Guild Wars 2

My only problem was that for some reason neither trial tier 3 gave credit to the achivment while tier 4s did…

Sampo.9678:

Lol we finally get something challenging and you can’t do by spamming auto attack and people complain…

Gates of Madness is one of the most difficult dungeons in Nightfall. DON’T TELL ME IT’S NOT because it is. Compared to GOM this is more difficult. Those who are soloing the content are basically exploiting it. They’re not soloing it because they find it fun to solo they’re doing it because the instance is not forgiving for PUGs. This is what 90% of people doing the content consist of.

For all of Blizzard’s faults the one thing they got right were dungeons. They knew how to strike a balance between challenging and doable. Take for example the first iteration of Ulduar. Now that was extremely difficult. Uggg… I remember those first dozen runs in that hell hole. Blizzard toned down the difficulty after players pleaded with them. At the time I dare not say anything because I was in one of the top raiding guilds on the server, but in silence I welcomed the nerf. The dungeon became much more fun afterwards! I felt like I was progressing and I was having fun doing it.

Of course there was the 5% elite player base who immediately complained about the nerf. They voiced their opinion that people need to L2P and GTFO if they can’t handle the difficulty. Then came the rampant bragging: “Yes I soloed Ulduar on my righteously awesome DK. LOL scrubs!” Sorry to inform you but you do not represent the entire player base. The bulk of players playing GW2 consist of casual players who like challenging but doable content. Right now the community probably feel they’re not being serviced by this content. That’s how I feel.

Besides the Trials content I absolutely hate Survival Survivor.

There are also rampant bugs that have not been fixed. I’ve successfully completed Gnashblade T4 twice after completing T1 – 3 and never got an achievement for my efforts. It’s not even fun. It’s simply turned into a grind from hell.

At this point I don’t even care who wins the election and I don’t care to do this content.

pdfrod.1948:

Haven’t seen any Guardian solo video yet, so here goes mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1COV-whBM8

Tks a lot. =]

I soloed both Kiel and Evon’s tier 1-4. It’s not that bad if you do it by yourself, as the plunderers are much easier to kill.

Electro.4173:

So this is a game that’s possible to solo if you abuse the spawns, but next to impossible if you actually try to do it the way its intended (the fact that your award is based on aetherblades killed and not just on gold remaining is a clear indicator that they want you to fight the enemies that spawn, not just the pludnerer’s).

Yah, sounds like a good design to me…

This is what really bugs me. The event isn’t even out for a couple days, and already people are trying for the method of least resistance or perverting it because it’s not possible as a group. It’s really not fun to do 24/7 spawn camping. I wanted to be in the area with the goodies and actually using them (flamethrower, grenades, etc).

Don’t do it in groups guys if you are not a coordinated group. The plunderes have too much health. The challenge you are getting here it that everything must be coordinated. Just going in as a group does not make it easier for you – it makes it harder so coordinated groups can have some challenges, too. More DPS is countered by a linear health increase in plunderers and longer time until aggro breaks. The level of difficulty stays the same. This one is really nicely balanced.

What I don’t like that for some reason Evon is harder than Kiel. Don’t know why they did this. I expected both challenges to be the same. Evon 1 to 4 is is balanced like Kiel 2 to 5 (if there would be a five).

Basic strategy: spawn camp, if you get aggro run behind the large rock. It is there for absolutely that reason as it breaks line of sight. If you miss a plunderer at the spawn don’t chase him. Kill him when he returns.

For groups the same strategy applies and the challenge here is coordination, which is actually fun.

That’s the mechanics here and the way it was designed without doubt.

If done right you can kill exactly 20 plunderes in the allowed T4 time. That again proofs that it was designed this way. No one is looking for an easy way, people just found the intended way.

It makes no sense playing against the provided mechanics for T3 and T4 whereas on T1 and T2 you can do what every you like.

Again that’s why Anet created two achievements and not one with four tiers.

tried it again with my warrior (something thrown together for cc, if someone needs an inspiration: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAU3ZjgOxw5OuOMxBizDqsEyreMH3EnUBxA ). this time I was lucky again as I only got a few spawns right and no strikers in the immediate vicinity of the right spawn, so it went easily and even awarded the achievement this time.
don’t forget to use potion of outlaw slaying – it MIGHT work (haven’t tested it, just used it in case it does) and something for power or precision and critdmg.
attack the plunderers on the right on their way back, use mace #5 to stun, axe 3, bolas and rifle 2 to immobilize (cripple = immobilize = 10s fury)

still has absolutely nothing to do with skill or tactics, I played the exact same way I decided upon after the first few tries. I just got lucky with the spawns.

I’ll never ever do this horrible excuse of an activity again, it’s the absolute new low of the game.

at least aspect arena and survival are well made and generally fun, even if I personally don’t like the survival mode that much.

Hey ANet, I paid money for your game and gems…please fix your LS stuff or at least test it before…..You making this game into a full time grind job instead of a fun game…

http://i41.tinypic.com/akjv9k.jpg
If you’ve got a guardian, get yourself a hammer, rotate 3,4,5 and only kill when they’re on the way back with a full bag. I could’ve done it with 2500 remaining but since I’m playing as a bunker my damage was just too low on 4 of them.

i soloed t1-3 with warrior and t4 with Mesmer didn’t think it was hard at all.

Soloed Evon’s on my necro just now, did Kiel’s with a 4 man group.

Necro has a lot of mobility restriction options so it’s one of your best choices if you have one. Here’s the build I soloed with:

Armor was all yellows (Knight’s) with Ruby Orbs; Weapons were all yellows zerker dagger/warhorn; Trinkets were all greens lv80 ruby (and Mad Memoires complete on the back because why not).

Traits because I was too lazy to retrait 10/30/0/30/0, key traits Spiteful Removal, Spectral Attunement, Dagger Mastery and Quickening Thirst.

Utilities Signet of Spite, Spectral Grasp and Spectral Wall. Elite was plague form. Healing goes to Consume Conditions since you’ll be dealing with quite a few of these.

Strategy consisted of standing a bit far behind the spawn on the left, then chaining Spectral Grasp > basic attack chain (3 attacks) > Dark Pact (skill 3) > attack chain until immob was about to wear off > Wail of Doom (skill 4) > attack > if necessary Life Siphon (skill 2) to range the plunderer as they get away. That was basically the strategy for killing any given plunderer whether they just spawned or were running back. Leg it behind the rock to lose aggro.

Spectral Wall came in handy when Spectral Grasp was on CD and a plunderer was heading back with gold – drop it in front of them and gain a few seconds as they’ll run into it and fear away 2 times. Don’t use it on plunderers with no loot as that’ll make them run toward the loot. Other options to hold them back when your chain skills are on cd are Signet of Spite to wear them down with conditions while crippling or put up Locust Swarm (skill 5) then follow them closely since it’ll cripple them and give you speed, letting you attack at close range while they’re moving. Death Shroud is a last resort for when they’re out of your reach and nearly dead, since it gives you long range attacks (or for when you need to live). Plague Form can also give you survivability if you draw aggro since it gives stability and boosts your HP, so it can help you get away as needed. Locust Swarm also helps you leg it when you draw aggro.

the key is to NOT kill the plunders. the more plunders spawn the more mobs will spawn. plunders spawn one at a time at the beginning, if you didnt kill it, the other wont spawn and that means mobs will not spawn too.
what i do was use all my knockback, stun skill etc to delay them without hurting them or just kill them slowly on their spawn area. the 1st 5 plunders spawn on the easy path, so you can kill 5 of it slowly. do not chase them. also it’s okay to loose the stuff as long as it’s not under 1k. i also use all lv1 armor and weapon and switch back to my normal armor to kill the plunders after sometimes and switch back, or just go naked and use lv1 weapon. it works like a charm. solo. i use a sylvari mesmer. and don’t panic.

As I posted in another topic that I created – good idea is to put 1 guy near west spawn, and 2 next to east one. For 5-men teams I think 2-3 is the way to go. We managed to kill them on the spot ( west side ) or on their way back ( east side ).

As for the " x plunderers spawn from here and there " on our 2nd run ALL plunderers spawned from east side. So it’s either bugged or random.

Mobs spawn at specific points in time, so does the right side plunderer. If you go back right after killing a plunderer they walk to the middle . You probably didn’t see them spawning.

I did not observe any RNG here. But maybe there is some as GW2 is RNG all the way. But I think it’s more like a defect. On one run (think was Kiel T2) I had a plunderer stuck and he never returned to the spawn point.

The mobs spawned are random. One run I had only a single grenadier spawn. I was able to stay on the rock on the right side near the grenadier and survive until I finally died due to not having my Signet of the Wild on with 10 seconds left on the clock. Next run I kept getting Strikers, and as you know, you’re screwed if you get those.

Want me to teach you guys a trick i learned from someone else?

Just load up with tons of long lasting CC with reduced cooldowns, one weapon set with plenty of CC on it and the lowest dmg possible, and a second weapon set for burst dmg.

What you do is use the first CC weapon set and keep the first Plunderer CC-locked as much as possible until you hit the 5.30 mark, then u can start killing it. After it hits the 5.30 mark, nothing else but left side plunderers will spawn, making everything much easier.

You do know Anet’s going to patch that because you said it on the forums, right? It works too…which is the sad thing. Edit/delete your post please.

Serenity.6149:

Whether solo or in a group… you can finish Trials on T4 without trying to kill the plunderers. Hint hint.

care to explain?

Well, did Kiel tier 4 solo. Thanks for whoever gave the water tip. It really helps.

Guardian, hammer to knock back the mortars, scepter/torch to burn down the plunderers. Full zerk, traits to support scepter/torch and dps in general.

Thing is… I realize this is not about dps. Its about how luck you are with the right side spawn point. After a couple tries for gnash tier 4, I decided to take a brake and try again only in a couple of days. This thing is not fun when all you can do is try to avoid being stunlocked while you struggle to kill the plunderers spawning only on the right side.

Back to levelling, hope to get my warrior to 80 soon =]

(on the other hand, maybe I will try to get this done with that warrior upscaled. if that works, I guess it will be clear this thing is just rng with little to none skill involved =] )

Here is guide for T4 solo with a thief:
http://www.twitch.tv/sakraycore/c/2636414

Legit way without skipping 3rd plunderer:
http://www.twitch.tv/sakraycore/c/2636747

I gave the CC method a try for fun: yes, the script hangs. If plunderer kills are < 1 at the 5:30 mark then the script re-spawns plunderer one again. Obviously a bug.

Yeah, I’ve had the bug too where only the left portal spawns Plunderers, and nobody else spawns at all. It was in a group of 4, and we spiked down Plunderers as fast as they could appear, so it certainly wasn’t linked to just CC’ing one guy around.

I have a feeling that it may be linked to a hard limit of how many Aetherblades can be spawned on the map at one time. If you manage to avoid killing any of them and they’re all clustering around the far end, the game can’t spawn any more Plunderers and so you’re just stuck with the one guy that you can spike down easily.

I just soloed both candidate trials last night on a ranger. Before you start make sure your pet is on passive and use one that has an immobilize. At all time stay in the lower left corner where the left plunder spawns and take it down asap when you can. Save all your longer cooldowns for when the right plunderer spawns – use longbow: knockback and immobilize from your pet. Also take the right plunderer always when its coming back!. After its downed run all the way down as fast as you can to loose all mob-agroo. Rinse and repeat. In one of the tier-4 events i got lucky and only got spawns from the left.
Hint: I am a woman in my 40ties – if i can do this anyone can :P
Best of luck- it was great fun to do

Engineer checking in .. just did both Evon and Kiel T4s. Took me 2 tries for Evon and did Kiel on the first attempt. Spec is mostly irrelevant, though quicker rifle cooldowns helps a lot what matters is your skill loadout.

Rifle, Med Kit (#4/5 helps to drop chill and run to reset aggro), Flamethrower, Toolkit, Net turret, Supply Drop

Start on the rock at the back left. Plunderer spawns.

Rifle #2 (root), couple autos or a Rifle #3 for some damage, wait until the root falls off and get in front of him
Rifle #4 (knockback so he falls behind his spawn), couple autos, Toolbelt F4 (Net)
Stop doing damage if plunderer is less than 50% health, switch to FT and wait for root to wear off and he makes his way back to you
FT #3 (knockback again), switch to ToolKit
TK #2 (snare), let him stagger towards the loot a bit, then TK #5 (pull) back into the caltrops to snare him again right before they expire
Run behind the rock and reset any aggro while the plunderer loots

Repeat all the snaring and rooting and knockbacks when he’s trying to make his way back with his loot.

LET HIM CAP THE FIRST BAG.

Root, knockback, root, knockback, snare, pull, snare again, then let him go back towards the loot.

On his second trip back, root, knockback, etc as much as you can to run down some more time. Kill him right before his second cap.

At this point, you should be well below the 5-minute mark, and the right-hand plunderers won’t spawn at all. Kill all future plunderers on their return trip, no need to let them cap any more. Remember to CC both outbound and inbound before you kill them to run out the clock. It’s boring, but very easy this way.

Good luck!

I posted about the CC method on page 2 of this thread, done with my elementalist, already, but think I just got ignored. Chill and Immobilize works great.

I somehow found it is random if the Grenadiers with Mortars spawn in the back… (or it depends on how many plunderers you kill if you let them walk back and kill them on the way back it seems to get easier and less other mobs spawn).

Also letting them at the Mortar(not killing the mortar) seems a good idea should they spawn. Worst is if they are there without mortar and attack you so you can’t get ouf of combat.

Honestly, doing the trials with a group is WAY harder than soloing it. I did Gnash T3 and T4 and Kiel T3 at 1st try and Kiel T4 after 2 tries.

Here’s my story: I solo’d T4 Kiel on a level 46 Ranger. I used solely the LB and bought some level 45 Strong gear, throwing some power/precision runes into them and a 30% chance to chill sigil.

I actually forgot to switch out my skills pre-fight, so I only had the frost spirit for use. I used the Eagle Eye trait (extended LB distance) and stood on the rocks on the right side of the spawn area. Kept my pet on passive, that whole thing.

Since I forgot to switch out my CC skills, I had to start killing the Plunderers right away, and I ended up beating it with 500 supply left. Towards the end I had to send my pet out to kill the Plunderer that spawned on the right side, which aggro’d the enemies in the middle; however, with the new change to LB #3, I only had to invis and aggro was lost completely.

Because of my location, I assume, the Mortars never fired. They just stood there, enjoying the view, reminiscing on better days and wondering if they wanted steak or shrimp for dinner evening. Was that a Charr that just ran past? Do we have enough oranges?

In contrast, I tried it the night before legitimately with 3 different 5-man groups. We stuck near the spawn, but tried to kill enemies that came after us (instead of running behind the rock to break LoS and aggro). We pretty much got destroyed; at one point after we died I counted 10+ veterans with 2+ uniques (named Vets, I assume?).

Now I know how it feels to be the Shadow Behemoth.

Haven’t heard many eles chime in here. But for the record, I got this done on my S/D aura support elementalist (30-0-0-30-10) using lightning hammer, signet of earth, and tornado to delay the turn ins. Also, you can burn/bleed them as they run away and by the time they get back you can rotate through your cc skills and then kill them easily as they are in the field – usually wont spawn an additional plunderer.

So when are we getting a nerf for this? It’s mostly the amount of health the veteran mobs have that is completely outrageous. My team has no problems in dungeons, fractals etc. but here we can’t even take down 1 veteran before 2 more spawn. And no. Don’t you dare tell me that it’s working as intended, because it’s ridiculous.

That people solo it if it was a challenge, kudos. But people are at the moment just exploiting it, finding loopholes to get the achievement. I don’t blame them though, but something needs to be done.

ghettogenius.9174:

Haven’t heard many eles chime in here. But for the record, I got this done on my S/D aura support elementalist (30-0-0-30-10) using lightning hammer, signet of earth, and tornado to delay the turn ins. Also, you can burn/bleed them as they run away and by the time they get back you can rotate through your cc skills and then kill them easily as they are in the field – usually wont spawn an additional plunderer.

I finally managed to get both of them done with a 0/10/0/30/30 d/d Ele using signet of earth, arcane blast, glyph of storms and glyph of elementals. The only reason I believe I was successful was because the right side plunderers didn’t spawn…

I died twice on my first solo attempt at T1. Kept getting kittened by the mortars. Then I thought kitten it I’ll camp the spawn area and stood next to the mortars. I blazed through all trails in the blink of an eye. I ran a warrior rifle spec with bolas, fgj and signet of fury. It was easy despite wearing full magic find gear.

What’s really odd, is that yesterday I did T4 Evon for a alugh and barely had any mobs and it was a breeze. Trying to do a T2 which has 5x as many mobs at one time and now is seemingly impossible. Some very bizarre bugs in this..

IMO the problem with this challenge is that you can just camp the starting/returning position of the plunderers and burst them down while you ignore pretty much everything else.

Even if there was 5x as many mobs I don’t see why that would matter since you can pretty much ignore all of them. Couple that with the bug of sometimes no plunderers spawning on the right side, and you have an otherwise hard-impossible challenge becoming easy-mode.

Direksone.3867:

So when are we getting a nerf for this?

Never. i finished so its possible.

Soloed T3 & T4

I think I got lucky on T4 – few mobs, plunderer spawned only on left side. I did get mobbed once in the beginning when I went too far forward and had to recoup but still ended up winning with only 500 treasure left. Used Ranger, Longbow, Muddy Terrain for skills and pet with immobilizing/poison on passive. I had tried it with the shortbow on T3 but kept failing. Definitely longbow on this one.

T3 took a lot of tries before I got that one. For me that was the hardest.

Went in with hubby last night to get his T1 & T2 and it was a lot harder together. He went back later and did it fairly easily alone.

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

Mobs spawn at specific points in time, so does the right side plunderer. If you go back right after killing a plunderer they walk to the middle . You probably didn’t see them spawning.

I did not observe any RNG here. But maybe there is some as GW2 is RNG all the way. But I think it’s more like a defect. On one run (think was Kiel T2) I had a plunderer stuck and he never returned to the spawn point.

If you stand on a rock you can see both spawn spots. And trust me when I tell you this – they spawned ONLY from left side. It might be random due to a bug, but it’s still random. Same for veterans – on one run they are over me and there are also runs when I fall asleep.

it’s not really random, if you don’t kill the third plunderer…the right side will never spawn. look at my guide for how to reproduce:
http://www.twitch.tv/sakraycore/c/2636414

I stood on a rock (right side) and got mobbed anyway even though I was only shooting at the plunderers so gave that one up – that was why I had to recoup. Went and stood midway between the right hand rock and left side where plunderer spawns and did just fine there and did not aggro anyone after that.

I feel people are actually over-prepping to solo it with a warrior. I just used a rifle, full berserker gear and straight dps. You whittle the plunder down a little on his way out, but don’t follow, then finish him off on the way back without aggro’ing more mobs.

You can easily do this with a war without CC utility skills, immobilize or stun. Straight up DPS ftw.

If I read the recent patch notes right they fixed the spawning bugs for mobs and plunderers. Good. This is supposed to be a challenge.

And such challenges are way better then the boring “Complete xxx 100 times”

As said also like that they split the tiers into different achievements. One very easy and one harder. I hope they keep this system up, providing more challenging content while at the same time offering achievements for the more casual players as well to get their reward.

Can anyone reply, in a non-condescending “well it was easy for me HEH noob” manner, how this is supposed to be done in tier 3 and 4? I’m getting frozen, immobilized and destroyed. If you don’t have enough DPS you can’t kill the mobs before they steal, and if you are glass cannon you just die right away.

Again non-jerky, helpful comments please.

Excalibur.9748:

If you don’t kill the third plunderer…the right side will never spawn.

Seems this got fixed about 30 minutes ago.

Fixed a bug in the Candidate Trials which prevented some of the Aetherblade waves from spawning.

It should still be easy for some classes.

Oh boy! T4 just got harder!

Oh lordy….thank goodness I got mine earlier today but gonna hear hubby using words I don’t want to hear when he goes for his T3 and T4!

Snowblind.4371:

Can anyone reply, in a non-condescending “well it was easy for me HEH noob” manner, how this is supposed to be done in tier 3 and 4? I’m getting frozen, immobilized and destroyed. If you don’t have enough DPS you can’t kill the mobs before they steal, and if you are glass cannon you just die right away.

Again non-jerky, helpful comments please.

If you’re getting frozen, immobilized, etc, then you should try to kill the plunderers from as extreme a range as possible, back by the grenadiers. If you think you’re drawing aggro, immediately retreat and go back behind the large rock, even if there are plunderers still on the loose. If you stay at range and break aggro quickly, you should never have to deal with chilled or other CC for the whole scenario.

What the hell is that? May i create a thief for that or change my full set for an event?

Are you moron developers? What did you think there? None can kill all mobs alone or party everyone look a trick or etc. Is it game or mad maker?

Are you kidding with us? Try a 7 min event more than 2 hour? What you want from us. Leave the game like diablo. This isnt living world, this is a new pain in the as….

Dear ArenaNet. I like challenging content. Challenging content is good and fun.
Tier 4 of the Trails is FRIGGIN’ IMPOSSIBLE! It is NOT fun. Associating an achievement with something that is so ridiculously, insanely hard is like like holding an ice cream cone a foot away from a toddler who is confined to a stroller… It’s just cruel.
I’m all for a challenge. But after spending an hour and not getting closer than the 3 minute mark… I’m quite kitten ed off with you. Crap like this SERIOUSLY ruins the game because it gets VERY un-fun, very quickly.
Please tone it down for us non-MLG players who would like to actually complete the content on offer.

Anet you really should have left this alone. The recent change only hurts the less skilled players which havent run it already. Parts 3-4 were already tricky enough solo or in group. Difficulty has been increased exponentially, with vets spawning near the plunderers and chasing you behind the rocks.

Why are people who can’t finish tier 4 acting like the whole game is ruined because they can’t get one achievement? Should every achievement be automatically easy for every player?