Hero/hench teams and dungeon difficulty in EotN

Mariner-80

Does anyone know where I can find a listing of dungeons BY DIFFICULTY?

I play primarily solo, with heroes and henches, and am getting frustrated by the number of dungeons I can *almost finish*.

The dungeons in Eye of the North are really great, but many of them are seemingly impossible with hero/hench teams: Vloxen Excavations springs to mind, but there are others.

I sure wish Eye of the North offered Standard vs. Hard mode on the dungeons, with appropriately scaled rewards/XP. Many of the dungeons seem set on permanent Hard Mode.

sassoonss

90% of EOTN can be done with heroes/hench

but thats not fun atleast some part should be real people

 

I have lot of fun doing dungeons with people than henchy

but still if u want i would suggest u go to

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Dungeon

 

it details all the dungeons difficulties and what builds /skills would be useful

Mariner-80

Actually, I think it's very *fun* questing with all-hench/hero teams, but to each his own. I also enjoy grouping with live players on occasion.

The list at wiki is not really what I was hoping to find. It does not list the dungeons by difficulty; they are listed in alphabetical order.

Maybe in time the dungeon descriptions will offer solutions for us hero/hench-only questers--but not yet.

Serling

I feel your pain, believe me.  I've gotten to the last boss on quests in several of them and have had to quit after several team wipes (Cyndr and the Channeling Rit boss in the caves north of Gadd's Encampment come immediately to mind).

It's not just that these bosses are insanely hard to kill, it's that they also do insane amounts of damage.  Guess the devs' intent was to force player grouping for these quests.  That's about the only justification I can see for taking this approach.

I doubt the difficulty on these bosses (since they are ultimately the problem) is going to change anytime soon.  So - like it or not - we're going to have to find player groups for these quests.  And, IMHO, I think that pretty much sucks big time.  I prefer hero/hench teams too, but these dungeons just aren't made for them.

8hammer8

Originally posted by tmr819

Does anyone know where I can find a listing of dungeons BY DIFFICULTY? I play primarily solo, with heroes and henches, and am getting frustrated by the number of dungeons I can *almost finish*. The dungeons in Eye of the North are really great, but many of them are seemingly impossible with hero/hench teams: Vloxen Excavations springs to mind, but there are others. I sure wish Eye of the North offered Standard vs. Hard mode on the dungeons, with appropriately scaled rewards/XP. Many of the dungeons seem set on permanent Hard Mode.

As I have said before the AI and diffuculty of the dungeons is great.  You are max level, what are you expecting for content, Pre-Sear for level 20's?  There is no reason you can't finish most of your dungeon runs, the reason being the consumable NPC's.  You have to weigh whether it is worth it or not to spend money and materials to give you that extra boost you may need to complete it.  Have you seen the Powerstone of Courage...removes ALL DP and gives you a +10% moral boost, are you kidding me.  The Asura Essence of Celerity 25% faster recharge and casting + energy, come on. 

Play with your builds and quit trying to use the same cookie-cutter team and I bet you can make some break throughs.  Exchanging 1 of your 3 searing flames eley's for an earth is a good start.

Overall, and here is the exciting part...they are going to have a hardmode for this.  You can't get to the max title levels currently because the priests/scouts/whatever won't give you the bonuses at rank 8.  So you think this is tough...

I wish you luck in your efforts to tame the wild dungeons.

Mariner-80

Yikes. A "HARD" mode for these dungeons? Like they aren't hard enough already...

But you make a good point. Cookie-cutter teams are not going to cut it here. I will try Cathedral of Flames yet again, with a different build of heroes. It was like that for me with Gate of Madness/Gate of Abaddon. I must have wiped I don't know how many times till I brought along a Hero assassin (Genmai), etc., with the right skills to end Shiro's self-healing stance (Shiro was the only really hard part of the Gate of Madness mission, in my opinion). Likewise, with Abaddon, the trick was getting *away* before Abaddon revived and then coming back again after killing the monoliths (and torment claws).

I got masters on both of those missions using only henches and heroes and playing a warrior.

The thing that bugs me about the dungeons in EotN is that they are so long and you have so much time invested and you get to the end and find it's hopeless -- again, this is if you are playing with an all-NPC team.

The respawn rate of the Ancient warriors et al. at the end of Vloxen Excavations, for example, is just crazy. Worse still, the revived undead come chasing after you long after you have left their aggro range and, worse still, you cannot even work off a death penalty fighting them.

I just think that is over the top. The least the devs could have done was make the dungeons playable with a hero/hench group. If you read Jeff Strain's speech about the future of MMOs, he makes the point that MMOs need to be solo-player friendly. Apparently, this ideology didn't apply to EotN's dungeons -- at least not to very many of them.

As for the Powerstone of Courage, it is very nice.

I left WoW because so many of the quests left you dependent on finding real players to move forward. With the dungeons in EotN, the Guild Wars franchise seems headed in that same, unfortunate YOU MUST GROUP OR ELSE direction, and it irritates me.

I bet if you polled Guild Wars players about this, most would say they do 80-90% of their questing on their own with henches. (With me it's probably more like 90 to 95%.) The dungeons should have been designed with that dynamic in mind.

Akaraxle

Bring Zho, set Gwen as a dom mesmer and you'll be fine most of the times. Caster bosses go down so quickly it's not even funny, Vloxen Excavations was the easiest dungeon ever (once I killed the necro's minions, he did nothing but stand there and die). I got wiped several times yesterday in Bloodstone Caves because of the massive melee presence, but I cleared it anyway and it's nothing I couldn't handle with a more appropriate approach.

Overall, just adapt your builds according to the dungeon; although some dungeons are probably meant not to be henchable, you'll be fine most of the times.

Mariner-80

Thanks. You were correct -- at least with Cathedral of Flames. The end boss (Murakai) was most susceptible to being DAZED, so having heroes with Concussion Shot and other Daze skills was enormously helpful. Zho was also quite helpful. I was able to beat the Cathedral , after all, using a different group of heroes and a different mix of skills.

You may be right about some of the dungeons being "non-soloable", however. I can't imagine ever getting past Vloxen Level 3 with an NPC team, but I intend to keep trying.

brownspank

I bring Zho and Herta a lot in dungeons, and I do fine most of the time. If after doing a dungeon the first, time, I fail, I just mix it up and bring different heroes/henches that'll do well against the spawns in that particular dungeon. Learning from mistakes (or the wiki) is the best way to go when you prefer henches.

Here's a question, though... When Hard Mode was introduced in the first 3 campaigns, they adjusted normal mode to be "more normal", you guys think they'll do the same in GWEN?

Mariner-80

Originally posted by brownspank:

"Here's a question, though... When Hard Mode was introduced in the first 3 campaigns, they adjusted normal mode to be "more normal", you guys think they'll do the same in GWEN?"

______

Someone has mentioned somewhere in these threads that a Normal Mode/Hard Mode option is coming for the dungeons and missions in EotN, but I am not sure what is the source for that. It would be great if, should they do this, they made the Normal Mode a tad easier!

Btw, I don't think Hard mode is available in Prophecies, is it?

Weareweare

Personally, I think that the dungeons in EOTN were perfectly made for my style of play, which is only using heroes/henchies. I've beaten pretty much everything that I've tried with my heroes/henchies in reguards to dungeons. Even though my heroes are what i consider to be maxed out, i think the dungeons are perfect for end game players to explore. Also I found that a challenging dungeon is Frostmaw's dungeon, where you can find Kinslayer items. It has to be the most difficult dungeon i've tried out so far, i think this might be a little to advanced if your still having trouble with the other dungeons, but its a great adventure. I'd like to recommend the dungeon west of Silhalla for you, I consider that to be an easier dungeon but still a challenge.       -Good luck

Weareweare

Hey, sorry for double post, but to answer your question... No i do not believe they will introduce hard mode in gwen... My reasoning is mostly because everything in EOTN is already max level, or close to it.  Also it is an expansion not a campaign, so that might have something to do with why hard mode wasn't introduced in the start of gwen and might never be. All in all its nothing to worry about or hope for, if they introduce hard mode that'll give us more things to do (and more Adventurer of the North title points )