The Eternal Grove, Assassin, H/H

I’ll spare you the diatribe about how and why I’m playing Guild Wars again, and how I ended up rolling an entirely new character, and just get straight to the good stuff.

Assassin:

• 11 + 1 + 1 Dagger Mastery
• 6 Shadow Arts
• 12 + 1 Critical Strikes

• Unsuspecting Strike
• Fox Fangs
• Death Blossom
• Death’s Charge
• Shadow Refuge
• Optional (Breath of the Great Dwarf)
• Optional (Word of Healing)
• Critical Agility

The only time I’ve found it necessary to have a secondary on an Assassin is for perma, and frankly, I’d rather just grab my heroes and lay waste to an entire area – it seems far faster to generate platinum by doing that, than by farming specific drops.

The optional slots are entirely optional – you totally don’t need them. I left Word of Healing on my bar by accident after capturing it for Ogden, as it were. As for Breath, I like it due to killing burning and providing a quick party heal. It’s pretty useless in this mission.

CA, SR and some form of shadowstep are critical for this mission. CA should never leave your skill bar at any time, to be honest, it’s just that awesome. But you’re going to be doing a lot of solo-vs-small group combat; what you do is CA, SR, shadowstep, start Death Blossoming.

You also want energy-sucking blades – I’m currently using Pywatt’s Talons (which just look awesome), but Droknar’s Daggers will do in a pinch too. I picked up Pywatt’s due to the enchantment bonus, when I started playing around with Perma – but I like to keep it around for CA, too. And since you should always be using CA, you should always get your damage bonus, to boot.

In terms of armor, I’m running full Survivor. The HP really helps out. I’ve got a Rune of Superior Vigor thrown in, which is of supreme importance – but feel free to spend ~4k instead of 22k and get the next level down – missing 9 hp isn’t as important as getting at least +41 hp.

Hero #1 (Tank):

I used Jora for this, simply because she’s the only hero I’ve invested in so far. She’s set up with mostly +hp/+armor stuff, but any tank (M.O.X. even) will do in a pinch. But for interest:

• 9 + 1 Strength
• 12 + 1 + 2 Swordsmanship
• 9 + 1 Tactics

• Sever Artery
• Gash
• Final Thrust
• Savage Slash
• Shield Bash
• Watch Yourself!
• Healing Signet
• Resurrection Signet

…This is a completely random build; I’ve never played a Warrior, haven’t looked into decent builds, and I haven’t been buying/capturing skills for Jora. Should note she’s wielding a Murakai’s Blade – the energy regeneration is near useless with this build, but I plan on giving her a much cooler weapon whenever I can upgrade her to Deldrimor armor. Yes, I’m vain, and want my heroes to look imposing, damn it.

Hero #2 – Livia – Minion Master – N/E:

You simply need an MM for this mission – two would be better, but one does well in a pinch. Livia’s my Necro of choice – I really need to get around to upgrading her a bit.

• 9 Blood Magic
• 12 Death Magic
• 9 Soul Reaping
• 3 Earth Magic

• Jagged Bones
• Animate Bone Minions
• Blood of the Master
• Death Nova
• Well of Blood
• Glyph of Lesser Energy
• Churning Earth
• Eruption

I’m tempted to kill Well of Blood from this build, since Livia often uses it far too often, when I’d prefer she raise a larger army. Still, she seems to add a hell of a lot more kick to my party these days.

Hero #3 – Ogden – Healer:

Definitely need a hero healer, simply because you want to split into two groups, and your hero group will need healage.

• 12 Healing Prayers
• 3 Protection Prayers
• 12 Divine Favor

• Word of Healing
• Orison of Healing
• Ethereal Light
• Healing Touch
• Signet of Devotion
• Healing Seed
• Draw Conditions
• Resurrection Signet

I didn’t give Ogden a non-signet rez after reading an interesting article about the merits of heroes with rez. It made some damned good points about the time/energy cost of rez spells, and how they will end up causing a wipe instead of just having a single group member lying on the ground until your current predicament is solved.

Still, this is a long battle – you might want a rez, but disable it and use it manually if you do take it.

Henchmen:

• Devona (<3)
• Aidan
• Eve
• Jamei

The important thing here is Devona (she’s an arsekicking machine and can hold a line for a decent amount of time) and Jamei. Everything else is negotiable, though I like Aidan because being a Ranger, I’m figuring he does some interrupting or something. Interrupting the bosses/monks is a good thing.

The Mission

Phase One

In the first phase of the mission, you’ll be fighting off Luskan, err, Luxon, invaders. (Yes, I went Kurzick solely because Luxon reminds me of Luskan, and I hate those damnable Luskans.) This is the easy part. This is the really easy part.

Place your party at the top of the stairs to the right. Place your heroes on the left stairs – Jora near the bottom, Livia and Ogden near the top.

Sit back and relax until you get warnings about siege turtles. Who’s going to kill siege turtles? You’re going to kill siege turtles.

On approach to a turtle, activate CA and SR, shadowstep to a ranger, and begin laying waste to the rangers – keeping an eye on your health and activating SR as necessary. You want to whack two or three of the rangers before hitting the turtle, simply because their damage really adds up when you’re solo. If you have good armor/skillz, you can survive it, but this is a long mission – you’re better safe than sorry. Once you’ve killed some of the DPS, slaughter the turtle. Make sure you keep an eye out for reinforcements if you’re on the north or south slopes – generally they run by, but aggroing a pair of elementalists can really ruin your day.

After killing a turtle, check the situation – feel free to mop up the rangers if you’ve the time. If there’s another turtle up, go kill it, if not, return to the central area and help out your teams or smoke a cigarette.

Phase Two

This is where things get hairy. Immediately upon cutscene completion, you need to get to work on placement – you can activate the three juggernauts, and you want them, but they move slooooooow and you’ve got Afflicted en route.

Place your party on the right – behind the gate – between the two hills. Grab a single juggernaut and put it in front of them.

Place your heroes on the left – again, behind the gate. Jora should be in the center. Ogden can go on the hill to your right – often times, if he’s not busy, he’ll run over to help your other group with healing. Place Livia on the hill to the left. You want the other two juggernauts with Jora.

Sit back, make sure your insurance forms are filled out, and wait for the balloon to go up – you won’t wait long.

The first waves consist of mixed groups on both gates – your party shouldn’t have any problems with the right gate, but do keep an eye on them. The left gate is your glorious chance for failure. You end up with a lot of Afflicted stacking up really quickly, including ranged afflicted and a devastating boss. If possible, you want to be in the thick of things on the left gate – try and take out the initial rush as soon as possible, to provide ample fodder for Livia. Step back, wait for the boss to charge, take him out. Then quickly play cleanup – shadowstepping, if necessary, to the back lines of the Afflicted to take out their ranged/monk support. WATCH YOUR HEALTH AT ALL TIMES! It’s very easy to die here – be very careful when attacking the Afflicted rear. It may make sense to not attack the rear before you eliminate some of the Afflicted on the front lines – you don’t want them swinging about and nailing you when you’re down the stairs – concentrated ranged fire from the numerous rangers, mesmers and elementalists will roast you.

The next few waves are general mixed groups, and should be light. Keep an eye on your hero and henchman parties, assisting where necessary – your assistance will again usually be in the form of shadowstepping to the rear and laying waste to support. Also, as you lose juggernauts, now’s a good time to re-activate them (they’ll be at the north tree – the one to the right) and re-place them.

The final wave consists of two bosses hitting the right gate. At the same time, you’ll have some very minor action on the left – I believe a pair of Afflicted Warriors. Livia can deal with those on her own; so at this point you can either move Jora, Ogden, or both of them to the right.

In terms of the boss fight, your job is simple – sit back, let Devona/etc. take aggro, then shadowstep to the rear and execute the Afflicted Monk. Once that’s done, cleaning up the two bosses is simple – I suggest taking out the ritualist first. The assassin boss didn’t seem like much of a threat, he simply took some time to take down.

Enjoy the Master’s reward – what a nightmare.

Final Thoughts

This is the roughest mission I’ve done solo. There have been some missions in EotN I simply couldn’t solo – kicking Cyndr’s butt, for example. There have been missions that were impossible until I figured out the correct tactics – A Time For Heroes, for example – I paid 1k for my first run; my second run was done on the first try thanks to clever placement, and myself doing nothing during the fight but spamming Breath of the Great Dwarf and Pain Inverter.

Still, this monstrosity, I ran probably a dozen times before succeeding.

The most important things to keep in mind while running this mission are to watch your health – don’t sacrifice yourself for the sake of quick damage. You’re doing a lot of soloing, and you can’t afford to bring Ogden to you if you bite the dust on a siege turtle or behind a line of Afflicted. Second, preparation and knowledge is key – knowing which team needs your assistance, why they need it, and when they need it, is the key to victory.

And keep an eye on your health at all times!

Nine down, four more to go… Ugh!