Sooooo very tempted to do a much-overused and abused “300″ ripoff by shouting “This is Guild Wars!” but I won’t. Or did I just? 
I’ve been enjoying this year’s stint in Guild Wars immensely. I’ve been pretty social with the alliance, which has grown and shifted a few guilds in the past couple of weeks. I even did an Underworld run with one of the guilds and we had an awesome time and I managed to keep everyone alive. That is until I single-handedly wiped the entire group by picking up a quest that I shouldn’t have. 
Luckily, they took it in stride even though we were all disappointed (we were near the end of the run) and no one said any rude comments over Ventrilo or chat. Quite the contrary, in fact. That was the only noob move I made, and only because the Ventrilo server did one of its momentary stutters and I’d thought the leader said for “everyone make sure to grab that quest.” Turns out he said “make sure no one grabs that quest!” Oh well.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, one of my projects for Guild Wars is to finally come to grips with full-on Protection monking. My old build was a Word of Healing healing/protection hybrid but it seems that for both PvP and Hard Mode PvE that full Protection is more valuable than the reactionary. I’ve come up with a few decent Protection builds that I’m becoming fairly proficient at where I have to alternate between proactively “pre-protting” either a single character (usually a tank if one is in the group) or the entire group prior to a damage spike — if I see (or think that I see) one coming — or reactive condition removal. Fun but challenging and it requires a somewhat different mindset when compared to the traditional reactive-only healing mentality we see in every other MMO. To maximize the efficiency of my Protection builds I wanted to get a “perfect” Protection staff. Last weekend was double drop rate for green (unique) items but I sure couldn’t tell. I spent roughly ten hours on and off in Grothmar Wardowns to get Chaelse’s Staff. I’ve never spent that amount of time getting a green item during normal drop rates! Louden Swain (@GuildWarsLouden) waltzed over and got the staff for me after only a few tries. 
Figures. Anyway, thanks for the staff Louden, it’s already been getting plenty of use! (Screenshot is during my final attempt to get the staff.)
This weekend, aside from running some special quests and missions in the Shing Jea Monastery for the Dragon Festival 2009, I decided to finally learn a new solo farming tactic. Just over a year ago, I learned how to do the 55 Monk thing, which I’ve become decent at but still completely unable to deal with mobs casting health degenerations on me. When I only have 55 health to begin with, hexes or curses that nail me at several pips of degen means I’m dead with barely any time to react.
These days, a 600/Smite team is the cool Monk farming. It is a duo team, so it’s not exactly “solo” farming, but the Smiter monk can be a Hero rather than a player. I went to Kamadan and bought the lowest level Sunspear armor I could get — Armor Level 15 — to ensure I’m being hit as often as possible, then went about maximizing the health bonuses by buying a Survivor insignia for each armor piece, two Runes of Vitae and finally the big mamma jamma: a Superior Rune of Vigor which cost 18,000 gold. Equipping that armor set puts Benjeth’s health in the vicinity of 600, give or take, hence the name. The Smiter monk is mainly just to follow around out of sight and maintain four enchantments on the 600 monk, so I setup one of my monk Heroes for the job.
Running the 600 was more challenging and difficult than learning to 55 for me, and took several revisions of the build until I finally came up with one that first and foremost actually made logical sense to me, then arranged so that I could run it easily and quickly because 600ing can be a little high maintenance and busy once the combat starts. So far my proficiency has allowed me to enter several areas in Hard Mode with no problems. Until I got cocky and went into the City of Torc’qua in Nightfall’s Domain of Anguish. I don’t think I’d ever actually been in there before but I am badly wanting to get a Tormented Shield for Benjeth and the Margonite Gemstones needed only drop in City of Torc’qua or The Foundry of Failed Creations.
Each time I stepped into the first wave of Margonites I was immediately spammed with Strip Enchantment, which is lethal to a 600 monk since the entire near-invulnerability relies on 6 to 7 enchantments being maintained continuously. The second my Spell Breaker expired, all Benjeth’s enchantments were stripped and he was pummeled and degened in less than one second!
Surely, there has to be a way to deal with these things? Domain of Anguish groups are harder and harder to come by these days, and I very badly want that shield. It’s sexy! I was hoping the 600/Smite team would do the trick…
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Lol at triggering the underworld wipe by accepting the wrong quest. Everyone does that their first time. It’s a ’spot the noob’ joke. Some people crack it and boot the noobie, but others just have a laugh. I’m glad your team saw the lighter side of the accident. I remember getting booted from the team and having my name announced in the all chat so that no one else would accept me. Things were obviously a bit more serious back then…
When started “farming” to become the cool thing in GW?
There is no solo team-farm build for the Margonite city, if you really are after Gemstones, try to get into a speed clear group. They usually have more N/Mes and only one-two monks.
Haven’t played Guild Wars with any seriousness in about 4 years. Wonder if I’d still remember how to
Oh wait, I’m a W/E offensive tank. I think my job is “Hit stuff a lot.”