Please let the King be infused for the Thunderhead Keep Mission

Yes I've been in multiple parties that were successful, so I know it's possible and no need to point out all the threads that help you get through it, I've read them.

My problem is my warrior is cursed and he can't finish this mission. For most of the game this is not a problem, but you can't avoid this mission. I want skills that you can only get on Fire Island.

I think Thunderhead is unique among the missions, though there are other missions that share some of these traits, Thunderhead is the only one I know that has all of them:

1) Very long
2) Can end in seconds without a single person in the party dieing
3) You can't skip the mission (there is no other way to Fire Island)
4) No control over aggro

This mission is no longer any fun at all for me and a lot of the other grumpy people forming parties. I've spent countless hours doing fine, then begging people not to stand in the middle of the stadium, then watching the King die in less than 5 seconds. I now avoid even attempting this mission except on the weekends. Luckily for me, the rest of the game is still fun.

I believe that if King were infused my warrior would have already finished the mission, and would now be running around Fire Island collecting skills. I don't mind a challenge, but the mission is frustrating to enough people that it is very hard to get into any group if you are anything but a healing monk. This change would at least give me a better chance to finish it with henchies, or even a good group that plays well together but somehow lets 2 jades through, to give the team a chance to recover from their error.

Boy would THAT be a good idea...that and just maybe hunting up a nice Einstein-ish kind of BRAIN for the fool. Not only is he not infused (which results in insta-death if one of the Mursaat get to him) but he's as dumb as a rope. Before I ran into the King, I though Rurik was the dumbest. If you've ever seen the movie, Young Frankenstein, think about when EYE-gore goes to get the brain of the Nobel lauriate and comes back with "Abby Normal's" brain.

But EXCELLENT idea. It's rough when a quest that you've been working on for a long while gets trashed when the king dies.

I suppose it could be a useful thing to do. It couldn't hurt. Remember though, if the Mursaat are even getting a chance to attack the King then you are doing something wrong to begin with.

I have to agree with you, this is THE hardest mission IMO and the King being brainless and uninfused doesn't help at all.

I was lucky enough to get through this mission with my Ranger and Warrior, but my Mesmer seems to be doomed to failure here.

Unless you have a good team that understand how this mission really needs to run AND brings the skills to beat it you really can't get through this.

The King needs to be infused... at least that way you could regroup near him and fight off the MOBs the break through.

I just did it last night by myself with the king and did the door glitch. I used all henchies except aidan and I was a monk. I did the bonus and mission, and I killed jades and stuff. The king IS infused, He's taken damage from mursaat and jades and I've healed him from it, and I know he's infused. I was able to beat it with all henchmen, as all missions are, and it was easier. No one left because they were all henchies, no one left, I did it on my first time with henchies and I did the bonus, it's completely possible because I did it and I'm a Me/Mo healer with not a lot of skill in this game. Just fight near the king and run from the east to the west side, they come in slow and 8 people fighting is better than 4 fighting and 4 not fighting.

All I wish is for the king to be as smart as the henchman. When your health is low, old man, turn and run! Don't fight to the death! It would help too if Mhenlo is a little smarter. He seems unwilling to heal the king unless all the other henchmen are healthy.

I actually think the mission is well designed. The problem is that players are too rigid in their thinking. For instance, the fort is the perfect place to use ranger traps. You have two entrances; the enemies must walk through them. Obvious enough, right? I have yet seen a trapper in action. Elementalists are also not that great on this map, because you need mobility. Mesmers, who can quickly cast and run, can do much better. Nonetheless you still see teams using the fixed 2E + 3W + 2Mo formula. Hell, most people aren't smart enough to bring a de-hexing spell, despite knowing that they (and the king) will get spammed with conjure phantom.

Anyway, the king's armor shouldn't be infused. That doesn't fit in with the storyline--he wasn't there at hte Seer. Besides, the point of the mission is to protect him. You're supposed to stop the Mursaats from getting to him.

First off, to you Zubrowka... lets not talk about the storyline. It has so many holes in it, it could be mistaken for swiss cheese.

Second, lets talk about your "formula". First off you left one out. You have 7 people there and not 8. Elementalist are great on this map if they are nukers and the MOBs are stopped at the gates. That's why people use that kind of set-up. In the absence of that, 2 warriors and 2 HEALERS are a must. I say healers because having two MONKS is not a requirement. Also, people who believe Necros, Mesmers or Rangers aren't required are flawed in their thinking. Each of them have skills that can be quite helpful.

What needs to happen is everyone has to AGREE on how the end is going to play out... alot of random running around will not do that job.

Also, fighting near the king or down where Dagnar dies is a very bad idea... fighting near the king allows for way too much aggro, and they DID put those catapults in there for a reason. Fighting in the center leaves you open to letting one MOB by so it can get to the king.

To Kai Nui... you beat it with henchmen BECAUSE you were a monk and you got damn lucky. Try it again and let us know if you beat it a second time... if you can do it twice in a row, then it was skill.

I did do it again with henchmen actually, I had to skill cap this mursaat guy, "Something The Enduring". I just finished it up since that was the end anyway. I did re-trigger bonus aswell, since he was a mursaat and I had no idea if he'd not come if I didn't light the beacons.

It's very possible, and that still doesn't make me sick of it because I lost MANY times with all player teams, and decided to make a different approach, and it worked. Since you're already ascended anyway, just swap over and use 7 or so skill points for monk skills. It's completely worth it to get you through.

Sorry... I made it through Thunderhead on my second try with my R/Mo. My W/N also made it through rather quickly, probably took about 5 tries. Both of those successes can with a majority of guild members. Since most of them have moved on a none of their lower toons are that far yet, I'm stuck with PUGs My Mesmer can't seem to get a good group, and I don't expect the henchmen to be anymore helpful than a PUG.

Both previous times we made it through the Keep we did it at the gates. It works, if it's done properly. Problem is, most PUGs DON'T do it well because you almost always end up with people who don't want to stick to a plan. They run around doing who knows what. Hell I was manning a catapult and the Monk who was supposed to be healing the Warrior at the gate ran up to heal me... the Warrior ended up dying shortly after, and the king got ganged.

exactly why henchmen are good.

Yes, but you forget the flip side... henchmen, much like the king, have no brain. If the king runs into battle and starts to take heavy fire, the hench-monks can't distinguish him from any other player on your team. Also if another enemy is near, they don't run... they fight to the death. This can get you killed just as easily as any PUG could do.

I did this mission with henchmen and finished it...I got so frustrated with groups cause they always muck it up.. My technique was on the 1st initial invasion I greet them by the door. The rest I just stayed in the middle and kept doing "ctrl" so I know which side mobs are going first then I tagged them and let my henchmen do the killing .. I rush to the right and tag the mobs until they are all within middle range.. I kept doing this until the very end where I just met the main boss and his minions by the door and killed him. The king was NEVER even touched. Sprint helps for your warrior on this and focus-fire is the key. Also the 3rd boss.. Ignore him...tag him a few times and then kill his minions first then concentrate on him. This is an annoying mission but its doable.

You mentioned here that you were a Warrior... how about trying this as another class?

Seriously guys... I've heard Monk, which can heal the king when he gets low, and I've heard Warrior which is fighting what the king fights (possibly has Monk a secondary as well.)

Try this with henchmen WITHOUT having monk skills on YOU... use monk henchmen only. You pull THAT off and come back here to post.

The problem is the king switches who he follows... At the beginning I always grab him since I'm either a ranger or a monk in the party. both of which are generally support characters and stay back. however around the time we get through the town, and start for the fort the stupid kind normally switches to a front line warrior and goes and starts rushing to the front line. making it harder to protect the fool... Typical Dwarf. lol In any case the point is who ever has him following him has to hold back and give the party a chance to clear the area first. And if you go outside first to get the 3 chests and kill the out side mobs first... then you have to keep him clear of the worst of them...

If he would stay with the person that initially clicked on him to begin with this would be easy, but like I said most of the time he switches on his own to a warrior, which always runs head long into danger and thus getting the king killed. why? because warriors are unwilling to hold back. Period. That's the only reason it normally fails. if you get a warrior that know what must be done and accepts that. Then only then will you be safe to clear the the fort.

One last piece of advice approach the fort wall from the opposite direction. then the mobs will not converge on you all at once. you can clear the inside 3 to 4 at a time and not have to worry. if you approach from the other side it triggers something that all 6 group attack at once.

Once you get through that... the waves begin. split up, with a monk or a ranger protecting the king...

part of team at each catapult. and part in middle. the ranger or monk can attack over the wall stopping the approaching troops for the catapults... And protect the king from elementists.

good luck.

Hope I don't anger you. But I did the mission+bonus using henchies with both my necro and monk. My mesmer may have to do the bonus with henchies too.

The king is only partially infused or not infused if I'm not mistaken. He's definitely less infused than henchies.

The bonus is really hard to do with henchies cause when I did it we had to light the becaons, and we had to spilt up to do it in time...

but your right. the mission is totally doable with the infused henchmen.

The King follows whoever talks to him at the beginning. when you get to the town he switches to whoever goes through the gate first. later at the top of the hill after opening the gate for you he will switch once again to whoever goes through that door first.
very annoying but you can keep track of him once you know it.

the first time i did this mission i did it first time in a PUG. i was a necro and stood on the west catapults (whichever is the busiest side) and ran continuously betwwen then firing them, occasionally casting minions and wells. at no point dod the king get attacked cos i took the aggro from the guys entering the gate and the ranged ones couldn't him me and the Armours... we'll they gave me some sticky moments but we won without the king even noticing we were under attack.

My Warrior however........1 month.....1!! MONTH!!!
(we always got Demetrios the enduring and 2 mursaat monks as the boss group....not all that beatable)

This mission is a nightmare, and I almost quit this game due to it.

My issue is the fact that it takes ages to get to the end, and the end is the hardest part, where any mistake means failure.

Really its annoying how it bottles down to the group your with and if they know what their doing.

Trapping Rangers do wonders on this mission, alone I managed in the end to hold the West door all by myself till bosses turned up.

Also another tip is if a monk boss turns out, take out other mobs first, never go for the healer first, they heal too quickly.

There is no pleasing you is there? It's possible with every class, and I'll say why.

Warrior - proved
Monk - proved
Elementalist - Same reason as warrior, you just sit and FIGHT, it's not hard
Mesmer - Interrupt spells and FIGHT, it's not that hard
Necromancer - They can heal and there's so much dead stuff you're not going to lose lol
Ranger - Pets to tank which you can heal, spirits, tanks, long range weaponry, etc...

The point is, the warrior above said the King didn't get touched, and when I was a Me/Mo with monk skills I didn't have to heal the king often because I let a few slip through a few times. It's very possible with other classes to do the same thing. If you don't think it is, bring a loyal Monk friend along or something with all henchies and then do it. It's really not hard with henchmen. People muck it up like he said.

I have to agree with this one. The king is standing on the TOP of the fort, and if you're doing things right no mursaat or jade will get THAT far into the fort. I don't know if he's infused, but he doesn't need to be, because if you do it right, no mursaat will get to him.

I know you didn't ask for tips on the mission, but since I found this mission quite easy, I guess we did something that worked. Try to do it with a team that communicates and plans ahead (thus guildie-friend team recommended).

1) Have 2 people man each of the ballistas on the fort, and clean out as many incoming enemies as they can with ballistas. The rest will only have to fight a few leftovers, who will come in with partial health, thus easy to kill. This part is very important and from your post about mobs incoming from both gates it seems your team was not doing it.

2) Grab a mesmer or several with your party - they are REALLY useful here

I will try it again w/ just henchies. Like I said in my initial post, I know alot of the strategies, the problem is that I have no control over either the henchies or another human to use the catapults. I also already said that I believe my ranger (or my monk for that matter) could use all henchies as I find they are much easier to control from the back.

My biggest problem is we have a discussion before the mission starts. Someone says that team will follow a certain strategy, one or two people agree and we go on. If the group is even just average we can usually clear the stadium, but then the trouble begins. It's usually me and one other person doing catpults and everyone else is standing in the middle of the stadium getting ready to run to either side. The first couple of waves they are ok, but then they miss a jade or two, the jades bypass everyone in the party and head straight for the king. Afterwards I always ask why the people in the middle didn't follow the plan and they usually say they don't think the catapults work well, and/or one time they didn't guard the King and they won it so they didn't like that strategy. Why they choose to tell us that *AFTER* the mission is already a failure is beyond me.

Also while I wouldn't mind splitting up the team to watch each door instead of guarding the stairs, I've found that if you have 2 henchmen healers (and when I'm on 90% of the groups are 2 henchmen healers) they tend to spend alot more time running between the groups and less time healing. (Which is why when there are 2 hench healers I like to guard the stairs) So when it's all henchies I last longer staying with the King and trying to keep things at the bottom of the stairs, but if I engage one side and jades come up the other side it's all over. If the King took "normal" damage like everyone else in the party this would be recoverable, as it is it is not.

Kai Nui, if you truly believe the King is infused then please try this, put away your staff or rod and pull out a sword, do the glitch and engage a set of 3 jades. The jades will run around everyone in your group, spectral agony the King and he is dead in 5 seconds. As a monk you might be able to heal him fast enough, but the henchies don't.

I hate when people complain on hardness of game, deal with it. Not everything should be handed to you on a silver platter. All the missions are so easy already. Thunderhead was the only mission i had a hard time passing, and i enjoyed it.

You know I find the king funny, when I first did the mission for the first time and saw the king on allies list, i thought "nice I get a high lvl ally to help me out, should be the best players out of all the henchies" but boy did I not know he was stupid... ended up failing the mission the first time because of him. A slightly better AI that makes him more survival-aware and keeps him close to the party or a feature that lets you tell him to "stay" (but still atk if enemies come) would be nice instead of babysitting him.

Not when YOU haven't done it with each class! As I said, you actually trying beating it with each class, then come back. You can't say you know it's "possible" if you've never actualy tried it.

Warrior - proved And why is it proved? Because you are tanking for the king and the henchmen will follow rather closely. Being that close to the king makes it easier to find his target and take it down.

Monk - proved Duh, you can heal the king yourself.

Elementalist - Same reason as warrior, you just sit and FIGHT, it's not hard
Mesmer - Interrupt spells and FIGHT, it's not that hard
Necromancer - They can heal and there's so much dead stuff you're not going to lose lol
Ranger - Pets to tank which you can heal, spirits, tanks, long range weaponry, etc...

Only if you get up in the enemy's face which is not smart for an El, Mesmer or Necro. Rangers have the best armor of these, but they still make mediocre tanks at best. The alternative is hope Devona and Thom can do it sufficiently... even infused this isn't always likely. You need to defeat each group as it's coming in as quickly as possibly and once you get a boss that becomes more difficult. Pets are mostly useless on this mission. Spirits won't help you in the middle of a battle because while you are taking time to cast them things could go south real quick, and don't last long against these guys anyway. Necros have wells for healing, but they require bodies and those bodies would need to be close to the king to be useful on him... and that's not the idea is it? Mesmer and interrupts? Tell me how to interrupt a Jade Bow or Jade Armor... they don't use spells!

The point is you can bring Monk healing to this fight ON YOU and you could win. You try it with another build and it may not go as smoothly as you think. The henchmen are not smart enough to know the king shouldn't die, and unless you are there to back them up with a little healing yourself, this mission could tank quickly.

Again... I never said it COULDN'T be done, but it is EXTREMELY difficult. It require skill and ALOT of luck. You are honestly better off with a group of humans where they all KNOW the king can't die and will do whatever they can to prevent that.

I hate it when people don't even try to understand the point of a suggestion in a suggestion forum, but instead just post a troll.

I didn't ask for a silver platter, I don't mind hard and I've finished it a number of times. Like I said in my initial post, I dont' mind long missions, I don't mind missions that end with a single mistake, I don't mind missions you can't skip and I don't mind missions that you can't control aggro. My problem is Thunderhead is all 4 at the same time. I enjoy playing guild wars, when I think about trying Thunderhead again I dred playing it. If you like the mission I'm happy for you I don't see how infusing the King will make it less fun for you.

I've never had trouble with the king at the top of the fort. I've fought with a Monk and Elementalist, and camped the king both times, without the mursaat attacking him.

It would be nice for the king to be infused. One of my groups went outside, using the gate glitch, and fought the Jades. The king had decided to stick on a warrior and all of a sudden we saw him with massive health spikes and both monks healing like crazy. Yeah, we almost lost the mission by trying to get the advantage...

No. Make Thunderhead Keep even harder, and also the Ring of Fire missions. And then also gives us some nice features for playing the full storyline. At least then there's a reason for completing Thunderhead Keep, since there's not..

For me the Ring of Fire missions are different since you don't have the King factor and you can control the aggro. In those missions even when things go wrong, if someone can escape and rez the party you can continue, though it is harder with the DP (as it should be).

I would also be fine making thunderhead harder as long as the King is infused. Having 3 monks in party keeping him alive isn't an option in this instance when I'm a warrior w/ henchies...

I don't think the mission needs any changes. This game is easiest enough as is, IMO. The Mursaat never reach the king when I do the mission, and I always do it with henchman.

Well, people usually start with the fixed formula, then add either a ranger, necro, or mesmer.

I'm not saying elementalists are useless. But for AoE to be effective, you need your warriors to pin the enemies down, meaning they can't retreat even when they health is low. That in turn means you must have healers on the team. Hence the fixed formula. It works well enough when enemies are just standing around waiting. In Thunderhead Keep, when the situation is more fluid, it doesn't work as well.

I got through the mission on the first try on a ranger heavy team with two protection monks without great difficulty, so I hardly think you must have two healers and a bunch of warriors. Every team could be effective if people just adjust their strategy and tactics. If your monks are using a lot of buffs, then symbiosis would work wonder, for example. If your team has no monks, then it's a good idea to bring well of blood and other healing spells.

My Me/N is still having trouble getting through the mission with henchmen. The king always end up dying before we take the fort. He's a goner whenever he's hexed twice, since I can only lift one. As soon as I find shatter hex I will give it another try.

This is the EXACT problem I am having. He charges in, aggros EVERYTHING, and there isn't much I can do to keep the hexes off him, especially when the hench monks aren't even bothering to heal him.

Were I a monk I could probably out heal the damage the hexes do, but as a Mesmer I can't destroy enough hexes to keep him alive.

My plan is to take just one monk so that I can kill more quickly. Durham likes to use slow down spells, which should keep the King from being ganged up so often. I would choose Lina over Mhenlo. The protection monk's logic seems to be to cast enchantment on whoever being attacked. The healer logic, as far as I can deduce, is to heal the team member with the lowest health, and if every member is healthy, heal any ally or pet. And she carries shield of regeneration, which provides pretty decent healing should it become necessary.

I tried it twice... once with everyone except Aidan, the second time with everyong but Dunham. Both times I died right in the same spot. Trying to get those last two groups near the boss. He runs up close and gets nailed with hexes that I can't clear fast enough. If I get too close then I risk aggroing the other group or the boss which I naturally don't want. With the henchmen, there seems to be no way to isolate just one group here, you get two or all three of them at the same time.