Guild Wars 2

Hello, it’s me again.

After spending much time and quite a bit of money on tickets, I also have finally finished these achievements.

I am just going to write a written guide and tips and tricks to this boss for now. I may add a video guide later when I have time.

First of all, if some of you don’t know already (I think most people may realise this after awhile) not all the arenas are the same. Yes i’m looking at you Anet. You and you super awesomely designed challenges. What better idea than to hang super tiny arenas in a really wide range area so we have to render all sorts of crap to lower our FPS. (sarcasm intended). Oh what you know what’s the worst thing, the arenas aren’t all the same! To be more specific, only the NORTH 2 areas are actually USEABLE for the fight against Liadri. Do you know why? you ever wonder why sometimes that white swirl that spawns at a corner seem to be NOT as close to the edge and sometimes HALF way into the edge. Well it’s because of the arena design isn’t perfectly shaped or the aoes are positioned slightly off in all the REST of the areas except for the north 2. So that kittened up kitten they said we only had to wait at most ~2 mins per fight for a 75 player instance is total kitten. Now, if this post does get the knowledge to the people out there, we’re going to be seeing a lot higher queues in these arenas and make the whole waiting time 3x longer.

This comes to my second biggest tip, no matter what super awesome graphic card you’re on… TURN YOUR GRAPHICS ALL THE WAY DOWN. I’m running on a HD7870 and my FPS lowers to about 17-20 with settings up. You need every drip of FPS you can grab for these fights.

Okay, onto the fights. As you may have also realised, the way the boss aoes and the way the swirls spawn are always the same. The best way to start off and get a guaranteed Phase 1 pass is by first killing the first orb u see then sitting near the first swirl. More specifically, if you’re standing at the edge of the arena and the swirl is right in front of you, you should be on the RIGHT side of it. A bunch of aoes will spawn to your left and after they’re done, quickly move to the LEFT of the swirl. An illusion should be approaching you and you should be able to pick up the blazing light and throw it at her. Proceed to the next swirl and hide behind it to lure the next illusion over. Watch out for the aoe that spawns. There should be one which covers the swirl and you can hide next to it before standing behind it again. There should be plenty of time to chuck the light and then quickly dodge roll PAST the illusion and behind the swirl.

What you want to do is to be fairly back from the swirl but still luring the illusions in the right direction. There should be 3 approaching. If you get lucky, you may be able to get both but chances are only one of them popped. What you want to do is keep lurign those illusions away from the light a bit as another AOE strikes at the location the blazing light is atm. Once that Aoe is over, quickly run over and grab the light and chuck it on the middle pepz. The next swirl should be directly opposite the last swirls location.

Okay, P2. Here comes the fun part. If you’re thinking of getting the 8 orbs achievement, as funny as it may be a high dps character is not what you want. In fact, the best class to do this surprise surprise is the guardian. This is because you actually need to tank quite a bit of damage dished out while avoiding the illusions.

Firstly, something about the aoe patterns. in P1, the aoes cover 25 % of the arena, in p2 the aoes cover 50 % of the arena (not 90 % that some people overly exaggerate it to be). The pattern is always the same, it basically just alternates so you can kind of figure out where to stand (and this is very important) and where to run every time. This is something you have to develop. You have to know the pattern like the back of your hand.

Okay, so what I’ve said so far is pretty standard, no biggy. There are 3 big factors which kill us in this arena. I find the pull is the least of our worry. The biggest worry is the one hit kill illusions and the conditions applied by the boss. Cripple is extremely deadly in this arena especially when you have to make it to the safe zone in time. When those illusions stack up, it can be really hard to have enough space to pick up the blazing light. So what can we do?

Well, one thing we can take advantage of is the kamikaze illusions. What you need to do is make sure you tag every single one of those illusions. Usually I just use GS whirl as a guard and what happens is that when those illusions pop you instant rally. it’s so quick you won’t even glimpse your downstate. The 2nd thing you need to do is to keep up that retaliation. That is going to be your main dps against the boss with occasional GS swirl hits to get her low while you salvage those blazing lights. Because of how fast her attacks are, retaliation works extremely well against her and being a guard, you naturally are tanky.

One huge advantage as a guard is that you have gs leap. Turn off that autotarget and use GS leap as an extra distance closer so that you can make point a to b in time. It really is a game changer.

Some advice on food is Orrian truffle meat stew (soemthing like that can’t remember exactly) it’s the one that gives might on dodge and endurance 40 % + regen. The 2nd best is condition duration -40 % the lemongrass food, the last is mango pie which gives health regen. The last one is the cheapest but the first two are a lot better. For faultily food, your best choice is quality maintenance oil (or the higher tiers for the extra %). Now if you got spare boosters lying around, regen and speed booster will really boost your game here. The regen especially as it really helps to keep that HP up while you’re getting attacked by the boss.

Another tip on luring the illusions is, once in awhile they will spawn RIGHT behind a swirl, so if you keep your eyes on them, you actually don’t have to lure the bunch following you but just make sure you’re in the direction which will allow that illusions behind the swirl to walk into it. I find by the time I get to the 5th orb, Liadri should be be around 20 % hp and you just need to burst her down and not die for the next 8 seconds in order to win.

Some recommendation for guard is that, block skills work on everything against that boss. So the heal skill shelter is way better than that signet you’ve been using everywhere else. My line up for shout build with shelter, save yourself, stand your ground and speed buff aegis shout with of course, renewed focus (is that what it’s called? i don’t look at the skill names these days). The traits I used was 0/0/30/30/10 though some people may prefer 0/0/10/30/30.

The key if you’re a guard is to keep that retaliation up. Try use a combo finisher (light + leap) to get more retaliation.

This fight favors certain classes a lot and sure Anet couldn’t have balanced this for everyone.. oh wait? no what am I saying? YES they could have, they just could have NOT added a 1 hit element. Make it 1/2 of their health of 3/4 of their health. Then aegis and blocks wouldn’t be such a kitten big deal but what do I know.

Final notes, I’ll try get a video up to show you how my tactic is, it does get messy in p2, especially when you’re just trying to get those 5 extra orbs but yeah. In addition to all the bugginess these arenas (like having two bosses at once because the last boss didn’t refresh properly and yes this STILL happens quite often after their patch). I’m willing to wager most of the anet guys can’t do the 8 orb challenge but I guess they’re not the standard for “challenging” content. But, using kitten camera angle and selling it off as challenging content is pretty cheap in my opinion. Stick to your monthly content updates maybe even every 2 months. I rather WAIT the 2 months then get thrown an extremely buggy as hell version.

Oh yeah, put the people working on crap that really matters, like permanent content? GvG? WvW fixes? How bout that LFG tool? Seriously, if you guys didn’t have gw2lfg.com (which you should really be PAYING for their help) people would be 100x more annoyed at your game. 1 year in and NO LFG tool. I remember half a year ago, you guys were like, oh yeah, it’s almost complete~ yeah, we just had a few bugs to iron out, we have an idea for one that helps people look for groups but at the same time doesn’t take out the interacting aspect out of it~. Haha…

Anyways good luck to everyone and remember. Achievements are optional. Don’t play into their evil scheme like I did. However, if this keeps going, eventually we’ll all reach a point where we go, that’s it. I quit.

Something I forgot to mention is to turn post processing off if you haven’t already with your settings at minimum. It’s hard to give a good tip on how to improve aoe visibility since this is anet’s fault but I do understand some people have a harder time seeing the aoes than others. The only thing I can recommend is, try to stay away from the edges. It is actually best to stay somewhere around the middle because from there you can access all four quadrants of the arena without having to run a long distance.

Almost 99 % of the time, people die because they’re caught out of position and have run out of dodges + cripple. So try not to get yourself in that situation. If you DO get yourself in that, try aoe all the illusions around you and you may be able to pull off a instant rally.

With the orbs, try mind your surroundings and kill them as soon as you can see them or pop stability quick.

I like how this is like half guide half complaining :P
But yeah.. dont have a guardian so… ;p

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

I like how this is like half guide half complaining :P
But yeah.. dont have a guardian so… ;p

It’s probably possible to do it on any class but the aegis and blocks really help (they basically give you a 2nd life). However, invul skills on other classes can serve as viable replacements. GL!

If you need more advices , go read my long post on wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Liadri_the_Concealing_Dark

PS: Thx for your very informative post, Doctor useless.

yesfourme.8906:

If you need more advices , go read my long post on wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Liadri_the_Concealing_Dark

Visions can be changed into an orb if they touch the lighting pool or are killed by the barrage while being in human form

Is there a human form of visions? How is it appear?

Hyperionkhv.1978:

yesfourme.8906:

If you need more advices , go read my long post on wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Liadri_the_Concealing_Dark

Visions can be changed into an orb if they touch the lighting pool or are killed by the barrage while being in human form

Is there a human form of visions? How is it appear?

Human form is when they’re not all black

This strategy is, in fact, effective. It took me about 15 tries to get the 8 orbs achievement.

I am still struggling a lot (trying 8 orb achi). What kills it for me are two things.

1) Poor red circles visibility (thats tied to camera issues).
2) Random nature of cosmic orbs. I cant count how many times I had a very nice try and suddenly I got zipped to the other side of the room, straight into 1-shot AoE. The orb even knocks you down which means you cant dodge immediately.

I tried to tune my monitor setting as much as I could, I tried different options. But no matter what I do, AoE circles vision remains to be very poor. That grate texture just kills it. And orbs? Its sometimes random. Nobody cant deny it. There are times when I can spot them spawning right away and 1 second later I realize that there is nothing I can do to avoid being downed. Will keep trying but I am already way beyond my treshold.

Awe.1096:

I am still struggling a lot (trying 8 orb achi). What kills it for me are two things.

1) Poor red circles visibility (thats tied to camera issues).
2) Random nature of cosmic orbs. I cant count how many times I had a very nice try and suddenly I got zipped to the other side of the room, straight into 1-shot AoE. The orb even knocks you down which means you cant dodge immediately.

I tried to tune my monitor setting as much as I could, I tried different options. But no matter what I do, AoE circles vision remains to be very poor. That grate texture just kills it. And orbs? Its sometimes random. Nobody cant deny it. There are times when I can spot them spawning right away and 1 second later I realize that there is nothing I can do to avoid being downed. Will keep trying but I am already way beyond my treshold.

Something I forgot to mention is to turn post processing off if you haven’t already with your settings at minimum. It’s hard to give a good tip on how to improve aoe visibility since this is anet’s fault but I do understand some people have a harder time seeing the aoes than others. The only thing I can recommend is, try to stay away from the edges. It is actually best to stay somewhere around the middle because from there you can access all four quadrants of the arena without having to run a long distance.

Almost 99 % of the time, people die because they’re caught out of position and have run out of dodges + cripple. So try not to get yourself in that situation. If you DO get yourself in that, try aoe all the illusions around you and you may be able to pull off a instant rally.

With the orbs, try mind your surroundings and kill them as soon as you can see them or pop stability quick.

+1 on all your posts Lafiel

Hastur.6231:

+1 on all your posts Lafiel

Thanks really hope this helps more people out there

I just want to add as well, I don’t believe this boss needs a nerf although in the future, Anet should consider to not using cheap camera angles and 1 hit mechanics on their bosses.

Guardian and thief are best for this.

Thief with acrobatics clears both weakness and cripple on dodge, so that’s all her condi applications cleared when you dodge on thief. As thief with feline grace you get 3 base dodges, vigor for even more dodging on a 15 sec cd heal that also dodges. And if it weren’t enough you can bring smoke powder to pick up light orbs safely. You got shadow step and speed signet.

Go condi rabid or settler spec on thief with pistol/dagger and shortbow, makes the whole encounter cake.

And to top it all off when you dodge on thief you drop caltrops, which bleeds and snares the boss.

This encounter is such a joke when you compare thief/warrior/guardian versus a class like the ranger or necromancer.

Lafiel, awesome stuff. i’ve yet to give it a shot with this. pretty excited to try though. the Guantlet definitely had some unforgiving fights for me so far (namely the achieves). appreciate all the time you put into these guides for, ha, “temporary” content. ; )) though it is confirmed, no? that the Gauntlet will return.

HOLY COW. this combined with help from a friend I got this done and boy what a rush. Wow, learning when to use leap of faith was big, and when I got her hit with the 8th orb I used the symbol and switched to staff so fast so i could keep my distance. I actually ran 0/0/30/20/20 for the balance of retaliation and surviving and got away with the 30% endurance regen food. Good luck to everyone who wishes to attempt this.

I just spent hour doing it. Two times I had 7 orbs thrown at her. Still not so much close
That stupid camera will always ruin the fight for me.

another hour spent, one time i had 8 orbs thrown… but it is so kittening confusing when you cannot see whole arena from upside.

anet you won, i am done with this achievement, wont spent any more of my precious gold on this BS