Hard Mode: Tips and Tricks

Hard Mode is Hard. But, like every video game, there is a patten, and there are hints which can make it easier.

*Hard Mode is serious business. You're not in Ascalon anymore. You should treat every party like a normal one (i.e. 2-3 healers in a 6-8 man group), otherwise you'll have problems.

*SS Necromancers and Mesmers are incredibly useful. With the fast-attack and the fast-casting enemies, Spiteful Spirit and Backfire/Empathy will trigger like mad. SS Necromancers are more attributed to melee shutdown, and Mesmers are caster shutdown; if you have both in the same group, Hard Mode will be a breeze. Who needs offense when your enemies become kittens? (Unfortunately, there aren't many effective Hero builds for Mesmers, and even less for SS, since the AI has no target prioritization ([i.e. Norgu will cast Backfire on a Warrior often])

*Always bring a Res spell, either a permanent one or a Signet (And if you are going to bring a signet, bring the dang Sunspear Ressurection Signet!). The Hard Mode AI will spike, and people will die, no matter how good your Monks are. Many groups I've been in have ended due to a lack of res.

Post your own Hard Mode tips!

Heard you could kill any group on hard mode without even having them attack you by using a Longbow/Flatbow. That'd be quite serious, any information on that?

Other then that; join a guild, that's what I plan on doing. Some missions/explorable areas are impossible with heroes/henchies.

I tested it after the last update, and it's fixed now.

For the lower level Ascalon missions, I highly recommend an MM.

Now let me tell you about an area I don't recommend an MM for... Kessex Peak. Yeah, the baddies in the back use Vereta's Gaze.

Also, don't forget to bring a necro hero capable of spamming enfeebling blood.

Weakness spamming on those nasty melee rushers will make your life a -lot- easier.

I use myself as a dervish party healer to keep the party's health at maximum as much as possible. I'd also definately suggest, if there's room, to bring an SF hero with two spell interupts from the mesmer line.

If you're a necro, and can manage, get three heroes setup as minion masters (do not give them blood of the master), and set yourself up as a N/D to spam blood of the master (and create a few minions). This tactics is virtually invincible in normal mode once an army is built, and works just as well in hard. I'd recommend bringing protection/healer henchmen. No, fleshgolem is not a necessity, but order of pain and things like spiteful spirit will help kill the first few minions to get an army going. A good sized army will consume anywhere from 50% - 80% of your health when you use blood of the master (without aotl), so things like mystic regeneration and aura of the lich are a MUST.

Don't forget to bring enemy shutdowns. Pure DPS won't get you anywhere but dead. You'll need snares, interrupts, blinds, and shutdown hexes to keep your team alive and kicking. Sadly, heroes suck at this. Dunkoro likes to go shake hands with snared enemies, instead of kiting them.

The only place I've noticed enemies not moving is the ghosts in the ruins of surmia mission. It's pretty much only an issue with monsters who are programmed to never, ever leave a certain spot, which isn't many of them.

Organize your groups beforehand. Ask everyone to ping their skillbar, and ping your own. Take ten minutes coordinating skillbars before the mission to avoid wiping and wasting 30 minutes.

Take it slow and check guildwiki for mob types for a basic idea of what your going to be up against!
(Example Fort Ranik has a lot of hexes so bring divert hex elite if your a monk and it'll make your life a whole lot easier)

Focus Fire on a single target!

Sometimes the best defense is a lot of offense for a mission

Carefully consider the type of enemies you're up against.
You may not yet know their build but you can be sure about their class. Skill accordingly and the missions will be a breeze. For example bringing a Minionmaster in the pretty much corpseless areas of Kryta is pointless. Having a bonder step up against Mirror of Disenchantment Margonites just doesn't work.

General Tips:
Damage Prevention is king. Don't even bother with pure healing, you just won't cut it. Continued partywide exposure to 200+ damage hits drain even the best healing monk dry. Also consider ways for your monk to evade damage when shit hits the fan. Dash worked wonders for me.

Furthermore, don't rely on enchantments. They were pretty much stripped at every corner in normal mode allready. It's even worse in Hardmode. Atleast bring some backup plan in the form of other damage prevention. Shouts (especially Paragons. Yep), Hexes (Make them suffer), Interrupts (the best damage prevention is damage not even casted) and condition (show them how weak they really are) can really make the difference.

The classic tank mentality is counterproductive unless your team really knows what they're doing. In which case the tank mentality boosts the speed up manifold. Unless you're there, ignore tanks.

Effectively, it's very difficult with only heroes/henchmen.
I played with my guildmates, we were killed very often with regular builds. We had to rebuild several times, but it was quiete OK then.

I'm more often playing as a monk, I had to abandon full heal builds to take some protection stuff (especially protective spirit)

One of my guild's ele took some protection skills too( earth magic) seemed to work quiete fine.
Another ele took a "tank" build, worked fine (especially with titans) but we had to be very careful to not aggro ennemies before he did.

When playing with another human monk I played full protection it seemed to work fine with my brother's monk playing heal (with 2 protection skills including protective spirit); of course it's much easier with 2 human monks rather than one human and a hero monk.

I used an armor without ANY superior rune, and a +60 health staff. Protective spirit saved our lifes very often.

Ergo the derv healer. Derv healers are king (or queen) of party health control, they do not spike heal, but will constantly supply the entire party with 89 health every 2.8 seconds roughly, while staying completely out of the line of fire beceause of the great range of mystic healing. In short, each party member is getting roughly 30 health a second from a derv healer, not including those that already possess health regeneration of their own. While this may not seem like alot, its counter productive to enemy attacks, and allows your spike healers (monks) to thrust great amounts of healing onto party members that really need it. In short, a derv healer and a spike healer work great together.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am getting tired of the people complaining about hard mode being too hard being met with responses like "Maybe it wasn't meant for you." or the more blunt "You must suck at PvE." replies. We need more helpful responses that will aid in solving the hard mode puzzle for some of those players that aren't yet enjoying it because it is too difficult for them. I was amongst those players not enjoying it at first, but after taking a long hard look at my builds and equipment I have found that it isn't as bad as I first thought it was. I just had to become a better player to start enjoying it.

What I aim to do is make a forum post with tips and tricks for players that are having difficulty adjusting to the new more difficult mobs. After all, they have raised their game, so we need to respond in kind if we expect to get anywhere in this new mode of play.

So, here are the two main questions I think it would help to focus on, when helping other players:

1. What adjustments have you made so far to better your gameplay in hard mode?

2. What are your tips for players struggling to make it in hard mode?

Examples of what I mean are tips for individial class builds, player + 3x hero team builds, missions tips, and explorable area tips for those players trying to vanquish.

For me, I have found the following tips to be important:

-Try looking at the armor and overall health bonuses on yourself and your heroes. Which ones have the lowest armor and health levels? Since they will be targeted first, how do you make them stand up to that damage? Try out various skills that allow them to block incoming attacks, and more importantly, try increasing their health and armor with survivor insignias, runes of vitae, and any insignia or that grants them extra armor under particular conditions. As hard as it was for me to accept, I no longer believe increased energy is king in guild wars. (At least, not in hard mode anyhow.) I recommend that every player and hero has at least have a major vigor rune, but if you can afford it, go for the superior. You should also make sure to get them proper weapons that help out their armor and health levels.

-Second, do your characters really need that superior attribute rune that lowers their health by 75? Try lowering their attribute by 1 or 2 to see how big of a difference it would really make if that were a major or minor rune instead. For example, is that little bit of extra healing worth your monk having -75 health? I think not myself. I run only minors on my monks in hard mode.

-Check out the bars on each of your characters to see what skills they can bring to mitigate damage for both themselves and the party. Some more obvious ones are "Watch Yourself" on Warriors, Ward vs. Melee on Elementalists, and Aegis on Monks. Any skill you have to aid your teammates is huge in hard mode, so look into them!

-Look at yourself and your heroes to see where you can fit additional healing. Your monks may no longer be able to handle it all, so help them out! I personally found that my Elementalists were well suited to bring Heal Party and my Minion Master didn't really "need" the Flesh Golem I had on him. It was more for fun than anything. I found that putting in a healing elite like Healing Hands, Word of Healing, or Light of Deliverance was pretty awesome on him, especially since he already had 11 in Healing for Heal Area. If you don't have healing elites you could probably try an in class solution like Grenth's Balance to make him less likely to die. Other self-heals like Aura of Restoration, Healing Signet, and Troll Unguent can be really handy.

-Minion Masters, have you tried switching to purely melee minions lately? They got a lot cheaper in one of the last updates, and I have to say, the protection they provide against incoming monsters for your casters in hard mode is HUGE. Right now I am running Animate Bone Horror, Animate Shambling Horror, and Animate Vampiric Horror and I have never been happier. (The heals incombing from Vampiric Horror can also save your bum!) Fiends were a lot easier to heal, but they cost so much, and with the soul reaping change and all, I have found them more difficult to cast than they are worth, especially when I really just wish I had more body blockers to kite around.

I think that's all the tips I have learned from personal experiences and my guildies, so what have you guys done to be successful in hard mode?

With a little help from the community, I hope we can all become hard mode s.

A little thing my guild mates and I noticed in the hard mode.

Although the enemies do like to go for soft targets(especially the one with the lowest health), the way they target is to follow agro bubbles. So if the monk is in the agro bubble of the suposed to be tank when the tank agros the mob, the mob will rush strait past the tank effectively rendering the monk the new tank. So stay out of your tanks agro bubble until people start bashing on him. Once this happens they dont switch often unless you cast something like meteor shower, so save that for once they are already dieing.

Also, to tank hardmode, you really have to pay attention. Bodyblocking for your monks is a big deal since it has a chance to divert the agro back to you.
So just pay attention and use your head a bit.

Tried some really defensive builds for the Ascalon missions, figuring they'd be rough with the small party size... Didn't do enough damage fast enough, ended up wiping anyway. Revamped build to war, dual sf eles, and monk, and the missions were a breeze. MMs are pretty helpful there too. In summary, if solid defense isn't working, go for a better offense. Things dying faster = less damage taken overall.

Avoid using MMs in the jungle missions. Scarabs spam Verata's Gaze, so you're only hurting your own party.

One thing hasn't changed from normal PvE - a good monk (or two, depending on area) you can rely on is essential. Tahlkora will never be as reliable as a good human, but can fill in the gap if you've already got one good monk and just need a second healer.

It's been said before, but know your enemies and plan accordingly. Being prepared makes everything so much simpler.

Can someone give me a tip for um...taking out 4 Shiverpeak Warriors, 2 Shiverpeak Longbows, 1 Shiverpeak Ranger boss and Shiverpeak protector on hard mode with 6 people?

NOTE: Shiverpeak Protector runs immediately, purges cripple and overheals any damage done to anything. Backline is dead in 5-15 seconds if I stop tanking to chase protector. Only have henchies and hero's at my disposal.

Things like Aegis, Ward vs Melee, Blurred Vision, Reckless Haste, Price/Spirit of Failure have no effect. Thus, the only way to mitigate melee damage is Weakness and Blind. The best way to Weakness is Enfeebling Blood and the best Blind is Eruption, though it can cause scatter.

Also since you can plan on the enemy melee hitting, I highly recommend your SS necro pack Insidious Parasite.

Though it may sound noobish, Healing Hands is not a bad elite for a monk to carry in the early Ascalon missions. Since you will likely only have one monk, you probably will need him to have some kind of prot ability as well as big heals. I have my monk hero set up with Healing Hands on disable, and whoever the melee enemies attack gets it.

Also, for the early ascalon areas the fire eles can be rather beastly, so I recommend bringing Spirit Bond, disabled on your hero monk. When three simultaneous Meteor Showers start raining you can keep your monk up with that.

nice thread man gg i will try some of those my self

Just give your heros leech signet and power drain. They're godly with interrupts. If this still isn't enough you can let your necromancer place Defile Flesh on the Protector. That should do the trick. About the others, they're all physical damage mobs, meaning a single enfeebling blood spell right into their midst tames the beasts.

Wake up to the fact that prot monks are rather good and generally better than heal if you have to choose between the two. Spirit Bond/Protective Spirit/Shield of Absorption et al will own all that boosted monster damage if you choose your target carefully and get the prot on them before their health bar is close to zero. There is an overabundance of heal monks in PvE and some of them need to learn the power of prot.

How I approach HM with a guildy:

1 - Warrior/Tank (me)
1 - Hero healer/healing
1 - Hero MM fully runed etc.. (green staff, etc)
1 - Hero Necro (curses ss, etc..)

Guildy brings:
1 - Warrior/Tank (guildy)
1 - Hero healer/protection
1 - Hero MM fully runed etc.. (green staff, etc)
1 - Fire Elementalist (sf etc)

Ya gotta love 20 minions for cannon fodder LOL

How I approach HM alone:

1 - Warrior/Tank (me)
1 - Hero healer/healing
1 - Hero MM fully runed etc.. (green staff, etc)
1 - Hero Necro (curses)
2 - henchman healers
1 - Fire elem henchman
1 - Blood Henchman

They made it harder so use a bigger hammer

To be fair I'm not bothering with hm missions, I'm protector in all 3 and no desire to redo them again.

well uuuh this is a lil tip for people like myself who are finding a lotta the melee to be severely annoying since they are now extremely co-ordinated in their attacks and very much so will spike your eyeballs out. have an ele with ward vs melee, unsteady ground, churning earth, and ash blast. earth attune obviously and a rez. the last two are obviously optional with thins like glyph of lesser energy or spammable attack spells so your always doing dmg while waiting for unsteady and churning to refresh. stoneflesh aura is always good just in case your the target in their squishee-hate-a-thon. the build works great since all monsters in hard mode have innate speed buffs so they basically are kept on their butts the entire time. using echo in the build is also a pretty effecient way to spam the churning earth and unsteady ground around a bit.

Is there any way to actually beat D'alessio Seaboard?

No matter what I run with a team of other humans we always fail.We take a Earth Ele with Wards of Elements/Stability/melee to deal with the Eruptions at Dorian and yet,its still not enough.Two monks with the Ele,not enough.It just seems that no matter what build is brought there,it ends in failure at Dorian.

is it from a team whipe or from dorian dying? (even though you hafta kill the worthless bastard eventually yourself)if its from dorian have one of the monks go bonder. and stay somewhere out of aggro range of anything....even though in hard mode they tend to find you anyways. it should make him live substantially longer unless theres enchant rippers now. in which case have said bonder bring spellbreaker o_o

Hordes of Undead... brought a smiter?

Solution: Take humans. My group passed the shiverpeaks missions with ease thanks to hefty doses of blinding and interrupts. Don't expect to clear the whole mob in a few seconds while they pointlessly hammer on your warrior.

Best Tip: Do it with humans.

well only problem with doing it with humans is other than the usual human incompetence which all of us posses (whether its our own fault or not) and obligations in the real world. myself like quite a few others have work and whatnot that usually keep us out all day and so typical play time is at night when everyone is either in bed or heading towards it. so generally speaking its a matter of finding a hero/henchie combo that works for the area. obviously an ss or SV necro would single handedly rape half the baddies in all the areas in anyways...along with an unsteady ground warder and good monks you should "in theory" have very little to no problems. in the 4 man areas take 1 heal monk and equip as many of your allies as possible with self heal (and no this does not mean triple echo mend frenzy infuse tanks). once you hit 6 man leave everyone with self heal but bring in another monk and one more dps or support (like rits, paragons, etc). once you hit 8 man take 3 monks 1 ss necro 1 unsteady warder 2 tanks and 1 other (probably a damn good interrupter since everything casts 33-50% faster or a minion master to help tank). but this is all in theory....hard mode has only been out a few days and ive only done a few missions and vanquished an area or two (thanks work >_<)

For the 4-person party areas, I found the following hero sets worked well.

Warrior character:
-- Dunkoro - set for healing with proper staff or wand/focus set
-- Talkhora - set for protection with proper staff or wand/focus set
-- Olias - set as SS without Arcane Echo; he doesn't use it sensibly

Mesmer character:
-- Dunkoro - set for healing with proper staff or wand/focus set
-- Talkhora - set for protection with proper staff or wand/focus set
-- Koss - buffed with appropriate runes and insignia; top-line weapon set

I found that an MM is too much trouble as monks spend too much energy healing his minions. When I changed Olias' skillbar, I kept it open and watched his skill usage. He does very well as an SS, but if given an echo skill, does require manual use of the skill to be echoed.

My mesmer's Koss, I discovered, was still using his starter weapon/shield as after getting him to level 20, I never used him. I spent the time/money needed to buff his armor and attributes, and found him a good weapon and shield in my storage. So remember to check seldom-used heroes for needed upgrades.

Also, as after all party members are carrying 60DP, you will be sent back to outpost instead of rez shrine at the next party death, bring a couple of DP removal items to use if you are almost done with area. No one likes to be just a few kills away from success and have to start over.

I don't disagree with you. I got a guild that hardly ever does hard mode...lol. But still if you can build a guild or alliance team for hard mode, heroes can't match it.

Nice guide, I posted something similar on my alliance's forums. I agree with the melee minions point, they do a wonderful job at keeping aggro away from the caster block, especially if you're teaming with over-eager nukers (or in my case mesmers :P).

My tip for running lower level areas with only 4 in the party is "Animal Wall".

Whatever toon I'm running, I take a pet. I've given my other heroes pets too, and have only one hero (a ranger) carry Revive Animal, so that 3 of us can have a slot free from Comfort Animal.

I'm still learning the aggro and maintaining a wall, but being able to guide the hero pets is quite a help too. I try to pull no more than three monsters at a time, watching party movement patterns.

Don't be afraid to tweak your build for each area you're going into. Someone mentioned it before, but think carefully about what monsters you're about to face. Aggroing Paragons and melee? "Shields Up!" Heading in towards some Ibogas? Have a monk hero carry "Spellbreaker" (that "click click click" when tanking in is lovely!)

Use passive defense. Heroes are too stupid to use active defense.
If you are too choose between activated defense and passive, always choose passive.

I use wards(earth hench) and shouts (p/w) that is usually enough.

my 4 party sized places party build:

RAnger with BA + RtW + Needling Shot + Savage + two blocking stances
Ranger with BHA + RtW + Needling Shot + Savage + Blocking stances + FW
MM with bone fiend + shambling horror + Flesh Golem + Signet of Lost Souls+ Blood of the Master + Rez Signet(yes... only 6 skills...)
Tahlkora with Healing Burst or Light (one of these) and some more healing and condition remover and hex remover...

with this i vanquished two istan places and did Great Northern Wall(first mission of Ascalon)...

i haven't had the opportunity to try more difficult places due to my work...

i don't know how some people are having that kind of trouble fighting in hard mode... currently hard mode is the same as Desolation and Ring of Fire with faster casting foes... nothing more... they are not boosted in terms of power... just in terms of speed and of course the levels...

My tip:
Bane mods.
Where most people probably treated them as vendor trash before Hard Mode, you should now be hoarding each and every one.
+20% damage makes one HELL of a difference.

Example: Mesmer Boss and a Monk: Boss keeps stealing energy. If I try to kill him the monk will be healing him, if I try to kill the monk, the Boss will take our energy away.

Another: Party at 30dp and a Elem Boss with Invoking Lightning wipes half my party on the first skill and the other half 1 sec later with the same skill.

This is madness, and please don't tell me to bring this or that because I'm not taking skills just for one boss.

The biggest change I've made to my style of playing is: I simply started thinking.

I played through 3 campaigns with 9 characters pretty much pressing "c" and the "spacebar" (this is in Normal mode). I've actually started planning attacks better.. luring and kiting like crazy (when playing as a caster). Rushing is a big no-no imo. Obviously you need to actually think about your and your team members builds, and know what you're up against. Otherwise it'll just end in tears.

So you refuse to adapt and you blame Anet for your stubbornness and stupidity? lol, classic. Ever thought to try bringing an anti-caster mesmer, locking him onto one boss, shutting it down... then killing the other? Or how about dazing the bosses, they're all casters that're wiping you. Hey, stay with your build, you're obviously fine with continuing to fail from not being willing to change anything, it gives you something to complain about. <_<

Also, for the guy who suggested bane mods... My war with 16 axe does around 5-15 damage without skills to Charr warriors in Hard Mode. +20% damage would be less than vampiric would add, and vamp works on all types of monster. I don't want to have to run off and buy a new damage mod that'll be outperformed by vamp every time I enter a new area with new types of creature. u.u

Funny, becase my problem was...I thought too hard. For example: I thought bringing an MM would totally gimp me...Quite the opposite.

This is haaaaaaardd mooooddeee!!

Had to be done, sorry.
*cough*

/seriousmode

Ok:
You should've had a prot monk pre-casting prot spirit on your party to negate the spike dmg that you knew you were up against. I mean cmon...ele boss = spike! Basics!

I tried Consulate Docks on Hard Mode with my monk as a bonder, using two hero healers and the rest hench/hero. Mission was easy up to the ele boss in the middle, who with one Meteor destroyed six of eight members of the party despite all of them being bonded; essentially meaning it did enough damage to kill them twice over. Only Dunkoro and I survived, because I had additional protections on me and wasn't in range and Dunkoro because he had 630 health. It certainly showed the power of ele bosses in HM.

Some nice tips listed guys. One I would say is to use flags effectively, just like in normal mode, if you're using heroes and henchmen. Use flags to make heroes kite or run if they don't automatically, use them for tactical positioning to spread out to avoid AoE damage. My most recent use of them was to dump to Meteor Showers on a group of 14 or so Kournans in Gandara (11 were casters or archers) by flagging Zhed and Sousuke just out of range and protting them. They'd wiped us three times before that without us getting a kill (embarrassing...) but all 11 died then. The guards were then easy.

I haven't used particularly special builds so far, just been cautious and took things slow and carefully. Haven't managed to fail any so far, though two areas have been close.

Prot Spirit for 8 people? Oy!