This is how grenth should be opened
Its doable and its easier with fewer people, however it is a zone public event, this means its not meant to be designed for just a small group to do and isn’t limited to just a small group.
Its not that “it can’t be done with 20 people” its more that it SHOULD be doable with 20+ people and randoms at that, as it stands it IS just about doable with lots of people but it depends highly on luck.
chances are you will get public people, potentially lots of them and it only take 1 of them getting agro and taking the boss to the stairs for the event to fail or them calling more people and you getting 5-10 level 84 shades spawn each wave(which really become overkill at that level taking a lot of people a large time to kill 1 of them).
It just currently isn’t really balanced for what it is, if it was a dungeon boss encounter it would be perfect but a public zone event? Really is far too easy for 1 person in the server to constantly fail it for people who otherwise would have no issue with it.
The problem I have with a lot of people is that they never respawn. It was VERY risky to be reviving someone during that fight. Unless a bunch of you are on one person. The chances of you to die are up there.
I have a problem with people who just sit there dead for a huge amount of the fight and cause the event to scale even higher.
I’ve just had a lot of people try to talk down on me due to the “You don’t know what you are talking about” “Grenth can’t be done with less than 8 people”.
Could be that people that I talk to really have no idea what they are talking about.
Everyone knows Grenth is a lot easier to do with just a handful of people that know what to do. His difficulty ramps up a crap ton when people keep joining in.
Apparently not everyone, given the crazy thread about it that was going strong until a few days ago where I had to argue—over and over again—that this was the way to do that fight.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this video.
P.S. @mehyaM: I know exactly what you mean. I gave up trying to explain it to people in-game, how the fight’s supposed to work. Nobody ever listens. Now I can kindly point them to this.
(edited by crawlerxp.1536)
Grenth is one of the few bosses where you actually have to understand the fight and the mechanics behind it in its entirety….. and it isn’t just YOU that has to understand it, its everyone person at the event has to as well.
This is what makes it one of the best and most frustrating events.
The problem is is that people go into the event not knowing what to do, not caring that they do not know, and not willing to learn. They are mindless people and they will pull Grenth everytime and the only thing you can do about it is hope they die before this happens.
The only upside is is that generally these people leave if they die or if the event fails as they are too lazy to actually wait around for the next attempt.
Past 8 people, I just ignore the shade entirely as they take to long to kill and will just down you with the 25 stacks of corruption. Its better to just go straight for the boss and hope the shades aggro on the bads while you kill the boss.
True, I’ve tried ignoring the shades with masses of people present as well. Hit or miss, as I’ve seen it. Either whoever is on the boss burns it fast enough, or they don’t, the shades pile up, and everybody dies. Even with a group that size, designating ten or twelve out of twenty to handle shades would suffice, I think. Trouble is getting five strategic people together to do it is hard enough, let alone twenty.
Grenth can be easily done with a large group as it can be done with a small group. The only difference is that with a small group of less than 5 players, it only takes 1 person to carry the team. The more people you have, the more that are needed to know how to step in the shade pools.
A zerg should not get a free pass just because they’re a zerg – encounter mechanics should matter.
Past 8 people, I just ignore the shade entirely as they take to long to kill and will just down you with the 25 stacks of corruption. Its better to just go straight for the boss and hope the shades aggro on the bads while you kill the boss.
This is why larger groups fail. Too many shades spawn for the usual people to carry the zergs by themselves. A majority of the zerg just stands there, shooting at the boss and some are even bad enough to constantly shoot at the shades, doing zero damage but since the health is going down, they think they’re helping.
The shade’s aura affects everyone, so leaving them up is just going to eventually kill everyone. The worst thing you can do is let them all live and keep DPSing the boss until more shades spawn at which point the stacks raise even faster. The only time just DPSing the boss will work is when you’re in a zerg so large, it exceeds the scaling limit, allowing you to mindlessly sit there while 1 is autocasting.
For every 5 people participating, at least 1 person should be killing shades. Preferably, everyone should get the buff and everyone should at least AoE them. From past experiences however, usually only 1 in 20 bothers.
A zerg should not get a free pass just because they’re a zerg – encounter mechanics should matter.
Indeed, however I still think that a zone size group also shouldn’t fail because of 1 or 2 people pulling grenth to the stairs in a panic.
The fact that new players that are more likely to panic are usually more likely to be the ones on grenth while the experienced players try and take out that ridiculously high shades just compounds the issue.
I mean personally I’d be happy with just a swap from keeper getting his kitten handed to him by random AoE’s to keeper having a set life time that if you don’t take down grenth in fails the event, means idiot zergs would still loose as they’d just keep wiping on shades and pools but proper groups wouldn’t have to worry as much about a bunch of randoms running in and failing the event before it even starts.
Grenth can be easily done with a large group as it can be done with a small group. The only difference is that with a small group of less than 5 players, it only takes 1 person to carry the team. The more people you have, the more that are needed to know how to step in the shade pools.
In my eyes a larger group = a higher fail rate. Unless of course that entire zerg knows what they are doing, but chances of that are high or low depending on the players. I’m not saying it can’t be done without a big group, most of the temple events ive done have all been huge groups, but people think you can’t do it with less. Of course in the video we had our close calls, but we’ve two manned grenth before. You just get a tanky person on grenth while any dps people take care of shades.
Currently while in cursed shore right now, ive seen grenth fail twice so far while ive been walking around get orichalcum. Everytime I see it fail.. “We need more people!” All I’m saying is this video is for people who have this mindset where they think grenth can’t be done if you don’t have a big group. Which I have had multiple arguments about that in my server.
(edited by mehyaM.3042)
Of course theres always the issue that if there failing its most likely because they already have too many players so one thing or another is overwhelming them, at that point you can’t really tell half the public raid to leave because its… well.. a public event, at which point you have 2 options, keep trying and probably failing with the people you have now (getting a public group to learn is like hearding cats, only harder) or call for more people and hope that they know enough of what to do to turn the tides or bring enough to simply overwhelm.
It’s pretty common knowledge that grenth is easiest with a handful of people. The problem is, ANet’s manifesto claims that “players should welcome the addition of other players to the fight” in the open world. This is FAR from what happens at grenth. On any given night, there are a dedicated 5-8 people that know grenth’s strat solidly and could take him down if they were the only ones there. The problem occurs when pugs show up. Random players that may not know the strat, or are in magic find gear, or maybe have latency issues that prevent them from dodging grenth’s mechanics. They scale up the difficulty so far that the few of us alive get overwhelmed by shades and eventually caught in a gravity well without endurance.
Grenth is probably not that hard of a boss for former WoW raiders and the like, but when you drop it in the open world, you include the possibility of random pugs strolling in, scaling up the difficulty, and lying dead on the floor the entire fight. This is what makes grenth so difficult for us.
TY for the video. GJ!
It looks like difficulty scales up disproportionally with larger groups because Grenth puts down more drop-you-from-the-ceiling aoe’s, so that with a large team the entire floor is covered, leaving no safe place, greatly increasing the chance for all people there to be dropped (multiple times) and die.
Of course it helps if people know what they are doing, but it also helps that the event is objectively easier with a small team.
question:
Is the drop-you-from-the-ceiling spell supposed to remove 80% of my health even before being dropped?
To counter people running towards Jonez when they don’t know what they’re doing, what you want to do is be the first one in, or hopefully, end up with someone that know’s what they’re doing to just happen to have aggro. The first thing you want to do is reposition the boss so that it’s back near the skill point, either directly their in the middle or more safely, on the side wall, which wall cause everyone near Jonez to be out of line of sight, forcing them to move. Back there, the boss can’t reach Jonez, so it doesn’t really matter if anyone’s standing next to him.
If someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing gets aggro and starts to run, what you want to do is snare and immobilize, trying to minimize the damage they’re causing as much as possible. Hopefully, as they run farther away, they drop aggro. If the boss was in the very back when this started, it wouldn’t have moved much. If that person never loses aggro and the boss passes the midpoint of the room, at which point Jonez is in range, you are pretty much screwed and that 1 person caused the event to fail.
question:
Is the drop-you-from-the-ceiling spell supposed to remove 80% of my health even before being dropped?
There’s a lot of damage going around at points throughout the encounter. A ranged add could have been hitting you, a shade, one of the few AoEs from the boss, which is all multipled by the shade’s debuff. Additionally, scaling causes the damage to be increased. The Grenth statue debuff also keeps a constant poison on you.
I’ve never really been hurt from the drop from the ceiling. It has always just put me a little bit above the floor, doing maybe a 1 second fall. But yes, I think the damage is done as soon as you touch it. I usually end up with around 50% health after the fall.
When you say the vortexes cover the floor, are they overlapping and are you sure you’re not also counting the red circles from the other AoEs. From the few times I’ve done it with more than 10 people, I havn’t seen the vortexes scale in number. They cover the floor even when I’m duoing it, leaving only a small safe spot in the middle of a square of 4 circles and on the edges. The sides and back of the room (where Jonez is) has always appeared to be a safe spot.
(edited by Healix.5819)
Thanks for the reply Healix,
When you say the vortexes cover the floor, are they overlapping and are you sure you’re not also counting the red circles from the other AoEs.
I’m referring to actual vortexes; the brown swirly things on the floor. Some do overlap, but mostly it’s just that there are a lot of them. It’s hard to not dodge into one while avoiding another – if i even get the chance to dodge.
They cover the floor even when I’m duoing it
In the video i see far fewer vortexes/less floor surface covered by those, than in the “need more people at Grenth” zergs i’v been part of.
The sides and back of the room (where Jonez is) has always appeared to be a safe spot.
I’ve been caught in vortexes while on the stairs fighting shades that are on Jonez.
I’m not sure what’s with the pre-drop damage that i often suffer, it happens so fast. One moment i’m on the ground with 90% health, next i’m near the ceiling with most of my health gone.
I usually drop from really high, regularly twice in a row because i get dropped on top of yet another a vortex.
Btw i have no trouble avoiding the ice aoe’s, which usually don’t do that much damage anyway.
(edited by helladoom.4317)
The “Drop you from the sky” aoe, hits you 3 times while dropping you. Anywhere from 3-4k. In the video you see me either renew focus or put on a block skill to block the 3 shots. IF you block all 3 shots or evade them, you won’t be tossed up.