User:Foo/GoM

A running setup. Here the party is flagged at the end of the long shadow, the player just south of the Portal Wraiths, and the spiker is south of the player, at agro distance.

AFK GoM Bonding Team Build

An efficient and simple AFK XP farm for getting the Legendary Survivor title in 4 hours, and 534 skill points per day.

This build is designed to work with no cons, special items, complex bonding, mercenary heroes, or any other hard to get resource.

Setup can take as little as 8 minutes, and the farm can run indefinitely.

The Basics

• A Chaos Rift in the Gate of Madness mission can spawn 8 new Titans every 30 seconds.
• A player tanks the Titans with a low health armor set.
• Protective Bond reduces all damage to 5% of the player's (low) max health, and Lightbringer title, reapplied after Protective Bond, negates most if not all of the remaining damage.
• Burning and Bleeding durations' are reduces with Purifying Veil, and health regeneration is provided by Mending and Watchful Spirit.
• A Keystone Signet Mesmer hero, backed up by EoE, kills the Titans.
• All other heroes are at spirit range, maintaining bonds and natural spirits.
• XP is shared only between the player and the Keystone hero, and with a Scroll of Berserker's Insight, sums up to 348xp per kill, or 334,080xp per (afk) hour.

The path through the mission and the Chaos Rifts area

Requirements

• Access to the GoM mission.
• Lightbringer rank of 4 or more.
• Heroes: 1 Mesmer, 1 Ranger, 3 Monks, and one additional hero of any profession.
• A 105hp armor-set (made with 5 superior attribute runes).
• Scrolls of Berserker's Insight.

Bonds

All bonds are applied to the player:

• Enough copies of Protective Bonds so that its prevention mechanism would cost only 1 energy.
• Purifying Veil at Protection 12 or more.
• Mending at Healing 8.
• Watchful Spirit.

The first Protective Bond applied should always be that with the higher Protection Prayers.

• Lightbringer.

While not strictly a Bond, Lightbringer provides a crucial never-ending damage reduction effect. Should be re-applied after Protective Bond.

Builds

A Monk Bonders setup with QZ and without Mantra of Recall

Monk Bonders

The Monks bond the player with Protective Bond and additional bonds and get the required energy with Blessed Signet and either Quickening Zephyr or Mantra of Recall.

For extra safety, especially at low Lightbringer ranks, it is advised to use both:

Protection Prayers: 16 Divine Favor: 2 Inspiration: 12

Protection Prayers: 8 Divine Favor: 2 Inspiration: 12

Protection Prayers: 8 Divine Favor: 2 Inspiration: 12 Healing: 8

The higher the Monks' max energy is, the safer it is. 50 is good, 60+ is best.

Keystone Mesmer

The Keystone Mesmer is flagged near the Player, and kills the titans.

Fast Casting: 12 + 3 + 1 Inspiration: 12 + 3

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• Should be set to "Fight".
• Should wield no weapon at all, (Offhand is OK).
• Should have Artificer's Insignias and at least 350 health (with any combination of runes / insignias / offhand).
• Should be individually flag-able by either being one of the first 3 heroes, or having a key assigned for the "Command Hero #" action.

Rangers

One primary Ranger and one secondary Ranger are used to maintain Edge of Extinction and two copies of Quickening Zephyr:

Beast Mastery: 12 + 3 + 1 Wilderness Survival: >=8

Wilderness Survival: >=8

Since Quickening Zephyr doesn't require very high Wilderness Survival, it is also possible to move it to another hero (like an ESurge Mesmer).

Walkthrough

Getting to the AFK location

• Start the Gate of Madness mission and activate your Lightbringer title.
• Do not use any cons that will change your health, like morale-boosters or a Grail of Might.
• Fight your way to the area where the Chaos Rifts are. The first two will be to your left (south) and to your right (north).

A good working positioning

Preparing the AFK location

There are 3 types of enemies in the area of the two Rifts: Those that should be taken out, those that better be left alone, and those that must survive:

First. carefully pull and kill these enemies:

• The 3 Portal Wraiths guarding the southern Chaos Rift.
• The 3 Torment Creatures patrolling the area.
• The 2 Margonites patrolling the area.

Try not to agro the two Titan Abominations patrolling the area. If you do, pull them away and kill them and their spawns. Be careful of the next pair to spawn and patrol the area.

Definitely don't agro the 3 Portal Wraiths of the northern Rift. If you do, try to disengage. If they all die, the Rift closes and the mission must be restarted.

Once the only enemies in the area are the 3 Portal Wraiths of the northern Rift and the 2 patrolling titans, setup can begin.

Preparing the Tank

• Switch to the 105HP armor-set. (For a total of 115HP with 2% morale).
• Apply all copies of Protective Bond, starting with the highest Protection Prayers one.
• Apply all other bonds.
• Re-activate your Lightbringer title. This must be done only after Protective Bond is applied.

Agro and positioning

• Flag the party on the tip of the long shadow as seen in the pictures.
• Agro the Titans and position yourself directly south of the Portal Wraiths, as close as possible without agroing them.
• Make sure that you and the enemies around you are within EoE range.
• Flag the Keystone slightly inside your agro bubble, in the direction opposite from the Rift and the coming Titans.
• Activate a Scroll of Berserker's Insight.
• Go AFK. Look out the window. Make some food. Love someone.

Troubleshooting

There are a few common failures:

• The Player took too much damage and died, because:
  • The Lightbringer title wasn't re-applied after bonds.
  • It didn't equip the low health armor set.

• Enemies attacked and killed the Keystone, because:
  • The player did not equip the low health armor set, or the Keystone had very low health itself.
  • The Keystone wielded a short-range weapon and got too close to the enemies.

• Enemies killed other heroes, because:
  • They were flagged too close to the Rift / Player / Keystone, and tried to attack or heal, and gained agro.

• Bonders' energy was depleted, causing bonds to be lost and the player to die, because:
  • Bonders' max energy was low to begin with.
  • Protective Bond wasn't cast in the right order (High Protection first) causing it to cost 2 energy per prevention.
  • Bonders used their energy in other ways, like for healing minions or other heroes that sacrificed health.
  • The Keystone Mesmer didn't kill enemies fast enough, raising Protective Bond's overall energy demands. This can be caused due to:
    • It being set up incorrectly.
    • It being flagged too far, wasting time on running back and forth.
    • It wielding a weapon, wasting time on attacking.
    • EoE not reaching enemies.
    • The Player being positioned too far from the Rift, lengthening the time it takes the enemies to reach it.

A slow Keystone could also cause the scroll to expire. If this keeps occurring, consider Grinding some DoA for Lightbringer 5 or 6, significantly improving its damage output.

Optimizing Max Health

While 115 health (5 sup runes and 2% morale) is mostly ok, the actual max health for zero damage is dependent on Lightbringer rank, and is equal to LB * 20 + 19.

Raising health closer to that limit improves survivability vs health degeneration, and can be done in simple ways for the relevant ranks:

• LB 6 (max 139):
  • Raising morale from 2% to 7% for 105 + 34 = 139
• LB 7 (max 159):
  • Raising morale from 2% to 10% for 105 + 48 = 153
  • Replacing a sup rune with a major for 115 + (75 - 35) = 155
• LB 8 (max 179):
  • +60 health staff (or +30 weapon and +30 offhand) for 115 + (30 + 30) = 175

Still failing and don't know why?

Message me on discord (gwfoo) screen shots of your builds and positioning, and details on how long you lasted, how it failed (if you know), your profession, your Lightbringer rank, how much damage you received from the Titans, and anything else you might find relevant.

Additional Questions and Thoughts

• Can this be done in Hard Mode for even more XP? Likely not, as enemies go after the Keystone, which even if bonded, runs away, messing agro, and being distracted from dealing damage.
• Can the player take part? Sure - a Necro player with high SR can replace a Bonder.
• Can the Bonders be anything other than Monks? Yeah, they can be Necromancers with high Soul Reaping, but that requires either 4 of them, or a way to get one to 13 Protection Prayers, to reach the 3e break-point of Protective Bond.
• Can the Keystone be improved? A lot of thought was put into every single skill in that bar, so I think not. If you think differently, let me know!
• Can this be set up for another player? Sure! The tank only needs LB4+ and low health armor. Everything else can be setup by another player/account.
• What about Dervishes? Due to their inherent +25 health bonus, Dervishes need to adjust their max health: At LB 4 they need a -50 Grim Cesta and a weapon health mod of at most +29. At LB 5 they need a Grim Cesta and a weapon health mod of up to +30. At LB 6 and above, they can do with their 130/140 health with no issue. See the talk page for more health values analysis.
• What happens if this is done non afk? A Mesmer player can play both the tank and the keystone for 696xp per kill, twice as much as when afk. Doing so in HM will get 924xp per kill, but is much harder due to a faster attack rate and a slower kill rate, and will most likely require extreme optimizations, like LB8, 16 BM for the EoE, 12 WS for the QZs, 16 prot for the veil bonder, very careful positioning and agroing, and maybe some pcons for more damage...

If you have any other questions or ideas, please share them with me on discord (gwfoo).

Good luck!