Griffon Run

http://www.stashfile.com/uploads/gwgriffon_run.wmv

I am glad you guys enjoyed the video.

The exact skill setup is as psycore said...
1- Bonnetti's
2- Cyclone Axe
3- Vigorous Spirit
4- Zealot's Fire
5- Healing Breeze
6- Healing Hands
7- Live Vicariously
8- Mending

Skill setup... I am not 100% sure on this but I believe this is a fair approximation. Will have to check when I get home.
9 Healing
8 Smiting
12 Strength
12 Axe Mastery
4 Tactics

Gear
I have a total of neg 5 damage received while enchanted, from Sup Absorb and my Shield, as well as quite a bit of health, +67 I think, from my axe grip and shield for the initial run/gather. I switch up my axe right before engaging which has a 3:1 vampiric haft for the added cyclone regen.

The Run
This build took me a lot of tweaking to finally get perfected and I still sometimes fail when attempting to take the 25-30 Minos/Griffons from a full spawn run. The timing of the skills is absolutely paramount as is their setup in conjuction with the mobbing you receive when you have finally gathered them.

I throw up mending early just so I can get around and stay alive. The constant regen is absolutely essential. On a troll run you don't need it as much and can use a substitute like Balthazar's but the energy gain it gives is fairly useless since you should never really need any once you actually engage.

The key to this entire build is healing hands. The weapons I use are a little grainy and I apologize, couldn't find a compression utility that preserved the image well enough to display what I wanted to show without it being a huge file. I have a 14% while enchanted axe with a 20% enchanting grip that really makes things a whole lot easier. Once you engage you immediately throw up Healing Hands and then in quick succession Zealot's Fire and Vigorous Spirit. By this time your Bonnetti's should be ready and after you throw it up, being careful not to let it be overwritten by a spell, your energy should be instantly 20. Then you throw up your second enchantment, Live Vicariously, immediately followed by Healing Breeze and Bonnetti's again. Now you have to survive purely from the Cyclone Axe regen, which is HUGE btw, and Bonnetti's , until Healing Hands is up again and you can throw up your safety net and rebuff.

Again, this takes a LOT of patience to get down exactly and I am sure there are alternate methods that could be used. Live Vicariously was a very late addition to this build and you could possibly substitute another spell that suits you better. I would be very interested to see if a Monk could do this run. The damage early on would seem to me to be too much for the Monk armor and they don't have a insta cast AE skill like Cyclone either. I am sure something could be figured out though.

The Rockshot Devourers, the crabs, can be very annoying with their distracting shot and if they are lucky enough to take out an essential skill like Cyclone or Healing Hands then you are sunk. However, if you time the skills correctly you shouldn't have too much of an issue. They only fire their Distraction shot when/if you cast a spell and most of the ones I was using are pretty nearly instant cast. As with Trolls, just be careful and pace you skills.

I have tried different variants of this build with the trolls near Droknar's and it works very well. I just find them to be far less fun. You just run into the cave, kill em all in about 30 seconds, grab the chests, and then rinse and repeat. There is hardly any "danger" really unless they get luck with Distracting Chop. Oh and did I mention that their drops are absolutely terrible? I don't like swimming in Raven Staffs and Mountain Troll Tusks.

As for the drops, well it used to be a lot better, but gold items do drop and like Trolls the vast quantity of white items is a good enough cash flow for most anyone. Be careful though, killing that many things at once with a Full Screen Text Explosion like you see in the video is HIGHLY addicting. It takes a very long time to get old.

Again, I am glad you guys like the video.

Nice, how did you have the build set up?

Is that the summit axe i sold you for 25k?

Wow, just wow. I love when the damage/healing numbers would cross the entire screen.

I noticed that only 2 blues dropped.

Actually I saw three and I think two yellows.

Oh, with the blurring from full-screen, and all the sand it is hard to see.

That was great! lol Do it again!

Its a very níce run i think. I have been Griffon farming too but at a much slower pace. One thing that really made it difficult is the scorpions messing up my casting (monk primary). The video is kind of blurred for me so its hard to tell the skills i dont use myself. Besides Zealots fire i cant see where you get your damage from for example. Are you killing with your axe? Please Explain your genius to me in depth .

I believe he has a spell like Retribution (or it might be the better version of it) that deals damage back to the attacker, which is nice. The only thing I'm worried about is anet nerfing this now :/

Seems t'me his damage is coming from Cyclone Axe and the old favourite, Zealot's Fire. Nice.

He also has live vacariously, which in conjuction with cyclone axe, heals a lot.

There is also Healing hands in his bar.

I was watching that and, after every group of enemies that you ran into, I thought to myself "he's gonna stop now". And you kept going. A great watch, well done.

that was the coolest thing I've seen in a long time...

makes me wish I could think of an effective way to use a ranger for this

You mispelled "to".

im confused, how is he getting all that energy with 0 energy regen and none of those skills can give energy @.@ its impossible!

That was truly awesome.

Thank god for your toon there were no spell casters in there.

Bonettis defense, click it, instant max energy.

Kind of interested in the attribute distribution.

balazars aura or spirit? one of those enchantments gives u energy with every hit u take.

very nice

i was just wondering...
if i change my warrior secondary from necromancer to monk will i be able to do the same quests that i allready did for skills?
if not how can i aquire the monk skills?

my character is through with all missions and is only used for farming now so i believe monk secondary will be a little more affiecient.

BTW
i see 1 gold 2 blue and all the whites you may ever need.

I'm impressed.

Very nicely done. I miss farming videos. They have become a lot less popular since anet has been carrying the nerf bat.

how do u make video's like that? ... i've been wanting to make one but i have no idea how...

btw... awesome vid

most people use either Hypercam or Fraps...though there are other ways.

Awesome I had to sit down and try something like this myself

From what I can tell the OP is running:
Bonetti's
cyclone axe
vig spirit
zealot's fire
healing breeze
healing hands {e}
live vicariously
mending

I tried to run a similar build but my smite level was too low for zealots to make any difference and I wanted to try harder mobs plus have some energy back up so I modified it to:
10 heal
10 +1 +1 strength
11 +1 axe
1 +1 tactics

The collectors axe from the desert with +15% damage when enchanted.

Bonetti's
Cyclone Axe
Healing Hands
Dolyak Signet
Vigorous spirit
healing breeze
live vicariously
balthazar's aura

start with enchanting yourself with balth's, regen a bit then ive vicariously have at least 5 energy for healing hands - at this point you have no regen so you will rely on balth's + bonetti's for energy. round up mobs. hit healing hands then let balths genrate another 5 then hit vigorous spirt then, cyclone axe, bonetti's alternately. bonetti's has 6 seconds at lvl 2 which is just enough to let cyclone axe fully recharge, cyclone axe will then in turn recharge bonetti's which you can keep spamming till you need to cast vig spirit again. dolyak signet will add +18 armour at lvl 12 strength and further reduce the dmg. Your not going anywhere so the 75% reduction in movement is a null point. keep healing hands running every time it recharges for further dmg reduction. I found that i hardly used healing breeze but it does do enough in conjunction with live vicariously if you get interrupted or disrupted (like droknars trolls) to keep you alive.

I tried minotaurs + griff groups and all the trolls in the ice cave and both are doable.
Props to the OP for the inspiration

That was a lot of numbers. That's what I call a true tank!

I love Bonetti's so much...

I don't know if you guys notice but the chaos axe is a vampiric one...
I wonder if that's a deal breaker or not....
If you don't have it I mean..lol

Fantastic video Kal. I know I'll be taking my W/M out of mothballs
when I get back home!! hehe

Sent.-

I had to give it a try as well with the following build:
9 heal
10 smite
8 strength
6 + 1 axe
2 tactics

It's working great, except for the last griffon boss. That one resulted in a standoff, as neither of us managed to deal enough damage to the other one.
I assume it's either the missing points in axe or strength, which prevent me from dealing enough damage.

But thanks to the OP, as this is a hell lot of fun against melee mobs

**Updated Original Post**

Try processing the video through virtualdub with divx filters and play witht he settings. I can usually trim down a video to 3/10th it's original file size from the cap with fraps.

I wonder why this is posted, sure it's good and it brings inspiration. But also depression that it will just be nerfed and Anet will probably spawn 10x more enemies. By thus stopping us AND all the people who Just arrived there (not being a farmer/tanker like the thread starter)..

Oh well, congratz on that challenge. Let's see when this get nerfed or over spammed by more creatures.

Yes, funny video.

Needless to say I know ways to farm 10 times more effective, Yes, its also grifons, no, theres no warrior involded BUT it needs 2 chars working together (still 10 times as fast after sharing by 2).
Funny thing about this farming was, I could (and needed to) put off my armor to make it work, because i had too many superiors on it.
Hey what should i say, it was mesmer runes.

Farming is boring once you know how to gain 45k experience in 30 minutes "LEGALLY" in the underworld, with just a good team.

I loved it!

I wish I could change my secondary back to monk =[. I recently got into soloing the grawls, since thats about the only thing i can do and stay alive. I use tactics to keep myself alive with stances and healing signet.

I wish i hadnt changed my secondary now =[.

go change it back

i tried this build so much, i just cant keep up with all that damage and always die

*loads up guild wars*

After reading that, I had to try the challenge. I threw together some skills, ran outside, got slaughtered on the way, changed skills, died a few more times, until I managed to get something that worked (fairly) decently. It's far from perfect, but it's going in the right direction.

Attributes (Mo/Me)

Inspiration 10
Divine Favor 7 + 3
Smiting 9 + 3
Protection 10 + 3 + 1
Healing 0 + 2
+ a rune of Major Vigor

Skills:
1. Divine Boon
2. Channeling
3. Aura of Faith {E}
4. Zealot's Fire
5. Aegis
6. Balthazar's Spirit
7. Essence Bond
8. Protective Bond

Weapon of Choice: Insightful Smiting Staff of Enchanting (10 + 4 energy, 11% longer enchants)

Basically I tried to follow the same run (since you wanted to know if a monk could do what you did). At the start, I buffed with Protective Bond, Essence Bond, and Balthazar's Sprit, then tried to follow the exact same path taken by the OP. Protective cuts damage down to 12, and Balthazar's and Essence negate any energy loss. Once I got to the battleground, I cast Aegis (so I don't die while trying to get my other enchants up), Channeling, Zealot's Fire, Aura of Faith, Followed by spamming Divine Boon until (most) everything died. I think I might have missed 1-2 mobs, but nobody is perfect

I originally didn't have enough healing to make it work, and even taking 5% damage I was quickly overwhelmed. After I realized I needed more healing (but didn't have room for points in healing), I settled on Aura of Faith (other protection spells like Shield of Regeneration, Mark of Protection, and Healing Hands just meant I died after the spell ended).

This could probably be improved by anyone with more money than myself. Remove the Major Vigor, and get a Superior Healing. You then might have low enough HP that Aura of Faith is no longer needed, and you can get some other elite to help you with trying to get all your initial enchants up before you die. Also, a better wand / rod with more energy and or 20/20 to one skill (divine favor?). Also alot more planning would probably help perfect it, as I probably only spent half an hour working on it until I found something that worked (semi-) consistently. Also need a way to get them all at once, because if 3-4 are left over after the majority are dead, you've got problems, as channeling won't give you enough energy back to spam Boon, though you might be able to safely drop Protective Spirit by then.

Finally, a picture of my success: Griffons!

Wait for it.... waiiit for it..... *AREA NERFED* Dammit! Haha.

But seriouly that was awesome. Such a funny and entertaining movie too, that must be so much fun to do. Great job.

Wow <jaw drops>, and i thought my ele taking 9 mobs was cool, i think im making a warrior now, that was sick!, and yes those numbers across the screen rock, i used to love that stuff

18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 29 18 23 18 18 18 18 18 18

Shot Your Eye 20 R/Me
Burning Hemrroid 20 E/Me
Big Bong Hit 20 N/W

I'm truly amazed, this is also my "farming spot" but i have never seen numbers reach the sides of the screen. Btw, I use an e/mo so healing hands doesn't really help when u r taking 60 dmg a hit haha. Any tips on getting past those pesky devourers, they seem to spawn at the worst moments for me?

I didn't see the video yet but where's the area you go into? I'm playing on dial-up, so downloading that video may take me a while.

That area is buggy on many different levels, if you pay close attention only 2 of the griffons per group (usually only 2 griffons not named) will attack at once.

Monk friend of mine does that, just at a slightly slower pace, i do it with a pure warrior build. My hp jump back and forth more than his, due to the different style, but the lack of casters makes it easier. Most of my damage is generated via gladiator's defense though.

The original poster's method makes it look stylish compared to mine though, where there is alot of shifting between offense and defense in mine.