Sorrows Furnace. Play your role.

Ok, I've been having trouble finding descent Sorrows Furnace groups lately. It's usually a good group, with the exception of 1 guy not doing his part. In a 5 man group, if 1 guy isnt doing his intended role, the whole team can suffer. I'm making a little guideline for you new players that want to try out sorrows furnace farming.

Tank:
Do not bring attack skills. You're going to be holding a keg or a gear the entire time inside the furnace. Bring stances and shouts, and if you're a warrior/monk, bring balthazar's spirit and cast it upon yourself. Simple as that. Never drop the keg/gear, spam your stances and shouts. In my experience, the best elite to bring is Gladiatiors Defense, but if you want to bring Shield of Judgement or something else, thats fine. As long as you stick to stances/shouts, and NOT attack skills.

Minion Master:
16 Death Magic is a must. Your role is to make minions and keep them alive. You do not need to bring attack skills. Deathly swarm should not be on your skillbar. Bring fiends and horrors. Your elite skill should be Offering of Blood or Tainted Flesh. There's no need for you to bring spiteful spirit. Put as many points in soul reaping as you have leftover from death.

Spiteful Spirit:
16 Curses a must. You must be a Necromancer/mesmer. Don't bother arguing, N/Me is the most effective SS build. You MUST bring Spinal Shivers. Without that, killing monk bosses is going to take forever, or it will be impossible. Other than spiteful spirit and spinal shivers and arcane echo, you're pretty much free to bring whatever you want. I like to bring malaise, parasitic bond, and weaken armor, a hex removal from the mesmer skillbase, mantra of resolve, and rez sig or blood ritual. There is no need for you to bring any attack skills, and do not bring Mark of Pain. It causes enemies to scatter, making Spiteful less effective.


The problem usually lies with these 3 players. The monks seem to always be good. I know this may sound like basic knowledge to some of you, and it is, but for some people, they just don't know. It's frustrating for me and other experienced players to team up with unexperienced players and waste time.

I hope this helped, and I hope that people can start playing their roles a little better.

As a warrior I always bring disrupting chop/distracting blow/savage slash especially in SF. Why? because monk bosses usign ressurect = no fun.


Spinal shivers only works if water damage is being dealt. Curses and blood wands do dark damage. Death magic wands do cold.

LifeInfusion
actually Villnar's set does cold dmg to

:P So vague, everyone knows warriors need cold weapons for spinal.
Deathly Swarm is not a bad skill for helping at the begining.
And OoB is useless if you're using soul reaping.
MM necros should bring a few curses as well.
Spiteful just needs to concentrate on his spinal shivers and SS, dont overcomplicate that. :[

Despite a couple of apparent rough spots (I wouldn't know), this is a very useful thread IMO. I've decided to shelve my (apparently) useless Ele for these higher missions and am working on a Necro specifically for farming SF and other places.

Hopefully, this will go a long way towards saving me from a lot of "You Idiot!" and "WTF! N00B!" type comments. Thanks

I love how PvErs feel they are doomed to failure or inefficient if they don't have the exact same build, skill-for-skill, attribute-for-attribute or if they try something differant.

Amusing.

Monsters don't change like opposing pvp teams. Not like we have to keep up with them alternating skills, we always know what to expect from areas that have been played through.

I avoid those groups mainly. I don't like to nag on them for playing their way (or not really playing it as some believe) and so just avoid them altogether. When I get into groups with friends, guildies, etc they all know that I like to actually play if I'm a tank, or prefer to actually let the tank in our group play. That means I set the rules beforehand (since I'm the guild leader) that there will be no keg/torch/book holding during this run. If they want to stand there and hold a book, or shoot at mobs while someone holds a book I kindly tell them they can go to IGE.com (yes, the place that's against the EULA) and buy their gold because it's about as interactive as holding a book. Some of us believe that the book/keg/torch trick is a bug and thus if you are exploiting a bug (against the EULA) then in out mind its no more wrong to tell someone to just buy gold at a gold merchant in real life.

I for one enjoy playing my warrior and his level 20 warthog and don't disgrace him (ok I'm an old roleplayer so that may have something to do with it) by making him a sacrificial ornament on the battlefield. This procludes me from many fissure groups and sorrow's furnace groups, but really I don't mind that much. I only posted this message for those out there that feel dirty doing this in order to let them know that they're not alone. I'm sure some of them join the oro groups or fissure groups just to screw up the lame ones (using a book/keg/torch trick), and I'll tell them that it's better to let them be and go do your own thing.

Maybe that's what the OP is encountering. Hopefully some of them will read this and quit taunting those people that feel comfortable with something like that and leave them be. They have as much right to play the game (play used loosely) the way they want as you have to play the game you want. So please if you don't want to be a librarian/torch bearer/beer hauler, just avoid the groups..

To the OP: I hope that helps.. Good luck in your adventures..

Please put your IGN in your profile. The other 999,999 account holders can then PM you before each battle to have you critique the skill button they are about to depress.

Contrary to your own belief, the world doesn't need you telling us what our roles are. I am pretty sure you didn't pay the $50 for each of the 1 million + accounts on GW, so how about to stop trying to dictate how other people play the game that they paid for?

Nice to see that you've got this down to a precise little cookie-cutter formula for everybody else to play by, but I'll pass on farming SF with you for the moment. I'm having more fun experimenting with FoC and Soul Leech / Backfire builds than I'd be playing everything to everyone else's specifications.

Actually, there is no such thing as "water damage," except in my basement, which is not where I play Guild Wars.

"Cold damage" is what's required for Spinal Shivers.

The attributes commonly associated with cold damage are Water Magic and Death Magic, but as noted above Vilnar's is a max-damage Curses-based weapon that does cold damage.

3 necros 1 warrior 1 monk > 2 necros 1 warrior 2 monks

FoC x 2 + SS = win.

And spinal shivers is crap.

Edit: Make that x 6 as it will be arcane echoed and mimicry

Strange - my level 15 Death Magic MM has completed tons of runs without a single problem - and I do have a single attack skill!

Also strange - most of the experienced MMs I've been friends with all say the same thing: Fiends only.

But of course, you're the expert here, not us.

The OP seems frustrated with the quality of those who do the Sorrow's run right now because the truth is that there are a lot of new farmers there. In fact, there always will be as it is there are no start up costs to farm a new spot and people get bored so don't stick to a spot long.

Cookie cutter PUG groups are how new farmers and people without a regular group farm this. Both groups are not open to experimentation. However, in reality there are more effective ways to farm sorrows then the standard 5 man if you play around.

I won't go into all the possible builds and combinations of teams, but simply reply to what has been posted.

OP is more or less right about no attack skills. The keg holder should have all utility and defense. However, having an interrupt is a nice piece of utility. If the keg tank brings shield of judgment, kick him immediately. It kills momentum and overall lowers damage per second. The spiteful should be on the fastest acting enemies and this knockdown means it slows them from working themselves to death, the extra damage from the spell is junk.

MM should have level 18 bone fiends. However, he should also be built to maintain them. MM who don't maintain bones are like having a dead slot on your team. Additionally, this job is a total sham. MM is an exploit of necros being good on gaining momentum. If you team (SS) can't maintain the momentum, he is often a dead spot. If your MM is carrying curse line for damage, stop. He needs to self manage energy and curse doesn't help this. Self managed energy means he is operating at 100% capacity CONSTANTLY casting something that makes more babies, feeds the babies, or gets the energy to do the first two. A MM's children are an investment in the future, don't neglect your children!

SS should carry spinal. That said, it is junk. Spinal is good for a "hard lock." By this I mean he puts it on a enemy to shut them down, but it also shuts down the SS as well. If they are casting rapidly the necro will drain out of energy and if there aren't enough minions to force damage on enemies you will lose momentum.

One common misperception is that the SS should carry blood ritual. PUGs want this because the players are too inexperienced to self manage energy. Your MM should NEVER run out of energy and should be able to exploit EVERY corpse without a blood ritual. If the SS carries blood ritual it ties him to the blood line which is weak for his job. Additionally, the only times the MM (or either monk) needs energy is at the same time the SS has none to spare. SS should run himself dry on pretty much every group by casting 4 SS and maybe even some other tricks to stop rez or wells. Awaken sucks, the extra touch of damage is not worth the energy lost (they will die just as fast without) and you will find nothing else on the blood line which helps this job at all. If your SS doesn't carry blood, he can open up the domination line and find many tricks and utility great for making the whole run faster.

Every SS you meet probably carries a vilnar weapon either because they think it is the best curses weapon (no) or because it is convenient to have the cold dam while still having a curse req. However, better SS carry a cold dam sword or axe for the faster attack speed (in addition to the vilnars, sometimes you don't want to be in melee but still lay cold dam). Also, EVERY member of the team should have a cold weapon. I actually have a screen shot of 5 players with IDS raging on a Monk boss. One person with a staff attack won't hit EVERY cast which will slow you down and you will lose momentum.

On a positive note there are very good players on these runs and this is how you identify them.

Tank: Knows maps and mobs and plays into this by getting whole mobs in tight groups at choke points. Sprints constantly.

SS: You will never see a rez or well, also many enemies frequently die at the same time (3 binders in a mob you may see a well).

MM: Good energy management and grab every corpse.

Bonder: No healer is needed.

Healer: No bonder is needed.

Note: You can finish sorrows with any of the common 5 group missing, therefore, if the group falls apart and you think it is that one clearly sucks, it is really because several suck. I have had all the possible positions err=7 out and finished the missions without them. All 4 man combinations can be done (tanking as a SS is a lot of fun ).

Sure, but how do you get 2 elites on your skillbar, short of when you're capping? :P

Well they said 3 necros so one would make the more correct assumption that 2 of the necros are FoC and 1 is SS not both skills on the same necro.

Hopefully that's cleared some misconceptions up.

Dosen't Arcane Mimacry copy a teamates elite?

As for the thread... Why do you want everyone to be such a natzi build specialist? I've seen some poor players who basically don't understand their builde they are playing... but everyone can go find their own build and actually have FUN with it...

Candy Cane wands do cold damage.

Plus, it's very cool to take down a monk boss with a pepermint stick!

see threads like this are, to me, part of whats wrong in the game right now.

no offense to the writer, but why are so many people falling into the cookie cutter "theres only one way to do this" builds ? the lack of creativity or out of the box thinking is sad.

before long noone will build anything other than W/Mo, Mo/W, and SS Necros .. at least until that gets nerfed