Guild Wars 2

So our group has done the Ghost Eater path twice, the first time Kholer kicked our kitten until I realized I could reflect his scorpion attack thing, even then sometimes Feedback isn’t up so people die, but whatever, we beat him. We tore through the rest of that path. The first time with high levels, including 3 level 80s and a couple in the late 50s/60s. Second time, 3 80s, a 37 and a 43 or so… anyway it went well.

Then we get to this path, the Colossus.

Kholer went as usual, but the graveling part… WTF. Seriously, if anyone has any tips, please share. Our melee guys couldn’t hit the kitten things, my berserker was missing more often than not, my warden was doing absolutely nothing. I respecced full DPS (for mesmer, such that it is), which didn’t improve anything, and then switched to my Warrior (level 40), but … see issue 1… melee can’t really hit the things. Even with his bow, I was getting obstructed more often than not.

Is the key to have every class capable of a spammable high damage ranged AE? I’ve read that this is bugged, it obviously is, but I’ve also seen people specifically requesting runs down the 2 paths that have graveling-burrow events, so someone’s doing something.

If it were working as intended we should have been fine, the warrior is doing good dps, we had an engy dropping grenades, and at the very least I could have dropped a warden and zerker on the things and maybe had them actually hit.

We had our ranger switch to ele for this, and that didn’t help either.

Group makeup was support guardian, support(then DPS) mesmer, ranger, warrior, engy. I think on any given burrow, maybe 2 of us were consistantly hitting them.

On one or two of them we burned them down in seconds, on others, it took forever due to this.

Edit: “Kicked our kitten”, I love this filter, lol.

Its extremely buggy, but it can be done despite this. Its not really acceptable, but you can take hammers and staves and those tend to hit better (certainly for guardians these 2 are recommended). Its a lot worse for Tzarks plan, than for Hodgins, which seems to have a more reliable hit rate.

May just skip it then until that’s resolved, I don’t mind a reasonable challenge, but an artificial one created by bugs is not my thing, lol.

Since we can do the Ghost Eater path reliably I wouldn’t even mind just farming that… but hey! DR!

May have to try Hodgins though if that’s easier. We managed to get to about 70% on Tsark’s thing before things just went laughably kittens up.

The mounds are bugged big time for melee. If you just stand there you will miss every attack but if you keep moving you will hit every attack. I run around in circles on top of them.

Other than the bugged mounds the strategy is figuring out which mounds to kill first and how many people you should have doing that versus protecting the npc. My group has figured it out but I’d rather not spoil that fun for you. =D

Hodgins route is extremely doable, as you arent timed, rather you are pressured, and so if you group enemies on the burrows, you neednt hit often anyway, its just preferable. Eventually you will win with the right strategy, as mentioned previously.

I haven’t done the colossus path, but on Hodgin’s path, we had 2 guardians, a warrior, and 2 elementalists. I was one of those. We ended up having just me and the other ele on the mounds, as our AOEs seemed to take them out quick and we could kite decently well to avoid any enemies coming after us. Mist form was invaluable for getting out of a pounce. It took a couple tries but 3rd try or so we were able to clear it.

Don’t know if that helps you at all but heres hoping.

Our group did it on the third try… we moved as a zerg trying to burst down each mound as it came up. Deal with the Breeders after the mound they came out of is destroyed or else another breeder will spawn. If one of the points is being attacked have someone go near there, the mobs will pretty much instantly switch aggro to the player over the point.

Cont: we ended up losing one of the points but we still defended the 2nd one and it finished. The run isnt hard except for that part but the whole miss thing is annoying

Did it on second try.

Its pretty easy to be honest.

Tip for melee: when you hit, move. For some reason, I noticed that if you stand still and melee, your first hit hits, but the next misses.

However, maybe I’m biased since I am a power specced grenadier engineer and I excel at taking down structures.

http://youtu.be/apShme6FWg8

I can confirm the burrows from Tzark’s path also cause misses from projectile attacks from bows and axe.

Not sure which one is more stupid: bugs like these exist, or the decision of removing incremental token rewards from mid-bosses in explorable despite the fact that these bugs exist.

As a thief spaming cluster bomb with 3 init per 10 secs and some acrobatics traits alongside with caltrops make the encounter rather easy for me , i manafw to hold a side by my own while the rest of the group strugles with theirs.

The encounter allows you to bunch up, take advantage of that.
That means, take some fire field and other group might, if all your duders have 20+ stacks of might, burrows die so fast that there should be no more than one at a time, with all the gravelings just dying as soon as they spawn. Be sure to kill every Breeder you see, they can own the essence collectors pretty hard while you’re not looking.

Staff elementalists or grenade engineers are really strong in the fight, since they have very good ground-targeted AoE abilities. Two staff elementalists will take out a burrow in a matter of seconds, just with Meteor Showers.

Those burrows are just ridiculously hard to hit, except with ground targetted aoe’s as listed. Ranger in my group had some success max ranging burrows at some random angle and he hit them consistently.

I just went full tank on my warrior and facetanked an kitten of adds while he basically solo’d burrows, was fun as kitten but I’d hope they would fix this soon. And my inability to enter Sorrow’s Embrace, etc.

The burrows are actually very easy to hit as melee…as long as you don’t have them selected as your target. Just get in range and let the cleave/cone of attack do the work for you.

I still miss about half the time on either of those paths.

Take ele with you, and tell him to make Ice bows. These will make quick work of burrows.

its bugged, any object that changes shapes when it is dying is bugged, you can’t hit unless you move. I’ve reported that to arenanet like 10 times so i got tired and not doing it anymore since my party doesnt have a elementalist. We got down to 92% before wiping on tzark, Hodgins is easy when you find the patern ( yes there is a patern of burrows you should kill first, when you find that out the dungeon becomes kinda easy).

Other than the bugged mounds the strategy is figuring out which mounds to kill first and how many people you should have doing that versus protecting the npc. My group has figured it out but I’d rather not spoil that fun for you. =D.

Takes all sorts to fill the world up, apparently you’re of the type to like banging your genitalia off a brick wall while running, and at the same time allocating jobs to others so they can know if they’re going to be banging their genitals off the brick wall themselves, or being covered in honey and mauled by bears.
SOUNDS REAL “FUN” =D

No, wait… what’s the polar opposite of fun?

good advice mind you, moving does negate a lot of the bugged misses, due to the crappy hitbox

Did it on second try.

Its pretty easy to be honest.

Tip for melee: when you hit, move. For some reason, I noticed that if you stand still and melee, your first hit hits, but the next misses.

However, maybe I’m biased since I am a power specced grenadier engineer and I excel at taking down structures.

Ugh those words are irritating, “it’s pretty easy to be honest” I mean you could paint a “flame me now” sign on your chest as it’s just asking for people to point out the obvious flaws with all of your post.

The encounter allows you to bunch up, take advantage of that.
That means, take some fire field and other group might, if all your duders have 20+ stacks of might, burrows die so fast that there should be no more than one at a time, with all the gravelings just dying as soon as they spawn. Be sure to kill every Breeder you see, they can own the essence collectors pretty hard while you’re not looking.

Staff elementalists or grenade engineers are really strong in the fight, since they have very good ground-targeted AoE abilities. Two staff elementalists will take out a burrow in a matter of seconds, just with Meteor Showers.

Solid post, but the potential for mights can vary from team to team. If you’re suggesting that we stack 2 ele’s for each of the fights, then you’re missing some important values despite the quality of the advice in general

Hellkaiser.6025:

The encounter allows you to bunch up, take advantage of that.
That means, take some fire field and other group might, if all your duders have 20+ stacks of might, burrows die so fast that there should be no more than one at a time, with all the gravelings just dying as soon as they spawn. Be sure to kill every Breeder you see, they can own the essence collectors pretty hard while you’re not looking.

Staff elementalists or grenade engineers are really strong in the fight, since they have very good ground-targeted AoE abilities. Two staff elementalists will take out a burrow in a matter of seconds, just with Meteor Showers.

Solid post, but the potential for mights can vary from team to team. If you’re suggesting that we stack 2 ele’s for each of the fights, then you’re missing some important values despite the quality of the advice in general

Guardians, Warriors, Eles, Engineers and Rangers have access to fire fields, every class but rangers has access to blast finishers.
Read closely, I am not suggesting everyone take 2 elementalists. That is my report of what I have personally experienced. I think any setup with a similar strength in ground targeted AoE will fare well.

edit: This is all just about the Tzark event.
Hodgins’ event is hilariously easy if you just have one guy kite everything that comes out the burrow at the entrance, then get the rest of the group to kill off all other burrows before touching the one that’s getting kited.

That said, I have done that event without using any sort of great group buffing or anything. It’s a lot harder and a kitten pain in the kitten because you won’t be able to basically quell most of the graveling spawns. But with survivable character builds, you can defend the last stretch if you split up in groups of 2 and 3 people.

I would like to add that it would be very nice of you to refrain from rating my or any other persons post without adding some sort of substance to what you are saying. A remark like “you’re missing some important values” is just very irritating, as there is literally no way for me to know what you are talking about.

2 warriors
1 guardian (me)
1 thief
1 mesmer (<3 Quickness)
All lv 80, with mostly exotic gear, we did all AC paths in a bit more than one hour in total, making 1,5 gold, drops excluded.
The dungeon is really doable (and fast) if you know what to do and have a decent equip.

Feel free to ask if you need any tip.

The buggy targetting for stationary targets as a melee character is a pretty huge problem in parts like this. You can mitigate it somewhat by not targeting it directly, constantly circle-strafing (which is a good habit anyway), etc, but part of it really is that that part of the game is just kind of broken right now.

That said, if you do figure out the ins and outs of actually hitting the things, then the only further advice you really need for that section is ‘focus on tons of direct-damage, and be extremely aggressive about killing the burrows as quickly as possible’.

I was lucky enough to do this path with a team that was very good at making sure that the burrows got hit (keyword: lucky; I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong if you’re in a team that isn’t), and despite not having played the path before, we’d heard second-hand that it was all about rushing the burrows, and managed to finikitten very comfortably on the first try. Once you get that part down, Tzark’s path is the easiest of the three by a fairly considerable margin (except for the last boss, which is slightly tougher than the others).

Did all 3 paths tonight, group as warrior, guardian, ele, mesmer and thief.

As for mounds, what i noticed is the hitbox of the mound changes position as it takes damage. You will notice that the location where its hit (ie where the floating numbers appears) pops up in slightly different positions as it gets lower in hp. That’s why you notice alot of people saying you should be moving while attacking the mounds (and that advice is spot on, it works).

As for route 3, its somewhat of a dps check. Killing the mounds fast is your best bet. I definitely would recommend bringing full level 80 group for that to make it easier. Its possible to kill them fast enough that you won’t have more than 1-2 up at a time. It is the hardest of the 3 paths for sure, but not too bad.

If you have an ele: Staff + Ice Bows
Ice Bow #4 skill has a 20 second CD and will drop a burrow by over half its hp and you get 2 of them for a minute. You can literally trade off using the #4 ability until the bow is gone. With the staff the ele has access to meteor shower and a slew of aoe slows, cripples, stuns, etc. Makes the whole thing so much more manageable.