HALLS | DUNGEONS
| INSTANCES
| DEEDS
| REPUTATION
FELLOWSHIP INSTANCES AND SKIRMISHES
THE GRAND STAIR
|
|
Location: Redhorn Lodes, 10.2S, 103.9W. Type: Level 56 Instance, Fellowship Mobs: Orcs, Goblins, Wargs, Trolls Description: In elder days, this |
The Grand Stair is the late-game equivalent to the Great Barrow
Maze. Chances are, you will end up running it at some point if you
haven't already. At one time, it was the player's first taste of
endgame content, separating the wheat from the chaff. Currently,
it serves a similar purpose - a late-game yardstick which can show
a player his strengths and weaknesses and teach him how to
function in a group. It's also the first real late-game content
that can teach a player the difference between a good, capable
group and a lousy, incompetent one. And it's the instance many
players "farm" for Medallions of Moria to barter for outstanding
level 60 armor, so there are almost always GS runs happening.
There are a couple of ways to do this one: daily challenge mode
or full-clear mode. It is not possible to do both modes in one
run, so pick a mode before you go in and plan your trip
accordingly.
Both modes start the same way. Head down the first set of stairs
and watch the little drama between instance boss Igash the Fanatic
and his minion, Izkal the Pummeler. Igash informs Izkal of an
impending rebellion fueled by the arrival of a band of interfering
Free People, and instructs him that he has ten minutes to get
things under control.
Izkal the Pummeler
Izkal is not that tough. Once the gate drops, everyone can rush
in and start laying down a fast, savage beating. Ranged attackers
will want to move all the way across the bridge just in case they
accidentally pull aggro off the tanks - if Izkal runs onto the
bridge, he resets. Fight him on his platform and this won't
happen. During the fight, he will call out "You will learn the
meaning of terror!" and inflict the group with a fear debuff. The
fear debuff doesn't do all that much, but everyone will want to
pot it off as soon as it happens. Later on during the fight, he
will call out "Feed me your fear!" and anyone still affected by
the debuff will heal Izkal. Having a Captain in the group helps
immensely for this - a Muster Courage immediately after the group
debuff strips away the fear and prevents Izkal from healing. If
the group has no Captain, everyone needs fear potions.
Once Izkal is engaged, the group has ten minutes to get to Nardur
the Shield, who is several challenging fights away. A high-DPS
group will have no problem reaching Nardur in ten minutes, but the
group wants to move fast once Izkal is down. Hang a quick right
and down the stairs and take out the pair of warg-riders there.
Zip along the walkway, but keep the tank in the lead - there are
two stealthed goblins waiting at the far end of the walkway, and
they will pop out when the tank gets within aggro range. Take them
out quick, down the next set of stairs and engage the next two
warg-riders on the right. Ignore the uruks standing to the left at
the drawbridge and press on down.
Follow the path down and right until you see the four
warg-riders. Two of them are stationary and two of them are
patrolling in a circle. Additionally, there is a stealthed goblin
near the bottom of the stairs. Keep an eye on the patrolling wargs
and pull one of them when it is right at the foot of the stairs -
this will draw only two of them plus the goblin. Tough, over-level
groups can probably handle all the wargs and goblins at once, but
on-level groups will want to fight smarter.
Once these wargs are defeated, stick to the right. There is a bridge
with stealthed goblins - send the tank to yank them out of stealth.
Everyone will want to fight on the bridge here - the goblins have
rather zealous anti-exploit measures and will glitch out if they
aggro on a player not standing on the bridge. After the bridge is
another group of four patrolling warg-riders. These can also be
pulled in pairs.
Nardur the Shield
At around this time, the group will find out whether or not they
have what it takes to get to Nardur in time. A billboard message
pops up at the halfway point. If the group is slow, there are a
couple of options:
1) Step up the DPS. Take more risks and kill things faster.
Hunters can use a more aggressive stance, Guardians can try
tanking in Overpower, Champions can stick to Fervour. Ramp it up
and push yourselves.
2) Disband and start again, but do things faster and better. You
may need to replace the weak links, or retrait for higher DPS.
3) Use the mechanics of the instance. You have ten minutes to
reach Nardur, whether you defeat him or not. Pick the group's
toughest, dodgiest, or generally-most-able-to-not-die character
and send him up to Nardur's station at the top of the stairs to
the left. The runner cannot have any active heal-over-time effects
running, or the mobs will focus their attentions on the healer
rather than the runner. If the runner survives, he can head
back to the group, pulling all of the orcs up there with him, or
he can leap over the side and plummet to his death, which still
activates Nardur but doesn't jeopardize the rest of the group with
an overpowering pull. Some players may believe this to be a cheap
exploit, but the devs have declared that it is not.
If you don't make it to Nardur in time, Igash calls out to the
other orcs that they have been betrayed, and Nardur - the leader
of the rebellion - heads for the hills while the remaining orcs
fight it out. In other words, he despawns and you lose his loot
chests.
If the group is doing fine, just keep plugging away... but waste
no time getting to Nardur. After the warg-riders, there is a
goblin hiding on the stairs, and four trios of orcs at Nardur's
station at the top. Most groups want to clear the platform in
order to fight Nardur there, because he has some serious
knock-back attacks that can send poorly-positioned players flying
to their doom. The safest spot to fight him is with everyone's
backs to the gate across the platform from the stairs.
Alternately, the tanks and melee guys can engage him at the foot
of the stairs, keeping the whole rest of the platform behind them
so they have flying room.
Technically speaking, a full-clear run can simply skip Nardur and
never have to worry about him. But Nardur's death spawns two
chests - each with a medallion in it - and you can complete this
part of the challenge in a full-clear run, so there's really no
reason not to do it. After Nardur's defeat, the group can relax
for a bit - the race is over and the group can tackle the rest of
the instance at its own leisurely pace. But where you go next
depends on whether you are doing a full clear or challenge mode.
For challenge mode, backtrack to Izkal's station and follow the
path north to Igash's throne room. For a full clear, you have lots
of options: backtrack to Izkal's station and take out the bosses
in the western sections, slog your way through a couple of groups
of uruks up the stairs to the east, or head back down to the warg
pens.
Glothrok the Vile
The warg pens have two sections: the place where they keep the
wargs and the place where they keep the boss. With small,
controlled pulls, the warg room is easy. The boss, Glothrok the
Vile, is a harrowing and frustrating ordeal. Make sure the group
has at least one Hunter for this fight.
It starts out simply enough - a spank-and-tank boss fight.
Glothrok will spam poison attacks on everyone in the group, and
some of these poisons have a timed stun effect. The group's Hunter
will need to spam Purge Poison for the entire fight - there is
almost no time for the poison-controlling Hunter to actually shoot
anything. After beating on the mounted goblin for a bit, he hops
down off his warg and they heal up and fight as a pair. Focus DPS
on the warg first and take him down quickly, and keep the tank on
the goblin. In this stage of the fight, he will summon four waves
of wargs into the fight, and the wargs will usually head straight
for the healers. Fortunately, the warg adds are fairly squishy and
can be dispatched quickly with Champion area-effect attacks... but
they do manage to dish out some hurt when they activate, so these
waves are priority targets when they come in.
Gothghaash the Firecaller
The next big fight is against the ghash-hai orcs in the west.
There are three groups of them on the western platform, one of
them patrolling up and down the ramp. Pull these groups carefully
- if you get two groups at once, they can be overwhelming and it
will be difficult to burn through the enemy heals. Take out the
healers first and deal with the melee guys after.
Head up the ramp, take out the small groups up there and prepare
for a barbecue. Gothghaash waits at the top on his
industrial-sized grill. This fight is not all that hard but
requires some good situational awareness and split DPS. Make sure
everyone gets into the room and off the ramp so the fight doesn't
reset if a ranged attacker accidentally draws aggro. Watch out for
puddles of fire on the floor and move away from them, and keep an
eye out for the fumaroles he will occasionally spawn in. The
fumaroles heal him up, so destroy them quickly when they pop
up.
The Beast and the Beast Tamer
After killing Gothghaash, head back down and find the stairs
leading down to the trolls. You can't miss 'em - they're on the
left and there are trolls on them. Fighting trolls in the Grand
Stair is a risky proposition because of the big, swinging
knockback attacks - always make sure you have your back to a wall
when fighting them, or, when that's not possible, a lot of room in
a straight line behind you (see crude illustration below). There
are two pairs of trolls on the stairs - one melee, one ranged -
and three groups of trolls and keepers down at the bottom. Take
out the keepers first, melee trolls second and leave the
boulder-chuckers for last.
When the big, dark room is cleared, you come to the lair of the
slumbering Beast and his keeper, Dorozg the Beast Tamer. The Beast
is pacified by the sound of beating drums, but the little goblin
drummers flee in terror when the group approaches. If you don't
want to fight both the keeper and the Beast at the same time,
someone is going to need to step up and unleash their inner Peter
Criss. Any character is capable of playing the drums provided they
have the proper training from a Minstrel, but the group's Minstrel
is probably the last person you want playing the drums during the
fight against Dorozg. The group still needs healing.
It is possible to fight both bosses at once and survive, but not
advisable. The Beast hits like a truck and has a damaging aura,
and has some nasty area-effect attacks for anyone unlucky enough
to be caught in the middle of them while fighting his keeper. It
is better to let sleeping Beasts lie, so figure out who in the
group can play drums and stick them there until Dorozg is down.
Dorozg is protected by a shimmering bubble that functions in the
same way as a Minstrel's Lyric of the Hammerhand - any damage done
to him while the bubble is up is applied to his Power rather than
his Morale. He's not terribly dangerous by himself, but the fight
runs long because of the shield. When Dorozg falls, the Beast
awakens regardless of whether or not anyone is playing the drums.
The Beast is a savage brute. He bats characters around like he's
swatting flies, has a truckload of morale, and will occasionally
stop and smash the ground, doing massive damage to anyone standing
near him. When he shouts "The ground will shake" it's time to get
some distance from him. He does around 1100 damage per smash and
he smashes the ground around 4 times so get across the room and
wait for his temper tantrum to end before getting back into melee
range.
Hunter Class Quest
On the way to Igash, Hunters will find a dead body on the last
platform before the stairs leading up to the throne room. Make
sure everyone knows you are doing your class quest before clicking
on this body, and that everyone is prepared to handle it.
Clicking the body spawns in a tough orc with big knockback
attacks. Watch your footing here - time for a Crude Illustration!
You want to stand in a straight line between your target and a
long walkway. Facing doesn't matter - the fellow at the bottom
left of the red target could have his back turned to the walkway
behind him, but he's going to go flying in a straight line from
the target when it does a knockback. Likewise, the guy standing in
front of the heap of junk along the outside of the platform might
be in a perilous spot of the junk is not stacked really high. If
it's a wall behind him, he'll be OK, but he doesn't want to stand
there if it's just a heap of broken crates and poles and such.
Anyhow, aside from the knockbacks and the big morale pool,
there's nothing else really noteworthy about this fight. Kill the
guy and press on.
Igash the Fanatic
Igash's throne room lies north of Izkal's station. You will need
to fight your way through a few groups of orcs - take out the
healers first, always. If the group has good CC, keep one of the
healers mezzed and burn the other. At the top of the stairs,
guarding the entrance to the throne room, is a group of five mobs.
Three of them are healers, two are melee types. High-level,
high-DPS groups can simply power through and fight everything at
once, but on-level groups may need to plan a bit more carefully.
Crowd control is a strong asset here. Mezzers can keep one (or
more) of the healers locked down, or Hunters can use Rain of
Thorns to root the whole group. The rest of the group waits just
down the stairs, out of line of sight of the enemies, and the tank
pulls one mob at a time. If things get hairy and the mobs break
out of the roots, take down the healers first. Not only do they
keep the other mobs standing, but they prefer to attack from
range, which means they are likely to target your own healers if
they are not handled efficiently.
At last, you reach Igash. He stands in the middle of his throne
room surrounded by riches, tribute collected by the orcs for
Mazog. He slowly walks forward when he is activated, but his
Devoted will run in from behind to protect his master. For the
daily challenge, the goal is to kill Igash but not the Devoted.
How this fight starts is very important, because a mistake here
can easily cause problems that will only multiply later and cause
a wipe. The Devoted rushes in and scampers around whacking on
(usually) random targets, and the two archers he brings with him
stand fast at the entrance and shoot. The archers can be CC'ed, or
they can be wrangled by a tank provided the tank can avoid
lingering around the Devoted too long, which makes the archers
attack randomly. Regardless of the group's methods, healers must
not begin healing until the archers and Igash are all active, or
they will risk taking a lot of damage that will be hard to fix as
the fight wears on.
The archers need to be led into the room, rather than being
allowed to linger by the stairs, just in case Igash decides to
attack the person tanking the archers. If he runs too far out of
the room, he resets.
One tank can handle both of the archers and Igash at the same
time. Guardians can do this fairly easily with AoE forced-attacks
and taunts, and Wardens are capable of this also by spamming
Conviction. The single-tank method requires a decently-geared tank
with lots of morale and/or damage mitigation, but it should be
easier for the healers because they will only be focusing on one
healing target rather than needing to spread it around.
Alternately, Igash and the archers can be tanked separately.
Igash is fairly easy to kite around the room without the kiter
taking too much damage, and he can be bounced around between
multiple Hunters by stance-switching and kiting. The archers don't
to much damage in melee, so an off-tank can sit on them the whole
time. If the archers are killed, fresh ones come running in from
the stairs, so the archer-tank will need to be able to pick those
up quickly to prevent them from murdering the healers.
There are a couple of things to watch out for in this fight. The
first is the fire puddles Igash lays on the floor periodically.
It's never a good idea to stand in fire, so don't do it here.
Secondly, he applies wounds to his primary target which
drastically lowers the character's armor rating. He announces this
attack by shouting "Looks like I found a break in your armour" -
pot that wound off immediately or you will be taking significantly
more damage from his attacks.
At around the halfway point, he will do a full-group attack which
does massive damage and stuns everyone in the group. There's no
real way to avoid this attack. Healers just have to make sure
everyone is in decent health and can soak the damage, and lay down
some group heals after the stun wears off.
You get 5 chests from challenge mode, and some of the loot is
outstanding and will remain viable for a long time.
alt="divider"> There's more! Read up on the Sixteenth Hall and Battle of the
Twenty-first Hall on Page 2!
HALLS | DUNGEONS
| INSTANCES
| DEEDS
| REPUTATION
HALLS | DUNGEONS
| INSTANCES
| DEEDS
| REPUTATION
THE SIXTEENTH HALL
|
|
Location: Nud-melek, 11.1S, 101.0W Type: Level 60 Instance - Fellowship Mobs: Orcs, Nameless, Gredbyg, Crawlers Description: The dread malady that |
One of the longest Moria instances, the Sixteeth Hall can be
unforgiving, relentless and brutally engaging. It's still a
challenge for a level 65 group - though there is significant
wiggle-room when dealing with the trash mobs, the 2nd and 3rd
bosses are tough fights.
The trash pulls are not enormously complex, but there are a lot
of them, and care will need to be taken during pulls. There are a
lot of patrolling mobs here, and tagging one at the wrong vector
of his patrol can mean pulling two groups instead of only one.
Using LOS
There are a number of trash pulls with ranged mobs, and these
require some line-of-sight (LOS) tactics. Ranged mobs are a
particular threat for healers because they often stand well back
from the tanks, out of range of area-effect threat skills and
often in places where it is dangerous for melee characters to rush
in and grab them.
One tactic that always seems to work - whether it be here or in
any other instance with ranged mobs - is to set up melee ambushes
and do ranged pulls. This only really works when everybody -
including the healer - plays along, but if the method is used
correctly, healers should rarely ever have a problem with ranged
attackers. Time for another Crude Illustration:
In this illustration, the orange line represents a "danger line."
Crossing that line has very dangerous consequences - triggering a
boss, for example, or aggroing the whole rest of the room. If the
group's tank (represented by the Sherman tank) stays where he is
and pulls the mobs, the ranged mobs will stay on the "danger" side
of the line. If, however, he pulls the mobs and runs around the
corner behind him, the ranged mobs will chase him and fall into
the ambush set by the rest of the group (the blue dots). If there
is no handy corner to duck around, a long straightaway works just
as well - run back out of the range of the archers and they will
give chase. Just make sure the ambush group stays put to attack
the pursuing mobs when they get close enough.
For this to work properly, the healer (the green dot) needs to
hang back a bit and wait for the ambush to close in on all the
mobs chasing the tank before he starts his healing. If he
starts healing before then, the mobs chasing the tank will break
off their pursuit and start shooting at the healer. However, since
he is back near the line-of-sight cutoff, he can just dash back a
few steps to bring his attackers closer in, which should bring
them right to the ambushers. It may seem counter-intuitive to
delay healing an ally who is taking damage, but it is necessary at
times.
The same goes for the ambushers - if they jump the gun and attack
the mobs before they reach the ambush, the ranged attackers will
hang back and shoot from behind the danger line. The ambushers
need to wait until all the mobs are in melee range, past the
danger line.
There are many spaces in the Sixteenth Hall where this tactic
will come in handy. Just about every large room has a
line-of-sight-blocker and multiple groups of enemies, and every
group has at least one or two ranged attackers. It may be
difficult to get this method to work in pick-up groups, because
some players (usually the newer ones) simply don't understand why
they shouldn't unleash hell the second the tank makes the pull.
Note that there are a bunch of side-rooms that can be skipped.
You may decide to clear everything when working on quests, but you
don't technically need to.
Burglar Class Quest
The group will come to a big room at the bottom of a set of
stairs, just before the curved stairwell leading to Tramug's room.
Clear this room with small group pulls, using the stairs to block
line-of-sight as detailed above. The group can clear out the small
room at the back if they want to, but it's not really necessary.
Once the room is cleared, Burglars can start their class quest by
using the glowing brazier near the foot of the stairs.
Using the brazier spawns in an uruk and his two troll buddies. If
the group has loads of CC, both trolls can be locked down and kept
separate, and the uruk can be burned first. If there is only one
Burglar, he can mezz one of the trolls and the group can burn the
other one. The trolls hit like trucks, so if only one can be
mezzed, the other is the priority target.
Tramug
The first boss is Tramug. He's in a big room at the bottom of a
descending, curved staircase. There are 6 small groups of orcs in
the room with him, and these should be pulled back into the
hallway before entering the room. These groups include archers and
healers, so use the long, curving hallway for the LOS tactic
outline above. The puller stands just past the doorway to tag the
groups while the rest of the group waits just inside, then runs
way back to the curved part of the stairway. Be sure to take out
the healers first always.
Once the small groups are gone, all that's left is Tramug and his
two flunkies on the dais at the back of the room. This is an
amusing fight - Tramug is in the early stages of the nasty fungal
infection that afflicts the later residents of the Sixteenth Hall,
and it makes him a bit... pukey.
Target-mark the two Moria Servants. Pick one as a burn target,
set your CC guy on the other to lock him down. The tank picks up
Tramug and kites him around while the rest of the group burns the
Moria Servants one at a time. The flunkies heal their boss, so
burn them as quickly as possible.
When the servants are dead, the whole group can turn on Tramug,
who should be chasing the tank around the room. This is pretty
much a straight-forward tank-and-spank fight, but the tank needs
to keep moving. It is unclear whether the puddles spawned by
Tramug are giant nasty loogies or pools of highly acidic vomit -
either way, it's unhealthy to stand in them. They do big damage
over time, and the debuff must be removed with a disease potion.
After Tramug is down, the group heads into the disease-ridden
portion of the Sixteenth Hall. All of the orcs here are infected,
and some of them are in really bad shape. The group will come
across Bloated Globsnaga here and there - these guys just sit on
the ground, suffering, but when a player gets close they burst
open and spawn a small swarm of crawlers. On their own, these
present almost no danger, but the extra mobs can be dangerous when
fighting a larger group.
After traversing the upper walkways, the group heads down into a
funky vaporous room with a bunch of sick Globsnaga orcs. The ones
that are still mobile stand in small clusters which can be pulled
back to the stairs in small groups. There are also a number of
Bloated Globsnaga here, and at a few points around the room,
players will spawn in some slow-running Crazed Globsnaga. The
Crazed Globsnaga will run at the group very slowly and burst in a
noxious, corrosive cloud, applying a hefty damage-over-time
disease on anyone caught in the cloud. These guys are quite weak
and should be taken out by ranged attackers well before they reach
the group.
The Wheel Rooms
After clearing the big room, the group will come to a crossroads.
Ahead is the chamber of Dhurz, the next boss, and to either side
are the wheel rooms that open the door to Dhurz's room. The wheel
rooms are filled with enemies, and there are loads of Bloated
Globsnaga loafing around in among the mobile, so it's much better
to contain the fight in the crossroads. A Hunter with Rain of
Thorns is a real asset here - he can dash up, root a few of them
and kite/LOS the rest back to the awaiting ambush group. A
Lore-master can do the same thing with Herb Lore, but will want to
take special care of his pet's tactics before pulling. Either way,
the group will get two small groups of mobs instead of one large,
overpowering rush.
Once the room is clear of mobile mobs, run in and trigger all the
Bloated Globsnaga and kill the crawlers with AoEs, and spin the
wheel when finished. Then do the same thing for the other side.
Rune-keeper Class Quest
The wheel room on the left has a special bonus. A Rune-keeper on
his class quest can go in there and use the glowing artifact in
the pool to spawn a 72k shadow-grim. Aside from the shadow vortex
things the grim lays on the ground, there's nothing noteworthy or
really dangerous about this fight - tank-and-spank it until it
dies, and keep on truckin'.
Dhurz
The next fight is against Dhurz, a badly-twisted orc deep in the
thrall of the nasty fungal infection that consumes these halls. He
has lost the ability to form words, and his battle shouts consist
of "Hhh-rr-rgh!" and "Nnnn-mph!"
Be sure everyone in the group has ample disease and power potions
for this fight. Even with careful planning and judicious
application of curatives, power will be an issue - exploding
mushrooms and Dhurz's disease debuffs sap power, and these things
occur faster than the potions' cooldowns. Having a Lore-master
"battery" in the group will certainly help.
For this fight, have the tank pick up Dhurz right away and pull
him close to the door on the far side of the room. The tank needs
to try to avoid standing close to any of the mushrooms so he
doesn't get power-drained when they burst, but he's going to run
out of power quickly regardless of where he stands. The longer he
can stay powered up, the better. Ranged attackers and healers
stand close to the wall inside and to the left, out of the range
of the mushrooms. This is a challenge for healers, who must stay
in healing range of the tanks - the middle of the room is
relatively clear of mushrooms but not exactly safe, and the
shroom-burst has a fairly wide radius.
Hunters and ranged attackers will find their aggro-management
skills put to the test here. They will need to strike a balance
between dishing out the DPS and not pulling the boss off the
power-drained tank. If the ranged attackers start doing more
damage than the tanks can out-aggro, Dhurz will charge across the
room and start tearing the squishies apart. Find that balance and
be mindful of the tanks' power - when they start zeroing out, ramp
the damage down until they can build power back up again.
Also, Hunters will be responsible for the Crazed Globsnaga that
charge into the room from the sides - they are slow-moving and can
be downed with a couple of quick auto-attacks, and they must be
taken down before they can reach the tanks and melee guys and
explode. They come in when Dhurz shouts one of his nonsense
phrases, so watch for the shout beginning with "M".
Bugs
After taking down Dhurz and looting the chest, the group has to
fight its way through swarms of gredbyg. Alternately, everyone can
run past the first several groups of strong bugs and drop down to
the area with the queens, which saves a fair chunk of time but can
leave players stuck in combat mode for a while. There are three
different kinds of bugs here:
1) Grodbog Guards, with around 3000 morale. There are several of
these at the start of the gredbyg area, but they are not present
when you reach the area with the queens. Kill these ones.
2) Grodbog Spawn, with around 1000 morale. These are spawns of
the queens and disappear when the queen is killed. Run away from
these when they come at you in a swarm. Though they are
individually weak, when a player gets 6 on him at once he goes
down fast.
3) Queens, the long, mantis-looking ones. These are priority
targets - killing a queen causes her swarm of little bugs to
despawn.
To open the way to the Lost One, the group needs to kill all the
grodbog queens along the upper ledge and down in the pools below.
Be careful fighting along the upper ledge - the queens have a
knockback attack and can send characters flying down into swarms
of bugs in the pools below, with a broken ankle for your
troubles.
The Lost One
When you first see the Lost One, you might think it looks like a
simple tank-n-spank fight against a single boss. Yeah, you
wish.
The Lost One is a Nameless with no head and a giant, hungry mouth
on his chest. And he's not alone - as soon as he is activated and
the fight begins, a bunch of small gredbyg spawn in and start
chasing people around. To complete the challenge, you must defeat
the Lost One without killing the bugs. Again, it seems like it
should be simple, but it's really not.
There are 3 important things to focus on in this fight:
1) Tanking the Lost One. He hits like a truck and it may be
difficult for a healer to keep a tank standing. Especially when
the healer is being massacred by bugs, which react strongly to
healer aggro.
2) The damn bugs. These things love to gang up on healers and rip
them to shreds. Since they cannot be killed, that means the group
may need an off-healer - a Captain, for example - to lay down some
initial heals to draw bug aggro and kite the things around.
Because the bugs are so fragile, AoE attacks are forbidden in this
fight, and damage-reflect gear (for example, Insidious Cuff from
the Grand Stair) and skills/traits (Guardian's Reactive Block,
e.g.) must be removed. If the bugs start dying, the challenge
fails, and the only way to reset it is to start the Sixteenth Hall
all over again from the beginning.
3) The mushrooms. They spawn in around the "corners" of the
rooms, apply a slowing effect to anyone within range and emit a
damaging, corrosive cloud of spores. The mushrooms need to be
handled, preferably by ranged attackers. It is impossible to
effectively kite the bugs through the spore clouds because of the
slowing effect, so it is imperative to take these down quickly to
give the bug-kiter maneuvering room.
So here's the basic strategy. Another Crude Illustration will
help with this:
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/101603">
Tank (blue dot) and off-healer (yellow dot) run in first; the
tank picks up the Lost One and starts tanking, off-healer spams a
few fast heals on the tank to get bug aggro and starts kiting. A
Rune-keeper or Captain works best for this, as they both have
heals that can be cast on the run. The bug-kiter will keep
throwing on-the-run heals (Words of Courage, Prelude to Hope;
Minstrel on-the-run heals either have too long of a cooldown or do
not generate enough threat to be useful here) as he kites to
maintain bugg aggro. The groups main healer (green dot) cannot
cast heals until the bug-kiter guy has firmly established aggro on
all the bugs.
The rest of the group (the red dots and the green healer dot)
waits a few painful seconds before charging in. Ranged attackers
(i.e. Hunters) will take out the priority-target mushrooms first
thing, switching to the Lost One when themushrooms are down, and
melee types will engage the Lost One with the tank. Everyone but
the tank will likely want to stay behind the Lost One to avoid any
nasty AoEs. The main healer will want to heal sparingly and use
any trick available to lower healing threat. With luck, he can
focus primarily on just keeping the tank alive, supplemented by
the bug-kiter's drive-by heals.
It is possible for paired Hunters to "tank" the Lost One by
bouncing him back and forth. One Hunter starts in Strength stance,
the other in Precision. The first Hunter lays into the Lost One
until it reaches him, then drops down to Endurance stance and runs
away, and the other guy switches to Strength, throwing some big
focus-burn shots to pick up aggro. This process is repeated as
long as necessary. It's a tough tactic to master but it can be
effective with the right group.
Alternately, since no one really does this one for the marks
anymore (the Grand Stair is easier, and Fil Ghashan gives more),
you can simply kill the bugs. This makes the fight immensely
easier. The group still needs to take out the mushrooms when they
spawn in, but it is otherwise a much more "traditional"
tank-and-spank type of fight without the bugs.
alt="divider">
BATTLE OF THE TWENTY-FIRST HALL
|
|
Location: Twenty-first Hall, Zelem-melek Type: Skirmish - Solo, Duo, Small Mobs: Wargs, Orcs, Goblins, Grims, Description: In the aftermath of |
This defensive skirmish becomes available at level 55, but
doesn't unlock until the player begins Volume II Book 5 Chapter 5.
It begins with Wili commanding the dwarves to their posts in
preparation for repeated assaults against the barricades to the
east, south and west. Like the other 2.5.5 skirmishes, there are a
number of different-colored, furled banners to pick up, 2 at each
station, and the player can have 1 of each colour in his
inventory.
The assaults are pretty straightforward - a group of mobs rushes
the barricade and you kill 'em all. Every so often, a goblin
sapper will slowly march towards the barricade and you need to
kill them before they reach their goals. They're weak little
things and easily-managed.
After all 3 barricades are assaulted, Wili pulls everyone back to
the Northern Hallway outside the Chamber of Mazarbul. Attacks will
come from the north and south ends of this hallway, and you will
need to dash from one end to the other fairly quickly. The
defending dwarves are tough as nails, so don't worry too much
about them.
The dwarves make their final stand in the Chamber of Mazarbul. An
epic-looking troll will bust in and murder your soldier
lickety-split - burn all your collected banners on this boss.
HALLS | DUNGEONS
| INSTANCES
| DEEDS
| REPUTATION
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Lord of the Rings Online Game Page.
