Vloxen Excavations - Hard Mode

Yeah, I could really use some help. If you've finished this dungeon before, pls post your strategies... I'll send you cookies and a smile!

I am starting it from Vlox's Falls (since that skips a lot of the fighting in level 1) but I usually die at level 2 even though I have Frozen Soil... I just can't kill them fast enough.

Anyway, I'll write my tips below (if you got any good ones, I'll edit them in here to make it easier to find).

Bring the following:
- a good tank that can pull;
- [Putrid Explosion], [Well of Darkness], and [Verata's Gaze] to counter the enemy Minion Masters.
- Focus on hexes (such as [Spiteful Spirit], [Empathy], [Insidious Parasite], [Visions of Regret], [Defile Flesh]), enchantment removal ([Rip Enchantment]) and spells for damage.
- Bring spammable blinding ([Blinding Surge] or [Steam] + [Extend Conditions]), miss hexes ([Reckless Haste] or [Blurred Vision]), and hex removal for defense.
- Bring [Frozen Soil] so you won't have to worry about the Stone Summit Resurrection skills. Also consider [Muddy Terrain] to make them stay in AoE spells longer.
- For more defense, consider using [Weapon of Warding] or defensive shouts ([Defensive Anthem], ["They're On Fire!"], ["there's Nothing To Fear!"], ["Save Yourselves!"]) since they can't be removed like enchantments.
- Kill the melee enemies with AoE damage and then go for the spell-casters.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated... this dungeon is mean.
Oh, and please post 8-man team builds, not just skills like I did since I never finished this dungeon.

Me (Aura of faith prot) and friend(R/d with wounding and pain inverter) took 1 N/rt livia with heals and splinter, 1 Mo/me dunkoro with heals, and 4 Sh nukers. Ranger took agro and then we nuked them.

But how did the Ranger keep the aggro on him? And weren't his enchantments quickly removed?

Ranger takes aggro by pulling, when they get into range, nuke nuke nuke baby!

At least, that's how I think he did it. I woulda done it like that, but I have yet to do HM .

I posted a pretty complete team build and basic strategy guide on GuildWiki's Vloxen discussion page after doing HM with H+H. Some points:
Instead of stealing corpses from enemy minion masters, steal the minions themselves Daze is your friend with multi-monk mobs. I ended up using 2 BHA rangers. In addition to Frozen Soil bring Muddy Terrain as well to keep those lawn ornaments from swarming all over the place
In any case it's a very hard dungeon to H+H. If at all possible try to find a friend so that you can deploy a fully customized team.

I did it with 2 friends, myself being necro with hexes and stuff, 1 friend begin ranger pulling agro and 1 begin a monk, we used consumables (to make it somewhat easier) and some AoE hero's to get the job done, the ranger was epidemic BHA.

But how do you steal their minions? [Verata's Aura] has a 33% life sacrifice and 30 seconds recharge. Or do you just spam [Verata's Gaze] and, if so, is that fast enough?

The enemy dwarves have [Draw Conditions] and [Plague Signet], so they can remove Daze. But even if the dazing stays, they still cast spells very fast and they use hexes like [Shadow of Fear] so it's hard to interrupt them with physical attacks.

When i did it (quite a long time ago now so i can't remember exactly) i took as much AoE damage as possible with the aim of simply overwhelming thier monks. Their monks are very potent and if you concentrate on only one or two targets they can usually keep them alive far too long. With taking as much AoE as possible the idea was to make it impossible for their monks to keep up. Another key thing is careful pulling and positioning. You have to pull the enemy into positions where you can do the most damage to them, and they can do the least damage to you. Things like blocking them against walls or on a corner are great for getting them bunched up ready to take the AoE you throw at them. Keeping their melee bunched up away from you also means their casters will either focus on your blocking minions keeping the damage off you, or they will move up to cast against your back line and in doing so walk stright into the AoE you've just laid down. Given the way monster AI works they will then likely do one of two things. They will either try and get some spells off and probably die doing so, or they will turn around and run back the way they came. Either way works in your favour.

I took a N/Mo minion bomber/prot hero, a E/N earth hero with eruption, unsteady ground, churning earth, enfeebling blood and weaken armor, and a E/R triple heat hero with frozen soil. For henchies i took both monks, the fire and earth eles. I ran a Rt/R splinter barrager with a 2nd frozen soil just in case.

The basic strategy i used was to get some minions up and use them to tank for me. I'd flag my h/h just short of a corner, set up FS away from the front line then i'd run forward and aggro with a flatbow. Run back and the minions would rush out and block the melee on the corner. Basically then i'd unload absolutely everything i had at them, making sure the earth hero cast eruption first to protect the minions. Nine times out of ten the front line would fall quite quickly then i'd move up to the casters and finish them off. Fairly standard tank'n'spank tactics but without a human tank, just minions. You can't get too complicated with a h/h setup or they'll just stuff it up. The death nova from the minions would also do some pretty serious damage.

The only groups that gave me any trouble were some of the larger Slavers Exile style summit groups. They are orders of magnitude harder than their regular summit counterparts. The regular groups fell easily. The necro boss on level 2 can also be tricky. He has a lot of enemies near him and it's too easy to accidentally pull more than you can handle.

One thing i didn't have at the time was access to many PvE skills from EotN. If i had to do it again now i would take pretty much the same team setup but i would carry [ebon battle standard of honor] and [technobabble] (the new one) for sure.

If i had another human to go with then i'd ideally make sure the six heroes were 2 monks, a N/Mo minion bomber, E/N earth ele and 2 SH triple heat eles. Weaken armor combined with the battle standard and damage-over-time AoE makes for some very fast kills. An SS necro could go in there instead of an SH ele, providing AoE, melee hate and freeing up 2 slots on the E/N for other skills.

This is just how i did it. There's plenty of ways but it worked for me. I used one powerstone before the boss fight because the E/N got caught a few times towards the end, but other than that no consumables were used.