Rescue At Cho's Estate (HM)

I've used just one setup of heroes on all my chars for that quest in HM.

Standard SoS + resto
Standard SoGM
and a hybrid MM prot. Oh I put spirit bond on this one.

What I did was lay down spirits abit away from the mob, flag heroes behind the spirits, and then I pull a mob to the spirits. This method usually guarantees at least 1 kill, at least for me it did, providing you didn't place the spirits in a stupid spot behind a wall or something

And if I accidentally pull more than 1 mob, or if things start going bad, I flag all of my heroes back and start running away, the spirits will usually keep them occupied long enough for the escape.
And then just lather rinse repeat :")

Pretty fun doing this quest in HM 10 times :") /cough SoS/Resto and dagger spam generally refers to the meta builds which you can find on gwPvX.

As for the quest, I'd like to say that I completed it before the update that made the quest easier, so using that method (or anything else that works) should be easier.

And like MisterB said, no cons or summon stones were required.

EDIT: oh about the peasants, I don't know how easier the update made the quest (heard some say the peasants don't get attacked straight away),
for the first peasant, I pulled the enemies from the archway bit before entering the menagerie so the npc doesn't turn into a target,
the second peasant is a little bit trickier, coming towards the peasant after coming out the menagerie, I'd pull the group of afflicted to the right of the archway down the grassy bit and kill em there so the peasant wouldn't get agroed.
And finally for the last peasant, the "agro" of the npc is close to halfway down the watery path in between the island the npc is on, and the main island and I pull the afflicted with a longbow there without agroing the npc. Sometime's you'll have to be patient here waiting for the afflicted to come close enough to pull.

Good Luck