Simple Guide for new Griffon or Ettin Farmers

This is meant to be a guide for people new to Griffon or Ettin farming that are finding it hard to make money these days. I'm not saying its the best or the most efficient, but its easy, and requires no elite skills. This build is only useable for a sword warrior/monk.

Skills:
Flurry (optional)
Bonetti's Defense
Defensive Stance
Riposte
Deadly Riposte
Healing Signet
Mending
Balthazar's Spirit

Stats:
Swordsmanship 12
Tactics 13
Healing prayers 3
Rest in strength

(Flurry is optional, ive found it can be interchanged with just about any non-adrenal skill for equal results. Pure strike works well. Try to use something requiring either swordsmanship or tactics, requiring only 5 energy.)

Immediately cast mending and balthazars spirit. You'll have 0 energy regeneration, but balthazars spirit will fix that, giving you 1 energy everytime you're hit. Use flurry (or whatever skill you chose) at beginning of battle. As soon as it is ready, cast riposte, followed by deadly riposte, immediately followed by either bonetti's defense or defensive stance. If your fighting more than 1 enemy, your adrenaline and energy will recharge quickly enough that you should be able to cast riposte and deadly riposte about every 4 seconds. Bonetti's defense and defensive stance are key to staying alive. If you fail to cast these immediately after casting the riposte skills, you'll be taking about 50 damage if your fighting more than 1 guy. Basically, cast riposte, deadly riposte, bonettis defense. Riposte, deadly riposte, bonetti's defense. They should recharge fast enough, but if for some reason they dont, thats when you cast defensive stance. If you're taking too much damage, use a healing signet, but ONLY while you're in either defensive stance or bonetti's defense. This will mess up your cycle but it will only take a few seconds to recharge your stances again. Continue this cycle. This is fairly simple, I probably die once every 10 runs or so, only when the rockshot's disrupt a healing signet or they catch me in a dust trap.

I use this build mainly for griffon farming outside of argury rock. There is about 25 griffons out there and it takes about 5 minutes to kill them all. The run makes me about 1k-2k each time, plus gold and purple drops almost every run, and also a nice 100 experience per kill. All of these skills can be found in Ember Camp, but most can be bought in Droknars forge. Good luck, I hope this helps.

nice post for beginners!

If you want more advanced farming tips there are many good ones out there, but you can find mine for griffons here

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...399#post886399

Im pretty sure its not really 5 mins for your build more like 10-15 per run. Only the most elite axe farmers can manage 5-6 mins per run and thats also using sprint. Also its really only 1.3k on average gold per run (2k if you farm the minatours as well but thats not an optimal time to gold ratio), but I have made 60k in 3 hours farming here but you need to find alot of gold scrolls and keys for this and I dont count gold wepons ive sold, just pure gold.

Yip good post. Although axe is much quicker than sword!
Battle torn's build is pretty foolproof i have been using one almost identical and i only started farming a few days ago, and my bank balance is much healthier!
Although i'd like to know what you guys do with the high req gold items that drop. Do you merchant em or try to sell em?

I have a dillema. I can farm 60k in 3-4 hours but it could take that to sell a weapon for similar price and its even more boring selling than farming. My storage and other chars got so full of golds I started to salvage the mods from em to make a few perfect wepons. I have 3 perfect swords now and a hammer, axe and bow. once I have enough Ill sell em all as perfects. Seems odd though, I never through I would be salvaging +14%>50% swords. Salvaging mods from wepons may be a quicker way to sell. people are allways looking for a mod so it might be more cost effective to salvage an item and sell the mod quickly for a little less than the original weapon would sell for so you can continue to farm and earn more gold overall.

problem is, just how can you start farming, If you cant afford the runes in the first place?

farming for runes / runes for farming.

It's just not as easy as some people make it out to be. (my tuppence worth )

Quote:

This is true, use minor runes at frist. You dont need superior runes at all infact its easier with minor runes as you have more hp to play with, its just not as fast. I only use superios runes to kill more quickly and increase the time-gold ratio.

The only relatively expensive things I would recomend using is a maj absorption, a shield with -2 dmg reduction and a vamp axe.

ah, ok, that is fair enough then!

I should be able to afford the appropriate major / minors.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was just uneasy about spending any money on something that might have went to waste.

Cheers

Dave

Could someone post a good ettin farming build for axe w/mo's thanks.... the only elite that I have is Glad's Defence

Quote:

Here is my Gypsie Ettin farm build for an axe, when using an axe I really like
disrupting chop, it interrupts and disables for 20 secs. the healing signet they
keep spamming. Also I found using a sword on this run works really well, did not
equip any interrupt skills but the sword was doing great damage and is fast, so
either weapon will work, but I like the axe build so I can take on more ettins at once.

Forgot the attribute point setup, hmmmm

disrupting chop
cleave
cyclone axe
bonettis
healing signet
vig. spirit
live vic.
mending

could drop cleave or live vic. to bring in sprint, I like the heal signet cause those
mergoyles and fire imps can drive down your health.


p.s. for a little change start a LA and get all the fire imps in the area and then run
over and start the ettin run in reverse, then just keep going back and forth thru
the portal to NKP and mowing them down and fill your inventory with colored
runes, so far the best rune I got from this is a Sup. Monk healing rune, still
waiting for that Sup. absorption rune to drop, if anyone ever wants to farm here
with me or show them around, just pm in-game.

The problem I had trying this was that I got knocked down a lot... Tried taking Balanced Stance and got battered to death pretty damn fast.

Also, I really didn't feel like I was getting enough healing when I was trying this... health just never seemed to go up. Maybe that's 'cause I was getting knowcked down and not attacking, but still

Ettins use irresistable blow that can't be evaded, and when blocked knocks you down (still dealing the damage, I think), and it's their main source of damage as well...

For ettins, I use (W/Mo):
Lots of axe mastery [helmet + 3 rune, totalling 16], pretty much strenght and enough on healing (think I have 2 pip mending/6 health per blow from LV)

Battle Rage {E} - Double Adrealine, faster running.
Distrupting Chop - Disable them healing signets from ettins
Penetrating Blow - Hurt 'em plenty
Dismember - More pain, and 20% less HP for them.
Axe Rake/Twist - Just an extra attack. I use the one crippling (only for damage)
Executioner's Strike - More pain.
Mending - teh noobest skill ev0r!!1, nah. It works.
Live Vicariously - more healing.

First 6 skills are all adrealine based, and Mending+LV are enhancements so energy regen will be at 0. Which is actually kinda useful in Northern Kryta when mergoyles throw spirit chackles and mind wreck, no harm from them at all.

Usage is pretty straightforward, cast enhancements [AFTER passing/killing the two Tengu Wilds when leaving from Beetletun], and attack. 3 ettins bashing at the same time shouldn't be a biggy, hack enough to get Battle Rage on, usually there's time to throw in Penetrating Blow, then Distrupting Chop when ettin gets up his signet. Then just finish with rest of the attacks, re-use Battle Rage before engaging next ettin, rinse and repeat.

I used to have Cyclone Axe (and Signet for healing), but it doesn't have that kind of effect, because the ettins will heal up the damage done by Cyclone with signet, and you can't interrupt them all. Of course, Cyclone could be used for adrealine, but I use Battle Rage for that.

im using a W/E on ettins, and all i use for real protection is dolyak signet, healing signet, bonnetis and reposte, and 2 dmg dealing skills.. although i must admit i need a second player cuz i dont do enough dmg dealing while healing so much to get them down
but hey.. i stay up!

eviserate, pen blow, exec strike, thats it for attacks.. you can power past the healing if you stick to using your skill attacks often. IE when it charges hit it

berzerker stance and dolyak sig , hit the sig first then stance after and they both will stay up, the stance is good to charge up attacks.

breeze and mending 8 healing gets you more than enough to stay alive.

sprint, save time and sprint past everything that ISNT an ettin..

13 axe mastery with a sup rune
13 str with a minor run
and 8 healing..