Guild Wars 2

So, ever since the patch, it seems very few servers are now able to clear Grenth. There is however a solution. Mainly, it involves that champion wraith. Anet, in their infinite wisdom, gave the Champion Wraith a massive AOE health drain attack with no target limit. Which means that 30 man zergs will be melted by it in the space of about 10 seconds. Oh, and it will heal itself to 100% while killing you too.

The only way around it is to find a few martyrs willing to die for your team. They will pull the wraith away from Tactician Footi, die, run back and try to keep it away. Make sure that your zerg pays them for their sacrifice. I know it would be nice to say there is a strategy that avoid players repeatedly dying, but Anet (in their mercy) insured that the only way to clear this temple is to have the true believers die for their cause so that the PUG’s may profit from their deaths.

Once you are past Tactician Footi though and manage to kill the priest, your good friend the Champion Wraith comes back (if you manage to keep Jonez alive long enough). Sure as poo, he still has that AOE attack. If he gets even halfway into the room, he will be able to kill Jonez and there is nothing you can do.

So, again, you need to find a few brave people willing to die for their server, this time at the expense of not getting the chest at the end. Its a big sacrifice, but its the only way. Anet (in their infinite mercy and wisdom) have made it so the most dedicated have to die so the least dedicated can get the loot and open Grenth up.

And yes, this is the only strategy that works. This is not another thread saying change Grenth so you can actually clear it without sacrificing people and fun, because that has already been said. This is simply a thread about how to clear it with the existing build.

I’d like to note that players must stay clear from Keeper Jonez when Champion Risen Wraith comes down the stairs due to its ability to cast a Well of Darkness AoE to players directly at the back of the room.

Clearly, players in the back room or center of the room will not be able to see Champion Risen Wraith due to severe culling issues in PvE, so proper communication by players in the front line are needed.

Bring crowd control abilities and the champion wraith will not be a problem.

Has anyone noticed that the champion wraith only shows up in timed events (except for Lyssa event at Union waypoint)? It’s because the champion wraith is not meant to be killed, but to be stalled till the time runs out

When the Life Transfer is being channelled, spam hard CC’s like daze, stun, knock down, push, pull to interrupt it, and no one dies.

I always bring 3 hard CC’s to the Grenth event, and I spent all my time during the entire fight at the waypoint trying to stall the trash mob waves as long as I can, keeping some adds alive at the waypoint, so the next waves won’t spawn.

Unlike the sequenced trash mobs, the champions at the Grenth event are timed, spawning at 4:50 and 1:50 respectively.

Beside stalling trash mobs, my other task in this event is to pull the champion spider to the waypoint the best I can, with my hard CC, to prevent it from laying eggs near Jonez. However, if I know my group has the DPS to kill it, this task is trivial for me.

When the champion wraith spawns at the waypoint, I soft CC it first (cripple, chill, immobilize) to delay its AI script, which kicks off when it reaches the bottom of stairs. The wraith will use Life Transfer 3 times during the last 1:50 min, and they are all interrupted by my hard CCs rotation.

BTW, the champion wraith’s normal attack is weak around 3k, and its Screech and Well are easily avoided. More importantly, it moves as slow as a slug, meaning an easy kite.

I’m under the impression the thing has Unshakable?

Furikake.4052:

Bring crowd control abilities and the champion wraith will not be a problem.

Has anyone noticed that the champion wraith only shows up in timed events (except for Lyssa event at Union waypoint)? It’s because the champion wraith is not meant to be killed, but to be stalled till the time runs out

When the Life Transfer is being channelled, spam hard CC’s like daze, stun, knock down, push, pull to interrupt it, and no one dies.

I always bring 3 hard CC’s to the Grenth event, and I spent all my time during the entire fight at the waypoint trying to stall the trash mob waves as long as I can, keeping some adds alive at the waypoint, so the next waves won’t spawn.

Unlike the sequenced trash mobs, the champions at the Grenth event are timed, spawning at 4:50 and 1:50 respectively.

Beside stalling trash mobs, my other task in this event is to pull the champion spider to the waypoint the best I can, with my hard CC, to prevent it from laying eggs near Jonez. However, if I know my group has the DPS to kill it, this task is trivial for me.

When the champion wraith spawns at the waypoint, I soft CC it first (cripple, chill, immobilize) to delay its AI script, which kicks off when it reaches the bottom of stairs. The wraith will use Life Transfer 3 times during the last 1:50 min, and they are all interrupted by my hard CCs rotation.

BTW, the champion wraith’s normal attack is weak around 3k, and its Screech and Well are easily avoided. More importantly, it moves as slow as a slug, meaning an easy kite.

So, do its Defiant stacks cap at 2? Is that why your third CC works? Champs I’ve seen have 3 Defiant stacks, which means CC would work on the 4th usage. What about if some random player applies a CC at the wrong time? I mean, no one just spams their attacks indiscriminately, amirite? So are you saying this event is doable by a coordinated team of skilled players?

Yes, a successful interrupt produces 3 stacks of Defiant on champs. I don’t know the threshold for Defiant to scale up, because seeing a zerg in this event is non-existent nowadays.

It’s true that the more players, the easier it is to screw up the whole Defiant removal effort, because Defiant isn’t well desgined for open world PVE.

Indeed, the best way is with 4 hard CC’s. Life Transfer usually has a cooldown of 30 sec; however, I have seen something as short as 5 sec.

My setup was 3 ranged hard CC’s. I could’ve brought a 4th to ensure a successful interrupt, but its short range got me killed quite often, and a dead player can not interrupt. So, I took my chances.

It’s impossible to coordinate Defiant removal in a PUG; therefore, I adopted a strategy to somewhat increase the margin of error.

I removed only 2 stacks immediate off their cooldowns, not all 3 stacks. The remaining one stack is the margin of error in case someone else uses a hard CC in the wrong time.

When the Life Transfer was being channeled, I then immediately removed the last stack with my only available CC, and usually I had to wait for a few seconds for one of those 2 previously used CCs to be available.

Since the champ was kept out of range of Jonez, a few seconds delay posed an imminent threat only to players. And that’s the risk with my 3 CC’s setup.

Furikake.4052:

Yes, a successful interrupt produces 3 stacks of Defiant on champs. I don’t know the threshold for Defiant to scale up, because seeing a zerg in this event is non-existent nowadays.

It’s true that the more players, the easier it is to screw up the whole Defiant removal effort, because Defiant isn’t well desgined for open world PVE.

Indeed, the best way is with 4 hard CC’s. Life Transfer usually has a cooldown of 30 sec; however, I have seen something as short as 5 sec.

My setup was 3 ranged hard CC’s. I could’ve brought a 4th to ensure a successful interrupt, but its short range got me killed quite often, and a dead player can not interrupt. So, I took my chances.

It’s impossible to coordinate Defiant removal in a PUG; therefore, I adopted a strategy to somewhat increase the margin of error.

I removed only 2 stacks immediate off their cooldowns, not all 3 stacks. The remaining one stack is the margin of error in case someone else uses a hard CC in the wrong time.

When the Life Transfer was being channeled, I then immediately removed the last stack with my only available CC, and usually I had to wait for a few seconds for one of those 2 previously used CCs to be available.

Since the champ was kept out of range of Jonez, a few seconds delay posed an imminent threat only to players. And that’s the risk with my 3 CC’s setup.

So, it seems as if you’ve found a way that might work every time. While I applaud your ingenuity and skill, I have to question how many other people on different servers could manage this.

Unshakable gains more defiant as more people are around, Your strategy works for up to 3 people, but if you have 4 people, you need to remove the defiant 4 times

If you have 9 people, you’ll have to deal with it 9 times.

Nope, as far as I know, the Defiant scaling does NOT increase in linearity. With that said, however, I have no idea what the exact formula is.

Since the April 30th patch, I’ve done the cleasing events with various group sizes, ranging from 4 to 10+ people (never had a success with 3 or fewer ppl). Each and every time, it has been 3 stacks of Defiant.

As I stated before in this and another thread, Defiant is NOT well designed for open world PVE. It’s nearly impossible to land a successful interrupt in a zerging PUG. However, with the current popularity of Grenth, a zerg is a rarity. More importantly, interruption is one of the 2 ways to counter Life Transfer, the other being kiting the wraith to a no man’s land beforehand, which can not be done in the cleasing event, since the wraith would not stay past the waypoint.

The other important point with my playstyle beside interrupting the wraith is to ensure that the group can last long enough to even see the wraith (at 1:50). That’s done by stalling trash mobs, as in not killing them all off and keeping some of them alive, so the next, more deadly, waves will not spawn. This is the same strategy I use for the cannon building event (and other events thoughout the game as well).

Amongst all my successful Grenth runs, the most successful one is that the wraith died without it getting a chance to cast any Life Transfer nor any Well of Darkness, and it wasn’t done by pure DPSing, but by 4 PUG people spamming hard CC’s continuously without corrdination at all (but still with manipulation).

The most regrettable unsccessful run is that I was the only guy with CCs, getting killed by trash mobs right when I was about to interrupt Life Transfer with 15 sec left in the event, which in return, made me abandon the idea of using my 4th, short ranged CC.

If anyone still thinks Life Transfer will someday, be nerfed so that players can live through all its ticks, then I’d say it’s gonna be a long wait till that happens. If you still wanna do the event during the wait, my suggestion is to use interruption, despite how terribly designed it is for open world PVE.

Furikake.4052:

Nope, as far as I know, the Defiant scaling does NOT increase in linearity. With that said, however, I have no idea what the exact formula is.

Since the April 30th patch, I’ve done the cleasing events with various group sizes, ranging from 4 to 10+ people (never had a success with 3 or fewer ppl). Each and every time, it has been 3 stacks of Defiant.

As I stated before in this and another thread, Defiant is NOT well designed for open world PVE. It’s nearly impossible to land a successful interrupt in a zerging PUG. However, with the current popularity of Grenth, a zerg is a rarity. More importantly, interruption is one of the 2 ways to counter Life Transfer, the other being kiting the wraith to a no man’s land beforehand, which can not be done in the cleasing event, since the wraith would not stay past the waypoint.

The other important point with my playstyle beside interrupting the wraith is to ensure that the group can last long enough to even see the wraith (at 1:50). That’s done by stalling trash mobs, as in not killing them all off and keeping some of them alive, so the next, more deadly, waves will not spawn. This is the same strategy I use for the cannon building event (and other events thoughout the game as well).

Amongst all my successful Grenth runs, the most successful one is that the wraith died without it getting a chance to cast any Life Transfer nor any Well of Darkness, and it wasn’t done by pure DPSing, but by 4 PUG people spamming hard CC’s continuously without corrdination at all (but still with manipulation).

The most regrettable unsccessful run is that I was the only guy with CCs, getting killed by trash mobs right when I was about to interrupt Life Transfer with 15 sec left in the event, which in return, made me abandon the idea of using my 4th, short ranged CC.

If anyone still thinks Life Transfer will someday, be nerfed so that players can live through all its ticks, then I’d say it’s gonna be a long wait till that happens. If you still wanna do the event during the wait, my suggestion is to use interruption, despite how terribly designed it is for open world PVE.

More likely, people will avoid the event. That’s what’s happening on my server.

What’s the deal with the wave spawning on Jonez at 0:50? My group failed twice in the same countdown due to something killing Keeper Jonez’s HP in 1 second.

What is there and how do we counter?

Possibly invisible mobs, happened to us (entire room of players including Jonez were killed by invisible mobs). Severe culling issues in PvE.