Heart Of Thorns Hero Points

[bobsort.4097]

@AliamRationem.5172, I apologize if my post feels insulting,

 

I have seen many people just post comments like yea, I solo sand giant and when you ask them how, they disappear. Anyway, my question is mostly out of curiosity. how those who do it, do it! Your video didn't help me much as I was expecting to see some stats like what is your build.

 

I have all 9 classes at level 80, and some classes in multiple races. (I leveled 2 of them in past month using the 80 booster and scrolls). Last weekend I was AFK (reading forum) in VB guano for hours spamming chat once in a while to get help with it, which didn't happen.

 

So far my Mesmer and Necro are the most successful in all classes dealing with Champs, but with other classes no luck at all. With ranger, champ ignores the pet stright up and jumps the player (even tank pet) my thief get crushed under kessex hill centaur champ (which I can kill it easily with all other classes) and it is equipped with armor given to it by 80 booster.

 

BTW, latency does matter in fight, I think yours is below 50, however mine is never been below 270 (avg 400) which means it takes about half to 1 second for me see the attack and react and then server get my response and do its damage calculations. Example of what I see is some of PoF Vets still hit my corpse with their AOE for another few seconds!

 

My suggestion is, if you are trying to help players like me that having difficult time map completing the HoT on their 11th toon, please give them your build and strategy.

[ReaverKane.7598]

While the logic is sound... It doesn't really apply to the current status of the game, there's easily more people running HoT than PoF.

[Fallesafe.5932]

I just dinged 259 mastery points two days ago. And I soloed 98% of them. It's doable... But WHAT a nuisance!! All I can say is that I'm glad it's finally over. Those silver and gold-medal HoT games drove me out of my mind lol.

[mtpelion.4562]

I agree that the HoT HPs should be retuned so that they scale based on the number of players nearby. If you are attempting to solo an HP, you should be facing a veteran, not a champion.

 

This is coming from someone who has solo'd nearly all HoT HPs. They are not "difficult" to do, but rather tedious.

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"bobsort.4097" said:

> @AliamRationem.5172, I apologize if my post feels insulting,

>

> I have seen many people just post comments like yea, I solo sand giant and when you ask them how, they disappear. Anyway, my question is mostly out of curiosity. how those who do it, do it! Your video didn't help me much as I was expecting to see some stats like what is your build.

>

> I have all 9 classes at level 80, and some classes in multiple races. (I leveled 2 of them in past month using the 80 booster and scrolls). Last weekend I was AFK (reading forum) in VB guano for hours spamming chat once in a while to get help with it, which didn't happen.

>

> So far my Mesmer and Necro are the most successful in all classes dealing with Champs, but with other classes no luck at all. With ranger, champ ignores the pet stright up and jumps the player (even tank pet) my thief get crushed under kessex hill centaur champ (which I can kill it easily with all other classes) and it is equipped with armor given to it by 80 booster.

>

> BTW, latency does matter in fight, I think yours is below 50, however mine is never been below 270 (avg 400) which means it takes about half to 1 second for me see the attack and react and then server get my response and do its damage calculations. Example of what I see is some of PoF Vets still hit my corpse with their AOE for another few seconds!

>

> My suggestion is, if you are trying to help players like me that having difficult time map completing the HoT on their 11th toon, please give them your build and strategy.

 

It's all good. I just couldn't tell what you were trying to say from that response.

 

I tend to find something I like and play it until I either get bored of it or find something else that I like better. So I am not the most experienced with all classes. I couldn't tell you how to solo a champion on X class or build because I've only really spent time on a few classes/builds so far.

 

As for the video featured, as I said in the reply the build is Chaos 1-3-3/Dueling 2-2-1/Mirage 1-3-1, axe/torch, staff, full viper stats, malice/energy sigils, adventurer runes.

 

I start by leaping in with the jackal. This covers me with a barrier for a moment so the adds don't chew me up while I stop to activate the Hero Challenge. But since I'm playing Mirage I could just as easily have used Mirage Cloak to cover with an evade followed by 2s reflect (traited).

 

After that, the first priority is clearing the adds. You'll see I run over toward the wall. This forces the ranged enemies off to the side to move toward me to reacquire line of sight, causing them to bunch up into a pile. This makes them easy to burn down with shatters and cleave attacks. Then I just finish off the stragglers, the veteran dies shortly afterward, and I have the champion all to myself with a good minute and a half at least before the adds start respawning.

 

Staying alive comes down to knowing what to expect. The most dangerous adds are the ones that spam poison darts from range. I neutralize them by using line of sight and with a trait in dueling that causes reflect for 2s following an evade. Since the dart frogs shoot multiple projectiles when they attack, if I evade any attack it will reflect all of those back to them.

 

The other thing I'm watching out for initially is the veteran as his attacks cause knockdowns that could easily be fatal if I get clipped at a bad time. Fortunately, he's much bigger than the other enemies and his attacks are very slow and highly telegraphed. I'm very careful to avoid them!

 

Finally, the boss. I need to be close to deal damage with the axe, but he hits hard. So I use Mirage Cloak and chaos storms to cover myself at close range and then swap to staff and get to range when I'm running out of tricks to pull. The chaos storms pulse aegis, letting me block attacks and I gain 4s protection each time I leap combo the field to produce chaos armor. Mirage Cloak I can dodge while performing attacks, so I use it to cover the most vulnerable moves. It also procs an ambush window, so I'm able to deal more damage!

 

Honestly, the most dangerous attack the boss has is his normal melee. It's pretty quick and will strike a target a little outside of melee range, making it difficult to predict and avoid if you're at close range. His other attacks are the stomp, web projectile, and poison vomit. These are all pretty well telegraphed and the projectile and spit attacks are directional. You'll see I consider that a freebie and run in behind the boss to land some risk-free damage while he's performing these attacks!

 

So there's some knowledge involved here (knowing the various enemies and how to handle them as well as how to play the class), but it basically just comes down to practice. I find that if you're quick on your skills and have played the class enough to know how to use them properly, you can defeat most of these HoT HP champions.

 

You mention guano HP. That's a bad one for getting spontaneous help because it takes time to get to it and it isn't really close to anything else. The best time to get help with it is immediately following the Wyvern Matriarch in the final 20 minutes of the night cycle. Her platform is located nearby and there's a chopper at pact encampment to take you up to the canopy in an instant.

 

But like all of the others, this boss can be done solo if you know how to handle her. The big thing about vampire broodmother is her draining attacks. She has a couple. First, she can apply a draining debuff. Avoiding her attacks will help with that. But the big one that gets people hung up on this boss is the red beam attack she activates when her health drops below 25%. She leaps backward and draws a beam to a single target. The beam strikes many times very quickly and lasts a few seconds.

 

You have to either line of sight this attack (run behind an object to block it from hitting you - see my healer ele solo of this boss for that) or chain invulns/evades, etc. to avoid actually being hit by it. If you simply let it strike you repeatedly she will heal rapidly (usually up to 70-80% health) and you probably won't be able to burn her down before she's able to do it again! Here's a video of her:

 

 

Notice I avoid most of her melee attacks so she only manages to apply the draining debuff twice during the fight. Then when she does the red beam attack, you'll see I do double chaos storms to pulse aegis throughout the effect and burn endurance to evade as well. As a result, she misses most of her strikes from the beam and only heals from 19% to 26%, allowing me to easily finish her off before she can do the beam attack again. If I had been paying attention, it would have been easier to simply use distortion, but whatever works!

 

Now here's a very different style vs. the same boss. My Tempest is a healer (Zealot stats). Since she doesn't have the elusiveness or damage my Mirage does, I opt for the line-of-sight option to handle the red beam attack. When she gets close to 25% health, I kite her around a pillar. When she does the beam attack, it never strikes me because the pillar is blocking her line of sight!

 

 

Obviously, it takes longer to kill her this way due to having healing power on my gear rather than ferocity. You can see I crit a lot of my strikes, but they lack the punch of a full berserker build. But still perfectly doable and she rarely pressures me even though I have no extra vitality or toughness on my gear and I'm a squishy elementalist.