Visions of Grandeur

Hey all, so I wanted to start trying to farm Seru, so I looked up the Arx Key quest to get to him and I'm a bit stuck on the last part of the key where you have to kill all 4 Praetor guild leaders in Sanctus Seru. Seems they banish you to the jail, and with a group of 4 that makes killing them quite difficult. I read posts that people pull the leaders to the jail to kill them, but considering how you have to use a click/port just to get to them and the jail is half the zone away I just don't understand how that's possible? Has anybody here done this quest line and have some tips? I managed to kill the first leader without getting banished at all and am wondering if I just need to keep trying and hope I resist/bash-interrupt any banishes? Or of course, if Control wants to remove the banish effect a la Trakanon I wouldn't complain :)

My crew is an SK/SHM/ROG/CLR.

Just kill them in their room. Engage with your SK and in two or three swings you will have them in summon mode. Once they start summoning just make sure you watch your aggro and are not switching aggro off your SK. If you get banished you will be summoned back immediately. The only one to be wary of is one of them is a wizard, I think, and comes with a rune so it is possible to be banished before you do enough damage to put him in summon mode.

greenspectre wrote:Hey all, so I wanted to start trying to farm Seru, so I looked up the Arx Key quest to get to him and I'm a bit stuck on the last part of the key where you have to kill all 4 Praetor guild leaders in Sanctus Seru. Seems they banish you to the jail, and with a group of 4 that makes killing them quite difficult. I read posts that people pull the leaders to the jail to kill them, but considering how you have to use a click/port just to get to them and the jail is half the zone away I just don't understand how that's possible? Has anybody here done this quest line and have some tips? I managed to kill the first leader without getting banished at all and am wondering if I just need to keep trying and hope I resist/bash-interrupt any banishes? Or of course, if Control wants to remove the banish effect a la Trakanon I wouldn't complain :)

My crew is an SK/SHM/ROG/CLR.

You can also set your group up inside the jail. I got the loc of the spell effect and set then up there. It's all just preference. If you want the loc look up the spell effect on EQ Alla

Ah didn't think about summon mode. Now that I think about it the one time i got banished it was almost immediately on engagement.

For people who suggest setting group up in jail, how do you pull that mob all the way across the zone to kill him there??

I did it essentially the opposite way of killing him in his room. Leave your Rog/Shm/Cleric in the jail and run your SK to the room. You will need to FD off the aggro because the mobs that drop the reports outside the rooms see invis. Once aggro is clear, aggro the shard mob making sure you don't have any damage shield and try to position so you don't riposte him. Eventually he will banished you to the jail where your other characters are and just wait. The mob will show up eventually. The odd time I have had him pick up a couple of green/low blue trash but they aren't a concern.

To be honest they do not proc their banish that often so it can be a bit of a wait. I pulled them with my elemental geared bard and sometimes lost up to 60% of my bard's health before it finally triggered. Other times it can be pretty quick.

Some others here may know of other ways to do the pull, like pet pulling maybe, but I just did it the "wait to be banished and have him show up" way.

Thanks for the tip Fierlen! My crew is mostly HoT/Veksar geared with the SK having a few pieces from Rumblecrush so I don't think I could take as many hits as your bard, but this is a strategy I might need to look into later.

Well thanks to everyone's tips, I managed to come back and get the other 3 kills I needed! Played a bit of jail/summon Ping-Pong but it worked out :) Now for Seru...I tried him once real quick but my tank went down right as slow landed and I had some computer problems, otherwise it might have been possible to try to rez him back in. Should I bother to worry about the curse damage? Or just keep my melees away from the casters and healed? Group is 60 at this time.

I wouldn't worry about the curse damage. I would say it is maybe 150/tick. I ran bard, and with bard and shaman Regen it negated the DoT damage. At 60 it is going to take you a long time to kill him. I'm not sure what the respawn on the guards in his room are but with your DPS it might be a consideration. I'm almost certain that LiS is tethered to his room so you could try pre-allocated, slow and cripple before you engage.

To be honest, I would just suggest you level and give it another shot later. I'm sure he can be done at 60 but the amount of time it will take isn't really worth it.

He has enough hit points that it would take you about the same amount of time to level from 60-65 as it would to actually kill him.

Yeah, I gave it a shot this morning and was only able to drop him about 18% or so before a random flurry hit me before CH could land. Cleric and shammy definitely don't have enough mana to keep my crew up at this point/SK doesn't mitigate damage well enough, etc. Still, it was a fun engage, and I learned I can bind right outside his room so even after I ruin my Heart of Seru faction (which for some reason is still amiably at this point) I can still drop this guy any time I log in without any hassle....once I can take him in the first place, that is :)

Off to finish the grind to 65 I suppose! Thanks everyone for your advice and insights!