Guild Wars 2

Alright so there is a lot of fuss going on about the Candidate Trials tier 4 specifically and i’m just genuinely interested to know what classes made it. I personally completed it for both sides on a full zerk D/D ele, please respond below which class you used remember it had to have been done AFTER the patch.

Guard, Thief, Warrior, Mes, Engi, Ranger, Necro <- I know people who’ve done it solo on all of these classes (I did it on my s/d zerk ele, personally, but have no doubt that I could also do it on my guard, warrior or mesmer)

Tried Thief and Mesmer. Had a much easier time with thief.

I did Tier 4 both sides after the patch with my Zerk warrior. Used Axe/Shield and Hammer.

Utilities – Endure Pain, Trow Bowlas, Bulls Charge.

had to do a lot of CC and running around in circles to avoid getting locked down xD

I don’t know what the fuss is about. Have to admit it i was in down state on the second tier 4 trial but made it only a few seconds remained xD

After hearing how hard it was and how it requires teamwork and coordination, I gave it a try with my Guardian.. 6 minutes of jokes.

ele

Full Zerk Warrior. Greatsword/Rifle. Kick, Grasping Vines, Bulls Charge. Had to do tier 4 twice so far because of achievement glitches tho

But wait cough attitude adjustment done: It was such a tremendous experience and a journey for me and my guardian. I had no friends to do it together at the time I was willing to test myself in such a challenging opportunity that this game offered us. I was biting my nails because of the nervous feelings taking my body over. By the time the clock started counting down to zero, my hands were frozen. Cold drops of sweat were flowing through my spine. At the end I looted the shattered lockpicks which these challenging pirates offer you for spending the most awesome 6 minutes of your life in this instance. Passing their corpses by with the blaze of glory.. Memorable.. end of sarcasm

Since the patch, I’ve completed t4 on the following (mostly to prove it could be done in other posts)…

• valk s/p thief
• war zerk riffle
• war knights axe/mace
• guard knights sword/focus
• s/d ele (bunker stats)

I just completed T4 with a Rabid’s geared Engineer using P/S, Grenades, Flamethrower, and Tool Kit.

Simply put, this content is awful. It’s challenging in all the wrong ways, it doesn’t promote team play, its goal is misleading, and its incredibly infuriating even for “hardcore” players. People saying otherwise are just waving their kittens around; this content is terrible. Not much more to say.

After I got the hang of things from doing the Evon trials, it was relatively simple for me in Kiel’s as a thief (zerk D/D and S/P). Use scorpion wire to pull the plunderer on the far right after he returns with the loot, Pistol Whip, hurray! I also liked to use the immobilize trap just to stall for time since things got a little crazy. I made significant use of Basilisk Venom too.

Personally and frankly I’m kitten ed because of the current state. I know Anet is capable of doing more than this. But instead they are now destroying the game which was once beautiful. Anyways I refuse to do any content related to this Living Story joke. Unless there is something really decent, and I say decent because you can’t really create decent content bi weekly. But if somehow they manage it in 2 weeks to bring some decent stuff to do like AR then I might consider doing that. Other than that no thanks keep your JP’s and minigames for your fluffy audience who hold hands and sing songs by creating a circle. But who forced them to do this anyway? They did it themselves..

I completed it with d/d thief. For CC I used scorpion wire, needle trap, and basilisk venom, and I also used assassin’s signet for extra burst. Towards the end I switched the signet for shadow refuge.

I’m gonna copy and paste my experience with a d/d elementalist from another thread.

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.

Rifle/SD/Zerker Engi build with TK, Goggles, & RT worked for me. Still have to worry about the RNG to be a success.

Did both with my berserker warrior (greatsword/axe and mace).
Used Endure Pain, Throw Bolas and Bulls Charge as utilities.

Good dps and lots of immobilizing skills does the trick :P

Just curious.. but how many are doing this solo without a gimmick?

My definition of a gimmick in this case is (example) standing out of range of most of the mobs and focusing on intercepting the Plunderer pirates from a relatively safe location (like the treasure drop off points).

You know, instead of standing with the ally NPCs near the treasure piles, keeping them alive (which pretty much requires you to kill every mob), etc. The way I imagine the designers probably envisioned everyone beating this.

Edge.4180:

Just curious.. but how many are doing this solo without a gimmick?

My definition of a gimmick in this case is (example) standing out of range of most of the mobs and focusing on intercepting the Plunderer pirates from a relatively safe location (like the treasure drop off points).

You know, instead of standing with the ally NPCs near the treasure piles, keeping them alive (which pretty much requires you to kill every mob), etc. The way I imagine the designers probably envisioned everyone beating this.

While I don’t believe the designers envisioned their content to be beaten a certain way and that spawn camping is nothing new, now that you mention the NPC, what I am fairly ticked off is why put these useless utilities like flamethrower, grenades and mines when 99 % of the time, the player is better off using their own skill. I actually went ahead and tried testing out all 3 and needless to say, they all did much less than my native weapon I was using so… yeah… It’s like they may as well have placed a pile of dead baby quaggan carcasses and I would have found them more helpful as a motivational push against the pirates.

Edge.4180:

Just curious.. but how many are doing this solo without a gimmick?

My definition of a gimmick in this case is (example) standing out of range of most of the mobs and focusing on intercepting the Plunderer pirates from a relatively safe location (like the treasure drop off points).

You know, instead of standing with the ally NPCs near the treasure piles, keeping them alive (which pretty much requires you to kill every mob), etc. The way I imagine the designers probably envisioned everyone beating this.

I got the answer: no one. Everyone is ‘exploiting’ their way through this. The infuriating part is ANet’s failure to acknowledge this. Instead they dodge comments/questions surrounding this. Just look at the post they made in another topic.. dear god no.