HM Eternal Grove

How to do it ? We tried with splitsing the teams with 2 mm's and 2 tanks, didn't work, wave of the first afflicted boss killed us every time or got through to the Tree Singers. So, any tips on how to beat this mission that was already hard in normal mode to get masters from and now in HM ?

I don't think the tanks can crowd control in HM seeing as the enemies target the dp'ed/low armor characters, I would give u a suggestion but I haven't got one so good luck :P

Having a lot of troubles with this one too, havent figured out what to do yet...
The last one of cantha for me :/

Have you tried spiking your squishies at the edge of your agro bubble? I play a W/ most often and I found this really works well. It usually allows me to tank the enemies and then the squishies move up and start smacking'em around too. Just my 2cents

Managed to pull it off with 2 SS necros, 2 warrior tanks (I'm ashamed, but we needed something big to block the gates), 2 monks and a 2 other chars. The problem however was that the tank didnt do enough damage when we were killing the luxon waves. What we did was take hexes like mark of pain and barbs to increase the damage of the tanks. When the afflicted came we used the tanks to block the gates.

On paper this looks ridiculously simple ofc. but it was an exciting stressfull battle. It's a matter of some luck too. My luck was that the tank followed my calls so mark of pain was really effective.

Enfeebling Blood is the greatest hard mode skill hands down in a mission like this.

Did it on my warrior with his MM hero, paragon hero, and ritual lord hero, along with a guildie who was SS. Then we had the two monk henchmen, and the ritualist henchmen.

Before the afflicted showed up, I ran around on my warrior and killed one turtle on the north and south (whole group was west at the start to kill that group). Then I killed the last group to the west of two rangers and a siege turtle solo (once this group is killed the cutscene is triggered). During this whole time the rest of the group held off in the center defending against groups that came in. By leaving the luxon rangers alive that are with the north and southern turtles, they will become allied (almost all of them, some stay enemies) and run towards the grove area. Extra NPCs always help.

Once we started to fight the afflicted, I stood by the north entrance just in front of Mhenlo. My paragon henchmen was flagged in a similar fashion on the south, with the minion master hero more behind, and the rest of the group flagged at the center (ritualist was pre-casting spirits). My guildie on necro was near the center as well, but I informed him to focus more on the southern group. We handily beat the groups without any deaths, and used the same tactics for each group that came.

It also helps when the luxon pets glitch and literally have thousands of health taking forever to die. Funny stuff. I'm fairly confident the mission can be done with just heroes/henchmen (managed 11/12 tree singers on two attempts) however there is some element that I was overlooking in my personal attempts that I couldn't replicate every time.

As a tank, I've found using "None Shall Pass" in choke points makes the agro stick alot better. That being said, I haven't tried it in EG yet.

Anna and I, together with our guild, managed to get masters on this mission while using the same tactics as in normal mode.

The party setup was:

2 monks (healing and ps)
2 elementalists (sf)
1 warrior
1 ranger (trapper)
1 necro (mm)
1 rit (mm bomber)

The split was as follows:

north gate:
monk, ele, ranger, rit

south gate:
monk, ele, warrior, necro

The fisrt part, killing the turtles, is relatively easy.

In the second part, after the cutscene, it is important to block the gates and to help out the other split team if needed.

At the north gate the ranger was trapping the stairs continuesly.
The split at the south gate took all the Juggernauts to block the gate.

With these tactics it is possible to keep the afflicted out and if some of the afficted trickle through they are stacked with conditions and are easlily killed.

I've tried this mission and had no problem holding off the first wave. Basically I put the 3 Juggernauts on gate on the right and my team on the left. It worked out good even though I wasn't trapping and most of the right side died - then I crashed and by the time I reconnected 2 trees were dead. XD

I'm going to go back eventually and beat this, I just really hate the Eternal Grove and Vizunah Square in Cantha because the whole swarms of mobs can do some serious damage in hard mode...

Yay! after loads of tries, finally made it!
We just added in another monk, gg.

LoD, Healers Boon, Bonder, MM heroes, SF, SS, and warrior took out all of the turtles the way racthoh described.

On to Elona now! :P

I finally beat this after a couple of attempts. I did what Ractoh did but changed it so that I managed to get like 2 Siege Turtles friendly and Rangers as well (it's random who remains hostile)

Anyways, all hench/hero team:

R/Mo - Trapper w/ EoE
N/Mo - Master of Whispers - Minion Master
N/Me - Olias - SS with Enfeebling Blood
Rt/E - Raza - Spirit Spammer w/ Attuned (Shelter, Union, Preservation)

For henchmen I took, the Guardian, Healer, Protection, and Ritualist.

At the start, I sent my entire team to the South gate while I trapped the North gate and used the EoE spirit as bait. Once the South team engages the warriors that come, I call them to me and fight all of them at once. I kill that wave and flag everyone but the MM to the South gate and place them somewhat close to the gate. I send my MM to the North gate and place 2 Juggernauts at that gate while bringing one to the South Gate. You wanna keep your South team close enough to the gate so that they take the turtle hits for you, this strategy involves waiting until no more waves comes!

For this part, help out trapping on the South gate with your MM - Danika should heal him if he gets hit. Keep killing waves until you have all 6 turtles in play. If you have positioned yourself right, the South and West turtles should be shooting at your henchmen and the Juggernaut (place him further out by the way). Once you are sure no more waves are coming, you have two choices.

Option 1: This is the riskier method. Grab 2 Juggernauts and your MM and path the Juggernauts onto the North group. Trap and attack with your MM and kill the group. Once this group is dead, call your entire team to you and kill the West group. Go STRAIGHT for the northern Siege turtle on the WEST position. Kill him and you will trigger the cutscene and you will receive either a bunch of friendly Luxon rangers and maybe 1 or 2 Siege turtles as a reward. This happens for me every time I did the mission this way.

Option 2: Call your entire team to you and leave the Juggernauts at the gate. Sometimes the turtles will start shooting at your Tree Singers. If so, you need to hurry in this part. Rush the north Group and quickly kill the two Siege Turtles. If the Trees are not being damaged, kill everyone and head to the West group. Kill the northern most turtle and trigger the cutscene. Sometimes it may take killing both turtles to trigger the cutscene.

Skip the cutscene. It will give you extra time. What I did here was to place my main flag in between the center and Luxon Rangers. I placed by Ritualist in between the center and the Western tree. Olias (SS) gets placed a little more inward to the center and north. The minion master is placed near the Ritualist. Grab 2 Juggernauts and bring them to the North gate and 1 to the South gate if they died somehow. They should have already been positioned however. :P Do this quickly and trap as much as you can in the gate where your Juggernauts are positioned. Once you have enemies incoming, run to the center and lay down EoE.... it helps immensely here!

The first wave shouldn't be too bad. If your Southern team begins to die, flag them back to the center so they can back off and let the Ranger pets take some of the hits while fighting. You need to keep trapping at the Northern gate, and try to keep the Kurzick NPC monks and Mhenlo alive for the first wave. Keep moving Juggernauts back to the North gate as they die. Once the first wave is beaten, begin trapping and reposition accordingly. If you can beat the 2nd wave without losing any Tree Singers, the rest is easy. This part is hit or miss. Try your best, and try to concentrate on trapping on the North gate if you can. Keep the Warrior boss of your henchmen.... he hits very hard.

For the 3rd wave, it is much easier. Flag your main team to the North Gate and bring at least 2 Juggernauts to there as well. Place your MM on the South gate behind the Rangers (if they are alive) and 1 Juggernaut. Trap the North gate until the wave comes. Once your MM takes care of the 2 Warriors on the South gate, bring him to the North again.

For the 4th wave, repeat what you did for the 3rd. You will only have 2 warriors attack from the South gate which your MM should be able to take care of easily.

Basically, the 2nd wave is the hardest part. If you can hold them off, you're basically set for the 3rd and 4th waves.

This part is hit or miss. After consolidating this strategy, I managed to get 11/12. The 2nd try was 12/12. It's all luck. The pets bugging helps out A LOT.

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Seems like an awful lot of effort... when you could just get a human team or a part human team.

Completed this earlier. It was so ridiculously close. The Warrior boss went to town on the minions while the rest of them killed the rest of our team, eventually the MM went down too. Then the other split team came across... at 1 point we had only 1 person left alive. Several failed attempts to res a monk hench and keep him alive. Somehow we came back to win it. Thankgod for traps.

I finished this today with one human and six heroes. Both of us were SS (running specifically SS, enfeebling blood, reckless haste, mark of pain and barbs) with our heroes being two MMs (with golem, fiends, bone horrors and death nova), two monks (one LoD healer, one ZB prot) and two warriors (one dragon slash, one triple chop, both had watch yourself).

Vs the Luxons we both rushed up the middle to start, taking out the first warrior mobs and the first turtle. After that we split up, one taking the north and south mobs/turtles. When the second turtles to the north and south spawned, we ignored them and stayed just outside the gates, killing waves until the middle turtle spawned when we rushed up and killed it (giving us three or four allied rangers and a siege turtle).

For the first wave of afflicted, both monks were flagged next to the middle treesingers, all three juggernauts were placed next to the pets at the northern gate, and everyone else went on the southern gate. After the first mob was killed, one MM was flagged to the northern gate while everyone else killed the mob with the warrior boss. Pretty much the same was done for the rest of the afflicted mobs, the juggernauts were constantly being moved back into the northern gate while we ran between the gates killing stuff. Enfeebling blood greatly lowers the afflicted ranger/warrior damage output, and they tend to come in groups of the same professions so they group up, meaning mark of pain and barbs will be activated by the minions and do a lot of damage, as will SS.

Bad mission, >.< anet need to balance some missions abit duhh~ last mission to get thru for cantha before I get my guardian. Too hard.

*Completed thx for thread help, really need a few ppl in team to pull this one off, got a bad alliance with little ppl doing HM*

great advice here, got legendary guardian woot

Up to 22 max titles now :P

But seriously great advice, works wonders. Managed to do it first time. well done everyone that contributed. A great post!