Helms dike!

[raymondo]

i just can't win helms dike. I've won the others on gold and caves on platinum but i cant complete helms dike. Either everyone gets wasted while i try to keep the gate up or the gate gets destroyed while i try to keep my guys up top going :/

[Bushido41]

I also found Helm's Dike to be hard. First run through I tried to do some secondaries and lost outright. Second try, I just focused on the primary and won but didn't earn any medal. The pace is so fast that I couldn't sustain DPS with my hunter. Early on, the friendly soldiers would kill faster than my bow inductions, so I'd often be wasting shots. I probably need to do a better job picking my targets and shooting the trailing enemies. Later after I lost a few friendlies, the enemies began to snowball and I couldn't keep up with the flow. It does seem to want you to be two places at once, so maybe more appropriate for a duo rather than solo. Maybe grab a friend to help.

[Golledhel]

Use the small ballistas and aim them at the formations that are coming for the center on both sides. Then fire away until you get at least all of the commanders. If you have Engineer rank 1 then pick up the 2 barricades and place them on the western side of the center group. The one heading to the watchtower. That group is usually the one that gets slaughtered. When the watchtower event happens, head there quickly to help out. The extra mobs going up that side can overhelm the group (the 2 barricades here help a lot)

If you do that then the NPCs can usually take over the rest. Just do a little healing here and there when needed. The NPCs at the outernmost ends can usually handle themselves.

[raymondo]

Thanks, yeah i use the 2 barricades there. How do you know how many commanders there is? im rank 1 engineer and i set up the ballistas before i start but firing away with it seems never ending :/ and feel i have to run round to the commanders to buff them as my 2nd tree is rank1 commander. am i better off just staying on the ballista u think?

[Golledhel]

When you hit the uruk formations, you'll see a floaty text showing what you did. like -2 Commanders, -2 Archers, -2 Warriors, etc. If you're not getting them then you're not really hitting them (even if the shot appears to land in the middle of the formation). Usually Commanders is the first thing you'll kill with the ballista in Helm's Dike. I think each formation in each wave to the center has 3 commanders the first time, and like 6 commanders when they start attacking both sides of the center at the same time. If you're killing archers then you've killed the commanders.

I think you should stay on the Ballista as much as possible. Thinning those formations means easier stuff for the NPCs to handle. At the very least, try to take out the Commanders. As soon as you get the events, go for them and try to do as best as you can. By the time they pop up, you should have put a decent dent on the formations.

Protect the Horses is pretty easy. You should be able to get platinum after only a few tries. Just keep those horses alive as best as possible.
The 2 barricades (one behind the other, with some space in between, just before the cluster of NPCs closer to the watchtower) will make getting platinum on Guarding the Watchtower easier. If you have traps use them too. You ideally want the mobs to stay in that corner clustered as much as possible while the NPCs (and you) slaughtered them. If you managed to get rid of all the commanders with the ballista beforehand then things are easier since you won't have any sigs to deal with.

Powder at the Gate on the other hand is very hard to do solo. The NPCs suck at killing the oncoming sappers and they drop too many bombs for 1 person to disarm by themselves. Flames at the Gate is also very difficult. I haven't actually managed to beat that one.

Haven't gotten A Stone Obstruction and The Statue of Helm Hammerhand, but I remember the Statue one being easy in beta(might have changed). Just keep those trolls down.

But yes, I think your priority should be to keep the Commanders in the formations heading for the 2 center sides down from even showing up.

[Gohankuten]

Stone obstruction is the only one I have been unable to finish. I can't figure out where I need to be and the NPCs get overwhelmed by the invaders. For flames at the gate I believe you need to go up and down the rope while keeping the gate at full health though not certain since barely got it done and no idea if going up and down the rope is what caused the archers to actually attack the siege machine.

[rannion]

Can anyone explain how I motivate the archers to do their jobs on the Flames at the Gate sidequest? Because I literally have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.. I had one run where I clicked the 'arrows' that were on the ground near the archers every time I could, and kept them safe from attackers fairly efficiently, but even then they didn't even get the ram down to 40% health before the ram destroyed the gate.

[Taravith]

The pace is so fast that I couldn't sustain DPS with my hunter. Early on, the friendly soldiers would kill faster than my bow inductions, so I'd often be wasting shots.

I have found that DPS hunters are not as useful in battles as their are in other settings. You'll definitely want to take a "secondary" role there with the yellow line, and either focus on the siege weapons + traps as an Engineer or boost the soldiers as an Officer.

If you pick Engineer with points in traps, you can even shorten your Trapper line a bit and get Rain of Arrows (+ Hail of Arrows whenever it stops bugging out) for a bit more punch in a pinch.

The biggest problems in this battle is protecting things (mainly the archers and the statue, and particularly on the western-central gap, where soldiers will die like flies) so if you can team up with either another Crowd Control class or a tank (a Guard with Vanguard can do miracles nowadays) you should reap some good rewards.

Can anyone explain how I motivate the archers to do their jobs on the Flames at the Gate sidequest? Because I literally have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.. I had one run where I clicked the 'arrows' that were on the ground near the archers every time I could, and kept them safe from attackers fairly efficiently, but even then they didn't even get the ram down to 40% health before the ram destroyed the gate.

I think that they stop attacking whenever they're getting hit, so that's already a problem (especially on the west side), and that the only way to not completely fail is to get at least 2 of them to shoot continously. The best I've been able to do so far is pretty much give up the westernmost archer as dead, get a solid defense at the western edge of the bridge over the gate and hope for the best. I don't even know how you're supposed to solo that.

[Spydre]

Can anyone explain how I motivate the archers to do their jobs on the Flames at the Gate sidequest? Because I literally have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.. I had one run where I clicked the 'arrows' that were on the ground near the archers every time I could, and kept them safe from attackers fairly efficiently, but even then they didn't even get the ram down to 40% health before the ram destroyed the gate.

I think I started to figure it out before it failed last time. I picked up the arrows and stood next to them and he started firing. I'll have to experiment more to find if it's accurate

[Golledhel]

(a Guard with Vanguard can do miracles nowadays)

Explain please.

[hurant]

Can anyone explain how I motivate the archers to do their jobs on the Flames at the Gate sidequest? Because I literally have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.. I had one run where I clicked the 'arrows' that were on the ground near the archers every time I could, and kept them safe from attackers fairly efficiently, but even then they didn't even get the ram down to 40% health before the ram destroyed the gate.

Click "Arrows" (select nearest item, "Delete" key default, might help greatly), then walk right into both archers to supply them with arrows. Repeat whenever archers say "Awaiting orders".

Immediately after that go down the rope and start extinguishing the gate (fire icon debuff on gate) and repairing it (<100% gate HP).

I have a question myself, why do the ballistas in Helms dike do NO damage to the enemy groups? I'm aiming in square formations that move forward, hitting them works in other BBs, but not Helms Dike.
In other battles I get "9 warriors defeated, 4 sapper defeated", here I get NO response at all.

[Golledhel]

You have to aim at the exact spot. The "hit box" of the formations is small and doesn't cover the entire formation.

[Lohi]

Early on, the friendly soldiers would kill faster than my bow inductions, so I'd often be wasting shots.

You may want to try Huntsman or Trapper of Foes instead. Huntsman so you can shoot faster and move around better, or trapper because the aoe and traps will really help out. The hunter run buff can be very helpful at times.

It does seem to want you to be two places at once, so maybe more appropriate for a duo rather than solo. Maybe grab a friend to help.

Yes, grab a friend if you can. In Helm's Dike solo/duo the enemies come in two locations at a time (not counting side quests). So have one person at each location helps. However it does seem that the location that is closest to the center will have the brunt of the enemies and the outer location does better (or that may be because that's where I can aim those ballistas best, it's so hard to see what's going on in the dark). You could also have one player handle keeping the battles stable while the second goes to deal with side quests.

I haven't done great in it on the main quest yet, but the pattern seems straight forward with some experience. Help out the one side as much as you can but occasionally run over to another commander and issue a heal/damage command. When things come down the center then both sides are vulnerable. The siege weapons may help there but more experience necessary to know where to aim.

What we really need are some Epic Battles guides, like a description of all the side quests, an overview map (please!), and maybe some hints.

[Lohi]

Protect the Horses is pretty easy. You should be able to get platinum after only a few tries. Just keep those horses alive as best as possible.

What's the deal with releasing the horses to run free? Does it count as a lost horse, or does it help?

I got to watchtower once but was baffled what was going on or where to click. Only did it once though.

Flames at the Gate is also very difficult. I haven't actually managed to beat that one.

I saw the gate at the bottom taking damage and options to repair or extinguish. If I stuck on that I could get the fires all the way out and then work on repair, but not sure if that's all that was necessary. Not sure at all what the archers up top were doing, certainly I couldn't give them orders and they never killed the siege engine. Maybe have two players with one up top and one at bottom?

Haven't gotten A Stone Obstruction and The Statue of Helm Hammerhand, but I remember the Statue one being easy in beta(might have changed).

Yes the statue was not hard at all. You can multitask between helping those soldiers out (orders to commanders) and then killing trolls once they come up. The enemies seem to mostly come from the east side.

Stone Obstruction was about going to the three archers and "reminding" them to keep shooting (seriously, they have to be told :-). Going between two archers continually is easy enough. Going between all three may be harder and slowing things down actually, unless you've got a run buff on if hunter. I'm going to see if a regular mount works there but it might not.

I'm not sure how scoring is done. It tells you how you lose merit but no clue given about how you make your merit go up.

[Lohi]

I had one run where I clicked the 'arrows' that were on the ground near the archers every time I could,

There are arrows on the ground there??

There are things down below to repair though. Maybe it's intended for two people otherwise you can't keep up both damage and repairs/extinguish?

[Golledhel]

What's the deal with releasing the horses to run free? Does it count as a lost horse, or does it help?

I got to watchtower once but was baffled what was going on or where to click. Only did it once though.


I saw the gate at the bottom taking damage and options to repair or extinguish. If I stuck on that I could get the fires all the way out and then work on repair, but not sure if that's all that was necessary. Not sure at all what the archers up top were doing, certainly I couldn't give them orders and they never killed the siege engine. Maybe have two players with one up top and one at bottom?


Yes the statue was not hard at all. You can multitask between helping those soldiers out (orders to commanders) and then killing trolls once they come up. The enemies seem to mostly come from the east side.

Stone Obstruction was about going to the three archers and "reminding" them to keep shooting (seriously, they have to be told :-). Going between two archers continually is easy enough. Going between all three may be harder and slowing things down actually, unless you've got a run buff on if hunter. I'm going to see if a regular mount works there but it might not.

I'm not sure how scoring is done. It tells you how you lose merit but no clue given about how you make your merit go up.

From what I can tell, releasing the horses doesn't count as a dead horse, but reduces the amount of merit you'll receive. So if you see a horse that is about to die, might as well release it. Another downside to releasing the horses is that it gives the orcs less targets to focus on so another horse is going to get ganged up on harder.

The Watchtower one you don't really need to do anything except kill any enemies that go to it as fast as possible. So long as the tower doesn't take any damage you'll get plat.

I finally got the stone obstruction one and got plat on my first attemp. Just run between the 3 archers contantly and tell them to shoot. Unfortunatelly, due to the stupidity of the west side NPCs, you'll end up losing some soldiers. Regular mounts work in there, but regular running is enough. The distance at normal speed wiill get you to the next archer pretty much when the cooldown finishes.

I've given up on the war machine gate one until the stuipidity of the west side NPCs is fixed.

[Taravith]

Explain please.

It's gonna be a vague explaination because I don't play Guardian myself, but my boyfriend does, and I've doing BBs with him since the beginning.

He can pretty much aggro everything (pretty awesome for quests where you have to protect things) and since he's always on the front lines hitting mobs, Vanguard suggested itself. Now I don't know how that works exactly (I'm the Crowd-Control-engineer-trap-person) but he's very happy with it and so am I. We've been doing fantastically those last few BBs (or would have if it wasn't for the bugs): I'm already tired of getting the same old platinum rewards all the time.

[Patriotp3a]

You can get full platinum in helms dike solo if you have atleast rank 3 engineer.

I just used the placeable catapults/ballistas to my advantage. Catapults out dps archers for the part where you have to kill the battering ram.
same for the watchtower and everything else if you dont have the burst dps. Usually not a problem for hunters


hope this helps

[Lohi]

Catapults out dps archers for the part where you have to kill the battering ram.

You can aim the catapult way back there? Or is this a new placeable catapult?

Problem with this stuff is that it takes a long time to learn where to aim things, and playing once a day has not yet given anyone enough time to learn this I would think, unless one was in beta.

[joshthenosh]

helms dike and deeping wall are the two easiest to get platinum on, i just use a catpult for flaming gate, but u need 2 people one to put the flames out, also use the catapults to kill soilders, the faster u kill soilders the faster the side quests pop up so if you watch the orcs outside u can see them dissaper as your soldiers kill them, im rank 6 enginner and kill 40 every catapult shot which is a million times faster than soldiers killing them