Not to brag, but why do they say Elona is hard?

I do thunderhead with henchies all the time. Usually with one guildie that needs it. Most of the time you can do it with no deaths.

Heh, I wish I was able to make a random PUG understand a few simple things in 5 minutes so they don't die. Ok, at least one thing - about aggro. Would be so much more fun to play with humans. You could even *grasp* take 4 half-competent people instead of 8 frags and get more loot...

Fellow EVE player Urfin?

I had a similar experience with dunes of despair.
It was really hard the first time around (using PUGs). No one even wanted to try the bonus, but it still took me about 5 tries and 4 different pugs before I got it. Everyone seemed to think that staying near the altar was a bad plan, they all wanted to go kill the wurms right away...

So a little while ago I went back to do the bonus. There was very few people in the district so I grabbed henchies. At the altar, all the incoming groups were dead around the 6 min mark. We killed all the bosses and were done with a little time to spare.

Also, I had my ele stuck on THK for a little while. Kept getting into extra crappy groups full of afkers, leavers, and all that. (there seem to be a lot of leeroy clones in that mission). Then the monks went on strike so I just figured screw them. I got out my monk fillied his bar with prots and grabbed all the henchies except Lina. It took me about half the time to finish as with a pug.

So I went back with my ele and all the henchies excpet Cynn. I was set up as an earth tank using Life bond, Balth's Spirit, Essence Bond. At the keep, I lit the beacons and then just parked my butt at the king. The whole thing was pretty easy (although I did die with ele and not monk, oh well).

I could never get a group together to do the bonus. Everyone whines about how it is impossible. It probably would be with a PUG, but is easy with henchies (if you can tank well). EDIT: I should note that it is laughably easy to do with henchies because the jade kill most of the giants anyway...you could never make a PUG understand that would happen, someone would aggro them all (and at the same time).

Keyote: Yep, since release. Took a tiny break though - GW is surprisingly refreshing from all the grind & OMGsupergigahardcorePVP in EVE

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I got an idea actually - maybe when you assemble a PUG you need to talk to them for at least 10 minutes about how you're totally not gonna aggro a gazillion mobs and just how much Power Attack should not be in the skillbar, etc. That should weed the millisecond-attention-span leeroys pretty neatly

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As has been already said, *any* mission is hard if you have no idea what you're doing and/or aren't willing to learn. If you're one of those who whine "omg, I've tried this mission like 16 times!" and still haven't figured out a strategy to maybe succeed on the 17th and thus can help your party, then........

PUG's get drastically worse once you reach the desert. I help groups earlier in the game with my monk and many of them are on their first time through the game. They may make mistakes because they dont know any better, but they listen and work as a team so it goes smoothly.

Then you reach the desert and shiverpeaks...people who have no idea what they're doing think they know best. They wont listen because it hurts their pride to stop doing the stupid thing you just told them not to do. A large number of high level players just aren't smart enough to get any better at the game, but they dont realize or accept it and try to do things their way regardless.

well then, show off, tell me *exactly* which skills, strategy and what whay to kill ect, for a single necro/monk to do this?

i have tried every thing i can think of to get thru this mission, other than just randomly inviting myself into peoples groups, and i DONT want to do that....
*and yes, i do use the henchies*

i have been finding that i cant dish out enough damage to them, i ALWAYS get monk bosses, mostly 2 of them.
i cant get the critters to come when i want, nor go away, and those damn cursed buggers keep teleporting onot my corpse and ravaging the leftovers of the henches >.<

(i would like to have even ONE charater asended befor factions comes out....i dont need to get to droks, realy, though i would like that without running, but i dont even want to FINISH the damn game, just get my main assended....)

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Rayea: I haven't ever player a necro, but being a braindead W/Mo I'm pretty sure you can easily beat this on monk skills alone. Adding necro nastiness can't really make it worse unless you sacrifice yourself to death, I think. I can't say as for exactly which skills would be good here (@ work now, but I could suggest a build when I get home if you need it), but one thing to note for a caster is that henchmen respond to calls - CTRL+clicky to attack & call, or SHIFT+CTRL+clicky to target & call, the latter being more sensible in your case. They do concentrate nicely on what you call, so if you call (& kill) at least sages first, you should do fine. Look at the mission map on, say, www.guildwiki.org, take the back route, to both bases and don't use the bridge.

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for the most part, i do the first 5-6 missions solo, then do all the rest with henchies, i do the easier missions with pugs cause sometimes its alot faster then with henchies, since henchies do not have the best builds

The Crystal Desert missions are where players really start to learn to specialize, and to outwit opponents. You can't really get through these unless you do both (or you piggyback on someone).

Rayea, it gets to where you want to focus your necro. Obviously, you haven't got to capping Spiteful Spirit yet, but you can still make a decent curses necro, or you can focus on Blood Magic / Battery, MinionMancer or try something novel. For my ele-monk, I had to switch over completely to heal skills, and managed to get through the missions as a potent support healer.

In the Desert, Blood Magic focus works well, cast a Well of Blood whenever you get a chance (try to keep closest to the corpse in the middle of the fray so the well sprouts up there, while staying out of the thick of it), and Mark of Subversion works really well on the casters. If you bring Blood Ritual and supply it to the monks when they need energy, they'll love you for it. Symbol of Wrath is a good way to keep the baddies off you, since they run away from it (it's technically AoE).

Don't be afraid to bring Rez Signet instead of Rebirth, since the latter kills your energy and brings the person back at a fractional state; RS brings them back at full health and energy, and recharges every time you kill a boss (and there are lots of those in the Desert missions). Someone else will bring Rebirth to pull from sticky spots, or you might even be able to fit both on your skillbar.

Make sure to readjust your attributes accordingly.

As everyone else is saying, these missions are not hard.

People, however, insist on making them hard.

The last time I did the Elona Reach mission, I had to constantly remind the PUG I was with (it was their first time) to ignore the timer and to stop rushing.

Thirsty River is hard because people make it hard. People fail to bring the proper skills. People fail to manage aggro correctly. The last time I did Thirsty River, the PUG was swearnig up and down that, in the second arena (with the two groups), they both auto-aggroed you, so there was no reason to, as I was suggesting, aggroing only one group at a time.

Roffle.

I did THK this morning. No one died. At no point did anyone panic. In fact, one of the warriors actually went on strike because another warrior picked up his fellblade.

And no one really cared.

Well, different builds call for different strategies. Put two r/mo toons through there last summer with all henchmen. Left the two tanks home because they tended to run off and aggro mobs in close quarters, especially good old Stefan. After taking the mission, going back to cap skills was a snap. Same with Thirsty River.

Riding a bike is easy too, once you've got it.

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well, i managed to get my blood and death skills up in the teens, i grabbed that vamp elite spell from a boss in there, and have tried the snealy,sneaky aproch, but for some reason, they ALWAYS know im comming....

*maybe it has somethng to do with Misha not having had a bath, and all that leather does make one sweaty *

im not that keen on rebirth, but res signet, i dont kill enough in time to keep using it, and i often get bottlenecked near the bridge...
(im usually comming towards the bridge via that passageway to its right when you face it, and theres a buch of sage twerps up on the top area that ALWAYS come down and take out my team...cant tell you how many times i have had to hide around the corner, wait for them to bugger off, then nip back in and heal/res my henchies....i even stopped taking my beloved Claude, it was too much to ask him to keep dying for Misha *grumble*

i usually have 2 healer skills *healing type and a res type*
i had one leet (cant spell the proper word tonight grr) that is the vamp one and one capture sig (just in case i got a monk boss)
the rest are usually blood/death.....the two boney summon, the first on you get as a necro (those black circles that are mass critter attck)
cant remember which ones else...

but they always dogpile on me....gees, its like they are taking it out on me that everyopne else is walking thru it blindfolded, with no armour on and a large clown outfit on to disguise them ^.^

The first time through I played exclusively with henches, and had some problems with Elona and Thirsty before I figured out the tactics.

The second time through I played a monk, and when I got to Thirsty, I got a bazillion invites. OK, I thought, why not.

O. My. God.

Wipe after wipe after wipe. Suddenly I realized that really bad players become concentrated at the harder missions, because they get stuck until good players carry them through. In most missions, people went AFK, and players scattered all over the map (which doesn't exactly make healing easy). I especially remember one guy who used sprint to solo-charge into enemy groups, even though I told him that then I couldn't keep up, and couldn't heal him. Naturally he bitched and moaned every time he died too.

Fifth try I finally got a decent PUG, and we got through - even though one of the guys was level 12 or something, and had very weak armor (requiring as much healing as the rest of the team combined).