I haven't explored the GC all that much past the rooms with the spiders and bears. The spiders and bears are great for solo polearm up to about level 65 then the XP is not so worthwhile due to the mobs turning light blue.
I was wondering if the deeper areas are any good. I went into one room and there were aggro archer mobs that hit pretty hard so it didn't seem like a good spot for poling. Are there other areas that work? For now I moved back into the catacombs with 6x mobs (Devotion and Witches) and the XP there is better than what I get from the spiders and bears. But I would like to pole the giants in GC to continue working on the GC quests if there is a good poling location.
The problem with the mobs deeper down in GC is that there are some that use ranged attacks (archers/mages). They will keep their distance from you, making it hard to kill them AOE-style.
Not to mention they have Strong Resists to Magic and Physical attacks. The XP is lame, and as said before, the ranged mobs hurt really really bad. Tried it once recently, killed about a dozen before I realized If I keep it up I'd be one really dead archer.
Good to hear that no one likes the lower levels of GC, makes it a nice quiet place for me to level.
Our group is me the DA tanks, a Prophet and one PR. It works out real nice since I can take all the aggro and the PR just stands in one spot with rapid fire and helps kill them fast. It is not an ideal place for just anyone.
If you want good poling xp, have you tried above Devastated Castle and hit the groups of ghosts? If you have a healer you may want to try that.
AoE in GC sucks nowadays. My clan used to be there a loooooong time, but we were pulling like 30+ mobs a train.
Same goes for ancient battle ground. We pulled there up to 60mobs (normaly about 45-50, just sometimes some extra ^.^) /train, since all mobs died from a WL and a Destro both doing WirlWind the same time (and 1hit afterwards for some).
Those "laser" shooting soldiers in GC use physical attacks. Silence does not work on them and they really hurt, because like to crit often (like archers).
The xp in the deeper areas is bad, the whole place needs an "update" to bring it to the same level as many of the newer areas. And AOE in whatever form is not easy there, because you have a lot of nukers/shooters which just stand there and shoot you instead of piling up neatly so you can pole them down.
Pole group or maybe pole group with an aoe nuker is quite nice in the entrance/medium areas, though (beast lord groups, spiders, bears). Used to do that a lot on my sub with a dwarf pulling. Dwarf, SE, sorc - that worked well.
Most deeper rooms if not worth even trying out. However last time I was there to help someone with the Baium quest I noticed there was a room with only the Barif Groups (1 leader and 3 minions). There was 3 of these groups in the room so that would be 12 mobs for you. It might be worth checking out since group mobs give nice exp but you would probably kill to fast so they wont respawn before you go again.
Most deeper rooms if not worth even trying out. However last time I was there to help someone with the Baium quest I noticed there was a room with only the Barif Groups (1 leader and 3 minions). There was 3 of these groups in the room so that would be 12 mobs for you. It might be worth checking out since group mobs give nice exp but you would probably kill to fast so they wont respawn before you go again.
When I did the Baium quest I found a room near the bottom on the way to the Giant mages and elders that had several Barif groups and a few other types of mobs. I will try to find this again and try it out. The groups usually yield very good XP for poling.
Hopefully there are some mobs in there that drop the books for the 2nd level of the GC armor quest too.