User:Entice789/Gate of Madness guide

This is my guide on how to beat the Gate of Madness masters, using only henchmen and heroes.

Since everyone's problem is always beating Shiro and the lich and stuff, I'm skipping everything beforehand ^^

Also, I'm making this guide made for any class that is at range (eg, not for Warriors or Dervishes) If you are one of these, replace Koss with yourself, and add a Ranger Hero with some high damage attacks. If you do take condition attacks...disable them when you get to Shiro.

Also note, don't use Conditions against Shiro, he will use Impossible Odds and put them on whoever he hits.

Preperation
Attributes: 11 Strength 10 Swordsmanship 10 Tactics. Give him a Sup. or Major Strength rune on his helm.
 * The Tank: Koss's job is to keep Battle Scars off and to keep him in the middle of the gate.  Warrior's Endurance keeps his energy up.

Attributes: 12 Protection 12 Divine Favor. Give him a rune of protection on his helm.
 * The Protector: This monk's job is to keep the damage minimal (if any damage at all) on the tank. Air of Enchantment helps keep the energy cost down, and as you will see later, s/he will also have Blood Ritual on him if his energy ever goes low.  Since Shiro will only be attacking the tank, you shouldn't need to worry about this monk casting AoE on anyone else.

Attributes: 10 Blood 11 Curses 10 Soul Reaping. Give him a rune of curses on his helm.
 * The Necromancer: I use Spiteful Spirit over SV due to its effectiveness in the previous areas, you can use SV if you prefer to use that. Basically, this Necro will be causing quite a bit of damage to Shiro, and helping the other characters keep their energy up.


 * Mhenlo: any other place I use Kihm, but since Mhenlo shouldn't be getting hit, Word of Healing helps a lot.  Healing Breeze also gets reduced down to 5 energy due to Air of Enchantment, making him even more usefull  =)
 * Sogolon: Excellent support Paragon, and with the Cautery Signet, conditions are a way of the past  =)
 * Eve: Eve will be your 2nd Blood Ritual Necro, just more energy management abilities.  Grenth's Balance is also very nice, since Shiro has thousands of HP.
 * Herta: Herta can do some great damage, and since Shiro is attacking a lot, her Sandstorm will be doing a lot of damage.

Unused Henchmen, and why

 * Odurra (Mesmer) She can be nice in dealing some damage, but since Hexes expire faster than normal on Shiro...Empathy doesn't quite do as much damage as you would expect. Also, since Shiro's activation time is 1/4, her 2 interrupts are next to useless.
 * Cynn (Elementalist) Cynn has great damage potential, but since she uses Fire Storm, Shiro (and many other creatures) will run around to places you might not want them.
 * Devona (Warrior) Devona uses a mace, and has "Charge!" as an elite. She also takes extra, unneeded damage while fighting Shiro due to Impossible Odds.  Crappy henchmen to begin with, makes it even worse in here  =/
 * Aidan (Ranger) Not enough damage, and poor use of skills. Not what we are looking for.
 * Gehraz (Dervish) Same problems as Devona. Also, he puts Conditions onto Shiro...which Shiro then uses Impossible Odds and transfers back onto Gehraz and your tank.
 * Kihm (Monk) We already have a protection monk, a 2nd one would hurt the party more than help.

The Battle
Flag down your Heroes and henchmen as shown: Position yourself between Master of Whispers and the Henchmen.

Once your heroes are flagged down, run down and pull Shiro with a longbow of some sort. Since the Lich is on a very small leash and won't come up the ramp, and moves slower than Shiro...it should be quite easy. Run back to your position between the Henchmen and the Necromancer.

Shiro's leach ends at the gate, where he then stops chasing you and starts attacking Koss. Shiro will randomly use Riposting Shadows, which will teleport him out to one of the other characters. Since this is past his leash, he will not attack, and start running back to his normal position. Since you are still attacking him, once he gets back to the gate he will stop running and start attacking your tank again. He may or may not be dieing fast, but he will die nonetheless, just keep attacking and he will go down.

Once he is at the 20% mark or so, he will start using Battle Scars. Your hero tank will remove this IMMEDIATELY because he has no other activating skills. If you are the tank, be sure to only focus on removing his stance.

Shiro will die soon afterwards, giving you plenty of time to go around and capture the shrines.

The 5 Shrines
Once Shiro is dead, the rest is quite easy. The Lich usually doesn't run to the rear end of the Shrine, so just head back there and kill any Margonites up top. Capture the Shrine and move to the the next.

When all 5 have been captured, kill the lich. He is quite the pushover, and should not need explaining.

I know Kihm is in the party, but that was supposed to be a test run to see if it was going to be good or not. :P