WOW. Lomar's Pass is crazy.

DD is SO MUCH harder the lonrar's pass

I reached beacons perch from camp rankor via snakebite with 7 henchmen and myself. I thought lornars pass door was locked from passing through the 1st time. I thought reaching Beacons Perch was my savior, so i was not impressed to find out that after zoning into beacons perch, I lost 2 of my 8 guys. Now if i head back out i have to go with 6.

Lonars Pass from Camp Rankor is quite the challenge, But the road i saw decending underground looks even more challenging.

Went into Lornars from Beacon's tonight. Got to the start of the worms no problem, had one down to about 1/2 it's health alright. Then all of a sudden the ground started to shake. Now what popped up? Not one worm, not two worms, but three more worms. Needless to say, we became mulch very very very quickly.

I ventured out into it on accident today (I'm lvl 16), needless to say I was happy to get the six kills I did before I was decimated

The main reason for the areas being so difficult is that the armours that sell at the places they link too are for lvl20 ascended players. The only way I could see them making it easier is if they rescripted the armourors so that the didn't offer armour untill you had ascended. They would also need to script the missions there not to allow pre ascended characters attempt them.
The areas are rock hard, you need to realisitically travel from the southern shiverpeaks to northern shiverpeaks not the otherway round, appart from the fact that doing it south to north means you are lvl 20 and ascended, but also means you get a party of 8 instead of 6.
If people have done it before ascending fair play, but they are the minority, and have had backup and suffered 60% deathpen for most of the way.

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Yes, what makes Lornar's pass so hard is those pesky worms. Even with 6 20's the sheer number of mobs makes Lornar's pass hard to get through. The same goes for the Dedrimer bowl. To get to fort Rankor you need to get past Lornar's pass, Dedrimier bowl, and Snake dance. If the pass and the bowl didn't get you the dance probably will. I regular 20 lvl party can take their way slow through Snake dance, but getting there is half the trouble. In my humble opinion 3 20 lvl warriors can get past Lornar's pass and Dedrimer bowl. The rest of your group can be any other support members, but you do need at least one monk. Following I go into a little more detail from a W/N14 who was nice enough to be invited to a party that was trying to make it. The rest of my party had the following makeup: W/Mo20, N/E20, W/?20, W/?18, W/?16. Yea we weren't quite the best group for the run, but we mostly wanted to see what was out there, but after lots of practice we made it amazing far.

We started out in Lornar's with everyone running like mad to keep up with the Wars. Usually the W/Mo20, W/?18, and W?/16 made it past the first tunnel after that it was plain luck. After about 10 runs the W/Mo made it to Dedrimer Bowl (there was much rejoicing). It really takes 10 or more deaths to figure out the mob timing and also for party members to figure out that we all needed to stick real close together. Don't autofollow, but be smart and stick real close. The reason you don't want to autofollow is because if the person your in front of made a mistake in thier timing than chances are so did you.
Dedrimer Bowl was cake in comparison and after about 5 runs the W/Mo20 made it again to the next section. The W/?16 had some maps and was able to draw on the map to direct us.
Snake Dance was hard, real hard and we tried a dozen strategies before we found one that worked. For about an hour we tried running it like we did the previous two, but the problem is the giants and that they knock you down when you try to sprint by. And those that did make it didn't have their party members abilities to rely on later and so even our hero the W/Mo20 was no match for the hordes of giants and trolls. Ok, heres what worked for us (btw, if you hadn't figured it out, expect to do this at 60% sickness) we decided to kill the groups we encountered. After multiple deaths from just sets of 3 giants we stumbled on the strat that would work. W/Mo20, W18, W16 would run in and take the hits on one mob. I would cast Soul Barbs and N/E would cast like crazy . W18, W16 would go down fairly quickly and I cast Putrid explosion on our own corpses for ~90 dmg to each giant. We usually took em all down and then our W/Mo20 would rez the fallen. If we ever died, which we did a lot we would make the run and keep on going. I had to leave before we finished going through as I had now been doing this for several hours, but I think after a few more hours on Snake Dance and we could have made it. We had killed about 9 of the patrols and 5 sets of the giants. We had pulled two sets of giants and got 2 sets of trolls stuck. I leave you with these tips:

1st strat: It is possible to drag the giants. What I mean to say is that one or more members of your party can jump in and out of aggro range and pull the giants toward them and the kickers is as long as they aren't patrols they will stay there. We found this useful on two occasions.

2nd strat: Trolls are suckers. What I mean to say is that they aren't nearly as hard to kill as the giants and a group of 3-4 was easily taken down using our fighting strategy. Trolls are burdensome as they roam so kill em all.

3rd strat: There are safezones along the way where your party can hide just out of reach of the patrols while you heal or rez. fyi, never use rez signet on the first half of the map. Only use it when you need it and then only if you know your party has a shot of making it to the new spawn point. Otherwise its much better to respawn at beginning and begin running it again.

4th strat: Wars need: sprint and endure pain. In hindsight I wonder if Dolyak Signet would be good regardless of decrease in speed because you can't be knocked down, which is a major problem with giants.

5th strat: It is possible to get giants and trolls stuck on a corner. If you are running from the it is possible to take a corner tight and they might get stuck on it. This worked for us intentionally twice. Keep in mind if you aggro them again they will get unstuck. I was the party train and was masterful at training 6+ of trolls back to the troll cave where the elite lies.

Well that is all, do with it what you will. In my opinion its possible to make it all the way with a 3 20 wars and 18+ support members.

Okay just a question here, not complaining or anything.

If 6 lvl 20 characters are continuously getting mulched, shouldn't it be toned down a little? I mean, what's the point of that whole area? Yes, I understand that it's guarding stuff for ascended characters, but that could just be scripted to only WORK for asc. char.

I understand that fissure and underworld are ridiculously hard, but apparently the loot that drops has been scaled commensurably. But me and a group of people (15-16) fought a few of the mobs in Lornar's and we never saw a single decent thing drop. I'm talking one or two blues after an hour's worth of fighting (and dying frequently, btw )

Like I said, I'm not complaining, I think it's great that there is stuff to do for 20th lvl characters, but if a maxed party of 20th lvl characters STILL gets mauled, how are you supposed to finally make any headway? I guess farming for better equipment? (which ANet doesn't like either).

It seems to be a bit senseless design.

Creston

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yeah not senseless design, but design with a purpose

makes it a noteworthy accomplishment if you can get a group of lvl10-12s through it to beacons/draknors

but it IS designed to be entered from the south...

Ahhh okay, that makes more sense then, I didn't notice the 8 party members possibility from that point on

"If it's any consolation, 4 Lava Imps from the fire islands would kill most of the stuff in Lornar's Pass in about 5-10 seconds. "


I'm scared...Someone hold my hand?


Creston

ok it can be done, but you need 5 hours REALLY! we did it with a 16lvl e/mo a 20 w/mo a 17 mo/e a 20 n/mo a 20 w/mo and me a 19 e/n.

having lots of people to heal helped and a necro that does undead army I am a fire pounder mage with some defensive necro skills, add in the other mages with the fire skills and as long as the w/mo and bone horrors can hold the mobs we mages pound them into the dirt.

of course we had to do some group run for your life spirts to the gate. pluss some leading of huge multi group mobs to a regen pad and kill them there or lead them out of the way.

last we were always at -60 most of the time, you have to be fast with the raise and the necro would make bone horrors every time someone falls.