Tired of wiping

Sigh. So I have a W/Mo using this build and I have 8 heroes from EoTN, and I'm getting frustrated with these late game missions and quests. I was doing Worthy Deeds, and I wiped several times before finally finishing the quest w/ 60% DP. I was doing Destruction's Depths with a team of heroes and a Rit. We wiped so many times that I got bored and was browsing the web while he slowly chiseled down the destroyers with his spirits. I tried Glint's Challenge and wiped at 14 points.

I was able to get through all of Prophesies with just henchmen and heroes, so I don't think I'm THAT bad of a player. So my question is, what am I doing wrong? Do I need to go through each of my heroes and model them after PvX builds? What can I do to practice whatever skills I need to complete these quests? I hope that completing quests with 60% DP is not how the designers wanted the game to be played.

first off..... are your heros fully geared? (insigs/runes/weaponry)

is there synergy between builds?

and in all seriousness, it is kinda hard to give any tips when we only know your build but not your heros

The destroyers pack quite a punch. Mitigating the damage your party takes will help loads.

Considering the majority of damage caused by destroyers is physical with some ele dmg you can use stuff like:
- Minion Master: When they're attacking minions, they're not attacking your party. Put death nova on them and they do quite some damage as well.
- Protective Spirit: Reduces incoming damage taken to 10% of max health, bring it at least once.
- Weakness: It significantly reduces the physical damage taken. Stuff like Enfeebling Blood is good.
- Aegis: Party-wide block is good, especially against the barrage rangers.
- Illusions specced mesmer: Stuff like Ineptitude, clumsiness, signet of clumsiness and wandering eye both prevents damage as well as causes a good amount of armor ignoring(!) damage.
- Armor: Bringing something like Stand Your Ground means +24 armor, that's about 34% damage reduction. (You have SY though so if you can keep that up decently this shouldn't be needed)


I normally bring all of the above.

First - understand & accept that you're going to die periodically. It's the nature of the game, especially while the varied content is still new to you. It's easy to roll through something when you've done it a hundred times, know what to expect, know how to position yourself/your team, know how to combat what you're facing. But the first time? It's a learning process.

If you're walking around with a -60% DP, I'd advise getting some DP removal. You can almost always find someone in Kamadan selling Candy Canes, or Honeycombs or something else that will either remove DP or give you a moral boost (which also removes DP).

Worthy Deeds sucks... that white rabbit is the devil incarnate. There's a reason you don't see people farming that area during festivals. They've got gimmick builds for farming raptors, vaettirs, etc. - but you don't see people farming the swarms the rabbit spawns. That's because it's hard as hell and a party is easily overwhelmed. (Note: My post will shortly be followed by a couple of people insisting that they can faceroll their keyboards and kill everything in that hole in the ground in seconds... tell them you want a video.)

I still can't do Glint's Challenge... even with some of the gimmick builds I've seen. Damn thing drives me crazy. Destruction's Depths was easy... until I got into the chamber with the bridge and the Destroyers rapidly wiped my party repeatedly. When I finally DID manage to beat it, I stood up on the bridge, right in the center, and did a whole lot of creative flagging with my party. I'm pretty sure it was pure luck I completed it, and I honestly haven't tried again. I will... just because I need to know that I can do it. LOL

There are always going to be certain quests that challenge us more than others, that other people really can faceroll and we're left looking at the -60% DP on our screen and thinking, "WTF?" It took me nearly 30 tries to complete the quest "A Good Deed." For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to kill those swarms, and when I finally did, and came here to share how I did it, I got told that the reason no one else had posted how THEY did it was because the quest was "so easy."

Made me feel like dirt.

Then I turned around and beat The Great Destroyer as easily as I can take down one of those Wurms people farm for Survivor in Ice Cliff Chasms. I breezed through it like it was nothing - yet the Wiki is full of dire warnings. I just danced my way through Arachni's Haunt for the first time... and I did it in Hard Mode. Had never even done it in normal mode. It was a cakewalk. I do Raven's Point & Oola's Lab & Frostmaw's Burrow, all in Hard Mode - NOT speedclears, for fun... I don't die, was not running a gimmick build or using consets, and until a few days ago I had to use 4 henchmen + my 3 heroes. Still did them many many times... for me, they're cakewalks. And I'm an elementalist, which is supposedly all but useless in Hard Mode. LOL

But other stuff just makes my head explode... stuff other people say is "soooooo easy."

The point of all this rambling is just to say - yeah, I get it. And yeah, it can be frustrating. But remember that you're talking about a few select missions amidst many... these just happen to be the ones that are most challenging for you (and a lot of others, too).

My advice would be to read up on the Wiki pages about those quests. Pay attention to the notes and skill suggestions. Try and examine "what" is killing your party... are you over-aggro'ing mobs? Are you getting hit with a lot of AoE? Are you doing something to ward against that? Are you especially susceptible to melee attacks? Look at the armor ratings and info for the foes you're facing.... like, destroyers have very high armor against fire damage and are immune to burning. That's important for an elementalist like me to know! Solution: I take Winter with me, turns all damage to cold. So I can ward against elemental damage that everything I'm encountering is now dealing (cold, by virtue of Winter), and still nail them with the spells I'm most familiar with (fire). Also read the Discussion or Talk pages associated with the quest pages on the Wiki. People often add additional information there that doesn't make it into the "official" Wiki page.

You have to learn to identify what it is that is killing you... WHY you are dying is the key to learning NOT to die again.

Agreed, identify what's killing you - you've H&H most of the game so your setup can't be all wrong.

Creating builds for all heroes from scratch is fairly difficult, especially if you haven't played the class, and there's no shame in taking a few idea's from PvX or even the existing henchmen builds.

Post your team also, in that case we can see if that needs some improvement.
I used almost the same build for my war through EOTN so I know there is nothing wrong with it. But you do need some serious buffing from your team because some if not most destroyers are high armoured even in nm.

Please remember that each campaigns and eotn are slightly different in terms of ease/hardness.Prophs is easy for some players and factions easy for others - some players will recall having major probs with places like viz square and yet a few months later when returned found it easy - i even found eotn easy after my 2nd chr did it.
Even war in kryta first gave players some difficulty due to the new skillbars the foes had as well as not having 1 set foe build but 2 or 3 that radomly set - its easy to set a team build when you know set skills but when you are faced with foes who skill bar has changed on zone you may have problems.
Most players within first few months of gw will have plenty of deaths - every did when they started , gw is also a game with a learning curve that never really stops - new skill updates affect both us and foes and forces new tactics.
Like my guild motto goes - its better to die trying than die standing around.

Another gd friend is the gw bible ( 2 editions as theres 2 wiki`s lol ) and its there to give insight into gw game be it foes skills in a zone to mission hints and walk thrus.And using the wiki`s doesnt mean your a bad player - means you are being prepared .

And one piece of advice for any chrs and specially wars - dont rush in and expect to walk out alive , pull carefully and be cautious .. dying can be easy but staying alive can be hard.

Like many parts of the game, things that seem hard at first will be easier with a different tactics. Let's take Worthy Deeds as an example as you mentioned it:
* Koren Wildrunner, only hard part is to find him, so just search around the lake.
* Myish, lady of the Lake, just clear the roamers patrolling the area first
* Nulfastu Earthbound, flag party at top, use Shadow of Haste and run to middle, timing it so it ends just when the spawn is triggered, shadow stepping back out. Then just pull mobs to your party with a bow. Eventually Nulfastu will be left and easily killed.

Nah, what you need to do at Nulfastu:
- go to Sifhalla
- load your party with spike skills (e.g. monks with signet of judgmet / roj, eles with air elites, etc)
- go down the rabbit hole with the hole party, careful to just not pop the enemies
- get ready...
- pop and spike the boss! (ctrl ping the boss so the whole party spikes it)

Should take a minute or two/three from Sifhalla, I do this on Zaishen Bounty days. Sending a hero or something down to pop the enemies and then working your way down is just way too slow.

If you wipe, rethink your strategy. If you wipe again, rethink your strategy again. Redo until you are successful.

You can of course use overpowered builds and make it easy for yourself, but what's the fun in that?

I'd be willing to bet it's hero builds and standard tactics like aggro management and pulling. If you don't know how to make a hero build or don't have decent skills unlocked, henchmen may be better.

You don't have to directly copy templates from PvX to be successful, but you can get some good suggestions for skill synergies and ideas from there. There's no shame in using PvX before you know how to play the game and make builds for yourself.

But it's impossible to know without seeing what you're running.

Honestly, I almost never pull or use any tactics other than bum rushing everything in normal mode, and I'm not that good. What I do have is a pretty decent hero setup which is really the key to the game. I pretty much just use the builds from http://www.gwpvx.com. But here's what I am running:

Me - Pious renewal Dervish with Save Yourselves!

"Sabway"

Necro 1 - Xinrae's Weapon Healer
Necro 2 - Jagged Bones Minion Bomber with Protection Spells
Necro 3 - Spiteful Spirit Curser with Strength of Honor too (applied to me of course)

"Spiritway"

Rit 1 - Signet of Spirits + Restoration Healing
Rit 2 - Signet of Ghostly Might and a crapload of communing spirits

"Mesmerway"

Mesmer 1 - Panic and Domination spells
Mesmer 2 - Ineptitude and Illusion spells


I know everyone is going to say "WAY TOO DEFENSIVE" and it is, but if you are dying a lot, heroes like that will drastically protect you and you could always dial back a lot of the defense as you see fit. I realize you may not have all those heroes but you could sub in other casters of you wanted (I would just strongly avoid any melee heroes).

As far as weapons go, you can pretty much give them whatever, it's really not that critical. What is critical is investing in runes and insignias which are unfortunately very expensive right now. For the most part you should just stick to minor attribute runes.

Bring en ele hero with bsurge (blind), enervating charge (weakness) and shell shock (cracked armor) and epidemic (spread the conditions to adjacent)
minor air run in head for more blind

That takes care of physicals for you. To counter the casters bring mesmers with panic and/or psychic distraction (both requires both gwen and norgu) and an overload of interrupts

Now that everything is blinded, weak, has cracked armor and can't cast anything, proceed to c-space.

Identify what wipes you. Use the damage monitor to see which skills were used against you. Then counter those things.
While I do most areas with one big balanced 7h team build, I often whip together an area-specific build.

the first response makes a good point, I bet we will see a lot of people having trouble with 7 hero parties if A.) the builds aren't good B.) the heroes have low life and aren't runed/equiped.

If you only have, say, your discord team (shutter) runed out, you are better off with henchies since they are "fully equipped" Heros with mediocre builds, no runes, are starter equipment are quite bad compared to some of the hench in the game. Herta in Eotn wasn't too bad a of a party choice tbh.

Stop playing warrior, or learn to flag your heros, try not dragging your casters and healers right into the frontline of the battle.

If he's playing NM Eye of the North he probably never has to worry about aggro control or flagging, so I'd say hero builds and equipment are probably his ultimate issue rather than tactics and strategy.

That being said, BASIC flagging a lot of times can be as simple as planting a single group flag and shooting a single shot with a longbow. I think a lot of times players hear "flagging" and they picture extremely complicated battle formations and micromanagement.

Runes don't make a huge difference on heroes. I'm sure they make some, but they're by no means necessary. I'm currently able to steamroll almost all NM stuff and a decent bit of HM with zero runes on my heroes.

It all comes down to builds, in the end. So I'll echo everyone else, and ask what your party build is, because that's probably it. That or really really bad pulling.

Thanks for the tips guys. I definitely use flagging to control my heroes, and I have a long bow to help pull mobs...but often times when I pull one mob, the whole freaking group aggros anyway.

I was live streaming myself trying to get through Oola's lab for Little Workshop of Horrors. So here is ~12min highlight of my gameplay and the wipe. I guess what I should have done was pull all the way back to try and deaggro them? (hopefully it's not too terrible quality)
http://www.justin.tv/rcapote/b/281226943

I got futher on my second try, but I couldn't figure out how to kill the second flame keeper at all. I was able to clear out most of the golems, but not enough I guess. So it pretty much went down hill from there: (~4min)
http://www.justin.tv/rcapote/b/281227244


Hero builds:
Ogden:
Dwayna's Kiss, Cure Hex, Heal Party, Healing Breeze, Vigorous Spirit, Shielding Hands, Rebirth and Glyph of Lesser Energy

M.O.X.
Radiant Scythe, Pious Fury, Pious Assault, Heart of Holy Flame, Faithful Intervention, Chilling Victory, Victorious Sweep and Rez Signet

Livia
Life Siphon, Vampiric Gaze, Strip Enchantment, Unholy Feast, Well of Blood Animate Bone Horror, Deathly Swarm, and rez signet

Jora
Sever Artery, Gash, Savage Slash, Pure Strike, Power Attack Flail, Thousand Blades and Warrior's Endurance

Vekk
Lightning Strike, Lightning Javelin, Whirlwind, Blurred Vision, Fireball, Lava Font, Glyph of Lesser Energy and rez signet

Gwen
Cry of Frustration, Chaos Storm, Imagined Burden, Shatter Hex, Conjure Phantasm, Empathy, Glyph of Lesser Energy and rez signet

Pyre
Read the Wind, Kindle Arrows, Savage Shot, Hunter's Shot, Ignite Arrows, Throw Dirt, Troll Unguent, and rez signet

yeah, it's your hero builds. Honestly, those builds are so basic right now, I'd rather just see you using the henchmen until you get more skills.

I would go to the PVX site and look into some team and build ideas. Another thing you can do is get Xandra (assuming you have Factions; if not don't bother). She is really easy to get in the Norn tournament. Just keep re-entering the tournament until you face her (she will always be in the 2nd round). A rit hero is very strong.

Also, I'm not sure what campaigns you own. Not having all of the campaigns will limit your ability to develop the best builds.

So I would make your first priority getting your heroes some decent skill bars and ideally replacing undesirable professions with better heroes (ideally more necros, rits, mesmers, etc...), but even then what you have is definitely workable with the right builds. If you have Nightfall, I would strongly recommend playing through that campaign first. This will unlock a ton of additional heroes for you and give you access to skill trainers. To get your heroes elite skills, you will need to unlock them first. First of all you need to make sure your character has ascended (check wiki on that, it depends on which campaign you started on). This will allow you to freely switch your secondary professions. At that point you can switch your secondary to any profession, get a signet of capture, and go out and capture elite skills for any profession you want (elites your heroes will be able to use). You can also go to skill trainers and buy more skills for your heroes. Alternatively you can accumulate zaishen coins via the zaishen bounties and quests and cash them in for Flames of Balthazar. Via Balthazar faction you can unlock elite skills on your account too (if the area of the elite is not readily accessible to you).

Yea, I have all of the campaigns, but have only played through Prophesies. My warrior is from proph and is ascended.

A few things based on the first video:

- it seems at least your Jora is on 'Fight' mode. All your heroes should be on 'Guard' mode. You can do this by selecting their mini skill bar by pressing the number next to their name and switching to the Shield instead of the Sword icon.

- you are flagging your heroes and pulling. However, you are doing it pretty inefficiently. You flag your heroes quite close to a group, then run to the group and pull the group straight to your heroes by walking through them. This way each enemy attacks a different hero and your party quickly gets overwhelmed.

What I often do with groups that need aggro management: flag your heroes back a bit further, so they're at least on the edge of your aggro bubble and the enemy on the other side of it. Then pre-prot yourself (open the mini skill bar of the hero with Protective Spirit for example, select yourself and force the hero to cast it), aggro the mob, wait until they have really settled onto attacking you, then unflag the heroes and let them attack. This also helps greatly to ball up the mob for aoe spells like Panic etc. For more difficult groups that need a little tighter balling, flag your heroes back further and after the enemies have settled on you backtrack to your heroes so the enemies ball up nicely. You can use the environment to your advantage, pulling against walls for tighter pulls or around corners to block ranged attackers from hitting you.


- looking at your skill bars, you actually have 0 prots (okay you have Shielding Hands). Protecting the party from getting damage, preventing the red bars from going down, is arguably the most important aspect of keeping a party alive. Just red-barring (straight healing to push the health bars up) is ineffective and will drain your heroes' energy quickly. A few staple protection skills are Protective Spirit, Shield of Absorption, Aegis, or Shelter on a ritualist.


Oh and yes, please work through Nightfall to gain additional heroes and access to Hero Skill Trainers for free skills! PvX has quite a few workable (many great) hero builds that you could take a look at for guidance on how to create hero builds.

Since you obviously have, and are doing, EotN stuff... I'd suggest getting Xandra sooner rather than later. As mentioned earlier, she's going to be in the second group in the Norn Tournament. For this purpose, it doesn't matter if you can make it through all 6 foes... you only have to a) beat the first and b) look to see if Xandra shows up as the second. If so, beat her. If not, resign and try again until she spawns.

Barring that, you can turn a ranger or elementalist hero into a pretty effective SoS ritualist.

A relatively "easy" way to unlock elite skills for your heroes to use early on is to do the Zaishen Challenge & Zaishen Elite PvP stuff - it's you against the AI. A couple of hours a day for like two days and you can unlock an elite skill of your choice. Your heroes will be able to use it immediately. If you want to use it, you just need to buy an elite skill tome from someone selling it in the open trade in Kamadan.

That's assuming you don't have/can't buy the skill unlock packs. Everyone talks about capturing skills... but let's face it, that's not always practical - especially if you're not yet strong enough or far enough along in a campaign to go against the foes you'd need to cap the skill from. So gaining the Balthazar faction needed to unlock the skills by doing the aforementioned Zaishen stuff is a decent alternative.

Your team build is a catastrophe, to be blunt.

You have minions in Oola's lab. There's no damage mitigation in your team...and you're down 1 guy because he's running minions.

I highlighted skills you need to fix

Ogden: Dwayna's Kiss, Cure Hex, Heal Party, Healing Breeze, Vigorous Spirit, Shielding Hands, Rebirth and Glyph of Lesser Energy
--> Divine Healing is more efficient. Healing Breeze is plain crap... Grab Word of Healing/Healing Burst asap.

M.O.X.
Radiant Scythe, Pious Fury, Pious Assault, Heart of Holy Flame, Faithful Intervention, Chilling Victory, Victorious Sweep and Rez Signet
--> Unless you're running teardown enchants only, don't run Pious Assault. More so, don't run Pious Fury AND Pious Assault. Heroes don't use teardowns properly so if you run teardowns go all out enchants that you don't care about (i..e no Faithful Intervention). I'd drop Pious Fury for Heart of Fury, Pious Assault for something like Zealous Sweep.
--> other option is to drop Faithful Intervention for Balthazar's Rage. It still won't meet the recharge on Pious Assault (3)

Livia
Life Siphon, Vampiric Gaze, Strip Enchantment, Unholy Feast, Well of Blood, Animate Bone Horror, Deathly Swarm, and rez signet
--> terrible skillbar... Vamp Gaze --> Blood of the agressor, Unholy feast makes heroes run into melee range, Well of Blood is useless when you have Animate Bone Horror, Deathly Swarm does like 20% damage to Golems and EOTN mobs

Jora
Sever Artery, Gash, Savage Slash, Pure Strike, Power Attack, Flail, Thousand Blades and Warrior's Endurance
--> Warrior heroes generally suck. Warrior's Endurance bars are almost always axe...because dismember is better than Gash and Pure Strike is lame since you're using a stance. Heroes don't use flail properly. They also don't prioritize Savage Slash.
-->Thousand Blades isn't a skill...
--> Golems don't bleed

Vekk
Lightning Strike, Lightning Javelin, Whirlwind, Blurred Vision, Fireball, Lava Font, Glyph of Lesser Energy and rez signet
-->Lightning Strike is bad. Lava font/Whirlwind is bad on heroes because they run into melee. You don't have a Attunement... without attunements your hero runs out of energy in 5 seconds. Lightning Javelin is inefficient.
--> also your hero is using 3 attributes. Drop Fireball, it's going to be doing like 30 damage against Golems anyway.

Gwen
Cry of Frustration, Chaos Storm, Imagined Burden, Shatter Hex, Conjure Phantasm, Empathy, Glyph of Lesser Energy and rez signet
--> Chaos Storm causes scatter... Imagined Burden is more or less useless, Shatter Hex is to expensive (bring Smite hex or remove hex)
--> Conjure Phantasm is a waste of energy

Pyre
Read the Wind, Kindle Arrows, Savage Shot, Hunter's Shot, Ignite Arrows, Throw Dirt, Troll Unguent, and rez signet
--> Kindle Arrows is unnecessary, as is Ignite Arrows. Preparations don't stack. Heroes run up to use Throw Dirt. Troll Unguent is useless because by the time they finish casting the 3s skill they're dead. Hunter's shot is useless in PVE because bleeding is lame.
--> slap Distracting shot on this bar.


Your bar
Purge conditions is lame. It's 20 cooldown so against any skill with conditions worth removing it's ineffective. Put draw conditions on Ogden or Foul Feast on Livia. Burst of Aggression is a better IAS with WE bars.

Overall team build:
You have no real power heal, Dwayna's Kiss is 57+30ish at best. I'd suggest getting Word of Healing at least.
You have no damage mitigation other than shielding hands and empathy. Good options to bring: Protective Spirit, Aegis, Shelter + Union + Displacement (on Soul Twisting Ritualist), Enfeebling Blood on necro.
Your build should have Save Yourselves! if possible.
You have 3 melees but nothing buffing them (Order of pain, Strength of honor).
Melee heroes have terrible AI. The only ones worthwhile I feel are Dervishes without teardowns.

Yeah, seriously, I would back up a bit out of the EotN dungeons and do the main campaigns first to at least get skills. BUT, you can actually get some decent skills in EotN pretty readily.

A few tips off the top of my head to get you in the right direction:

1. Go to Kamadan, and at least do the quest that takes you to the Consulate Docks (Land of Heroes). There you will get a quest that you do in Prophecies to get Olias (a 2nd necromancer for your team). Go capture "Jagged Bones" in Eye of the North and set him up as a Minion Bomber (again, see the PvXwiki page for the build). But as mentioned, be aware of where NOT to use him (specifically that Golem dungeon you are attempting).

2. As stated, go to Gunnar's Hold and get Xandra.

3. Try to get some Balthazar Faction and unlock "Signet of Spirits" (you can capture it but you have to go most of the way through the Factions storyline to do so). This skill is ridiculously overpowered right now AND will provide a source of energy to power your new ritualist (see PVX wiki for SoS Ritualist build). All of your non-elite rit spells can be purchased in KC, Eye of the North, or Kamadan.

4. While I think Panic is the preferred elite for Gwen, it had to be captured at the very end of Prophecies. I would either spend Balthazar faction to unlock it for her or an alternative would be "Ineptitude" which you can capture in Eye of the North. (see PvX wiki for Ineptitude spammer)

5. I'm not a lover of Monk heroes but you can at least capture "Word of Healing" in Arbor Bay Eye of the North (see build for WoH Hybrid).

6. I would set your 2nd Necro (Livia) as a healer for now. You can buy her a bunch of restoration spells in KC, and even without an elite she's a powerful healer for you. Later on you can grab her an elite or maybe someone could recommend an easily attainable elite that would work on a 2nd necro. (see SoLS Healer)

So with fairly minimal work that would give you a core of:

Olias - Minion bomber
Livia - Restoration Healer
Gwen - Either a Domination or Illusion based interrupter/damage dealer
Ogden - Monk
Xandra - Spirits and most importantly SPLINTER WEAPON (BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!)

Definitely make either Xandra or Livia carry 12 points in Smiting and carry "Strength of Honor" which is a must for any melee character. You could also make one of them carry either Curses or Orders (Blood Magic) stuff to further boost your damage.

A strong consideration is to make Pyre Fierceshot carry Communing Spirits too (instead of a bow); but I might get flack for that idea... Otherwise you CAN capture "Barrage" fairly readily in Eye of the North.

Also if you want to develop your Dervish hero, all of the Avatars can be captured fairly early (right after the Consulate Docks mission) in Nightfall.

I'm sure my fellow Guru guys will critique my ideas but you are definitely in the right place. Good luck!


EDIT: I just noticed that he said he played through Prophecies. That does open up a lot of potential elites and hero builds including (Spiteful Spirit Necro, Ether Renewal Elementalist, and a Panic Mesmer).

Alright, so tonight I did some work and decked out Ogden and changed around Vekk. I got Xandra on my second try, but only have the base rit skills so I guess I need to work on getting those.

Prot is at 12
Healing is at 11 w/ rune
Divine Favor is at 11 w/ rune
Dwayna's Kiss, Cure Hex, Divine Healing, Word of Healing, Healing Seed, Shielding Hands, and Rebirth.

I also did some work on Vekk because his skills and attributes where all over the place, but it still seems wonky. He only casts the ward skills if he's set to passive, and I have to disable Obsidian Flame.
12 air
12 earth
Ward against melee, War against foes, Magnetic Aura, Earth Attunement, Blinding Flash, Obsidian Flame, Glyph of Lesser Energy, and rez signet

I advised you to get bsurge, but looking at the builds you posted I think you don't have allt eh skills for that yet so euh, ignore anything I said.

I would however suggest that you make other characters and learn how they work. For example, make a monk and see how monking works. Make an ele and learn how eles work. A necro to learn how necros work.

When you get a feel for it like this, when you know what makes a monk tick, what makes en ele tick, then you can make awesome builds.

As with the rest of the posters you have to aquire some skills and the main thing is learn what each skill does.

We offer constructive criticisim ,but to break it down its all about learning.

think of it in general terms if i may be so bold

Would you run a build as a main char that is on your heros ?

you are part of a team hence all the team has to have synergy with one another to work properly

Look at each area /dungeon you are about to enter press F10 enter he mission/dungeon name then have a read on what you will face when you enter

Then at that point you have an idea on what you will have to adjust on your hero build.
I know this is simplyfying things but, if you are not fully aware on what each build does then your just hoping you make it through that particular area

My view like some others here is to read up on what a profession does within a team take your time ..play a char of that class to see what synergy is all about

Lastly this game is about fun but you must learn it some also to prevent yourself becoming fed up with wipes

You went through all of prophecies (and only that) with H/H. Doesn't prove anything. I'm not trying to be an ass but I'm going to be very blunt with you. Your team build is horrible. So you managed to get through 1 campaign (probably in normal mode?) with a horrid H/H setup. Is that indicative of the build or even you as being any good? Definately not. PvE, especially normal mode is jokingly simple therefore even if you had a bad setup you'd never know because normal mode PvE is so forgiving. Now you've reached a point where there's finally some level of difficulty and guess what? Your team setup's weaknesses are now finally exposed.

My best advice to you is to really really read over the descriptions on your current setup so you can UNDERSTAND why it's not working. Simply copy and pasting another build off PvXwiki like some other posters have mentioned will help you only temporarily. As the saying goes, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." You should really do some research and learn to setup builds on the fly rather then just copying PvX. You'll never learn how the game mechanics work that way. You need to understand why certain setups are the way they are. How they work, how they complement each other and how heroes use them (or not). I can write quite a bit here but I think you get the point.

i second this suggestion. It's about making builds, trying them out, look at the energy pool, look at the areas you fight in (is there heavy hex? is there heavy conditions? enchantment removals?), its all about research and understanding of each area and skills you use, just because they are good doesn't mean there are no counters against them.

Someone probably already posted it but I didn't feel like reading the endless wall of text. Don't use Fire Magic heroes against the Destroyers.

Every mmo requires research to become a pro player, Guild Wars is no exception. Against destroyers don't ever use fire magic like the above post states and bring a cold weapon. I highly suggest using wiki to look at the area your are going in. Look at the mobs and what builds they are sporting and bring skills to counter them. Find if they have any weaknesses, wiki posts the armor ratings for most if not all mobs. For areas such as Oola's lab a MM is a very bad idea. Spirits are best way to go in place of an MM if there are no corpses. Everything else has been pretty much covered.

My main is a warrior so if you still need help don't hesitate to pm me in game.

IGN: Dromar The Banisher

I spent the past two hours trying to vanq Old Ascalon. Wiped the first few times, learned what caused the wipe (hex and not enough prot), and modified my heroes accordingly. Got to 140 kills and the damn Ulodyte and crown of thorns wiped us down to -60% DP. I guess I need to bring anti-heals and energy regen on my monk.

I understand, now, that builds and how the skills work together is important. The problem I'm having now is...how do I know what my problem is? Whether it be not enough heals, not enough hex removal, or just plain terrible skill bars? As much as I would like to, it's probably not realistic to come here and post my builds to see if they are any good :P

I actually don't agree with a couple of the posters. While building your own builds from scratch will teach you about builds in a brute force sort of way, I do think it is ultimately more efficient to take a meta build and then analyze it, understanding WHY people find that build to be superior and learn from that. If I wanted to invent a car, it would be a lot easier if I had another car to look at and take apart to learn from. Click the discussion link on the Pvx site, you can read a lot of great info dissecting particular build concepts.

A couple things to keep in mind regarding hero builds: Heroes aren't human players, they don't use most skills that effectively, so via trial and error thousands of other GW players have done the work for you to pass this information on. Also, heroes tend to spam some skills to the point of sucking their energy to zero (I discovered this the hard way on my domination mesmer hero spamming Wastrel's spells). While things like hex and condition removal may be critical in certain areas, keep in mind that most hexes and conditions you experience in PvE are fairly innocuous, I usually avoid stressing about a ton of hex removal unless I know I've going to face a very specific skill that is going to shut me down during play (something like Empathy, Spiteful Spirit, etc...).

Also, as mentioned before some parts of this game are just downright broken and OP, and you should take advantage of them. Namely Soul Reaping on Necros being an infinite source of power, or the massive attack and defense that spirits can bring to the table.

So to summarize, I DO advocate seeking out cookie cutter builds for now and to learn from them directly.

Using skills from all campaings and EotN is recommended.

A perhaps easier method of getting skills for heroes is;
Make a PvP char and do the the first 3 of the 4 training PvP matches.
Then abandon the PvP quest, and repeat 3 times to get the max 2000 Balthazar faction.
U can get max 2000 Balthazar faction ervry 24 hours that way.
Or, if u like do more PvP, but that may be more difficult.

A normal skill costs 1000 and an Elite 3000 Balthazar faction to unlock for Heroes, and your account (u can yerself learn this way unlocked skills with Tomes).

Trial and error.

I'd imagine it might be different for someone who is the hardcore self-described "leet" player who spends thousands of hours analyzing skills and combat mechanics... but hell, I work in the gaming industry - and for me, it's trial and error. LOL

The longer you play, the easier it becomes to parse all of the information the screen is showing you. You've got your damage pop-ups (red, with -#'s) that will sometimes tell you what is hitting you (splinter weapon, spectral agony, etc.)... you've got your effects monitor showing you what hexes or conditions or enchantments you're under... you've got little colored arrows that point down on your Party list, which also let you know that something is dealing consistent, maintained damage to you. Then you've got the numerical pop-ups showing what damage you're dealing, the damage your summoned minions/spirits/allies are dealing, and any healing being cast on you.

It's a LOT to keep track of... but it does become easier with time. I can tell by the color change to my name in the Party list if I'm under a condition or hex, and if needed, I can "force" one of my heroes to remove it if I don't think they're getting to me fast enough. But it took me quite a while to be able to nearly instantly tell what's happening to me and how to counter it... that means also being familiar enough with my heroes' builds that I can quickly make them take action if I have to.

I read the Wiki pages about every area I'm venturing into... every mission, quest and explorable area. I look at the Notes and any Skill Recommendations. I hate going in blind, so I don't. I am constantly tweaking my heroes' builds... I've got standard builds they carry 99% of the time, and I know which skills I consider "optional" - meaning which ones I'll swap out if I know I need additional hex removal or something for a particular area.

A lot of what you need to know you learn simply by playing... but of course, if you're dying all the time, you don't get much real play time in, either. This is where PvX builds can come in handy. They're tested, proven with time. Using them can give you the chance to play enough that your mind begins parsing the information on your screen faster, just through practice.

Look... it's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. Forget people who say relying on PvX builds is lame. Forget people who tell you that the smartest players use PvX builds. Forget both groups.

Do whatever you need to do to have fun. If you enjoy the aspect of gaming that involves examining and experimenting with hundreds of builds, great! Do that! If you'd rather dive right in and not die much by using established builds, great! Do that! Just do whatever is fun for you.

That's kind of the point of the game.

If it ain't fun, why bother?

Not even with Winter spirit or Stone Striker?

What happens when (1) the so called "meta" build is random crap; (2) half the people discussing it on PvX appear to be retarded; (3) you don't have a basic frame of reference for the concepts involved?

Nothing happens. You don't learn anything.

Well, depends on your preference. If you mean, for EotN, then yeah, you should use all your resources. After all, that region was meant for people who completed the other chapters and have all those things.

For other things, not so much. I mean, you can, but I find that Prophecies in NM becomes ridiculously easy if you do it right from the start with a full hero crew, max armor, powerful skills etc. So be careful, you might end up diminishing your joy. I prefer to go with just a monk hero and only add more heroes/stuff when I actually need it.

Well, first of all, heed Gizzy's advice. If it's not fun, don't bother.

OK, assuming you feel it's fun to improve your knowledge of the game, read on.

Most people are held back by refusal to admit they have a problem, or not even being aware of it. Congrats, you've moved past that stage. You've admitted you need to learn and recognized that build and team synergy is essential.

Here's what you do next:

1] Get a basic understanding of the core concepts that drive each profession. The builds derive naturally from these concepts, not the other way around.

It sounds complicated but it's not. It's usually one or two core concepts and a few bits of advice for support and variation. For each profession, the gist can probably be expressed in one phrase.

Why don't I just give you that phrase? Two reasons:
* It would be the same as copy&pasting a build, braindead spoon-feeding.
* Different people come up with different ways of playing a class. The gist that I've settled on may not be the one you will eventually reach on your own.

You have to extract that understanding yourself.

From where? There is a sticky thread on each profession-specific forum section. Sometimes two (one for basics, one for advanced play). Read them. They contain distilled core knowledge for each class.

2] After you've taken in the basics for, say, Warrior, it's time for some homework. Try to come up with builds from scratch, following whatever driving principles you've extracted from those threads.

They don't have to be great builds. You just need to apply those principles to something concrete, get familiar with them, refine them (you won't get it right from the first time.) Rinse and repeat for a while (days). Make builds, test them in the game.

3] Next, it's time to take your builds to the next level. This means planning to achieve specific purposes for a build and adding buttloads of information from the wiki (skill lists, game mechanics, equipment, mods etc.) on top of the general class principles you practiced at the previous step.

This step will get very detailed. It needs to be a rigurous, exhaustive approach. Don't be afraid to ask for input from others.

Example: I want a hammer "shutdown" build. This means AoE KD, hence Earth Shaker. OK, what are the ES characteristics? Fueled by 8 adrenaline, KD only (no damage). The KD will last 3 seconds (with Stonefist). After 3 seconds I need to have gained another 8 adrenaline. This is impossible with straight weapon attacks, since default hammer hit speed is too slow. What can I do to improve adrenaline gain? "For Great Justice", IAS, Furious weapon mod, AoE attacks. Which IAS? Which AoE attacks? Do those cost adrenaline or energy? I have to make up that adrenaline or energy so that the build is self-sustaining AND can fuel ES every 3 seconds. And so on and so forth.

2 hours and 2 pages of scribbles later, after weighing pros and cons of a lot of skills and doing a second-by-second play of a fight, I think I have a rough build. Is it good? Maybe, it's theoretical at this stage, needs testing. Can it be improved? Most likely, I've got alternatives waiting to be tested for several of those slots as well as the optional.

Hope you get the idea. The end result will be a product of your personal approach to a profession, refined by extensive game knowledge and lots of practice.

A good cookie cutter build to use is discord. It has great synergy with heroes. It allows you to run 1 skill as a significant source of armor ignoring damage and run skills that support this skill, debuff mobs such as stripping enchants and heal/support your party. Not to mention heroes can read mobs much faster than any human can and see if they have the conditions to use discord and spike together efficiently. You will have to run a caller build on your bar but wont greatly change the type of build or weapon your currently using. The best warrior caller for discord wields an axe or daggers.

http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_Discordway

Now you probably wont run that caller build but the best warrior caller builds run Warriors Endurance, Asuran Scan and Dismember. A dagger warrior can be an excellent choice to spam a discord spike one after the other through the jagged strike, fox fangs and death blossom combo but many mobs throughout the game are immune to bleeding. Before the dervish update I used black mantis thrust, wild strike and death blossom as a general dagger warrior build with discord but the Asuran Scan nerf completely killed the damage output of the build and with the 6 and 4 second recharge on the first 2 skills it just doesn't compare to the normal dagger spam build. A good build to run would be,

Warriors Endurance
Asuran Scan
Dismember
Power Attack
Counterattack
Flail
Enraging Charge
I am Unstoppable

14 Strength
13 Axe mastery

I think Urascumbag brought up some good points (......) especially regarding understanding the basic concepts of the professions (what fundamentally makes each profession excel at a specific role). My only concern, especially with the OP, is that there is a big difference between being able recognize the weaknesses of a particular build that you are playing (knowing that you are running out of energy, having clunky castings during combat, etc....) vs. knowing what your heroes are doing. For the average player (me included) and ESPECIALLY with the 7 hero update, it's really really hard to be fully aware of how well your hero bars are working for you. While it is kind of fashionable to bash on PvX builds, they usually are at least "in the right ballpark" for the average player. I would strongly encourage any new player to stay pretty "meta" with their hero bars until they really master their own player bar first.

Ura also brought up a very good point about kind of running through each build and seeing how they ultimately will play out during combat. A few tips I would throw up that he also addressed:

- You hero should more or less be always doing something during combat if they have the energy to do so. Topped off energy bars are ultimately a waste. If you hero has lots of extra energy and time, make them spend it on something that helps the team in other ways (that's why many people will add things like Orders, Protection Spells, or Smiting Support to professions like necros or ritualists who might have time and energy to do more than just their normal task).

- The flip side is that heroes need energy in the first place. A hero completely depleted of energy during a battle and having to rely on natural regeneration is not helping you. Always ask yourself if a particular build is capable to sustaining itself energy-wise. Most professions have a few skills that give them energy and worst case many builds will take a secondary profession that opens up energy management skills to them (like a mesmer secondary).

- This is always debatable but I strongly belief that whatever profession you are playing, you should ultimately be the foundation of your team's damage. In your case if you are a warrior, I would like to see nearly every hero on the team in some way making you a more potent warrior (Strength of Honor, Orders, Curses support, adequate blind and weakness removal, Hex removal when appropriate, etc...).

- Understand how heroes like to use certain skills (wiki usually will address this). Some skills, while great in the hand of a human player can be disastrous for a hero. As mentioned, throw dirt is a nice skill but heroes just run up to the front line and use it pre-emptively. Auspicious Incantation is an awesome skill for a player, terrible for a hero. Echo spells.... same thing. But heroes are also pretty smart at other things. They are good at not casting a duplicate hex on a foe. They manage minions nicely. They will cast protection on you if you are taking damage. They will spam certain spells right on recharge. Again, a lot of the "meta" hero builds are ultimately build around a trial and error understanding of what heroes do well and what they suck at.

*Discord is not a 'significant source of armor ignoring damage'. It's 30DPS. Splinter Weapon can produce over 100DPS and isn't elite.
*Enchant stripping and heal/support isn't unique to Discord bars.
*You don't need a caller bar for discord anyway. Throw Withering Aura in somewhere and the hex isn't particularly difficult either. There really isn't an optimal weapon for Discord calling.

Warriors should be running bars that support melee. Discord does not, so Warriors should not run Discord.

Classic reason why copy and pasting from PvXwiki is a bad idea. Discord...you'll plow through shit thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread.