How to finish TOPK in less than 40 minutes

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Cookie cutter b/p, always.

But allow me to explain.

All runs I've done were with PUGs. This introduces lots of uncertainty. You get people who do 5 runs daily, and you get first-timers. Until after the first level, you don't get a real feeling for the group, so it's a hit and miss situation. This is why I prefer the standard build, since it has the greatest likelyhood of everyone in group knowing what to expect from others.

The ranger skills I expect are: barrage, distracting shot, throw dirt, troll unguent, comfort/charm animal, rebirth. For extra slot, two rangers have spirits, other three have concussion shot. I prefer R/Mo, since they are less likely to bring some "perfect skill" (it's horrible seeing a R/E starting to cast meteor storm). Seeing apply poison (wiped by barrage) is also bad sign, as well as ranger running ahead starting to lay traps (traps have uses, but prove uneccesary in tombs and slow things down considerably).

Distracting shot is best for wurm siege (20 second safe time), distracting shot is used to disable the dryders. Some would argue that savage shot is better, but that one needs to be spammed, and keeps one person locked on target. The greatest damage dealers would arguably be dryders, so having 6 free interrupts to shut them down should be enough. Mesmers are only dangerous for empathy, and spikes, the rest of their stuff is managable.

MM should be able to sustain minions, so the typical N/Mo with heal area works best. In my opinion, death nova is not needed. For a simple reason. A MM should have two tasks. To chain-rez minions, or spam minion healing skills. If there's time for anything else, the group is killing stuff too slow. In a fast killing group, there should be no time whatsoever for MM to cast death nova.

About pets. Many want pets rezzed first, but I'm strongly against it. The reason is the skill disable that occurs on pet death/rez. That is 8 seconds when one ranger is not spamming barrage. Since pets often die in groups, this means there's plenty of rangers not using their strongest damage dealing skill.
5 x barage with orders will do incredible ammount of damage to whole group in 8 seconds, possibly killing it. The benefit that MM would get from rerezing the corpses of pets is negligible (starting a level, or recovering from partial wipe excluded).

Targeting: most will use the 'target closest', and use barrage on that. But the barrage will send up to six arrows to opponenets around your target. So targetting the closest will mean you're only allowing to hit up to half of possible targets. Always aim at middle of the group.
While playing MM I sometimes find myself standing in front of everyone, trying to create minions. Rangers stand safely back, while I need to be closest to mob, and as such take all agro. All rangers should stand between the minions, giving the mobs closer targets, giving them also time to respond to grasps that get through, and use throw dirt. Many rangers also prefer to run away from grasps behind monks and MM. If at any time you find yourself under too much pressure, it's better to die there, than to let MM take over the tanking. A blinded grasp will take quite a few hits to kill a ranger.

Using 'unusual skills'. With PUGs it's not about bringing the best build of the hour. It's about bringing simplest and most predictable one. A R/E might bring ward against melee, but some people will not know how to take advantage of it. Symbiosis is a skill like that. It has good sides, but neither MM nor Monk will be prepared for the changed situation. Also, grasps will kill most minions in 2-4 hits, so the minimal healing brings only marginal difference in most encounters. The fastest killer overall is well aimed 5 x barrage. dealing around 35+17(+14) damage under ideal conditions means each mob takes 300-350 (damage varies) almost every second. Even SS put on individual opponents will only deal 30 or so every second. Minions help a lot here as well, but most of the time they focus on one or two mobs at most. This is also why I believe that rangers being disabled by pets are a bad move. MM should keep making minions whenever possible, if they run out of corpses during battle, the group overall is killing stuff too slow.

Leader. Groups slow down considerably when there is no clear leader. When creating a group, the leader should also be the puller (in case of ranger), and make sure the group knows that. All total wipes I've seen have occured, because someone got impatient, and pulled before the designated puller, who was waiting for mobs to get into right position.

Luck. Even with best groups that clear first three levels in record time, a disaster can happen on the fourth, for absolutely no reason. Had it happen twice.

All above is just personal experience of PUGs, from seeing what works and what doesn't, taking in consideration the lottery aspect, as well as huge skill diversity of players entering. Your milage may vary and your opinion might be different.

we use traps on mm,orders and monk! And we dont die all that much anyway, stop playing in pugs if it must be that percise in execution, its a game to have fun! We And we only bring 2 rebirths!! WOW~!!!!! the rest is res!! What ever floats ur boat!


DUST TRRAP FTW!!!!!

I feel dust works great for that bad pull, it does wonders!!!

I've recently turned to 16 BM, some expertise and some Marksman. With 2 sup rune, rest minor.

I bring Pred and Symbiosis, I dont tell to my party what spirit I bring or I get kicked right away. But once we have entered, I cast them, theyre like "WTF", I tell them, just try them, you'll see, it will not hurt you I didint see any ppl who didnt like them. Only 1 monk, I said fine, I'll stop using them, but every ranger wanted to keep them... So now I run Tombs with Pred/Symbiosis and ppl bring Winno/FW. That make great run.

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Playing a few times this weekend on my orders I think I am probably going to stop playing it. It just isn't as much fun and you get less benefit when you play orders.

Unless you are doing an active heal on a party memeber or blooding the monk you will gain soul reaping from a distance but not experience.

I am also thinking that it isn't even worth it to bring both orders anymore since the OotV change. Since OotV recharges at approximately the same rate as a recast you should be able to keep that one order up at all times (about a 1 second gap when it runs out while you are recasting with a 20% enchant mod.) OotV gives essentially the same extra "damage" through life stealing as OoP but gains life for the attacker, so that is a clear choice over the other.

It also allows you to not bring Blood renewal, thus cutting down on the time you are spending trying to self heal instead of spamming the order. I have been succcessful just bringing mending to maintain my life or using a quicker heal spell, even heal party recovers you nicely.

I got into a fight this weekend witha monk about my bringing PS. I was with a party mostly made of my guild and friends and we got a monk in. I told them I was bringing it, to which they started to complain. I calmly and nicely explained the benefits outweigh the drawbacks to which they started in with the typical "n00b dumbasses, I am a monk with over 4 million experience, I can blah blah blah blah blah" So we kicked em. Funny thing is that if s/he was such an uber experienced healer, shouldn't they have been able to deal with the 20% drawback without a sweat? We did have a sudden dropout at the beginning of the second level that run when the monk lost connection. PS and our good orders necro saved our butts and we finished the whole thing with relative ease.

Full disclosure and communication prior to starting will save the group a lot of heartache from the jerks and trouble makers.