charity: Monks for Thunderhead.

Nope one here.

So most casters do make mistakes. Big deal.
But other peoples mistakes don't give warriors e.g. the right to make a mistake based on the one others make.

If casters run out of energy, they give warnings. And if warriors or whoever ignore those warnings saying: not my fault that you run out of energy, then that is another mistake.

Oh, but I do understand that.
We just seem to have different ideas about the term "rushing".
"Ruhsing" in my book is "attacking, while the whole team is not yet ready for another attack"
The "Rushing" you have in mind (if I get your words correctly) means: "tanks block the mobs from casters, while casters attack" (basically)

If your rushing is the true meaning of rushing, we don't disagree at all, because those are the basic rules of battle.
If my rushing is, what rushing is about, it's a bad thing.

To get back again on the rushing. "gathering aggro" is not, what I would call rushing.

Now we're talking about rushing.
And Leeroy has lot's of relatives out in GW.

Like the one I met a few days in the wilds.
For some reason the monk took a little longer to join the game. His health bar in the party member window was still gray and that warrior was already attacking one of those storm thingys.
That's rushing. That's bad. That's what you see a lot in GW.

I can't promise on the pet thing, but if I am new to a mission (like the UW, where I've never been, or the Fow where I've been only 2-3 times yet) I am the last person to ignore target calls or infos given on the minimap.

No. So far I've been exploring air and water. That's why I asked.


Thanks for the explaining. Since my ele has been not so good with water magic, and I always wanted to change that, now I know what to explore further.

Hm, maybe I have blind on me, but I don't recall having seen that, and I have 4 chars using pets and only 2 that don't.

Well, my pets (including warrior hench) usually start running shortly after the arrow has been shot.
If you use the S-key right after you sent your arrow flying, the pet will return right away, including Thom.

I think what most players don't do too often is, to make use of another tactic: "retreat".

So the mobs are after the squishys. If the tanks adjust to the situation, and fall back, they're back in business.

I don't think I did. At least, I never had the intention to do.
All I wanted to do was to point out, that real players make many vital mistakes that can ruin a mission. And that henchmen make less mistakes.
Of course hench make mistakes too, but they can be countered easier (I think) than those of real players.

I might be twisting your words here again, but if you stick to what you just said, and if your invitation to the FoW and/or UW is still on. Does that mean, I could bring my pet anyway?
I always had the feeling, that you were trying to tell me (and maybe others) what's right or wrong.

It is, isn't it? But it always works. Plain and simple.

Neither did I. That's why I put a question mark behind that. I never stated that you were stating that.

So was my list of classes, doing wrong things.
Warriors make more mistakes then just rushing (my meaning of rushing)
and there are blood necros that don't bring the well.

My original intent was to point out (what I think is) the major difference between real ppl. and hench.

I do think, that we agree on most things that were said. We just use different words, that make us think that we disagree.

Certainly if a Monk (or elementalist) plays stupidly and exhausts all energy when it is not truely necessary, that is bad. But I think what also all too often happens is that a Monk, and especially an Elementalist since they have a lot more energy to regain, has used up a significant portion of energy and hasn't the time to regain it before the impatient rushers are off to the next battle. I think this is the situation that Ashley is referring to, not the "Orion syndrome" of shooting off fire storm to celebrate the ending of a battle ;-)

I don't agree that "if the casters are continually running out of energy they are doing something wrong" is completely true all the time. It depends on how the others are playing - there is a limit to how much one can heal, and how much AOE one can shoot off. If the rushers take on too big a chunk to chew on, everyone suffers.

I didn't know that about the S key. Gotta try that. I do know about retreating, heh heh, and am quite good at it.

Regarding pets, I don't think any player in this game has the right to ask or demand a ranger to bring or not bring a pet. That should be the decision of the ranger. This is an integral part of the ranger's choice of skills and tactics, and whether or not the pet is ruining Kampfleks aggro tactics or not (I don't believe so), then all I can say is, live with it. Take it as a challenge that someone on the team has a tactic that you don't really like. That, or just leave the group you are in, and we all know how unpopular doing that will make us!

I haven't myself played a warrior character yet, but what I do notice is that I enjoy best when the only warriors in the group are henchy warriors. They are far easier to control, and let me and my group play the game at a far more enjoyable pace ;-)

I guess the problem is, only noobs don't take Henchmen, because noobs and Henchmen won't succeed. And noobs + noobs don't stand a chance either. Though, helping doesn't change the fact they're noobish, and I don't like noobs getting as far as great players, just because they get lots of help.

There is simply no reason in the world to be stuck at this mission for any long amount of time. You certainly should try to do it with real people, that is what the game is all about. But if you can't get a good group together, one which does not leave and which works together well and with decent tactics, or if you simply cannot find the monks you need, then take henchies!

I did this. Tried with human groups for two nights. When that didn't work, I took my one character through with 4 humans/4 henchies and my other character with all henchies. And no one should respond that you cannot do this mission with henchies, because there is proof! There is an entire thread on this forum devoted to doing THK with only henchies.

So there is no reason to be stuck here for any length of time, and certainly no lack of monks! The henchy monks are always available and willing.

Well... i helped 5x7 people through the mission so far and i'm going to stop it for now. The reason why? Constant moaning and bitching and blaming others... even if the mission is going fine. By the end of the mission there were constantly fights between the members of the party for some stupid reason and no one could calm them down. It seems that some folks are really really frustrated with this mission and a simple mistake will turn them into bloodthirsty flamethrowers eager to unload some of their frustrations unto others.

About the Pet comment above... well, it is not my group. It is normally someone elses group. Another leader, his rules. Besides... you CAN bring a pet but it won't get any love from the monks.

Completed Thunderhead on my fourth try last night. Myself (W/MO) and guildie (Mo/ME) tried first with Henchies. Got almost to the end, but we weren't sticking by the king, we were running back and forth. Hehe. Then went twice with the same group.

Five of them were warrior/monk builds with one warrior claiming to be a healer. What a disaster, aggroed everying in sight. My buddy Monk threatened. To much gung ho, even the warrior who claimed to be a healer was running into the thick of it. Terrible.

Last party taught me alot about this game. Led by a couple of Rangers. We also had an elementalist, Necro, and another warrior on board. We brought Mehnlo as the last Monk. Smoothest operation I've ever seen. Rangers set up a ton of traps on the entrances to the fort and had the spirits fired up. Elementalist manned the ballista and rained fire down from the parapet. Played this game for months and that was the first PUG team effort I've seen that truly impresses me. Moral, Monks and warriors are great but vastly overated and typically trigger happy. Give me a solid, mature patient group of rangers anyday. In fact, I'm going to give Ranger a try as second. To many W/Mo out there anyway. (Trapping is as underated a skill as I can think of.)

So if you want to move a Noob out of Thunderhead send a Ranger!

I love just stopping and letting those people aggro 20 mobs at once and die.

Unfortunately, nobody listens to the monk. I say to pull a mob back so we dont get aggro from another mob...and they just charge in and attack, when the die...sucks for them, I dont rez them I don't do this to be a dick...but if they refuse to listen to me, then why should I enable

It's funny because their lives are in our hands...but they still dont listen.

now see thanks to your uber long posts i cant find the one by ollj, thus denying me a good laugh.

>.<

oh thats cause hes the op

*hums while slowly backing out*

Had this happen last night in the Wilds mission playing my Monk with a party of 5 Warriors. After they all got killed on the way to the bonus (ignoring my warnings about the wandering groups and the advantage of luring) I had my chance. Being the only one left alive (I was in the back and I ran away when everyone got clobbered) and with a resurrection spell, I quickly typed in the chat message box:

"Now that I have all your attention, let me explain something about needing to lure here".

Heh Heh. That was absoluetely sweet. But they were a nice group of warriors, and they learned from this!

I'm a monk. My friend needed help. Went in, rejected all invites. Made my own group. Invited a mesmer and necro, and my friend. Then, I brought people who listened to me. A nuker x2, what's his face monk, a warrior. Won without anyone dying, including the damn henchman. On the first try.

ps. the mesmer was trying to make me follow her out the doors for an "exploit". She just couldnt believe that it was patched...

I was bored the other day, and thought what the hell, I know where I will be at least frustrated...
So I grabbed my trusty healer, and went to thunderhead. Drilled some basic tactics into a bizarre group combination and grabbed lina. Drew the warrior mursart boss.. and won...

Fun and rewarding... hoepfully karma will catch up

Went through the mission with my last two characters on my first try - in PUGs. Finished it last night on my mesmer in a group with a couple of necros, and the two healer henchies. Very smooth operation - no deaths, just a little shouting on my part at the whammo-rusher. I'm thinking we won because of the healer henchies. Most monks probably would've forgotten about the king.

Shatter hex, by the way, is an excellent skill for this. Domination mesmers will have fun blowing up groups of casters with it. :P

I had my experiences with hench and I dont trust them (especially in THK), with my N/R I beat the mission with a PUG on the first try, then with my E/Mo and W/Mo I die at the mursaat boss (near the end). This is usually because the leader is asking for us to split up, 3 ppl at one gate, 4 at the other and 1 at the king. It seems to me that when you are a support char (mesmer,ranger,necro) the mission is a piece of pie, but the most wanted chars (monk, elementalist, warrior) have problems with mission (usually the ele and warrior have these problems, the monk is protected by the support chars [when there are some in the group] so not many problems there).

PLEASE! will monks do THK with us people that cant get past it? PLEASE!
I AM BEGGING YOU! PLEASE!

I am willing to monk for this mission occasionaly with only one request...no bonus. It's not worth it to me; yeah it's 1k exp, but I get so frustrated with it and since it is just a game and not a life/death situation, I do what is necessary to ensure the successful completion of the mission. I'm sure there are some monks out there thinking they could do the bonus with a PUG or henchies or whatever, and thats fine; just not the way I operate.

So, again. If there are people out there needing a monk for Thunderhead, give me a whisper (Monki Mynthe).

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Don't mean to break people's hearts but I broke all the rules at Thunderhead Keep.

I beat it as a W/Mo with all henchmen, using a Smiting Wand and a Healing Ankh as my equipment.



So for those people who don't know how to play that immediately whine, "We need three monks" the minute anybody dies, well, to that.

Thanks folks for getting me in such a sick mood. I'm going to go to one of the bigger districts and listen in on the chat now...

Great thread folks, but even outside of "normal" character roles, this mission is beatable, and best of luck to the charity.

I was at thunderhead keep for a week and a half before i found an intelligent group with 2 monks. One of the monks dropped out in a few seconds but we finished the mission with only two deaths. Its not hard as long as people know what they're doin. The hardest part was explaining the arggo circle to the other tank. So I must say sorry for pssing one noob through to the ring of fire, but we did it with 7 people total, including one monk and a tank who arrgo'd must everything.

P.S. If you can't get a group get a guildie monk and get him in your party and just say Monk and _________ LFG.

Bingo on the part about people knowing what they're doing, but I didn't even need to watch the aggro circle too much.

This is great though. I'm watching all the chat seeing all these people who've failed multiple times throw hissy fits. It's sickeningly fun. Thanks for knowing how to bring out the worst in someone.

I keep advertising, "Experienced W/Mo for Mission AND Bonus. Blow Bonus and I'm out." Nobody seems to think they're capable of doing the bonus.

I'm too tired to try it tonight but one of these nights I'll do it with henchies and brag about that too.

Solo'd the mission with my ranger and the rest henchies. It's not that hard.

But as the original poster said, one moron can ruin it for the rest of the group. I've even been in group that used the torch exploit, and some people still couldn't grasp the concept.

i tried this mission with some random ppl that i had done the other two shiverpeak missions with as the only monk in the team and we past them all fine(they followed what i was saying ), but when we got to thunderhead acouple ppl left and the group turned in to the most noobish team ever..

i just rebirthed one person so no nrg, then the group decides to run of to fight two different groups in different directions both out of range of each other, thats pretty hard for one monk to heal. then they leave the king next to the archer ppl and run of, had to go back and heal him while team spam there health.

then right at the end the decide to attack at oppsite gates ad spam heal, only realy thing i could do was heal party... i hate teams that don't pay attention

the main thing is noob waroirs don't understand the concept of nrg regain,

Agreed, but then so was Ascension until the update where they made Doppleganger less powerful. So Thunderhead will continue to fill up.

Who says the monks aren't noobs themselves?

I've seen a huge amount of monks which couldn't be resurrected by using rebirth. I'm still noob myself but are 55hp invincimonks a good idea on a mission that has enchantment strippers?

I play THK when I'm bored, I see a lot of things... THK= Lemmings, GW-style ^^

Even when monks have energy, that's hard for them to cover, that's why I always get a kick out of the noobs that laugh at me when I say fight on the staircases not at the doors.

U actually laugh. Ur nice. Usually, at this point of time i start whispering others : That n00b going to cost us the game

Why is the topic starter getting flamed for this? I think it's hillarious. Everything he says is absolutely true. Play a mission with some random group and see.

I love you idea and I think I'll support it using my Monk that's already beaten the game and has nothing left to do.

I finished this mission on my first try back in the day, and I will humbly offer the services of my monk Eldarin Ithuliel, with the simple wish that you listen to what I say.

^_^

No. THEY laugh at me. It usually goes something like this.

It: LFG TO BEAT THIS $$$$ING MISSION. NO IDIOTS PLEASE!
Me: In short. Looking for Henchies.
It: What?
Me: I beat this mission with henchies, as a warrior, using monk equipment.
It: That's just stupid.
Me: Yeah but it worked.
It: What did u do?
Me: I fought on the staircases instead of at the doors.
It: U dumb$$$. Ur supposed 2 guard the king.
Me: I did guard the king, and won the mission.
It: U don't fight on stairs, you fight at doors. Ur stupid.
Me: But it worked.


It usually goes something like that. It's comical how someone who's consistently lost insists on telling someone who WON that they have no clue what they're talking about.

We had in our group of 7:
W/mo (noob who doesn't know what and arggo circle is)
W/N (me using Mark of pain)
R/N (trapper)
R/Mo (trapper/a little healing and I do mean a little)
Mo/E (healer best monk I've ever seen)
E/Me (nuker)
E/R (nuker)
Thats all we needed the trapps really helped but we did have that 105hp monk with a hammar that we couldn't rez. He dropped out after 5 minutes or so. It IS a hard mission, but IF you know what you're doing it's not too challenging.

Well I got a healer or protector available.

EDIT: People should try having 2 healers and a protector instead of just 2 healers. Other than that, people must start playing the monk profession.

Why not sub in an E/Mo for the protection spells? It's not like they need a ton of Divine Favor for those spells, except Spell Breaker or something like that.

EDIT: Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. What nuker wants to play as a protection monk for one mission. Sorry.

I forget what my group was, but I somewhat remember there being three warrs i think, me and my guildie monking, must have been an ele, I think a nec, and possibly another ele or rang? mes? Idk, but anyways..

Once we got inside the fort, we held it easy as hell with me and my guildie monk splitting up sides, manning the ballistas the entire time. If I had action coming on my side, I'd call for the warrs to switch and engage at the door, and while they were on my side, I'd heal them, and the other monk would keep firing the ballistas. Once my side was cleared, they would go into the middle, dance, and wait until another legion came from some side. Most of the time, the ballistas took down a decent number of enemies.

Aaaand that was pretty much it.. I never had to heal the King once inside the fort.

I would donate a gold piece a day to this cause to provide n00bs with basic schooling and equipment.

i said that but no one listens to the monk, or they do listen intill a boss appears then u get the warroirs running at it to die with eles casting leaving one monk with the king and two jade bows coming up the over side... joy...then you get the ***wot happened?!?!?!?!*** and why didn't you heal :P

I tried this method this past weekend with my warrior, turned /monk so as to be sure to keep the king healed. I used Sprint to light the 2 beacons and assume the bonus was triggered as Jades were fighting White Mantles. Should there have been a banner for "Bonus Started" or somesuch so I knew for sure?

I stayed on the platform with the king and henchies and after not too long a large number of jades and mursaat attacked up the stairs and were too much for me and the henchies - but the king was still standing.

So does this method still work or has Anet made changes to it? I've seen other subtle changes here and there in the game, like monster mobs moved, decreased or increased in some of the older missions, and they haven't been documented. Anyone tried this recently?

Otherwise I'll try again without triggering the bonus.

I havent tryed mission yet.

For a few reasons:
1) I dont want to be yelled at because I dont know every detail about the map and what spawns there (I havent done it for god's sake).

2) I had to get decent trapper stuff because it is apparent to me that for a ranger to get into the mission you have to be a trapper.

3) Once I do number 2...I think about the fact that I have limited trapping experience...So would be yelled at again like number 1 because I dont know exactly the right second to set the trap or wheres the best stair to set it on.

HINT: Every person there that doesn't know exactly where to go and when isn't a 'noob'. We all haven't beat the game multiple times (this is my first character).

Actually I did this mission with a pug team with my ranger and brought no traps. I just dealt high damage and tossed around the poison. If a group has half a brain they should know this mission monks should focus on healing because sometimes it goes arrai. Yet I think most the time it does get blamed on the monks..which isnt right cause without you guys...missions after the desert would be extremely frusterating.

Well as my Monk character I have done ThunderHead more then a few times. Seems evertime I turn around someone in my guild needs help getting through ThunderHead.

I have paid my dues there....

Most people assume that spawns are pre-determined and are not random, that isn't the case. You could THK 10 times in a row and not see the same spawn pattern(for bosses especially) at the end battle, so what works one time may not work another time.

Bosses are random, I had surprisingly hard time when I faced "Perfected Armor" there - no idea why, after all, it was "just" a Warrior boss, but took so damn long to kill and did quite a lot of damage, that I actually lost that time But, usually staying on stairs and leaving bosses for last - no matter which boss it is - works perfectly.
That, and Mursat/Mantle groups are so small, that it barely matters if you get 2* Elementalist or 2*Bows or whatever.