Who die first?

Location: Raisu Palace

The Monsters: Star burster - elementalist, ie: Star Ancient Koosun , monk, ritualist, warrior and ranger in a group, which of these do you take out first?

In my days spending playing Guild Wars, the norm is you must always take out the healing foes first. But, over time, i come to realise sometime it is not the case. In some cases, you have to take out something else beside the monk first, for instant, the above scenario, it is always advisable to pull Star Ancient Koosun out alone and kill it first before getting to the mob, and when ever you fight a mob with star burster elementalists in the them in the Divine Path, Raisu Palace, it is the elementalist that you have to get rid of first.

So what are your secret of playing a smooth game, share your tips and trips. thanks. I haven't been to all corners of Guild Wars and still have much ground to cover, I think this might help me and other alike. So, who die first?

In cases where you don't know who to take out first, you'll be the one that go bye bye first.

Just incase people don't understand, or I am unable to get what I actually want to say in this thread, please read, this is not how to kill this particular group thread, its what are your advise, different location, different made up of foes, different boss, like what Storm Alex says Blow up Koosun first. The monk and rit Shiro'ken are terribad healers you can laugh at. and so, you have to come up with your own location and group of enemies and which foes to take out first is your advise to other players.

I've come across many pug, yes I do pug, that INSIST on killing monk first (which many a time isn't the case) even if you tell them to kill FOR EXAMPLE KOOSUN first. this is such a thread, so that players know it in NOT ALWAYS the monk you have to get rid of first.

for instant, when playing nightfall, sometime instead of Word of Madness, you have to get rid of the chaos first. because chaos kills your party monk very fast. And it create CHAOS amongst your party which you don't want, when you see your monk starts running frantically around, its time you switch and get rid of the Chaos instead of insisting on killing word of madness.

kind of making pug better thread :P~ savvy?

Edited to make what I want clearer, obviously i am bad at getting message across.

I don't understand why you made a thread for this...I guess you lost against the boss? Lots of times? Just kill everything at once...fire is key.

Monk,Rit,Ele,War,Ranger. interrupt/degen/slaughter.

i solo that group lol

Blow up Koosun first.
The monk and rit Shiro'ken are terribad healers you can laugh at.

If you're really pro, you can blow up everything at once with physicals + MoP + Splinter.

If there's somebody that's inflicting enormous damage, usually an ele, kill it first. Otherwise, kill healers first. Sometimes I also kill mesmers first in the event they're shutting down MY healer.

The boss, then the ritualist, since he uses Flesh of my Flesh.

Pretty sure my post makes this discussion irrelevant. There is AoE for a reason. Blow them all up at once...

Take them all out at once, not hard.

monks, rezzers, eles, melee, the rest, usually rangers last.

depending on situation, sometimes tho i go for eles or rezzers before monks.

Greatest inhibition to victory first.

If their offense is high, you take down their offense. Likewise for defensive.

Killing monks first made a lot of sense when monk healing was far weaker on themselves (WoH target other, etc) or if you had a lot of disruption that could block healing (KDs), but for a lot of PvE groups neither is the case and you're just as well off knocking out the offense if it's any threat to you.

You just weigh where your disruption would be best used, or put a bit on the healers while you wipe the offensive targets.

There are too many variation to make a simple statement on something like this. Some Rits are awesome healers, some awesome damage dealers, some neither. Because the class doesn't always have the same skill set, you have to learn how each monster functions. This holds for groups too. Some groups have no healing, some average healing, and some amazing healing. Depending on what type of group you face, you pick a different target.

For the Shiroken groups you are referring to, I'd always go for the Elementalists first, followed by the Monk/Rit. And for the people saying to kill them all at once, I agree, but only if you can. Not all people know how to group aggro, and having monsters scattered won't allow for AoE to hit all the targets. There are several places in that mission that you can't group them all together and stay on pace to get Masters.

I go as a general rule: boss -> monk (if good healer) -> hard rez -> main damage dealer -> any foe anoying H/H -> softies

here that'd be boss -> rit -> eles -> monk -> boum

You realize that Star Burst is a touch skill that makes it unlikely that you'll be able to get the boss and the monks/rits at the same time(unless you can wipe them all with your initial attack pre-aggro)?

The dangerous one goes first ever, dont mather the class...
later
The Annoyings goes second place dont mather class...
last
The rest dont mather class

Only time and exp will show who is the most dangerous in a foe team...

Basically man i use earth.. not fire to AoE, better effects...

I try to put them all togheter, this way you dont need to focus in monk, monks will die for AoE...

I use a monk with SB, full damage monk... i use Sb in myself run first and all casters waste spells on me, if team is easy release hero/henc and kill them, if harder run back and use terrain, tank and use AeO... if you good 95% of time you will put foes togheter and kill them fast no mather who will goes first...

Agree...

sorry my weak english...

if you know that place at all, just for people who think killing the whole lot in the koosun situation is the best, let me remind you, koosun is very very pull-able. you only need to kill the one without aggro-ing the rest, then sneak pass. (for mission) for explorable/vanquish, don't go into the room, always pull koosun, it will be slightly harder.

lol @ killing the whole lot. what a waste of time.


PS: please don't just talk about koosun, if you have other ways of a faster better way to kill any type of foes, please share. thanks

The interrupt ranger attacks the healer, the rest on the most dangerous one. Locking heroes on a foe FTW. This tactic even works in PUGs

Read the op post... he not asking how to kill kossun...

i am the op. lol

Well i always say FIRE...hit them hard and fast, more damage you can do quickly the better, normally works for me!

As long as you have a good balanced group most things are easy

I forgive you... lol... my bad...

Throw in an [[Ebon Vanguard Assassin] to the suffer the initial damage. [[Pain Inverter] on the Damage Dealers (most of the time ele's), [[Broad Head Arrow] on the Monks or Rits, spread with [[Epidemic]. [[Throw Dirt] on the melee's closing in, spread with Epidemic. [[Screaming Shot] on a balled up mob, Disease them with [[Signet of Infection]. Epidemic...

...and then just wait untill the mob is killed by my minions/SF-ele's.

That's basically how I vanquish/complete missions/play this game.

I just bring enough damage that all I have to do is aggro them and then stuff starts to die.

I used to do that, but then I realized that things in PvE die so quickly most of the time that if you just blow the everloving crap out of a single target you can pretty quickly wipe out 2 or 3 key enemies and then just mop the rest up like leftovers. This seems to be especially true in factions.

Tactics are overrated. Just go ballistic :P

Feel free to stop posting in it then. We won't miss your oh-so-witty and irreverent commentary.

1) Anything that'll insta wipe your party/tank
2) Anything that'll overload your monks or kill them
3) Their healers
4) Their annoyers
5) Their moderate damagers
6) Rest.

In general (i.e. not in all cases) I'll go for the Rit healer over the Monk healer in a group. After that - unless I notice their healer is just making it take longer and therefore being annoying - I target whatever is closest, and then the melee attackers.

If there's a boss in the group, I'll ignore it if it's melee, or pretty much anything else (unless I know it's a powerful damage dealing Rit, or something that's going to piss me off by making me slow, or blind, or...you get the idea) but kill it first if it's an Ele.

These days it's so easy to stroll through massive groups with no problem that targeting has become less of an issue as it used to be. It's a shame really...but I guess that's why we now have hard mode, to make the encounters just that little bit more difficult when faced with multiple healers, etc.

1. Anything massively dangerous (HM Ele bosses for example)
2. Anything with hard res (I'm can't be bothered killing everything twice)
3. Anything stopping other enemies from dying (I've encountered two single non-boss monks that can do this: Duncan's Dwarves)
4. Everything else.

I attack whoever is closer besides the boss. Stay away from that Silver Armor Boss until the end. AOE will nip at him and burning etc.. then he is usually pretty easy to kill Sometimes dead before i finish the group.

H/hench

For general play Is end hench/heros after Front lines and I hit (mesmer usually) the casters of my chioce

1. Kill anything.
2. Raise a Flesh Golem
3. Attack whatever the Flesh Golem attacks.

May sound silly, but it's not. At least for me, those things target exactly what must be targeted.

Well the monks in Raisu are weak healers, even in hard mode. But those elementals only get stronger. I always take those down first.

As for melee, I rely on how bad the monks are to shut down the assassins and warriors.

I always kill the monk first then the rit then the other casters and melee last. With my dual shatterstone build they are a cloud of nothingness in just a few seconds. As always you kill the healers first, you aggrivate the others while killing the healers forcing the healer AI to waste energy healing them when it should be constantly healing itself. The AI is dumb so exploit it and kill healers first.

If there are two Monks/Rits, I always kill one first because trying to outdamage two healers without pressuring them directly can take way too long considering their near limitless energy, increased cast speed, shortened recharge times, and increased health levels.

Once it's down to only one healer, or if there ever only was one, focus on the main threat. Against Charr, this would be Dominators. Against Stone Summit, its usually the Herders. Against the Undead, I'll pick off the Wizards first. You can (or should be able to) easily outdamage a single healer to knock out these priority targets.

Once the main threats are down, clean up any remaining backline they have (healers, casters), move onto to midline (rangers, paragons), then finish off any frontline who haven't already been killed from hexes/collateral damage (warriors, dervs, assassins).

I play a Paragon, so I can laugh at any feeble attempts at hurting the party they make. I kill whatever their most important support is. Actually, that's my approach in PvP as well. Take out the support and the opposition collapses.

I think what OP is searching for is the optimal principle behind prioritizing targets, now that he's realized that "kill the healer first" isn't always the best plan.

This is half of it. The other half is "target with the lowest opportunity cost first." (The "opportunity cost" of killing a particular monster is the sum of the damage/heals/hexes/rezzes that come from other monsters you could have killed instead during the time period while you were killing your target.)

In sum, the principle looks like "Kill whatever eliminates the largest inhibition to victory at the lowest opportunity cost."

(How is that different from simply killing the greatest inhibition to victory first? Well, let's take an example: When fighting the Remnant of Antiquities and the one Frozen Elemental next to him, which one do you kill first? The Frozen Elemental. Why? Clearly the Remnant is a much bigger obstacle to victory. But killing the Remnant is going to take a long-ass time, during which that little Frozen Elemental would get to deal thousands of damage if left alive. The cost of killing the Remnant first, measured in terms of what the unchecked Frozen elemental is going to do to you while you kill the Remnant, is very high. Conversely, the cost of killing the Frozen Elemental first is going to be only one or two casts from the Remnant (or zero, if you assign a single interrupter to the Remnant while killing the Elemental).)

For the most part, prioritizing targets is about making accurate judgments about how big a threat and how fast a kill each monster is going to be. A few rules of thumb about what might be a high priority target: (1) High-damage monsters can be a threat to your survival, which tends to make them a large threat to victory. (2) The threat posed by a rezzer is effectively equal to its own threat, plus the threat of whatever it can rez. (3) Effective healers/protectors raise the cost of killing anything as long as they're alive. It's usually better to kill them first than take a whole bunch of fire as you drag through several slower kills because you didn't kill them first. (4) "Glass cannons" are higher-than-average-priority targets almost by definition.

That's because their preference for low-AL, low-HP, close-proximity targets does a very good job of picking the target with the lowest opportunity cost to kill. As long as there's nothing around with an unusually high threat level, and no surprises with healing or blocking or other skills that make that yummy-looking low-AL, low-HP, close-proximity target harder to kill than the golem thinks it is, the golem is probably right.

Actually this is a very valid thread (don't troll, claiming how your build is so leet it requires no thought/strategy).

There are certain areas where the monk isn't the first one who should be targetted. Mostly, eles are a big threat. Or when running certain builds like a bonder, stuff that strips enchants are.

My opinions
Flameshielders and then dominators (res chant) and then prophets for charr areas
The dervishes and then the Water eles in Realm of Torment first
The necros in Naphui Quarter first (well of blood, grenths balance, enchantment removal, and armor ignoring life steal, oh my)
Mursatt - Monks first
Hell's Precipice- Fire Sparks

This. Your only worry with the Ritualists are some lamely annoying resurrection skills. They'd be second on my list. Monks I don't even take seriously, and I sometimes leave them as the last to kill.

Ritaulists, Monks and Mesmers first.
Warriors and Assassins second.
Everything else comes third.

If Anything is killing you, target it. If nothing is killing you spread the love around. If at any time there is anything that prevents you from killing your current target, kill it first. Re-evaluate after each target is killed.

The only exception is that a critter with a hard rez falls into the "prevents killing" category but it doesn't override the "killing you" priority.

In this case there was something killing you badly - Ele bosses in Factions are a nightmare (double damage and halfing times) and none of the other professions are preventing you from killing it. Had there maybe been two monks there you may have been hard pressed to kill the boss and had to kill one of the monks. Once it is dead there isn't really anything there that can kill you or keep things alive therefore I let the hench/team pick their targets and wail on it (actually I still call targets but I don't pay much attention to what they are other than I choose enemies that are clumped up for any AoE damage I am doing).

I haven't found a time when this hasn't produced the correct target priority. The rest is positioning and knowing if there are any environmental affects to take advantage of.

This seems to be the most usefull advice. Different enemies have different builds so it's impossible to give a standard order to optimally kill a group. It depends heavily on how good their healers are, how many of them there are, and whether they have a ress skill or not. Take out extreme damage dealers first unless they have strong health support, if they have strong health support than take out those first. Also take out ressers and minion masters out as fast as you can after the extreme damage dealers and healers.

Totally agree; excellent post, Chthon.

Reminds me of when I go up against that group of Ceratadons with "Joffs the Mitigator," the ele boss with Shockwave. You take out the other two before you go after him, and you will survive much better.


Of course, Pain Inverter helps...