Guild Wars 2

So after weeks of running this event & failing hard, or event bugging out, finally got my first shot at the Balthazar vendor.

The assault was lead by a commander (cant remember his name, started with an O) on Tarnished Coast. It was bugged on the first try, so we lured the champ giant over to the npc’s, and they were quickly dispatched, thus resetting the event. After securing, the south and central invasions, we head to the pact rally point, hoping for better luck this time. Wow, we made it up the hill, and to the temple with “just” enough morale.

We had a lot less people than usual, so I figured it would be another fail, for sure. But Alas, he was defeated not only in less than 10 minutes, but less than 9.

As far as strategy, we focused the Champion, and veterans immediately when they spawned, ignoring the great god himself completely. Yes a lot of people went down to Balth’s elite attacks. Everybody revived everybody. (not sure, but i don’t think anyone re-spawned and ran back). Once the champs and vets were gone, you could visually see Balths health dropping fast, with focused dps.

Great success.

Wish i didn’t have to do it again, didn’t have enough Karma for my clovers first time

So in a nutshell:

a) focus the champs/vets first
b) revive everyone possible.
c) still the toughest boss in the game, IMO.

What server are you on? And is he still uncontested?

It’s bugged on my server

On Tarnished Coast.

No, its again contested (completed last night), but hope to reorganize another assault tonight or tomorrow night. (to finish my clovers) !

Thank you for your post on basic boss fight strategy. Not being sarcastic, honest. I’m just hoping people see this and stop kittening about people killing the adds or bothering to res. Of course we’d be lucky to see a Commander actually attempt to lead anything.

How do you manage to actually get people to start the invasions? On my server very few people do them, so they barely progress and everyone else is just zerging it up on the DE’s.

When i ask for help and as to why no one is doing it, i get called a whiny kid who is self centered because he wants to get access to the merchant…

@pennry: yes it is basic, but on my server, not many listen, and I’ve seen tons of posts of “Can’t beat Balth”, “balth is too hard”, “balth is bugged”, “wtf I want a refund for this game”.

This is for them, obv, not you.

@Zelk: Honestly, I can’t usually get one started either. There’s usually a small unorganized group making a valiant attempt. In my case, I honestly believe, people saw a commander and followed, and it went from there. Can’t say for sure. But it was one of the smaller groups I’ve seen run the event.

So is there any server where it’s currently uncontested?

A human god is a boss? ( I haven’t been to Orr yet, I’m still Wvwvw’ing/exploring/profession’ing)

That’s terrifying.

Nah, it’s just a risen priest boss. But he is terrifying none-the-less. I can’t tell you how many times getting “fear” forced my character to run right into an AoE field. Also, his fireball attack owns. Got double hit for 11k dmg per hit (immediately back to back).

Koega.8653:

Nah, it’s just a risen priest boss. But he is terrifying none-the-less. I can’t tell you how many times getting “fear” forced my character to run right into an AoE field. Also, his fireball attack owns. Got double hit for 11k dmg per hit (immediately back to back).

Yeah, he can instant kill people with hardly any chance to evade like most other bosses in the game. But the only thing which makes him “terrifying” (which should mean frustrating) is that you only have 10 minutes to reduce his ridiculously bloated HP pool to 0.

a) focus the champs/vets first
b) revive everyone possible.

No and No.

The champs/vets are nothing more than HP sponges. Just ignore them and focus the boss. This is a RACE. The boss is your first priority.

You should only be reviving DOWNED players. Reviving DEFEATED players is a complete waste of time. It’s making the event MORE LIKELY to fail. If instead of reviving that person, those people had instead focused the boss and the dead person rezzed at a waypoint and ran back, you would have done far more DPS making the event much more likely to succeed.

The only reason you won was because you had far more than enough people to compensate for your horrible tactics.

Strill, I’ve tried your method 30 times.

Failed everytime, with BIG groups, trying to DPS the boss the whole time.

The one time, that’s been successful for me, was focusing the mini-bosses, and with a smaller group.

As far as reviving, maybe, maybe not. OUR group kept everyone on their feet, 80% of the time, and we had time to spare. (over a minute).

Come to think of it, the only thing that changed between the groups that failed and the group that succeeded for me was the size. The successful group was smaller.

Maybe the scaling for large groups is a bit off. Which it would be if we had a lot of condition damage being ignored due to the max stack size.

Valid point, Sleep…and makes sense.

Might try another small group tomorrow night and see how it goes.

Also, leaving people on the ground means that the event scales even tho they do not contribute to the DPS.

digiowl.9620:

Also, leaving people on the ground means that the event scales even tho they do not contribute to the DPS.

That’s why you tell them to waypoint out and run back when defeated.

It will certainly get them back in the fight quicker than having someone try to res them, get most of the way, then get caught in the insta-death blasts. Without having someone take themselves out of contributing to DPS to res the guy.

Costs them armor repairs tho, as well as the waypoint expense (and the closest one is likely to be contested, so they will have to fight or evade their way thru mobs).

Maybe any profession that can should pack some kind of res utility? But i guess that is a bit much to expect, as i guess most show up in whatever they were out farming with when they see a major event light up.

Ugh, never mind. Seems like Anet specifically designed those to be hard to use. All are long cooldown abilities (rangers being the shortest, require a active pet, and still has a cooldown of 85 seconds for a single revival). Some are signets, meaning that the holder loose the passive benefit after use, while others are centered on the user or single target abilities.

There are three ways to do this kind of fight:
1 – Burn the “main boss”, ignore the rest
2 – Burn the adds, then the “main boss”
3 – Bring enough people to do both 1 and 2.

Here at JQ, people scream for method 1. To them it’s the only way. Nevermind watching people getting bounced from one add to the next, just to be finished off in little to no time. Some even suggest that the adds simply be kitted. That’s a way of doing method 3, but no one bothers to lead and set a group to such a task. Which brings us to why all three methods are seeming to fail: Very few people care to lead. (I’d gladly do it, just send me that 100g.)

In my opinion: method 1 is just dumb ie Zapp Brannigan; method 2 is a little smarter, as people follow the “kill weaker first” & “kill more for more loot” mindsets; and method 3 is the ideal way, but take way too much coordination and timed numbers than one can really expect from an open-world MMO event. And I will agree about the res’ing of the dead versus the downed, downed is some 10x faster to res and running back when dead is just quicker (especially if there is a good constant stream of people keeping the path).

I suspect that there may be reason for the adds to be there, and why the smaller group who killed the add.. succeed.

Maybe having those adds dead weakens Balth somehow, and makes getting him to 0 easier…

But one thing I can absolutely say, people being bounced around and killed by the add are not adding any DPS!! This game may be partially about self relance, but if we work as a group and support each other, we can achieve a lot more..

There is a very strong message on the overlying story of the personal line… It tells you how to win at Guild Wars……….

Meaning that story design and game mechanics design do not mesh.

- support activity is not accounted for, at least not in any overt way, in the end of event results.

- the support skills we have are expensive to use thanks to long cooldowns, loss of passive effects, and the high chance of multiple uses (meaning wasted used) in a uncoordinated public event.

- no unified voice chat, or some kind of quick message system (heal, dodge, attack, retreat and so on).

- Heavy attack FX, making it hard to notice tells regarding big attacks.

- weak support FX, making it hard to locate a healing spot (turret, well, whatever).

The whole game engine seems designed around small, practiced and coordinated, groups fighting each other (no wonder given that Anet is pushing the e-sport angle heavily) that has been shoehorned into a open world MMO.

It’s down on ET right now if you wanna swap and get your stuff, if only someone would kill lyssa.
When i got to level 75 and went to orr, I quested in the first two zones for a little but then i ran straight passed the first two into the 3rd, because the first two were empty when i was playing and no one else was at any of the events i checked on. It was my first time in orr too, i didn’t play beta or read anything about it.
They should combine the chat of all 3 zones and make teleporting within orr free to try and improve it, Also probably make the entire place level 80.

raxx.8914:

It’s down on ET right now if you wanna swap and get your stuff, if only someone would kill lyssa.

et being what exactly?

I agree with Bawlduke that those adds might be the key of defeating him. It is a very popular mechanics in raid boss where adds provide invulnerability and damage buff to the boss which oblige you to clean up the adds first. Hope more people would try this and report their results. If it actually can be done with a small group provided you use the correct tactics, people would be more eager to take the challenge.

Koega.8653:

Nah, it’s just a risen priest boss. But he is terrifying none-the-less. I can’t tell you how many times getting “fear” forced my character to run right into an AoE field. Also, his fireball attack owns. Got double hit for 11k dmg per hit (immediately back to back).

Ah yes. in ANets vast arsenal of challenging boss mechanics it seems like they opted for the classic “let’s one-shot players” mechanic.

What a rare and unusual choice.

I find it funny how all the other god temples are rather easy with a decent size group, yet this one, the meta to it takes forever and you get there and wipe 9/10 times.

also, the Morale Meter when going to the shrine should be slowed down. losing 60% of the bar and not being at the halfway point, instead still being at the front of the outpost is dumb. that meter should be relabeled “Actual Player Morale” or Zerg strength.

thanks for this and congratulations!!! i just happen to stumble across a group that was calling out for it and did it from start to end. i didn’t heave NEARLY enough karma, but if igured i should participate and help out anyways.

great to hear that you guys revived each other. when the temple priest was up or we were nearing the top, at least 3, 4 people shouted out saying if you die, port and run back, no one’s gonan res you or don’t be lazy kittens. luckily, most people didn’t die, least i didn’t notice anyone. we had a simila rstrategy but i guess we had more people. a group focused on the champ and vets when they showed. while another group was constantly DPS-ing the priest.

thanks for the tips though! will be useful because i know that was not the last time i will be seeing that Priest.

I remember beating this event less than a month after launch, we were a relatively small group (smaller than the huge zergs I’d seen and fail this event before), and we succeeded by just focusing on the boss.

We had a small, disorganized-ish group on Borlis Pass who made a really good attempt at it last night but he still had about a quarter of his HP left at the end of the ten minutes. I think your strategy makes sense, but like a few others have commented I think there’s better value in rezzing downed players vs. dead players.