Tahnnakai Temple (Explorable) HM Vanquishing help

Sometimes I wonder if they ever thought HM through with some areas.

Vanquishing Cantha has been easy so far, except this area.

With the mass amounts of Jade Brotherhood, no matter what direction you go to, how do you deal with them to vanquish this place successfully? These Jade Brotherhood aren't good, they're retardedly good.

I'm a Warrior using H/H if that helps any.

Requires three monks a mm and a ss then fill in the rest, one monk running bonds (barrier/life bond for the one taking most dmg) other monk running LoD and the third anything you want. one of the extras we used was a BHA ranger.

zone went well except for when our bonder wanted to get a closer look of rit boss, and ate a spirit burn and died lol

I was thinking a Life Barrier Monk that you could flag out of battle, bonding the whole team. It would cut their damage in half to boot, and make these guys easier, but the only pain in the ass would be flagging him in and out every battle.

I'll try again tomorrow, when I'm not irritated with the game.

Go when you have favour and pray off DP when you get it. It's mostly doable with a team build that can cope with dragons stomp spike (I went as a geotank with mantra of resolve for when there were jade mesmers in the team I was fighting), but the hardest part is the group of jades in the tower - no easy way to kill them before you get up close with your minions, and they can fire on you at will the whole way up there. You're pretty much guaranteed to rack up death penalty on the approach.

I also found Tahnnakai Temple to be the hardest area in Cantha to vanquish. I play as an ele with heroes/hench and I failed many times at that area. I finally found a team build that worked - as others above have said, bonding was key. I took both Dunkoro and Tahlkora as bonders to keep both Life Barrier and Life Bond on the rest of the team (three each). Flag them out of battle. I also took Tai for the healing. Olias as MM was my third hero. Devona, Talon, and Lo Sha were my other three. I played as B-Surge air ele for the blinding and weakness.

My general strategy was: survive the initial spike from the mages (the bonding helps here, and Prot Spirit on you and your heroes works wonders); blind and weaken the knights - at least one or two, depending on the spawn; then focus fire on the rits and take them out as fast as you can; re-apply blinding and weakness on the knights as necessary; take out the mages, if any are left (minions should have helped finish them by this time); finish off the knights; lastly the mesmers. The mesmers have nasty interrupts, but they don't inflict too much direct damage compared to the others.

As bifter said, the group at the top of the tower is really tough to get to unharmed. I ended up pulling them to the bottom of the ramp (leaving a few dead hench on the ramp on the way) and killed them off one by one at ground level.

I did this area two days ago with hero/hench and used a life barrier monk flagged out of battle aswell. Others were Dunk as healer (LoD), General as ToF tank (helps alot imo since they often bunch together and almost all are on fire), me (paragon), 1 healer henchie, two tanks and Eve I think, mainly for blood ritual for when battles take a bit longer. I prefer to take as few squishies as possible and just absorb the damage they throw at me, taking out single targets at a time.

Ofcouse I get to abuse the overpowered paragon sunspear skill but I took zero deaths. The flagging each battle can be a pain at first but I got used to it after a few areas. Also i manually cast Aegis at the start of each battle as the hero flagged back wont use it if its too far away from the fight.

I managed to vanquish Tahnnakai recently with heroes and henchmen. There were only minimal casualties, though it certainly was the only area in Cantha that I had to experiment with builds a bit. Olias died once due to mis-flagging, and Jamei once to the rit boss. Here's the build I came up with. Its not perfect, but I don't see much need to change it since it went smoothly the first time. The Jade Brotherhood mobs have rediculous hex removal, but no condition or enchant removal - so blind and bonds ftw. I don't really like to use melee henchmen or heroes, but I found Melonni to be rather useful due to the need to control the above average mob sizes.

My Character
E/Rt - 14 Air, 9 Energy Storage, 10 Channeling
Enervating Charge, Lightning Orb, Blinding Flash, Blinding Surge, GoLE, Splinter Weapon, Air Attunement, Flesh of My Flesh

Tahlkora - Mo/Me 13 Prot, 13 Divine, 8 Inspiration
Blessed Signet, Mantra of Inscriptions, Sig of Devotion, Aegis, Balthazar's Spirit, Life Bond, Life Barrier, Rebirth

Olias - N/R 15 Death, 11 Soul Reaping, 8 Beast Mastery, 2 Blood
Golem, Shambling Horror, Bone Fiend, Blood of the Master, Sig of Lost Souls, Dark Bond, Death Nova, Symbiosis

Melonni - D/Any 12 Mysticism, 13 Scythe, 8 Earth Prayers
Reapers Sweep, Mystic Sweep, Chilling Victory, Heart of Fury, Mystic Regen, Conviction, Faithful Intervention, Res Sig

The other henchmen are less critical, but I'd advise against melee or Cynn if you want steady aggro. I used Tai, Jamei, Lo Sha, and Zho (for more splinter weapon goodness).


Tahlkora stays flagged out of battle, and she should keep Life Barrier on the whole party. I find that heroes can maintain 9-10 enchantments without too much difficulty.

Melonni is the tank and a significant damage dealer with an AoE scythe + splinter weapon if the aggro is focused on her. She should have Life Barrier, Life Bond, Balthazar's Spirit, and Faithful Intervention maintained on her. With those 4 enchantments and Symbiosis, Melonni has 1100+ health, and this is enough to survive the initial onslaught while aggro centers on her. If you flag her into the path of patrols, she'll rush towards the casters even when set to guard mode. This works in your favor, since the knights will also follow, and Melonni will wreak havoc on the whole mob with splinter weapon. Just reapply splinter weapon, blind any knights that break away, and keep pressuring the casters and everything should go well. The minions might actually be unnecessary, but they soak up dragon stomps and death nova is always fun.

Hope this helps, I managed both Elona and Canthan Vanquisher with just Heroes and Henchmen, but I think that Tahnnakai is probably the most challenging area in Factions.

Pretty easy area when done with a friend that knows what he's doing.

We had 2x LoD and 1x RC monks (with 2x aegis and 1x ward melee), 2x BHA ranger, 1x Curses hexer, 1x Bsurge ele, 1x Warrior. Nothing special, just careful pulling and flagging your hero so they'd spread out in insane AoE.

After having failed this place for a couple of times, I gave up on normal balanced team, made my monk Spirit Bond tank with Balanced Stance, Tahlkora a smiter (Holy Wrath/Retribution) and Sousuke E/Me with things like Empathy and Backfire to finish the ritualists that would keep on healing themselves. Norgu would've probably worked better, but I wanted to have some nuking backup.

Only problems I faced was the occasional interrupt from Jade Brotherhood Mesmer, but the DP went off quite quickly. I'm sorry I didn't really give you any advice at all, since you're a warrior, but maybe some guildies would help?

PS Sorry for any mistakes, my English is pretty bad

Trapper + decent luring = completely screwed up Brotherhood. Then just top it off with Searing Flames.

I've done this zone before using H/H and I helped a friend clear this zone recently. He only has Factions but I used 2 monk bonders and a ranger. It was basically the builds from the Legendary Survivor thread in the farming section.

I'm really against the 3'rd monk approach. So far what has worked best for me in most areas is this set up

Warrior(usually d-slash)(Me)
Necro(MM)
Ele 1(SF)
Ele 2(SF with ward against melee)
Ranger(BHA)
Paragon(ToF is main skill here, with the 2 SF eles it works extremely well)
Monk 1(HB or WoH monks work fairly well on heroes)
Monk 2(ZB or some other prot monk, this was played by my friend so we could do things that weren't possible with heroes)

I'm vanquishing fairly often during the day, give me a PM if you want some company, I still have like 10 areas left in Cantha.

IGN: kratos of cruxious

I know an exploit you guys can use if anyone is still having trouble with this, and I'm suprised they didn't put it on Wiki. You get a person (any old newbie) who has just completed the mission and has hard mode unlocked on their account. There is a primary quest called "Meeting with the Emperor" which will make vanquishing this area 100 times easier. Most people overlook this quick quest because it is required to get farther in factions... however it is not. You can actually keep this quest active your character if you get a ferry to Arborstone with someone who has "The Count's Daughter."

Anyway, first off, you'll notice that if the exploit is working, then you will see the emperor in the center with his guards. Go north past them and go to where the Tahnaki Temple Mission area portal is, but instead of mapping there, go north and you'll see a single group of Jade Brotherhood (about 6-7 of them). If you get a bad spawn, resign and try again, but otherwise just kill them. Notice the counter? Anyway, go north from there, but try to stay as far south as you can along the wall before the stairs leading up, because if you go further north, the counter will get messed up. Go east and then down the stairs and you should eventually come to 2 temple guardians. Kill them and the area is vanquished. If you guys don't have a character with the primary quest, PM ME: Tifas Revenge Z and I will help. Have Fun!

- Tifas Revenge Z

Eh, I now admit that saying no 3rd monk was kinda dumb, i have started using an LB monk plus 2 heal monks in the party, works great!

Well I got lucky with this, there was a glitch with when I tried this area, I only killed two temple guardians after crossing the bridge and got vanquishing credit for the whole area despite it being full of enemies.

Weird I know but not complaining in the least, we were stunned.

http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/3361/gw064ma4.jpg

Edit: didn't read Tifas post, so that's how we did it lol

Quote: