How do you complete these quests in UW with a balanced team?

I'm talking about Servants of Grenth and The Four Horsemen(although we haven't attempted the latter yet). Tried numerous times with balanced teams and always fail swiftly here. First we tried to camp the dryders spawn so we could kill them as fast as possible as they appear, but couldn't kill them fast enough. Then we tried surrounding them in the 3 directions in which the dryders split up, but still got overwhelmed by the rate at which the dryders spawn. Finally we tried to have a single tank camp the dryder spawn, it seemed to be working at first but too much everything-ignoring damage from the skeletons eventually dropped the tank instantly (we were using an ele earth tank).

Any team/individual builds/skills or strategies you guys can give would be greatly appreciated!

Also i'm not completely sure what constitutes a "balanced" team so if you could enlighten me that would be great. I've always assumed it was Tank<Bond<Heal<AoE.

Well thats what I would also class as your general "Balanced group".
A group that doesnt abuse anything (Shadow form) and has room for multiple classes,

ArenaNet have been so set on making there "Elite" areas hard - due to perma sins
That they completely forgot the fact that .. "Hey, wasn't this once for a balanced group?" Not anymore.

I think the only way you would do this is with the tank somehow aggroing the terrorwebs into a nice ball and a well timed / chain of maelstrom getting thrown down.

Other than that I am clueless.

(Note: on that Maelstrol Chain, perhaps Assassins promise + Maelstrol might work if your party consistantly works on hitting single targets to defeat your AP for recharge)

Our guild's best balanced runs in UW have recently been using a pair of spirit spammers, one communing and one channeling. We don't use a true "tank," but usually either a R/A dagger ranger with a couple block stances or an Earthshaker warrior. The rits have, to our satisfaction, been able to camp, by themselves, two of the dryder spawns in Servants of Grenth and hold a single side of Four Horseman. If you can't accommodate one/two rits in the party, I recommend party-wide mobility skills for Servants ("Fall Back" is the one that comes to mind first). For Four Horseman, we've always done a 4/4 split without the rits, nothing special, just a balanced group on each side.

Hope that helps, good luck.

I thought you could only have 1 Spirit Spammer? If you laid 2 Pains, 1 would die.

I have to say, when I hear the word "balanced" this isn't what comes to mind.

Couple of Warriors (Earth Shaker is nice, but so is DSlash) with SY, 2 x ER Eles and you shouldn't have any issues.
As for the rest: well whatever. Something to boost the physicals' damage and stuff like Barbs and MoP.

When you have to split just put 1 ER with 1 War and split the rest of the team.

Or just run Spirit Spammers if you're lazy.


I haven't been to the UW since the recent changes though. But I can't see the new Dhuum Skele's screwing it up for a good team.

Thank you both for the responses. I've actually been suggested to use 2 spirit spammers but I rejected the idea assuming that two quasi-spammers wouldn't be as useful as a single one. Out of curiosity which spirits did each rit use? Also, where exactly did you have them camp in the servants quest, and where was the rest of the team? Far away from the spawn point in order to get one wave at a time I take it? Sorry for all the questions but trial & error is getting old.

Read carefully.

Channeling Rit brings something along the lines of...
Boon of Creation
Signet of Spirits
Vampirism
Bloodsong
Splinter Weapon
Ancestor's Rage (or Spiritleech Aura, if you're ill-equipped to kill smites)
Summon Spirits
Painful Bond

Communing Rit brings something like...
Boon of Creation (or a Rez)
Signet of Ghostly Might
Dissonance
Shadow Song
Anguish
Pain
Armor of Unfeeling
Summon Spirits

There have been a couple splits on this quest that we've succeeded with. For the first, we've had one of the rits protect the Reaper while the other rit holds one "corner" by Frozenwind and the main team in the other "corner" (you know, they come at the King from two sides...). Alternatively, we've had success using both rits to hold either side of the King while the main team protects the Reaper (and then comes and cleans up, the ritualists won't kill the Terrorwebs before the main team does.

Hope that helps.

Thanks alot Madriel and everyone else who made a suggestion. I'll give it another shot later when most of my friends log on.

use the old terra tank for fourhorsmen

The skeletons are the only change I can think of that was aimed at nerfing a farming build that significantly made any elite area harder for balanced groups. UW has always been very, very difficult for balanced groups; PUGs traditionally went to FoW, farmers went into the UW.

More failed attempts today, although we did a bit better having 2 spirit spammers. It starts off easy with the dryders but they spawn so fast that we get overwhelmed, and then the skeletons come in and pretty much finish us off. We had an idea today to have a single monk standing behind the king protting him with PS, SBo, SoA, etc, but didn't have time to try it. Unless there's something we're not considering, this seems like a near guaranteed success for this quest. We also thought about using the same tactic on the reaper during the four horsemen, but with some way of maintaining SBr on him. Any thoughts?