DEVS Ascension = GRIND

here's how Thirsty River most commonly works IF and only IF you have a consistent team or henchmen...if you are constantly changing team mates then it probably takes longer:

Attempt # 1: 20 minutes to kill sand giants and attempt 1st team...start over
Attempt # 2: 20 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 2nd team...start over
Attempt # 3: 25 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 2nd team...start over
Attempt # 4: 25 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 3rd team...start over
Attempt # 5: 30 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 3rd team...start over
Attempt # 6: 35 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 4th team...start over
Attempt # 7: 30 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 3rd team...start over
Attempt # 8: 35 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 4th team...start over
Attempt # 9: 35 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 5th team...start over
Attempt #10: 40 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 4th team...start over
Attempt #11: 40 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 5th team...start over
Attempt #12: 40 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 5th team...start over
Attempt #13: 45 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 6th team...start over
Attempt #14: 45 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 5th team...start over
Attempt #15: 45 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 5th team...start over
Attempt #16: 45 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 6th team...start over
Attempt #17: 45 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 6th team...success

Total GRIND: 10 hours, and that's a pretty conservative estimate IMO...you will find accounts of people spending a whole week at thirsty river.

Elona's Reach was a similar experience for me...took one full 8 hour saturday for me, and another 2 hours the next day.

Some may think this is a challenge...well it's not...it's a grind. Put in your 10 hours at each of the 3 missions for ascension and another 10 hours for the final test, and you will ascend. The first time you successfully defeat a team at thirsty river is a challenge...having to re-defeat the same teams over, and over, and over, and over is not challenging...mindless repetition = grind. Ascension does not = challenge...ascension = 40 hours.

Everything up to ascension was fun, then we get hid in the head with a boorrring, frustrating grind.

Oh well i guess i got what i needed out of my RP toon...i guess i'll just ditch that toon and make a pvp toon. i have 30 hours of ascension left, and my spare time is waaaay too valuable to waste it on such an incredibly boring, and frustrating GRIND.

I've heard people complain that it is a grind, but, it seems that quite a few do enjoy the challenge and don't feel the same. It isn't like getting to level 50 or whatever in another, where all you are doing is fighting monsters over and over, it is really completing objectives. Granted I'd love to not have to worry and be level 20 right now to PvP, bored of trying to level when I have finals this week, have been studying for them, the tests just before em, and papers due around then, but it isn't a real hassle I don't feel.

Of course, haven't been here so perhaps, a tone down of the repetition though sounds in order from the way you put it, albeit I can't understand your version completely.

Attempt # 1: 15 minutes to kill some sand giants and attempt 2nd team...start over
Attempt # 2: 25 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 4th team...start over
Attempt # 3: 20 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 3rd team doh!...start over
Attempt # 4: 35 minutes to kill everything up to attempt on 5th team...start over
Attempt # 5: 45 minutes to kill everything up to and including 6th them - success
Attempt # 6: 43 minutes to try and do the bonus mission... fail

Gives up on the bonus and goes to Elonas Reach

Whats that, allmost 3 hours?

This was with PUGs. Attempt 2-5 had 4 people stay in the pug. And some rather good communication and basic tactics, planning and skillswapping.

Ie: bring caster and healer hate skills. Mind the 2 minute respawn. Just take on 1 team at the time. Don't rush. Do the last area counter clockwise - the healer combo last.

[edit]Dunes of despair: 1st time with henches, took some time to get to the Hero tho.
Elonas Reach: 3 tries with pugs and finished it the next day with a mixed guild/pug group

hmm.. i can see your pont about it being a grind, but its more of a learning experience..once you have learnt what you have to do in the mission, you just need a good group and before going in make sure everyone knows what they are doing, if you dont know the mission follow someone who does and follow the calls..don't over aggro, thats generally the basis for a mission fail..

I think the only serious grind issue is fighting your mirror, i think i was lucky to kill mine first time, but i think its easyer for warriors. (learn and counter your self)

it's definately a learning experience the first time, but to have to redo everything every time you fail is a giant borezor to me...especially the 15 minute giant/devourer warmup at thirsty river. the mission takes long enough to complete without tacking that on to every single attempt.

and i felt the same way when trying to figure out elona's...that whole part with the billion stupid bulls...i never once died to either the bulls or the giants, so they are definately not a challenge...just a great big bore before the mission starts.

i'd much rather them remove the damned giants/devourers, and lower the team's by 10% instead of letting me gain 10%.

uh guess I'm rare or something but my pugs did Thirsty first try in about 20 mins. Dunes was a few tries because we were just disorganized on the first try. Elona's took 2 or 3 tries but nothing insanely hard. *shrug* Get two monks or a monk and a henchie monk and call your targets the missions are not that hard.

Well every map or mission or quest you fail you have to redo from the start - I just don't see how you think this one is special.

It might be too hard with your current settup and group - yes. But it's not different than any other...

well if you don't want to do it, skip directly to go and select PvP.

Or the easier way, if you're that sick of fighting all the giants and devourers, is just run past them all to the Ghost so you can start the actual fight.

Bwa ha ha ha

So right, so right

I did all three of them. They all took multiple attempts, but it was so hard I felt like I was doing something. I thought a lot of the later missions were too easy. That could be because I was running with mostly guildies through the later missions.

I havent done this particular mission yet, but it reminds me of how yesterday I kept hearing how hard all the missions up to and after Lion's Arch/Kryta were from various people. Myself and my guild steamrolled every mission in one try, killing everything in our path. Our group consisted of: El/Mes, War/Monk, War/Monk, Nec/Mes, Mo/El and a R/something. The point being most missions are very doable if you:

a)roll in a cohesive unit that has complimentary skills
b)call your targets and focus fire

I have yet to encounter one that wasnt doable in one try using these tactics. When people begin to run off and aggro various MOBs w/o calling targets is when everyone dies, hehe.

Grumble. It definitely sucks that you got a crappy group but to say it's the game's fault for you not being able to beat the missions is just incorrect.

I can understand why you'd want to just pass the easy stuff - may as well, right? However, some content is easier for some groups than for others, so currently you have to pick a group that can pass all the content. Also, if you were allowed to simply bypass the easy content that you have no trouble with all you'd allow people to zerg the harder encounter(s) and get lucky.

same, elona's took 4-5 trys over 2 days, i got dunes and river done within an hour the next day

to OP, if your group fails constantly you probably want to find a new group, no need to try for 10 hours with the same group if its obviously not going to work

Please, this is not grind. The games been out now what, a little under two weeks and people are already complaining about grind?

What they meant by "no grind" is that you dont need to play every day all day to just be on pair with other players.

The ascention wasent even that difficult: river 1 try, dunes 2 trys, and elonas 5 trys.

Stop whinning and GET BETTER AT THE GAME. What ascetion teaches you is that you dont have to fight every damn monster on the map, only fight thoughs that you need to.

P.S. On river you just have to use comon sence. Take one base at a time, kill the priest as soon as possible, and wait for a multiple of 2 before moving on to the next base.

I think some people misjudge grind for a challenge. Grinding is a repititive action that benefits you in some way over a period of time...a challenge kills you over and over because you most likely have no strategy at first, and then develop one.

If I can't beat it and have to try it over, it's a grind.

If I have to think and use strategy and timing in a mission, rather than just hack my way through it with ease, it's a grind.

Dude, the quests aren't a grind, their hard missions. Hell, enough people get through it trying only two or three times. My guildies got through all three on the first try, in the same night.

These are missions that you really have to work on, and figure out how to do, and communicate. We say GW is based on skill, and part of that skill is communication and developing a good team, don't we?

Well, these are perfect examples of that in effect. To be honest, I had problems with the Ascension missions. But as soon as I really sat down and created a strategy with a real group, yeah, it was a pug, be we selected who we took carefully, the missions turned out to be a breeze.

Strategic mission do not equal grind.

Not grind at all, if you ask me.

Realize that Ascension is AN ENTIRE AREA/CHAPTER UNTO ITSELF. It is much akin to going through THE WHOLE OF ASCALON. If you call doing a whole area grind, well then you need to learn what real grind is.

Spend a month working on a SINGLE quest, then you have the right to claim it's grind.

There are about 10 sidequests attached to asenscion if I remember correctly.

Yes after doing all of these myself, this is not a grind, I joined with decent but completely random groups, 1 try at Dunes and now I can't even remember what we did there, 1 try at Elona and we still had 15 minutes left, 4 tries at River because we had a few stupid people. Takes 10 minutes maximum at river to get past the giants and into the first battle, the first battle takes two minutes and is incredibly easy, the dual battle works basically the same and if you have people stupid enough, like my first few groups, to go running off well after the first 2 minute mark on the next set of enemies, then it is an obvious reason why you lost, same goes with the trio of bosses. I think in our run it took us about 2:30, 4:30, and almost 6:00 to finish em all, and one of our resets was someone leaving early on so technically, only 3 tries, one was a poor mistake by a stupid group, another was a reset on the server I think most people got, and then we won.

Then, just beat my mirror-image, took four tries after seeing how he would use a few of my skills, and beat him in about a total of 10 minutes through all of the attempts.

So what it boils down to is :

30 minutes running with an unknowing group to Dunes of Despair, about 20 minutes through Dunes itself, then took a small break for studies, back and running to Elona, got there about 10 minutes later, took about 25-30 minutes to finish it altogether I'd say, and took another group to thirsty river, took about 30 minutes cause I was poor with directions and no one had ever been, then took another 30 minutes to get the failures out of the way, and another 30 minutes to run through the mission, th en 10 minutes to fight mirror image and behold, I'm at the Dragon's Lair.

So that is 3:10 to finish this area, 3:30 if you count running from the oasis...

well i guess i've just had insanely bad luck with groups, because it's the only way i can explain how one guy with a high IQ and tons of gaming and pvp experience (me) could have such a vastly harder time than all of you apparently did.

to the guy that did thirsty river in one try...you must have been with a group of people that had already attempted it a billion times, because there is no way in hell a group of people are going to complete thirsty river the first try.

Seriously, if you can't stand getting past ascension then don't even bother. The missions past ascension are far more difficult. I like it that way. Need something to challenge us don't we? Thank God its not easy.

LOL so true... on the last part of thirsty we just waited for all the groups to engage and ganked the priests the mobs fell easily infront of our warriors w/ my support healing O.-

EDIT : and in response to the OP saying everyone else in my group tried alot before me .... no actually we came from sanctum cay together :|

well the evidence is in then...either i am a drooling retard that can barely tie his own shoes or you are an uber elite genius gaming god.

how can you even stand to engage in pve when it's so easy? if you did thirsty river in one go, then everything up to ascension must have been completely unchallenging and completely boring...just a big easy walk through.

thirsty river isnt tht hard.... took me 2 hours.

I did have a rough time the first time. The second time we knew what was there and developed the following plan.
There is plenty of time so dont rush.
One target
Just clear a majority of the people then drag them in with the priest. There is only one hard priest to kill and thats with the healing boss. Takes around 30 seconds with a tank heavy group.
Wait till the new two minutes starts to start on the next base.
You can stop the hero and make him stay. Kill things around the gate before you open them.
With a pug this mission took us from try one to finish in maybe a hour. We killed everything along the way. Dont try to rush the missions and heres a bit of advice for a mission after this one. Sometimes you cant kill them all

I beat it in one go, and Im no "uber elite gaming god"

You dont need to be a god to beat the river in one go, you just need to exersize common sence.

Wow im in shock. I did River and Dunes last night with a group with no problem at all. The fact that its taking some of you hours and hours or even days is like amazing to me. Either you are totally unprepared for these areas, or you had one hell of an unbalanced/crappy team. Perhaps better planning before heading out would have helped?? Unless I just got really super lucky or something??

Yeah i did river and dunes (including travel tiem to and from both areas) in about 2 hours...

dunes was retarded easy...with henchies i did it first try...elona's took me a long time but maybe that was because i wasted my efforts with crappy groups...took me about 4 tries with henchies.

thirsty river is last so i guess i'll try with real live people someday.

See, the ASecention quests aren't impossible. You just need to avoid bad groups, and people who think charging right away is a good idea. In retrospect though, it is hard to figure out whose good, and that's what makes them hard. I've had groups with people with good fantasy names be morons, while someone named "Pwner of noobs" was a great teamate at Elona.

If you have friends that you trust or guildmates that you know aren't stupid, try to do it with them. It's all stragety.

I must of got *uber* lucky with Rivers. I did it first try. To be fair it seemed everyone else in my group had failed 10 times and knew what the hell they were doing. We have even took the bot healer with us.

It became apparent to me that the Desert missions are meant to be run by people at or about to hit lvl 20.

Groups of lvl 17 - 18 will have a difficult time with these missions.

Best advice I can give you is to make sure your group has a minimum of TWO dedicated healer monks ... and I'm talking DEDICATED not a half a$$ed monk.

Second piece of advice ... in the desert the game changes from being one where you can just tank everything in site to a game more akin to traditional MMO's where you have to pull a couple mobs at a time. Pull more than one group .... game over.

It's generally one or two idiots that bring the whole group down. Get in a good guild and have your guildies help you through missions your having a hard time at. Pick up groups generally get slaughtered in the deserts because

a. They don't have enough healers
b. One or two noobs don't know how to properly pull (or even understand the concept of pulling period) and drag too many mobs onto your party
c. The desert content is geared towards lvl 20 players ... which is why it's so hard.

Content after you ascend only SEEMS easier ... it's really the same difficulty as the desert ... except you are now lvl 20 when you hit the new content.

I did Dunes and River in my first tries. Elonas took 4-5 tries though. I love how this game actually takes a little skill, unlike DII where I could make a new character and have it to lvl 80 the next day. You just cannot walk through enemies in this game and I like that.

in river, stop complaining, you can attack most of the enemies before you even enter the bases. just use a ranger or two. then kill priests. if you didn't know about killing priests first then i have no idea how you even made it past the dolyak in the shiverpeaks.
dunes was easy. you don't even need common sense to do it. you just walk. and attack. i guess if you had the sudden urge to attack nothing but seige wurms...
elona is the only one that really has a challenge to it. just start with the right side instead of the left side and again... use common sense and avoid what you can't kill. i think this thread is about dead too. 90% of it is saying the same thing.

ok i'm going to take back everything i said in this thread.

I respec'ed as a pure healer last night and tried thirsty river again with all henchies...i got to the 3rd one on the first try of the evening and failed...i realized i could do it if i just found some decent people.

I hooked up with a group that had tried it before so they weren't running around like idiots.
I was the sole healer and for 95% of the whole mission i was able to keep the entire party above 90% health. (with only one rez)
We did it on the first attempt.

Now one thing i must say is that the sniping part is most likely not how the devs intended us to do this mission, but it sure works like crazy. We would have been able to do it anyway, but i suspect the devs will one day "fix" this so the mobs are no longer snipeable.

The thing that ruined ascension for me, and caused so much frustration, is the fact that all the ascension missions act like a bottleneck for dimwits. And it can be very hard to find a decent group in a sea of tards. I bet the average player IQ goes up considerably post-ascension.

So ascension is not a grind, but finding a decent group can be.

It took me about 2 hours to complete all 3 last night and my mirror image. I dont know how people are saying that these are hard. We breezed through these. Though, the group I was in knew exactly where they where doing and it went so smoothly.

I was thinking to myself about people that are saying they are impossible, and at the same time we where doing these without breaking a sweat. Oh, and at all 3, we only had 1 healer. But, we had 4 War/Monks who could keep themselves alive aswell, so it made the job on the monk alot easier.

elona's reach took me 2 tries.. the first try we messed up really early on but then we knew exactly what to do. thirsty river... 2 tries. first try was with henchies, second with people. dunes, 1 try, very very easy. why would it take like 20 tries?

I found that henchmen teams could pull me through all the way to Ring of Fire. That last mission was too hard for me with henchies. Other then that though, everything seemed fine.

I did all three in 1 night. The only one that was hard work was Elona's.
That was mainly due to either
a) People dropping out! (No idea why!)
or more often
b) People not working as a team. Always someone wanting to rush off ahead and be the hero! It's always funny when a tank thinks they are amazingly hard in battle - right up until they attack the next group and notice the monk is out of range or everyone is still low on mana. (Splat!)

Having to do a mission again because you failed, is not grind.
Having to do a mission again to get your armor infused, cap an elite, farm runes, farm mods etc, is grind.

I disagree. I was able to complete Elona and Dunes with myself as the only healer given a party that knew what they were doing. With Sausaletus Rex Life Bonding me, I was able to prevent myself from dying and Blackace kept Blood Ritual up to provide energy for healing. We completed both Dunes and Elona in under two hours; one try for Dunes, two for Elona because we didn't expect the charge of the mobs following the death of the last boss. These missions are not as hard as people make them out to be, good teamwork will get you through.