I have been farming Luxon faction through vanquishing Silent Surf for my Savior title. If you are not in a MQSC guild, silent surf is a good alternative. This area has about 250 foes, and will give you about 18.5k luxon points (~32k during vanquishing bonus weekend last week). With my herobuild, I can finish it around 20~22 min consistently without any con, which will give you 50k plus luxon points per hour. And the vista in silent surf is beautiful and I like the music a lot, so it's not as boring as MQSC :-)
One good thing about silent surf is that many foes fight each other so you don't have to kill everyone to vanquish the area. I usually vanquish 180~195 out of the 250 or so foes in the area, so as many as 70 foes die by fighting each other. Since the 50 point per foe of luxon points that you gain at then end of vanquishing is based on the total foes died, not total foes you killed, so you are getting a huge discount vanquishing Silent Surf. The area also has 9 easy bosses, so that's 2250 factions by themselves.
Comparing MQSC split FFF with Silent Surf heroway:
Silent Surf: Total foes: 250, foes you kill: 190, bosses: 9 = 250X50+190X20+9X250=18550 points, so that's 883 points/min for 21 min runs.
MQSC: Total foes: 140, foes you kill: 140, bosses: 5 = 140X50+140X20+5X250=11050 points, so that's 1105 points/min for 10 min runs.
So all in all not that far off a source for farming luxon points if you don't want to wait to form groups. Usually you'll see 5~6 chests which drops jellyfish wand, plagueborn weapons, outcast weapons and lots of jade sword/wand/staff/bow. The foes include afflicted, jellyfish, dragons, outcasts so there is chance to drop all kinds of desirable loots. I got r9 15% dual vamp longsword and r10 15% energy regen Jade sword during the double-factions and double-vanq weekends last month.
Here is the build. It's a standard mesway with tweaks to suit this area. To get constant speed boost without con, I ditched minions, minimized spirits and put 3 copies of fall back. Its a large map so you will need the speed boost. Since I use endurance dagger myself, so 2 copies of splinter weapon are a must. You'll also need IAU since turtles KD and for armor boost. I have max ETON titles and working on drunk title so Drunken Master is perfect. Buffed Shatter Hex is nice for constant AOE damge. Mend condition is for blinding since afflicted rangers always throw dirt on you. Hard rez is OK in this area since there are 9 bosses to recharge it every 2 min, and you don't die often. You basically just death charge in any group on recharge and kill everything. Pulling is not required except the 2 groups together with mes boss when you leave unwaking waters (luxon).
For heroes, they all have 20/20 wand and offhand, superior runes on headpieces and radiant insignias.
New Build:
Old build is here:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...emplate1.jpg/]
Here is the route for the run. I was testing endurance axe last night, but like daggers better.
Heroway for Silent Surf HM Luxon Faction Farming
jensyea
Looks very good. Shame I don't have merc heroes.
How do you prevent them from fleeing the chaos storm AoE?
How do you prevent them from fleeing the chaos storm AoE?
Spiritz
MQ doesnt need to be sc - my alliance has times from 16 mins to 20 mins avg and we dont use any set team builds - we just make sure we have at least 1 healer and rest is mish mash of everything.We even managed 18 mins when i got stitched up by the 2 healers and they sort of didnt heal me so parts of it were 7 man lol ( we had a gd lol about it after tho ).
Only thing i can see which is a bit weird - why 2 splinter weapons and only 1 melee as heros tend to cast splinter weapon on anything but the melee ( times ive had splinter on build ive had it cast on me maybe 3x in whole zone and the rest get it instead ).
Only thing i can see which is a bit weird - why 2 splinter weapons and only 1 melee as heros tend to cast splinter weapon on anything but the melee ( times ive had splinter on build ive had it cast on me maybe 3x in whole zone and the rest get it instead ).
Olle
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Originally Posted by Spiritz
Only thing i can see which is a bit weird - why 2 splinter weapons and only 1 melee as heros tend to cast splinter weapon on anything but the melee ( times ive had splinter on build ive had it cast on me maybe 3x in whole zone and the rest get it instead ).
He said before that he used W/e with daggerattack, which pretty much has the best attack speed(combine with Drunken master*drool*, therefor he needs 2 splinter.
Your heroes probably cast it on the other heroes in your team because they got an martial wep equipped(spear,sword,etc)
All in all, good build
though id run 2 Fall Back and 2 SYG instead, just my input.
(also, Esurge is armor ignoring, therefor WA maybe isnt the best, but sure, it helps u as an war !)
Your heroes probably cast it on the other heroes in your team because they got an martial wep equipped(spear,sword,etc)
All in all, good build
though id run 2 Fall Back and 2 SYG instead, just my input.
(also, Esurge is armor ignoring, therefor WA maybe isnt the best, but sure, it helps u as an war !)
untitled2005
jensyea: Chaos storm is for the jelly fish who spams spirits. It helps kill pain and disenchant which can be deadly if unchecked. It's a 5e skill with long recharge so the mes heroes can afford it energy wise. You can also replace them with shatter hex for conditional AOE dmg.
Spiritz: MQSC is different from MQ vanq. Many build can vanq MQ sub-15min, including this one. But MQ has much less foes and bosses than silent surf. And foes in MQ don't fight each other automatically so you basically have to kill every foe yourself. In silent surf, you only need to kill 70% foes to vanquish the area.
kajusbonus: You are right that 2 splinters are necessary for daggers melee :-) With 5 hits and 53 dmg at 16 channeling, it is deadly. For fall back, I have 3 copies with 7sec, 7sec and 6sec, so that's 20 sec for 20 sec recharge. And the heroes chain them very well. Another SYG would be nice when the SY is down.
Spiritz: MQSC is different from MQ vanq. Many build can vanq MQ sub-15min, including this one. But MQ has much less foes and bosses than silent surf. And foes in MQ don't fight each other automatically so you basically have to kill every foe yourself. In silent surf, you only need to kill 70% foes to vanquish the area.
kajusbonus: You are right that 2 splinters are necessary for daggers melee :-) With 5 hits and 53 dmg at 16 channeling, it is deadly. For fall back, I have 3 copies with 7sec, 7sec and 6sec, so that's 20 sec for 20 sec recharge. And the heroes chain them very well. Another SYG would be nice when the SY is down.
Olle
An question though, how does heroes use Feast of Souls?
Good skill but never thought they would use it any good ..
Good skill but never thought they would use it any good ..
untitled2005
Good skill but never thought they would use it any good ..
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Originally Posted by jensyea
Looks very good. Shame I don't have merc heroes.
I also tried Invoke Lightening Eles before I got the merc. It didn't work out very well due to 1) a lot of enchant strip: Chilblains from outcast, Expunge enchant from carp, disenchant spirit from jelly fish, Order of Apostasy from afflicted nec and drain enchant from kirins. 2) slow casting of chain lightening even with 40/40 wand/focus. 3) heroes don't cast invoke lightening on recharge.
ROJway may work if you can wait and let the foes ball up before charging in. Another choice is to replace 3 ES mes with 1 AoD and 2 AoB Derv. Those enchant strips actually help the derv tear down. I tried 3 Derv/2 mes/2 rit before and got ~23 min, which is still decent. But dervs are skill heavy, and it's difficult to squeeze in rez skills. Morte66
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Originally Posted by untitled2005
And the vista in silent surf is beautiful and I like the music a lot, so it's not as boring as MQSC :-)
In the past few months I've ground up from r2 to r9 on Mt Q, so your promise of beautiful landscapes and pleasant music intrigues me.
A couple of questions: 1. What do you micro? 2. Is this ball and nuke, all aggro on the warrior then bring healing/damage? If so I notice that you don't really have any prot, how much does he die to the Silent Surf mobs? 3. Have you tried Mark of Pain, given the attack speed on those daggers? 4. Do you see Esurge as plain damage, or is it meant as energy shutdown too? 5. I, too, am interested in how heroes use Feast of Souls. Spiritz
none of my heros have/use a spear/sword etc they only use staves/wands which means im the only melee in the team.The splinter weapon problem has actually been discussed in other threads before
untitled2005
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Originally Posted by Morte66
A couple of questions: 1. What do you micro? 2. Is this ball and nuke, all aggro on the warrior then bring healing/damage? If so I notice that you don't really have any prot, how much does he die to the Silent Surf mobs? 3. Have you tried Mark of Pain, given the attack speed on those daggers? 4. Do you see Esurge as plain damage, or is it meant as energy shutdown too? 5. I, too, am interested in how heroes use Feast of Souls. |
1. I don't micro anything
All heroes are on auto-pilot. I don't call targets since most dmg are AoE dmg. I really hate ctrl-click, which makes my index fingers sore. 2. I don't wait for foes to ball up. When I see a group, I just death charge into the center of the group and start attacking. With IAU up and the +20 vs. ele dmg insignia, I can sustain a lot of dmg. I usually die once every 2 or 3 vanq runs. Usually at the Southeast corner when 3 jellyfish patrol groups converge with the Rit boss. I usually aggro all of them and stay alive if the heroes don't aggro the kirin and saltspray dragon group nearby. That's the only area that you could die if you don't watch the bubble. Team wipe is very rare. Another place that needs caution is the mes boss outside the outpost. It's 2 groups actually with lots of kirins and saltspray dragons. Only here you need to pull them apart with a bow.
3. I tried Mark of Pain, but didn't use it coz: 1) foes die very quickly with 4 ES, so you can get MoP off maybe a couple of times at most. MoP has 20s recharge, which is pretty long for a single target hex. 2) MoP needs adjacent range, but foes in silent surf don't ball up very well. 3) Splinter weapon basically does the same job for 5sec recharge. Would love to use it if MoP is AoE hex.
4. I use it for armor-ignoring dmg. With fast casting and 40/40 gear, it has a decent recharge. I guess E-denial doesn't hurt either.
5. SoS rit uses it petty well esp under pressure. Since I never micro-manage anything, I didn't pay that much attention. I'll keep SoS's skill pane open next time when I vanq.
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Primary mes definitely helps a lot. Not only with more powerful ES, but with faster casting speed/rez speed. My original build wasn't the safest way to vq this area. It's rather "i kill you before you kill me". I found a UA monk with splinter weapons actually helps a lot.
I used to vq other areas with the following teambuild before I got the merch pack. Hope it can be useful. AoD derv heals and AoB derv burns:
For the sin construct boss, I usually clear the smaller group with 3 afflicted first. They are close to the bridge. Then death charge to boss directly to attack. After he's dead, kill afflict Rit if there is any otherwise he'll rez the boss. I usually go in this order: boss --> rit --> mes --> monk --> ele.
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Originally Posted by Bright Star Shine
I don't know howmuch the counter will be, it's at least over 120 I seem to recall, but not sure...
Outcasts fight everything, so pulling them into the wallow group would work. Once you pass under the bridge, behind the outcast boss group, there is also an Oni pop to your right which you can pop, it will fight the Outcast as well. The ele boss is pretty strong, but the others are rather squishy, it's possible for the ele boss to wipe everything there, but remain the sole survivor. That spot is a place to check afterwards though.. I think you can actually make a farm out of this if you take 2 teams that have 2 rits with spirits and a couple damagers, like mesmers that split up. 1 team goes south and 1 team goes north. I think that if done correctly you could do this in ~15 minutes, but haven't had a team to test it with yet.. And it's probably never gonna be a farm, because it requires actually thinking and that's beyond the average PUGs capabilities... Even MQSC is too much to handle for most of them.. I think the area is manageable with split groups. The only place that may be a problem is the SE corner with lots of jellyfish patrols. But if one team member takes the dragon egg quest from Leviathan Pits, it will wipe out a lot of foes in the area so a split group can manage. Silent surf has about 250 foes. If 120 of them die by fighting each other, you only need to vq 130 foes, which are around the same number of foes in MQSC. So I think this can be a good source of luxon faction farm. Jeydra
There's something wrong with this area ... like, sometimes I get to a mob and instead of there actually being a mob, there's only one monster left in it. Other times I get to where a mob is supposed to be, but there isn't any mob there. Seems to me that the most efficient way of VQ'ing Silent Surf will somehow involve getting to places after the mobs finish killing each other, and just mopping up. This involves some fairly precise timing. I don't like it. Like, if you kill an earlier mob too fast you actually slow yourself down later.
I'm positive I'll eventually manage to clear this in 20-21 minutes. 19 minutes and under though may be impossible, we'll see. Do you kill Reef Lurkers? Morte66
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Originally Posted by Jeydra
There's something wrong with this area ... like, sometimes I get to a mob and instead of there actually being a mob, there's only one monster left in it. Other times I get to where a mob is supposed to be, but there isn't any mob there. Seems to me that the most efficient way of VQ'ing Silent Surf will somehow involve getting to places after the mobs finish killing each other, and just mopping up. This involves some fairly precise timing. I don't like it. Like, if you kill an earlier mob too fast you actually slow yourself down later.
Yup. But the mobs off-camera spawns/movement/fights are not the same each time. Thus I'm not sure that perfect timing will always help.
On Mt Quinkai some time back I had a team that hit 17 minutes every time, like clockwork, except the one time it hit 15 minutes when all the spawns/wandering came right at once and I cut a leg off the route. The idea I'm working on at the moment is that if you do a double loop around the central northern island, wide then narrow like in the OP, you can get the groups interested in each other on the first circuit then break aggro, and mop up on the second. But I've only got two runs to go for Luxon r10 to max out SY.  edit: and done! I may have just done my last vanquish ever.
Bright Star Shine
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Originally Posted by Jeydra
There's something wrong with this area ... like, sometimes I get to a mob and instead of there actually being a mob, there's only one monster left in it. Other times I get to where a mob is supposed to be, but there isn't any mob there. Seems to me that the most efficient way of VQ'ing Silent Surf will somehow involve getting to places after the mobs finish killing each other, and just mopping up. This involves some fairly precise timing. I don't like it. Like, if you kill an earlier mob too fast you actually slow yourself down later.
I'm positive I'll eventually manage to clear this in 20-21 minutes. 19 minutes and under though may be impossible, we'll see. Do you kill Reef Lurkers? I really think 15 is possible, and I'm even willing to test it. I know the mobs by heart from chest running there, I know all the patrols, I know which mob to pull into which mob etc etc. With some luck I can wipe the entire north side of that map except for 1 group. If you would do this with a split you would have to do the following: 1 groups (preferably the strongest group) goes SE to get all the jellyfish stuff. 1 group goes north, gets the Afflicted + the monk boss, then goes to the little bowl where I run through first to clean up any mess that's left there, then cleans up the north side -which will probably will still be fighting- after that goes up the hill at the ssin boss to clean up whatever is left from that. The runner does exactly what I described earlier. The SE team cleans the first bunch of jelly fish. By the time they reach the rit lord boss, I should be there (a full tour, WITH opening chests takes me 3 minutes, 4 minutes if I deliberately pull every mob into each other, without avoiding a single one), if they're fast, they can clean the south most groups as well by the time I reach them. I could ball up the monk boss spawn and help them spike it, same for saltsprays etc, thus speeding them up a lot. While the north team cleans up their mess, we will go and kill the entire south side of the map. If I succeed in pulling the mesmer boss group into the assassin boss group, I'm fairly certain they would still be fighting by the time we get there (haven't tried that yet, it was just a thought that came to my mind) meaning the two teams should meet just about there, leaving just that group as a cleanup. Benefits over MQSC: -seems like more fun, because for the love of god MQSC is boring -you kill just about as many foes, but your kill counter is a lot higher, giving you more faction Downsides: -having to set it up and learning new stuff seems to be impossible for some people I don't have any benefits with this myself, since I maxed both my allegiance titles, but I'd like to help testing this stuff to see how fast we can go with split teams..
aspi
Bright do you start from seafares or unwaking?
Also do you mind making a small movie about the route, I know nothing about silent surf since it's usualy just a pass through for me to get to unwaking. :/ And yeah mqsc is quite boring even though I have done it once... untitled2005
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Originally Posted by Jeydra
There's something wrong with this area ... like, sometimes I get to a mob and instead of there actually being a mob, there's only one monster left in it. Other times I get to where a mob is supposed to be, but there isn't any mob there. Seems to me that the most efficient way of VQ'ing Silent Surf will somehow involve getting to places after the mobs finish killing each other, and just mopping up. This involves some fairly precise timing. I don't like it. Like, if you kill an earlier mob too fast you actually slow yourself down later.
I'm positive I'll eventually manage to clear this in 20-21 minutes. 19 minutes and under though may be impossible, we'll see. Do you kill Reef Lurkers? I think you trigger the patrols when you are within certain distance from them. It's farther than the mini-compass. So if you take the "wrong" (or "right") route, they will finish each other off when you actually get there. I usually do the vq clockwise, but after reading Bright Star Shine's tips, I think counterclock (i.e. following the outcast ele boss) may be more efficient (less foes to kill). And no, I don't deliberately kill the reef lurkers, but many times the poor creatures are just collateral damage. There are also 5 or so oni spawns that are on your route, you can pop them too for additional 20 easy foes. I just maxed the luxon point last weekend and tried MTSC last night for the kurz point. Oh its so boring even just after 2 vq's!! I'll really miss silent surf
Bright Star Shine
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Originally Posted by aspi
Also do you mind making a small movie about the route, I know nothing about silent surf since it's usualy just a pass through for me to get to unwaking. :/ And yeah mqsc is quite boring even though I have done it once... |
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