Guild Wars 2

tovadaun.6304:

Ah. sorry. I did not know that. I cannot find info on the exact ‘fix’ or when it was.
I apologize, and will re-edit.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-July-23rd-2013/first#post2495876

Another hidden change they implemented is that more vets will spawn,and closer to the two rocks people like to camp behind. Good luck!

Sparrowsong.4238:

My group was able to complete this yesterday by just using cc on the 1st bag guy we held him up for almost 1 minute. just leave the other spawns alone, each time you “release” the loot thief swim out a bit to un aggro any you may have picked up and remember NOT to kill any other npc. stand by the motars. we did it by the 5 loot thief since they only spawned on the one side. just stay by the motars on the left and lock that thief up!. don’t kill him! let him go at about 25% health and lock him up again when he returns. we did both phase 4 trials this way and it worked flawless.

The patch went in around reset time yesterday. From the strategy you used it sounds like that was pre-patch. Did you do it before or after daily reset?

Yeah my first party to do candidate trial were all apart of my guild. We had teamspeak for voice chat and we failed kitten T4, there were just so many vets that were each way too hard to kill. I still haven’t finished the trials.

Most likely before reset. Well I’m so happy we got it down before the patch, but even with the extra spawns I would think the CC would still help.

the health of npcs scales up depending on size of party. It is harder to solo in 2 person party vs one person.

It doesn’t sparrow. not after the patch.

I still made it with as an engineer solo post patch. It wasn’t easy and I screwed up a bit but its doable.

nice job! what traits/gear are you running?

Penguin.5197:

I still made it with as an engineer solo post patch. It wasn’t easy and I screwed up a bit but its doable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQJhk_F9O10

Latency.3907:

nice job! what traits/gear are you running?

I explained a bit on another post but yeah its basically zerkers

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Candidate-Trials-Solo-Anyone/first#post2502975

Just on a side note – that it can be done solo is just a symptom of the horrible design.

I would be really impressed to see anyone (solo or group) do the event with gold – i.e. kill 50+ pirates. That is how it is supposed to work from the event point of view after all. Not some combination of darting in and running away.

Your NPC should survive as well.

There are a few things at issue here:

1) Is it possible? Yes. There are people who have done it post-patch.
2) Is it reasonable? That’s a question highly subject to opinion, and probably won’t be solved in a forum like this- people will argue both sides, and we don’t have an adequate way to poll the “general public”.
3) Is it working as intended? (most important, in my mind) – I think we can safely answer this as no. From the gold/silver/bronze aspect of the achievement, this is clearly meant to be a hord mode. Killing the enemies is something the game is telling you you should be doing. But with the recent patch, I will go as far as to say it is impossible to kill 50 pirates and keep the plunderers at bay in a 5 man party, with the way it currently scales. An average player will struggle to do this while killing one or two.

To me, the fact that it is possible to do this with a heavy dps party while hiding/running from all the aggressive mobs and cc’ing the pluderers to death does not mean that the event is “fine”. That says to me the event is broken, but players have found ways to overcome it regardless. Congratulations to those players, but the event is still not working as intended.

Falcon.6521:

Just on a side note – that it can be done solo is just a symptom of the horrible design.

I would be really impressed to see anyone (solo or group) do the event with gold – i.e. kill 50+ pirates. That is how it is supposed to work from the event point of view after all. Not some combination of darting in and running away.

Your NPC should survive as well.

I agree but that is pretty much impossible considering all those electric fields near the end and that sith lightning…getting hit by one is bad enough, getting focused by 2 is gg

tom.7468:

If you do this with a group the enemies got around 150k hp so make sure you have enough dps.

no i did it solo. i think with party its much harder

Solo’d this after 6 hours of trying. GS+rifle warrior with full zerkers.

Got lucky really, did the same as usual but somehow the mobs didn’t cluster around the mortars.

Having done every living story achievement so far including the Aether Retreat ones I gotta say this is the most boring, frustrating and unrewarding one yet.

I just spent 8hrs trying to complete t4 of the evon trials. 2hrs was just waiting to find a group of any size. 5hrs were spent trying help people complete t3 so they could do t4.

I tried solo and with every party size. We tried using the boxes of equipment and camping near the mortars. No group had the combined survival, dps, and crowd control to complete t4 and only 1 group barely made it past t3.

I know it is possible to complete if you are on a class with full zerker + ascended gear that has high single target ranged dps plus crowd control and escape tools. The thing is that isn’t me and it won’t be within the time frame of this event. Guild Wars 2 was supposed to let you play without roles, but instead keeps rewarding max dps. I play with a hybrid of damage and support with just enough survivability, and it works well everywhere else.

Oddly enough this challenge would be easier with the holy trinity, a tank to hold the vets, a healer to keep the tank up, and dps to cc + kill the runners.

Okay, is there any way to do t4 with a full group of 5 instead of solo? Any strategy or this is just stupidly group-unfriendly.

wolfie.7296:

Lafiel.9372:

advisor.

what about every other class. can’t put down enough cc and dmg without it running into range of mobs and agros. the only way you can do it is to have a class that can instagib+stunlock at the same time.

All classes can do this i’m pretty sure, the only requirement is that you HAVE to be in zerker build to do this. Necros have the pull skill, thieves are natural burst and also has a pull skill. Guardians have a few ccs, rangers have ccs+ high damage at range, engineers have some cc and decent dps with speced right, mesmers also good dps, I suggest turning off clone on dodge however.

Again, this is a big fail on Anet’s part to make grouping much harder than solo for this dungeon.

Weeeeell… I’ve tried with my group of friends (that I run dungeons and fractals with) and we eventually gave up after trying different strategies, different group sizes… we can’t even get close.

I manage to do it… alone with my zerk thief.
The only control I had was 4th skill on the gun, and I just spammed this skill to stop them throwing their bag.

Was very hard, and not funny at all…

Thanks ANet for bringing MMO to a new dimension : a RPG.

I just did it with my mesmer, solo. 30/30/0/10.
Domination: Signet of Mastery, Greatsword Training, Harmonoius Mantras
Dueling: Phantasmal Fury, Mantra Mastery, Empowering Mantras.
Illusions: Precise Wreck.
Mantra of Distraction, Mantra of Pain, Signet of Domination. Mass Invisibility.
I had full zerker armor so it might not work for everyone
Potion of Outlaw slaying and Truffle Steak.

Kill the plunderer from the first spawn point as usual. around 5:25 the second plunderer spawn point starts.
Wait for the other add to run away then run behind the rock and stay far to the right without starting to swim.
Kill the plunderer on his way back, use signet to stun him for 3s, distraction for 1s dazes while you use mantra of pain and GS to kill him.
This is based on luck, sometimes more adds will spawn after the 2nd plunderer spawns from the 2nd point.
The 3rd spawn point will start around 3:00.
Hopefully this will help a little. I had around 1000g or so at the end.

The content was a neat idea, but poorly implemented with awful scaling. When the only real way to beat this is to avoid combat is silly. I too would like to watch the videos of the devs playing this content.

And I won’t even go into the absurd language used to select the tiers. Just say, Tier 1, Tier 2, if that is what you mean.

I’m so angry right now….A-Net rewards the people who use a bug or who have the time to do all kitten achievements right after the release…I grant everyone this achievement however you got it…but it’s seems really unfair to me to punish people with less time!

I wish to see how designers of this lvl are doing this, I wonder if they are good at maps they are doing or putting mindlessly mobs without testing.

Seems pretty hard to me.

Last night I was able to finish T4 with high condition damage gear. I stayed by the spawn and used Eruption or Flame Burst + Signet of Fire to take out the plunderers.

http://www.twitch.tv/ailesdelumiere/c/2632993

This guy did it solo with no armor. He’s a thief, but any class can accomplish this with a bit of CC. I was able to get Evon T3 and 4, as well as Kiel T1 – 4 with this approach in under 2 hours. And it would have been faster if I hadn’t completed 3 extra rounds needlessly due to doing them out of order.

- It’s easier solo. Things won’t scale up and if you’re competent, 100% of the team is competent.
– If you’ve already done 50% of the ‘Support’ achievement, the higher of the two tiers is what you need to do next, regardless of what you’ve done already. (So if you start the “Advanced Support” achievement by completing Tier 4, you need to do Tier 4 a second time to finish it.)
– The mortars won’t shoot you if you stay close to them. Don’t waste your time attacking them. Hanging out next to / behind the mortars will also prevent other things that spawn in from aggroing on you.
– All you need to do is kill the plunderers. If anything else aggros run towards where you entered the map until they leave you alone.
– If you have a nice big pull, like Scorpion Wire, Engi Magnet, Guardian GS, use it to pull the plunderer off the extraction point -after- they reach the point. They will stay still and try to beam up the treasure rather than running back to the point.
– You need to repeatedly interrupt their beam-up-treasure animation while DPSing them. I’m not sure what options other classes have, but for me this was Pistol Whip. (Thief S/P)

Good luck!

^This vid looks like it was pre-patch as the plunderers only spawned on the left side. While still solo-able it is much more difficult now as plunderers will come from all 3 spawn points at 2 mins or so.

Basically ANet really needs to look at the scaling for 5-person parties as the mob health seems waayy too high compared to when soloing. Specifically the plunderers can be killed in a few seconds (with full zerker) when solo, but they take much longer with a full party.

I think T3/T4 is really a huge hit or miss. If the enemies hang out in the middle, you are f***ed and there is nothing you can do about it. I did a smooth Kiel T3 just now because all the enemies hung out in the back. But I couldn’t complete T4 because a grenadier kept hanging out at the rock the entire time and would not go away… couldn’t get anything done.

Why punish those who have not exploited that bug? ArenaNet should just fix the bug and punish those who exploited the bug instead.

Every fifth thread created on this living world forum is about the Candidate Trials and its difficulty. One thread, at this point, has 250 responses and over 11,500 views.

Some of the posts are general complaints, but many offer good feedback which seems to be ignored.

This has (had?) the capability of being very fun content. The idea of setting up a defense in the middle with a couple of your best buddies knocking down wave after wave of plundering baddies sounds great. Unfortunately, even pre-patch, this isn’t how it was handled. We sat near the spawn points, solo, waiting to pick off a mob as it spawns.

So my questions to the development team:
Are the Candidate Trials currently working the way you envisioned it?
Nobody dares group up for this content. Was this planned?
Are any changes planned?

I am very unhappy with this challenge. I also have done every living story including AR. Spent 4 hours today trying with my warrior (got an 80 of each prof so I can try on any class) but I couldn’t do it. Yet everyone who did it using the trick before the patch gets the achievement for free…

I’d like it if someone would at least come out and say whether the challenge is really working the way they intended it.

Sadly I will not be finishing this challenge I have 3 80 a necromancer,(blood tank build) great for puling the mobs to me not so great for dps, a mesmer that is staff/sword build (doesn’t have great utility to pull mobs back and my guardian that is a staff/two handed sword build.

The last two do not have much mob control and as for beserker gear there is no kitten way I am going to spend 20+ gold plus 4-5 gold respec to make a build with one of my 3 characters to try to solo or duo this. Not work the money not worth the time.

I am sadden that I bashed myself solo and with several groups over this last week to get basically nothing for tier 4 and 75% of the time not even tier 3.

This place is forcing me to play with a certain gear setup and spec and I will say to anet no thank you take your stupid kitten tier 3 and 4 and keep it, not only is gold impossible as far as I can tell on tier 3 and 4 just finishing it seem just as impossible unless you have the most decked out players with the right gear and builds. Which I might add ticks me off something fierce.

If you dislike it then I suggest you get everyone who hates this and flood Anet’s inbox with emails about it. You are their customer after all.

Havana.8625:

I’d like it if someone would at least come out and say whether the challenge is really working the way they intended it.

I would really like it they stopped making the challenging stuff 2 week content.

i want their official response as a video of 5 devs doing T4 and able to do it until the end.

Soo many threads because soo many casuals.
T4 not required for meta achieve
It’s optional

MassDelusion.9130:

Soo many threads because soo many casuals.
T4 not required for meta achieve
It’s optional

This was suppose to be a casual game from what I understand and I am not making a sharp tongue statement. They need to stop making the hard stuff 2 weeks and make it permanent! Some of us like to do hard stuff but don’t want to rush it and keep pounding at it non stop!

@ Ayrilana
This IS their inbox for this kind of thing. That’s what we’re doing.
This is our only recourse to do so.
Why do you even say something so off-topic and snide on a thread that was BUILT to do exactly what you just said?

all i want from trials…
is a quest that makes me want to go on a killing rampage with a group

and not some “solo to avoid scaled health mobs and aim for plunderer” junk

by the way, here’s a picture of me having cleared t4 before the update
with the spawn camp method since mobs have way too much health
but I was too clueless to check that I needed to clear t4 a second time
because apparently I skipped t3 somehow
and now it looks like I might not get the full achievement
how upsetting

You say there’s so many threads because of casuals (taking a dig at them), but then you say it’s not required for meta… which is all casuals would go for.

If people want to complete every single thing, they’re probably not casuals.

Regardless, there is a large amount of interest in this topic currently, and I think it would be interesting to have some input from someone on the inside. We have not had content quite like this before.

If ‘Casual’ stops at T2, and ‘Elitist’ starts at T3, why is it not labeled ‘Elitist OCD Jerkwads Only’?
Just because a person only has TIME to play causally doesn’t mean their skill level 2yr old.
What do You define as a ‘Casual’? Someone with a wife or husband? Children? A job? School?
Is what you’re saying is that anyone who isn’t ‘cool’ enough to be a dead weight on Society-at-large cannot and should not have access to this content?
If it’s not, you should amend your post.
If it is, you need to think better about what you post in public.
I am beginning to tire of the Elitist Snobs who think that because someone doesn’t play this game 36hrs a day 450days a year with no sleep and so fiendishly that they have every ‘shiny’ item in the game- that they either don’t know how to play, or just don’t ‘deserve’ anything for the hours of work they do put in.
This is the extreme far opposite of the ‘I want it all and I want it now and I don’t want to do anything for it’ genre. This is the ‘How long does one bang their head on a Brick Wall to no avail before they tell someone to FIX THEIR PROBLEM.’ (and as such, it’s ANet that has the problem to fix)
This is exactly the same with the Search Function on this Forum.
There wouldn’t BE an ‘every 4th post’ about this Content, if posters could FIND all the Threads that CURRENTLY exist.
Treat others with at least a shred of decency. You don’t know them. You don’t know their skill level. You don’t know anything at all about them.

MassDelusion.9130:

Soo many threads because soo many casuals.
T4 not required for meta achieve
It’s optional

So in other words you think content should only be fun and/or completable for the hardcore players who have an infinite amount of time on their hands.

I like your username btw.

I cannot be bothered with the T3 and T4 achievements in this. I can get more loot, more money and more fun elsewhere. I got my meta on both sides and am happy to leave now to concentrate on other (main game) achievements that I need. After trying this one a few times with groups and a couple times solo..‘nah!’ time gated and tedious, not for me. I would be well upset if it was a necessity though.

Comicus.4036:

I cannot be bothered with the T3 and T4 achievements in this. I can get more loot, more money and more fun elsewhere. I got my meta on both sides and am happy to leave now to concentrate on other (main game) achievements that I need. After trying this one a few times with groups and a couple times solo..‘nah!’ time gated and tedious, not for me. I would be well upset if it was a necessity though.

This guy gets it, if you want to be a completionist, you’re going to have to put in some effort.

You guys want everything easy.
Some difficult things are nice.

Also, the only thing you really get out of T4, are the Achievement/achievement points. Loot wise, anythinge else wise, T2 is best.

Soo many threads because soo many casuals.
T4 not required for meta achieve
It’s optional

But it’s not working as intended because you can’t achieve 50 kills for gold at least I didn’t even saw anyone who’ve done this way.

Psychol.5783:

Soo many threads because soo many casuals.
T4 not required for meta achieve
It’s optional

But it’s not working as intended because you can’t achieve 50 kills for gold at least I didn’t even saw anyone who’ve done this way.

Rewards might not be right, but difficulty is fine

I don’t see the issue with this. It’s hard, people kept asking for hard content. Of course it’s not going to be for everyone, but hard content never is for everyone. If you want to play that content just to enjoy it and you think T4 is too hard, do T3, it’s easier.

If it’s a matter of just wanting an easy way to get the achievements, well… I couldn’t care less. Doing content you don’t want to do just to get a reward, be it an achievement or something else, isn’t exactly smart anyway.

MassDelusion.9130:

Psychol.5783:

Soo many threads because soo many casuals.
T4 not required for meta achieve
It’s optional

But it’s not working as intended because you can’t achieve 50 kills for gold at least I didn’t even saw anyone who’ve done this way.

Rewards might not be right, but difficulty is fine

Your name suits you.

This difficulty simply isn’t in line with… anything else in the game.

Yes we want difficult content in the game, but a little two week mini event that is harder than all top “end game” content? From the impossible task of getting gold, to people avoiding groups at all costs, it just feels broken, not difficult.

And again, people think differently and are on both sides of this, which is good! It makes for an interesting topic. That being said, I don’t see how a developer isn’t chiming in on this, or any posts on the topic. Not to make it easier or harder, just to join in on the conversation and give some insight / input as to what they are / were thinking and where they plan to go from here related to difficult content.