Eternal Grove Masters (Using Henchmen)

Is this possible? I'd like to beat the mission on normal difficulty and would be glad to see some tips on how to do it for the masters reward. I've already gotten the standard one. My warrior is very accomplished and has several builds at her disposal, and my heroes are pretty effective, but if there are certain builds that can help me, I can easily attain them...

...The only thing that isn't easy is that mission. :P

Any tips?

Shameless self-plugging: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10138589

At one point I thought this mission was impossible to hench...in a sense thats true, you may need heroes to get the job done.

In any event you will need to memorize the directions the waves come from, they are somewhat static and organize accordingly until the afflicted show up. The afflicted assault is far easier to defend as they bottleneck at the archways. Using the guardians will be a huge help in just providing meat for the afflicted to pummel.

If you have heroes this mission becomes far easier (its how I got masters) organize an MM with a healer and a tank on one side (heroes) run with the remaining henchies to the other points making sure to stop the turtles and then return to the heroes for support in between waves. With 2 MM's one at each gate the afflicted wave is painfully simple with the exception of the last double boss wave which you will need to focus on to win. Also note that even with the groves speed bonus you will not be fast enough to run from one side all the way to the other...you need to sort of float in the middle and anticipate waves.

You're a warrior primary? Goodie. Try this:

Shield's up!
Flail
Dragon Slash
Watch Yourself!
Standing Slash
Sun and Moon Slash
Healing Signet
Dolyak Signet

Swordsmanship: 16
Strength: 11
Tactics: 9

For heroes I used a Defensive Anthem paragon, minion master with Jagged Bones, and a spirit spamming rit with splinter weapon.

Head west right away, kill the group there and the group with the turtles. Send the entire group back into the sanctuary ordering the paragon with his aggro bubble touching the entrance of the south, and the same with the ritualist on the north. Have the rest of group placed inbetween the two of them.

Run to the north, grab aggro on the group coming into the sanctuary and run inside. Run all the way to the south and by now the southern siege turtle is there. Kill just the siege turtle and flee back into the sanctuary. Once the northern siege turtle arrives, do the same thing killing just the turtle. Do not harm any of the rangers. Once this is done, head back west and wait for another turtle to appear there. It will have two rangers with it; kill them all to trigger the cutscene.

Skip cutscene and look to the north and to the south. You'll notice that a number of those rangers that you kept alive have become allies! On occasion, the siege turtle to the north will become allied as well. Some of the rangers will remain enemies, but are killed quickly. The rangers will proceed to run around a lot, but will draw the attacks of the afflicted giving you time to deal some damage yourself.

Before the first group arrives, ritualist flagged to the center as with the main group, paragon stays still and minion master behind the paragon about half an aggro bubble. You, as warrior, take the north entrance. From there, it's just a matter of killing the groups as they come. Precasting Splinter Weapons is wise.

I've never tried that strategy on normal, but I've used it to get to the last group on hard mode a few times (but failed to keep a tree singer alive by the odd afflicted that broke aggro) so my assumption is that it should easily net you masters on normal.

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In case anyone doubts Racthohs godly build-creation skills, I just wanted to post & say that, yes, Racthohs build & suggestions works.

I had a minionmancer, a critical barrage assassin, a protection monk, and i myself was a warrior. I brought healer & prot monk & warrior hench. The warrior hench was useless; I thought I'd need the extra damage, but I'd suggest blood necro, ranger, or spirit hench instead.
I distributed the heroes so they covered the entrances, and then ran back and forth killing the turtles. I messed up a couple of times with the timing, and the idiot warrior hench refused to retreat and got himself killed several times, but I did OK anyway.

Because of the difficulty flagging individual henches, two people with heroes should be ideal.

Thanks guys! Using a combination of Dusk's and Racthoh's strategies I breezed through this mission like never before. Now all I need to do is get masters for the Luxon mission...

Then my title is assured!

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Minion Masters are extremely helpful in this mission, plenty of corpses to help build an army

lol we beat it on HM with 3 b/p rangers, Orders nec, 2MM, and 2 monks