DoD mission stratagy?

My mother and I are stuck at the DoD mission. We're both un-ascended lvl 20s with no elites.

I'm a E/R using fire magic (flare, AoR, Fire Attunement, phoenix, healing springs and fireball.)

She's a R/N using necro skills (mostly blood and death skills)

We're using the henchmen (no heros yet as we only have Prophecies at the moment) and no elite skills. Our trouble comes during the timed part of the mission with the arcane. The arcane are overwhelming us no matter what we try. We just aren't dealing enough damage to take them out fast enough.

What skills would be recommended to use in this area? It's obvious to us both that we aren't using the right skills, so I'm wondering if I should switch to Earth, Air or Water. Granted, I know that the elites would most likely be a vast help, but we wanted to go through the ascension first if possible. I'm not even sure which elites would offer the best advantage.

We've tried pinning the henchies to one side, with her on another and me near the ghost, but that didn't go over very well, and it was futile for us to try rushing from one side to the other. I'm not sure what else we can try to beat this mission.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

DoD = Dunes of Despair? If so, that's the easiest of the desert missions.

Since your trouble is only with the casters, I'm assuming you're referring to the elementalist ones who show up in mobs of two at the start of the countdown. To make the fight against them easier, note where they come from.

A) The first two will come from the east, and should be engaged before they reach the bottom of the ramp. This way, you won't have to deal with more of them hitting you from the back while you're still trying to take these two down.

B) The second two will come from the west; if you're still fighting the first two, they will stop at the top of the ramp and focus on your Ghostly Hero. This is a good thing, however, since the Ghostly has tons more health and armor than your henchies, and your healers' AI has been updated to count him among the party and heal him if he drops too low.

C) The third two will come from the south and stop just south of the throne itself, assuming you bring a melee henchman and are still fighting the second two. If you don't, or if you've already killed the second two and retreated, they will move towards the western ramp and stop when they aggro your Ghostly Hero.

D) The last two will come from the east again, and probably stop halfway up the ramp when they aggro the Ghostly Hero.


Now, for the following, I'm assuming you know neither of Guildwiki.org nor of the official Wiki (accessible in-game by pressing F10) and have not seen any of the myriad of guides floating around. With that in mind, here are some things you can do to make the fights easier:

1) The Forgotten are casters, which means their armor is very low. The only reason they don't die as fast as they should is the Kinetic Armor enchantment spell they use. It has a horrendous recharge, so removing it - with an appropriate skill or by preventing the Forgotten from casting for 8 seconds - will basically turn them into practice targets.

2) The Forgotten are casters with no condition-removing skills, which means that the Dazed condition will shut them down for good.

3) The one dangerous thing the Forgotten do is Earthquake, which means you should wait for one of them to start using it, interrupt it (with Distracting Shot, Savage Shot, by knocking them down with Gale, or through other available options), and immediately switch to the other to be ready to interrupt it if it tries to use Earthquake as well.


As for your builds...

Lose Healing Spring. It is not nearly as effective as a thousand other skills. Even a Troll's Unguent would work better with a low attribute investment.

Bring interrupting bow attacks (and a bow, of course). Even if both you and your mother have access to one (most likely Savage Shot), between the two of you you should be able to interrupt both Earthquakes. If you want to do damage with bow attacks instead of spells, consider Conjure Flame and Kindle; if you don't, keep the bow in another weapon slot (accessible through F2 - F4) and switch to it before the Forgotten fight.

Bring enchantment removal. I don't know what precisely is available to your mother, but Strip Enchantment is core, as is Rend Enchantments and Well of the Profane.

For henchies, bring Alesia, Lina, Dunham and Stefan. Stefan will tank for you, the two monks will provide more than adequate healing, and Dunham is the only hench capable of removing enchantments.

Oh, and after you kill the Forgotten - which I really hope you do, what with all the things I've just typed up - just retreat to the ramp north of the Ghostly Hero and wait for more things to come from the west. Take them out as they come, and you can watch the counter tick down and /dance the time away.

Good luck!

If you are having problems taking down the forgotten arcanists quickly, it is probably because you are dealing low damage due to their armor. They are actually very easy to take down once you get past their armor. They cast kinetic armor which basically doubles their armor and they keep it up by refreshing it with stoning. So you have three choices to effectively deal with them.

The first is to interrupt them. Your mother with the ranger primary is best suited for the job although she would have to be able to toggle between the two arcanists to see which one is casting and interrupt it. It takes some practice to be able to monitor multiple spell casters. If she brings both savage and distracting shot, which you should be able to get in Prophecies before you get to the desert, she can interrupt both of them back to back. This will require her to play her ranger more traditionally with bows. Alternatively, you can bring gale and get enough in that attribute to use it. She can interrupt one and you can interrupt the other. Gale casts faster than kinetic armor.

Second way is to remove them when they are cast. Of the three professions you list ranger, elementalist, and necro, only the necro has ways to deal with enchantments. You can take strip enchantments which you can get before the desert. Unfortunately, it has a 20 second recharge on it so you can probably only use it on one arcanist. If you happen to strip ether renewal, then you are even more hosed. You can use rend enchantments which can strip everything from one target. Unfortunately, that has a 30 second recharge. If you bring both, then you can effectively deal with a pair of arcanists. Rend enchantment is in the hexing attribute, but you don't have to put any attribute in it.

Last way is to deal armor ignoring damages. All types of degeneration ignores armor. So you can burn, poison, disease, or hex your way to cause health degeneration. As an elementalist, you have several skills in the earth magic line that deals armor ignoring damage. Air skills penetrate armor, which in the case when kinetic armor is up, means quite a bit. As for the necromancer secondary, you can try the hex barbs. It may not seem like much to add ~10 damage, but consider that it is ~10 armor ignoring damage everytime that the target is hit. It adds up quickly when you have henchies hitting the target. I don't know if kinetic armor renewal counts as a new cast, but it it works anything like recurring insecurity, then slapping soul barbs on the arcanist will make it hurt itself everytime it refreshes kinetic armor with stoning. Note that I haven't tried this though. It's just a rather nifty idea.

Thanks for the tips, hopefully we can get through this mission soon.

We've looked everywhere on wiki and several other sites for strategies, but nothing we found helped much. Most of the strategies we found were for monks/necro/warrior combos I think.

The last time we tried using the slow totem, she noticed that the arcane stopped just outside the circle (I dropped it at the bottom of the east ramp I think)

I tried a line up with the air, water and earth skills, but again, I seem to have been using the wrong ones lol. We'll give it another shot with the interrupt and armor penetration skills.

Thanks again.

Quote: Originally Posted by GoblinQueen