Twilight Arbor Record Push

I suggest we tackle one path at a time until we feel we can't get any faster in order to focus our efforts and maintain a sense of accomplishment and interest.

Items, Equipment, and Consumables

Needless to say Nightmare Court potions will be required but what should the food be? Anyone have any opinions on this?

Depleted Power Crystals - I believe this applies 5 stacks of Vulnerability on foes but has now gained a cool down period. I need to note it down but even so it should be possible for the team to maintain a high if not max level of Vulnerability during our boss fights.

Grawl Ritual Totem - Again I have no idea how its been changed since the update but this should be really useful in pushing bosses against the walls incase we mess up. Will note full details when i get the chance.

Healing Seed Pods & Mortar Seed Turrets - Massive number of heals if all 5 team members use both this should allow us to run very offensive based teams and builds.

Rotten Drake Eggs - Again not checked since the update but if these are spammable without animations these could be really useful for attacking the Nightmare Trees on all paths.

Skale Venom - Yes once again needs checks on update but if this works this means a love buff for our warriors.

Fire Elemental Powder - These things will come in handy during all of the boss fights, spider cave and nightmare tree fights.

Ascalon Tome - Whilst im told the aoe dmg is fairly poor Id like to get an actual number on it. As if it beats one staff attack on a elemental it will be useful for right path.

Anything I have missed?


Left Path

The first successful test of this path yielded a 13 minute run. This was before the dungeon updates that effectively nerfed the bosses and gave us more waypoints than stars in the sky. Therefore I believe it would be possible to get a 9-11 completion time.

I would suggest a team of...

3 Warriors

1 Mesmer

1 Guardian

We are now killing all 3 spider groups on casual runs when we have the option to have a specific team set up i.e with a Necro. That being said we have been successful in the past of killing all 3 groups using the Fire Elementals and we didnt all have them at the time so I think this team set up will work. I wont put up anything on the other paths yet till we start this one.

Central Path

Right Path

ogre pet whistle

also everyone needs to be norn so we can all use Become the Snow Leopard and Dash through everything

Do you have a link to Gab's video of our fast up run? That should be quite instructive.

No I believe it was a joint account with fury and he changed the password or something so Gab doesn't have it any more.

un
be
lievable

This Fury guy really does like pissing off old NAME guys doesn't he?

On a more related topic: Sign me up for this. I'd love to join in because I was disappointed we didn't get to do it earlier. Also when is the timer started? When everyone is in or what?

Also here are some other possible consumables that may be useable:
Explosive Charge (supposedly decent damage, haven't tested though)

Gear (Gotta love stun)

Timer should start as soon as the path selection screen pops up.

I know that it takes a while to get to that point in some dungeons (like TA and CoE) but its a good universal starting point.

Actually I'd argue very strongly in favour of starting the timer at the first cutscene. In every single dungeon, there is a NPC you need to talk to at the very beginning in order to open the door(s) to proceed. This isn't necessarily locked up tight in every dungeon, but I think legit tactics kinda rule out jumping over the walls anyway.

Mistress Misty wrote:

Actually I'd argue very strongly in favour of starting the timer at the first cutscene. In every single dungeon, there is a NPC you need to talk to at the very beginning in order to open the door(s) to proceed. This isn't necessarily locked up tight in every dungeon, but I think legit tactics kinda rule out jumping over the walls anyway.

I could agree with that. sounds fair enough. You spelled favor wrong though. LOL

>_>

So we should set some dates and times then? I would like for this to be a reality.

Well lets start discussing the idea of a team build we should have all this discussed before we begin.

Anyone against using 3 Warriors 1 Mesmer 1 Guardian?

I can't think of anything else to improve the speed in terms of tactics I think we have pretty much pushed that as much as we can.

I think at this stage its going to come down to team build, gear, and items to improve our times.

Well we should probably set up a few mock runs just so that everyone is on the same page with how it works then it'll be easier to pitch suggestions for improvement.

Maybe 2 warriors and a thief would work better, but that's a big maybe.

It's possible. There are many people that swear that a thief with warriors is higher dps than all warriors but I've never seen any math for it. You could also maybe make a case for the utility of thieves but that is mainly stealth that wouldn't be needed anyway.

For the most part what we need more than anything is raw damage. We have the tactics to keep ourselves protected and I may have a way of making that more the case in one area at the end.

It would stand to reason that we should conduct some tests on damage output. Is there a testing area that we could use like with Guild Wars 1?

From what I've heard, a thief that uses double pistol traited in a certain way can match or out damage a similarly geared warrior with sustained damage. Haven't sen decent proof though. Umm you could try testing in hotm on the different generic profession npc and the golems with diff armor ratings. Record the damage log in your chat bar with identically geared classes.

The utility of the thief is spamming Infiltrator's Arrow as soon as Malrona's dead, so you can trigger Fyonna several seconds sooner.
The DPS comes from spamming Heartseeker.

I thought high single-target thief damage came from spamming backstab via CnD and stealth utilities and then heartseeker when <25%. Backstab requires back or side positioning, so can be tricky/unreliable.

Warrior is more consistent, easier, and has great party buffs such as for great justice, on my mark, and banners.

Both thief and warrior can move super fast; the thief via SB and shadowstep, warrior with banner charge, GS spin and rush, and sword jump.

I do not know how they compare in regards to ranged damage. I mostly consider ranged as breather time to recover health so I can go back into melee.

A thief can spam AoE blind (pistol #5), block projectiles (smoke screen), stealth the party (shadow refuge), and quickly remove defiant stacks (pistol #4). Their blast finisher from SB is also strong and spammable. If these things aren't needed, I'd probably stick to a warrior, or at least until you already have a solid time.

BTW, I'll help if you need another (war and mes most developed).

Thieves have a lot of good utility, just not much that is useful for TA :/

Yeah if what everyones saying is accurate I would say lets stick with a Warrior.

I hate to break this to you Manic, but... you can no longer use Mortar Seed Turrets (or a bunch of other consumables) in dungeons.

Yeah I noticed. Looks like this will effectively be just a really fast casual run then.

Still... would be fun I guess