Imperial Sanctum - Masters - in NM and HM with H/H
Having recently been taking characters through Factions, I have been forced to do the Imperial Sanctum mission a few times recently. Not enjoying the premise of having to pay a runner, and with the difficulty in getting enough guildies together for this mission, I decided to try to take on Shiro with H/H and still try to get the masters reward. THE PARTY: The party consisted of my elementalist, Master of Whispers , Livia , General Morgahn , Zho , Daeman , Lukas and Devona . Tactics: It really could not be simpler. Forget about healing and go all out offense to kill Shiro as fast as possible. THE SKILLS: Copy/Paste Skill Codes: Jonny Firestorm OghjowMs4QXMIDADEDNNjVkVylA Master of Whispers OAVDMJlHPvh6QewCsHwgnhqK Livia OAVCIKxzbQFqBaDygLQVVAA General Morgahn OQWjEslqpOFZbwWbCI+HxCAAAA NM RESULTS 1:58: HM RESULTS 1:24: NOTES: Clearly the strategy listed on Wiki is not entirely accurate, specifically the comment that "A paragon with Wild Throw is not a viable substitute, as it takes too long to recharge." I encountered no severe issues running with only a paragon to end stances. It also was not necessary to "disable all energy-using skills of the hero and trigger wild blow manually." With this team configuration I was able to simply let the heros do their thing without controlling them. I also ignored the suggestion to bring along one monk (in addition to Mhenlo) as there was no need to bring one. As for the celestial skills, the ele skill was certainly helpful (which I added to my skill bar in place of my rez). I would suggest waiting until Shiro hits the bottom of the stairs before using it, but otherwise it really was not too bad. In HM, I actually stood too close to Shiro and got killed, but got rezed very quickly and immediately got the use of my celestial skill a second time, which made things go a bit faster. Otherwise, it really was a proverbial walk in the park. I hope that this helps others who need to conquer this mission! :D

I used this with my assassin to beat Shiro in both modes. Lacking the listed heroes, Vekk served as one necromancer and Gwen served as the paragon. Piece of cake!

It was more difficult with my ranger, it took several tries to beat Shiro. Got 'er done though.

The ritualist was even easier/faster. I had fewer hero choices, so Acolyte Jin was ra/wa with wild blow and other sword attacks.

Good to see that it helped. After breezing through with ease with my Ele, I was a little surprised as to how massive of a difference there was when using the exact same hero builds with my Derv. While I was able to beat Shiro on my Derv, I wasn't able to get masers in a couple tries. One thing I could tell was that the derv celestial skill is not exceptionally powerful, and that the normal derv skills do next to no damage against him. Even running with a War secondary with Wild Blow (for double the stance removal) the party was having a far more difficult time with him. Swapping builds did not seem to help much. But then again, my derv is really limited on skill availability (especially non-derv skills, elites and PvE skills). I'll try to re-work this to work a little better with my derv and see if it works well for other professions as well.

Hmm, will need to try the alternate hench solution and see how it works. Thanks :-)