So, yesterday I decided to give The Ascent a try as a solo spot.
As far as getting there, you first zone into Broodlands from Lavastorm and then head over to Stillmoon Temple (it's in the north part of the zone). Be sure you are invis. After you enter the temple go straight and enter the building. You will see a winding stair. Climb the stairs and you will be in a hallway. Take your second left and follow all the way to Ascent.
There are two parts to Ascent, seperated by a gate that you click on. You can invis all the way up through the first part. I didn't have time to fully explore what was after the gate, but from what I saw things got slightly harder with a lot of double or triple pulls. Anyways...
All the mobs were partially/mostly slowable. Max hit was around 450. They do run and run fast. You definatly want hobble here or some other means of snare. Most are pretty straight-forward warrior type mobs, but some of the goblins and drakes are casters and they do dispel. I resisted all their nukes but ymmv based on your resists. With fero I average around 250 for all. For the most part everything is far apart and you can just pull singles. Most mobs are static but there are a few roamers to watch for. Loot reminded me of PoP, meaning a few gems and sometimes a cat ear worth as much as a gem, so basically crap. Didn't see any named.
The best spots I found were at the zonein and the spider room. From the zonein you can just pull from up the path. If you keep things cleared then even if you do get a runner you hopefully can get it nuked down before it brings the smack down on you, or at least you can zone out. The spider room, however, I thought was a better spot. Mobs are more plentiful there and you are less likely to get trained by others or have them taking your pulls. To get there, after you zone in follow up the right-hand path. Eventually on your right you will see an open area with one cat and then a small tunnel leading up. Inside the tunnel you should be able to see a spider mob. I cleared the cat (careful cause a roamer paths near here) and then the spider in the tunnel. After you enter the tunnel you should see a room with about ten spiders in it. All are static but one. The one roamer paths up near the entrance to the room, so you can just single pull him and get him out of the way. Then just start clearing around the room (after I killed one I would move to its spawn spot which I knew would be safe for a bit). If you run out of mobs you can pull stuff from outside. The spiders do have some poison dot. I'm not sure how bad it is...I resisted it every time.
Exp was okay. I use the standard UI so I can't give you an actual % but it seemed similar to NC and was a nice change for me. I was tired of getting ripped to shreds by murks and ferans.
Don't hurt the kitties there =/
I've no plans to go to that zone, other than to stand guard against evil poachers!
Went to this zone for a while 'cause a task sent me to get pristine kirin brains. Wandered all the way to the second part of the zone invis without an issue, the only see invis I saw was a golem that was pretty far in, towards the end. The mobs were indeed tighter packed, with often 2-3 drakes huddled together.
I only killed various kirin mobs, particularly a couple of spawns that were alone and seemingly free of roamers, but the exp was probably about 3%AA per. The caster types were much easier than the non-casters, I ended up self healing a lot when fighting the melee mobs.
I agree about having hobble or some form of snare, especially if you're in a small group/soloing and adds become an issue.
As with stillmoon temple there are a lot of casters around, and if you manage to get a few cleric mobs at once it can get really annoying.
Two things I'd like to add...
Like most DoN MOB's stuff in this zone seems to have a ridiculously low attack, hence very few max hits and quite a few misses. Makes this zone quite easy, as long as you stick to single pulls, even doubles aren't all that bad.
BUT there are a decent number of healers, which can really throw things off, especially if you pull multiples. Nothing quite like fighting 2-3 MOBs that complete heal each other nonstop. Generally better than Stillmoon though, as pulls are easier.
Saw 3-4% AA per kill at 70, pretty good in my opinion, considering how easy stuff is, with conviction and KEI, basically 0 downtime. PoFire castle 1, etc gives better, but not as easy as this.
on a special note, if you want to make the mobs run slower on low health, dispell them twice. it takes out mobs SoW/selo speed. i often forgot to rehobble my pet (i was doing two tasks in there. map pieces and killing kirins *cry*). with mobs dispelled, the lack of snare wasnt nearly as deadly as some say.