User:Rotfl Mao/Vanquisher

Since i'm playing Mesmer, i'll focus on this class(+heroes of course). This is mainly for people who, like me, don't really fancyPUG's and do most thing with hero/hench parties, and are not really top gear pro gosu awesome players. Leave a comment on the talk page if you find this usefull/useless, or got an idea, etc.. Feel free to add anything to this guide, regarding other classes, setups, other areas, blahblahblahblahblah anything.

Few Tips:
 * Equip some good ressing spell, rebirth perhaps. If you'll get in a tough fight and have to retreat, you might find yourself alone with everyone dead just near the spawn. If you rebirth them, they'll teleport to you.
 * If all of your party gets -60 DP, it's no cigar.
 * Take the bosses out early, especially the weaker ones. morale boosts helps, with death penalty you'll prolly won't take them out at all. Some early bosses(Ascalon, southern shivers) won't have any skills at all.
 * It's better to fight with obeying heroes than idiots, no matter how many neurons they might have.
 * If you're an interrupter, memorise the pattern in which foes are casting spells, they're usually casting them in a same chain. Makes it easier to interrupt skills you don't want to hit you AND, you can actually predict when they'll be casting them and fire the interrupt split second before(there's always lag, let's face it...). With a bit(lot) of luck you could interrupt even 1/4 spells.
 * The enemies not only are much higher level but also move and attack faster and activate skills faster, also run earlier from AoE, kite and target your dumbass monks MORE THAN ALWAYS. However, if they're attacking faster it means they will take more damage from Empathy or other skills that rely on enemy's actions.
 * Experiment and have fun, that's what the game's about, no one want to be smashing their keyboards ^^

EDIT as of 28/04/08: As of some time most of the PUGs do all the vanquishing/dungs/missions/etc with this fukken Ursan/HB Mo bullshit. Just want to say that this page is dedicated to people that want to do this the proper way(blood, sweat and tears that is) and not just pressing 1 and 2 repeatedly like f***ets.

Ascalon
General Tips Old Ascalon
 * A lot of the enemies are Charr, so if you own EOTN expansion, put up Rebel Yell.
 * You can try Caravan vanquishing From Yak's Bend. six-man team has a significant advantage over four-man.
 * Watch out for tar slowing you down. Fighting in tar leaves you little chance of running away if something goes wrong.

Quite big area to start with. My build is Empathy, Ineptitude, Clumsiness for meele enemies(grawl, etc), Backfire and Arcane Thievery for mages. Leaves place for res, maybe some interrupts, something that suits you. Heroes/Henchmen: Tanking koss("Watch Yourself!", knockdowns are good for grawls)if you're not a warrior, Healing Dunkoro/Tahlkora, either Ele or N, i went with Flesh Golem Olias+horrors,Death Nova, the like.

Start going right to the statue of balthazaar, get 50gp blessing, heroes will get that too so makes for a bit easier fights. Keep an eye out for devourers popping from the ground, don't advance too slowly but don't rush either. Leave NW part of the map(where the trenches are) for last, avoid the cave to the east completelly - only devourers pop out there in big numbers(for 4-player team). When fighting grawls/ulodytes, target latter first, put backfire and steal a spell, switch(TAB) to grawl(s) and hex them with anti-meele(so they loose life). Now, if you stole heal area, ulodyte won't heal himself too much and die quickly. If you stole heal other, grawls won't be healed and will die quickly. Otherwise, you might want to retreat now.

To the south there's Bonetti(easy) and grawl boss(if it's a monk you got a tough fight). Cobble Poundstone might appear on top-centre, interrupt healing signet, otherwise easy. Devourers mainly pop up in north, northeast, east. devourer boss in the cave to W(where that hermit guy is), watch out for pop-ups.

Regent Valley

Starting from Fort Ranik, you may use the same setup as from Old Ascalon, with a bit more emphasis on interrupts, can consider Norgu if you're not a Me. Going off stop by the guards, couple of charr warriors with ash walker behind will engage them, stay behind and help finish them off. A lot less hulking elementals to deal with which is a shame since they're piece of piss really... Renegades will make for a tough fights, they use Mind Burn(even non-eles)/Fire Storm, try to interrupt this, Power Block works well(as on ugolytes). Regular renegades only got mind burn, steal this and they're just regular cannon fodder. Go down to the bridge and ignore area that leads to pockmark flats, there's only devourer pop-ups over there.

Up the southern path there's a small plateau with about ten grawls/ugolytes. Tough area to take at once, so flag the party and pull one. Thing is grawls come in pairs Grawl/Grawl Ulodyte, so pull those and dispatch one at the time. If you get nito a fight with more than one ugolyte, you'll propably die, so just retreat.

Up to kings watch there's a melandru shrine and a charr group, standard 3warriors/ash walker. Grawl closer to the western river tend to be loose kind, so if you aggro one, the rest will ignore it. There's more of them close to the shrine though. Moe devourers up past the northern bridge, with another concentrated group of grawl in about central area of the map, with some hulking elementals. Again, pull those one by one.

Pockmark Flats

Start from Serenity Temple, Devona will be waiting for you over there, so take her. You might want to change your build a bit, more interrupts/shutdown. Also, consicder bringing more powerful skills with higher energy costs instead of cheap spammable ones.

You can start with clearing the big crater, there's quite a lot of mob over there. Along with hulking elementals there are stone elementals, which use eruption and earthquake, try to interrupt or disable these. After that there's only meele ward. What's a big problem however(at least fo us Mesmers) are Storm Riders. Not only they have backfire, which you HAVE to interrupt/disable, but cast Panic on your warriors along with Energy Drain, and come in packs of 2-3. Consider bringing Lion's Comfort instead of Healing Signet and hex removal, i/e. Remove Hex on dunkoro, Inspired Hex, the like.

Further down the map there are occasional devourer pop-ups and a few gargoyles along with ressurect gargoyle, kill that one first, it raises dead allies. Devourers are usually in a pack of four, one beeing necromancer type, the rest are usually rangers with Quick Shot, they spam it right after regular attacks which makes for a fairly high damage output, either blind, cnockdown, etc. Empathy does good damage on them.

Southern paths are pretty low on mobs, mural of balthazzar is empty so no need to go there. There's a devourer boss south of the temple, past the riders circling charr meteor, looks alone but his spawn pops-up when you get close(lure him to avoid that).

Ascalon Foothills Small but not so easy. Run from yak's bend to have size-six party. Minion Masters have a bit of a problem with bodies, so try not to rely on them too much. Greates challenges are Hydras, with Meteor and Phoenix, and Stone Furys with Earthquake, Eruption and Ward Against Melee. You absolutelly must interrupt at least some of these, otherwise you're toast. Elemental warriors are annoying with their Dwarven Battle Stance but well placed Ineptitude or Blinding Flash will make things a lot easier.

There's a statue of grenth up the road, so get there first and get the 50g blessing. The only other type of a monster i've encountered over there are those Singed Oaks, Quickening Zephyr may be a nuisance but otherwise they're quite easy. As for the skills, your standard build will prolly do, make sure you've gat at least two interrupts, something to blind warriors, maybe put dwarven stance on your warrior to interrupt enemy casters, or knockdown skills. There's no bosses in this area.

The Breach Not really difficult. You'll encounter mainly Charr, so Rebel Yell is a good choice, along with some Vanguard skills. You might want to drop Ineptitude Here since it'll really work to it's fullest on Warriors only. I've did it with my standard bullshit build (Empathy, Ineptitude, Backfire, Inverter, few interrupts) along with Hundred Blades Koss, Earth Knockdown Vekk and Healing Tahlkora.

The northern part are just Charr, mainly in groups of three, four. These will have a different composition, RRRW, RRW, MeMoWR, MoMoEW etc. What you need to be aware if is if there's a E in the party and interrupt it's Meteor Shower and then Backfire or Pain Inverter him, they spam Flare. You may also want to use Pain Inverter on the Monks since they'll cast Shield of Judgment (switch your monk to not-attack). W's are fairly easy, but R's deal some decent damage with Ignite Arrows and Dual Shot, and on top of that your H/H will start running around as if they were hit by DoTAoE. Necros will hex your party to oblivion so try to interrupt them and/or Backfire. The area to northwest holds a few gargoyles and the ruins where a few Ascalon Soldiers stand have a few Devourer popups, not much of a challenge. Few bosses of warious proffesions, also not really a huge challenge. Remeber to pull carerfully and you'll do this one without a major problem(my Vekk got 45%DP at the end and the rest died once or twice but i made it in the end).

Diessa Lowlands You'll want to start from Nolani or Courthouse, but run here from Yak's Bend instead - The party size there is six instead of four and that will give you a significant boost. I've got the same bullshit build as in The Breach(See above) except i've switched Tahlkora for Prot Ogden, plus Stefan and Alesia.

This area has a big variety of foes: Charr, elementals, gargoyles, devourers, storm riders or hydras, so you have to be prepared for everything. Start by going around from the north, towards the entrance to Flame Temple Corridor. You'll encounter mainly Charr over there so put on Rebel Yell. The composition of groups varies greatly athough it's always either six or four. As with The Breach watch out for Meteor Shower and Necro hexes and try to get the Shamans or Martyrs first(watch out for Shield of Judgment. It's a lot easier to take these groups on with a group of six.

The gargoyles come only in three flavors: Shatter(Me), Flash(E) and Ressurect(Mo). Try to kill the latter ones first. Hex removal is useful here, as with Charr. The gargoyles aren't really dangerous unless in a big group. Other foes are met occasionally, devourer pop-ups are not very dangerous if you're aware of your surroundings and elementals are only either W's or E's. Empathy/Ineptitude first and Backfire/Pain Inverter the others. There are two places that might give you a lot of trouble. The first one is a "Charr Temple" in the lower centre part of the map. The first part is not very tough if you know how to pull, but at the end(up the stairs) things might get pretty nasty. I've got a E and Mo bosses to attack me at the same time(and made it) so you'll have to be extra careful over here, don't go gung-ho and retreat when things don't work out the way you wanted. The second place is just notrth of Nolani Academy entrance. There's a huge spawn of gargoyles over there clustered close to eachother. Even with careful pulling it's not uncommon to aggro two groups at the same time, and with three Rez'ers you'll be pretty much hexed and nuked to oblivion. Interrupt and Backfire any and all.

Few bosses aren't really a huge challenge. I took two of them at once and survived. Also, consider doing Flame Temple Corridor after this, saves getting there with a 6-man party.

Flame Temple Corridor It's a good idea to do this area immediatelly after you've vanguished Diessa Lowlands, especially if you're in a party of six since it'll save you a lot of running.

The whole area consists of only Charr and a few hydras which should be dead before you'll ever reach them. The area is quite small and if you'll pull correctly it will be quite easy to vanquish. Most of the charr stand in a groups of two and don't patrol. The thing is they stand close to eachother so if you'll attack one the neighbour ones will attack you, so you have to pull them away a bit. Better to be safe than sorry.

The biggest problem is the "temple area". There are five groups on the top with additional ones surrounding from below. Pulling them is a difficult task since they don't go far before retreating, and attacking head on is pretty much a suicide. You could kill the first two Scouts by letting them attack you while being healed from behind and hexing them so they'll kill themselves. After that you'll probably pull two or three groups at once. It's still possible to kill them at once if you won't aggro the E's standing behind them.

Dragon's Gullet Quite a difficult area to vanquish(at least for me it was). Also more frustrating as there's tar almost everywhere slowing you down. I used the same build as for two previous areas since i did all of them in one go. Because of hydras it would be wise to have an anti-caster hero.

The most dangerous enemy you will encounter here are Hydras, usually in packs of three or four. They usually cast Meteor before charging in to finish off with PBAoE. I got wiped twice because of them in this area, so you have to be extra careful, interrupt as much a spossible, spread everyone so they don't have a chance to hit multiple targets, hex, hex, and hex.

Other mob is not really dangerous. Charr are only by the entrance and are easy to dispatch. Tar Behemoths are pushovers, taking full DoT/AoEDoT. They don't dish out much damage either and if for some reason you'll get in trouble you can always run easily since they don't move at all. Abominations can put some pressure on you but only if there's more than three of them. Try to interrupt their minion spell. They don't do much damage either.

Northern Shiverpeaks
Traveler's Vale Quite easy. Parth size is six, so take additional tank and monk and you'll be fine. Most of the groups are either 3 or 4, with an exception of a few. When fighting dwarves you'll get a pattern of either W/R/Me or W/W/Me/E(siege golem), or some variations of these. Target golems first as they use damage/snare hexes which really piss off(and make tactical retreats impossible...). You can take care of W's with Ineptitude/Empathy/Clumsiness. You could try with Arcane Thievery on sages since you'll get your proffession spells(if you're a Mesmer^^) but then i'll got useless crap like Illusion of Haste most of the time...

Few bosses, the toughest one is a monk in the pass northwest, although with careful interrupting and/or Backfire it's not too tough. Up the north there's a tricky area where mob patrolling areas are quite small and overlapping eachother so you have to be carefull when pulling. One big 6-8 individuals group on the "top" of the map. Also, watch outfo occasional Juniper Bark pop-ups, Signet of Judgment knocks down AoE - get caugh in the fray and you're Dolyak food.

If you killed everything and still not get the reward, get back to previously visited areas, stone summit's got a few W/Me patrols with long paths, so you might have missed them.

Anvil Rock

There's been quite of some time since i vanquished something, and with the release of GWEN my build has changed a bit. You get six blokes and gals in the party, so i've got now W/Mo Knockdown Jora(Earth Shaker and the like), E/Mo Knockdown/Blind/Ward Vekk(Unsteady Ground, Earthquake, Eruption, couple of wards) and Mo prot Ogden, with Zealous Benediction, SoA, Protective Spirit, Reversal of Fortune and Signet of Devotion. Throw in Stefan and Alesia and you're good to go. I've got a bog-standard anti melee Ineptitude build with Pain Inverter Now the minotaurs here might be lvl.24 but they're piss easy. They don;t have any elite skill and just annoy with Endure Pain, but don't dish out much damage at all, and with melee ward and prot prayers youre in no danger at all. There's a minotaur boss spawn point on the map, but he's pretty much pitiful. Frostfire Dryders on the other hand will put tremendous pressure on your healers with their health steal and degeneration skills. Just four of them can be a really worthy opponent so try to Backfire and interrrupt them as much as you can. You could also come upon a dryder boss of some proffesion, he doesn't use any skills so he's really a pushover. To the bottom right portion of the map there's a bit of Stone Summit to deal with, along with a Necro boss, Rind Windroot(?). A lot of Sages(Me) and Howlers(N) to deal with, melee characters might fins it difficult with Crippling Anguish and Empathy. It's best to Backfire and interrupt them. They also deny enchantments. I strongly advise against starting from Ice Tooth Cave. Go form The Frost Gate instead and start dealing with the Summit straight away, then move north to dryders. After that you could start circling the map or go back and deal with dryders and centaurs near southern/southwestern portion. After that most of the map are minotaurs and a bit of centaurs. The latter are not the easiest enemies, but not the toughest either. The only problem is the Jolo Lighhauch Mo boss group, which has him and additional two protectors(on top of W's and R's) and is quite a pain to defeat. A good idea is to spike one of the Mo's and then retreat and regenerate. The counter clocked a bit above 200 enemies.

Griffon's Mouth

Small and relativelly easy. Only a few Ice golems encountered here, with their Water Trident they don't pose too much damage. Worse are the Snow Ettins. Not only they are dmage orientated Warriors, but usually come in packs of four. Get an anti melee build with blinds (Ineptitude/Signet of Midnight/Blinding Flash) and spam Empathy and Clumsiness on them. they're fairly tough but don't carry any self healing.

Three bosses, elementalist dragon-like thingy, he dosen't deal massive damage but uses Glyph of concentration so your interrupts are useless(you shouldn't bring them here anyway). Warrior Ettin boss carries Healing Signet, so concentrate on other ettins while blinding him. Monk Ettin boss dosen't carry any skills at all.

Iron Horse Mine

Not the biggest or hardest area but it has it's moment. Change your build to accomodate for enchantment/hex removal, anti caster and a bit of anti melee.Shatter Enchantment, Inspired Enchantment, same for hexes, Ineptitude, Backfire, an interrupt or two wont harm, such as Cry of Pain or Power Block. Also, if you have an Elementalist, you could change his build to fire, get your monk an hex removal or two, a few interrupts for a Ranger, dazed infliction, etc.

the south-eastern area contains patrols of stone summit: Stone Summit Sages, Stone Summit Beastmasters and some W's or R's. Beastmasters knock down whole party and Sages carry Empathy. Pain Inverter works on both of them. If you don't carry it, Interrupt the former and Backfire the latter. the cave to the north got only Snow Ettins which are quite easy.

The main strip mine are, among other parts of the map, sontains a lot of Stone Summit patrols consisting of (usually) two W's or W/R and a Dolyak Rider. These carry Remove Hex and Mark of Protection among other skills so you have to have a plan of defeating them. As soon as you cast a hex on anyone the Rider will remove it, cast enchantments and then Protection on whoever is under attack. So what you have to do is cast a hex on anyone in their party that isn't Backfire, then cast Backfire on the Rider and starty attacking him. Then try to interrupt Mark of Protection and if you're succesfull it's pretty much win, if you fail, Remove the enchantment, if you fail again switch targets immediatelly and wait until it wears out. If you'll keep attacking the rider it will just heal him. The Riders don't have much means of healing themselves so after it wore out they're pretty easy to kill.

The northwestern part is populated by Frostfire Dryders. As mentioned in Anvil Rock's walkthrough earlier there are quite dangerous. Usually they'll be alone or in pairs, but a few times you'll encounter a group of four or five. Spread your party so Suffering doesn't get everyone on the first cast and try to remove their most dangerous hexes, like Soul Leech. Good skill ideas for this part are Hex Eater Signet, Avatar of Dwayna, Hexbreaker Aria, Purge Signet or Convert Hexes, to name a few.

The rest of the map shouldn't be very difficult. A few patrols hae long routes so after you've killed everything and still didn't get the Vanquisher, try to run around and look for those missing patrols. Also, get The Wayward Monk quest, Cynn Will help you.

Deldrimor_Bowl

Moderate size and a quite easy area. Centaurs, centaurs and even more centaurs! And coming only in three flavours, Shiverpeak Warrior, Shiverpeak Longbow and Shiverpeak Protector. So equip mainly anti melee with Backfire and Crippling Anguish or Imagined Burden - the Protectors like to run in circles while healin everyone so a bit of a snare is only good against them. Warrior with cripple infliction or Knockdowns is a good idea too.

About one-third of the groups you'll encounter won't even have a Protector in them. Thing is, a lot of them will have two of those healing eachother. I've actually got 2+monk boss in one group and got wiped, so you'll just have to hope for the best. Body-blocking running protectors is also a good idea. They don't have any hex removal, so you can base your build on that and fire away, or maybe get a necro hexer hero. Also, Rangers put Winter absolutelly everywhere, so skills like Greater Conflagration or elemental based weapons/conjure anything are not a good idea.

A few bosses in the area, Necromancer i've encountered wasn't using any skills, unlike Monk and Elementalist(Ice). all in all, not so hard.

Kryta
Scoundrel's Rise

Small, but bloody hell is it annoying. You'll swear a lot on this map. First, mergoyle wavebreakers that you'll prolly encounter first cast Grasping Earth and Deep Freeze. They deal fair amount of damage with this and Crystal Wave, so try to interrupt that. Worse are regular mergoyles, mesmers with Power Block. Of course, your monk will ALWAYS get hit by that. Luckily they don't deal all that much damage(it's still dangerous though) but use Mind Wrack/Spirit Shackles combo, so don't wand around too much.

Last, but not least, Bog Skale. First, they will cast Soul Barbs and then spam you with the rest of their hexes, triggering soul barbs. Life Siphon on a whole party, same for Price of Failure (switch monks/etc to non-attack mode and don't wand) and my personal favourite, Spiteful Spirit. With Curses at 20 it will hit you and adjacent allies for 45 damage... Now imagine this on EVERY party memeber... Even with massive hex removal you'll still get a huge amounts of damage. Spread your party and don't be afraid to retreat. Backfire them and interrupt SS or try to steal it(Arcane Thievery/Inspired Hex).

No bosses in this area. The swamp to the west makes you poisoned, so pull the skale over there to dry land before dispatching them. Toughest group is six bog skales about the centre of the map. No melee mob in this area, so focus your team on anti-caster skills. Interrupts, shutdowns, knockdowns, you name it.

Watchtower Coast

This area splits into two parts: the southern piss easy one and the northern "fuck this necro/mesmer shit!" part. So. Convert Hexes is an extremelly good idea, get Shatter Hex or any other hex removal or two, preferably on everyone you can. Swing towards anti-caster with Pain Inverter and Empathy and you're good to go.

Go towards the northern, more difficult area first. Mergoyle Wavebreakers are not really dangerous, but Mergoyle and Bog Skale really pack a (hex)punch. Mergoyles use the Spirit Shackles/Mind Wrack combo so order your caster not to attack and don't wand yourself. Also, if you've got an Ele, switch his build from air - Mergoyle use Mantra of Lightning. Bog Skale will hex you to hell and back, expecially with Spiteful Spirit and Soul Barbs which will trigger often since almost all they cast are hexes. SSpirit on multiple party members will quickly decimate it, but that's why you have Convert Hexes and other heavy hex removal. It's absolutelly critical that casters don't wand at this point and Monks and Warriors stay relativelly hex-free(especially monks). H/H Monk with SS on him will heal someone, get damage, heal himself and get damage, and so on until he stupidly dies. Also, pull carefully.

The southern part's got Tengu(W/R/Me), but they're not really dangerous(compared to Skale...) and there's not much of them. the Oakhearts might stand around alone but as soon as you attack them, Spined Aloes will pop-out from the ground to heal them. For hilarity, cast Pain Inverter on the aloe after it cast Holy Wrath and order everyone to attack it. The Wrath spell will deal damage to everyone and the aloe will take damage from Inverter because it deals damage. And there's nothing it can do about it ^.^ The oakhearts are pretty much easy Rangers with a few traps, usually there's only two of them so no problem here.

The Black Curtain Right, this is the area from which you will be doing Caravan vanquishing in three different directions, This>Kessex Peak, the Lion's Arch way up to wherever you want to finish, and Maguuma Jungle way. This area is really worse than Watchtower Coast even though you've got two more party members(since you're starting from temple of the ages). Most of the mob is casters so go anti-caster/hex removal. Again, Convert Hexes is REALLY usefull, on top of your regular hex removal, Inspired Hex/Shatter Hex might help too. Any interrupts are also recommended, knockdowns, etc.I've went with my bullshit build with Inspired Hex, Hundred Blades Koss, earth magic knockdown/blind/ward Vekk and Prot Ogden. On top of that Stefan, Orion, Claude, Alesia.

Start going to the left on the map(your right as you exit the temple), this is a very hard area with a boss, but the swamp over here doesn't get you poisoned(for some unknown reason). Reed Stalkers are quite dangerous and spam Wastrel's Worry and Clumsiness, so don't wand (and order your monks/other not to). The Bog Skale Blighters are much more dangerous with their Spiteful Spirit. There are a lot of them here and to the south-western part, along with numerous pop-ups of Spined Aloe. You MUST interrupt SSpirit as much as possible and don't aggro more than one group. Also, if you're using hex removal, use it on Monks first, then on Warriors. In this area there's a Elementalist boss accompanied by a few imps. Nothing too dangerous.

The western part is dominated by Skeletonn and undead and the waters cause poison.You don't need to take poison removal since it'll ususally be on a whole party and you can cross the swamp in some safe places and just wait for it to wear out. To the north, packs of Rangers don't pose too much of a challenge. Further down there's patrols of Necrid Horseman+Hellhound packs. Kill the horsemen first, they're not very dangerous if taken one group at a time, but because of their long patrol routes they might appear in a middle of a fight with somone else. Also, don't engage them near Damned Clerics. These seem to be alone but as soon as you approach them a few Wraiths and Smoke Phantoms will appear and start attacking you. Again, they're not uber-dangerous if taken one group at a time, but watch out for the horsemen patrols, take the Cleric out first and interrupt any Chain Lightning.

Fog Nightmares inhabitate southeastern bend of the swamps. When low on health they will use Grenth's Balance on a party member which can cause 250-300 damage in one hit. It's also a 1/4s activation time spell, so you'll just have to brace for impact(noone died in my party because of that, but still...). They also use Mark of Subversion, which is annoying on your monk, so if you have hex removal use it on monks(they will try to remove it themselves and cause damage). The southern part will contain some minotaurs, but they're piss easy.