Gate of Madness Help

Looking for a good build for the Gates of Madness Mission. I usually use an elementalist secondary but have also used other secondary.

Bring some kind of Elemental defense, either wards or mantras. The Dryders are all kinds of overpowered. Interrupts would help, too, as they have some longer cast times. Aside from that, a couple anti-caster spells should eat them quickly. The rest of the mission is just standard Torment Demons and Shadow dudes.

I think you thinking about the mission before this one. The mission to stop the Dryders and save the souls. This is the mission with Shiro and the lich. I never seen any dryders?

/Mo for rebirth is quite useful, especially with the usual 8+ points in fastcast. Pulls the H&H out of sticky situations. Otherwise, you'll do fine with wastrel's worry and empathy on Shiro; the lich isn't difficult at all.
Interrupts (Power Return, Cry of Frustration in particular) are invaluable against the demon mobs.

/N worked for me. Maxed Domination for Empathy, brought Spoil Victor, as well (Blood was at 9). Made mince meat out of Shiro.

I've only play an Elementalist through there, and I found it "Easy" to do the run-around with Shiro as we where doing the bonus. Personally, I found that just using Fire (or Air) to knock out the enemys as soon as possible was effective as you where running around with Shiro.

The mesmer, you'll have 3 Spellcasters there I believe. No, four was it? Necro's, Monk's, Mesmers and Elementalist. So a bit of Anti-Spellcaster would be helpful to everyone. Whether it's using Migraine to slow their spells (and degening them as fast as possible, with interupts as needed) or just energy denying them, the faster the better.

Course, making sure all members of the party are targeting the same persons is helpful to.

One tip is to make things faster is when the gates open and the monsters come out, don't fight, just move back and go to the earlier gate after the monsters move around the corner. You can sneak in there.
For the part with the portal phantom thingies, you can bring interrupts, like power return and the like. The portal keepers are the ones that HAVE to be taken out first. They die quickest, are the biggest threat and the portals will keep chugging out baddies until they are closed by kill all the phantoms.
On Shiro, I was an Me/A with Ineptitude, Empathy and Feigned Neutrality. You can also bring Signet of Midnight instead of Ineptitude.
The group I was in that finally beat Shiro was a group lead by a mesmer too. She knew things!

There is a bigger thread about this out there somewhere.
I'll say again how to beat Shiro and Lich. Take your usual Hench+Hero team but fit Master or Olias in there. Equip them as Blood(12), Curses(9) and rest Soul Reaping. Put Spoil Victor and Enfeeble in skillbar and fill it up with any other Blood magic skill and don't forget res signet.
Fight through mission, there is a specific route to take that is easier(less enemies), so experiment if you're having trouble. You got this far so everything up to the Lich and Shiro should be a breeze.
When you get to the Lich and Shiro:
1.Open your Necro hero's skill bar and disable all skills (shift-clicking on them) except Enfeeble.
2.While Shiro is your target click on the grayed-out target icon next to Master/Olias' skillbar. That should set Shiro as his target and cause him to ignore all other enemies. Doing so causes Shiro to be under a continous state of weakness.
3.Proceed to attack the Lich and kill him.
4.After Lich is dead continue to ignore Shiro and go rally (cap) the 5 god altars.
5.After you've rallied all 5 gods you should then run into the centre area and while doing so activate(shift-clicking) Master/Olias' Spoil Victor and one more life stealing skill.
6.Just keep thumping away at him till his dead, he might kill 1-3 of your group at his last breath.

Side notes:
I always bring 3 monks(2 Hero, 1 Hench), 2 Heal 1 Protect.
Melee skills like Wild Blow, Wild Throw etc. helps to break his stances and makes it a little easier but is not neccesary.
If you don't have Spoil Victor just go and unlock it with Balthazar faction.

??? Just a question about Shiro: Is it just me or is he way tougher in Factions than in Nightfall? ???

Thanks for your time and good luck.

For me he was a lot tougher in Nightfall than in FActions.
I guess it depends on your group makeup.
When we beat him in Nightfall we only had 1 primary monk and 1 secondary.
3 monks?!

Nightfall is tougher because you don't have the celestial skills you have in Factions.
I've got 3 characters through the game and this mission is one of the more difficult.

3 monks is possible, but ....
I've done the mission with my Inneptitude mesmer in a 3 monk team and it's a slooooooow process.
Replacing one monk with a decent damage dealer would probably saved about 20 minutes.

It is also tougher as Shiro has hex and condition resistance in Nightfall.
I killed him with no sweat as a mesmer.
flag your melonni at the door of the last room, and all the rest of the team just an aggro bubble away.
Pull either shiro or lich, but not both ( this is the tricky part, move back and retry if both came up).

Melonni's bar should be : Avatar of Balthazar, wild blow (AoB is for holy damage versus lich and tanking vs shiro, wild blow is for breaking shiro's stance 'battle scars' which give him high vampirism)

My key skills were : empathy and wastrel's worry that gave me about 100dps
Hero necro with Spoil victor or spiteful spirit helps..

Got thru it with a searing flames / inspiration build. I took only the 2 Hench Monks cynn and Dovana. For heros I took Koss with wild blow, Ranger/Paragon hero (spamming go for the eyes), and here is where most will say I am nuts The Assassin Hero (Main skils Wild Strike and Flashing Blades very nice since the update.) 1 trick that saves time you can run past the big titans without fighting they break agro very fast, and henchmen seem to follow pretty well. Thanks for all your help.

Gratz Pain, i got to this topic a bit late to offer any tips. i used Spirit of Failure on shiro to help out the team, was the biggest energy boost i had in game yet.

Anothertime i put (Rt 2nd) on Morgan & used "Binding chains" to slow Shiro down, the team can get a good distance from him(after you take out the Lich). that does work but in pug teams you need to make sure all pug's Dont attack shiro which is alot harder than it sounds.

Well you've made it now so no matter