Wild Blossom Star and other TBL names

Update!

I tried my first trial last night, Wending Ways. I got my bottom handed to me multiple times. I think my tanking and DPS are just not quite there. I did eventually finish it, but it took me about 3 hours. Obviously knowing the layout helps, too. I died a few times because my characters were bugged out on the portals and ended up falling into the center, and I died without a corpse and had to go back to guild lobby, summon, rez, etc. I was also trying to teleport my chars one at a time and didn't realize there were trash mobs on the other side, so they ended up killing me at first until I realized I could invis. It was a mess.

The fire boss was a pain in my rear and killed me twice, at least. Once I got him pretty low, and I just didn't have any discs to help me stay alive, even with the shaman spot healing on top of my merc healer. The final time I killed him, I got lucky. He never gave the emote for invulnerability, so I just kept going without having to drag him to another brazier. Despite the periods of invulnerability, this guy just has a stupid high amount of hit points. I think I tanked him for 20 minutes on the final try when I killed him.

The lightning boss was just tough because malo/slow/cripple would never land. I pushed through and got this one with greater ease than fire, but it was also a long fight. My SK died when the mob was at 2%, so the mage pet tanked, and I had to manually fire off nukes with the mage and some nukes with the shaman. Good enough for me!

I had water next, and this was probably the easiest of the fights. Several toons got low on life, but none died.

Earth was last, and it was about as tough as water, but without any deaths. I tried to use VP on the shaman to push back the split mobs, but it didn't work, so I had the mage reckless servant and mage pet with Fortification tank one while the SK tanked the other. This worked fairly well.

All in all, it was about 3 hours because of all the deaths on fire or when I fell into the center and died (it happened to both my mage and my SK). It was a lot of re-buffing, invising, etc.

I got the lamp to improve the progression Dissident abilities, and I got a head slot upgrade for the SK. I got one of the spell upgrades, too. Everything else was not an upgrade.

What is the next easiest trial? I

Otherwise, 'm guessing I may need to complete fire fight mission for the item that lets me get into instanced Smoke, and I skip the actual mission but go into Empyr to farm named mobs while the task is up. Is that correct?

I honestly am not sure why people say wending ways is easier than to3. I mean sure, the bosses are about equally as hard as far as I can tell? If anything I'd say the to3 areally easier and fewer overall, but even if they are harder the trial takes way less time and is far more box friendly and less buggy (falling into the center for no reason on wending ways etc)

The only hard part is understanding the puzzle they give you to figure out what order to kill the mob's in, and that isn't hard plus there are websites out there that parse the clue and tell you what order to kill without any effort on your end.

Also, if you have at least one caster (two would be ideal) cyclone trial is a complete joke as well. Infact, probably the easiest of the 5 if you have 2 or more casters.

No, you just go back into smoke.. like you’re going to do another trial. You don’t need to do fight fire, just run through Stratos. Request the mission/instance by standing on the portal, select trial, wait for instance.. then zone in.. and go straight through to empyr.

Trial of 3 is basically the same difficultly but it’s 3 bosses instead of 4. You have to figure out the riddles which can be a PITA the first few tries.

I think Trial of Three is easier then Wending ways so you may try that one next.

I'm working on my old group geared toons that I had neglected for years and am currently doing TBL progression. Skipped RoS for now just to see how I would fair in TBL. We are up too Esianti now and I going to start farming Contract of war for visables and keep doing GMM HA for non vis. I started this in conflagrant gear and have a few upgrades so far, each little bit seams to help. I box 3 Monk for tank, shaman, and bard. My fiance plays a ranger and then we use 2 mercs.

You were able to tank the trials on your monk in mainly conflag still? Nice.

Very messy but yes hehe. We were in a hurry. Trying to get flagged for Empyr to do the 20th anniversary cake eating challenge. After making to Empyr and then doing more progression I think my biggest feat for monk tanking so far has been the named in Aalishai for the Palace of Embers quest. Also fun and exciting was the Brass palace. Those 3 named are pretty mean, was good thing I had my Terror Juju on the first guy. That DS is brutal.

In my experience, I found Wending Ways, Cyclone, and Amphitheatre to be the easiest. Though, with the removal of the ability to target the aura in the theatre, I am not sure about that one when it comes to boxing.

I also found Trial of 3 named to be amoung the more difficult due to their abilities. Wending Ways while time consuming, was fairly straightforward.

That sounds to me like a triumphal result for attacking brand new (to you) content on the edge of your capability. Simply less faffing about will save you like two hours on future redos, quite aside from the benefits of actually getting stronger

Trial of 3 is harder because the bosses are roughly the same difficulty but each of the three "pick the boss" steps is on a pretty short you-lose timer.

have no cc?? Shamy can CC (rootable) / Mage can CC using swarm pet to off tank.

The shaman CC is a bit easier for Wild Blossom (I still haven't tried it yet), but the mage CC not quite so much because I can't easily cast mage pets against 5-10 adds. The shaman AE push/root would at least work better on Wild Blossom since there are so many adds, at least on some of them. I think the mage reckless servant is better suited for when you have 2 tough mobs rather than 10 green/light blue mobs.

Hmm, I guess the first attempt or two that might cause someone to incur a failure but they really are not hard to decipher imo. Like I said (not going to try and find it from work atm) there is apparently a site that makes the riddles a joke. It tells you what to look for for every single riddle.

And the mechanics behind all 3 bosses are a joke, group heal every 30s and you keep everyone alive. Only problem is if healer gets silenced I suppose (forget which boss does it, I never really have problems with it even if healer is silenced. Good ol deflection and life taps!) I just think it's the fastest and nothing particularly difficult about it compared to the other 4.

Eother way, There's 3 trials that, given the time to do them, should make for easy farming for players of all kinds!

How on earth is your monk tanking? My SK is barely hanging on in those missions, and that's with full GMM non-visibles, a few pieces of T1 TBL, and the rest conflagrant. My SK can tank multiples in GMM missions, and my monk can barely tank 1 at a time. I specifically gave up on the monk because I knew he'd never be able to tank. He was even given a bunch of gear on FV, so he's mostly TBL T2. I'm surprised your monk could tank those bosses so well. I must be doing something wrong, heh.

Thanks! I will give that a go tonight.

I am getting her better gear now a little at a time as it drops. When I did trial of 3 I was sitting at 238k HP buffed 4.6k AC. Cycling defensive's as they are available, blood drinker,s coating, and shaman spirit guardian.

Wending ways is massively easier than any trial including the 3. Why? Because he can literally burn every disc and aa he has. Afk for 10-15 minutes and then do the next boss. The trial of 3 is the fastest but for a box team low on dps and tankabillity he will have a far easier time on wending ways because he can slowly move entire box team there and then blow all disc/aa. Move on to next.

Over time the OP will get enough gear to do the others but the concept is for him to go all out on the named and then afk until repop on discs/aa. Yes it means about 60 minutes a trial but that's not bad for his scenario. I don't see him being able to do trial of 3 if he can't get thru wending ways. Simply because he couldn't blow all his disc/aa in the same fashion with it being timed.

Would I be better off using melee dps mercs instead of caster dps mercs? I had read a while ago that caster mercs were definitely better because they don't kill themselves on a mob's damage shield. I also figured the casters would be safe from AoE attacks, but just about every AoE I take affects the casters too.

Someone told me recently that caster mercs were nerfed, and I'm wondering if switching would give me more DPS, especially since the shaman can use Dissident Roar for more dps for melee toons.

Thoughts?

Melee dps merc would probably be better with the shaman, yes.

Use multiple healer mercs...

Try some combinations like Paradisic is suggesting. I'd let the shaman focus on pure dps and have healer mercs (two heal). Shaman will likely make up more dps and you'll have better survivability. Until you get the hang of it blow all your discs on each named in wending. As you figure out which ones are easier for you, you will modify your strategy.

I would suggest making two changes and then seeing how things go.
1) Drop Mage for a Bard
2) Add 3 Berserkers