Guild Wars 2

Ah, Balthazar Temple! Home of the elusive Obsidian Shards.

People seem to think that opening Balth is next to impossible, but they are the cause of their own defeat. Saying it is impossible makes it impossible. Don’t admit defeat before you begin.

Sure, if you’re new to the process yer going to fail. Thats Good. No seriously, it’s great! People learn more from failure than success, and you need to learn a lot to reliably open Balthazar’s temple.

This first post is targeted at Commanders.

Commanders: If you want to see Balth open, and it’s not happening on your server, make a habit of opening all the other temples, and killing the Karka Queen. You can start your zerg at Dwayna or Lyssa, you only need 5-10 players for those temples, and work through Melandru to Grenth (might need 20?). Remember that the events will scale up to your zerg, so if it seems ‘terribly impossibly difficulty’ the last time you barely succeeded and now you have half the numbers, the event will likely scale smaller and you can still clear it. Make opening those other temples a ‘Thing’, and after a few weeks add a finisher to your longer successful runs: take your zerg to Balthazar.

Once you are at Balthazar, you are going to fail. It’s a given. Balthazar is a temple you have to earn your way into. Your zerg is green, they don’t know what to expect (you may not know what to expect), but that’s ok. Failure is your opportunity to learn. Keep up beat about it and don’t get frustrated. Frustrated is where zergs become defeated. Don’t show it and speak to your zerg to counter it.

Start with southern invasion. You don’t need all 3 invasions to open the temple. North seems to have odd zerg requirements (I may just need to practice it more to understand it better). Central – 5 of the events are out and out farms, and it offers fast resets after a failure, but some of the NPCs are Kin of Kilroy and can wipe even massive zergs with their actions – it’s great but not entirely reliable. South is free of such distractions. With the current state of affairs with Veteran Subjugators , more reinforcements isn’t that much of an asset. Mind, do try the other invasions, you may find some work better with your play style than others, and if you can reliably swing it, I do recommend central (fast resets after a failure).

Once you get to the rally point, commanders, you now have 2 vital roles to play.
1) Pay attention to everything that’s happening and get players to move on anything that might represent a failure about-to-happen.
2) Pay attention to everything that’s happening, so you can answer the most common question after a failure: “What happened?”

As a commander in a zerg of 20 or 30, your DPS is trivial. Your attention to detail is vital.
Pay attention: Are the NPCs responding correctly to the waves of undead? Are the players defending them along each axis of threat? Are there heals landing on the NPCs? Is that the last veteran in that wave? What are your current threats? Is anything unexpected or unusual happening? Are the NPCs headed towards an upcoming spawn location? Is that really a midget Waldo with a dagg… oh, that’s an asura in red stripes and carrying a greatsword.
As a commander, if you don’t know whats happening, its more important for you to observe than fight. Oh, go ahead and land some blows so you contribute DPS, but focus on understanding the big picture. Without knowing where the failure came from, it’s difficult to correct for it. It’s also important to have the answer to the inevitable “what went wrong?” I’ll be honest. Weird stuff happens at that final escort, and even expert zergs can find themselves in a situation where the NPCs move to a very very wrong spot and all die without clear warning.

You may not crack it your first, second, or even third time trying, but that speaks to the difficulty of the content. It takes learning what you face and taking the time to find ways to cope with it. Nobody gets it right the first time out, but anyone who has perseverance and is willing to learn and try new things, will eventually succeed. Please, when you try Balthazarm should you fail don’t just turn around and quit — the zerg will have learned from the failure, and will usually fare better the second time out. Keep trying. Success is grand, but the simple effort can be grand as well.
//Portable Corpse
(edit reason — sum it up)

From Rally WP to the Temple is pretty inconsistent, sometime the moral of the pact can just suddenly vanish very close to the starting area, without any clue why, sometimes it can disappear to about 25% and stay that way until the temple.

The whole thing is pretty uncontrollable.

Different people have different idea’s, and it’s difficult to get 20 or whatever random players to co-ordinate.

Healing the pact, does it work, don’t think so.

Take out Subjugators and vets asap, probably helps.

Stay close to the pact, but not too close, draw mobs away from the pact, that helps.

Keep up with the pact, if they go ahead while you mess with mobs left behind then your probably going to fail.

Get two pacts to go together, might help but difficult to co-ordinate, and I’ve seen two pacts fail just as quickly as one.

I’ve done Balthazar a lot, probably a couple of hundred time’s, and it’s the most unpredictable DE in the game, as far as I know.

Zerglings:
For the green zergling – You’ve just heard about this ‘Balth’ thing and been told to come along. Well, here’s your chance for adventure, but being in the wrong spot or using the wrong set of skills can hurt.

• Bring AoE Damage. You’ll have many targets to kill quickly. AoE helps with that.
• Bring AoE heals. It’s not just you that needs healing out there, sometimes the NPCs need it too. Bonus points for a water field.
• Keep out of the red circles. In some events you can tank the damage from the red circles, that’s not the case in a few places here – standing in them more than 2 seconds may leave you dead.
• Save killing veterans for last. They all deal about the same damage, but the veterans take much effort to kill, clear the weak mobs out first.
• Stand on the orange circle. The event draws an orange shield on the map, and circles it. Being on the circle puts you at a good distance from the NPCs — not so close that you draw fire onto the NPCs, and close enough to pummel anything that hits the NPCs. Keep on that circle – the NPCs are famous for moving ahead without finishing a fight. Be there for them when they do.
• Spread out: The undead attack from all sides. This is especially true when the NPCs move early.

Experienced Zerglings:
You’ve learned whats what. You know that priest dude is kinda wimpy on health, and his pet Abomination packs a punch. Time to up your game a bit.

• Don’t be afraid of the undead, show em why they fear you. Get among them early so they don’t have a chance to move on the NPCs.
• Heal those NPCs. They need to be healed almost constantly at the end of the final escort, make sure they stay in a healing field of one type or another. Do NOT stay near the NPCs, just get near enough to place the field and back away.
• Bring CC skills. Especially AoE ones. Knockbacks, pulls, and fears can move undead away from the NPCs.
• Bring blast finishers. Use them in combo fields. Any of the warrior banners have a skill 5 that serves as a blast finisher, don’t fear using them.
• Bring Projectile Defense skills. Some of the final waves can be heavy on projectiles, things go much simpler if the projectiles are harmless.
• Make note of the spawn locations for each wave. Make special note of any spawn locations the NPCs pass. Watch how the spawns work.

Crack Zerglings:
You know what’s what. You know where to be and when to be there. Still, random things like happening in the event that could fail it: you are prepared.

• Keep useful. You know what’s what, look for things the zerg isn’t doing and do them yourself. If all is well, look for where things can go wrong… just in case.
• Bring Buffs and Debuffs. The zerg appreciates both.
• If the NPCs are about to cross an upcoming spawn point, be there with your CCs. If that spawn lands as the NPCs are on the spawn point, the event can fail extremely fast. A well timed set of CCs to force the undead off can save the event.
• Be ready for random. Sometimes the NPCs skip waves. If this happens, act smartly. That may mean chasing after the NPCs while the main zerg finishes a fight, that may mean forming a line behind the NPCs to catch a spawn that will try to chase into them.

//Portable Corpse

• Even if your commander is a corpse and is moving, don’t kill her. Please focus instead the other dead stuff that’s moving.

Enable the “Show All NPC names option”
That way you can actually see where all the NPCs are so you can avoid them regadless of your graphics settings.
Unfortunately too many mesmers and/or rangers will clutter things up.

Veteran Risen Subjugators.
If (when?) these have been nerfed, please ignore this bit.

Subjugators are the risen human based necromancers. They use lich form and their skill sets include horn skills.

The veteran ones are something else, and can, by using their horns, summon a dozen or more wells that can kill anything in them zergs, NPC, etc). One veteran can stop a temple run cold with a single skill. They currently represent the single most dangerous element to the entire event chain. Minimum, you want to have a plan for dealing with these.
Advice includes and is by no means limited to:

• Target them with 3-4 man teams that move them clear of the main fighting.This will likely lead to ‘Acts of Random’ should the NPCs avoid aggro. Small teams fighting these may burn them down faster with vulnerability and might stacks
• designate a significant portion of the Zerg to hunting just these – like “most” or “all”. May backfire, as the zerg forming on one will cause it to scale up during the fight.
• use CC skills to move them well clear of the NPCs current and future positions (knocking one forward does little good if the NPCs march up to it on their normal path.
• spam CC skills to interrupt them, hopefully blocking any chance of getting their killer skill off.
• if possible, shut them down entirely (stun-lock? Knock-lock?)

Some facts about them:

• As individuals, their abilities scale up based on the number of nearby players. They are actually quite wimpy with just 3-4 nearby players to scale them up.
• They can appear in the first and third waves, plus one wave later in the event.
• They can/do spawn within longbow range of the NPC.
• their spawns are random – they may replace other veterans or not.
• veteran subjugators can appear from multiple spawn points in one wave.
• multiple veteran subjugators can appear at each spawn point.
• their well skill is preceded by or coincides with an audible horn sound.
  //Portable Corpse
  New data from yesterday’s crawl with a smaller zerg.

I know that there are at least 2x Guilds working together at Dzagonur server that annouce the temple raid a day before they attempt it (start 20:30 yesterday I think). So far, been there 2x and it goes rather smooth. Commies know what to do and they manage to keep track of the invasions, NPSs, etc. Might as well appeal to particular guilds, seems to work.