Making Shards of Orr Easy

Ahh, yes. Shards of Orr. Everybody's favorite dungeon. High levels, balanced skills, and massive condition immunity combined with impressive healing power makes this dungeon very deadly. Fortunately, Kaida is here to save you. :]

I did this dungeon with a friend using a balanced build at first. It was only moderately successful (2 and a half hours). So, we tried a few more builds until I came up with the following:


Our Characters:

Necromancer:
(Any build, I honestly haven't found a really helpful one yet. The mobs die instantly most of the time.)
Suggestion: Running the elite Healer's Boon and having your monk buddy Arcane Mimicry it could work in both of your favors!

Monk:
(LoD Heal/Prot Hybrid)
Suggestions: Using the strategy in the Necromancer's Suggestions section works well, as does a regular LoD build. The following 3 skills are recommended:

1. Prot Spirit
2. Light of Deliverance
3. Shield of Absorbtion

(the rest of these are what we used)
4. Glyph of Lesser Energy
5. Signet of Rejuvination
6. Dwayna's Kiss
7. Cure Hex
8. Resurrection Chan


Our Heroes:

Class (consistant with all of the following bars):
Mo/Me

Runes (consistant with all of the following bars):
Full Survivors and Attunement
Superior Smiting
Minor Divine
Major Vigor


Skills and Stats:

Type 1 (x2):

Stats:
16 (12+1+3) Smiting
11 (10+1) Divine Favor
8 Inspiration

Skills:
Signet of Judgement
Smiters Boon
Mantra of Inscriptions
Leech Signet
Castigation Signet
Reversal of Damage
Smite Hex
Divine Boon


Type 2 (x2):

Stats:
16 (12+1+3) Smiting
11 (10+1) Divine Favor
8 Inspiration

Skills:
Signet of Judgement
Smiters Boon
Mantra of Inscriptions
Leech Signet
Castigation Signet
Smite Condition
Smite Hex
Divine Boon


Type 3 (x2):

Stats:
15 (11+1+3) Smiting
10 (19+1) Divine Favor
8 Protection
8 Inspiration

Skills:
Signet of Judgement
Smiters Boon
Mantra of Inscriptions
Leech Signet
Castigation Signet
Reversal of Fortune
Smite Condition
Divine Boon



The Concept:
The build is very easy to run. Here are 4 easy steps to make it work:

Step 1: Approach group and lock the nearest enemy.
Step 2: Activate Mantra of Inscriptions and Signet of Judgement on all of your heroes. Be aware that you need to be far enough away so that they do not attack.
Step 3: Both of you ping the same target (the nearest enemy) to attack.
Step 4: Watch the mobs die instantly and laugh.

The build can also easily brawl the groups as well, it just takes longer. So, if you miss a few of the baddies, don't worry about it.

If you are not a necromancer and your friend is not a monk (or visa versa), just adapt the build to suite your needs. My confidence is in you. ;]

Finally, my disclaimer:
I've seen a few of you running around here with similar ideas and I'm not taking credit for your ideas! I'm just posting what worked best for me. You have my compliments for figuring it out yourself. I'm just trying to help the community, as should you, so feel free to post here and add your advice.

Good luck, and may death... er... life strike your foes!

Vampiric Gaze
Signet of Judgment
Light of Deldrimor
Spear of Light
Castigation Signet
Blood Ritual
Balthazar's Aura
Sunspear Rebirth Signet


Is about the best I could make on a necro.


For the hero monks: Go heavy on Smite Condition, since they spam Blind...make it work against them.

Another possibility is to go Mo/R and use pets to draw conditions/hexes.

Looks good if you want to run through the dungeon but how do you kill the necro guy and his spawns at the end, sorry if I come across agitated it`s because I am. Smiting is definatley the way to him but then something else is needed and I can`t work out what and any help is appreciated. Thankyou.

Now the boss. Come on you pro mesmers or even ritualists, post your builds that shut the end lvl boss down!? Well thats my best guess, I`ve given up for now untill someone posts a revelation.

You just fight him like normal. He goes down eventually. It's not really a hard fight. One of his forms doesn't heal. If you find that your team's energy is getting low, just retreat while he is in that form. I think the form is his "human" one... someone double check me on that.

Look nice just run in and all sig judge xD

but I still prefer run inside with prot and aggro with 4 ms and deep freeze

About anything with smiting works like a breeze on these dungeons, i would take a melandru's derv with maintained judges insight as a tanker on shards, i use a balth derv in cathedral of flames.

At some point I while I was looking over the dungeon description on the wiki I started reading the discussion about builds. As it turns out there's one on the discussion that's very similar to the OP's and worked really well for me when I H/H'd the dungeon.

10 Inspiration, 12+1 Smiting, 10+1 Divine Favor
[skill]Mantra of Inscriptions[/skill][skill]Signet of Judgment[/skill][skill]Reversal of Damage[/skill][skill]Bane Signet[/skill][skill]Castigation Signet[/skill][skill]Smite Hex[/skill][skill]Smite Condition[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

I was on my Rit when I did the dungeon and found I needed to go Resto to bolster the relatively spotty healing by the hench monks. I ran with this:

12+1+1 Restoration, 12+1 Communing
[skill]Spirit Light Weapon[/skill][skill]Recovery[/skill][skill]Life[/skill][skill]Mend Body and Soul[/skill][skill]Spirit Light[/skill][skill]Pure was Li Ming[/skill][skill]Light of Deldrimor[/skill][skill]Flesh of My Flesh[/skill]

I filled the hench roles with Lina, Mhenlo, Herta (for her wards) and Devona. Devona is worthless for damage because she's blind and hexed all the time, but that's the point: she's first out of the gate and the monster's priority target. I rolled through the first two levels easily. Careful pulling on the third level got me to Fendi. It was a tough fight with three complete wipes but was near dead on the last wipe so it was easy to finish him.

Meh to getting an onyx gem from the boss chest. I suppose it could have been worse and dropped one of Fendi's lousy greens.

Lastly, I've been experimenting with Gwen and Norgu as signet mesmers wearing a full artificer's set. So far they seem to work out just fine. I've run this build on them:

Fast Casting 3+1, Smiting 12, Inspiration 12 + 1 + 1
[skill]Mantra of Inscriptions[/skill][skill]Signet of Humility[/skill][skill]Signet of Judgment[/skill][skill]Bane Signet[/skill][skill]Signet of Rage[/skill][skill]Castigation Signet[/skill][skill]Smite Condition[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Damage output is a bit less, but the extra armor seems beneficial. Signet of Humility... not sure about its utility but again this is an experiment.

The only hard part comes from using full h/h team.

With real players, just about anything works.

Signet of Judgement knock down the boss, if used well he won't be able to do a thing.

I did this with some guildies, basically the damage came from 2 smiting monks (on 1 of them human, 1 hero) and from 2 rangers.
One splinter barrage, the other (me) with HotHF+volley and BHA, which was extremely useful against the final boss - as against any caster boss.

Having a tank was useful for us ranger, since we got blinded very seldom.

Seeing 170+ damage from Sloth's hunter shot with holy damage was fun, actually ...

Necro/Rit Hero with [skill]Mend Body and Soul[/skill] (this is the big condition remover and healer)

I used a necro with
[skill]Spiteful Spirit[/skill] [skill]Defile Enchantments[/skill] [skill]Desecrate Enchantments[/skill] [skill]deep freeze[/skill] [skill]soul barbs[/skill] [skill]Pain Inverter[/skill] [skill]Suffering[/skill] [skill]resurrection signet[/skill]
Could switch out SS for FoC for more area effect dmg

Oh thank God I thought this was another QQ thread, but instead a pwnface one. Rawk on!

As for my build...I forgot what I brought. I think I brought Razah, Dunk, and Talk as a Prot monk. I'll put up the SS when I get home.

Kaida doesn't QQ. :]

All great suggestions guys. Keep it up!

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I just started testing H/H builds this morning in SoO. Was happy to find this thread and just printed it out. Thanks so much Kaida and everyone who's contributing to my edification.

If your hero is doing close combat besure to bring some anti knockdown skill. My Kahmu forget to bring one and he cant do a thing because of getting spiked easily with Shock + After shock to 60 DP.

We used a three man 600 monk team and it was a breeze to get to the boss but the first time we tried he spawned with no weapons. Now they fixed it we went back with the same team and five nuker heros as backup. Again getting to the boss was very easy indeed but the boss took us a fair while especially when the rangers respawned with all new debilitating shots. To top it all off the two of us were rewarded with a crappy high req gold item. Def a dungeon to not bother with again but gotta catch them all ;-)

i hated this dugeon so for kicks and giggles...i went in with my zoobuild. myself (ranger 1), 2 Ranger heroes and a monk hero...all with pets...npc proc monk, talon, cynn and Lo (mesmer npc)...all 3 rangers having barrage/pet build (one carried fav winds, one carried edge of extinction, and one carried conflag)

its a tricky build to run cause you gotta make sure the monk's pet dont die or he is uslesses during the cool down. Was rather fun.

Alternative is to take rangers with poision or fire condition builds and a mesmer hero to spread the love around.

Its also rather fun to run with a moestly ele bulid too...you can set the long range damage spells off before they even know you got them targeted if you do it right.

anthem of purification helped me finish

Lol @ shards, went through it with my warrior yesterday, but they dont like warriors in Shards (the blind isn't the worst, the KD's annoy me greatly though). What struck me is that lots of big mobs had pretty chokepoints where you can cornerblock them quite easily. Ogden's aoe smite does the rest. I felt a bit bewildered though, because I had to TANK (yuck). I just stood there to block monsters as some blind, useless gimp :P.

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A war with Uran Blessing is pretty much imune to blind and has extra armor and hp for tanking.

Its the best build for tanks in shards I would say, but certainly not the only build.

Anyone take a war/monk with Symbol of Wrath?

yesterday evening i tried the smiter heroes teambuild
each of them had signet of judgement. i placed eoe... then ping a group of enemy and then... BOOM!!!
i didnt even hav to fight ^^

Hi Kaida...

I got to Fendi really fast with a variation of your team build. I just didn't have time to finish off Fendi because I had to leave for work. Any tips on how to take out Soul of Fendi fast (with or without consumables)?

Thank you!

Ursan Blessing? I was going W/Rt and bringing "Sight Beyond Sight", but I never imagined using one of the PvE elites.

Maybe I'll try that one on D'Alessio Seaboard, since I'm having issues on the HM of that one, I played it recently and found it much like Shards of Orr.

And yes, I agree with all the sentiments of less whining threads. Yes, I had issues with Shards of Orr at first, but got around it with a single Ritualist skill and a full hero smite team, but it's nice to see so many other suggestions.

Well, here's an unconventional approach for all the melee class players who want to make a contribution against blind-happy monsters: be D/X or X/D, take a scythe, put points in Scythe Mastery and Earth Prayers and take Sand Shards! It's a cheap enchantment that any profession can keep up indefinitely, and in an optimal situation you fail to hit 3 enemies with each swing, doing 60ish armor ignoring damage to all nearby enemies. Just add an IAS skill for silly amounts of AoE damage oh yeah, blind me some more ...

Well, there is no "fast" way to clear the boss with this build. It's going to take some time to beat him (esp. since it takes a bit anyways). The time you save getting to him is plenty enough to compensate though.

Locking a few heroes (onto the boss) is the best suggestion I can make.

shards of orr is hard? when did this happen?

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I did this dungeon about a week after GWEN came out.

Done it solo (me and H/H only) just like all the other dungeons (except Kinslayer).

I only used the 2 henchie monks, and so I didn't have smiting. It did appear hard getting past the undead groups. However, my rit hero (resto build) did a pretty good job.

I reached Fendi, and it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to kill him. Eventually I did, took me some time, a few heroes did die, but I did manage to kill him. I flagged heros away from the rising lava in some places.

Took me about 2 hrs total.

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