Heroes Are Forged - The Hero's Forge Mission Discussion

There are some things that folks have brought up with that I completely agree with. The Lich phase and the run away emotes called right as the Shalowain phase starts.

But, I still thing folks are crying wolf because they want to just plow through the event with out doing the mechanics.

I just did the event with a sub optimal group.


Phase I: ooze
- Ooze is not a big deal even if you go slow and spawn add.
- Can clean up extra oozes, before you DPS the spider queen.

Phase II: spider queen
- Annoying but easy to do.
- If you have pets, keep group together and just send them in to kill egg.
- If you are all melee, tank queen in one of the lower rooms, have 1x melee DPS in each of the other rooms, tank pushes phase on the queen, the others wait till eggs pop then kill them.
- OR - Ignore eggs, wait for the to hatch and kill adds.

Phase III: Lich
- Still working on getting this phase down 100% ...
- There seems to be a pattern and I'm getting faster at killing him.
- We got adds but killed them before pushing phase.

Phase IV: Shalowain
- Still working on this phase but ...
- Would like first set of names called after 6s-12s delay. Give tank time to get agro and not be called.
- Pretty easy to dodge the song auras if you have live people.
- Those having problems boxing this part ... bring real people

The bards group DA makes the initial shalowain engage a lot easier. I don't get a second round of the sparkles but if I did it'd be a lot easier to deal with after everything stabilizes.

Please, do tell: when to cast bard's DA? Should the group be bunched up so echos head to the group? Should the DA be cast and then those who were called just run into echoes?
What works the best?

Try pulling Shalowain to NW corner. Gives a little more time for the echos to reach you.

I pop it as soon as I engage with Shalowain. The sparkles usually blow up with about 8ish seconds of DA left. Then I click it off the tank with a few seconds to go and then it's an easy tank and spank with a big AE every 30 seconds.

Thanx, I'll try that over this weekend.

How much easier do you want than /target egg and then hit /pet attack? Or a ranger hits /target egg then /autofire?

And to be honest, you do not *have* to kill egg sacs. You just get 4 additional mobs to kill. If a group cannot kill 4 additional mobs, then that sounds like a skill issue than a group issue.

Edit- could also put one player in each room. If that is "too hard" for a group, then put two players in the two bottom rooms. 50/50 chance on not getting an add if Queen ports into one of the bottom rooms.

None of that is the challenge for me as I box it. None of the mission is challenging for a group of actually geared and adequate attention players. I've beaten this particular mission enough times to be done with my type 5s.

The challenges *personally* are with the lich. The lich warps on a % base up to I think it is 25% and then on a timer of every 5s after 25%. I usually get the lich *near* dead by the time the first add spawns, and if the lich isn't dotted to hell, then I can take care of the add, that has 110M HP (the lich has 200M), then back on the lich. The lich that doesn't summon the entire event, suddenly summons at 2%, something that has been reported and confirmed in a bug thread.

That single mechanic usually messes up the group positioning enough that hitting bard DA isn't an option to negate the Shalowain achievement.

My gripe, is that getting through all of that to get to Shalowain, the achievement is getting the mission correct. That the AE dmg is the raid dmg. The achievements are generally doing something like an emote correctly....or ignoring a mechanic and making an event more difficult.

Also, add to the list of bugs that if you do wipe, the sparks are still on all the corpses and can be clicked on the next attempt.

I'm sure you've come to the same conclusion already but one thing that made killing the lich more comfortable is realizing he has a teleport pattern. That's most beneficial to casters that can move a few times to hit him from range.

I've tried Kazumi and it worked. The Soundproof achievement was blown, but the mission was a win.
On a side note (pun intended) Shalowain casts echoes again after a while (90 seconds recast), before Kazumi refreshes(180 seconds), so a group will have to burn to beat it, or will need to kite a second set, which is easier as the fight has steadied by then and people can pay more attention to echoes.

Thank you for the tip.

Thats false.
The missions are intended for:
1. leveling up
2. getting gear

Which means they are for group geared players who are not lvl 125 and are not in t2 gear yet (and absoluetely ZERO raid gear on anyone in the party). For years you level by acheivements, not grinding. So you need to complete the mission for the achivement to level.
As well, the mission is a major source of gear. Requiring players to have all the gear it drops to do the mission is rather backwards wouldn't you say?

You’re kinda messing your own argument up pretty badly here, the gear, augments and necklace are all 125 required IIRC.

Just because something is listed 125 doesn’t mean you don’t get any added benefit from it. This argument is like saying evolving items are only meant to be equipped after they’re evolved since you don’t get the full effect of the item until then. These missions are the single best option to get your exp and gear now, especially for group players. Saying you need to do 5 hell levels on zone trash until you're 125 and can get the full benefit of drops is asinine.

/target egg and /pet attack is 4 words, "/pet attack egg" works just fine.

Then why do the missions give huge chunks of xp as part of the progression achievements if they weren't intended to be used to level up? That xp reward would be useless at 125.

Clearly, the missions (every other expansion) are meant as a means to level up for everyone, and a means to gear up for group players. Saying that they're intended for 125 and full gear is just not true.

And the T2/T3 gear being max level only is an entirely different issue that the devs refuse to talk about and have no relevance to this discussion.

What are you using the items for, ballast? They give 0 stats to anyone not 125.

Strawman, you can still do collects, hunter, merc, partisan. IIRC the 2 group missions are less than 1 level of xp.

Clearly, you didn't read my post objectively. Cite where in the post I responded to that I disagreed with this.

It has huge relevance as a counter argument to the idea that 120-124s need the group missions to gear up prior to 125, until changed.

I was posting from work and didn't put my thoughts together well. And using my phone, which is shite for posting on these forums.

As far as the gearing, it SHOULD be required lvl 120, recommended 125. That way, as people are using the missions, as intended, for leveling, they are also upgrading their gear and getting more benefits from it as they level.

While you can get decent exp completing achievements, it takes a village to do hunter in a timely manner and you can run the 2 group missions at least twice a day gaining both exps AND coin to further improve your gear. Again, the missions are what the devs INTEND for how people will get most of their leveling exp. These group versions of the raids still have raid mechanics in them. Including the raid ooc timer.... They need fixing, and a bit of tuning.

You're hypothesizing a whole different model based on itemization that's in your head and then using that separate reality as support to say that what actually exists isn't right?

Gear used to have Required and Recommended levels but I assume that requires more coding time, as each level gives a different stat value. With a new itemization dev, and all the errors and limited coding time we've already seen with this expansion I see WHY they don't code this way anymore, but it doesn't mean it is a good progression through content.

Play through missions, bagging gear that cannot be worn, augs that cannot be worn, etc.
Play through T1 group progression, able to equip anything that is attunable and dropped in T1 zones (LI, TF, AK)
Play through T2 group progression, unable to equip anything that is dropped until level 125.

Personally, I was done with all group progression on 12/6/23. I didn't have a bunch of shinies to click to max my level right away, because I like having the trophy all year.

The idea of bagging everything, just to BEAT the expansion, all the content, in old gear and now that you're DONE, now you can wear the gear? It's flawed.

Edit: I forgot to mention, but it has already been said multiple times, LARGE chunks of the experience gain is from completing quests, missions and NOT from grinding mobs.

Took about 4 attempts figure it out but did it with 2 necros, 1 mage, 1 ranger, 1 shaman, and a healer merc. All level 123 with a mixture of T1/T2 group gear, 3 live players.

Phase 1: The blob is just a standard tank and spank.
Phase 2: The spider was easy; with 3 pet classes the eggs went down before we had any spawns.
Phase 3: The Lich, 1 necro did a burn he went down rather quickly. Seemed to have almost no HP's.
Phase 4: This was the most problematic, We had issues with the AoE killing everyone the first couple times. Third time we all just ran up the stairs and around to one of the spider buildings upstairs then jumped off and repeated. The notes move so slow we could stop and cast a few spells then run a little ways and repeat. Never saw the AoE and beat her.