Hardly anyone mans the cats in Thunderhead Keep mission

I've made a few attempts today trying beat Thunderhead Keep. Seems, no one thinks maning the cats is important till a large mob comes up and wipes us all out. I've done this mission in one shot with my other character so I know what it takes.

I finally beat mission and bonus with all henchies. I didn't use catapults at all, they're completely useless. You just got lucky.

Agree on your strategy before hand. If your group doesn't want to go the catapult route, find a new group.

The catapults in thunderhead keep are less important than they seem. All of my four characters finished the mission in groups that did not use the catapults, except to wipe out the initial crowds that are already standing in the line of fire at the very beginning.

Attempting to hold the catapults also implies holding the two entrances to the fort, meaning you will most likely split your group in two. If you are willing to forfeit them, you can get away with just defending the king where he's at, as one group.

Holding the catapults will work occationally, but having played thunderhead keep at least 100+ times I can certainly say that doing so seems to require more coordination than the average PUG possesses. More often than not people get confused about the concept of defending two entrances at once and begin running around from left to right. This is especially bad for the monks in the party, since most often half the group will be out of healing range. With PUGs I've had a much greater rate of success simply defending the king at his location.


ManaCraft

You're on the ball with this one. The first time we did the mission we maned the cats some of the time, but as you did, we stayed with the king at the very top which worked out great. The groups i've been with since then split the group up in two, guarding the east and west side. Seems hard now a days to find good groups, henches are becoming a better resource.

Amen to that, long live HENCHIES my favorite team-mates

Thunder, Thunder, Thenderhead Cats! Hoooooooo!

Leave the kittuns alone, they don't want you "manning" them! D:<

I've done the mission with catapults and without, catapults can be really usefull at ensuring you are more fit for the next battle if some stray mursatt gets in it can be just an annoyance. Healers can heal the catapult users if they get close enough. Not using catapults can be good too if you have a good competent team. I'd much rather 2 trapper-rangers in the mission than 2 guys manning the pults. It becomes a whole lot easier with traps near the gates

When I did that mission we used to balistas to take out the enemies outside before we killed Dagnar, but after that we just defended from the king's position.

i finished the mission some times as well and what i did most of the time was manning the catapults if possible but as soon as someone sneaked past then we all went back to the king and did protect him.

Thinking back (it's been a while since I did this one), the team that finally beat this with me was simply well-coordinated. We didn't man the catapults, but we did have some skilled people working well together. We kept going back to the center position, where you can see both gates, and swarmed on enemies as they became visible. Shadow damage was helpful here too, as we had a couple of Curses Necros coordinating attacks (I believe it was Mark of Pain on each enemy, then attacking both enemies next to each other to get double Shadow damage effect).

Memory tells me that we had one protection monk and one healing monk, both very skilled, staying out of trouble.

Quoted for truth.

Unlike other posters here, I've done Thunderhead Keep on all my characters USING the catapults effectively. Even with PUGs we were able to run back and forth between each gate quick enough...with some of the long range characters like rangers or eles being the catapult runners.

In fact, using the catapults big things boring because taking down the jades and mursaats became so much easier. We had to spend a lot of time just waiting.

Between NOT lighting the torch, in order to keep the mission easier, and using the catapults, you end up fighting very few enemies.
At some points, you'll have to wait a couple of minutes just to fight anyone at all. It gets pretty boring.

On the other hand, boring > redoing the mission again and again with poor pickup groups. Especially when you've already done it 4 times before on other characters.

I myself did it with the following setup and DID man the catapults/balistas
2 warriors, 2 monks, 1 ranger (trapper), 3 eles (of wich one half necromancer with blood well)

I did split up my group in 2, 1 Warriors, 1 monk and making the ele and ranger change place when needed. letting the Ranger set Spike traps slows down the enemy so they don't deal as much damage. also the ele doesn't have to be at one position all the time since he can also just stay in the middle.
putting 2 eles at each catapult works wonderful, since they can get any foes outside of the range of the catas, but in the range of the spells. packing them up with Meteor Strike also works miracles.

The catas are there to weaken the bosses and mobs before they come in. This saves time and gives your men a breathing moment between mobs.

I did the mission with henchies a few times, I just told them to go attack while I'd shoot some catapults at groups just standing out there. Helped a lot, in fact we only had to fight a couple mobs including the boss. It's not that hard to do with henchies not using the catapults thought, that's how I beat it my first time.

Having a good group that can hold the gates is best. Most of the time when staying with the king the group is foolish and allows the king to be ganked.

EDIT: Catapults are not useless. As an Ele, I held an entire gate by myself just with the catapult.

The pseudo-door trick also helps with the mission.

I just grabbed henchies, and stood with the king after lighting the torches. It was easy, no need to be shooting large missles at mursaat when the will eventually all start coming to you and some jst get randomly stuck outside. :P

Its an easy mission if you keep the king alive and keep your attacks focused.

It's not even a hard mission. If you're dying at the defend part you're not talking to your team, using the mini map and communicating the defense.

Maybe that's a foreign language to people now since the game is so easy in PVE, but die, learn, communicate the next time = success.