Guild Wars 2

Robert, as it was said in the previous post, sparks are not the only problem.

Simin mechanic is out of this game. Regular players have no idea what to do, even when you explain to them and show them graphics… this fight is still out of this game as it is unique in everything you have to do.

No other boss in any other dungeon require you to herd anything. No other boss in the game has a dps check as this one. No other boss in this game goes uses timers in this way. No other boss requires a specific location, dance, syncronization to be done. Not even Lupicus.

This sum together makes the boss a huge pain for the vast majority of the player base since they are not used to, and don’t know how to deal with a fight like this. Also, don’t forget that to reach her, you need to run 1-3 hours depending on how good the group is since some trash pulls are very hard and there are a lot of bosses in this path. Many groups skip mobs but others preffer to kill all in their way. (different story if Simin were the second boss in the dungeon, players wouldn’t be so stressed and tired and might put more effort into it).

Like I said, all together makes this fight something else rather than what people plays at GW2.

It is doable, by certain groups, certain party composition with certain builds (lol at that group mentioning 2 necros with blue, greens… I dare them put them 2 on Simin dps and the warrior and guardian on tears/spark duty, lol) and this irritates most players.

Simin fight beats your willing to play before it beats your character, as the fight its not even hard, you can’t die at her but man you don’t want to log ever again for at least a few days after this event.

Mesket.5728:

Robert, as it was said in the previous post, sparks are not the only problem.

Simin mechanic is out of this game. Regular players have no idea what to do, even when you explain to them and show them graphics… this fight is still out of this game as it is unique in everything you have to do.

No other boss in any other dungeon require you to herd anything. No other boss in the game has a dps check as this one. No other boss in this game goes uses timers in this way. No other boss requires a specific location, dance, syncronization to be done. Not even Lupicus.

This sum together makes the boss a huge pain for the vast majority of the player base since they are not used to, and don’t know how to deal with a fight like this. Also, don’t forget that to reach her, you need to run 1-3 hours depending on how good the group is since some trash pulls are very hard and there are a lot of bosses in this path. Many groups skip mobs but others preffer to kill all in their way. (different story if Simin were the second boss in the dungeon, players wouldn’t be so stressed and tired and might put more effort into it).

Like I said, all together makes this fight something else rather than what people plays at GW2.

It is doable, by certain groups, certain party composition with certain builds (lol at that group mentioning 2 necros with blue, greens… I dare them put them 2 on Simin dps and the warrior and guardian on tears/spark duty, lol) and this irritates most players.

Simin fight beats your willing to play before it beats your character, as the fight its not even hard, you can’t die at her but man you don’t want to log ever again for at least a few days after this event.

Yes, please, do make yet another boss that requires nothing except setting autoattack on and going for cup of team.

Btw, we had one of that necro on simin and other guy was throwing tears when it was deemed as necessary. Explaining mechanics in simple words usually does a thing or two.

They still skip the traps (is it possible to make the trap a ring around the statue? This way when sparks get next to the statue they just trigger instead of keep trying to fit the last one on the circle) and they often swap targets (easily avoided if we stay out of the way).

There also seems to be a limit to how many sparks you can agro with one person. On some positioning we used sometimes 1 of the runners sometimes agroed 4 sparks, and every time that happened 1 refused to follow (this one was on us, though you might want to check it out).

Didn’t notice much difference in spark behavior before and after the patch but i only tried p4 twice (and first time we had a ranger making it a total disaster and impossible to compare to the last run).

Regarding Simin can you at least test if it bugs like it did with my group last time? Even though we should have made it that early stealth just killed the group, not to mention that having to use a known exploit to even have a shot at phase 2 is rather stupid.

By the way Robert, thanks for lupi fix on necro minions (i wont feel so useless on phase 1 again) but it seems he can still target npcs (might be wrong but i think the only grub we missed was one that spawned in front).

It’s going to remove some of the challenge from it, but I’d rather they make the sparks a physical object you hit ‘f’ to pick up, and run to a slot. I dunno, maybe make them colour coded so they only fit in a certain slot that randomizes, and deal damage to you as you’re holding them. I could actually see people tolerating her regen rate at this point, since the speed at which you get the sparks in falls completely on your team, rather than on AI that sometimes but doesn’t always decide to do what you want it to.

Otherwise, please tone down her regen a little bit.

I haven’t yet done Simin since the patch, but if all that was changed was spark pathing, the fight is still going to be significantly overtuned. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good challenge as much as anyone else, but the Simin fight is just on a completely different level of required gear & coordination than anything else in the entire game. By lightyears.

You have a mechanic in which even the smallest, slightest mistake results in what is essentially a complete boss reset. The only way most groups are even getting past it is by exploitation, and its pretty telling that some in this thread are still having trouble with it even when using the 4/5 exploit, even after the pathing fix.

Please retune the Simin fight. The easiest solution is to make her heal slower, so that perfect coordination results in a fast win, but sloppiness only drags out the fight – not completely resets it.

Keep in mind this fight takes an hour or more just to get to, and Lupi still has to be dealt with, which is no small task on its own. Adding in a “be perfect or get out” fight like Simin on top of Arah’s already steep difficulty is just too much for anyone but the game’s absolute best players, let alone an average PUG group.

Simin does not need to be nerfed. I wanted a pre-nerf kill before the 28th (it didn’t end up getting nerfed), so two guildmates and I arranged a group for it the Saturday night prior. We pugged two people from gw2lfg.

Our group comp was two Staff Elementalists, two GS Warriors, and a Mesmer. Our two elementalists kited the sparks. Our Mesmer was on Tear duty. Each member was over 3.2k Attack with +20% Damage vs Undead from Sigil + Potion. I can’t speak for the specific stats of the others, but my Ele was at 3325 Attack, 64% Crit Chance, and 109% Crit Damage.

After a few attempts of perfecting spark kiting and time warp usage, we got to a point where we were killing her faster than she could heal. Kill came on the next attempt.

It is perfectly okay for ONE boss in the game to be tuned to require organization. The vast majority of the game can be solo’d or pugged – gotta give the 1% their content!

There is something I am confused about with this. The 4/5 thing and “3 people DPS her while the other 2 run sparks” sounds like you have both Simin and the sparks on the screen at the same time but when I did it that was never true. Either you had Simin and not spark or you had sparks and Simin is stealth.

Am I misinterpreting something?

Cap the heal so Simin returns to maximum 90% of its HP the first time, 80% the next, etc…
If you run sparks well, you will just have less heal.

Problem is that you need 5 full dps players to do it. Doing it with 5 tanks is impossible since they cant do enough dmg in short time. I suggest that you either increase the time frame between stealths or reduce regen a bit. It is fun when it is hard, but this is over the line

I don’t understand why it can’t be like the Lyssa meta-event in Malchor’s Leap. On one of the event nodes to keep the Priestess active, you have to restore power to a generator of sorts by killing sparks surrounding it, who then become inactive and go to the generator by themselves. For Simin, I would rather you be forced to beat them in to submission, and they go to a designated position around the altar by themselves. Give them a regular mob’s HP (not silver), so player roles (positioning around the room to grab the sparks immediately) can be maintained, but the frustration of the kiting will be removed.

I don’t know what effect this will have against her healing, but I think that perhaps, while all the sparks are active, her healing is as it is right now. With each spark you “subdue” by taking its HP away, the healing speed decreases. This emphasises the rush to take the sparks out, but again downplays the frustrating kiting elements and gives groups without pure glass-cannon DPS and Time Warp a fighting chance.

This events is just annoying, not challenging. Smashing buttons for max dps on 5 dps classes with stacked stability isn’t that hard. Simin just stands still, “attack” with rather funny aoe attack and that’s all.
I had to change my guardian, which is just IMO perfect for arah to warrior for this fight because we need more dps. Still we need stability because my warrior got turned into stone every stupid 7 seconds, which without stability would be rather annoying.

Path 4 is just waste of time. Many many bosses, which are just easy, done all of them for first time (only knew lupi from other paths) and all of them was just easy. Way too much trash on way, last boss (or rather stone) which just did nothing and simin which is just dps check. Annoying as hell dps check.
I really want to see this event with normal party, without 5 or 4 full dps classes.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I recently changed the spark behavior in this latest patch – they should follow much better now. I noticed this thread was created yesterday, so I’m wondering if folks feel the sparks are still behaving badly? I watched our QA do it a few times and the behavior seemed to operate much better than it was before.

While they seem to follow a bit better, we still had multiple issues with them circling around the spot you need to put them in and wobbling a bit. Granted this may have been our fault somewhat with bad movements, but it was still awkward to place the last 1-2 usually.

You still can’t aggro the spark by hitting them, probably because they are invulnerable – I’m not sure if this is wanted (I guess so if it hasn’t been changed), but it would make them a lot easier to gather if you could hit them from range to aggro them.

I feel if someone aggros a spark it should follow that person only until it’s placed. Right now, if you run by another player, there’s a risk he takes aggro without wanting to do so. This can be problematic when the 2 people running north and south sparks get to the middle at the same time and the aggro goes nuts and sparks are a lot harder to place at that point. It’s also annoying if you’re fighting her in the middle, and someone gets petrified about the same time she stealths, which can interfere with the spark runner as that player can take aggro unwillingly.

I like the idea someone else proposed in this thread to make it a ring instead of 5 circles, so that you only really need to bring them next to the statue and not in 5 designated spots.

I finally did it today! The sparks seemed to behave beter but we actually had a lot harder time than the last time i tried this dungeon (different builds i guess). We spent about a hour to get this boss killed. It really is NOT balanced.

We used 3 warriors, a mesmer and a guardian. While not being full berzerker warriors, our damage was really high (GS). We used the mesmer for time warp and the guardian would throw tears because his damage was the lowest.

It went fine at first but at some points, she would heal up again after only 15 seconds. What the hell? It really demotivated us! (This must be a bug btw?) So after 30 minutes or so.. our guardian decided to switch out his toon for a warrior. So we had to 4 pretty DPS focused warriors and a mesmer.

We started all over. We brought all the tears over to the wall again, fought her there to at the wall to allow us to use the whirlwind spin for maximum damage. We did loads of damage! Her HP got lower with each phase but we were very afraid because if we would fail to do quick spark runs, we would have to fight an uphill battle again. Luckily, we kept going at it. We used 2 timewarps because the fights took so long! honestly, i think that we wouldn’t be able to complete it without timewarp! The progress between her healing would simply be too low. We wouldn’t have enough damage without time warp.. How pathetic is that?

When we finally beat it, we were extremely happy of course. And even happier when the NPC didn’t bug at the end of the dungeon (happened a few days ago to me!). So yeah, finally done with the dungeon master title. Phew………

So is this a balanced dungeon? NO no NO!

- Not only the longest dungeon in the game, it also has one of the longest boss fights (Grenth) and one of the most stupidly designed bosses (Simin). Either make this path shorter (quicker boss fights) to put it in line with the other paths or make certain fights a bit easyer.

- Skill wise, Lupicus is a much harder fight (best designed boss in the game imo). So why would you punish a good team that can get past Lupicus by having a DPS check on a boss at the end? Like… Really? And it’s not even a small DPS check! You can’t change your skills etc. to make it work. You actually need people with high damage stats like power/critical damage. It’s pretty much a GEAR check as well! Again, why a DPS check in Guild Wars? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Solution without ditching the whole boss is to make the healing on Simin A LOT less. That’s all you need to do. I’m baffled that you think this dungeon is well designed or fun for a team. Only highly organised guild teams can do this, and even then they have to PICK certain players over others because the DPS/GEAR check is extremely high…

CoF runs take less than 7 minutes with our setup so like i said before, our damage really isn’t low and we are pretty experienced GW2 players. The boss is just badly designed. Admit it and make a more drastical change please.

I bet a lot of people would love you for it.

I have nothing against more difficult encounters and I haven’t done simins since the new patch. I will say though that the problem is that none of the other dungeon encounters are of this level of coordination, dps requirement, luck, timing and of course after already having spend a long time within the dungeon draining your energy.

I really feel there should be another difficulty mode added to dungeons. I feel that people should be able to do explorables in a more doable environment like most of them are now and get rewarded tokens. But have the same explorables tuned up highly to give a challenge to hardcore pve’ers with organised groups that award far better rewards.

You could include simins to this new category of difficulty.

I also feel that some of the storymode bosses are harder than half the explorable bosses. Make 3 difficulty levels.

- Storymode, Easy, lore driven introductory/tutorial type of dungeon. Make them even easier

- Explorables: Harder, pretty much mostly the same as they are now but reduce health bars, make them a tiny bit easier, balance the really harder fights to be much easier

- Hardmode: Have all fights tuned up with many new coordinated abilities like simin/subject alpha/lupicus. Bring back old-school searing effigy etc. Make them hard and unforgiving but completing them twice as rewarding. Also make it less about DPS but more about coordination and survivability/support.

That way, people get a challenge and those who can’t do hardmode can still enjoy the same content and at least some of the same reward. I know storymode was intended for this but storymode is completely different, less content for it and of course not nearly as rewarding.

IDarko.4709:

It went fine at first but at some points, she would heal up again after only 15 seconds. What the hell? It really demotivated us! (This must be a bug btw?)

Finally someone with the same bug we had, thought it was weird since a few claim to have cleared p4 several times and none reported having similar problems.
Can any dev report on this matter?
It’s annoying enough having to deal with the current simin, but this bug just makes it even worse.

IDarko.4709:

When we finally beat it, we were extremely happy of course. And even happier when the NPC didn’t bug at the end of the dungeon (happened a few days ago to me!). So yeah, finally done with the dungeon master title. Phew………

Wish I could say the same. It was more like ‘meh so I cheated my way through a dungeon run with food and potion’. An empty victory.

Solution without ditching the whole boss is to make the healing on Simin A LOT less. That’s all you need to do. I’m baffled that you think this dungeon is well designed or fun for a team. Only highly organised guild teams can do this, and even then they have to PICK certain players over others because the DPS/GEAR check is extremely high…

The healing wouldn’t be a big issue if the sparks behaved reasonably. They switch targets way too easily and have a tendency of walking between the cages rather than into them. You can try to walk over the cages to have them follow but that isn’t reliable. The game seems to expect people to have fine grained control over the sparks’ movements but gives no tools for doing so.

Fay.2735:

I also feel that some of the storymode bosses are harder than half the explorable bosses. Make 3 difficulty levels.

Before any of that the current dungeons need to be working nearly perfectly. None of this ‘boss fails to spawn’ nonsense and other completely broken to the point where the only fix is to restart the whole thing.

JJBigs.8456:

Are you and team using:

1. Warriors using greatswords as their main attack specced into DPS Traits?
2. Everyone using a powerful potion vs undead
3. Everyone using a +Power food nourishment buff
4. Everyone using a Bloodlust sigil that was charged to 25 before fighting Simin
5. Having the least DPS be the main tear person (I.e. Non- warrior)
6. Ensuring these people who claim to be zerker, actually are zerker with gear checks
7. Wearing Ascended Rings and Backpieces
8. Running proper warrior builds: (FGJ, OMM, Banners)

No? Didn’t think so. And not that you need all these, I have done her with less but if you do have problems, try using some of these.

Yeah, I tried it last night, but one of our warriors didn’t have ascended gear.
Needless to say, we failed miserably because of his crap gear, health too low… barely DPSing anything.

We kicked him and got one with ascended rings, what can I say… HEAVEN AND EARTH!!

I wouldn’t consider this path of Arah hard because of a fear of death. Its not difficult to stay alive in any portion of this dungeon really the problem comes from the imposed requirement of the Simin fight, which in turn is the basis for your eligibility to ever join a group.

Now I can understand the need for people to have the proper gear to do the right amount of DPS ect, but the only way to complete this path is to be typecast into a very specific role for this fight. And because of this one fight, about half the classes in game are getting turned away at the dungeon door. That in my eyes is the true problem.

These “other” classes can have all the maxed out ascended gear and shinies they want but they still have no real chance of getting into most random groups. And I say random because not everyone has a whole guild or friends list waiting to do a dungeon run, especially one that takes much longer then any other in game, and these players usually do end up pugging for completion. So I find this to be the biggest problem, more so in a game that is so focused on every class being perfectly balanced and interchangeable.

The one thing that drove me nuts about this encounter (which I still haven’t beaten) is that the whole dungeon requires you to pick a pretty defensive setup (for obvious reasons). Then all of a sudden you get to Simin and you need basically maximum dps output to get past it. Since you cannot change your traits on the fly, and most people don’t have several gear sets on them, this makes the encounter extremely challenging for most groups, especially pug groups.
As mentionted above, one slight miss-step in pathing the sparks and it basically resets the fight. I can’t count the number of times we got her down to less than <25% hp, only to have her heal completely because we couldn’t get the last spark to get in the kitten circle.

Quick Mouse.7635:

The one thing that drove me nuts about this encounter (which I still haven’t beaten) is that the whole dungeon requires you to pick a pretty defensive setup (for obvious reasons). Then all of a sudden you get to Simin and you need basically maximum dps output to get past it. Since you cannot change your traits on the fly, and most people don’t have several gear sets on them, this makes the encounter extremely challenging for most groups, especially pug groups.
As mentionted above, one slight miss-step in pathing the sparks and it basically resets the fight. I can’t count the number of times we got her down to less than <25% hp, only to have her heal completely because we couldn’t get the last spark to get in the kitten circle.

How this dungeon requires defensive setup? It’s more than doable with glass cannons.

Use mobility skills to get sparks faster, don’t just run. I’ve seen groups picking as runners the worst possible choices.

Mesket.5728:

—
It is doable, by certain groups, certain party composition with certain builds (lol at that group mentioning 2 necros with blue, greens… I dare them put them 2 on Simin dps and the warrior and guardian on tears/spark duty, lol) and this irritates most players.
—

Here shows indeed your issue. You don’t have just 2 guys doing damage, you have your whole team doing damage.
I always run 3-sparks (on open end) on my Warrior. I’m always on secondary spark-duty if primary spark thrower needs assistance.

Just a quick question.

I’m looking to do this path with my guild sometime in the future and am wondering:
Can anyone confirm whether or not the regen can be decreased with poison?

Kaon.7192:

Just a quick question.

I’m looking to do this path with my guild sometime in the future and am wondering:
Can anyone confirm whether or not the regen can be decreased with poison?

It used to work when you could still also dmg her while she was invisible. Now she cures all conditions when stealthing and can’t be hit before reappearing so poison doesn’t help anymore.

Don’t give in to the whiners, do not nerf Simin.

I have the same problem as OP and share the same exp and opinion.

Personally, here is how I plan to do path4. I am going to wait until I get all my ascended stuffs (even the stuffs NOT out yet). Then hopefully, I do enough dmg to pull it with all potions and every bonus possible. But still there are too many specific req.

If not, forget it. Like I wrote in another post, maybe I suck. Maybe the team I got suck. I dunno know. Look… I tried for 8h+ the Mad King jumping puzzle. At the end, I was alone and I still can’t pull it. Yeah I know all the pro here who are going to scream it was easy implying I am a noob. Whatever. Ultimately, Arenet will have to decide what kind of gamers they want to attract/keep.

You don’t need to complete that path, there are 3 others. Should we have all 4 paths with faceroll difficulty level? How would you encourage above average players to do them when all bosses require autoattack turned on and occasional dodge out of red circle? Do we really want to have steady, stable and low difficulty level in all dungeon because some people can’t step up their game? I joined a lot of pugs, stucked at Simin, and there’s a reason why they can’t do it.

I disagree that Simin needs to be nerfed. This is the last dungeon, so it should be hard. A lot of people have managed to do it, so it’s definitely not impossibly hard.

Something must have gone really bad for a team of 3 DPS warriors failing to do it. I did it with a team of 3 Guardian and 0 Warriors (and I think I was the only Guardian specced for damage).

Here’s a tip some you may have missed: when Simin gets to 50% a 1 minute timer is set. When this timer expires, Simin will hide again and another 1 minute timer is set. This means you have 1 minute to put the sparks and DPS as hard as you can. The longer you take to put the sparks, the less time you have to DPS. Example:

10s to pull sparks → 50s to DPS
30s to pull sparks → 30s to DPS

pdfrod.1948:

I disagree that Simin needs to be nerfed. This is the last dungeon, so it should be hard. A lot of people have managed to do it, so it’s definitely not impossibly hard.

Something must have gone really bad for a team of 3 DPS warriors failing to do it. I did it with a team of 3 Guardian and 0 Warriors (and I think I was the only Guardian specced for damage).

Here’s a tip some you may have missed: when Simin gets to 50% a 1 minute timer is set. When this timer expires, Simin will hide again and another 1 minute timer is set. This means you have 1 minute to put the sparks and DPS as hard as you can. The longer you take to put the sparks, the less time you have to DPS. Example:

10s to pull sparks -> 50s to DPS
30s to pull sparks -> 30s to DPS

I was part of Darkos team. We did the sparks in a super fast time. Just a few seconds each go. They were never, ever a problem. Our entire issue was the amount of time that she would go invis was random and healed for improportionally too much based on how much time we could dps her. There were even a couple times that she’d only appear for about 10 seconds and heal 20% of her hp. Even after bringing a 4th Warrior in (none full zerk but all with soldier or soldier/zerk hybrid stats and dps focused utilities/traits + hundred blades) we had to go through 2 time warp cycles.

There was nothing ‘hard’ about the fight. It was not a difficulty issue. It was either bugged or very unbalanced towards berzerker gear.

After many hours of attempts, my group managed to beat the Simin encounter before the Jan 28 patch.

Yesterday, we went back in to help another guildie get their Dungeon master title. The sparks are much more responsive this time! It’s so much easier to kite them to the slots than before. Also, we didn’t get the 5 shield bug or the bug where you are rooted even though you don’t have petrify. It looks like you’ve solved most of the major issues, and now this boss is a challenge without being frustrating due to mechanics not working properly. Thanks, Mr. Hrouda.

Geikamir.6329:

There were even a couple times that she’d only appear for about 10 seconds and heal 20% of her hp.

I’ve seen a lot of videos of this fight, and when Simin appears for a short duration it’s always because the group took too long to put the sparks. If the group takes 50 seconds to put the sparks, then yes Simin only shows for 10 seconds.

pdfrod.1948:

Geikamir.6329:

There were even a couple times that she’d only appear for about 10 seconds and heal 20% of her hp.

I’ve seen a lot of videos of this fight, and when Simin appears for a short duration it’s always because the group took too long to put the sparks. If the group takes 50 seconds to put the sparks, then yes Simin only shows for 10 seconds.

He’s right about that. I’ve done that path 20+ times and sometimes Simin stealths after 10s even if you put sparks in ~10s.

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

Meridius.6502:

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

We were breaking even with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer (mesmer using tears). It took us 3 timewarps to finally take her down. The sparks seem to be ok now, it’s just the stealth timer that is unfair to non-DPS groups. Increase the timer as well as make Dwayna hurt some more because her threat is non-existent at the moment.

Rhoda.1654:

Meridius.6502:

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

We were breaking even with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer (mesmer using tears). It took us 3 timewarps to finally take her down. The sparks seem to be ok now, it’s just the stealth timer that is unfair to non-DPS groups. Increase the timer as well as make Dwayna hurt some more because her threat is non-existent at the moment.

3 timewarps with 4 wars and 1 mesmer? Did you have tanks?

haviz.1340:

3 timewarps with 4 wars and 1 mesmer? Did you have tanks?

Maybe sonic booners or the invincible warrior builds.

haviz.1340:

Rhoda.1654:

Meridius.6502:

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

We were breaking even with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer (mesmer using tears). It took us 3 timewarps to finally take her down. The sparks seem to be ok now, it’s just the stealth timer that is unfair to non-DPS groups. Increase the timer as well as make Dwayna hurt some more because her threat is non-existent at the moment.

3 timewarps with 4 wars and 1 mesmer? Did you have tanks?

All of them were running with a DPS build, actually.

Rhoda.1654:

haviz.1340:

Rhoda.1654:

Meridius.6502:

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

We were breaking even with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer (mesmer using tears). It took us 3 timewarps to finally take her down. The sparks seem to be ok now, it’s just the stealth timer that is unfair to non-DPS groups. Increase the timer as well as make Dwayna hurt some more because her threat is non-existent at the moment.

3 timewarps with 4 wars and 1 mesmer? Did you have tanks?

All of them were running with a DPS build, actually.

If they were all running dps build, real dps builds, then it shouldn’t take 3 time warps UNLESS…

1. They fail at skill rotations for maximizing dps
2. Your tear thrower keeps them petrified too long
3. Spark runners taking too long
4. They claim to be dps builds but arent really dps builds.

Just saying that they are dps build doesnt prove that they are actually dps. Would need to know their gear stats along with trait setups.

We played with 2 sonic booners (more offensive specced tho) i think. But that’s not even the point. The point is that there is a high gear/dps check at the end of a dungeon. And that boss is also bugged half of the time. Stop defending it, because it doesn’t make you more elite or anything. I also did it and i’m not even going to brag about it because it’s a boss that doesn’t require any skill.

IDarko.4709:

We played with 2 sonic booners (more offensive specced tho) i think. But that’s not even the point. The point is that there is a high gear/dps check at the end of a dungeon. And that boss is also bugged half of the time. Stop defending it, because it doesn’t make you more elite or anything. I also did it and i’m not even going to brag about it because it’s a boss that doesn’t require any skill.

Did it with Guardian support, zerker thief, 2 zerker warrior, Full cleric ele spamming water auto attack heals + tear thrower. Im not defending the encounter, I’m merely stating its not as much a dps check as everyone makes it out to be (yes it is still a dps check, but not impossible by wack party setups).

Rhoda.1654:

All of them were running with a DPS build, actually.

That’s a really bad dps build you had there. 2 warriors plus 1 thief can kill her without even running sparks after 4-1 and without timewarp.

Rhoda.1654:

haviz.1340:

Rhoda.1654:

Meridius.6502:

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

We were breaking even with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer (mesmer using tears). It took us 3 timewarps to finally take her down. The sparks seem to be ok now, it’s just the stealth timer that is unfair to non-DPS groups. Increase the timer as well as make Dwayna hurt some more because her threat is non-existent at the moment.

3 timewarps with 4 wars and 1 mesmer? Did you have tanks?

All of them were running with a DPS build, actually.

So groups with less dps kill it way faster, sounds like they weren’t really DPS builds or your group was utterly terrible at pulling sparks or let it heal more then you could DPS it during non-timewarp cycles which is pretty commendable because that’s hard to do with a 4 warrior/1 mesmer group in the first place.

Sounds like a l2p issue more then a boss issue at that point.

2 zerker wars and 1 zerker thief is not a wack setup loflux. That’s a pretty DPS focused party. Heck, i would say it’s even more effective than having 4 warriors which are sonic boon / knight specced.

Again, let’s stop acting like 4 zerkers = the standard or normal way of playing. 4 zerker warriors is actually the most effective and optimal setup in a lot of dungeons. You can’t expect most people to have this kind of gear. I’m running CoF daily now for some berserker gear and with only 3 pieces and a different trait setup, i alrdy notice that the difference is huge compared to the sonic boon build.

I personally think that the gear/dps check is a lame gamepaly element tho. But i alrdy said that so i leave it at that. The dungeon designers can do whatever they want ofc. i’m done with it anyways. Most dungeons show no challenge and the only one that does a bit, has a dps/gear check for the lulz.

Strifey.7215:

Rhoda.1654:

haviz.1340:

Rhoda.1654:

Meridius.6502:

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

We were breaking even with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer (mesmer using tears). It took us 3 timewarps to finally take her down. The sparks seem to be ok now, it’s just the stealth timer that is unfair to non-DPS groups. Increase the timer as well as make Dwayna hurt some more because her threat is non-existent at the moment.

3 timewarps with 4 wars and 1 mesmer? Did you have tanks?

All of them were running with a DPS build, actually.

So groups with less dps kill it way faster, sounds like they weren’t really DPS builds or your group was utterly terrible at pulling sparks or let it heal more then you could DPS it during non-timewarp cycles which is pretty commendable because that’s hard to do with a 4 warrior/1 mesmer group in the first place.

Sounds like a l2p issue more then a boss issue at that point.

This is turning into a debate between people that have experienced the bug and those that haven’t. Again, often we had a 10-15 second dps time. There is no group other than FULL zerker dps builds that can out damage her heal in that time. Even then you have to time everything perfectly.

Us that were in the group are very experienced dungeon runners and players in general. We know how to play the game. We are in the same guild, were on TS, all have way over 1k hours played, the lowest pvp rank is 23 (I think), the lowest achievement score is 4.4ish, and we do speed runs of other Arah paths all the time. I know that all doesn’t really mean all that much, but I’m just trying to get across that we aren’t new players. And with the bug we had (unless this is the current new way it’s supposed to be) only coordinated zerker groups could complete it. Which would be imbalanced IMO.

To those saying this is a l2p issue: How can it be a ‘learn to play’, if you need specific professions with specific gear to make it work? Knowing what gear and professions to bring is NOT learning to play. It’s reading the wiki. And having a lot of time in your hands to grind for the required gear. Also, it is NOT Guild Wars 2.

To those saying the encounter is ‘do-able’ and not as hard as people make it out to be: There can only be two scenarios here. Either we are playing different instances (it’s buggy and my version is harder than yours) or you are dead WRONG in your assumption that your elementalists were playing in ‘water attunement’.

I just stopped trying to beat the encounter with guildies. We didn’t all have ascended gear. We didn’t have 3 warriors. But we did do our best to build/play to maximize the damage. And we ain’t bad. Still no go.

I also used my stopwatch. 12 seconds to get the sparks right, 25 seconds fighting the boss. She always goes invulnerable at 50% health. What’s up with that?

Overall, I do not mind the dps check – that is fine. But it has to be tuned down. If you guys, developers and players, are looking for something more ‘difficult’ in this game, then you need to find a more creative solution. If the encounter is indeed not bugged or broken, then I believe your priestess of Dwayna is a gimmick that the players shouldn’t accept. Not even the ‘elitist’ minority that defends it, since their time and (in game) money is wasted for bragging rights that mean next to nothing.

And as a final note: it isn’t even remotely fun.

Having FINALLY completed this path after so many hours of endless fails I can confirm that the patch has made this sooo much easier! granted you still need a mix of dps classes (atleast 3 warriors) my team was 3 warriors 1 mes 1 thief and we managed to do it without any hassle we all used 10% damage to undead buffs and made sure we excuted our utilities at the right times..

Althought the path isn’t fun most of arah isn’t anyway so.. I probably would be if the rewards matched up to the length of completetion but anyway…

A big thankyou for the fix
Onwards and upwards to my title

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I recently changed the spark behavior in this latest patch – they should follow much better now. I noticed this thread was created yesterday, so I’m wondering if folks feel the sparks are still behaving badly? I watched our QA do it a few times and the behavior seemed to operate much better than it was before.

You QA experts can do it but what about us less experienced?

I think you’re missing the point of this thread.

I will agree that it is quite hard, but on top of that, it is not fun. My group and I were having a great time with P4 up until Simin. Then it became frustrating and tense. We didn’t beat her because a patch kicked us out, but it completely ruined the experience for us. She’s not a fun fight at all.

I have nothing against more difficult encounters and I haven’t done simins since the new patch. I will say though that the problem is that none of the other dungeon encounters are of this level of coordination, dps requirement, luck, timing and of course after already having spend a long time within the dungeon draining your energy.

You mean there’s finally a challenging fight that requires team coordination, preparation, and execution in the dungeons that are named “Explorable” and considered a form of endgame?

Please.

If anything we need a great deal more of these encounters to continue to push groups to the limit. I enjoyed Simin thoroughly and managed to down her my first try with pickups from gw2lfg.com (running 1400 healing power, mind you).

Xetelian.9278:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I recently changed the spark behavior in this latest patch – they should follow much better now. I noticed this thread was created yesterday, so I’m wondering if folks feel the sparks are still behaving badly? I watched our QA do it a few times and the behavior seemed to operate much better than it was before.

You QA experts can do it but what about us less experienced?

I think you’re missing the point of this thread.

Remember, story mode is created for people not willing/able to skill-up to the difficulty of explorable dungeons. You should go ahead and stick to story mode or even different paths if something is too hard for you..

You don’t see me over here crying about not being able to get a legendary, and hell I think that’s way harder than killing Simin. Some content is for some players, some content is for others.

IDarko.4709:

2 zerker wars and 1 zerker thief is not a wack setup loflux. That’s a pretty DPS focused party. Heck, i would say it’s even more effective than having 4 warriors which are sonic boon / knight specced.

Again, let’s stop acting like 4 zerkers = the standard or normal way of playing. 4 zerker warriors is actually the most effective and optimal setup in a lot of dungeons. You can’t expect most people to have this kind of gear. I’m running CoF daily now for some berserker gear and with only 3 pieces and a different trait setup, i alrdy notice that the difference is huge compared to the sonic boon build.

I personally think that the gear/dps check is a lame gamepaly element tho. But i alrdy said that so i leave it at that. The dungeon designers can do whatever they want ofc. i’m done with it anyways. Most dungeons show no challenge and the only one that does a bit, has a dps/gear check for the lulz.

It’s 3 people against 5 with a timewarp. And he said they were dps traited/geared. And what the kitten is that sonic boon build?