Guild Wars 2

I was looking forward to the CoE videos in the video guide sticky, because a lot of people I’ve pugged with have trouble there. In particular, I was hoping that they’d show how to deal with Subject Alpha. I have about 2000 more CoE tokens to grind up for my Warrior (probably gonna need another 1200 or so when I get my Thief to 80), and I would highly appreciate it if people were somewhat less terrified and terrible when it comes to him in my pugs and stopped dying 10 seconds after getting in range of him, especially with the waypoint placements of paths 1 and 2. Unfortunately, the only videos up of CoE right now kind of show the group failing pretty hard at Alpha, so I’m just gonna write my own little guide here and hope that someone will be willing to learn from it or contribute. Subject Alpha is just absolute terror to most people from what I’ve experienced.

http://imageshack.us/a/img822/7145/subjectalphastandardpug.png

I’m not going to give you exact group strategies or whatever (DO THAT YOURSELF), but I will hopefully be able to make you less terrified of the second ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. Also note that these are all my own observations and I’m a mostly solo/duo player – I ONLY pug, and pretty much only play this game with one other person, who doesn’t run any dungeons. So I won’t claim to have the entire thing analyzed (in fact there’s some stuff I am unclear on myself and would like to test, and with red circles everywhere it’s pretty messy). This is also all off the top of my head, so… hopefully I’ve got a great memory lol. If you see something off or flat out wrong, just tell me and I’ll check it when I can.

Subject Alpha is a little bit different in every path, but in total, Alpha has 5 basic abilities that you actually care about. I’ll list each of these and explain how to deal with them individually, before talking about each paths’ version as a whole. If you’re still confused after reading, check the links for some pretty AutoCAD (lol) pictures!

1) Alpha casts Dragon’s Tooth on everything in range. This is the same as the Elementalist’s #2 fire Scepter. While he casts this, he also lets out a PBAoE that inflicts a burning condition. You generally should never dodge roll this attack, as it’s a waste of endurance. You can simply walk out of it, often even if walking backwards most of the way. Also of interest is the fact that if you are close enough to him, he will not cast Dragon’s Tooth on you. Taking advantage of this can make this fight trivial, hint hint. Essentially, Dragon’s Tooth is free time if you’re up.

http://imageshack.us/a/img20/8502/subjectalphadragontooth.png

2) Alpha casts a line of Earth Spikes, with the first being quite small. As the attack gets further away from him, the Earth Spikes get progressively bigger, essentially becoming a cone AoE in the direction of his target. Unless you are strafing very close to him where the width of the cone is at its smallest or you can walk through/behind him as he casts it, you will usually have to dodge in order to avoid this attack. They don’t do all that much damage compared to some of the other spells, so eating one or two between heals is okay. Be aware that you can be hit by two of these in one attack, though, as the spikes overlap slightly.

Note that the hitbox for this attack does not start from Alpha’s center, hint hint. Use this in combination with the above for the easiest runs ever.

http://imageshack.us/a/img834/8829/subjectalphalineofearth.png

3) Alpha casts a ring of Earth Spikes around everyone in the room. Note: it’s a ring of spikes. The AoE indicator on the ground looks like two concentric circles, one about double the radius of the other. The inner circle is a safe zone. The area between the two circles is the actual damage zone. This means that against this attack, you can actually just stand still and complete avoid it. In fact, you can be downed or stuck in a crystal, and this will sometimes miss you. Alternatively, you can run out (forwards/sideways, not back), or time your dodges. If you roll, however, I’d recommend you dodge towards the outside of your circle for reasons listed next.

http://imageshack.us/a/img853/4518/subjectalpharingofearth.png

4) Alpha casts a delayed AoE ice blast at a target location. This is one of his trickier moves. The ground indicator is very similar to the ring of Earth Spikes, in that it’s one circle inscribed inside another. He also casts this at the same time he casts rings. However, if you are moving around and this spell is cast on you, the inner circle is NOT (usually) concentric with the outer circle. Look at the diagrams below if you need more clarification. In addition, any incoming ice blast has a blue mist over it, whereas rings of Earth Spikes will only have a frozen patch of ground (thanks to the sexiness that are Spreadsheets, and Shiri as well). This is IMO his most dangerous attack, as it is easy to confuse with his ring attack, deals very high damage upfront, and applies 6 stacks of bleeding.

http://imageshack.us/a/img824/5204/subjectalphaiceblast.png

5) Alpha jumps up and down, encasing a single target in a purple crystal. This happens pretty fast, and although it can be dodged, it’s pretty hard and requires quite a bit of luck to do so (you’ll know because the crystal will still go up, but you won’t be trapped obviously). This is often what actually makes Alpha difficult, depending on whether your team deals with the crystals or not. Note that you can blink out of crystals, and use invulnerability moves while still inside (Eles, Thiefs, and Mesmers deal great with crystals solo). Stunbreakers don’t seem to work on them, however. They also seem to break after a certain period of time automatically. As a Warrior, I can’t escape from one (afaik), but I can use Endure Pain while inside a crystal. This attack is common to all paths of Alpha for each second and third encounter.

Alpha can also regenerate a bit of health and summon risen thralls and tendrils. Use the tendrils to rally yourself if you do go down. You can also stun Alpha by killing his Alpha Essences when he tries to heal, and even chain this to stun him for the entirety of the fight. Alpha will also occasionally take a nap, AKA bug the crap out and pet a kitten for 10 minutes, which is fine with me but probably not intended.

Now, for the 3 versions of Subject Alpha (I may mix things up between paths, this is off the top of my head and honestly I just pretend all the Alphas are the same at this point):
Submarine Path
On this path, Alpha does not use the ring of Earth Spikes. He only casts Dragon’s Tooth and the line of spikes (the first and second attacks listed above). He will constantly alternate between these two, going DT>Spikes>DT>Spikes>etc., with the occasional heal/summon/crystal in between. If Alpha pauses for a few seconds without doing anything, he’ll sometimes cast the same thing twice in a row, but that usually doesn’t happen (this is common to all paths, and sometimes kinda buggy). If you’re in a full ranged party, and Alpha is currently targeting you, then generally you will be following a pretty simple pattern – run out of Dragon’s Tooth, roll evade out of Spikes, run out of Dragon’s Tooth, etc. If he is NOT targeting you or someone close to you (doesn’t face your direction when casting Dragon’s Tooth), then you can pretty much just stand still and do nothing while he casts the line of spikes.

Teleporter Path
On this path, Alpha does not attack with lines of Earth Spikes. He only casts Dragon’s Tooth and the ring of Earth Spikes (attacks 1+3), with the occasional ice blast (attack 4). This is IMO the easiest version of Alpha. Your general pattern will be to walk out of Dragon’s Tooth AoE, then stand still as Earth Spikes go up around you, and repeat. The random risen thralls are more dangerous than Alpha in the first fight. Just watch out for the occasional ice blast switch up (I’m actually not even sure if he uses it in the first fight). More importantly, oddly enough, watch out for your teammates.

Now, this will probably be the first time you deal with the rings of Earth Spikes, and this’ll probably make everyone go crazy and run around. For a ranged party, the key is to keep your distance from each other. By running around close to each other, Dragon’s Tooth becomes kind of hard to avoid simply because you now have to avoid several instead of one, but more importantly, your rings start to overlap and your safe zones get negated by the damage zones of others. In fight number 1 along this path with a ranged weapon, if you take out the adds, you can literally clear this encounter solo moving like 5 steps every Dragon’s Tooth, and then just standing there pressing 1 with a ranged weapon until the next Dragon’s Tooth. By running around haphazardly, you’re actually making the encounter FAR more annoying and tiresome than it needs to be, both for yourself and your team. If you play smart, though, and have a little bit of extra endurance regen, you should be able to keep up enough to dodge every single time he plops out rings of Earth Spikes, just in case your team decides they like making your life difficult.

Front Door Path, the manly man path
In this path, Alpha is both hardest and easiest, oddly enough. I say easiest because there’s an actual waypoint that you can use to quickly get to the last Alpha encounter, which means that those that like to waypoint zerg actually can now, which is a lot of pugs. Alpha gives up his Dragon’s Tooth spell here in favor of the other two. This means the dangers presented by your teammates that I outlined in the above path are now made far worse, because now you may have to be burning endurance on back to back rolls, which means your teammates have a much higher chance of eventually getting you killed along this path if Alpha decides he really likes to aggro you. Not to mention the camera control in this area just sucks.

All in all, there’s really only 4 real dangers:
1) Your teammates – the more people that understand how this fight works, the less this will matter, obviously.
2) Crystals – if people learn to focus fire these, these shouldn’t be a problem. Depending on your class, they may not even be an issue
3) Endurance – if you can spec for some endurance regen (vigor or whatever), this generally shouldn’t matter either, especially in paths 1+2.
4) Misread ice blast mixups – sometimes you expect a ring of Earth Spikes and you instead find yourself a new butt plug made of ice. If you keep moving left/right repeatedly, generally you can spot when the circles are not perfectly concentric, but it doesn’t always work out. This is probably honestly the most tricky thing about Alpha. I’d actually like to just test it, to see what other differences there are, but since I only pug, I can’t unfortunately. On downed players, I think he sometimes casts both simultaneously, but again, I’m not quite sure on this.

Also consider your ressing options. Fast, ranged resses are pretty nice for this fight (ex. Warbanner), as depending on Alpha’s rotation it can be very hard to ress someone with eating damage of your own. You can change the skills on your utilities/elites, it’s true!

And then there’s the REAL issue with Alpha… the fact that he has a stupidly large HP bar and you have to fight him 3 times per path. But that’s a different discussion…

Now that you have all this information on hand, you can make up your own strategies for not sucking at fighting Subject Alpha!

On a final note, a lot of this is from this perspective of a ranged player. I usually roll with a Rifle/Longbow Warrior, which is a really weird and honestly pretty inefficient combo, but I do it because I like the ranged playstyle. I love to kite and I love to pew pew, though not the pewpewpewpew of SB rangers (and which is why I’m not a ranger). That said, you can absolutely melee Alpha (I occasional swap the Longbow for a Hammer) and do fine. In fact, if your party is on the same page, some melee parties can make some Alpha fights absolutely trivial, hint hint. Naturally not a single pug has ever listened to my advice on Alpha, but despite that and the fact that I run dungeons in Magic Find gear (raises flame shield), I can still manage melee on Alpha fairly well. Anyone who actually is used to running lots of melee can make it work here just fine. Also, burst builds are generally nicer for this fight for crystal shattering. Which, of course, my build absolutely sucks at.

Can someone please teach me how are we supposed to fight him in that tiny room of front door? The last battle.

You simply do not have any space to dodge the earth spike and his aoe covers the whole room. I can do him just fine in the other paths, dying only 2~1 times, but i died dozens of time in that part

A+ guide that manages to be both humorous and informative. Especially with regard to Agent Spire’s inhuman reserves of fortitude and willpower.

I do want to add that the Alpha’s Essence stun is a legit thing. Gives you about 10-20 seconds worth of risk-free burning. However, it requires coordination to pull off – you have to kill one in a short time, and he spits a lot of them, while few people can manage to solo one unless it gets caught on terrain. Sometimes they won’t spawn at all since the spit lands ‘inside’ the terrain. If your party is doing badly (I.E. PuG) it will often be impossible for everyone to have enough breath to burn an essence while dodging Alpha’s attacks, between spammed dodges/downs/blown cooldowns/etc.

There is also a current bug where, while stunned, he’ll continue to act against the party – except all he’ll do is spit more essences. This can allow you to keep him chain-stunned for the entire fight, burning him down in 2-3 minutes if you don’t drop the ball. This probably won’t last forever, though.

Nebilim.5127:

Can someone please teach me how are we supposed to fight him in that tiny room of front door? The last battle.

You simply do not have any space to dodge the earth spike and his aoe covers the whole room. I can do him just fine in the other paths, dying only 2~1 times, but i died dozens of time in that part

It’s rough, but manageable if you time your dodges perfectly. I actually did CoE a good 15 or so times on the Front Door route alone without even realizing his AoE had a safespot. Yeah, I had to perfectly dodge everything from the beginning to the end. I figure it’s doable.

Effective positioning also helps. I made up a rough diagram of the final fight’s staging area. It gets rough depending on where the undead tendrils spawn, as they can really chip away at your HP over time without you realizing it. But the important part is to avoid overlapping one another as much as possible for the earth crags, and there’s plenty of small nooks to hide in – though, be careful of LoSing him, as a sudden change in position can make things messy. The enclosed area also makes it fairly easy to pick an Essence and focus it down when he spits them.

I also have a suspicion that his Earth AoE actually does more damage the farther away you are, much as its size increases. It’s just a suspicion, though. I’ve had an easy time meleeing him.

Nebilim.5127:

Can someone please teach me how are we supposed to fight him in that tiny room of front door? The last battle.

You simply do not have any space to dodge the earth spike and his aoe covers the whole room. I can do him just fine in the other paths, dying only 2~1 times, but i died dozens of time in that part

You’re making a common mistake. You seem to think you have to dodge out of the circles, which you do NOT have to do. All you have to do is dodge, any-which-way, a second after you see the circles on the ground. In fact it’s easiest to just get in close, and dodge into him and keep wailing away. The circles can also be blocked with aegis. If you have aegis on you, don’t even bother dodging, save it for the next time.

Most groups I’ve been in wipe because when they see the red circles everywhere they scatter all over the place in panic. Then he’ll get party members with the crystals ect. Stay together, and in close, even when dodging.

Nebilim.5127:

Can someone please teach me how are we supposed to fight him in that tiny room of front door? The last battle.

You simply do not have any space to dodge the earth spike and his aoe covers the whole room. I can do him just fine in the other paths, dying only 2~1 times, but i died dozens of time in that part

What other people said. Think of your dodge roll not as something that simply moves you somewhere, but as something that temporarily turns you invulnerable. It doesn’t matter if you’re rolling into a Dragon’s Tooth, or a giant Earth Spike, or whatever – if you’re currently rolling, you will evade it, even if you’re smack dab in the middle of the hitbox. It may not make sense in your brain, but that’s how it works. You’ll have to learn the timings depending on your lag (my timings are probably quite off from the norm given my connection and the fact that I play overseas), but once you do, as long as you have endurance, you should never take a hit against Subject Alpha assuming you’re not trapped in a crystal with no way out.

Of course, maintaining that kind of endurance is kind of hard, so the next step is to figure out what you simply don’t need to use endurance to avoid.

Subject Alpha’s line of Earth Spikes is only cast in one direction. He also turns towards whatever direction he’s casting it beforehand (and usually he tosses it out at the same person he was facing when he casted his previous attack – in the case of the FD path, that’d most likely be a ring of Earth Spikes). This will let you know whether or not you will need to burn endurance avoiding this attack. Otherwise, you can just continue on with your day like nothing happened. I covered that above.

After he casts that, up next will almost always be a ring of Earth Spikes centered around every player, with the occasional Ice Blast thrown in. You may or may not have to burn endurance to dodge this as well. This is dependent on the positioning of your teammates. If they’re all buddied up with you (causing your safe zones to overlap), or giving you quite a lot of space (so that there’s no significant overlap at all), you most likely don’t even need to move to avoid this. If you’re running around mindlessly and spaced out ala my “standard PuG” picture, then yes, you may need to burn endurance on a dodge if you don’t start running for a safe spot fast enough.

Beating Alpha smoothly is a combination of good positioning and good endurance management. As long as you pay attention to those two things, you can dance around him naked if you really wanted to. The more chaotic your party is, the crappier and more annoying fighting him will be. That’s an obvious, generic thing, but Subject Alpha’s mechanics make it doubly so. One of the smoothest Alpha fights I’ve had was in a 4 man (total) PuG that kept their cool.

Today I tried boss (path 2) with the Elementalist trait Renewing Stamina (vigor buff on critical hit). Could use more dodges than I really needed, making it very easy. Brought teleport to get out of the crystals, although this wasn’t really needed, cause my PUG was pretty good at taking care of everything.
I remember doing this boss a few weeks ago without the vigor buff, and it was definitely harder to manage my dodges.

Yawn boring loot and boring skins. Finishing dungeons has no appeal whatsoever inc this encounter.

Perhaps a bit harsh but the loot is just so bad and the skins! what is with all the big coats for medium armour wearers? A bit more variety wouldn’t hurt would it?

Never understood why people have problems with Alpha. After the first fight he becomes easy yet fun to do. There are only two things you need to know when fighting him.

1) If you’re close to the edge, run out.
2) If you’re nowhere close to the edge, time your dodge just as the AoE hits (2 seconds) and you’ll evade it flawlessly.

Great writeup and I hope it stops people from moaning and whining for the entire run saying how absolutely impossible this boss is because I know people who can do CoE without ever getting downed.

Robert, did you design this dungeon? If yes, people make future dungeons like this. Teleporter path is easily one of the most fun (lazer room makes all the lulz happen) dungeons to do.

you’re probably 1 in 1000 that finds this dungeon amusing.

maybe you’re saying, “my friends and i clear it in 10 minutes”. good. i am glad you and your friends work well together…. however, about 97% of the people who play this game probably a) don’t have 4 other friends that play this game and b) don’t have the time to invest to figure out the mechanics of this boss. i am in a guild of over 100… no one likes running dungeons because they are not “casual” friendly. least of all is CoE.

i honestly can’t imagine anyone, after working a full day’s job, coming home and being happy that they are going to go into CoE…. and about 80% of the other dungeons.

maybe after this guide will people be more willing to give this place a second chance. as for me, i ran it enough to get me that nice chest piece…. i can certainly assure you that i will never step into that dungeon again. if that is what you call a successfully designed dungeon, then i am very worried for the future of this game.

GW2 needs a fow/uw/doa type area, where if even if you don’t manage to finish it because of ppl leaving etc there’s a chance of a good drop that is actually worth saving/selling such as ectos/obsidion shards ‘like in GW1’ surely you don’t need the cash shop that much to deprive players of making a ‘bit on the side’ That is what’s missing in gw2 seems like everything is stopping us from gaining something of value :O

Cash shop could function but give the players something too.

Being a CoE junkie myself +1 to you for a great guide!

You missed something about the ice spike.
The circle where the ice spike will appear actually shows a very obvious frozen mist animation prior to it hitting. If you just watch out for air turning blue, it’s easy to spot and move out of.

Yeah, the earth one also has the ice graphic, but it’s not “forming”, it starts already there. I’m guessing it’s bugged and the ice graphic should only be on the ice spike, the earth one would just be normal circles. That would make this less painful (died like 6 times trying to figure it out, normally I just dodge every single one.)

Shiri.6728:

Yeah, the earth one also has the ice graphic, but it’s not “forming”, it starts already there. I’m guessing it’s bugged and the ice graphic should only be on the ice spike, the earth one would just be normal circles. That would make this less painful (died like 6 times trying to figure it out, normally I just dodge every single one.)

It’s just a simple trick, and a funny one at that. Frozen ground → no spike, frozen air → spike.

It shouldn’t go, because figuring out which you’re in is basically 90% of the challenge in avoiding it. By your logic, the big circle on the ice spike should go, too. But that whole attack is built around looking similar. Just not quite the same.

Great guide and it confirms most of my suspicions about the aoe attacks Alpha does. I never had a real problem with it but on my pug groups I noticed people kept dying while I was staying alive (usually until I was the only one alive and being trapped twice in a crystal).

To be honest these tactics are really impossible to negotiate with most PUGs you will get in to, unless you get on voip or something. The better thing to do in a PUG would be to tell everyone to dodge and then rely on them to dodge properly. It is MUCH easier just to dodge the right damage at the right time, and to walk out of circles you can walk out of.

I am a necromancer, that means my endurance bar isn’t traited / buffed to give me more dodges than what would be standard and I find it easy to keep up dodges for the attacks that matter. In this dungeon I use DS sparingly for extra survivability when trapped by crystals, it can soak up a good few attacks before running out.

Yesterday I did CoE without any deaths (apart from the lasers piece, which I ofcourse did naked and zerged into twice before cooling down and taking my time to do it properly). It is amazing how much difference a good team can make who knows when to dodge what and where priorities lie.

If I can give one tip, you can help someone up when fighting alpha, but remember, you can do this with multiple people. If you time it right and are quick about it you can get away doing it alone, but with two people you are mostly quick enough before the next attack comes your way. Even better is three people ressing a fourth and the fifth with focus from Alpha, you will res a downed, this is so quick it feels like no time is lost.

And don’t panic.

So the mountain of HP → working as intended?

Not complaining, ran teleporter my first time yesterday and good Lord it was a lot of fun, but it was LONG….and not in the “lots of content” way. Many of the bosses were rather boring with masssssive amounts of hp.

Personally I think the 1st 2 encounters with Alpha need a bit less hp and the last one needs better telegraphing for his essence spawns….or perhaps a trigger. We were thinking killing all the tendrils would trigger him to use the spawn, but weren’t able to successfully replicate it. If its random, then please give him a channel and telegraph, if it’s triggered then please make it reliable.

I really dont mind long, interesting encounters, but the most fun I had here was the naked laser event, many Lols were had in ventrillo that day.

Our warrior: “Watch, I’ll do this with my armor on”, Ignore Pain, Leap, dead xD

The dungeon feels about right, just a little bit padded. I hope this gets looked at, not because I want things handed to me on a silver platter, but because I want to be engaged with the activities I’m doing.

If you have +health on your trinkets, none of Alpha’s attacks will be one hit kills
If you summon stuff, you can make your own team very miserable (Mesmers beware)
Teleports can exit the crystal
If +health, then dragon tooth not instakill, then crystal less pain

Submarine Path
Press F11 – Disable Meele Attack Assist
Stand inside Alpha
One team member runs suppport, the rest will bash him down in notime.

Other than that, there are only two types of Pugs. Those who listen and those who ignore chat and refuse teamspeak. Never group with people who refuse teamspeak and CoE will be fine.

Rough estimate of how much time a run should take:
Submarine: 45 Minutes
Teleporter: 55 Minutes
Main Door: 1h20 (enhanced destroyer might need a teleporter, so people learn to navigate the jumps and not be frustrated by running times. He is not regenerating anyway)

Enjoyed reading this, it’s a great guide. I do CoE runs regularly and am very disappointed to see how PUGs become terrified of the dungeon when they learn they have to deal with Alpha three times. I really do hope that some of them will read this guide and learn something from it. It’s not that hard when you learn when to dodge, when to stay put and when to walk out of AoE.

And the laser part is guaranteed to make you laugh, even if you’re doing it with PUGs.

Can we have Alpha’s abilities have a target cap? It should not punish pet/summon users more than anyone else for their abilities. more than ones with just plain attacks. I noticed this with my Mesmer and my illusions, but I assume Necro and Ranger pets, Guardian weapon summons, heck even Warrior banners get targeted.

Also can we get bigger rooms to fight in? It’s claustrophobic.

Something I observed during my last teleporter run is that when it comes to the ice blast, he picked only one target to cast it on for pretty much the entirety of the fight. As long as that person was in range, he would cast the ice blast under that person, with the usual rings for everyone else. If that person died and was running back, he’d then pick a different target to use it on until that first person got back. Sort of similar to the earlier golem boss with the 4 turrets in the same dungeon. I’ll try to test it more when I can, to see if this is actually how it does work or if it’s path specific. If that is how it works, then it means you don’t even have to pay attention to whether you’ve got an ice blast or a ring of earth coming up once you figure out who he picked out.

I’ll add in the bit about the ice spike animation when I get the chance. Thanks for the tips!

What is going on here… I played my first time in Explorable Mode (Path 2) in that Dungeon…. Haven’t played much Explorable overall (probably 5-6 in total) and I really had no big problems with Alpha. I actually can’t understand why so many players could have so much troubles with this guy, at least not concerning Path 2, I’ve no idea about the other ones.
I like bosses with a more clear mechanic behind it like this one, not just bosses where you push your DPS and try not to have aggro all the time…

I like this boss too, I dont like his ocean of hp, but his mechanics are fun and unforgiving. As the OP said the biggest threat is group inexperience, and that something my guild is working on getting better at. My only 2 issues with his mechanics are that 1) He seems to exclusively aggro me, an ele, with his earth cone and the telegraph (if there is one) is too short making them very hard to dodge, and 2 you dont know that he’s spawning essences until those little black kittens are traveling across the floor at mach speed.

Id imagine that with good coordination, good knowledge, and getting the stun everytime he spawns essences he could be burned down in a matter of 5 or so minutes.

But for you guys having trouble: keep heart. Took us 40 minutes on this boss alone the first time (tele path) and only 20 the last time we fought him (sub path).

My best Alpha tips:

• Alpha moves pretty quickly. He is much easier if someone in your party melees him and gets him to stand in one spot so he can get hit by all of your team’s AOE skills.
• Use the thralls or tendrils to rally.
• Anyone with an instant blink skill can escape the purple crystals. This includes the Mesmer skill Blink and the Elementalist Lightning Flash.
• Call the fact that you are a crystal so people can save you.
• Walk out of the Dragon’s Tooth AOE. This skill is very slow and easy to avoid.
• Dodge all of the other skills. After the rings appear on the floor, wait 2 seconds and then dodge roll. As long as you are in the dodge roll animation when the spells explode they won’t deal any damage to you.

There were 2 instances where I ran CoE doing Submarine Path and Front Door Path, we managed to Perma-stun Subject Alpha and it’s not the bug where he does nothing.

We killed his essences then he just stood there doing nothing, after a few secs he summoned his essences again then we did mass AOE around him killing the essences he summoned as they go near him and we just kept doing it until he went down doing nothing but summoning his essences.

One thing about the ice spike – The ice that appears in the center of the earth ring is just a white sheet whereas if the ice spike is cast you can see the ice slowly crystallizing (its animated)

Good stuff BlackToof. You left out his earth cone attack though. Only thing I have to add is that if you’re meleeing him (as an ele I stack right on top of the boss) the aoe will always be overlapping so dodge everything but dragons tooth. It takes timing and good endurace control, but I’ve managed to go the entire fight right next to him without being downed. If you have 4 stacking right on him and one ranged, whenever someone goes down all 4 can rez him before the next attack lands. Plus if someone gets crystalized you’re likely to free them before they take much damage.

As an Engineer that uses bombs for DPS, I can also vouch for melee range being really, really easy once you figure out the timing between the red circles appearing and the attack hitting. He doesn’t do the AoEs fast enough to drain your Endurance even without Vigor, so long as you don’t waste any dodges.

If you can edit the video and add in information on his cone attack, it’d be nice.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t have the hardware to support decent video recording right now, so I couldn’t do so.

gibby.9328:

you’re probably 1 in 1000 that finds this dungeon amusing.

maybe you’re saying, “my friends and i clear it in 10 minutes”. good. i am glad you and your friends work well together…. however, about 97% of the people who play this game probably a) don’t have 4 other friends that play this game and b) don’t have the time to invest to figure out the mechanics of this boss. i am in a guild of over 100… no one likes running dungeons because they are not “casual” friendly. least of all is CoE.

i honestly can’t imagine anyone, after working a full day’s job, coming home and being happy that they are going to go into CoE…. and about 80% of the other dungeons.

maybe after this guide will people be more willing to give this place a second chance. as for me, i ran it enough to get me that nice chest piece…. i can certainly assure you that i will never step into that dungeon again. if that is what you call a successfully designed dungeon, then i am very worried for the future of this game.

Amen. Subject alpha is incredibly OP. He does not need minions to attack you while your running around for your life since one aoe one shots anyone with low hp. If those minions were there for you to rally then they should have less hp.

Subject Alpha was easy as pie once I figured out when to dodge. I work full eight hour days and enjoy fighting with him when I hop onto Guild Wars that night. Just read a guide if you don’t want to figure it out for yourself, because after learning his pattern he isn’t nearly as dangerous. This is when playing with a 100% PUG group, by the way, so it’s not about having a cohesive team at all.

It’s now Feb. 2013, after the “change” to dungeons. This however, is my first encounter with the Front Door last Subject Alpha boss. There is now room to sufficiently spread out the team to ‘avoid’ affecting each other on his targetted AOE’s; I found as an Ele, I was quadruple targeted in an instant ( I got four overlapping concentric circles enough that two dodge moves would never get me out). I also saw the entire floor of the miniscule area filled with overlapping AOE targets more than once, thrown simultaneously. He only spawned essences twice and only a few. I’ve got Exotic gear for the most part and still I got the “one shot wonder” with all protections available in place + Guardian boons.

Now, I’m still outfitting my Ele for the best lvl 80 gear, and I’m just learning this dungeon, so I’m more than willing to admit, it could all “just be me”. That said, I’m here to learn so any helpful remarks are welcome.

So, can someone please assess any differences from the above since the “dungeon patch” – someone who knows this dungeon much better than I?

Just to add, my experience here was almost an assured permanent aggro until I was dead if I was attuned to water.

Thanks in advance!

oops.. the above should read “No room to spread out”

Tori.8192:

It’s now Feb. 2013, after the “change” to dungeons. This however, is my first encounter with the Front Door last Subject Alpha boss. There is now room to sufficiently spread out the team to ‘avoid’ affecting each other on his targetted AOE’s; I found as an Ele, I was quadruple targeted in an instant ( I got four overlapping concentric circles enough that two dodge moves would never get me out). I also saw the entire floor of the miniscule area filled with overlapping AOE targets more than once, thrown simultaneously. He only spawned essences twice and only a few. I’ve got Exotic gear for the most part and still I got the “one shot wonder” with all protections available in place + Guardian boons.

Now, I’m still outfitting my Ele for the best lvl 80 gear, and I’m just learning this dungeon, so I’m more than willing to admit, it could all “just be me”. That said, I’m here to learn so any helpful remarks are welcome.

So, can someone please assess any differences from the above since the “dungeon patch” – someone who knows this dungeon much better than I?

Just to add, my experience here was almost an assured permanent aggro until I was dead if I was attuned to water.

Thanks in advance!

One of the best ways to fight him is have the entire team stack up on him and force him against the wall, even if you don’t have a melee weapon. Friendly AoEs/cleaves will help free your teammates from crystals, and you can pick up downed people really quickly in between his AoE spikes. When it comes time to dodge the multi-circle attack, you’re more concerned about dodging the point of impact rather than the marked area, so dodge after 2 seconds, which is about the time the spikes hit.

Tori, you shouldn’t have to dodge more than once per Alpha cast. When Alpha casts all those circles for earth and ice, wait about 1.5 seconds and then dodge. Even if you dodge into another circle, you won’t be hurt by it.