Talk:Hard mode

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Hard Mode is extremely hard....
Well, I stoped Shiro, annihilated the Lich Lord, and destroyed Abbadon. Whats that? Hard mode? sounds cool! *click* okay, enter portal, load..... thers a mob, aaand..... *WHAM* I died.

Tried this over and over and over in various areas with tons of different builds/ party arrangement... nothing changed, entered, found mob, kaboom. am i just a terrible player or am i missing something? I copied this from the archive 2, as it was archived a few hours after I posted. Sorry if I wasn't supposed to do that.


 * I find it not all that hard. A Warder and 3 Monks generally is all the defense you'll ever need (halfway through overkill) and 4 nukers. Screw tanking, screw MM's. Just pure ele power. Or Putrid Veins nuking, also works a treat, bunch of armor ignoring dmg. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (s)talkpage 20:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Or just lol at everything and use ursan+ some monks. Lord of all tyria 20:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

okay, i guess i was just missing something then. all eles, monks, and a warder you say? players or henchies? Cnk3 20:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm one of the nukers, Zhed goes warding, Tahlk usually prots. Vekk nukes. And then Cynn, Eve. Mhenlo and Lina. At least, when I hench. Otherwise: as much heroes as possible :P They have leet reflexes --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (s)talkpage 20:38, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * My suggestions: HM is significantly easier if a party has *two* humans and their heroes. Many of the overpowered PvE skills also help quite a bit (notably, the Sunspear skills, and Pain Inverter is incredible at taking out particularly dangerous foes, like bosses with AoE damage).  I usually play my monk in HM, and I run prot.  Having a human protter is very helpful: their reaction times are certainly not nearly as good, but good judgment on use of energy and prot enchants is *essential* (e.g., pre-protting the puller, putting the appropriate enchies on the appropriate people (e.g., guardian or SoD on the ally getting mobbed by assassins, but PS or Spirit Bond on the ally getting whomped by the warrior boss).
 * Still...having a human damage-specialist is powerful, as they can take out the foes that need to be taken out first, and make sure the herohenchies are also concentrating on the important foes. When I solo monk herohench in HM, the hardest thing for me is directing herohench attacks at the right targets while keeping track of my own casting on allies.
 * If all else fails, I keep a few consumables around for emergencies. Golden eggs and candy corn give me a tiny boost (almost unnoticable, but just slightly helpful) to get past high pressure situations (stupid Mantids in Wajjun...), wintergreens will help keep me from being targeted if DP starts building up (when I go down, the party goes down...), and when things get particularly shitfucked, I toss on a Grawl of Might, Armor of Slavation, or Essence of Celery, for situations with DP and very nasty mobs (oh, how I hate Shelket's mob, in Alkali Pan...).
 * As for party makeup, I very rarely take elementalists. I'm happy with Aegis over Ward of Melee most of the time (though both is nice too), and ele damage is primarily only good at spreading AoE damage, whereas I find it important in HM to take out 1-2 particular foes in each mob, and the rest becomes cleanup.  I disagree about tanking: having Talon or Melonhead (VoS <3) psuedo-tank tends to hold off a couple melee foes at least a few seconds, and that's nearly essential with some HM mobs (e.g., Mandragor Terrors with Headbutt, or Jade Knights who can Triple Chop casters into smithereens unless you can blind ALL of them, tank them, or keep Shelter up).  Similarly, minions can hold off melee foes and nicely distract other foes into attacking minions rather than your group.  (For a minion master build, I like running something like a jagged bomber, with Jagged Bones, Death Nova, and Bone Minions, usually with Bone Fiends for extra damage or Vamp Horrors to help the MM's health a bit, though Signet of Lost Souls is used extraordinarily well by heroes.  I also have my MM run Flesh of my Flesh, for a quick res, and SoLS or Taste of Pain will restore his health very quickly to keep him from being a target.  This build is quite amazing for HM, since it keeps damage off the group, maintains some fairly strong pressure on foes, needs very little handholding with the hero AI, needs very little healing (SoLS/ToP + BotM >> Heal Area), and has a very nice fast res. However, this build is very sensitive to party wipe, especially at the very end of a vanquish, because you will have few foes to make minions out of and very likely a particularly nasty mob waiting for you.)
 * More important than the tanking issue is dealing with casters. I almost always bring a mesmer with a good collection of interrupts.  Power Block on a hero can usually keep one caster entirely out of the battle.  Cry of Frustration can top several casters at once, which gives you a huge advantage if it hits the right spot (e.g., three Roaring Ethers casting ESurge).  Humility can take out an elite skill (e.g., a WoH/ZB monk or SF/SH on a ruby djinn), and Ignorance can take out dastardly signets (e.g., res sig on Roaring Ethers: toss ignorance at one ether while the other is half dead).  With HM-increased casting speeds (roaring ethers can activate res sig in a mere 0.6s, and they aren't even bosses!), guilt and mistrust are powerful (worth running MoR with Guilt/Mistrust/Pspike/Pdrain), and backfire can be nice for spell-spammers, but I rarely find room for it (though definitely worth taking with MoR).  Other than in GWEN, I sometimes take Gwen with me so that I can have Norgu running PB, holding the attention of at least one caster, and Gwen running Ineptitude and other fun ill (sick?) skills primarily to deal with non-casters (espeicially barragers!).
 * Lastly (I hope), I've heard of some other interesting combinations. One is the triple nec squad: a jagged bomber MM build like I use, an SS build customized to the foes you'll be facing (e.g., defile flesh around obnoxious healers, defile defenses around obnoxious blockers, and barbs and mark of pain are always good fun with bone fiends if you have room for them), and an N/Rt "healer" (a restoration build, relying on minion and foe deaths rather than spirit deaths: WoR, Spirit Light, Life, and Protective was Koala, naturally with SoLS and FomF, possibly with Resilient Weapon if the area is hexy).
 * I hope this all-too-long set of suggestions is helpful to someone. It might be nice to put together a set of suggestions for dealing with HM. (Not a collection of builds, of course, just ideas like "Try running a PB mes to deal with casters.")--Carmine 00:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * All good points and useful information. Thanks for putting it up (and the time into writing it) :). Personally I play an ele most in HM so I always have one, that said I find that outright damage builds aren't that good. I tend to use either an air build or more recently I've been favouring  earth 5 pulses of aoe blind is just great against melee enemies and earthquake brings some nice aoe knockdown for caster mobs. -Ezekiel 03:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * All good points, but one thing that I find helps (quite possibly the most) is inflicting weakness on melee enemies. My main is a N/Me and I always have Enfeebling Blood on me when I play in HM. I often find myself even Arcane Echoing it when I find that I can't weaken all the meleers in a group at once, or if I find the fight may drag on. By doing this, you can then focus fire on the casters, all while the meleers are doing bugger all damage. xD I'll try not to repeat on things I agree on, so just the things you left out: I agree fairly strongly when you talk about bringing a Mesmer, but if you know that a monk is really going to make things hard for you, don't just interupt, bring along Arcane Languor. Vekk is one of my favourite heroes, i've found that equipping him with a burning/Searing Flames build will annihilate just about any party (Yeah, yeah, SF is overused, but for good reason). That's about all i've got to add, you did a good job of the rest. =D [[Image:Bigrat2sAvatar.jpg]] Bigrat2  Talk  03:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Does Arcane Languor actually do much in PvE? It always seemed that AI foes had egregious amounts of energy (100-200, even on non-eles), not to mention e-regen...  I can't find any experimental data on AI foe energy or e-regen, but there must be tons out there, at *least* since the whole Famine 55 Titty farming fad a few months ago (or has it been nearly a year? ouch).--Carmine 05:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I would think so. I used it a little while ago while doing some mission, seemed to shutdown the boss fairly well. Might just have been luck that time through though, not sure. I might have to look into that. [[Image:Bigrat2sAvatar.jpg]] Bigrat2  Talk  06:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Enfeebling blood is definitely win; I knew there was something essential I left out of my necromancer suggestions! Thanks! SF is unfortunately still pretty damn good against many foes (try the undead, plants, and swampy-watery-skaly foes outside ToA...pwnt to a crisp), but it's an order of magnitude stronger if you can pull together 3-5 of them with another hyoomin, especially with ToF, and allows one or two to cast MS/meteor where needed while the others keep up the SF pressure.  Also: SF builds can deal with melee foes a bit better if you use Steam with Epidemic, and caster clumps if you use Malestorm and Power Drain.--Carmine 06:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Even just a pure Air build will do a fairly good job of keeping a group of meleers blinded for the most part of a fight. [[Image:Bigrat2sAvatar.jpg]] Bigrat2  Talk  06:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Spiteful Spirit --Blue.rellik 03:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh of course, forgot that I run an Spoil Victor/Pain Inverter/Insidious Parasite build. In HM, everything has way too much health, so SV rips just about everything into fourteen pieces, then some more. [[Image:Bigrat2sAvatar.jpg]] Bigrat2  Talk  03:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Spiteful Spirit --Blue.rellik 03:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)