/henches (until G.o.M., I always have to add that disclaimer).

Did Rihlon Refuge for master’s the first time through. With my dervish. The party was almost wiped at the very very end but we managed to kill the Drought anyway. It proves you can do it without BHA, without Winter, without even a clue!



(Of course on subsequent attempts at this mission, I did indeed take all these neato useful skills, and BHA and Winter are extremely useful!)

I think it's funny people only want Broad Head Arrow when there is a really tough boss. I put it on my ranger hero straight away, it just makes the whole of PvE a joke. Every monk, every caster, unconditionally dazed every 15 seconds. The few times I didn't take my ranger hero, you really notice the difference when the monks can actually heal and the casters actually do damage to you.

But yeah I guess all rangers will still be bringing only Barrage when the 10th chapter is released. /sigh

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