Eyes of the North - Death fest

Looking for some advise about the north. I'm a fairly new level 20 E/Me usually running as fire. I have Ogden, Vekk, Xandra, Jora, & Gwen as heroes. I'm attempting to work on the Eyes of the North quest lines and it's a death fest for me. Sometimes I can pull the groups just fine, the next group instantly full group wipe. Over and over, I don't understand what I'm doing exactly wrong.

Setup:
Myself: E/Me Fire Spells: Flare, Immolate, Fireball, Meteor, Phoenix, Fire Attunement, Glyph of Lesser Energy
Ogden: Mo/E Healing: Orison of Healing, Healing Touch, Heal Party, Covert Hexes, Healing Breeze, Signet of Devotion, Resurrect, Glyph of LE
Vekk: E/Me Fire Spells: Flare, Immolate, Fireball, Meteor, Phoenix, Fire Attunement, Glyph of Lesser Energy, Aura of Restoration
Xandra: Rt/E Earth Spells: Stone Daggers, Ward of Weakness, Glyph of LE, Magnetic Surge, Eruption, Earthquake, Earth Attunement, Rejuvenation
Jora: W/Mo Hammer spells: Hammer Bash, Frenzy, Wild Blow, Shield Bash, Power Attack, For Great Justice, Watch Yourself!, Healing Signet
Gwen: Me/E Mesmer spells: Backfire, Chaos Storm, Empathy, Shatter Enchantment, Shatter Hex, Wandering Eye, Migraine, Glyph of LE

Then a healer and archer henchman. I'm trying to work out if it's a build I'm missing or certain types of spells. Groups of Jotun are pretty much a death run over and over. Any advise would be appreciated. Also working on the Prophecy quest lines, just at the crystal desert area now. Do not have Factions or Nightfall.

Your team lacks protection and damage reduction. The damage output overall is a bit low as well. The ritualist hero shouldn't be a half earth ele; consider starting over on that build. I believe Jora will have energy problems with that listed build, and heroes in Frenzy can prove difficult. If you haven't seen it yet, try gwpvx.com(PvX) team and hero builds, and browse the campfire here on Guru for hero builds.

Replace Flare, and never use Resurrect. Resurrect is inferior to many other skills that scale with attributes.

There are hero teams builds in wiki. I suggest you follow them and then tweak them and then come up with team builds of your own. Unless discord was nerfed, 3 hero necro teams make short work of eotn. Add SOS rit and ST rits for prot and forget the warrior/physicals.

Simple and it works for most of the game.

Having just Prophecies and North cripples you considerably. It's doable, but it will be harder.

The first thing you will want to do is make sure you have max armor (you can get a set in Boreal Station), and put skill and health/armor runes and insignia on. If you can afford to rune/insig your most valuable heroes, all the better.

Taking a quick look at your bars, you seem to have no elite skills (makes sense since you only just hit the Desert). Do yourself a favor and get through the Desert so you can Ascend and unlock the ability to change your secondary, then go through one of the easier Desert missions and get Ogden Word of Healing (you could get it in North, but it's a ways off).

The easiest way to face-roll through the content is with meatshields -- namely spirit walls (which you can't really use) or minions. Problem is you only have access to one necromancer, and you won't get her until a bit further in North. A rit could normally be used as a minion bomber, but Factions skills are required to make that build work....
So my typical advice of "Grab Aura of the Lich and you're good to go" won't really apply here. Hopefully someone more familiar with minionless play can point you in a better direction.
ETA: But I agree with MisterB -- Xandra is likely to run into energy problems with that build and should be reworked or replaced with a better henchman (I never could figure out what to do with Xandra when my alt account had only Proph+North).

Lastly, Panic! on Gwen can be a real life saver. You won't have access to it until almost the end of Prophecies, and it can be a pain to try and cap because of boss shuffling, so I would suggest earning some Balthazar Faction and unlocking it that way.

Thanks! Looking over all of this now and getting some ideas. I really don't know yet which skills heroes use well and which they don't at all. My only Alt is a Monk which got the basic skills up to party heal so I'm starting to realize that he's crippled healing wise without the other skills. I'll work on the desert so I can change my subjob then gather up other skills!

With only EOTN to get Rit skills with I would suggest a healing\support build. Skills can be brought from the skill trainer in the Eye of the North, good luck. I'm sure someone can be more helpful though.

If you are bringing a second monk as a henchman, choose Lina rather than Mhenlo, since you have a healer already. In your team, Xandra can be replaced entirely with Herta.

Those suggestions require Factions and Nightfall skills, which the thread starter does not have.

I thumbs up this point. When I was first starting, switching to using a Minion Master, even a crappy one, was a huge boon. Since (as also mentioned) there's no MM or Spirit Spammer hench in EoTN, you're kind of out of luck.

Given your limited skill options, I'd honestly just run henchmen. All of the hench have elites. Lina is actually pretty well kitted out. ( see http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_...North_henchmen )

I would probably take Lina and Lo Sha first, Then Mhenlo, Eve, and Herta. That's 5, 6 for you. Take Gwen and then either another healer or Vekk depending on how strong you feel, until you can unlock a few more heros and skills.

Also, you could just ask for a party to help you through the tougher areas. Plenty of other people already have all their heroes kitted out. If you're lucky, you can just ignore them and concentrate on your own character for now. Finding a larger guild could help. For all the nice people on this forum, there's 10x as many in-game if you just ask around.

Noticed an instant difference with Lina in the party and Herta. Is Eve effective? As of now I have no Necro skills unlocked at all.

Because you only have Prophecies and EOTN and because EOTN is giving you problems, i assume your EOTN reputation titles are still low too. Therefor i have the feeling that you still have no max armor (in Prophecies the first max are is available in Droknar's Forge and for EOTN armor you need to be at least R5 of Asura, Norn, Vanguard or Delver)... is that correct?

EDIT: oops, i forgot about the armor in Boreal Station...

Correct, was going to start saving up for the Armor in Boreal however it's a bit costly so getting them in chunks as I can save up.

Switching to Henchman is making a huge difference, I didn't know they were more effective then the heroes right now.

zenithangunn, PM me your in-game name. I'll spot you the armor.

If you have only prophecy's and eotn, getting a good (eotn) skillbar for all your heroes can be pretty difficult. You could try to adjust some of the skillbars mentioned on the pvx site. But in case that doesn't work, swap some (the one that really suck) heroes for henchman. The Eye of the North henchman are rather good AND use skills from all campaigns. Herta e.g. is using one of the best earth builds in game and does it very efficient.

So don't worry to leave some of your heroes out and use them instead.

Thank you guys so much! The henchman are helping a great deal

Why not make your (gaming) life way easier and get the other campaigns. They cannot be more than a few bucks right now and it will make you enjoy the game even more.

Also fire works ok in prophecies, but in EOTN the destroyers are more armored against fire damage and do not burn.

A couple of things you might also want to look into for your toon and heroes:

Do you have all your attribute points? At max level of 20, you should have 200 att points to spread out between your ele's skill lines. There are two skill quests characters in all campaigns need to complete to get their last 30 att points. On a related note, until more familiar with the game, you should also not spread your attribute points between more than 3 attributes. One of those should always be your toon's primary (for eles, that's Energy Storage). This also applies to your heroes .

If you haven't done so already, make certain to get your ele through Ascension in the Crystal Desert. It will unlock the ability for your ele to switch secondary professions. This is handy later for capping elite skills for your toon and his/her heroes to use. This also opens up being able to unlock some basic skills of other professions for your heroes to use via skill quests (also handily located in the Crystal Desert for prophecies characters).

Have you runed up the armor on you and your heroes? Do you and they have max weapons? As you play through the campaign and expansion, you should receive armor and weapon drops that can be used on you and your heroes. Remember to carry an ID kit and a basic plus Expert salvage kit with you at all times. ID drops to increase their merch value and to see what runes/mods might be on the blue/purple/gold drops. Runes and mods can be salvaged off using the Expert Salvage Kit, though you'll run the risk of destroying the drop they came from in the process. There is a nice sticky on this forum for making money in-game that is quite handy

Also...if you have a spare character slot, create a toon of each of the other professions and play thru for a bit in Pre-searing. It will help unlock some basic skills on the account that your heroes can use later.

Finally, are you making use of hero/party flagging for pulls? I.e. watch how large mobs or multiple groups of red dots are moving, flagging your party back and then carefully going in with a long or flatbow to pull one group at at time? Also, calling priority targets for your party? Enemy monks/rits/eles and mesmers tend to be the priority targets imo....in about that order more or less.

So far I've given my heroes the /bonus weapons and tried to keep them to their main Skill & 1 other (energy + fire, etc). I'm working with a friend on the desert quests and hope to do them with him tonight.

I'll do the quick starter toon thing, I didn't think about that before and it would vastly expand my skill set for these heroes.

The henchman are helping a lot too, I've been able to get much farther in the various quests. Even found a few Mesmer elite skills!

Using focus command to take out casters and healers on mob groups ASAP. Just starting to get used to flag pulling.