Guide to Legendary Skill Hunter

Hey, this is my Guide for Legendary Skill hunter. It is a work in progress, I am still working on Canthan and Elonian Skill Capping guide part. This should contain the basic ingredients and it covers most of Tyria's hard-to-get-parts. I will post Factions and NF soon.

All rights reserved to Elanor The Highelf (me) for writing this. =)

In my skillhunting quest, i did not notice that there was no guide for skillcapping, so i decided to work it fully out. I did post a part of this here:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10348958 , but this will become my official separate thread.

I capped my skills in the order of Factions -> Nightfall -> Tyria. I will explain later in this guide why.

Since i assume that you all know what elite skills are, i will not go into detail to that. You are all reading this for a reason right? I will break a few things down tough, so here it goes:

Introduction
Elite Skills consist out of 30 Core Skills, which are available to all 3 main campaigns, (EotN excluded since it is an expansion). Prophecies has 60 Tyrian Elite Skills, Factions has 90 Canthan Elite Skills, and Night Fall has 110 Elonian Elite skills. This brings the total amount of skills at 290. Your Elite Skill progress bar will say otherwise, that each campaign has more then that. As matter of fact, it says that Tyria has 90 skills, Cantha has 120, and Elona 140. The title display has the 30 core skills included with the count per chapter. So if you cap 1 Core skill in Tyria, it will say that you have capped 1 skill in Tyria, Cantha, and Elona. So if you have the 30 Core Skills capped, they will be shown as all as 30 per campaign. So if you cap the core skills in 1 campaign, they will be capped for all others.

Core skills
First, a note on Core skills. Do NOT cap most of these in Tyria. Big pain, waste of time. Include them in the first area you are capping, Cantha or Elona. For the Core skills, just follow my usual setup below, just take a look at the specific skill and compare where it is most easy to cap. Imo the Core skills in the desert are the easiest in the missions, compared to other locations. Just look around, your call, compare.

If you have a skill that is cappable in more then 1 location, COMPARE! It might save you lots of time, especially since we are talking about 290 Elite skills and many hours of capping, if you can save 5 minutes by looking up 1 skill for 30 seconds longer, you got time gain, and that is nice, if you don't want to spend weeks doing this. Think in the longer run. I did about 1 and half week to get this title, and I don't grind hardcore 24/7.

The Setup:

Factions
First i did Cantha, used this link: http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elit...tion_(Factions)

I worked down from Bukdek to Raisu, then went to http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elite_skills_list -> factions section - run Gw in windowed mode - check skills by prof if you have missed one out. Fairly easy, short runs, only a few in raisu that might take some time.

**Will write a guide soon for this section****

Nightfall
Same for Night Fall - http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elit...ion_(Nightfall) - Work from cliffs of Dhojok to Depth of Madness. and check back at elite list if you missed one out. Easy runs, only Realm of Torment can be annoying, use your holy lightbriner title to speed up killing. NF has the most skills to cap, apart from the 30 core skills that you got in Cantha, you need to cap 110 skills here, but it is quite easy, 5-10 min per run is easily done, except the harder ones. Got that title in 2-3 days.

*** Will write a guide soon ***

Tyria
Now do Tyria, and only use this: http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elite_skills_list - Tyria Section - and go by profession. It is easier that way, since you have already capped the core skills with Elona or Canthan skill capping, leaving Tyrian locations behind. You will have about 60 skills left to cap. The reason WHY i keep Tyria till last and WHY i advise you to do it by profession, and not cap all the skills per area, is that Tyrian skillcapping is a big pain in my opinion. Tyria was not made with titles in mind, so it makes things harder/longer to do. By going per profession (eg. Warrior, then Necro, then Ranger) you have more variation per run. You wouldn't want to do capping of 5-6 skills in Hell's Precipice in a row would ya? Mind numbing...

Another note - Compare - Quite a few Tyrian Elite's can be capped in GW: Eye of the North. This may, or may not be easier, depending where it is. Or what friends you have. If you have a friend who is a 600/smite, let him help ya cap Powerblock off the Magekiller in lvl 1 in CoF. Easy. Saves you time running around like a headless chicken flagging your lobotomized heroes out of Meteor Showers.

Specific Area's
For the capping of skills in Snake Dance, the bosses seem a long walk, but it can be relatively eased in a few ways.

There are 3 bosses: Raptorhawk, Old Red Claw and Featherclaw, and if you look good on http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Sdelite3.JPG you see that there is a spawning point adjacent to Camp Rankor. Exit in/out and rush to half down the hill outside Rankor, kill the griffins, if ya want and if you're lucky, aggro the +15 griffins to the nearby Dwarven patrol for some support in the north. Anyways, one of the three bosses spawns there, it saves time to cap them here instead of walking north. Re-exit if your boss is not there.

Second way - for the other bosses in snake dance that spawn north near Dreadnaughts drift - Go to Deldrimor warcamp - exit - go west - take portal there to Snake dance, go up north. Any of the bosses you can cap can be reached that way faster then starting from Camp Rankor. If the boss is not there, go north into Dreadnaughts Drift and rezone.

For Lornar's Pass, there are 3 bosses have unique elite's, they can't be capped somewhere else. There are 2 spawn locations outside Beacon's Perch, easily capped with a 6 man team if you have decent heroes. Exit in out if specific boss is not there.

For the Mursaat Bosses in Ice Floe - I found it easier to run North - West from Marhan's Grotto then to exit Thunderhead keep and go west. It does look longer, but many Mursaat Patrols can be avoided, while exiting THK you must cut your way through 5-6 patrols in a row. No fun.

For the bosses in Mineral Springs:

It is easy to run through Tasca's Demise, when exiting The Granite Citadel, keep running when the Stone Summit spawn, they will be immobile for a while, and can be avoided. This will save you an annoying battle in the start. In Mineral springs, you will get jumped by a patrol, but all birdies here are easy to kill. Where o where is tat pwussycat... After that you can make a choice for those who want variation and try their luck: Go north, or take the split East. Good luck finding the right boss =) It may seem that Mineral Spring is the most annoying skills to cap, but believe me, it is not.

Talus Chute - Exit in/out Camp rankor, run around the S shaped bend, kill the different Azure bosses there. Easy, 2 min run. Troll bosses spawn in south-west cave, easy run droks. For Grawl bosses, stick to the north border of Talus Chute when exiting Camp Rankor, try avoiding Grawl patrols there, 4 spawn points North with regular intervals. I recommend to try the first 2, and if you want, go on till the last one. Last spot is in a Grawl camp, may be overcrowded there.

For the bosses in Perdition Rock - The drakes spawn north - Run out of Ember Camp - Try to avoid the annoying patrol when exiting, if timed right you can run north and flag your group somewhere there. Again, it might take you maybe 5 mins more killing those patrols, but you're gonna do this lots, and lots of times, so in the longer run it is best doing things as fast as possible.

For the Golem and Phantom bosses - there is a spot east of Ember Camp - run by the patrols outside ember camp to the east - kill the 2 hyrdra's there - check if your boss is there. You can even go on and see if it is the next one you want, they are close together. For the panthom bosses, they spawn close to the Golems - If you cant see one, come closer, chance he is nearby.

When capping in Hell's Precipice - Take a few heroes with Protective Spirit or such and manually ps. then when facing sparks. Or they will toast you with Rodgords Invocation. They will. They have BBQ dip too. You can run the first part untill after the bridge without fighting, if lucky. Then, cross the second bridge, wait for the spark shopping rush to pass by, they will disappear somewhere later, and see if your boss is around patrolling there. If he is, you can cap. You can either rezone if he is not the right boss, or go on a short bit to see the 2nd boss south west, or go to the portal area. I suggest not to talk to the seer, since he will spawn the Armageddon Lords, waste of time killing them. In the portal area, there can be 1 boss patrolling, and the other 2 cannot be seen. Kill the popping hands and run ahead, ignoring the portal area's. When reaching the hill, run up and turn around, and the 2 other bosses have spawned. Happy pulling towards the hill/hunting. A run to the portal can be done in av. 18 mins, as i did, with some hero protting micromanagement.

For another note in Tyria... save 10k, buy an elite necro tome, and get Feast of Corruption. You would NOT want to go look for mr. Maw.

Tyrian Mission Elite's
Tyria is the only continent where the Elite non-Core Skills cannot be capped outside a mission. This can be a pain, escp. if you have to get halfway through a mission to cap a skill. Again, i ask you, compare!! Many elite skills in Tyria can also be capped in Eye of the North. Apart from the Wind Rider ones in Abbadon's mouth and the Titan Bosses in Hell's Precipice, most skills can be capped on alternate locations. Check!!!!

Build Setup
For some general advise, my main is ele, i used an airspike build that is easy usable on 1 target, fast recharges, good spikes. You might more then once run in and target a boss only while your monks keep your team alive long enough to get the boss killed and capped. If any other profession, i suggest you use single target build if ya want to do it the rush way. For longer runs AoE support may come in handy dispatching large mods in your area's. Think about Warcamp - Snake Dance.

For running skillcapping in the Mursaat and Ring of Fire area's, take an extra healer - and a good prot does miracles.

Well, goodluck, I will write a full guide covering Factions and Elona, please, give me feedback.

EDIT: - 17/01/09 - Ty for getting this posted, i will work the other parts out soon, within a few weeks, got exams coming up, will be around later.

good guide, I would suggest the fact that some elite tomes are cheap enough its worth it to get certains skills. For example, Assassin elite I use elite tome for 6 of em since its pretty cheap.

the absolute easiest way to see if you missed a skill is to sort your skill list in your attribute panel by campaign, as opposed to sorting by attribute, then compare your list with the priest of balthazar's skill unlock list.

e.g. you're a monk and you're trying to figure out if you have all the mesmer skills capped in nf. make sure you're a Mo/Me and just above your skill list when you hit "K" there's a little button in the right hand corner, click on it and choose "sort by campaign". then walk over to the priest of balth in your GH or GToB and go to the "unlock skill" panel, choose mesmer skills and compare your list of skills to the priest's skills. this way you have them side by side and you aren't clicking from your GW window to your wiki window trying to figure it out.

good guide,skill hunting is also good for survivor.

Thanks for sharing.

thanks for guide even though I'm alrdy legendary skill hunter

nice guide.
Keep in mind that using tomes even when its cheap it can cost you alot of money.
e.g. when you buy an elite assassin tome for 3k, in that money you could have caped 3 other elites + save some factions that you used in order to unlock the skill, for zkeys.


happy hunting.

A bit unorganized and unnecessary...but good nonetheless

Please fix the links.

This is not the proper address:
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elit...tion_(Factions)
(notice the Elit...tion - the ... isn't easy to guess either)

Same for:
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elit...ion_(Nightfall)

Also, please make sure the (Factions) is really part of the link and that the very last ) is included if it really is part of the link.

The content of the post is good. Thank you, and sorry to bump a very old topic.

Nice guide but I used this ( http://www.xennon.co.uk/eliteskills/ ) and would reccomend as it is can be split into each campaign so you can see the skills broken down that way and into each proffesion.

However the website is now outdated to a degree due to the release of EoTN which means you can actually now cap a lot of skills from bosses there without say having to make the painful trip to Mineral Springs...


P.S Just realised that this is a fairly old thread anyway lol my bad xD

My guide:

Do factions and nightfall, then easy Proph skills you can cap relatively fast.

BUY TOMES FOR RING OF FIRE/ICE FLOE.

The way I did it was pretty simple...

Open wiki, go to elite skills by profession, and go them down one by one. Look where the boss is, if there is an elite skill in the same area you can cap because it fits your profession/the other boss is same prof, cap it too. Rince and repeat until done. Don't see why you'd need a guide for it...

The only problem with Tomes is that you need the skill unlocked initially. This can be achieved using Balthazar faction, or by unlocking it with the skill pack.

The way its worded is a bit misleading to make people think that a tome will simply allow them to pick any skill they want. You'll need to unlock it one way or another first.

Could the original post be editted to have links to BOTH wiki's.. for those of us who mainly use the official one.

Why not equip your heroes with one or more Signant of Captures also. This will save time going back to those areas. If you take one hero from each profession and choose a secondary profession for the missing ones, you should be able to pick up all elite skills in that area during one visit.

There are three flaws with that:

1: Heroes cannot equip Signets of Capture because they're PvE only.
2: Heroes do not obtain skills for themselves, they use whatever you have unlocked on the account.
3: Even if you neglect the above two points, it wouldn't matter. Your character personally needs to know the skills. Having them unlocked doesn't matter.

I didnt use Wiki for this title. Look up the program "Mapping out". You can find an older version in the downloads section of Guru.

You open a new character in the programm and you can select which skills you already have and which ones you still need. Then just list the uncapped skills and the programm will give you every boss spawn which you need with a blinking square on the map for you to find them easier ingame. It is an offline stand alone programm, so it does not need the internet or Guild wars to run.