Farming the new ettins

There are new ettins this weekend -- in a quest given in Lion's Arch. I've tried solo farming them a couple of times, so far without complete success.

One of the problems is that the drops are lousy, as was also the case today for the classic ettins outside Beetletun. Never mind that. I also haven't figured out a build to use, or else I'm playing them wrong.

Getting to the ettins isn't bad. Just remember to kill Caromi Wild's before attacking anything else, and you should be fine. The problem is after you get there.

There now are three kinds of ettins that I could detect -- classic ettins, some geomancers, and a Level 24 meleeing boss. I tried only earth builds with Ether Renewal, so the geomancers weren't a problem for me, but they might give real difficulty to Mist Form builds.

My first try was with a classic Aura/Ether Rewal/Kinetic/Armor of Earth/Attunment/Crystal Wave/Aftershock/Stone Daggers build. Ether Renewal got disrupted too often, however (I presume by Backbreaker; I didn't notice any other disruption). So on my next try I swapped out Crystal Wave for Sympathetic Visage, so as to discourage the adrenaline-based Backbreaker, and that worked pretty well. It was disrupted a lot, but when it was Ether Renewal then got through, so I was OK. However, I wound up in a one-on-one with the boss, and turned out not to have enough damage potential with Stone Daggers and Aftershock to kill him.

I suppose if I were smarter about waiting for Backbreaker to hit, I wouldn't really need SV. So that leaves three potential skill slots for hurting him. One try that comes to mind is Rust, so that I can attack through the Healing Signets. The other is to switch to fire damage, and see if I can get by with somewhat less armor and also less energy management (because the Attunement won't cover everything).

What I plan to try next is the fire, specifically with Flare/Flameburst/Mark of Rodgort.

Unless the drops get better, this won't be a good farming spot economically. But right now it's become a matter of principle ...

EDIT: Another possibility is to go back to a straight earth build, with the damage being Stone Daggers, Aftershock, and Obsidian Flame. If I succeed in timing the Aftershocks to hit the Healing Signets, then the Obsidian Flames and the Aftershocks are each about 120 points of damage.

Even that may not be enough damage, however, if he spams Healing Signet ...

i can farm them pretty easily, ill post a build in the Monk section
Drops aren't too bad, I got 4 gold armors and 2 purples in 2 runs

Thanks for the drops issue.

Either I was just in an utterly unlucky patch, or I unluckily ran into a glitch in the anti-farm code. I just went out and actually complete a skill quest (for an alternate profession), so I assume the code is fully cleared now ...

I finally ran and killed the new ettins and got 2 sup vigors in 3 runs =). too bad prices are plummeting so sell em if you got em. Undoubtly the new 25-30 ettins they added are an attempt to control prices a bit...IMO a good thing. anyway i ran the classic geo build also and the problem with the boss is backbreaker so i just waited for him to hit me with it before i used ether renewal. It still doesn't make a difference cause you won't be able to kill the guy. That problem is your energy after about 30sec 1v1 with him and his healing sigs. you have ether renewal but still not enough spamming with daggers and daggers don't do much dmg against him.

An alternate way to go is when you get to him ignore his henchies and go after him right away with daggers + cw + rust + aftershock. the henchies will give you plenty of energy especially the geos that spam daggers at you giving you +2 energy with every spam. There are 2 of em so +4 energy every sec. You can leave ether renewal behind and just use balthatzars spirit instead. Your health should be completely full since AoR will keep you healed. The rust will cause his healing sig to take 6 sec to cast which leaves you a huge window to use aftershock, daggers to hit him hard =).

Balthazars
AoR
Kinetic
AoE
Rust
CW
AS
SD