Making things hard

So with my new ability to enter hard mode, I decided to play around in Old Ascalon for a while. No surprise, I found Old Ascalon to be a little bit more challenging. I'm actually going to have to think through my build and that of my heroes a little more. Problems I'm facing:

Enemies tend to run away more frequently, making healers very difficult to kill.
Smaller number of enemies than I'm used to. 2-3 in a group.
The build I'm currently doing is simply not doing enough damage.
Enemies are more likely to go after my monk.

Incidentally: My monk is using his interrupt with great success and staying full of energy. My SS and Mes are not keeping enough energy at all.

So, the first thing that comes to mind is that I'm going to have to start seriously tanking. The second is that I'm going to have to rebuild to feature more direct single enemy hate.


One step is going to be to use a Domination/Inspriation Mesmer to shut the target down. Key skill: Diversion. Looking at the skill bars for enemies in Old Ascalon, they have about 3-4 skills each. So, if you can simply take a skill away as you interrupt it, you've gained a huge advantage.

Since there will be a number of Shatter Gargoyles, Shatter Hex seems like it will also be useful.

Minor Victories

Atleast there are some things I'm capable of doing. Tried to H&H Hell's Precipice and tried with a few pugs. Better success with H&H but it wasn't good. Eventually I connected up with a dervish and a single monk. We trashed the place, using heroes. My heroes were a WoH Ogden, livia with SS/Mes skills, and Gwen with some good illusion hate. The Derv brought Talk and Zedd as a water ele.

Big shock came when the monk showed his skills at the start... What, fire rain, on a monk, in a ring of fire mission? No no no no no.... Got him corrected on that, and we trashed it. Next step to go back and take care of bonus for my first max title. Woot!

Nerf/Buff/Bugs/Set Back

So... As if this wasn't hard enough, yesterday they fixed a bug where the destroyers weren't self-healing. Now they self heal. Wipe came really fast. I'll have to look back through and regroup to figure out how to turn this disadvantage into an advantage.

The best place to start: the middle

So, my goal is simple: Figure out a way to reliably beat Glint's Challenge using my existing character and only what's available through Prophecies and Eye of the North. Why? Because that's what I own, that's why. So, I've actually been doing this for a bit. (That's why this is the middle.) The problem is, I've been making tweaks and wholesale changes and can't remember what's worked and what hasn't worked. My best attempt, so far, has been to get towards the end of wave 5. At that point it broke down. What did my team look like? I don't remember.... So now, I'm starting from the ground up... Again...

I'll be posting records of my builds, the changes and the reasons for the change on this blog.