Guild Wars 2

@tencoderiot.6430 It is not impossible.

Done with a normal setup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMynZ-prUY&feature=youtu.be

Guardian, Necromancer, Engineer, Thief and Mesmer. No Zerker Warriors or similar groups alike.

Is all about coordination and knowing the ‘synergies’ of the classes in the group.

We just wasted 5 hours on this, trying every single tactic. Big groups, solo, duo, all full zerk, bursting, pulling CC’ing, heck, we were even on voice com for this!
Tier 4 is way to difficult to complete. Please scale it down.
Thank you.

GrizzlyBearoDactyl.9460:

We just wasted 5 hours on this, trying every single tactic. Big groups, solo, duo, all full zerk, bursting, pulling CC’ing, heck, we were even on voice com for this!
Tier 4 is way to difficult to complete. Please scale it down.
Thank you.

You might need to rethink your approach, if you still can’t do it feel free to message me in-game.

I think the big problem I’ve having the most is that no one wants to do it because of the high difficulty. Therefore, it takes me 4 hours to get a group together and when I do they attempt it once and then disband from shear frustration. I’m all for difficult events but it’s not fun when no one wants to participate with you. As an engineer I don’t feel like I can or wish to solo it. This is group content in my opinion but the groups just aren’t willing. Hopefully it’ll get toned down just a tad. Even a small tweak could fix this issue.

@tencoderiot.6430. Engineer was the key for us to finish it.

People seriously need to learn how to play this game properly, CoF and Zerker teams (mechanics way to simple for the casual players to be able to finish the content in the game) has dealt a lot of damage to the game and tbh is Anets fault for letting it go for months.

Alur.7510:

@tencoderiot.6430 It is not impossible.

Done with a normal setup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMynZ-prUY&feature=youtu.be

Guardian, Necromancer, Engineer, Thief and Mesmer. No Zerker Warriors or similar groups alike.

Is all about coordination and knowing the ‘synergies’ of the classes in the group.

Nicely done, Alur. I was wondering if anyone would post a group video without abusing the aggro leashing. Nice to see a highly coordinated team can get this done.

Do you think your group could ever get to Gold? Or are the Vets’ hps way too much?

@Alur.7510 Are you aware of any builds that would help for an engi? Anyone have any links for a build that would be ideal for this content?

@tencoderiot.6430
It will take a couple of tries due to RNG, but this is the build that finally let me do it after trying all day yesterday:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUl0picX7STF17IyoHkWnNhgeYX5lfJqg+B-jQyAYLAiCQyrIasthioxqqBULYqSElLqCOyCBMaCA-e

Azraeel.1238:

akamon.2769:

it’s definitely doable i want to say, albeit a LOT harder compared to pre-patch , not using the bug.

i will say though, at time sit still depends on luck. which is good and bad. cause you can get really lucky, or well. you know the other end of the spectrum. or perhaps someone who can shed some light on the experiences i’ve had myself.

so the vet spawn locations seem random to me? i’ve seen or heard how people do it without aggro-ing (at least not TOO much). i often have vets that spawn near the plunderer spawns. some at the middle flat rock. some even close to the left plunder spawn. so if i leash far enough to lose aggro , i might as well quit because the plunderers, especially if 2 or more are running, they could just walk and have all the treasure by the time i get back. :///

doesn’t help that i feel aggro range has been extended as well? sometimes i see the charr grenadier vet that will run across the entier map, heading straight at me until i run near the water between the armor repair guy and the plunder spawn points. :/// it’s scary whenever i see him come a-runnin’.

one time i had 3 vets spawn near the plunder camps.

I don’t know how accurate your description of the issue is, because it totally differs from my experience. The only time I’ve seen the NPC run back that much is when they successfully landed an attack on me. Otherwise, just moving a little back will make them reset. They even run afar where the treasure is leaving me to solo the plunderers.

His description is pretty accurate, between that and the vets spawning at the grenadiers it’s crazy. Like some others I’ve managed to solo this, but again it’s all luck. If you get lucky with the spawns on the vets it’s o.k.. Not easy at all, but o.k.. If you don’t, well that’s game.

This “fix” was just a punishment to people good enough to solo it. Which inadvertently punishes the hell out of people who didn’t get this before they “fixed” it.

I think the big problem I’ve having the most is that no one wants to do it because of the high difficulty. Therefore, it takes me 4 hours to get a group together and when I do they attempt it once and then disband from shear frustration. I’m all for difficult events but it’s not fun when no one wants to participate with you. As an engineer I don’t feel like I can or wish to solo it. This is group content in my opinion but the groups just aren’t willing. Hopefully it’ll get toned down just a tad. Even a small tweak could fix this issue

Unfortunately most events (just look at Orr) were made with a certain size for the player base in mind. Now what’s sad about that is that GW2 has already passed it’s “prime” with it’s player base, and that’s just not achievable on anything except 2/3 servers. What you are experiencing is the same thing most players experience when trying to do a variety of content in the world. Get it done on the first day, or the area becomes a ghost town.

You could probably guest to one of the high population servers and get it done.

@Zhavari.7190
Thank you!
What do you mean by Gold Zhavari, 50 kills?

@tencoderiot.6430
Debby will give you the build she was using in the vid, as a reference.

@tencoderiot.6430

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V;4cPVi0s57QFx0;9;4TT;0946A46A;45;04-3;9;0o-Fg-A;4VhVlWqXv21475230Cs1k;5k06Rk06R;9;9;9-kkkkkk;4k0m

switch utilitys depending on where you go and what ur doing.
in this specificcontent, use the build from link.

If you are more experienced in the class you could go full zerker armor too.

Did this solo yesterday, much easier than with a party. Don’t let the descriptions and advertisements about needing a party fool you.

@Yamsandjams.3267
you’re completely missing the point.
its about team co-ordination and personal accomplishment of being able to complete this without any bug’s glitches of lame tactics.

Alur.7510:

@Zhavari.7190
Thank you!
What do you mean by Gold Zhavari, 50 kills?

You’re welcome. Yes, I was referring to the 50 kills mark. I noticed you were at 28 by the end and assume that hitting 50 would be quite an uphill climb.

Debbysaurus.4016:

@Yamsandjams.3267
you’re completely missing the point.
its about team co-ordination and personal accomplishment of being able to complete this without any bug’s glitches of lame tactics.

That is what I was implying. The mini-game was not well designed and did not play as intended. If they had this sort of foresight they probably would’ve redid things before they released it.

It’s not Anet’s fault if you or the guys with 5 legendaries with ascended gear have no skills.. Deal with it.

@Debbysaurus Was this used to solo it? Can you go into detail about the build a little more like where certain skills would be ideal and when to use them?

I managed to solo both tier 4 trials on my d/d elementalist yesterday. It’s hard but once you get the pattern down it’s not so bad if you bring a lot of cc. If you happen to aggro any mobs it’s best to just run back behind the mortars and hope the vets will leash even if you have to risk losing treasure. Here is my build and gear setup with consumables for those interested. I only have one (not infused) ascended trinket so feel free to replace the others with your infused zerker trinkets. :p

I am Sylvari so I was able to get grasping vines for extra CC. I went d/d partially for magnetic grasp. I find sceptre to be a bit too slow, but if you feel more comfortable ranged, go for it. Immobilize the plunderers as soon as they spawn and just start destroying them. If you really need to get a plunderer on the spawn closest to the treasure, you can immob him with one of your many CC skills, burst him down, then RTL out of there (make sure you aren’t immobilized first though) so you won’t be absolutely destroyed you as you are incredibly glassy. Your heal skill doesn’t have to be ether renewal, but the condition removal is incredibly helpful if you happen to be caught.

I went with the water line trait stop, drop, and roll because of the incredible amount of chill. If you’d rather just sit in air a majority of the time, you could take ember’s might instead of internal fire, but I just found it easier to get the 10% damage boost in both attunements.

If you happen to be downed, don’t give up! Mist form into water and swim away. Seriously, you can res yourself much faster in water and can still complete the event if you are even a little bit lucky.

I am by no means a great player or theory crafter and I’m sure many of you can come up with better builds/strategies. I’m just sharing what worked for me. Hope this helped a bit.

And for those of you who can’t open the link for whatever reason:

Weena.6429:

30 points in fire with traits Burning Precision (V), Internal Fire (VI), and Pyromancer’s Puissance (XII)
20 in air with Bolt to the Heart (VI) and Air Training (X)
20 in water with Vital Striking (VI) and Stop Drop and Roll (VII)

Full Berserker gear with emerald orbs and ruby trinkets with ruby orbs. I have a cavalier backpiece with a ruby orb, but that can be replaced with Berserker and you won’t be missing out on much.

2 Berserker daggers with Sigil of Superior Strength and Sigil of Superior Battle, although you could probably get away with different sigils or even ruby orbs.

For consumables I used Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup and Master maintenance oil, although I have read you could use the potion of bandit(?) slaying too.

For skills I used Ether Renewal, Signet of Fire, Grasping Vines, and Signet of Earth. I didn’t really bother using an ult because with Fiery Greatsword you miss out on that CC you need. Tornado might be an option but you’d probably be eaten by conditions.

It’s trivial to solo it with a zerg warrior. You need to use 2 or 3 differend skills. Just camp at the back and hope that no charr naders appear, because they somehow aggro more easily and draw more mobs.
Really, how incompetent are the people who are creating this content? This particular activity is just plain retarted.

ps. The obvious build is 10/20/0/10/30, r/g, full zerg, crit dmg and power food, outlaw potions.

@ tencoderiot.6430
no, its the build i used in alur’s video.

Excruciating. Even with a perfect set of utility skills, strategy and good timing.
I have been playing MMORPGs for over a decade now, but never had to make 80 tries to achieve something. Bought a second set of gear and respecced for max dps to no avail. To me this event is imbalanced and thoughtless.

Call me a hater, but I hate you for doing this to us.

DaMunky.6302:

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!

Yep, this pre-patch. It’s totally different now. It was super easy before patch, I completed T4 about a dozen times. I’ve completed it once since patch and it’s 20 times harder. Not only do plunderers always spawn in all locations now, but there are more mobs in general. Try it again now and you’ll see a huge difference.

I’ll have to try again when I get home @Debbysaurus. I appreciate all the tips. It seems that it’s just about massive team coordination which I guess is lacking in pugs. Unfortunately pugs is all I can get as my entire guild is locals that are taking a break from the game or have left entirely. The woes of an enternal pugger.

Zhavari.7190:

Alur.7510:

@Zhavari.7190
Thank you!
What do you mean by Gold Zhavari, 50 kills?

You’re welcome. Yes, I was referring to the 50 kills mark. I noticed you were at 28 by the end and assume that hitting 50 would be quite an uphill climb.

@Zhavari.7190
It wasn’t the best setup for DPS wise, and I guess we can still go up about 5 to 10 kills of mobs (same group and some build changes), to hit the mark of 35 and get silver. Gold is something we will have to “craft” and come up with a group for it.

But mainly we wanted to show that you don’t require a Zerker team or a perfect meta team to be able to do such a thing as T4, is just a matter of coordination and knowing what the classes are capable off. As example thief was pulling, blinding the mobs and constantly doing massive dps in 1 target (striker priority to not kill the guardian, then Plunderers when they came …), and if you look at the big picture of the game, Thieves are not so loved, just because people want to go for the easiest way.

DaMunky.6302:

- If you have a nice big pull, like Scorpion Wire, Engi Magnet, Guardian GS, don’t bother using it to pull the plunderer off the extraction point -after- they reach the point. They will stay still and try to successfully beam up the treasure rather than running back to the point.

Fixed that for you.

Xiao Haishou.3691:

Snip
Fine whatever. I just made a video on my first T2 attempt (a.k.a. no wiping, reset, or whatever other cheap tricks you think I use to cheat on T2) and I have 48 kills.

That’s the most interesting Guardian Skill-set I’ve NEVER seen.
Ty.

I finished this in full pug but I know that there was some luck on our side. I hope there wont be content as this again. Yes, I like hard content and I hope for hard content but there are many ways to make content hard without doing it annoying.

Elarii.2756:

Asudementio.8526:

Elarii.2756:

Asudementio.8526:

No one is entitled to complete all of the achievements associated with an event. If you do not have the capacity to best the challenges and hard content associated with an event then the achievements associated with them should not be yours. That said i believe if there is a meta reward that is of sufficiently little importance it should require a minimal number of achievements to acquire, but i also believe there should be a rarer and more prestigious item given to those who have the skills to pay the bills.

If you were responding to my post, I would just like to point out that the Bazaar meta has nine achievements left to do, eight of which I will never be able to do as a solo ranger with no pvp skills so I never said I should be able to complete them all, but the ninth I did finish … guess what, it didn’t count. Your point again?

You don’t have the skills required of the content so you don’t get the reward, and the difficulty of the content doesn’t necessarily need to be changed to ensure any player is able to complete it. <- that’s my point

You missed MY point, I WAS able to do 16 achievements(just as the devs had promised when they said I could play this game my way… ie. no pvp), as listed in the section of achievements for this event, however, someone decided that one of the achievements listed would not count for the meta and now it’s my fault?

In a way it is your fault as you should probably realize that the frequenter achievements are never part of a meta and just a way to reward repeated play. Be more careful with selecting achievements for meta progression in the future is my advice.

GrizzlyBearoDactyl.9460:

Tier 4 is way to difficult to complete. Please scale it down.
Thank you.

Yes.

To say that I am frustrated would be a horrifically gross understatement right now. I have tried with groups, I have tried solo. I have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried. And yet I cannot for the life of me get past tier 3 and 4. So someone please please please please explain to me how an elementalist can do this. I need tier 3 and 4 for both candidates.

And Anet, please don’t ever ever ever make something like this again. Especially not something that you have to complete twice. This is the epitome of UN fun.

Unless they adjust the scaling so it’s not insane with 5 players, I will believe that the official response is:

“We like people who exploit the bugs and issues content have, so they get to keep any rewards of any kind they got from them. We also prefer that players stick to a single set of builds instead having variety”.

Only adjusting the scaling so killing a foe with 5 players doesn’t take 10 more times than when going solo will convince me the contrary.

Maybe resetting the title too, so those who exploited the tricks don’t get to keep it.

They messed up the scaling.

It takes over 10 times more time to kill a plundered with 5 people than with 1.

I can kill a plundered in 3-5 skills alone in less than 5 seconds. With a party full of warrior berserkers we may take half a minute to do so.

If they wanted something “extra hard” they should have done a 5th tier that doesn’t have an achievement.

Much like going in Monster Power 10 doesn’t give you extra achievements in DIII, you only get extra exps, moneys and phat lewt.

I managed to do 3 by avoiding enemies at all costs and focusing just in the plunderers, putting lots and lots of burning and bleeding on them so they die before they come back.

In Tier 4, veterans see me from the central pile of loot at follow me all the way to the Rapairs NPC, so I can’t avoid them. Kiting them is not possible, because Strikers have direct attacks you can’t avoid by strafing, only evading, but they use them continuously.

I would until the fix this. IF they fix this.

You can do alot if the mobs hang in the middle. Kill plunderer and run back to the water to loose agro.

When I was using Pistol Whip spam to kill Plunderers, I really only had to interrupt them twice before they died. So if you have a couple interrupts it should be fine, especially if you DPS them as they’re leaving and returning to the extraction point. For example with my engineer, Overcharge Shot & Flamethrower #3 come to mind.

Weena.6429:

I managed to solo both tier 4 trials on my d/d elementalist yesterday. It’s hard but once you get the pattern down it’s not so bad if you bring a lot of cc. If you happen to aggro any mobs it’s best to just run back behind the mortars and hope the vets will leash even if you have to risk losing treasure. Here is my build and gear setup with consumables for those interested. I only have one (not infused) ascended trinket so feel free to replace the others with your infused zerker trinkets. :p

I am Sylvari so I was able to get grasping vines for extra CC. I went d/d partially for magnetic grasp. I find sceptre to be a bit too slow, but if you feel more comfortable ranged, go for it. Immobilize the plunderers as soon as they spawn and just start destroying them. If you really need to get a plunderer on the spawn closest to the treasure, you can immob him with one of your many CC skills, burst him down, then RTL out of there (make sure you aren’t immobilized first though) so you won’t be absolutely destroyed you as you are incredibly glassy. Your heal skill doesn’t have to be ether renewal, but the condition removal is incredibly helpful if you happen to be caught.

I went with the water line trait stop, drop, and roll because of the incredible amount of chill. If you’d rather just sit in air a majority of the time, you could take ember’s might instead of internal fire, but I just found it easier to get the 10% damage boost in both attunements.

If you happen to be downed, don’t give up! Mist form into water and swim away. Seriously, you can res yourself much faster in water and can still complete the event if you are even a little bit lucky.

I am by no means a great player or theory crafter and I’m sure many of you can come up with better builds/strategies. I’m just sharing what worked for me. Hope this helped a bit.

Your build didn’t stay put together in the link :/

What was your weapon set?

Kasaeva.4691:

Your build didn’t stay put together in the link :/

Hmm.. seems to work fine for me. I can write it out anyways.

30 points in fire with traits Burning Precision (V), Internal Fire (VI), and Pyromancer’s Puissance (XII)
20 in air with Bolt to the Heart (VI) and Air Training (X)
20 in water with Vital Striking (VI) and Stop Drop and Roll (VII)

Full Berserker gear with emerald orbs and ruby trinkets with ruby orbs. I have a cavalier backpiece with a ruby orb, but that can be replaced with Berserker and you won’t be missing out on much.

2 Berserker daggers with Sigil of Superior Strength and Sigil of Superior Battle, although you could probably get away with different sigils or even ruby orbs.

For consumables I used Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup and Master maintenance oil, although I have read you could use the potion of bandit(?) slaying too.

For skills I used Ether Renewal, Signet of Fire, Grasping Vines, and Signet of Earth. I didn’t really bother using an ult because with Fiery Greatsword you miss out on that CC you need. Tornado might be an option but you’d probably be eaten by conditions.

Hopefully that helps a bit!

Thanks! I’m examining my spec and comparing it to yours. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish these achievements.

Rule #1 of MMO’s: get the rewards before things get fixed/balanced.

I posted this on another T4 forum, but I feel it needs to be repeated:

“I don’t care if anybody can or can’t complete it, and neither should anybody else. The event has wonky scaling and is unbeatable in the way it was designed to be done.

This is supposed to a horde style event, where you kill wave after wave. This is evidenced by the fact that Bronze/Silver/Gold depend on the total amount killed, not merely stopping plunderers. If the event was really about plunderers, then the reward level would be how much treasure you had left when time ran out instead. It’s also evidenced by the fact that NPCs fight and help out by putting out turrets. Even the area provides you with environmental weapons suited for the tasks at hand – chilling mine (to slow plunderers), grenades with large area control + knockback (good for zergs + plunderers), even the flamethrower’s auto attack hits multiple targets (perfect for zergs!) and comes with AoE knockback and blind! Candidate Trials is meant to be played at the back.

So when everybody who completes it has to rely on spawn camping, pure DPS, and disengagement, they are only proving that Candidate Trials is broken. All the things that you need to complete it go against the design of the area. I have also noticed a trend where everybody who has done it mentions luck (such as spawns not getting close or needing extreme timing to avoid them). And this is why bringing up proof (ie “post screenshots if you think you’re so good”) is completely irrelevant – if you play the lottery enough, eventually you will win. However to say the lottery is fair is ridiculous – there’s no skill involved, it’s only luck.

And to the people who say to complete it with less people/solo, well that goes against the design of GW2 – the manifesto was about flexibility, not “omg solo stack on the damage and then nuke!”. What about us who want to play with others and be a team player – we just get tossed out because the event scales too harshly!?"

Matthew. While I understand where you are coming from I do not agree. Me and my guild play a lot of content together, we have no problems with any of the dungeons or fractals. Some of us do not play in the most optimal setup perhaps, but to each their own. We have tried several times doing the T4 and it wasn’t necessarely hard, but more that the mobs had WAY too much health. We were in the middle of the fray, not just killing the Plunderers, also trying to kill the veterans but it is kitten near impossible for us to burn two of them down before the next couple spawn. I seriously suggest you look into it again, because the scaling in terms of health is beyond ridiculous in my opinon.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

…but I’m just as eager to see what groups come up with to overcome this challenge!

And with only one week left before the content evaporates, I am sure everyone will be rushing to do it! They certainly are not going to evaluate the risk vs. reward of just farming gold and buying the skin (the real prize from this) from the TP.

Sorry, Matthew, from the armchair this feels a little like hand waving. Your achievements are designed to encourage people to stop the plunders, not take on the waves. If taking on the waves was important then we would need to be obtaining “Gold” to unlock them.

And then, truly, no one would have it cause the difficulty is borderline absurd for even the most coordinated group.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

[…]

All I read there is “We are fine with people who exploited th bugs to get the achievement, will not fix the scaling so going solo is not way easier than doing it in a group, and we are fine with it being harder for those who attempt it now than for those who attempted it before being fixed”.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

[…]

All I read there is “We are fine with people who exploited th bugs to get the achievement, will not fix the scaling so going solo is not way easier than doing it in a group, and we are fine with it being harder for those who attempt it now than for those who attempted it before being fixed”.

Yep.

I read it twice and I got a weird feeling in the stomach area.

Not sure yet, but it could be anger.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Greetings, Matthew Medina has asked me to pass on some explanations/clarifications:

There’s been some confusion and spirited conversation regarding the Candidate Trials, and I’d like to take a minute to clear up some of the concerns that have been raised about this content. There’s a lot I’d like to cover, so I hope you’ll bear with me. ?

Difficulty – From the beginning, we wanted to create an event that would truly test player’s abilities to survive, whether solo or in groups. That’s when we came up with the concept of the [Challenge Event]. We wanted to create an event where it was easy to get bronze participation, moderately challenging to achieve silver, and difficult to get gold, and to provide an escalating difficulty curve by making use of tiers that got progressively harder, and progressively harder again with groups. We knew that this would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we also know that there are many players who are eager to challenge themselves in this way, and we stand by the decision to include content for those players. We made sure to make the lower tiers as accessible for all players and play styles, and the upper tiers (III and IV) a serious challenge! Now, there’s hard and then there’s impossible. I can assure you that completing Tier IV with a group is absolutely possible, but it’s not in any way easy, or even feasible for an uncoordinated group. It requires the utmost concentration and communication, and so our expectation from the beginning was that only a small number of groups would accept the challenge, and even fewer would succeed. I’ve been impressed by the many different methods players are finding to solo Tier IV (Ii’s a feat even I myself have yet to achieve) but I’m just as eager to see what groups come up with to overcome this challenge!

Rewards – There has been some confusion about the most optimal way to acquire the rewards in this event. We are seeing some players contend that the lowest risk option (staying up near the plunderer spawn points and away from the treasure piles) at the highest tier is the optimal path to acquiring an Aetherized weapon. This is wrong…somewhat. ? Employing this method will get you enough kill credit to earn one or two loot bags, but your chances for getting an Aetherized weapon actually increase with each subsequent loot bag that spawns. So if you really, really want to get your hands on some wicked Aetherblade gear, you actually stand to gain much, much more by taking more risks and defeating as many Aetherblades as possible at the highest tier you can manage. The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

Achievements – There was an initial bug related to how we were tracking player’s progress through the tiers, which did not quite match up with what achievements you had unlocked. We made fixes to that bug, and now player progress for the tiers should be tied to what you’ve unlocked, achievement-wise. There was also an unfortunate bug which was fixed earlier today involving an issue where some of the Aetherblade waves would not spawn. The first bug made the achievements hard to understand, while the second made the achievements easier to attain. I deeply apologize on behalf of our team that these issues led to a less-than-optimal player experience. With these issues fixed, our hope would be that the achievements for the Candidate Trials are clearer and better balanced for their intended difficulty.

I think that covers most of the concerns I’ve read, but the team will continue to monitor feedback on the forums, and if further clarification is needed, rest assured that we will communicate that out to you, our amazing players! Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Matthew Medina
Content Designer

Matthew or Martin, I doubt that it is possible for a team to kill all 50 aetherblades and get gold on T4. If it is in fact possible can you please post a video or screenshot of anyone getting gold on T4? You should be able to if this is a realistic goal.

Thank you.

Unpredictability.4086:

And to the people who say to complete it with less people/solo, well that goes against the design of GW2 – the manifesto

Please tell me you don’t seriously still believe anything that was in that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E&t=1m40s

There is a little gem for you. Yeah we just don’t want people to grind..lol. 1 minute 40 seconds still makes me laugh

I wish I could have played the game they describe.

Direksone.3867:

Matthew. While I understand where you are coming from I do not agree. Me and my guild play a lot of content together, we have no problems with any of the dungeons or fractals. Some of us do not play in the most optimal setup perhaps, but to each their own. We have tried several times doing the T4 and it wasn’t necessarely hard, but more that the mobs had WAY too much health. We were in the middle of the fray, not just killing the Plunderers, also trying to kill the veterans but it is kitten near impossible for us to burn two of them down before the next couple spawn. I seriously suggest you look into it again, because the scaling in terms of health is beyond ridiculous in my opinon.

I agree. This has been a common theme in recent content. New mobs that are being introduced all have higher health than in the rest of the word. Look at Southsun Shore. The health and skills on those guys are more similar to one level higher than in the rest of the world. By that, I mean that normals feel like veterans, veterans feel like elites, elites feel like champions, and champions feel like legendaries.

The same was true with all of the aetherblade content. At least in that dungeon, there weren’t too terribly many of them and we had a full group so it was doable and even enjoyable. However, run over to the jumping puzzle they introduced with the content and get into a tussle with the aetherblades there and you’re going to be hurting. Not to mention their ability to apply conditions, immobilize, knockdown, and damage is borderline overboard. This content with aetherblades is no different. They are scaled way above normal mobs in the world. Be careful or you will find yourself caught in an upwards climb of inflated numbers.

Kasaeva.4691:

And Anet, please don’t ever ever ever make something like this again. Especially not something that you have to complete twice. This is the epitome of UN fun.

actually…
You don’t have
I am surprised that they even allowed to get achiements for both of candidates