Thunderhead Keep ''Mission Impossible''?

You play a mesmer. Take a good ranger, load the rest with henchmen (Lina and Manny, + your choice) and off you go.
That's what I did with a ranger-friend who had trouble completing the mission.

Strongest point, taking henchmen is, and will be in the future: Played well, they always do, what you want.

If you attack, they attack.
If you retreat, they retreat (more or less)
Fighters are an exception (like Thom and Stefan), but if you e.g. lure with a bow and retreat fast enough, the fighters will stop their attack and retreat too.
They don't argue with you about which group to attack next AND, they don't spam the team-channel with 'I'm attacking the ----ed <whatever>'

Of course it's more fun to explain the mission and hope that ppl. follow your words and learn, but if they turn of their chat-window and close the party-member window, you can't help them.

Maybe aNet should put in some kind of non-blockable-mission-chat. Something like the green crap-text that tells you who picks up what and how much gold you share. Who cares about that anyway?

Noobs. I can solo that mission.

Well.. I haven't tried it yet But it should be possible..

I've had trouble with this mission and I think I know what the two biggest mistakes people make are that cause them to fail:

Dividing up: Sure it works sometimes, but the chance of one team get annihilated is greater when there are fewer people. Staying near the king is the better plan, because it allows you to draw on the resources of the entire team. You can have some people run to one of the catapults every once in a while to damge the incoming attackers, but for the most part just have everyone stand and wait.

Attacking the Mursaat boss when it shows up: about halfway through, one of these guys shows up. This is probably the hardest attack of the whole mission, but it can be defeated with a simple strategy.

The natural instinct for alot of people is to get rid of this boss. Bad idea. That boss is only tough because of all the little minions helping him out. Kill all his helpers. There is another team that is coming to attack close behind and you don't want to be stuck fighting ALL these guys. The non-boss enemies are much easier to kill, and once they are gone the boss is a pushover.

The Mursaat boss battle is where almost every PUG I've been with fails at... it's arrival has almost always spelled doom for my parties. Last night I was able to convince a team to ignore him until the weaker enemies were dead. Needless to say, we passed the mission with ease after we cleared this battle.

K thank you all guys i made the mission yesterday and beated the game with my necro to now thank you all for your help (i beated it with henchies =D)

Unfortunately I didn't see this thread before I started mine devoted to doing this mission with only henchies! But I see there are some good tips here.

To Kampfkeks: Great contribution! It is amazing how many people trying to do this mission seem to insist that rangers and mesmers are worthless, and that a lot of human monks are needed! I play a Mesmer and think it is a really strong, fun character to play.

Someone I know finally completed this mission yesterday also, and her comment to me was "take henchy monks, they are better than humans".

When I formed my (successful) party last night, I advertised something like this:

Forming a party of 4 humans plus 4 henchies. Who wants to join? Team players only!

And indeed, this filtered out a lot of the human players that I did NOT want to have in my party. I got three people to join me, and all were very skeptical about having henchies in the group, especially monk henchies. But after a bit of discussion, all saw my point, and agreed it was worth the try. And after we succeeded, all were very thankful for the idea!

For my Mesmer, I will try the same; or else maybe only henchies.

Great tip above about the boss! I was always wondering if one should clear the boss first or not, but I can see the point of getting rid of the minions first.

Another good tip against Jades: get someone to take a blinding spell. I was air elementalist last night, and tried to give blinding flash to every Jade that came up the stairs.

Killing the boss last is _always_ the best strategy. You should allways take out the 'soft' targets first, and the boss is invariably the hardest target.

I did Thunderhead after about 6-8 tries. I have been stuck on Hell's Precipice now for about 20 tries. Got to the Lich once with a pug, but mostly it is idiots that screw over the party.

The Keep is a rite of passage. If you reach Perdition Rock, you deserved to get there. No runners allowed! My first time took 18 tries. Almost all of those were with different groups, and it spanned out over a weekend. I never once considered quitting the game. And finally beating it was pure bliss. Hardest mission in the game? Yes, and it should stay that way. Can it be done easily? Yes also. I ran through it later with a few guildmates of mine and some non-guildies. Our guild's Mesmer was maxed out, and she absolutely obliterated the Lv 28 Monk boss with Backfire (147 damage). I'm serious, that fugger lasted like 15 seconds.

I'm not going to recommend the best group, but a couple of suggestions are a Mesmer with Backfire and a good hammer warrior. Knockdowns, interrupts, and domination make quick work of the spellcasters, who are really the only problem in the mission.

And keeping the king alive before the fort? You're kidding right? It's amazing that none of the monks I've grouped with on the Keep have brought Mending. I have to waste one of my whole 2 energy pipes, and I put +3 Mending on Jalis at the start of the mission, and he has never died before the fort, even despite his Leeroy syndrome.

Perserverence is the key. I learned my lesson in 1998 playing Final Fantasy Tactics. The mission in which you fight Velius is easily the hardest in the game. It took dozens of tries to beat him. I actually did break from the game for 2 weeks out of frustration. But what's funny is later on (after I beat it through grind) I discovered a way to make that mission so easy that it was laughable (don't attack Wiegraf, just keep casting Yell until your speed is 50), and suddenly I looked at it from a different light.

Thunderhead is as hard as you and your group make it. If you use the exact same group composition and strategy as everybody else who fails, then you'll get the same results as those people. Listen to the people forming groups on chat and notice everyone is looking for the same thing. Buck the trend a little and you might be surprised.

I think the toughest things about doing these hard missions are 1) not knowing what to expect and so not avoiding tactical mistakes and 2) a group of players who do not communicate and work like a team. The first one you get over after trying a mission a number of times. The second one is sometimes tough to get over. Finding or forming a good group is a hard task.

I am glad this mission is hard. But it is entertaining and challenging because of this. I actually enjoy listening to the local chat at Thunderkeep when folk are trying to form groups. Seems like they want warriors and monks only, and everyone seems extremely tense, frustrated and desperate. But that's not what its all about. It doesn't matter what class is in the party, as long as people work together and the party has a good mixture of various types. You can always round the party out with a few henchies if you can't fill the gaps - like if you need another warrior or a few monks.

I've rarely had problems keeping the king alive before the fort. Only times he's died is when someone made a dumb mistake and attracted too many groups at once. So I don't agree that mending is necessary for the king (but of course wouldn't hurt). Essential here is smart playing. I've been out with a group and watched them hack away at a pile of warriors with no success while a Dolyak Master stood untouched and undisturbed in the background, healing away as usual.

(Been also out yesterday with a party including a henchy monk, myself as E/Mo but with only a few healing spells, and a human monk who turned out to be a smiter. Heh heh, we found out she was a smiter first after entering the mission, and she demanded quite loudly that the monks keep her healed! Who she talking to, me? or was she talking to the henchy. And started calling us all noobs when she died. Heh, heh, after that I stopped healing and resurrecting her. Unfortunately Mehnlo was nice enough to help her once in a while).