Urgoz's Warren

About consumables, I would consider bringing an Essence of Celerity. If you were to buy it, it would cost below 3k... or you could just do a short and easy quest, O Brave New World, so you can get it as a reward (along with the Mindbender PvE skill). The best part about Essence of Celerity is that it gives you a 20% speed boost and all your skills will recharge 20% faster for 30 minutes. Compared to the other consumables, which basically make you harder to kill, the Celerity could make the run a lot faster to complete.

1) Absolutely anybody can use Consume Corpse, even the Warrior. It's just for one situation where you will see a bunch of enemies on top of an unreachable bridge above you, then you will have to kill them (and make sure the Minion Master doesn't exploit all their corpses), and then one human player will have to teleport on that bridge by exploiting an enemy corpse with Consume Soul, click on 2 mechanisms of some kind that open a gate, and then walk through a blue teleporter which sends him/her back to the party.

2) The MM with protection spells sounds good but the SoS healers sound bad imo. I would REALLY recommend that your fiance plays the the BiP Necromancer (with a 55 armor and normal armor in his/her inventory). That extra +6 energy regeneration on most of your party members helps A LOT. A Hero can play the SS Necromancer just fine, but BiP can only be played well by a human. So, as long as you have a BiP Necro, 2 Monks should be enough (I would also recommend you make one UA and one HB, both with Arcane Mimicry and Heal Party).

3) EoE makes the boss fight a LOT easier so yes, I recommend you bring it on a Barrage Ranger, a Searing Flames hero, or something like that. One of your human allies can bring Draw Spirit to save you some head ache in the boss fight (so you can make sure it's close enough to Urgoz).

4) Don't bother with hex removal. The only hexes present at all will be Shroud of Silence (which goes away after 2-3 seconds and has a recharge of 30 seconds), Life Siphon (-3 health degeneration, be very afraid :P ), Icy Veins (this hex is only triggered when the target dies, so hopefully that won't happen :P ).

5) EBVAS is more of a spike skill since it has a long recharge (30 seconds). I would recommend you focus more on DPS skills like Necrosis and such. Keep in mind that, in the boss fight, you will have Explosive Growths spawn every few seconds (if you get in Urgoz's range, which is roughly the size of the compass/radar) so you have to cast a skill, then move, cast, move, cast, move etc. This is why EoE is so effective here. I recommend you keep the healer and the BiP in one spot where Urgoz can't reach you, let them spam Heal Party and maybe UA if someone dies, cast EoE and move it with Draw Spirit close enough to Urgoz (have a player adjacent to Urgoz so you know it's close enough), get Urgoz's health below 90%, and then just run around constantly and let EoE do the work.

6) I think the Deep is harder at the beginning but easier afterward, since you're split up in groups of 3 and have to kill enemies that have rezzing capability and healers, but it's a lot easier when you get together with your allies. Urgoz, on the other hand, is relatively straight-forward at the beginning, but the boss fight is a lot different and a lot more challenging. So, overall, I'd say Urgoz is harder than the Deep.

Hope that helps, have fun!

Thank you so much for the replies guys! (Special thanks to FengShui, for posting a very lengthy and detailed response!)

I know that people are going to have varying opinions based on their experiences with clearing Urgoz's Warren, and I already see some conflicting opinions - I'm just sort of analyzing all of it, and I'll make final decisions one way or the other, but I want to remind everyone to not take it personally if I follow one suggestion or the other.

After all, the end result should be that me and my two companions have a ton of fun, right? It's our first time doing this! And we had a blast in The Deep, so I'm expecting the same from Urgoz's.

With that out of the way, let's move back to strategy. I'm also trying to work around the available hero builds that each person has (the Warrior is a bit of a slacker, so he has a more limited selection, hah!). While none of us mind going out and getting more skills, I'd like to avoid spending hours hunting down elites, since we all have limited time to play.

Here are my current thoughts:

Q: Is Barbs useful for anything other than Urgoz (not sure if there are other dangerous/high HP bosses up until him)? Is it definitely worth a slot on a Necro bar, considering everything else sounds like it requires heavy AoE?

Me
E/A - AP, EBVAS, YMLAD, Finish Him!, Glyph of Sac, Meteor Shower, GoLE, Searing Heat [open to suggestions on the last skill, just an AoE filler at this point]

Hero 1: Me/E - Illusion mesmer. PI/Wandering Eye/Clumsiness/Signet of Clumsiness/Power Drain/Arcane Conundrum/Waste Not, Want Not/GoLE
Hero 2: Rt/R - SoS Rit with EoE (no resto, just channeling)
Hero 3: Me/Rt - Panic/Wastrel's Worry/Unnatural Signet/Power Drain/Wastrel's Demise/Cry of Frustration/Waste Not, Want Not/FoMF

My fiancée
N/Mo - Still up in the air about this one. She's not used to playing a caller build, and is very used to playing SS. If possible, I'd like to set her up with a bar like: SS/MoP/EVAS/BuH/Barbs(possibly)/Rebirth/Enfeebling Blood/Necrosis - I'm open to more suggestions on this one, of course.

@KoalaGuy: I always want to hear more opinions!

Hero 1: Rt/any - SoGM spiritway hero with Flesh of My Flesh
Hero 2: N/Rt - Bone Minions+Resto, with Icy Veins
Hero 3: N/Rt - Spiteful Spirit/Rit resto hybrid. PWK/Putrid Bile/Shadow of Fear/Rejuv/Recovery/etc

My Leeroooooy-ing Warrior friend
W/N - HB/Whirlwind/Traversal/S&M Slash/FGJ!/Flail/Enraging Charge/IAU! - this seems like it'll work pretty well.

Hero 1: N/Mo Minion Prot Bomber - AotL+Bone Minions+Death Nova with Aegis/Shield of Absorption/Prot Spirit
Hero 2: Same as hero 1 (MM Prot Bomber with Aegis)
Hero 3: Mo/Me - UA/Power Drain/Leech Signet/Cure Hex/Aegis/Dismiss Condition/Dwayna's Kiss/Divine Healing

Total of:
3 Minion users (all are minion bombers -- should I change one to a true Minion Master?)
3 bar pushers (1 with Monk heals, 2 with Rit resto heals)
3 Aegis carriers (two of which have a couple other prots)
2 Mesmers (one Panic [Domination], one Psychic Instability [Illusion])
One of each of the following spirits available: SoS, Bloodsong, Shadowsong, Pain, Disenchantment, Dissonance, Anguish
And plenty of AoE damage and debuffs (HB warrior, MoP, glyph sac+Meteor Shower & Searing Heat, and plenty of Spiteful Spirit)

That's just my current thoughts, I'm definitely wide open for critique. As for the actual Urgoz fight, does this strategy from the wiki still work well?

"Clear out the entrance to Urgoz's room to the east first and then clear and enter via the southern entrance. Just inside the southern entrance is a safe spot with a rock on the right. This is a safe place to flag your heroes, healers and your caster for Edge of Extinction. Take a moment to run a player right up to Urgoz to ensure that Urgoz is in the area of effect for Edge of Extinction.

Each Player can now run into the pop area for Explosive Growths, cast their Urgoz Skill (3 second cast time or less) and then move on and dodge Growths as needed. Keep running around the room using this technique. Once you reduce Urgoz to below 90% health it will start dying faster, but keep the pressure on with your Player characters."

If so, I think we'll definitely stick with that, to avoid having to be constantly flagging our heroes away from Explosive Growths.


Once again, thank you SO much to everyone who is replying! My whole group really appreciates it, and honestly, I love the whole team-building aspect of preparing anyways! =)

EDIT: @Schmerdro: Thank you for the details about hex removal. I switched up the UA Monk's build based on that advice. Are conditions a big issue in there, if you know?

I just thought I had to mention that there can only be one kind of a spirit out at a time. So you really shouldn't bring 3 SoS heroes. Replace one of them with a ST Communist Rit and go barumbas on the other slot.

Say hai to Urgoz from me, good luck!

@Schmerdro:

I edited the set-up to no longer have an SoS healer (it just has a pure channeling SoS Rit, for Splinter Weapon & Ancestor's Rage). There are technically three bar pushers (two are N/Rt, and one is a UA Monk) in the set-up now, but two of them are hybrids, so I think it'll be okay.

I put the interrupts on the Monk's bar for additional energy management too, not just for the sake of interrupts. I was always under the assumption that Power Drain/Leech Signet were useful on Monk healer heroes for that purpose, though I could certainly be wrong! Also, I had Heal Party on there in case that strategy against Urgoz actually panned out (where you can hide your heroes away behind some rock, out of range of Urgoz, while the players do all the kiting/damage) -- I figured Heal Party's massive range would be useful here.

Also, I have Rebirth on my fiancée's bar because I really want her to be the one to run the hell away if things fall to pieces, and come back and rez us, so it's not a complete wipe. I don't expect that it'll come to that, but.. just in case. I would really hate to get even decently deep into there, and then fail the whole mission!

Thank you for the feedback - we're probably going to be running it tomorrow (finishing up Sorrow's Furnace today!). After we're done with Urgoz's, we'll also be running Fissure of Woe.. but I'll be making a separate thread for that at some point.

Seems good, you can also trade 1 minion bomber for Visions of Regret mesmer for more AoE hex damage.

Heal Party isn't needed, use those points for damage.

I'll be on tomorrow, PM me, Zodiac Ele and I can lend a hand.

The difference between the setups I posted and Zodiac posted are basically that Zodiac throws in more caster damage, which is just fine as well.

I'll make sure to look for your FoW thread, as I do that one with myself and 6 heroes all the time . Build making is a blast for me so I always search out these threads.

Anyway, good luck in Urgoz, and have a lot of fun!

@Zodiac: I tried sending you a PM when we ran it, but you weren't on. No worries though, and thanks for the offer!

We finished Urgoz's yesterday (no wipes, huzzah!)

It wasn't so bad, actually! Pretty straightforward overall (much more so than The Deep), and we only came moderately close to wiping once when we got a double pull of Maddened Wardens.

The Urgoz fight was, for us, 100x easier than Kanaxai. We just flagged all the heroes at the edge of the hill (from the western entrance into the room) so they were in healing range of us, but out of Explosive Growth range, and the three of us just kited around and let EoE do most of the work after 90%.

Hell, even without EoE, I'm pretty sure we could've eventually killed him - it just would've taken forever, haha. But with how we had positioning set up, we would've been able to last indefinitely pretty much.

Either way, we're all now proud owners of a nice statue of Urgoz in our HoM!

Thanks again to everyone who contributed advice! Next up: FoW! =)