A Guide to Arena Heal Badge Farming

Disclaimer: This guide is written as an attempt to help those wanting to obtain the healing badges through arena gladiator matches reach their goal in a less numbing timeframe. It is written entirely from what I have experienced while doing just that. If you have anything to add or change, feel free to do so. While I may not be perfect in my methods, I am trying to do my best. This is my first attempt at a guide of any kind, be gentle!


Arena healing only has a couple requirements. You absolutely must have the Longbow Warden 2 gladiator. This is the one which will do all of the healing for you. There must be two people, at a minimum, involved in the match, one on each team. Finally, you will need to be able to leave your computer on every night for the next several months and up to a year.


Gladiator selection


Below are the lists of gladiators that I have had the best luck with. One thing to keep in mind is, it is always better to fill the padding team before adding to the attack team. You want the maximum number of gladiators to heal before adding to the damage. A list of gladiators and information is at the end of this post under "Appendix".


Healing Team

The healing team should consist of three Longbow Warden 2’s and as many other gladiators as you can afford, to fill up space.

For Heroes:

<ul type="square">[*]Longbow Warden 2[*]Longbow Warden 2[*]Longbow Warden 2[*]Outcast Initiate Slugger[*]Outcast Initiate Slugger[*]Outcast Initiate Slugger[*]Cog[/list]
For Villains:

<ul type="square">[*]Longbow Warden 2[*]Longbow Warden 2[*]Longbow Warden 2[*]Mook[*]Mook[*]Mook[*]Outcast Initiate Slugger[*]Outcast Initiate Slugger[/list]

Attacking (Anchor) Team

The anchor team should be made up of as many gladiators as possible. You should not use any gladiators that have attacks with knockdown/back or status effects such as hold, stun, confuse, etc. These types of attack have the possibility of interrupting the healing of the Wardens. The Juicers/Wraiths are able to do AoE damage and make up for the higher cost by hitting more targets.

For Heroes:

<ul type="square">[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Wraith[*]Wraith[*]Wraith[/list]
For Villains:

<ul type="square">[*]Mook[*]Mook[*]Mook[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Juicer Chief[*]Juicer Chief[*]Juicer Chief[/list]

Padding Team

Padding teams are made up of as many gladiators as you can put on the team. There are no considerations for attack powers, as these guys will be sitting and passively taking damage and heals.

For Heroes:

<ul type="square">[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Nebula Elite Buckshot[*]Nebula Elite Buckshot[*]Nebula Elite Buckshot[*]Frostling[*]Frostling[*]Frostling[*]Crane Enforcer[/list]
For Villains:

<ul type="square">[*]Mook[*]Mook[*]Mook[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Outcast Slugger[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Cog[*]Night Haunt[*]Night Haunt[*]Night Haunt[*]Wolf Spider Enforcer[*]Wolf Spider Enforcer[*]Wolf Spider Enforcer[/list]


Event Setup


To set up the event you click on a terminal in one of the arenas (hero side - Galaxy City, Talos Island, Perigrine Island. Villain side - Port Oakes, St. Martial (inside the Golden Giza. Both - Pocket D). The setting are listed below.

<ul type="square">[*]Team Gladiator[*]15 Team Respawns[*]2 Teams[*]8 Players per team (slider)[*]No Observers (observers could cause unnecessary lag)[*]Invite Only (to prevent a griefer or hostile party from joining the event)[/list]
The command to invite players is /ai &lt;character name&gt;

Once all of the players have joined the event and the teams arranged into heal and attack teams, you can click the button to start the event.



Gladiator Arrangement


The first thing to do is arrange the healing team in such a way that all og the gladiators are withing the AoE heal effect of the Longbow Warden 2s. This is done by finding a good corner (see Appendix) and placing the Wardens in a semi-circle about 10 feet from the corner. Then try to place the non-healing gladiators inside of the circle of Wardens. The gladiators seem to have a mind of their own and don't always follow directions well. Get them as close as you can to the corner and then put them all on Passive and Stay

Note: You can control the gladiators best by selecting the options Switch To Advanced Mode and Show Individual Pet Commands on the Pet window Options menu. The two icons at the top of the Pet window will control all of the gladiators while the icons beside each gladiator's name will control that gladiator only.

It is very important that all of the healing team gladiators stay on passive during the entire event.

Once you have the healing team in place, it's time to set up the anchor(attack) team. Make sure that all of the attacking gladiators are set to Passive. Place the target character, the one that is least likely to suffer a lag or connection problem, in front of the healing mob. Have the characters that are healing (the ones with the Longbow Warden 2 gladiators) click on the target character and set the Wardens to Attack My Target making certain that they remain in Passive mode. It is this action that will start the Wardens healing cycles. After all of the Wardens have begun healing, place the attacking gladiators near the healing mob using the Go To command then set them to Stay. Once the attackers are in place, set them to Aggressive. If you have more than one character on the attack team, set up the other character's gladiators in the same manner as the first attacker.

Here are some things to keep in mind.

<ul type="square">[*]You never want to have more than 4 sets of gladiators attacking. The damage output will be too much and you will start losing Gladiators on the heal team.[*]Never use a boss type gladiator on the attack team. Their damage output is usually too great to be healed consistantly and you may start losing gladiators on the heal team.[*]If characters disconnect from the heal team, you may need to dismiss some of the attackers to keep the damage level manageable. A good rule is no more than one set of attackers for every two sets of healers.[*]It may be necessary to restart the event several times before you get a map that is usable.[/list]
Appendix

Hero Gladiators

Villain Gladiators

Arena Map List

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed post!

Why do you need an attacking team?

In my experience if you put the healing team in stay/defend the LBW2 start heal spamming like a noob empath. Only with the glads (and contrary to player character logic) the healing counts toward the badge even if no damage has been taken.

All you need is at least one person/account to man the second team to keep the arena contest open. Both teams can sit in their own corners and healspam for the badge overnight if necessary.

Edit: Actually not having set up myself, I'm trying to remember if the leader from each team sent one pet to the other side to trigger the heal spamming or not. I do not recall it being that way, but been about 6 months since I participated in one.

You can farm heals without an attack team, but it's not as effective. This is all based on theory, but the healing of the pets in the arena only count a small percentage of the non-damage heals towards the badge. The actual damage being healed is counted at 100%. I can't generate actual numbers because, as far as I know, there is no way to track the values of the heals. I do know from experience that the daily totals are overall better when using the attack method.

Does this help?

hax0rz!!!!

but actually i noticed that the totals jumped slightly when there was an attacking team. I just have to actually suck it up and join the farms again...

Could you be a little more specific?

Great job Cap!!

Anybody doing this on Virtue? I recently got the longbow gladiators but wouldn't mind sitting in on a larger healfest....

Thanks for the info!

[ QUOTE ]
Anybody doing this on Virtue? I recently got the longbow gladiators but wouldn't mind sitting in on a larger healfest....

Thanks for the info!

[/ QUOTE ]

I am on Liberty with my main badger, but as a suggestion, you could take a look at one of the information terminals around town and see who has really high totals for the current or previous month and ask them. If you can't catch them online, you can try an in-game email. I'm not sure about others, but the folks on Liberty are always happy to add others to the heal farms. Teh more people, the higher the heal points earned.

bump for increased interest

For the attacking team, you can just use 2 Shivans + fillers like Outcasts/low damage minions. Only use 1 person for the attacking team with Shivans.

Put the Shivans at max range so they only uses their ranged attacks. If they get in too close, they'll resort to Electron Haze which causes knockback and all kinds of scatter. Tell 1 Shivan to attack 1 Longbow 2. He'll use a combination of X-Ray Beam and that AoE bomb attack, neither of which does knockback.

Otherwise, everything remains the same.

If you have only one person healing, just use 1 Shivan. If there are more people healing, you can safely use 2. Some maps are better than others for this. Use ones that have little to no objects in between the path of the Shivan and healing huddle, since objects seem to cause them to lose their minds and close in to melee range.

This is, of course, dependent on their AI not having changed since Jan/Feb-ish time frame.

Hey there. I would be up for running one of these on Freedom if anyone is interested.

The critical piece of information that I seemed to miss is not to attack the Longbow Wardens. Set the attackers on the gladiators to be healed. If you just set the attackers on the group the Wardens will kill the attackers.

That's because gladiator behavior was changed without notice. Previously, you could have enemies spamming AoE damage and, as long as the Wardens were set to passive, they would not attack back. Now they do. If they take damage, they attack the enemy that inflicted it.

Did this change since i14 went live? I set up a farm last night and after 12hrs plus I have only gone up 750k. I went from 2mil to 13 mil in a lil more than 24hrs last time I did this.

I have 4 teams. (1 healing, 2 anchor and 1 attacking)
The attacking team is 3 Shivan Destroyers set at distance doing around 2k total damage with each volley.

Hero stats is showing around 10mil healing done but I'm only getting credit for the 750k.

Any ideas out there as to what is going on?