Guild Wars 2

Times like these, I feel like Anet are so out of touch…

Also I would also like for the Anet devs to show that T4 can be done as a group. Show us how it’s done.

Don`t QQ guys, its possible to do it solo, i did it two times – one for Evon and one for Kiel. It`s difficult, but not impossible.
Everyone is complaining about the game because its too easy, and every time ArenaNet comes up with something challenging, the people start to complain again.

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Don`t QQ guys, its possible to do it solo, i did it two times – one for Evon and one for Kiel. It`s difficult, but not impossible.
Everyone is complaining about the game because its too easy, and every time ArenaNet comes up with something challenging, the people start to complain again.

Will people like you stop talking. This isn’t just about soloing it. Think things through please. As a group activity it simply scales way too high, go try doing this in a group activity then come back saying it is easy.

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Don`t QQ guys, its possible to do it solo, i did it two times – one for Evon and one for Kiel. It`s difficult, but not impossible.
Everyone is complaining about the game because its too easy, and every time ArenaNet comes up with something challenging, the people start to complain again.

In the main people aren’t complaining that it’s not possible. Obviously the fact some of us have done it shows it’s possible.

People are complaining that it’s unfair, luck-based, relies on exploitation rather than playing it the way it was apparently designed (does anyone actually use the grenades etc?!), and not very fun.

It’s possible to create challenging content that is fair and fun (see the achievements for, say, Aetherblade retreat) but this is just bad design.

As far as I can see those defending it are either people who want to feel superior to those who haven’t (for whatever reason), or people attacking a strawman argument that it isn’t possible.

Very few people are defending it saying “this is fun, well-designed and awesome, let’s have a constant stream of new content just like this”, which in itself is pretty telling.

I don’t meant this aggressively btw, so apologies if it comes off that way. Just intend to voice an opinion as part of a friendly discussion!

Mm.. I’d just like some better warning than “you’ll need to group up to complete it” – especially since, according to these forums – it’s easier to do higher tiers solo than in groups. A friend of mine really really really really really [takes a breath] really really REALLY likes to collect achievements, so it’s hard for me to listen to my friend complain about this when Anet says that it’s doable – just in a group. If we had known beforehand that the latter half of the candidate trials were only meant for the most skilled, most coordinated groups (like what has been provided to us in this thread), my friend and I would have had a much easier time with it.

The first time my friends and I went into Candidate Trials, here was our general reactions:

Tier 1: “Heh.. pretty neat. Not hard, but not easy either.”

Tier 2: “Whoa, that was challenging! Glad we made it through that.”

Tier 3: -insert random mass of letters and numbers as we hit our keyboard keys at random- “Nope. No way this is doable for us at this point.”

….To be honest I don’t even want to think about tier 4.

As nice as a nerf would be for a player like me to get the achievement for it, watering down content just makes it boring for everyone else in the long run. I learned this the hard way, over time, in my last MMORPG. You can probably guess what it was – I left before the martial-arts pandas became its thing.

So… since I can’t ask/beg/demand for a nerf, I’ll just ask for something else: let us know when you’re giving us Clocktower-level content again Anet, before or when you send it out. Pretty please?

Pinch.4273:

keenlam.4753:

Hi Pinch, could you please describe your group composition and stragegy u guys used?
Thanks

Full Support Guardian (Hammer/GS)
Zerk Ele (Lightning Hammer)
Zerk War (GS/Axe)
Zerk Thief (S/D & S/P)
Zerk Mesmer (S/F, GS, pick up the other LH)

What a surprise… In order to complete this crappy content we all have to roll serker. While I already am (Engi), not everyone in my guild is, and neither am I going to force them, because we are supposed to play through content the way we want. However right now because of the scaling it’s impossible for us.

I don’t understand colin’s logic on ‘Party members need to communicate’ when the game is based on purely DPS (no tank/heal), this means everyone needs to wear zerker, and everyone just focus 1 and aoe the rest.

@Groonz.7825
@Charak.9761

It doesn’t escalate way to much, people simply doesn’t know how to play this game properly. As for a note, don’t go in with 4 zerker warriors and 1 mesmer.

So far I’ve done it solo (thief) and with another guy (thief+ranger).
Took us two tries to do it, so I wouldn’t say it’s THAT hard. I don’t know if it’s consistent, but it seems like they get about 100% more hp when there’s 2 in there as when you’re doing it solo.

On the other hand it’s extremely boring that it’s back to the “zerg or leave”, because it would be so easy to make sure you wouldn’t be able to do so; all you would need is one or two invuln mortar npcs that damage half-ish of the current ones, and make the plunderers spawn slightly closer to the treasures so you would actually have to kill things instead of just pulling and nuking plunderers.

Charak.9761:

I don’t understand colin’s logic on ‘Party members need to communicate’ when the game is based on purely DPS (no tank/heal), this means everyone needs to wear zerker, and everyone just focus 1 and aoe the rest.

Are you not paying attention?

Everyone going zerker and bursting down plunderers then hiding till they next spawn is the very epitome of skill and the awesome challenging content we’ve all been asking for…

;p

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”.

Thats pretty much how I read it as well. Pretty much, screw you if you didn’t use the exploit, now deal with it the “way it was intended”, and hope for the perfect spawn.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

so our expectation from the beginning was that only a small number of groups would accept the challenge, and even fewer would succeed.

Then why even tie it to an achievement (which noone can even see that you completed it) if you want only a small number to get it?

Martin Kerstein.3071:

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.

Better balanced? How the kitten is overrunning people with really high health pool veterans (which stun, knockdown, stack confusion, etc) balanced?

XacTactX.6709:

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.

I’d like to see this as well. If its supposed to be doable, then why can’t they show us a video of them doing it (with everything shown, and not on their test/development server).

I personaly love this fight. One of the few times in GW2 where you really need a tactic to win the thing and not just brain-afk press some keys to win a dungeon.
And yes, it scales a little too heavy, but still it’s doable, if everyone in the team knows how to avoid damage and deal damage in the the time.
And if you have some problems with T4 just try 4-5 T3 runs and figure out, where to stand, where to hide if needed and what time you need more damage. All of these things can be already figured out in T3.

Then why even tie it to an achievement (which noone can even see that you completed it) if you want only a small number to get it?

You could ask the same about the 2500 points from the hunger games thing.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

…

I would recommend ArenaNet to just separate out the “raiding/gold farming” contents and “achievement” contents. These two contents mix badly. Simply put, the normal MMOs are designed such that the players would go permanent raid/dungeon instances for farming gold. Please just leave those special one time only instances for achievements only.

By the way, ArenaNet should already know this CT design is a failure, as there are many dissatisfied players.

skullmount.1758:

Then why even tie it to an achievement (which noone can even see that you completed it) if you want only a small number to get it?

It is an ACHIEVEMENT. Why the hell does everyone think this is what every so random casual player can get? I think it is actually better to give everyone the chance to get a few achievements easily (and you get enough for the miniatures without problems) and for getting more/ higher tiers it should be improvingly harder. The only thing wrong was to not make 4 tiers of this particular achievement but only 2.

skullmount.1758:

I’d like to see this as well. If its supposed to be doable, then why can’t they show us a video of them doing it (with everything shown, and not on their test/development server).

There is a video from players doing it a few posts above. This alone is proof enough it’s doable. Since from watching it once, I saw enough room for improvement for them.
And if you still dwell upon it is impossible to ever get gold for this:
When the fractals were still new there were people who got to fractals 80+.
It would be boring if everyone could do this easily. There were tons of people complainung about the whole Canach dungeon being a joke. But it seems you want jokes.

Here is the link for the Fractals thingy: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractals-cap-80/first#post1111885

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

So I completed the Gnash trials however after doing the all 4 Kiel trials multiple times, it still won’t give me the achievement. I haven’t tried for a few days though.

Does this mean that it is fixed?

Such bullkitten. 4 zerker team, else the DPS is too low. This is not challenging, this is a pathetic gear check. Challenging would have been fun mechanics, not something you can avoid with 100% projectile reflect / absorb uptime.

How fun, I get to change gear to berserker!

TheGentleEnemy.2875:

It is an ACHIEVEMENT. Why the hell does everyone think this is what every so random casual player can get? I think it is actually better to give everyone the chance to get a few achievements easily (and you get enough for the miniatures without problems) and for getting more/ higher tiers it should be improvingly harder. The only thing wrong was to not make 4 tiers of this particular achievement but only 2.

You can make it really difficult and still not make it impossible for pugs. Some of us don’t have friends to play with or guilds, so we have to only do pugs.

TheGentleEnemy.2875:

There is a video from players doing it a few posts above. This alone is proof enough it’s doable. Since from watching it once, I saw enough room for improvement for them.
And if you still dwell upon it is impossible to ever get gold for this:
When the fractals were still new there were people who got to fractals 80+.
It would be boring if everyone could do this easily. There were tons of people complainung about the whole Canach dungeon being a joke. But it seems you want jokes.

Here is the link for the Fractals thingy: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractals-cap-80/first#post1111885

You sure the video was post patch?
Weren’t people getting to those high levels of fractals in the beginning by using an exploit, or gaming the system?
Canach dungeon was a joke for other reasons IIRC, not just because it was easy.

skullmount.1758:

You can make it really difficult and still not make it impossible for pugs. Some of us don’t have friends to play with or guilds, so we have to only do pugs.

Then at least you could try get the PUG together in teamspeak or similar ;D
I did it for high level fractals all the time and it worked out mostly.
The thing is, you need something to challenge good teams who enjoy playing together.
If it’s doable with your everyday pug, it will be way to easy for a good team.

skullmount.1758:

Weren’t people getting to those high levels of fractals in the beginning by using an exploit, or gaming the system?

They used revive orbs. Nothing to say against this, they are intended to be used when you are dead. No exploit involved here.

Y u mad its vydia.6324:

Such bullkitten. 4 zerker team, else the DPS is too low. This is not challenging, this is a pathetic gear check. Challenging would have been fun mechanics, not something you can avoid with 100% projectile reflect / absorb uptime.

How fun, I get to change gear to berserker!

“Bullkitten” is going in with zerkers. You wont ever get it done with zerkers, they will die like flies to the first few mobs (already tried multiple times with zerker groups).

Believe me or not, but this game is actually NOT all about DPS. There is a reason Anet gave us all those other awesome mechanics like spreading conditions, pulling groups together, reflecting projectiles and so forth. Just like in the video above, they are not full zerkers, aren’t they?
Only because of CoF everyone thinks zerker is the best. But try going into fractals 40+ with only zerkers. Have fun.

Good luck getting those groups killed without at least 2 people in full zerker gear. You can pull them together all you want they have so much HP zerker is basically required.

Alur.7510:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMynZ-prUY

Great work. What build/gear make-up was your team? I assume Guardian was DPS?

Edit – I also notice you guys were blind/weakness spamming like crazy. How was this done?

Y u mad its vydia.6324:

Good luck getting those groups killed without at least 2 people in full zerker gear. You can pull them together all you want they have so much HP zerker is basically required.

If you have 2 zerkers it then is no full zerker group. So you actually said nothing which goes against my argument xD. Of course you need DPS, but not alone.
If you have someone keeping them alive zerkers can starting dealing damage. If you only have damage, you will be dead before you could even start attacking.

3man’d T1~T3 relatively easy.

5man’d T4.

2 Berserkers (Thief, War)

Strategy: In and Out. Go in, BURST down plunderers, use plenty of interupts if the plunderer begins the tossing animation. Then get out of combat by running farrrr away, behind the rocks where Mortars spawn. You’re not meant to fight 20~30 veterans with your average group, your targets are just the plunderers and occassionaly the mortar enemies (both have very low hp compared to the other veterans)

Best of luck out there!

To those singing Anet’s praises:

First, if you’re trolling, just quit. It’s not funny, edifying, helpful, or contributing to this discussion.

Secondly, if you’re here to puff up your ego, please do it elsewhere. I’m sure you could create a thread purely for celebrating completing the content. This thread is for discussing the pros and cons of the content.

If you’re not trolling or boasting, did you do it before or after the fix or both?

Did you really and truly enjoy the content?

Do you truly believe that such content should be temporary with only 2 weeks to complete it?

Do you feel satisfactorily rewarded for your time and effort?

Do you think the scaling was done appropriately?

Do you think the 4 tiers really should have been more of the same or could they have come up with more creative ways to make higher tiers harder?

Do you really think that having the content repeated twice was a good thing?

And do you believe that Anet’s stance as posted in the dev’s post here is truly the best way to deal with the issue of broken achievements and exploited content that is temporary and never returning?

The issue the rest of us are having with this content is that it is poorly implemented, it is not fun, we don’t believe the rewards are really worth our time, we disagree with the way groups are discouraged from doing this content, we disagree with the dev’s stance on exploitation and rushed content as presented in his post, and we wish they had told us upfront that this content was only meant for 1% of the community to complete. Very few, if any of us are saying that this content is too hard or impossible. So please quit putting words in our mouths and explain why you think this content is so marvelous and wonderful. Or better yet, post a detailed explanation of how you did it so the rest of us can complete it too. Thank-you.

I’m now many many hours into the candidate trials. I work on it every single day, and pick a different class each time (I have all eight to 80). Still no T4. It’s very frustrating to spend this amount of time in something that took 10 minutes to do before the patch.

Hard content is much better if it’s hard for everyone. Please at the very least remove the achievement for those who completed it when it was easy (pre-patch).

Edit: Are there any post patch videos of people completing T4? I know there are a lot of T4 videos out there. The ones I’ve found are ALL before pre-patch. Let one side steal and things don’t spawn right and you can finish without any effort. This is the main problem with the Candidate trials. Hard content for everyone is fine, easy content for everyone is fine, but hard content only for those post patch is stupid.

my problem is that i have only one main well equipment char and it is a bunker guardian … the veterans just destroy immediately any defense that i have …. today i will try with a warrior that i will change him to full dps if i will have some change to pass this trial

i prefer to fight a whole zerg alone in www than these veterans …..

Havana.8625:

Hard content is much better if it’s hard for everyone. Please at the very least remove the achievement for those who completed it when it was easy (pre-patch).

The thing is – it was hard content before you have only been able to skip most parts of it. I’ve finished it with a guildgroup on the first day without any skipping. So dare to take away my achievement which I worked for.

And yes, I liked it. Though trying it again with another guild group yesterday failed us often and we didn’t succeed (the guys gave up). Never do it for the achievement itself. If it ‘s to challenging for you, do something else instead. There are other achievements you can complete instead, they don’t force you to do that content you know.

Lucky.9421:

Alur.7510:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMynZ-prUY

Great work. What build/gear make-up was your team? I assume Guardian was DPS?

Edit – I also notice you guys were blind/weakness spamming like crazy. How was this done?

This exemplifies how some key mechanics, such as combo fields and finishers aren’t explained well by in game hints.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Ths guys in the video did a great job, but were by no means perfect. They analyzed the situation, changed a few skills, and beat the content solidly. Some coordination was required on the reflect and pull rotations, but other than that, these guys just knew how to play all aspects of their classes and had decent situational awareness. The only part of the video where “leet skillz” were shown were the mes pulls.

imaginary.6241:

Havana.8625:

Hard content is much better if it’s hard for everyone. Please at the very least remove the achievement for those who completed it when it was easy (pre-patch).

The thing is – it was hard content before you have only been able to skip most parts of it. I’ve finished it with a guildgroup on the first day without any skipping. So dare to take away my achievement which I worked for.

And yes, I liked it. Though trying it again with another guild group yesterday failed us often and we didn’t succeed (the guys gave up). Never do it for the achievement itself. If it ‘s to challenging for you, do something else instead. There are other achievements you can complete instead, they don’t force you to do that content you know.

Yes, there’s other content to do. But if all new content becomes like this and we keep having to go ‘do other content’ because ‘they don’t force us to do content’ and this content ’isn’t for us’ then what’s the point of new content? This isn’t necessarily about them fixing this content because more than likely, they won’t. This is about getting them to see the problems with this content so that future content will be better. This is feedback.

Most of us have probably resolved ourselves to not completing this content but we don’t want to see more of this kind of content so we are voicing our thoughts and ideas. If you liked the content and want to see more of it, then explain why. What did you like about and what didn’t you like about it?

Alur.7510:

@Groonz.7825
@Charak.9761

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMynZ-prUY

It doesn’t escalate way to much, people simply doesn’t know how to play this game properly. As for a note, don’t go in with 4 zerker warriors and 1 mesmer.

That is a nice run, with good coordination.

Problem I see is the challenge itself. To get gold completion, you needed 50 kills, and you guys had 28. That should have given you silver, but it only awarded you bronze and a whopping 7 copper.

Anet,

Show me the data!

For each level of each trial pre and post patch, what is the outcome(fail, bronze, silver, gold) from groups of 1,2,3,4 and 5.

If you don’t know you should.

Kasaeva.4691:

If you’re not trolling or boasting, did you do it before or after the fix or both?
Did it on Sunday the 28th, dunno about the fix or whatever
Did you really and truly enjoy the content?
Yes, it presented a challenge greater than most dungeons and taught people how to play their classes, half the community doesn’t know which of their classes’ skills are interupts
Do you truly believe that such content should be temporary with only 2 weeks to complete it?
I don’t like temporary content, I want them to stay.
Do you feel satisfactorily rewarded for your time and effort?
Um..I guess, I went there for achievement points, and I got it in reasonable amount of time, this ain’t 2500 points Southsun Survival
Do you think the scaling was done appropriately?
Yeah, I guess, we did T1~T3 with 3 people, and T4 with 5, as long as people contributed their share, the scaling was fair
Do you think the 4 tiers really should have been more of the same or could they have come up with more creative ways to make higher tiers harder?
It’s really not ‘more of the same’, it’s different game totally doing T1~T3 as that was a walk in the park. T4 had that sense of urgency and danger where it was not present in prior Tiers
Do you really think that having the content repeated twice was a good thing?
No. Evon and Kiel versions are redundant
.

My post above yours explained a valid strategy.

The key is to immobilize, burst, interupt when needed, and run. You can’t stand and fight the veterans. You gotta disengage when there’s no plunderers around to kill.

This event favors thief more so than other classes due to several reasons:
Mobility, Damage, Stealth, and almost unlimited amount of Immobilize and Interupts (Sword #2, S/P #3, Pistol #4)

I’ll leave some tips for other classes here too:

Elementalists can RTL into plunderer, and use fire D/D burst combo (#3, turn around aim, #5) then mist form or lightning flash out of danger. In fact, elementalists can run a Valkyrie or Cavalier spec and use Arcane Power so they get some survivability and retain their Burst.

Guardian can assist in many ways. CC with Staff Line of Warding, Hammer Ring of Warding, Immobilize with Scepter #3, Pulling with GS #5…if that’s not your style try Burst Meditation build, for once maybe it gets to shine in something other than hotjoin pvp.

Warrior…I don’t think I need to go into this, but I will anyway. I think Axe/Shield or Mace/Shield do nicely, Axe if you want better burst (Evicerate), Mace if you want more interupts. Shield is for getting out of danger (3s block) and additional interupt. The other set I recommend greatsword as it is still king, #3 skill is pretty epic here as plunderer tends to run the other way, which makes u connect more hits. never use hundred blades unless the target is immobilized long enough. GS also has Rush so you can get in and out quickly.

Mesmers can do all sorts of fancy stuff, they can burst with MW, CC with pulls and pushes, blinking, AoE stealth to disengage, heck even portal to facilitate team mobility. Condition is u gotta be pretty good at what ur doing.

Not too knowledgeable on the burst capabilities of Necro/Engi/Ranger as those are my condi characters. Pretty sure its viable too!

Obviously our strategy only aims to clear it for the achievement, it can’t be compared to a full clear party.

Alur.7510:

@Groonz.7825
@Charak.9761

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMynZ-prUY

It doesn’t escalate way to much, people simply doesn’t know how to play this game properly. As for a note, don’t go in with 4 zerker warriors and 1 mesmer.

@Alur: Congratulations. I took the courtesy to copy all your posts about your group strategy to my thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/cutthroat/Candidate-Trials-Tier-4-Full-Group-Strategy/first#post2516243) so people can look it up more easily. Hope you dont mind.

Excellent work. Thanks so much for sharing.

If tier 4 was always meant to be so difficult, which seems hard to believe, then the achievements for tier 3 and tier 4 should have been split. At the moment casual players essentially get no reward for tier 3 other than the chance to get their butts kicked on tier 4 until their patience wears out.

I finally did it solo with my thief and must say it was mostly due to luck. A lot has to do with where and when different vets spawn. How much they chase seems random. Sometimes far away vets won’t leave you alone and other times they seem crazy for walking away when I’m right next to them. Since the one success I haven’t gotten lucky again so I don’t know if beating it twice on T4 will do it for me.

TLDR: Can be done with enough tries, may not give achievement if you complete it still.

Edit: Since I forgot to mention it here (though I did in the bug report) it did NOT give achievement the one time I did do it. Here is the link http://i.imgur.com/7VfXfdq.jpg with proof that I’ve beat it on T3 from achievements listed, and proof that I beat it on T4 in right hand corner.

Orpheus.7284:

My post above yours explained a valid strategy.

The key is to immobilize, burst, interupt when needed, and run. You can’t stand and fight the veterans. You gotta disengage when there’s no plunderers around to kill.

This event favors thief more so than other classes due to several reasons:
Mobility, Damage, Stealth, and almost unlimited amount of Immobilize and Interupts (Sword #2, S/P #3, Pistol #4)

I’ll leave some tips for other classes here too:

Elementalists can RTL into plunderer, and use fire D/D burst combo (#3, turn around aim, #5) then mist form or lightning flash out of danger. In fact, elementalists can run a Valkyrie or Cavalier spec and use Arcane Power so they get some survivability and retain their Burst.

Guardian can assist in many ways. CC with Staff Line of Warding, Hammer Ring of Warding, Immobilize with Scepter #3, Pulling with GS #5…if that’s not your style try Burst Meditation build, for once maybe it gets to shine in something other than hotjoin pvp.

Warrior…I don’t think I need to go into this, but I will anyway. I think Axe/Shield or Mace/Shield do nicely, Axe if you want better burst (Evicerate), Mace if you want more interupts. Shield is for getting out of danger (3s block) and additional interupt. The other set I recommend greatsword as it is still king, #3 skill is pretty epic here as plunderer tends to run the other way, which makes u connect more hits. never use hundred blades unless the target is immobilized long enough. GS also has Rush so you can get in and out quickly.

Mesmers can do all sorts of fancy stuff, they can burst with MW, CC with pulls and pushes, blinking, AoE stealth to disengage, heck even portal to facilitate team mobility. Condition is u gotta be pretty good at what ur doing.

Not too knowledgeable on the burst capabilities of Necro/Engi/Ranger as those are my condi characters. Pretty sure its viable too!

Obviously our strategy only aims to clear it for the achievement, it can’t be compared to a full clear party.

Thank-you Orpheus and the others who have been posting helpful tips. I’ve been gleaning as much information as I can. I’m sure others have been too. I’m going to go back later and try to see if I can beat it at least once.

Havana.8625:

I’m now many many hours into the candidate trials. I work on it every single day, and pick a different class each time (I have all eight to 80). Still no T4. It’s very frustrating to spend this amount of time in something that took 10 minutes to do before the patch.

Hard content is much better if it’s hard for everyone. Please at the very least remove the achievement for those who completed it when it was easy (pre-patch).

Edit: Are there any post patch videos of people completing T4? I know there are a lot of T4 videos out there. The ones I’ve found are ALL before pre-patch. Let one side steal and things don’t spawn right and you can finish without any effort. This is the main problem with the Candidate trials. Hard content for everyone is fine, easy content for everyone is fine, but hard content only for those post patch is stupid.

here’s a video of me completing t4 solo on a thief.

It’s probably the easiest method by which to do it and includes recommended traits/equipment/nourishment. Several others have had success with this method and I’ve been able to help 5-6 other people from this forum (and countless guildies) through their achievements this way, including a non full exotic’d thief, who I made good friends with and is now joining my guild!

So, yes, it’s doable, yes, for anyone having trouble with this, yesterday I spent 6 hours running people through it, and I’d be willing to do it again at some point today if I find myself on with the time (should be around 2am EST because I’m usually busy during the day, might be able to get on around 11pm EST instead)

This is really poorly made content and Anet’s laziness is shown when they couldn’t even be bothered to make two separate candidate trials. Yes it is possible to compete it but that really isn’t the point. Also like many have said before, I really doubt they intended for players to sit behind the plunderer spawn points since they have medals based on kills. I have few complaints about what Anet does and I think they made a great game, but i hope that we won’t see the quality of these events decline with the bi-monthly content patches. Also I really did enjoy Aetherblade Retreat, best dungeon they have come up with, too bad it wasn’t permanent.

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Don`t QQ guys, its possible to do it solo, i did it two times – one for Evon and one for Kiel. It`s difficult, but not impossible.
Everyone is complaining about the game because its too easy, and every time ArenaNet comes up with something challenging, the people start to complain again.

I take it you didn’t jump into the fray and do it the way a horde mode is supposed to be done. The fact is that regardless of difficulty people were having to exploit game mechanics and/or solo to beat Candidate Trials. That is NOT how a horde mode is supposed to be played. If it can’t be done by a full group of 5 standing their ground and protecting the loot from the plunderers then it is a failed horde mode.

Barabbas.8715:

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Don`t QQ guys, its possible to do it solo, i did it two times – one for Evon and one for Kiel. It`s difficult, but not impossible.
Everyone is complaining about the game because its too easy, and every time ArenaNet comes up with something challenging, the people start to complain again.

I take it you didn’t jump into the fray and do it the way a horde mode is supposed to be done. The fact is that regardless of difficulty people were having to exploit game mechanics and/or solo to beat Candidate Trials. That is NOT how a horde mode is supposed to be played. If it can’t be done by a full group of 5 standing their ground and protecting the loot from the plunderers then it is a failed horde mode.

But someone posted a video earlier of a group of 5 running it as a hoard mode.

After trying again with random group.Found that those vets have absurb HP which need to be focus down with at lest 3 people to get the job done before any of them spawn more.And they won’t stay clustered so team need at least 2 people who can chain pull them and another person stun lock them which I found thats really not going to happen to most builds and classes out there.

Dev really need to tone down Vet HP they can keep there damage and some of thier nasty move like chain stun , invulnerability , 1 shot 12 stack bleed, out of nowhere 5 stack of confusion.

it’s no coincidence it hasn’t been adjusted everyone…….with long threads like this and the obvious nature of it, it leaves questions.

There are time constraints so this is a DPS check. If you don’t have enough DPS and CC, you’ll lose. You so need to use survivability abilities as well.

A lot of pugs fail because 90% of players do not know how to work as a team, play their class to its potential, and/or use techniques/strategies based on the mechanics of the fight. I see a lot who just run into mobs and spam whatever skills are available. Not many swap out abilities based on the situation but rather stay with the same 3 the entire time.

Tiers 3 and 4 are meant to be a challenge. The dev even stated such. They will not tone down the hp of the vets or whatever else. It’s not unreasonable that they have one small part of the game be challenging when 99% of the game is a face roll.

I believe it was stated that a warrior only did 20% damage to a plunderer whereas in solo they would have killed it. Lets assume that the scale was set to 5. This means that everything is five times that of solo. If a warrior can kill a plunderer in 2 seconds solo then it will take 5 warriors doing the exact same thing to do that. My point is that you can’t have only 2 DPS and expect to finish it easily. This isn’t a balanced group.

The main problem is not if it’s doable now or not.

They made it harder mid-event, and not everyone will have time to adapt to that.

That leaves a bad precedent that tells people: “Do every single gimmick, exploit and cheat as soon as you can, before they fix it, those that do that get to keep the reward, those that try to do things as intended will get a harder time”.

Now those who have the achievement have no merit, because anyone can assume they cheated.

They screwed up and made it easier.
The fair thing do it is keep that easy method so it’s not unfair, and keep in mind of the next time so that doesn’t happen again.

They fixed a bug after two days, not mid event.

Let’s get things straight. The only people that complained that the updates were too easy were the hardcore max geared guild players.

Look who is enjoying the new content!

Everyone who is having trouble right now should know that you may not get credit even with a successful attempt. I beat Evon T3 a few days ago and beat Evon T4 TWICE today. It’s still not giving me credit. I have before and after screens so everyone can see I already was at 1/2 before, and then see the other screen two seconds later. Even beating T4 twice doesn’t help.

Before: http://i.imgur.com/pu1dsLg.jpg
After: http://i.imgur.com/7VfXfdq.jpg

Havana, maybe you should go back and do t3 again? Can’t hurt anyway. :/

Do you have the Kiel advanced support completed? I’m wondering if there is a bug that causes credit to be glitched and goes to the other candidate.

There’s a separate entrance for each candidate’s trial. You do not need to be representing them. Kiel’s entrance is next to her by the edge railing. Gnash’s entrance is behind him next to a house.

This is not fun, I just wasted time trying to pug Evon T4, after a half dozen of fails the party splits, and you are back to town trying to form up a new party. Rinse and repeat.

Too much CC, health pools too large, too much aggro.
The solution? Find a gimmick and exploit it. Good job, really.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I got the T4 for Kiel a couple of days ago.
I achieved Dungeon Master several months ago, I’m used to difficult content and to finding ways to overcome it.
Still I think Candidate Trials is badly designed.