Update - Thursday, February 9, 2012 (Winds of Change Part 3)

Have you tried the HM after the nerf though? ^^

If anything, they should give more rewards like this. No one is forcing you to get the extra hero, just like no one is forcing you to complete the game in hard mode. But if you do, you should be able to get an extra reward.

really would have liked to see a MESMER hero, not another useless sin ---I think the ONLY time I have taken out zenmai was to level her up and anton has never seen the light of day (no skills even)...would liked to have had another rit, but I did my one merc hero as my rit so I am not toooo unhappy about the hm reward (wont do hm with this monotonous quests...still trying to convince myself to finish them on my 2nd character in good ole regular noob mode)...

and still want to know what happened to evinnia and her trip to ascalon (they kidnap her and make her the kings slave????)

eh, still asking myself as well...I suppose we'll see her in the elona part, cause after the refusal in ascalon she traveled there to ask for help and in the process married palawa yoko..you know how these things go :P

Any news on the Melee Hero update? Last I heard, it was supposed to occur alongside the final WoC update.

for the panda, just get 80k balth, its the cheapest

Was there a nerf or maybe a tweek on patrols? I was sooo stuck at Chos HM but last night breezed through with heros in like 30 mins. Seemed like the pats were less overlap and you could tackle 1 group at a time. Also, for the middle npc I pulled the mobs way back around the corner to the diseased critter area. This activated the npc and when the mob broke agro and reset the quest updated and I moved on to npc 3.
Now just having some trouble with Cleansing the Lagoon...npc wont follow anymore and those multi meteor showers are brutal.

cheapest for you maybe (I still am stuck with only 10,000 balth faction level)...would require me to pvp for many many many....YEARS!


but with today's vanquish...getting a LOT closer to getting me a panda pet...

I was wondering about this as well. In fact, I was looking more forward to this than WoC part 3. Though I can't see how any "moderate" AI changes would help A heroes defensively. A players can survive due to PVE specific skills and the fact that players can adapt to different situations by playing smart. A heroes have neither. IMO, they need to split some defensive A skills and boost them so that A heroes can be used without dying so much. Offensively, A heroes are doable in their current state.

-_- now i have to do the whole woc quest chain all over again in hm just for better hero, great.

so, i started out doing the woc chain quest in hm fine for the early cleansing quests... then comes "rescue at minister cho's estate hm" and it is ridiculously hard. in normal mode i had difficulty with it, but i still managed to complete it with heros. now i am not so sure if i am able to do it solo in hm without spending 2+ hours banging my face on the keyboard and -60 dp all heros.

About thess talks in all 3 parts. Some ppl care about. Some don`t.
Why don`t they have a skip button? It`s annoying. Very.

I've noticed that after the update that was supposed to dumb down Chos HM (and it did, considerably) peasants started rushing in the middle of the fight to heal minions with healing touch. Did they had this skill before the update? Doesn't make life easier ))) still not too bad thought.

Anyone figured out how the Reiko fight works? She just won't stop regain HP hella fast then died suddenly.

You can do the HM Titan quests for gold zcoins too. Everyone is saying how easy PvE is, so you might as well do them.

You need to keep attacking her clones and copies until her Grand Illusion bar is empty, then you can hurt her directly.

well...cant seem to get past the shing jea quest...will try again later. (and yep another party beacon--no need for these as I have completed party on 3 characters already!)

I did HM shing jea with my warrior and his heroes. If you need help pm me in game.

Dromar The Banisher

The Shing Jea quest was so much more fun with other people.

One stands by the drunkard initiate getting and dropping the bombs (and protects Mhenlo and the initiate if something goes wrong), two run back and forth with fast-recharge running skills like Windborne Speed, picking the flasks, and using then in enemies in both stairs and the rest work on keeping alive the NPCs, and holding the enemies back with minions and spirits.

It got me a little excited for Elonas new content (if there is some before gw2 launch).

Made me remember to tuck away some undead dmg mods just in case considering joko controls the undead...

Have they said anywhere if these new weapons might eventually count towards HOM? I'm just curious, I haven't purchased all the filler weapons I need yet for it.

I hope there will be! There's quite a bit of things not yet answered.

I just hope that they give us some skill updates (like the para skill update...) before they work on more content. Splitting the low amount of GW1 resources among too many projects has already resulted in extremely large periods of time between skill updates .

guessing in few weeks, goanna see another update that will allow imperial weapons be able to go into HoM. You can craft gold versions of Imperial weapons for 15 of those item. Be kinda cool if there is some sort of bounty quests daily get to take in cantha.

Anybody else noticed that Zei Ri has a different model when used by a PvP character?
It appears to be his original model prior becoming a hero. So he uses Warrior/Ranger animations and has a different face (behind the mask).
It's just... weird.

Why using 3 characters for that?
Just let 7 people do their thing, and let one pick&drop flasks between waves, then when the waves come, let the flask collector throw them into the waves. If done correctly you can easily wipe an entire wave with the 5-7 flasks you got this way.

Quicker, easier, and you just freed up 2 people ( since the flask disables your skills after usage I just gave you 2 extra party members just like that).

Depending on how far you place your other party members, at the beginning while the 'collector' walks and set traps, flasks get ready, and get wasted while no one picks them.
With a single character focusing on picking flasks and protecting those two NPCs (e.g.: a protection/healing monk) you can get much more of them ready and set much more traps between waves, increasing greatly the damage output.


Of course, over time NPCs die and you end up having to retreat back to where Mhenlo is, and there's no time to set traps, so it's enough to have just one picking and throwing.

MM is very useful in that raid quest.

This has mhenlo in it...hes my favourite character oh Anet thank you!!! he got promotedd too

I especially liked it when Cynn showed up to help Mhenlo defend the Monastery

Some thoughts:

********WARNING********
Everything here has spoilers
***YOU'VE BEEN WARNED***

Overall I've really enjoyed WoC. Part 3 is the best of the bunch in my opinion, with good variety and less of the frustrating "face 70 monsters approaching from multiple directions at the same time" and none of the "face huge mobs with good builds with a party of 4" that Part 2 suffered from.

Finding Jinnai was my least favorite quest. Plot-wise, it's a serviceable move-the-plot-along quest. Play-wise it's missing something. I *think* you're supposed to utilize the teleporters to lead the mobs on a wild goose chase into Jinnai's traps... I think... In any event, it's not at all clear and I ended up fighting the mobs straight up. In NM, it's easy to just stand there and mow them down as they come. In HM, I had to find a dead-end to hide in so I could bottleneck the foes, and it was still dicey enough that I don't think every class will be able to beat it that way. Also, it was somewhat frustrating that a major factor controlling the outcome was whether and when Starburst guys showed up.

The dialogue in Calling All Thugs was funny enough to justify a quest with no actual fighting and to help me ignore Raisen's 180 degree personality change. FYI: Shadow Meld + any asura summon makes HM a lot easier.

Raid on Kaineng Center was one of my favorites. The plot is ridiculous, but it's lampshaded well. The mashup of all the different mobs is a hoot. After seeing the sheer volume of foes in NM, I was expecting HM to be rather difficult, but it wasn't.

There Goes the Neighborhood was my second least favorite quest. Plot-wise, it was a neutral move-the-plot along quest, so no issue there. But play-wise, it was frustrating. Several of the peasant mobs are positioned so that they're all going to be dead before you arrive even with dual Fall Back. A couple of the mobs are also placed so that you're forced to rush through a bottleneck and have difficulty reaching their backline, which can be problematic in HM.

Ministry of Oppression was another non-quest, but the dialogue made up for it. <paraphrase>"I've killed thousands because someone told me it was the right thing to do, and now I kinda regret not thinking for myself."</paraphrase> Um, wow, complete deconstruction of the entire ARPG genre much? Now, the $64k question is: Will a-net follow through on this and give us some kind of mechanism/interface for moral agency more advanced than green dots versus red dots in GW2?

Raid on Shing Jea Monastery was another favorite quest. The dialogue alone made it worth playing, particularly the MacGyver joke and the part with Cynn. (Btw, is the part with Cynn only in the HM version? I don't recall seeing it in NM.) I fought straight-up in NM and thought to myself, "this is going to be impossible in HM with all the minions and Panic." In HM I learned to use the bombs and discovered that it's really a pretty quest.

The Final Confrontation is probably my favorite boss battle in GW. I'm not sure if the cloning thing was meant to be a reference to the original TMNT arcade game, but it wouldn't surprise me given the pretty obvious reference in When Kappa Attack. Beyond that, it's a pretty cool combination of Dhuum (beat the gimmick meter to beat the invulnerable boss) and the Doppelganger (choose your skills knowing that they're going to be used against you). The plot pushed the envelope by giving us a Pyrrhic victory, which left the ending feeling, well, envelope-pushy, but not particularly satisfying. (Not even satisfying in the "Togo you were fricking annoying and now you're dead -- ha ha!" kind of way.)

Redemption for the Lost had good dialog for a side quest. I haven't gotten around to doing this one in HM yet, and, frankly, I'm a little concerned by the huge mob size I saw in NM. (I may edit this comment later.)

Vassal States had amusing dialog and decent gameplay (not too long, too short, too hard, or too easy) for a "cleanse all the things" quest. (Well, maybe a bit too long.) There might have been a little bit of comic self-reference there, since it was "cleanse all the things AGAIN." The references to taxes reinforce my suspicion that WoC's story is intended, at least in part, as a commentary on contemporary US politics.

You then did Finding Jinnai HM the hard way.
Its easier to just keep on moving, fight a bit, retreat into a trap of jinnai, move on, until everything is dead.
Quest is a walk in the park that way.
Waiting for them to swarm you at a chokepoint is also a way of doing it, but its not as fail-proof.

Yup. I didn't think much. I just walked to each location pinged in the radar, and the enemies just followed us to their deaths, then I took the few remaining units that strayed from the rest.

At the end I though: "that was it? O_o".

you know when things are bad. I don't know anyone that is doing WoC HM

I figured it must be something like that. So the red pings are bombs?

In Finding Jinnai there's an easy way to do it in HM. You plant your heroes at the door on the otherside of the map from where you spawn. There you can fight the mobs that spawn on top of you and the mobs that come to you in between the spawns. The way the mobs come at you makes them ball up.

yes.
And to my surprise, they actually pack a decent punch.
So basically what I did was kill the group at the start, drop spirits to occupy next group, rush to chokepoint, fight a bit there, retreat to bomb, drop spirits to keep busy, rush to next chokepoint, and do that until you have had all 5-6 bomb spots.

makes it a walk in the park.

Right, so, it looks like the HM Kappa quest was not among the things that got toned down. If anything it's harder because of the ele update.

Anyone else thinks Zei Ri should be wearing the mask when used as a hero?

I mean, he has it as an armor piece.

I'm glad he doesn't, since it looks like the lovechild of a blender and a theatrical mask

BTW... Vassal States HM. Most. Boring. Quest. I've. Ever. Seen.

Warning, SPOILERS ahead, of course....














So it would appear that there is quite some extra content available in WoC if you do it in HM. Anyone know all of them?

So far, I noticed:

It makes sense from a lore standpoint. Somewhere in there someone said that they wear the masks because they're just part of some larger thing. The armor's so huge that he looks kind of funny to me without the helmet, though.

Thoughts: These were mostly fun quests that weren't too hard in HM with a basic team of overpowered heroes. Raid on Shing Jea HM was cool for me for the same reason that Chthon liked it: I decided to try using the bombs and discovered that leaving a trap on one of the two staircases was really good.

Both the Raid quests seemed a little weird, though. I guess you're supposed to split up and fight the groups separately or something, but I always just hung out at the place where you're supposed to make a final stand, made all the guards follow me, and it didn't really give me any trouble.

Vassal States was kind of annoying, making me run all over the place just to kill a bunch of little groups. And I ended up nearly vanqing in Redemption for the Lost to find everyone. So I found those kind of tedious. Not a huge deal, but eh.

I kind of liked the change of pace in the two quests where you just have to run a lot. (You really don't need any special skills or planning for those, though. Just run.)

Overall, it was pretty fun, and having a third rit is cool. And hey, more gifts to open up and get random junk from, whee!