Help with Gate of Pain

Is there any effective way of beating this mission with hench/heroes, I seem to be having a great deal of trouble with this mission as the A.I seems to have lost it's I at the moment.

What I mean is the spell casters think they are tanks and are rushing in and just getting cut to pieces or if somone goes down they all decide to stop and try and resurect them, I've tried numerous methods and nothing seems to work. I can get to the 4th (or 5th?) torture web but after that things just fall to peices.

Now I can put down my own deaths to having starter armor on my feet but I am usualy the last in my team down. So is there <b>any</b> fail safe way of completing this mission with hench/heroes? Or am I going to have to resort to going with a human group. I have seen people asking for runs but surley this is impossible? (If it isn't I have a mini siege turtle for somone who could do this for me).

One reasonably fail safe way to complete the mission is daze.
Jin with Broad Head arrow on one (called) foo, you with interrupt on the other.
The terrorweb dryers are the hardest, those come in pairs.
So you make sure to disable the meteor showers on one, while your hench team kills of the other one.
Also, those are not linked to the torture, so you can pull them with a bow (flag your hench away somewhat further and remove the flag while you run back to them).

What profession are you using?

Darko - don't despair, after many attempts with PUGs (and I mean many), my dervish finally mastered this mission with just her heroes and henchies. I loaded up Zhed with loads of mesmer interrupts (I didn't have the mesmer hero at this point), made my second prof monk so I had a reusable res skill, and took Master of Whispers as an MM. It took all night but I took it slowly, observed the enemy movements so I could get the best time to strike without aggro-ing everything and made use of pinning my heroes and henchies well back. Oh and I took Lightbringers Gaze with a level 4 rank.

The ironic thing is that I then helped my other half do this mission with his dervish and we easily mastered it first time....sigh

Two rules to beat Gate of Pain

1) Don't over-aggro
2) Follow rule one

i was stuck on the gate of pain myself, though last night i finnaly beat it, henchied it. i then continued on to beat gate of maddness and abbadon with henchies. the build i ran, was almost pure protection to avoid the ungodly damage spikes the torturewebs run. my dervish with conviction/faithful intervention/mystic regen/balth avatar, both monks were running protection, HA build actually, and they worked rather well, one was a ZB protection, Mo/E (glyph of lesser + aegis) the other ran the same build, with shield of regeneration in place of ZB. then came general morgahn with anthem of flame/"theyre on fire"/"watch yourself" although i switched him out for master of whispers running a Spiteful spirit build for gate of madness, you may want to try that varient as well. for the henchies, devona, Cynn, Aidan, and the mesmer are what i think i used, though they really are almost completely optional. Starting at pain, i beat nightfall in 4 hours... most of which was experimenting with builds, but thats what i found most effective, give it a shot.

Another thought to this is calling a target. If you do that, they will all attack that target, not allowing the torment monster to get off "Call to Torment", multiplying your foes.

I agree with Arkantos: Do not take on the enemies if they are close to another mob. Torment monsters and dryders at the same time will like overwhelm the team. One mob at a time. Recharge and continue.

Also, some form of self heal works wonders.

I quite enjoy this mission and I can give you a few hints about it.

Overagroing is a defiant no-no. If you have any hope of beating this mission only take on small groups. Don't jump into any mob that might combat another mob.

Always take the left side, I find it the quickest.

Terroweb dryders are quite easy, however they cannot be effected by the lightbringer gaze they can be brought down quite easily with disruptors. Hero disruptors will work wonders in this mission.

Torturweb dryders are the hardest, you should only combat them one at a time, and it should be your only target. Liquid flame with double damage and conditional burning hurts. So you require heaps of disrupts here as well. Also you should set yourself up for a lot of damage if your not ranger or mesmer. Keep defence in mind (maybe even mantra of flame for reduced fire damage) yet taking down foes quickly is probably the most important thing.

What I took in my build was actually quite simple.

I brought the illusion henchmen, both healing henchmen and the earth henchmen. For heroes I brough Dunkoro set up for healing with light disrupts, Like leech signet and power drain. I had Norgu set up for full disrupt with casting increase spells. I had Magrid the sly with a whole heap of disrupts as well, especially useful for inflicting daze and disabling there skills.

With all my heroes I brought mantra of flame which helped tremendously with defending the team.

The only problem people have with this mission is unpreparedness and over agroing.

Rule 1: Don't overagro
Rule 2: Disrupt

Gate of Pain is the easiest of the three torment missions. A ranger with broadhead arrow makes it a cakewalk. Two players each with a ranger can target seperate dryders and blow through the mission.

When you first zone in, stay on the path to the furthest left. It's far and away the easiest route. Pull the first demon mob back, kill them, and take out the second one. After that you're home free. There are about 3 groups of two dryders, interupts are crucial. You can also take out the three dryders hanging out with the Harbinger on that side making the bonus a lot easier. Head to the right illing the few dryders that remain, cross the bridge and kill the first tortureweb dryder and Harbinger that shows up. From there on there's only a couple demon mobs and a few dryders. Pull carefully and kill away. If you get a lucky spawn you can pull the center harbinger out of his area and not deal with 8 dryders and demon spawn.

Thank you all for the feed back, As soon as I can gain some faction I will try it again using Broadhead arrow.

I tried it again this afternoon loading up Zhed, Souske and Dunkoro with Cry of Frustration and seemed to get alot further then normal but the party was wiped out as good old Devona aggroed an Emisary while fighting a torture web

You can make yourself a mesmer secondary and use power return and web of disruption on terrorweb dryders. When you fight the terrorweb dryders, try to switch between the 2 and to see if they are using ms on you. If they do, just disrupt them because ms have 5 second cast time. Your henchies and heroes should be able to kill them easy.

On the bonus groups, with the durham and the 3 terrorweb dryders, flag your heroes somewhere else and pull the group. Chances are that at least one of the terrorweb dryders try to use ms on you, and they will cast ms on your agro point instead on your heroes/henchies.

Not over-aggroing on this (and lets face it any) mission is great advice.

I find it particularly hard on the first bonus Emissary though (the one in the middle). Anyone got any bright ideas how not to aggro that whole mess of mobs in there?

Tromador: I usually go in from the side where the Lost Soul's gather and pull one group out at a time. Then there will be the Emissary and 3 terrorweb's left to deal with. It takes patience to wait for the patrols to separate enough to pull them. Just flag your heroes back and if you mispull, run for the hills.

I normally have a hard time doing masters on this mission with heroes and henchmen unless I bring a bunch of interrupts myself. The AI is too stupid to interrupt meteor storm on all 3 terrorwebs and is too stupid to quickly evade a meteor storm if one does get cast.

If your hero’s do not have a secondary or do not use there secondary class skills. Then you should change them to a secondary of a Mesmer and add Leech Signet to there skill bar. My monk also takes Power Drain.

If you're getting meteor showered just flag your AI away from the site.
Daze makes the mission pretty easy. In fact, the only hard part is the center emissary, since you may pull about 500 other monsters out with it.

Norgu + Mantra of Recovery + Power Return (with 15/16 Fast Casting to keep Mantra up pretty much constantly)
Margrid + Broad Head Arrow

Problems solved.

Heroes have a target button on their bar. If you put an interrupter on each of the dryders he will dedicate himself to make the dryder's life pretty miserable. It helps a lot since the mobs aren't very big and it's a remedy to the problem that heroes are too stupid to tab between dryders and interrupt all of them.

After struggling with a lot of PUGs that cannot get past the first group of enemies I won't ever do this mission with anything other then a hero/hench group. I think the other posters have covered the basics on how to beat this mission with heros/henchies. Couple other tips. First, besides the interrupts try to disperse your group as much as possible so that any AoE spells that do get launched at your party don't do massive damage to anymore then then 2 or 3 of your group. Second, you have done the mission a few times so as the others have said watch the patrol patterns and don't engage a group until you are confident that you aren't going to get the attention of a second group. Last, if you can equip one of your monks with Light of Deliverance it can help out a lot. Heal party is another less preferred option.

Good luck.

Well I did it, Only 1 death and that was the earth henchmen. Stratergy as folows:

The 'So good it's almost cheating' from the Hero build area of the site, Taking 2 healer hench, Earth and Illusion as she is an awesome interupter.

Just made sure I didn't aggro to many and forced Dunkoro to PS me as went into kill the torture webs - I have a feeling I could of done the bonus but I didn't want to push my luck