Hard Mode: Tips and Tricks

Tips for when fighting Charr.

Note with the salvaging of these items it may of changed all i know is that afew months ago I salvaged two 25% vs charr mods off the weapon smiths sword.

If you are playing a hammer warrior i would suggest getting this collector hammer and salvaging the
+25% vs Charr mod off it. (replaces fortitude, armor ect)
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Ascalon_Maul

If you are a protection monk that prefers using shields i would suggest getting this prot icon as it is effectively a shield with +15 armor (normally you only get 8 from shield) and +6 energy.
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Protective_Icon
Soul reaping and air off hand versions here
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Louise_Haup
Inspiration version here:
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Wain_Hughes


This shield may also be useful as it only requires 4 tactics (secondary warrior using spare points) and gives you 6 armor, +10 vs Charr and + 10 vs ele damage ( +26 vs the charr firecallers!)
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Ascalon_Aegis

This collector has a bow and sword with +20% against charr which you can (could?) salvage.
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Louise_Haup

Note:I got 25% ones from somewhere but they don't seem to be listed on wiki (changed maybe) I am pretty sure i got them from Piken weapon smith so it might pay to have alook there first if you want the 25% vs charr sword or bow.

Hehe, 20-25% is not that great but just thought i would inform those who don't know so they have the choice
Good luck!

Wow this thread is great =D I'll definitely be remembering some of these

any tips for PvE sin in HM ? such as don't enter HM ?

Why use an MM? I just don't see the point in it... They rely solely on your enemies not been able to overwhelm your minion army. Pretty much any warrior in HM will kill an entire minion army very quickly. Plus once they lose all the minions they're completely useless.

I've been using a basic Broadhead Arrow w/ Apply Poison build. Takes those Dolyak Masters out in no time.
Norgu with a basic MoR Domination build. Mistrust is great in some areas. Specially vs Grenths Balance.
Olias with an SS/Reckless/Price/Enfeeble build, yeah he's a bit shit with it... but tbh both of them can take some intuition and hex things off target.
Sousuke with a reasonable Warder build, Elements, Melee, Eruption, Stoning, etc. Works nicely when he hits enfeebled enemies.

They got me through Grenths Footprint without much hastle, once i'd figured out the tactic anyway after nearly been wiped on the first few mobs. Don't expect to suceed first time... its a case of sucessfully countering the enemy and learning where to put your interrupts.

Seriously... how the hell has anyone cleared Kessex Peak? I went in there earlier... managed ot kill the mobs of mostly MMs. But the Rangers and Mesmers... they're just insane. Punishing Shot/Choking Gas been spammed at everyone. Migraine making it even easier for them to interrupt everything.

Hmm my post got deleted?

Heres a nice little trick:

Flag a hero somewhere far out of danger and leave him there as long as you don't need him. This way you will never get sent back to an outpost as that hero will never get up to 60% DP!

And for pve-er, just use a tanking build, but don't tank. Look in the Assassin forum in a thread called "fav sin builds" and in my post I put a few good ones. The 2nd and last ones are great in HM.

just bring death pact signet and you don't need to worry about flagging a hero away

First off, I'd like to say:



If anything, there isn't one build that will work for all missions. Depending on how much hex use or melee there is you will have to change your load outs. Fortunately, the later missions aren't much harder at all than the normal mode verisons... probably because with 8 people you can bring enough skills to cover everything. I'll just go over some short tips for some missions I remember:

Aurora Glade: If you want to get the primary/bonus the easy way, bring along Razah as a Spirit Spammer and have your hereos/henchies spread out near the base shrine. When you first come upon there, start running your crystal to the one the White Mantle capture while your Rt Hero sets up spirits. Run back after you recap it and capture the middle shrine after the White Mantle get it. Basically you need to kill off all the enemies - it's way to hard if you try to run around constantly because a mob of level 25 enemies will own you...

Sanctum Cay: I had some trouble with this one. Searing Heat + Fireball OWNS heroes if you have them flagged in one group.... I barely beat this one with Dunkoro + Talhkora + Alesia.

Thirsty River: Rush the King at the start and kill everything. I used a MM here and it worked excellently. Just need high DPS and a few interrupts (my monks bring Power Drain)

Other than that, like it's been said before... SS works great. I ran as a Splinter Barrage Ranger with Distracting/Savage. It wasn't that hard. THK is still easy.

Also, this cool bug showed up in hard mode! There was a Jade Armor called Black Bear!

Excellent job m8! I wish I had more time to play, HM is definitely my favorite feature of the game added since Prophecies.

This might seem kind of intuitive, but going through Dejarin Estate to kill the Acolyte of Dwayna with guildies, once or twice we ran into hard times since some of those mobs are very close together. If you have some DP, it is worth it to seek out smaller mobs that are easier to kill to get back. This is something that you couldn't really do before to gain XP, but since most creatures are lvl 26+, instead of going after that 6 creature mob and going for the 3-4 one first is really handy. Thats my two cents.

Camp right below the ridge they won't be able to hurt you. HM baddies still aren't smart enough to deal with "shot obstructed".

Loki, I hate you.

What hero builds are you using?

I've been trying Tahnakki Temple with Heroes/Henchmen...Temple Guardians' Breath of Fire + Heroes' refusal to flee = MASS HYSTERIA.

Cantha, IMO, is the most difficult of the three continents to get Guardian due to the sheer volume of mobs. I wonder how exactly you complete Vizu's room in Tahnnakki Temple...

Tip #infinity: Don't use Heroes/Henchmen if you can help it!

yip on Nolani Acadami when rurik aggros every thing at end please

As for hero builds I'm using mostly staple ones.

One necro is a pretty basic SS build with some twists. I made him bring Rip Enchantment and Shadow of Fear / Faintheartedness (this helps for hard hitting mobs that have 50% IAS). SS, Insidious Parasite, Reckless Haste, SoLS, etc...

My protection monk was running either Blessed Light or Life Sheath depending on the area. On top of that, I have Guardian, RoF, Protective Spirit, Aegis, Power Drain (great in HM), etc..

The rest of my builds are pretty basic. SF nuker, MM, and WoH or Light of Deliverance monk. It depends on how many monks I have from henchies (4 group missions I bring 2 monks, my SS, and myself as Splinter Barrage)

As for tough spots, I really had trouble on Sanctum Cay and the White Mantle Savant's Searing Heat because on the "new" and "improved" henchmen AoE "flee" AI... they don't flee - they run around in circles while being burned alive!

More realistic? ..... Yes.

More fun? ... No.

I hope they fix it. It's much worse because now they don't even heal inside AEs. I'm going to do Elona next since Cantha is probably the toughest overall.. .

Then you're doing something wrong. Probably bringing tank skills instead of attack skills.
In the Northern Shiverpeaks missions, a normal elemental mod sword was doing 58-60 damage to Stone Summit dwarves (yes, the warriors).
With an elemental bane weapon I was doing 68-72.
Mind you, that's because I usually run builds that keep pumping out the +damage skills.
If you're foolish enough to be running tanking skills instead of +damage skills, then of course you're not going to see much benefit from bane weapons.

Edit: Also, you do realise that bane mods are suffix type mods, don't you?
This means that you can have a Vampiric Sword / Hammer / Axe / Bow of Monsterslaying.
In the future Chicken Ftw, don't be so hasty to flame someone about something you don't understand.

Imo knockdowns seem to be one of the best shut-downs in Hard Mode. My method of vanquishing most areas consisted of having Razah set up Union, Earthbind and Displacement, then I would lure the mob and try to have them form a nice tight ball. When in position me (ele) and Sousuke, both using earth magic, pile on the AoEs and chain Dragon's Stomp/Earthquake. It's usually enough to keep them licking floor during most of the fight. This method worked a treat on Jade Brotherhood casters (especially the Rits to stop them from outhealing us), and also on the elementals in the Mirror of Lyss. The only group this didn't work on was teh Paragon boss' group in the Mirror of Lyss...dear god he was hard.

How would you solve "Siege of Tsumei" in HM?

good thing they made razah easier to acquire a while back, as he comes in quite useful in HM, imo.

i've essentially equipped him with the standard rit lord build used at urgoz. i figured if it helps so much there against the spike damage and the insane amount of baddies, that it might be worth a shot in HM. i spent a lot of time over the weekend farming LB points in HM nightfallen jahai, and nearly spent my entire stash of 4-leaf clovers because i was getting party wiped so often by the demons. bringing a necro hero with SS coupled with razah's spirit spam cut the party wipes down significantly. earthbind is particularly useful if you're using knockdowns, and bring along shadowsong when dealing with those hard-hitting melee creatures.

requires some setup though, as its best to have all his spirits up before you engage a mob. its also a very energy-intensive build, so putting BR on the necro is essential, and its kind of a pain because razah needs to be driven most of the time. however, the payoff is good! setup his spirits, send in the tank, and blow em to smithereens.

Barrage Pet hero teams are quite viable at owning Hard Mode, in missions with many chokepoints and bundled mobs you can get away with using that. I owned raisu palace and tahnakai temple at masters level with 2 people and 6 heroes. Eles with sliver armor rule out any usage of AI melee anyway. If you run a build without enchantments you can also put natures renewal in there to get casting speed back to normal.

I also found out that aegis is one of the best skills in the game (DOH). I didn't try areas with much enchant hate yet.

Curses and mesmers are more or less a must, while I find that pretty lame, it still helps. I managed to make it through tahnakai with only myself as necro+hench. With any other character I wouldn't have made it, but the necro owned some.

Last but not least: give the mm 9 points in Blood Magic and give him BIP as elite, since flesh golem was overrated anyway. It's such a waste if a mission fails because a healer somewhere was out of energy.

Spirits to stop spike damage kinda own, but that has been discussed thouroughly already...

This is indeed true...but like you say, the payoff is good. I tried engaging mobs and have razah do his own thing and when I have him put up his Key spirits first we mow through everything with considerable ease. When I've had him put the key ones down I ley him do whatever he wants and he generally keeps them up through a sustained battle pretty well.

Some tips and tricks for Vanquishing areas with heroes and henchies.

• Plan ahead, adjust your builds to the area. (Yours and your heroes of course.)
• Do the hardest bits first so you don't waste time.
• Don't kill anything you don't need to before you've finished all the hard bits. You'll need easy marks to erase DP.
• If a group is a bit tough to kill, use attrition: kill some key members in a suicide run, respawn, use an xp scroll and kill easy monsters to get rid of the DP. Lightbringer scrolls FTW, but any will do. Go back to finish the job once you're back up to full strength again. Rinse and repeat.
• Frozen Soil is a perfect tool to get rid of cross-rezzing monsters; plus, on suicide runs to kill them it guarantees an even DP progression on your own party, which makes it easier to recover. (It's annoying to have one member with far more DP than the others.)
• If you can't kill something, move on and find the next big threat. Don't resign to make build adjustments too soon. Try everything on for size; gather more intel, so to speak.
• Be patient. Treat no fight as a trivial one.

I managed to Vanquish half of Elona that way in just 3 days.

Note for areas with lots of human opponents (e.g. Bukdek Byway):

Edge of Extinction Kamikaze is not dishonourable. You can respawn; they can't. Just be sure not to get stuck at -60%.

Grrrrr, the whole mission of THK done... including bonus, and Dorian's f*cking mob wipe me!

Particular mission tips:

Ruins of Surmia
When Rurik & Erol get to the drawbridge, DON'T immediately open it when you get to the other side. Instead, follow the path around and you will find all of the Charr that usually rush you at the end sequence in a bowl to the left of the path. With careful pulling, you can kill all of the Charr that usually charge you during the end sequnce.
When you've killed them all, then it's safe to go and lower the drawbridge for Rurik & Erol. The end sequence will now be completely stress-free.

Nolani Academy
After getting Rurik to the gate and watching the cutscene, don't follow Rurik. Instead, take the stairs to the right. You should now have a clear run to the end boss, Bonfaaz Burntfur (aside from 2 Charr on the way who are fighting mages). Kill Bonfaaz to win. This saves a LOT of time.

Frost Gate
For an easy end sequence, clear the area around the 3 levers before activating them. When all of the mobs in that central area are dead, everyone except one player with a speed boost should pull back to where you found the lever. Then, the player with the speed boost should activate the levers in the order centre, right then left. This player will probably die after activating the third lever, but it doesn't matter. It's not the fight that's important, it's activating the levers. After a short wait, the mission will complete.

well i cleared scoundrels Rise and did both Bonus and Mission for Gates of kryta with the following build.

Warrior/Monk (Me)
[skill]Flail[/skill][skill]Critical Chop[/skill][skill]Cleave[/skill][skill]Executioner's Strike[/skill][skill]Healing Signet[/skill][skill]"Watch Yourself!"[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Monk Hero
OwUUMkG/SYOZkAiGJncRyrvEdCA
16 Healing (12+3+1) 10 Prot(+1) 10 Divine(+1)
[skill]Orison of Healing[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill][skill]Word of Healing[/skill][skill]Healing Touch[/skill][skill]Divine Healing[/skill][skill]Mending Touch[/skill][skill]Convert Hexes[/skill][skill]Restore Life[/skill]

Elemental
OgNCoMzDdDXMW3F0CkRMplA
16 Fire(12+3+1) 13 Energy Storage (12+1)
[skill]Searing Flames[/skill][skill]Fire Attunement[/skill][skill]Glowing Gaze[/skill][skill]Meteor[/skill][skill]Aura of Restoration[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Resurrect[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill]

MM Hero
OANDQWx2OV1l6j4oSFiJtkOB
15 Death (11+3+1) 6 Blood 12 Soul Reapon (11+1)
[skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill][skill]Jagged Bones[/skill][skill]Strip Enchantment[/skill][skill]Animate Shambling Horror[/skill][skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill][skill]Resurrect[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Blood Ritual[/skill]

Healer Henchman and Enchanter Henchman I believe it was.

Worked well...although the end of the Mission was a bit tough as Minions are hard to come buy

Or Earthbind + 2 eles chaining Dragon's Stomp / Earthquake

tut tut, the Jade Brotherhood aren't going to get anywhere laying down on the job...

D'alssio Seaboard:

Whammos are your Friend.Judges Insight is totally Leetsauce in this mission.

If you can get two whammos with the follow skill builds, you can pretty much rend any undead group your encounter.

The First Warrior

Quivering Blade [E]
Sunand Moon Slash
Final Thrust
Hamstring
Frenzy
Sprint
Judges Insight
Resurrection Signet/Generic Resurrect

The Second Warrior:
Triple Chop
Cyclone Axe
Dismember
Executioners Strike
Frenzy
Sprint
Judges Insight
Resurrection Signet/Generic Resurrection.

Keep Judges Insight up constantly on both,Make the Axe Whammo massacre large groups of undead,while the Sword Whammo to take care of Monks.

16 Axe/Sword Mastery
10 Strength
9 Smiting

Then you can comprise your group of most any other class,As long as the warriors are kept clean of Blind they will do most of the work.

I hate to admit it, but i have a serious problem with Jokunar Diggings in Hard Mode. I done Consulate Docks with no trouble, but this is a different matter.
The real problem is that you HAVE to take Melonni and she really is the weakest link.
After three total party wipes and having got no further than the first part of the first city i gave up for the night.
With a four person party cap and one of them having to be Melonni, its hard to make a balanced party.
I was doing this with my ranger, my main character. Any suggestion would be appreciated.
The party consisted of Ranger, SF Ele, Healer Monk and unfortunately Melonni.

Any tips?

My personal tip for people complaining about some areas being impossible with heroes... heroes are actually preferred IMO because they make life less hectic as opposed to pugs who run whatever they 'think' is best.
At least with heroes you can make sure they have sup vigors, perfect mods, and strategically flag them pre-aggro.

I hope you dont mind some comments:

Why "Resurrect"?
Even at 0 healing prayers Resurrection Chant is much better (As is almost every other resurrection spell, even at 0 points investment).
And why so many hard resses to begin with?

Monk:
Convert hex and Divine Healing on the monk-> two costly, 2sec cast spells on a monk without any e-management.
I would suggest making him mo/me and give him Power Drain and Leech Signet instead. Even with as little as 6 attribute points in inspiration they provide excellent interruption(AI) and some energy management.
Aegis and Orison are very borderline too IMO... there are much better alternatives (and aegis is damn costly).
If you face much ranged attacks, take Shields Up on your war.
If the map features much melee take Ward on your ele.

SF Ele: I guess resurrect is deactivated until needed (how often do you need your ele soft, puny to hard res though?)
But why Remove Hex? You want your SF ele to spam his fire spells.
With remove hex he will spent 1/8 of his time casting that spell, since there are always hexes, but either they are no threat or they are so dangerous (stacked) that one remove hex wont help...

MM:
Ok more hard ress...
I actually dont know how effective a MM in general is in hard mode (I just expect that in nightfall they arnt that good if you face even a single enemy dervish class mob. Any AoE by mobs will be nasty too, wont it?).
Good old Spiteful Spirit will do wonders. With the increased attack and casting speed Spiteful alone will possibly outdamage your (single) searing flames ele.
Weakness incuring spells are very good too, since melee mobs are a tough nut and melee bosses are ... nasty.
If you dont take spiteful take a hex that reduces attack speed.

In general:
Most of the time I would take three heroes who are X/me with power drain and leech signet.
Henchies and heroes are excellent at interrupting and waste no time switching targets. The first few casts of enemy caster mobs are shut down very well by such a team of three instant interrupters. Gives you a bit time to focus on your designated target without fear of Ele spell spike in the beginning of a fight.

Concerning your war:
You shoud decide for a direction.
Axe has excellent options for causing deep wounds (useful in PvE too) or quickly gaining adrenaline.
Critical axe is... odd though. It has a 15 sec cooldown and a very conditional side effect.
Taking a spammable adrenaline attack in combination with a spammable energy attack would be much more efficient.
Compare your elite to furious axe. It does the same ammount of damage, but is non elite, and has just the right cooldown to be spammed (you regen 5 energy ~every 8 secs). Eviscerate may cost twice as much adrenalöine as cleave, but it "does temporary 20% max hp" damage too. on a 500 hp mob that is 100 hp "damage"... (temporary, but if you focus fire that should be enough). Take another adrenaline attack or two and your damage output will be much bigger.

@hex removal:
If hexes in an area are a problem take focussed measures against it (try a mes hero. Empathy alone is a great damage tool too!).
You shouldnt try to spread (bad) hex removal on all your chars, weaknening them all.

Plain and simple reason i don't use Res Chant is that I don't have it unlocked. I will definetly look into other rez options as you suggested but the main reason I don't like a Rez Sig especially in HM is that heros/henchies often use it at the wrong time. Although I will definetly take what you said into consideration and will most likely make some changes

I normally do run Power Drain on my Monk...although I was scared i wouldn't have enough healing or what have you in HM so i made some adjustments. I was always under the impression that Aegis was a good spell so thanks for pointing that out and PM me or post a good optional spell that could take its place. As far as E-management goes...i tried with BR on the necro and it seem to work fairly well. Most of the time my casters had plenty of Energy....except for the Ele with the exhaustion spam :P

when you least expect it, but will definetly keep it deactivated from now on...just never thought about it i guess

well I was really worried about all of the mergoyles and the numerous hexes they used....may have been a bit to worried and probably should have put some condition removal in instead of so many hex removals.

So far an MM hasn't been wonderful although it hasn't been bad. I just unlocked SS for my account last night and expect to look up some builds for it soon

I would use Eviscerate if I had it unlocked on PVE toon...but will definetly switch out cleave to furious axe and take a different elite (hoping for an Elite Warrior Tome)

I think I answered this reasoning I was really worried about the hexes...this mission and area was the first thing I tackled in Hard Mode because it was always my favorite...With my build I was able to vanquish the area and Get Mission/Bonus on first try. I agree 100% that there are some things that I probably didn't need or wouldn't use again if I were to attempt it again...and thank you for your thoughts and for the insight you have given me. Much Appreciated

Ouch. We hit Dorian with 2 sigs left and 7 chars still up (one was so dp'ed we left him down) and people died left and right, somehow we still won.

My absolute best tip for Hard Mode (although might be only understood by PvP'ers) - run everything that made PvP boring. You will win.

That means (just in general);
Passive prot (Aegis, Bonds)
Wards and/or blindbot spam
Antiwar hexes
Spirits/shouts to an extent

Essentially, all the kinds of skills that cause a reduction in the capacity for your opponent to do anything, without requiring any actual intelligence (can go on heroes fairly well).

Been running (2man-6hero);

Evisc War w/ purgesig
Me/E dom with wards
Dual SH eles (powerdrain on both)
Dual SS necroes w/ antiwar hexes (one with well of darkness)
ZB/LoD monks (powerdrain/leech sig on both)

4-person areas

Me/E wards
E/Mo air damage with blinds
Evisc War
Monk

Pretty easy stuff so far..

Absolutely. I've used these tactics to steamroll Kourna with heroes and henchies. (Just Jahai Bluffs left to vanquish )

I use Khim and have Dunkoro join her in chaining Aegis and at the same time Herta and Sousuke chaining Ward against Melee. (I only use protection monks, btw, works great.) With a few anti combat curses thrown in, my backline can ignore practically any amount of melee pressure for over a minute. This time is more than enough to slaughter the opponent's casters. (Daze, cripple, kill, rinse and repeat.) I had it down to a routine as easy as standard mode after a few area.

I was having this problem over an over again (mostly with roaring eithers who coordinate a spike and its all over against hechies who ball up)

What you do is take Razah and have him put up shelter before every mob. Flag your heroes and henchies back and run in to lure. The Boss will invoke spike you and the other casters will also spike you, but you shouldnt be dead. At this point you uncheck the flag and try to kill the prioty targets while the bad spike skills recharge.

Whammos are wanted in PvE.

The world just exploded.

No seriously, I'm looking forward to trying this out later tonight.

That right there is going to be my biggest tip if you decide to heroway: Bring wards! At this moment, henchies and heroes still do not kite when attacked. Ironically enough, before the update they would never stay still from a melee attacker...even when a ward was up. Hop on this oppurtunity and ward yourself up!

For all the 4 person areas we used:

W/A

Cleave
Dismember
Agonizing Chop
Flail
Dash
Disrupting Dagger
Healing Signet
Ressurection Signet/Sunspear Rebirth Signet

R/Mo
Broadhead Arrow
Distracting Shot
Savage Shot
Apply Poison
Natural Stride
Troll Ungent
Purge Signet
Rebirth

E/Mo
Blinding Surge
Lightning Orb
Lightning Strike
Gale
Air Attunement
Glyph of Lesser Energy
Convert Hexes
Ressurection Chant

Mo/E
Word of Healing
Dwayna's Kiss
Healing Touch
Reversal of Fortune
Spirit Bond
Dismiss Condition
Glyph of Lesser Energy
Rebirth

What we did for most mobs was have the ranger daze one caster and let the warrior and ele (in between blinds) train that target while the ranger would tab to another target and keep it interrupted. I still think a lot of teams out there are relying on the monk to take care of absolutely everything (healing, hexes, conditions, prot) to keep the team up. We have a good amount of disruption which can also be considered as a form of defense as well. Gale did a good job in preventing kiting casters. We paced ourselves and went group by group and the mobs dropped with ease. If you die, don't rebirth the monk if you can help it. It may take a little getting used to for those that are accustomed to the nuke-the-sheep technique, but it work well for us and shouldn't be too hard to grasp the concept.

How I have tackled HM

Standard B/P group

1. Minion Master
2. WoH Monk
3. Support Monk or Ritualist
4. Choice of Curses/Blood Necro or SF Ele or Mesmer - depends what is available

The rest are B/P's - preferably 2 splinter b/ps or throw in a couple traps (dust trap best choice) (traps take much longer)

Basically the pets and minions are your wall. Set spirits and fire!

Pull groups one at a time.

Use heal command on pets if you are bow pulling

If you are an assassin having a hard time try critical barrage - with pet


We have replaced a b/p with a tank as well and although not as effective we still got through the area.

Note

Thought I should add call targets and all attack same target - makes it so much easier - and your team should all live until their monk is dead first.

Two cents worth on Hero Monks - since they do not at the moment kite as they should until it is fixed (if it is fixed) use your flag controls to move them if they get in trouble behind you or someone else.

So far I have only done Plains of jarin with this build. Will unlock Prophecies hard mode tonight or tomorrow (accidently deleted the character I cleared it with), get to ascalon, and try it there

Mo (Me)
Zealous benediction
Gift of health
RoF
Prot spirit
Shield of absorption
Signet of devotion
dismiss condition
Rebirth

Rebirth is for those party whipes that sometimes happen.

Second monk (Dunkoro)
Life sheath
Words of comfort
Healing touch
Shielding hands
Spirit bond
Mend condition
Leech signet
P-drain

Heroes are leet with Life sheath.

3rd I have Koss with Eviscerate, generic axe attacks, signet of remedy, Healing signet and Tiger stance.

N/me (master of whispers)
Spiteful spirit
Price of failure
Reckless haste
Empathy
Power spike
Backfire
Signet of lost souls
Resurrection signet

This owns pretty much everything.

I was doing it alone, and i tend to bring Norgu, Sousuke and Olias for 8man trips so i only have Lina/Mhenlo to count on. I think it was mainly due to very poor priotization on my part. I spent the entire fight trying to kill a White Mantle Savant, who in the end fled after i missed many key interrupts on him. By the end of the fight after we'd been wiped the Savant was the only enemy i'd actually killed... I should probably have wasted the Priest and interrupted the ele myself in all honesty.

Anyway, just had a fun time clearing Perdition Rock. It was all quite easy, the only frustrating bit was searching for the last 10 enemies that i'd missed. 1 was a Drake boss that i forgot to kill. The other 3 were patrols of Dark Flame Dryders scattered across the map, took me 15 damn minutes finding them.
You have no idea how insanely easy that place is to clear with Norgu running Hex Eater Vortex + Shatter Hex and Zhed running Ward Against Harm. Basically i lure the Golems to myself (ranger), once they were close, let the anti-hex spam lose and blew them to pieces. Dark Flame Dryders... seriously, these guys are no better than they were in normal mode. Drakes just spam with a much faster recharge and cast time. If Zhed placed the maelstrom well you could take them completely out the fight, plus the Hex Eater Vortex/Shatter Hex on the Mark of Rodgorts forcing them to recast Ele Att. made them much easier. Phantom were easy once they ran out of interrupts letting SS and Empathy take over. The only problem were Hydra, they managed to wipe me once but that was due to extremely bad interrupting. If BHA hits 1 you can usually force hench to attack it keeping it interrupted indefinately and interrupt the other 1 or 2.

I made it with a friendthis week-end and I agree about Meloni. I gave her a decent build, yet her survival depends on Mystic Regen, and she can't handle that (she doesn't understand casting more enchants will increase its efficiency), so basically she was a meat shield with 60% DP. Both of us were rangers: one BA/poison and one barrager with JI. We both had bumped WS to have a 7 arrows troll. The monk was a protector, since a single healer is running out of energy fast. It worked. Just pull carefully and don't leeroy. Of course, there are better setups, but we couldn't choose the team members professions since we had to take Melonni - that was only one slot left, for the monk hero.

Even if you have one free slot, I wouldn't go with a MM for the bonus. The minions will go berserk in the second room and kill the sunspears, so you'd have either to wait till his minions die before you enter or leave it at the entrance. In any case, he'd be a dead weight.

What is it thats killing Melonni exactly? Primarily that is. Because you could probably solve all problems with Spells murdering her by giving her Vow of Silence. As for melee. Reckless Haste on Olias works like a charm, you don't HAVE to have an ele everywhere you go...

That or go as Trapper and make damn sure they stay over the traps until the melee is dead. Tbh i haven't attempted it yet. But i don't see how it'd be a problem until you reach the Apocryphia, and even then, anti-attack hexes should tear it apart before it can do any real damage.