Nolani Academy

Here is a build I use to farm Nolani Academy for festival items:

Simply get your enchantments up, open the gate for the Charr, and kill the mob with axe skills. Rinse and repeat, but if the drops start to decrease, do something else and come back later. I personally have a Dervish to level up so that is what I do in between runs.

Benefits: Relatively high damage output, quick and easy area to farm, plenty of flexibility, 1 or 2 campaigns required.
Drawbacks: Would probably take too much damage if mobbed by high level enemies, uses rare and valuable weapons.

Axe attacks to kill Charr:
Cyclone Axe (core axe attack everyone gets free)
Triple Chop (Factions elite, easy to capture in Bukdek Byway)

Health Regeneration:
Healing Breeze (core healing prayers) maintained for health regeneration
Vigorous Spirit (Prophesies healing prayers) maintained for health bonuses
Live Vicariously (Prophesies healing prayers) for considerable health bonuses

Energy generation:
Essence Bond (Prophesies no attribute monk) used to provide "gratuitous amounts of energy"

2 available skill slots, which I have set for condition and hex removal. I have only used hex removal when the necro boss appears.

Equipment:
11+2 healing prayers (11, headgear, minor rune)
10 axe mastery
10 tactics (for my shield only)

Dragoncrest Axe. Any maxed vampiric axe (preferably of charrslaying) would work.
Shield: 16 armor (req 10 Tactics) (9 would be better but I don't have it)
Health +30
Armor +10 (vs Charr) (very useful)

Alternatives include:
--Substituting E/Mo for Mo/W and using AoE nukes such as Lava Font, with Fire Attunement (not sure if this is necessary while mobbed by enough Charr) and more healing instead of Live Vicariously. Skills such as Armor of Earth need to replace the Tactics shield. Be careful, Live Vicariously produces a lot of healing and needs to be replaced.
--Using a W/Mo with Runes of Attunement and Radiant Insignias to get at least 25-30 energy. Needed to get Healing Breeze up while having no energy regeneration.
--Replacing Triple Chop with Prophesies skills that increase damage output, it you don't have Factions. Add a different elite if you do this.
--Sacrificing 8 armor to trade Tactics for Smiting Prayers. Balthazar's Spirit and Retribution, as well as AoE nukes, would work nicely.
--Any additional ways to convert energy into healing. Essence Bond creates the most energy while being mobbed, and using this build to solo Diessa Lowlands proves it gets stronger when attacked by bigger mobs of low-levels.

that is a good idea for farming event items.

Never thought of crashing the front gate in HM for items, will have to do that at easter.

EDIT: Another thing similarily you can do is during the first mission (Great Northern Wall) you can wait at the bridge for all the charr to rush you then wipe em out.
You'll fail the mish because there's no way you can get back to the wall in time, but you'll wipe out all the charr.

Can't do as many RPH (runs per hour) but I figure I'd mention that before someone else did

If you have a build able to take on the Charr in Hard Mode, you are about to see a nerf. One of my friends has tried using this kind of build (cyclone axe plus defense) to farm trolls in the Southern Shiverpeaks (level 24s) and succeeded, but never in Hard Mode either there or Nolani. My build doesn't even use the near-constant 75% chance to block of Bonetti's Defense and Gladiator's Defense, just raw healing power.

The mission failing thing at Northern Wall could be negated if an extra person waits near the objective, running the entire group to the finish. But then farming becomes a group activity, reducing drops...

The event items are probably the only reason an experienced farmer would use Nolani. This is my first farming build, so I picked the easier area and justified it with Shamrocks. It may also be a good way to learn the basic principles of farming; I look forward to taking on far harder areas with alliance people now that I have Nightfall.

Good luck everybody, and thanks for all the ectos!