Newbie valleys

Aurora Glade, Elona Reach, Thirsty river, (the dragons lair), THUNDEERHEAD KEEP, Ring of Fire

None of the above missions is really hard, its just that the default "lets just wait, rush and retreat" idiotsity fails on them.
No, you actually have to READ and understand the skills descriptions!
I call them newbie valleys because you can not do thoose missions if half the team is relatively new to the game, or just ignorant.

So the problem is that relatively 2 ignorant players have the "skill" to keep 4-6 better players with them in this area (not on purpose, but they are forced not to solve them).

So what happens? sometimes (lets say rarely) all the better players met and do the mission and more and more "not so good" players "have a party" and stay in that area gathering more "not so good" players around them.
The area gets filled with newbies, a "newbie valley", that keep all the experienced players in it.
the problem of this mecanism is that the average skill in the "newbie villages" decreases further and further

Yes, you could do them with hencheman, but this game is still just more fun even losing (or winning) with real players than winning soloing or with hencheman.

Aurora Glade:
Enjoy failing at the CTF part without using skills thas change speed or without a team that can act as a team. Thank god this mission is not exxential.

Elona Reach.
The time limit is the least problem of this mission, its simply staying alife while killing the others that fails too often because most dont care for teamwork.

Thirsty river.
Second most "newbie valley" mostly because noone brings interrupting skills to the priests.

The dragons lair.
Easiest mission in the whole game, but too often you get like 5 players without any self heal so you die in thw first world, or your party lacks in mesmer skills and fail in the elementaristds world.

Thunderhead keep.
biggest "newbie valley" of the game, mostly because everyone can reach it, everyone can be brought trough all the above missions by 7 other good players, BUT it needs 8 good players to do this mission!!!
Another problem is the time this mission takes, so once you have kicked the players that wont make this mission forthe next week, the rest of your team desintegrates by exhaustion and you have to do the "pick a good player lottery" one again.

Ring of fire.
They dont move, but somehow thoose seals ALWAYS manage to kill thoose teams that still did not learn to act as a team.
If Jades and murshat are a problem for your team something is damn wrong with it, like to many players still using only skills from pre searing without ANY elite or all of a sudden wear their new stronger but uninfused armor (seen all this too often).

we need builds and instruction that are as simple as possible for new players, to do those missions no matter how low your IQ is
for example the last mission can just be done with winter, ward against meleee, ANY necro-Well and the instruction to never pull more than 3, or retreat.

It doesn't take a genius to work out strategies for such missions.

Agreed.

The mission is rediculously easy with a team that knows what to do. I failed twice with full 8 member parties because idiots just don't care for teamwork. Then, I found a group of decent players and beat it with a 6 member party because the other two dropped/left.

The missions at the end have the most incompetent people I think. I completed a quest with 2 people who were not Infused... wtf. And yeah, those seals get the most kills even though they don't move. I don't understand... if you got killed by it 3 times already, please don't go up to it and get killed again.

I don't want to get started about thunderhead.

I've played the mission 3 times with henchies...and I simply don't have enough mana/regen to keep Jalis healed..and Menhlo refuses to do it.

I've done the mission 7 times with PUGs...the learning curve for this game is completely skewed. People get tossed into this mission and all of a sudden they realize they aren't any good at the game...up until now 4 good players could carry 4 terrible players through a mission.

I've done the mission 2 times with just a buddy(no henchies...just two of us)...and we've made it through to the final arena area...we never expected to beat it, we just wanted to make sure it was everyone else that sucked

I'm serisouly considering joining a guild just to get through this mission...

Haha, no need dude, throw me a PM sometime, I'll whip up a few friends and we can help you try it again.

Game name = Man with pms

I took a group of noobs last night through Thirsty River (I needed to get the bonus only) and got them through it with no problems. As long as you go in and tell them right from the start that if they want to finish this mission, as well as get the bonus, just follow your orders and you'll guarantee them both. Thirsty River is extremely easy as long as you do it in a very straightforward manner, and take your time. Even waiting twice for the 2 minute respawn timer, you can get the bonus easily.

But it all depends on the other players. If there is one moron in the group, you'll fail miserably. I can't recall how many times I've had to redo that mission to ascend a character when none of my guild mates were around and I had to endure PUGs. And I've finished the game with four different characters.

But it seems to have gotten a little bit better, at least to me. It used to seem like 95% of the time, you'd fail that mission due to the noob factor, but now it might be down around 50% or less.

Elona Reach is still a nightmare though, as there is much more of a chance for one person to completely hose the entire party.

I have done thunderhead keep with two different characters. I picked up a random PUG and went (my last thunderhead PUG was 6 necros and 2 rangers ). I haven't failed it once, and I have never seen what all the fuss is about

Last night I did Thunderhead because I needed to get my mesmer to Ring of Fire. Anyway, we went through the mission pretty quickly and without any trouble(between us players) up until we had to defend the keep.

It's like 6 of them turned insta-newb with their "Unbeatable lets stand in the middle and keep patroling the entrances strategy". A pretty good healer and I manned the catapults and it didn't take too much effort to beat the missions. I would purposely beacon a group of incoming enemies on one side while the healer and I would go to the other and hold the other group off. It worked, meanwhile the healer and I were coming under-fire for being newbish about the catapult thing. Ofcourse I'm not saying we did all the hard work, the other 6 did do their job, but they were too stubborn.

What I'm saying is that its not always about skill, it's mostly about common sense and smarts.

I agree with all the coments made. I feel Thunderhead is the most prone to this problem. The ascension missions can be powered thru with a few good players even with a bad team. Really Thunderhead is a quirky problem it should not be as difficult as bad teams seem to make it. I have actually beaten it with 5 just but standing on the battlements at the top of the stairs and waiting for the mobs to come to us. Never even used the ballista.

Sometimes, players simply refuse to follow instructions as though they don't believe that you know what you are doing or that you are just showing off. The result is more often than not the same, failure.

I've heard people saying that they tried Thunderhead/Ring of Fire and the like for over 10 times and they just could not complete it. I usually am the one who helps the newer members of my guild to get through missions and it is tough when you have to use the help of the usual "residents" of those missions.

There was this one time when I took two members of my guild all the way from Thunderhead to Hell's Precipice and we didn't fail any of the missions. Why? Because people actually listened and they used teamwork but this is so rare.

Dude just pm me ingame sometime (ign same as forum name) and me or me and my guild will help you through it (no need to join, we aren't really recruiting right now anyways).

My problem is that in Mouth final is asking for teams to be killed, we have those seals (that eat energy), we have those lv10 spirits that spawn when one is destroyed and then they spawn 2 lv20 musraat on the backs so its "lets screw up the players" mission since casters cannot go into the seals range (since it eats their energy) but if they dont they will be defenceless against the back attacks of the mursaat sealkeepers, the seals need concentrated firepower to go down and its not like we can send a warrior in since they have their own defences and they will hurt the fighter with their lighting attacks.

You have to destroy one by one. Try destroying the nearest one and retreating. Take care of the guardians and the Musraats, recharge and repeat. If the team works together, there is no way to fail.

"I can do them all with henchmen"

Seriously, I have to agree with the ascention missions being filled with bad players. Recently, while trying to get my necro to ascend, I had to repeat Elona Reach well over a dozen times with real players, then decided to hench it. Even though I was revamping my skills and trying new things, everytime i tried it with hench I got further than any pug except one, the one I made and chose carefully and we beat it. I did believe that the healer hench was good enough for the mission unlike 3 of my party members and we did it. I can't say about later on though as it has been a while since I did them with a pug.

Sorry but that is not true, the moment a seal goes down you get lv10 ghosts fighting the warriors and mursaat coming from ahead and behind, the warriors got locked with the ghosts (that are not that hard but the seal fight itself is not) just to see a mursaat comming to fight then as the casters have a mursaat comming from behind.

I know its destroying one by one but if something goes wrong with a seal (like it killing a party member) things go bad real fast, honestly I found the last mission easier that the seals, those damn things are overpoweful.