Detailed Guide to solo farming IDS with a Mo/Me

The Build

Monk/Mesmer

4 Inspiration
1+3 = 4 Healing Prayer
10+3+1 = 14 Smiting Prayer
11+3 = 14 Protection Prayer
9+3 = 12 Divine Favor

Skills
Protective Spirit
Shield of Absorption
Blessed Aura
Balthazar's Spirit
Mantra of Resolve
Shield of Judgment (Elite)
Healing Breeze (or Watchful Spirit, or something else to counter health degeneration)
Whatever (Essence bond is useful)

Equipment
Strongest armor you can get, with Superior Runes distributed appropriately.
You need a weapon or focus that increases enchantment duration by 20%. I use Kephet's Refuge.
You'll also need an extra headgear with a +1 Divine Favor boost. You'll swap to this when you cast your maintained enchantments.

Using this Build

This is not a new build, but it is well-suited for this run. There are other threads that explain this build much more thoroughly, but here's a quick run-down on how it works.

Swap to your Divine Favor headgear. This should give you enough Divine Favor to give you a 32% boost from Blessed Aura. Cast Blessed Aura and Balthazar's Spirit (and Watchful Spirit if you brought it). Switch back to your Smiting Prayer headgear and head out! Have Protective Spirit and Shield of Absorption up before aggroing ANYTHING. With both PS and SoA up, you will take about 15 points of damage, followed by no damage at all from any source other than health degeneration. You'll have about one second to recast Shield of Absorption when it recharges, and that much ONLY because of the 32% boost from Blessed Aura. If you're not used to working this kind of build, you may want to practice a bit before trying this run!

Use Mantra of Resolve to counter interrupts. For this run, I keep it up all the time. Avicari Braves have an interrupt, and the Ice Imps themselves, of course, have Maelstrom. Mantra of Resolve will ensure you aren't interrupted while recasting your enchantments.

Healing Breeze or some other degen counter is essential, as in the course of this run you will have hexes such as Phantom Pain and Life Siphon cast on you, often while you're already bleeding. Divine Favor will help keep you alive, but you'll need something to take the edge off.

Shield of Justice is your damage-dealer. It will take two casts of it to kill most of the mobs you'll encounter on this run.

Getting through Tasca's Demise

First things first. When you step outside of the Citadel, you’ll be ambushed. If you don’t want to kill this group, then you can bypass it pretty easily. Stand near the eastern edge of the clearing and wait. The Summit will start to move toward the portal to the Citadel. Duck between the black rock and the snowy hill once the enemy is clear of your aggro circle and head east. Run down the path past the Shrine to encounter some more summit. This next group will be impossible to avoid.

Screenshot: Avoiding the summit

You can either kill this second group, or run through them. Sometimes there will be a slow-moving patrol with a Stone Summit Heretic in it heading northward from here. DO NOT AGGRO THE HERETIC. If the Heretic is there, you’ll have to wait for him to head north, so you might as well kill this group and get some steel ingots, leather squares and possibly some runes. Kill the Giant Herders first, as they can knock you down and interrupt you. If one of them runs away, fire your staff at him and he’ll come back. They should both die pretty quickly. Use HB to counter the bleeding and Life Siphon. The rangers and Carvers will die on the second Shield of Justice. The Gnashers can last a very long time by raising minions and using Taste of Death; killing them is more trouble than it’s worth. Once everything else is dead, just pick up your loot, ignore them, and move on.

Screenshot: Killing the second group

Here the path splits north and east. You want to go north. Along the way you will encounter 3 or 4 Ice Golems and a Gnasher. The golems will knock you down with Water Trident, so be careful. Wait for Deep Freeze to wear off before moving. Make your way north until you reach the wall, then head -west- into the corner. Back yourself as far into the corner as you can. A patrol will be coming back shortly, and you don’t want to be caught by it. Pass the time by killing the Gnasher and the Ice Golems. A Heretic and some other Summit should approach from the east, pass you well outside your aggro circle, and then head south. If they haven't shown up by the time you're done killing the Golems, you might have to run east until they appear on your map, at which point they should begin moving toward you. Run back to your safe little corner and wait for them to go by. Once they're clear, run east along the path and head north at the turn.

Screenshots:
Here comes the Heretic patrol from the east
The patrol has headed south, time to start running east

Now this is the part that may require a bit of luck. You'll see a large open space with many, many Heretics here. DO NOT AGGRO THE HERETICS. At the northeast corner of your radar, you should see a slow-moving patrol of Heretics heading north toward the portal to Mineral Springs. You may not be able to see the portal on your radar, but you should be able to see the patrol. If not, just wait for it. I've never made a run without seeing it. You must wait until that patrol is AWAY from the portal, then make a break for it. Sometimes you'll get lucky, and the Summit will be far enough west that you can run straight for the portal and make it. Usually, though, you'll die horribly as all the Heretics shatter your enchantments and rain health degeneration on you. This is okay, though, because if you make it even a little way into the clearing, you'll spawn at the Shrine just west of Mineral Springs. And since you waited for that Heretic patrol to move south, you should have a clear path straight to the portal. If you didn't wait, then the Heretics might be standing right IN the portal, and you'll have to wait until they move off and risk aggroing the whole mob again. If that happens, you probably won't be able to reach Mineral Springs at all. Don't dawdle by the portal, either, as Avicari Tengu will sometimes run out of it.

Screenshots:
Waiting for the patrol to get clear of the portal
Run forward just enough to activate the Shrine, drawing the Summit away from it
With the patrol clear you have a straight run from the Shrine to the portal. Yes, Avicari really run out of the portal

Map Screenshot

Getting through Mineral Springs

Okay, so you're in Mineral Springs, probably with 15% DP. No problem. Recast your maintained enchantments (don't forget to equip the Divine Favor headgear while you do this) and take out the first group of Avicari. Two shots of SoJ should do it. There may be more than three Braves in the group. If that's the case, be sure to use your staff on the ones that run away so they can't regenerate their health. Clearing this first group should remove any death penalty you may have accrued getting here.

Screenshot: Killing the first group

Now run east along the path. Here you'll meet another group (actually two groups) of Braves and Fierce. If you want to kill these, I recommend running farther east and aggroing the next group of Fierce before they patrol north. Then you can kill them all at once. Again, two casts of SoJ should take care of them all.

Screenshots:
Aggro the second group and run them toward the third...
... and kill them all!

Now the path turns northward. Follow it, and it will turn east, then south again. At this point, there will likely be a group of Avicari to the west. Avoid them, as it's usually a boss group and with mesmers and necromancers in it. Also near here you'll find 4-5 Pine Souls. A single round of SoJ will kill them all easily, or you can just ignore them and keep moving. They use Spike Trap, though, so be ready to cast HB to counter bleeding. Now you'll be heading south. Eventually you'll reach another fork where you can either go east, or continue south. Both paths end up at the same place, but heading south takes you farther out of your way. In this area will be at least two large groups of Avicari Fierce. Aggro them both and take them out with two rounds of SoJ. Do NOT go too far east until you've killed these mobs. Once they're down, you're ready for what's likely to be your second death of the run.

Screenshot:That's a lot of arrows.

To the east you'll see a small group of Avicari containing at least one Wise (mesmer) and probably a Guile (necromancer). Guiles use Strip Enchantment, so this is going to get interesting. Move to just outside aggro range of this group, then cast PS, SoA and stack HB on top of them. Run like hell to the east. You'll pass another boss group, which you'll likely aggro. Head up the hill, still moving east, and you should see a Shrine. Make sure it's activated, then let the mob kill you. You'll respawn on the Shrine, clear of the Avicari (who will run back west as soon as you die).

Screenshots:
We'll run by this mob
Keep moving east to activate the Shrine
Make SURE the Shrine is activated
Die...
... and be reborn!

Okay. We're halfway there...

Recast your enchantments (don't forget the Divine Spirit headgear) and head south. You'll see a group of Avicari to the southwest; avoid them. To the south and southeast, you'll see a large field with some Tundra Giants wandering around. Their normal attack will randomly knock you down, plus they use Giant Stomp. It is vital that you not aggro more than three or four; otherwise you'll be spending too much time on your ass to reliably recast SoA. If you do aggro more than you can handle, you may be able to hide under the cliff near the Shrine to avoid taking hits while you recast.

The easiest way to kill the Giants is to cast SoJ just -before- you aggro them. They don't get knocked down, so they'll kill themselves quickly before the enchantment runs out and you should only need to recast SoA once before they're dead. If possible, wait until you are knocked down to recast SoA; you'll cast it the second you stand up, and the odds of you getting knocked down again immediately are quite low. If SoA gets interrupted by a knockdown, then kite like mad to dodge the rocks until it recharges. In this way, clear out the Tundra Giants that stand between you and the narrow crevice to the southeast. Do not wander too far south here; there are giant Wurms down there and the constant knockdowns will be the end of you.

Screenshots:
Giants before
Giants after

Once inside the dark crevice east of the Tundra Giant field, hold down your Ctrl key and look around. There will be a boss north of you and there will probably be a Guile in his mob, along with several Wise. Cast PS and SoA, and cover it with HB, SoJ, and whatever other enchantment you may have. Run like hell north through the mob. It's VERY narrow here, so make sure you don't get pinned in by Braves. Just keep running north, recasting HB to counter the degen from the Wise. The entire group will break off pursuit when you leave the shadowy area. Almost there now!

Screenshots:
I have X-ray vision!
Run north like crazy!

The last part of the run can be the most frustrating. You've come all this way, but sometimes the very last groups of Avicari make it nearly impossible to actually enter the Ice Imp cave. To reach the cave, you need to run west around a long ridge, then head straight east to the cave entrance. There are usually two groups of Avicari along this route, and at least one of them will likely contain a Guile. There are four main configurations you're likely to find the Avicari in as you approach the cave.

A) No Avicari at all between you and the cave. This is what you hope for, but it doesn't happen often.
B) One Avicari group near the western tip of the ridge, and another just east of them around the bend.
C) One group of Avicari near the western tip of the ridge, and another very close to the cave entrance.
D)Both groups of Avicari very close to the cave entrance, mingled with Imps.

If you encounter situation A, thank the Gods and proceed to the cave. If you encounter B, then you can probably make it to the cave by running and reapplying whatever the Guile strips, as the Avicari will break off pursuit when you reach the entrance.

Dealing with C is more complicated, particularly if the group near the cave entrance contains a Guile. If it does not, just make your way inside, using HB to counter the degen from the mesmers until they give up well inside the cave. If the group DOES contain a Guile, then there's a method I've found that you can use to draw them away. Aggro the mob near the cave entrance, and lead them back around the western tip of the ridge, along the path you used to get here. Lead them until you are nearly opposite their original location on the other side of the ridge. You'll be at the very edge of their pursuit range; it may take some work to lead them this far. Once you've got them on the other side of the ridge, though, something weird will happen. The AI's path-finding will mess up, and the group will get stuck against the southern face of the ridge, unable to find a route back to their starting point! (See the screenshot.) Now you can run around them, make your way through the mob at the western tip, and head into the cave. Sometimes they'll start running back, but they'll always hug the face of the ridge, so you can run past them without aggroing them.

Screenshots:
Where to lead the avicari
Avicari stuck against the southern face of the ridge

If you find configuration D... good luck to you. You may be able to deal with them using the same trick as C, but I've found that it's very difficult to lead both groups all the way around the ridge. If there are no Guiles in the group, you can just head into the cave and make sure you keep HB up until they give up.

Inside the Ice Imp Cave

This is the easy part. Just make sure you keep Mantra of Resolve up at all times and make sure your energy is full, or close to full, before casting anything. The reason for this is that Mantra of Resolve may drain 10 or 20 extra energy on top your spell's casting cost. If you run out of energy, Mantra of Resolve will fail and you'll be in deep trouble. Fortunately, Maelstrom and constant hits from the imps will refill your energy very quickly thanks to Balthazar's spirit (and Essence Bond, if you brought it).

Screenshots:
SLAUGHTER!
Note all the hits from Maelstrom, yet no interruption
Bingo!
Uh.. Bingo! Yes, I got two in one run. Don't expect this to happen, this is NOT a common event.

Map screenshot (note the jump in my path where I was killed and respawned)

Beyond the ice cave

Make sure you kill ALL the imps. It's possible to get past the Ice Beast and kill the imps that sometimes spawn near the Seer in the southern exit of the cave. To get there, though, you'll need to get past 6 Azure Shadows in the tunnel, and their knockdown can really make this difficult. Here's the easiest way to do it.

Just like when fighting imps, make sure you keep all your enchantments up at all times, including Mantra of Resolve, as sometimes Imps will spot you while you're dispatching the Shadows. Move -very- south down the passage toward the Ice Beast. If you move slowly enough, you should spawn only 2-3 Azure Shadows. If you spawn all 6, back off and try to get it down to just a couple. It's possible to kill all 6 at once, but it's very chancy. The Shadows will attract the attention of the Ice Beast as well, but it can't hurt you as long as you keep your enchantments up. Now the trick here is to make sure you don't get interrupted by the Shadows' knockdown. Fortunately, it's a Signet skill and thus is very easy to spot. If you see the white Signet rune forming over their head, make sure you don't cast. Just keep up SoJ and wand the ones that run away, and you'll have them down pretty quickly. Then you just need to move forward and make the rest of them spawn (there should be 6 total, I believe). Wait for them to use Signet of Judgment, then cast SoJ; getting interrupted while casting SoJ really sucks due to the long recharge time.

You won't be able to kill the Ice Beast; just ignore it and keep your enchantments up as you proceed south to kill any imps that are near the Seer. It's worth getting past the Shadows if there are several imps to the south; the very first IDS I ever got dropped from one of the imps near the Seer.

I'll add some screenshots to illustrate this part shortly.