When Kappa Attack HM

I went with a double panic mesmer under micro so you can get both sides of the waves in the third spot at once. Standard SoS, ST with muddy terrain on micro, UA, AotL and a Xinrae nec. Sin was a run of the mill dagger spammer with scan to bypass the cheap blurred vision spam. Nec was a run of the mill SS. Of the two in my opinion melee had it a lot easier. Oroku actually did make a halfway decent "tank" to help ball sides if you kept prots on him for the original. Mouse over on 1 was not intentional on the screen...

Post the build you're failing with if you want some advice.

Otherwise to answer your question, it's simply 'Yes'.

Did it on my Derv character that I did all WoC stuff on.

Fairly standard party lineup, nothing special IMO. 2x MM 2x Rit 2x Mesmer 1x Monk. MMs were both AoTL/Curse I believe (may have been AotL/Prot, but I think I was abusing MoP), Rits were both Channeling/restoration, Mesmers were 1x Panic and 1x Keystone/smite, Monk was Healing Burst.

I ran a fairly standard VoS build (abusing SY in this instance). Only special thing I did to my build was add Ebon Escape for easy movement around the battlefield. Minions spread out ->instant teleport to wherever the best AoE spike point is.

No cons needed, no special aggro tactics needed, no deaths throughout the whole thing.

I can definitely see the DD casters shredding minions if I did it after the ele update though. I'm also not sure how you would approach it as a caster. Not having SY available makes you heavily gimped in defense. Minions alone can't block, ST rits will fall under sustained pressure from AoE foes, and there are too many sides for individual prots to work. ER ele is the only real defensive option that stands a chance, but I think that would gimp your damage output too much to destroy waves fast enough.

Of course, I'm sure there are aggro tricks and splitting tricks that can be used to make it much easier overall. Never tried to do that on the 3rd mission, simply powering through it with Dervness was my solution.

EDIT: How did the armor update affect these guys? It was determined that HM enemies got reduced to NM-level armors. Given that the NM enemies were lvl 15 and standard armor, did the lvl 25 HM enemies get reduced to lvl 20 armor (or even lvl 15)?

Gave few tries with my necro when part 2 was launched, got close a couple of times, then forgot about it. Really wishing I hadn't, since it's much harder now, between the buffed ele elites and all of that armor-ignoring damage my necro can do getting nerfed.

May have to break down and use cons.

Anyone tried muddy terrain and barbed trap yet? Lol

Tried it twice my mesmer, got it the second time. Definitely much harder than physical was. Interestingly enough I didn't find the ele elites to make it much harder at all, though that was partially thanks to my build.

I went with 2x MM, 1x SoS, 1x SoGM, 1x Panic, 1x FD, 1x HB monk.

I did run EoE on the SoGM as Reformed did, but found muddy terrain useless. Instead I used Nature's Renewal, which pushes DD to a massive cast time and also counteracts a lot of other annoying crap (especially with Dazed working alongside it). The only Hex or Enchantment I use that is substantially affected by NR is Painful Bond, but thats definitely outweighed by the benefit. Otherwise, fairly standard builds on the rest of the team.

Myself I was an AP, for obvious reasons. Snow Storm/EVAS/FH as my PvE skills.

As with all defensive battles it's very important to make sure you kill everything ASAP, which is a point I think a lot of players miss since in normal guild wars you can patiently wait around while enemies die. Handing things correctly required a ton of micro and situational awareness.

For the most part, I tried to go by a simple semi-split strategy. Not really technically a split, but focusing certain elements of the group in tandem that work well together. Panic + Spirits can hold against most single waves. About 1/2 to 3/4ths of the minions + FD dazing shit can hold against their own (bad luck vs Blurred Vison will make the battle a standstill though). Everything else has to be handled without those, and you need to clean it up quickly to double back and help the other elements.

If you make sure to micro things properly so that your resources aren't being wasted, e.g. wasting the FD and Panic on the same group causing lack of interruption elsewhere, or wasting minions and spirits on the same group causing minions to waste 10s running to the other side, things aren't TOO bad. There isn't much room for error though. If you fall at all behind in your rate of killing there is absolutely nothing at all that can save you. Keep in mind that you also still need to micro spirit and hero placement so they aren't all stacked and nuked, so you got your work cut out for you.

Really, if you have problems with it just find a ranger or paragon buddy and ask them to run SY. Its far easier. Normally I make fun of people who can't do PvE stuff without multiple PvE-abusing characters, but I'll let them off the hook on this challenge. Cons are still for the weaklings though.


Also, FWIW, the HM armor update definitely nerfed their armor substantially. These guys are entirely 60 AL, break out the armor affected damage! If I did it again I would consider straight up abusing 2x Snow Storm + EBSoH, Snow Storm alone was pumping out serious damage. Ele nukers, VoS/HB physicals, and minions also murder these guys as fast as you can blink.

Got a screenshot with exact builds?

kunder, what builds do you use with 2x MM? i'm assuming that AotL would eat up too many corpses for 2 MM to be able to maintain, but, discord or flesh golem coupled with other minions? i guess really, i'm just curious about the elite.

I used 2x Order of Undeath MMs because I didn't want to deal with AotL taking 4s to cast and wanted maximum damage. That said, AotL certainly doesn't require a ton of corpses, I run it pretty much everywhere else (where I don't need to micro for maximum damage). OoU really doesn't need all that much extra healing, in some cases you actually get more health back then you sacrifice (keep in mind vamp horrors +damage means +health per hit). Also Dark Bond makes necromancers completely invincible anyway, its the equivalent of +80 armor that also works against armor ignoring damage so long as a minion is alive.

Myself:
AP/Auspicious/Arcane Echo/EVAS/Snow Storm/FH/Hex Eater Signet/Mantra of Resolve

MM skill sets:
OoU/Bone Fiend/Vampiric/Masochism/BotM/Dark Bond/SoLS/Prot Spirit or Spirit Bond

SoS:
SoS/Bloodsong/AR/Painful Bond/MB&S/Spirit Light/PwK/Spirit Siphon

SoGM:
SoGM/Pain/Shadowsong/Anguish/AoU/EoE/NR/BoC

Panic:
Panic/Wastrel's Demise/Unnatural Signet/CoF/Shatter Hex/Power Drain/WnWn/Hex Eater Signet

FD:
FD/Frag/Weaken Armor/Oppressive Gaze/Barbed Signet/Wandering Eye/Power Drain/Hex Eater Signet

(note: aim for 4-5s duration on the condition inflicters to maximize frag damage)

HB:
HB/Patient Spirit/Signet of Rejuvenation/Cure Hex/Power Drain/Hex Eater Signet/Elemental Resistance/Dwayna's Sorrow

Fairly standard builds overall, only a couple tweaks to suit the area and the use of NR. Only "special" build that you don't see run often is the FD (and why it isn't run often is something I don't understand, considering how well it combos with AP builds).

As I mentioned earlier, running it again I would probably go with EVAS/Snow Storm/EBSoH. Snow storm will easily do ~165 damage AoE before scatter gets them out, the full 270 if they get caught casting a spell when it triggers. Accumulated Pain getting switched in somehow to continue the AoE deep wound spreading would probably be good, not sure where I would put it though. Trying to fit Elemental Resistance on a few more characters would probably be a good idea too, Spirit Rift @ 100 damage is a lot less painful than Spirit Rift @ 200 damage.

Funky build. No hard resses at all seems to leave very little room for error indeed. Still it contains a fair bit of interesting ideas.

I'll try it and see.

EDIT: Build did not work. Damage output was way lower than what I expect it to be, and the build collapsed and died once I lost AP (which tends to happen at least once a run, thanks to the Kappas' million hex removals - and I usually have both Norn shouts + EBVAS backing up AP). It doesn't help that Nature's Renewal interferes with Panic, Fevered Dreams and AP in addition to Painful Bond.

Either you are a lot better at micro than I, or there's something you're doing that I'm not.

i've tried running OoU before on MM heroes but watching their bar they rarely used it, or if they did it was at the end of a fight, do you micro that?

how well do heroes use FD without micro?

Guys this is a Kappa, not Dark Bond, thread.

Anyway assuming the spawns don't get easier if Oroku dies, I can see some light at the end of the tunnel now: in the third spawn, I did end up wiping to the third wave, but only three Kappa were alive and a big part of that wipe was because I unluckily lost AP right at the start of that wave (z). The third wave is difficult because two waves hit at the same time. Though I didn't count the waves before the last run, this seems to be the wave that consistently wipes me. After that the remainder of the spawns were no trouble; the last wave especially was simple cake because they came from one direction.

I'm running my own builds now though; I'm quite doubtful Kunder's build can do the quest because of no resses + the fact that FD sucked in my run, but I did take a few ideas from it.

I wouldn't suggest running FD on heroes anyway, they're really terrible at it and chances are it'll get hit by hex removal before they follow it up with conditions.

AI use for FD is similar to any generic hex - it has no special priority and the AI doesn't seem to make special priority for the FD target for conditions. It is also highly counterproductive in caller AP spike builds; you ideally want the FD target to stick around as long as possible so that it can spread daze repeatedly. Calling a single target for FD and then spiking it to death in 2 seconds won't really faze a caster group badly.

If you wanted aoe daze and cracked armor and don't intend for FD to last more than 5 seconds, I'd suggest Technobabble/Extend Conditions instead. It recharges faster and dazes faster.

Going Finish Him -> Extend Conditions is a lot harder than Fevered Dreams -> Finish Him, because FH kills the enemy most of the time. Not killing your target with FH greatly increases the risk of AP not triggering quickly enough.

The point about FD being removable with hex removal is valid, but the same is true for AP itself. FD only has to last for about ~1s to trigger correctly. When I play FD usually hits just as soon as my AP lands and the enemy dies off from FH (+YMLAD if its barred) .5s later, the risk of hex removal should be slight.

@Kunder

Well, you'd be right in most cases, it's just that this thread was talking about WoC and I really really hate Expel Hexes because I've never managed to run a smooth AP around anywhere infested with the jade brotherhood.

Btw, just a small math issue, but regarding something you brought up, "in the area" being 5x the size of "nearby" is a piece of bad math (usually "calculated" by substituting in 2 and 1.5 into　pi*r^2 which would give you 4 pi - 2.25 pi = 1.75 x 3.14 = 5.495pi or so), it's using the wrong benchmark (in factors of 1x radius), because to express it as a factor of the area of "nearby", you'd need to divide by nearby, not subtract, so the increased area would be 4pi/2.25pi = , making it only 1.778 times the size of "nearby".

This isn't really relevant to Jeydra's thread, and it isn't constructive at all, sorry

Edit: Oh, I see. WoC removes expel off the Mesmers. Ignore the above then.

All Kappa must die.




As always, tactics + micro > builds. I think I got lucky this time as well, as the first spawn of the third wave balled a bit too much and died quickly to the mass Fire Eles, which left me with enough time + room to set up spirit walls for the rest. I had quite a few deaths, but thanks to the UA, I lived through them.

FWIW I consider Res scrolls a consumable. Not only does it take a skill slot to fit in a hard res / Res Sig, the hard resses all carry major drawbacks, and the hero takes time to cast the res as well (or maintain in the case of UA). I was going to try Technobabble + Extend Conditions at some point, but it was never needed.

The difficulty of this quest is on par with or perhaps even harder than 4H / Foundry.

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