Guild Wars 2

Hi,

After countless attempts to clear 2 specific events (with a same theme), i had to ask the question: are AC EXP path 1 and 3 just too difficult. The events are:

1. Hodgins path – protecting Hodgins from gravelings while he reads a book
2. Tzark path – protecting 2 collectors before they are overrun by gravelings.

Both encounters share the same mechanics:

• destroy graveling burrows before you are overwhelmed
• at the same time defend either Hodgins, or collectors

However I feel that the fight is too hard (and for some of the wrong reasons)

• Hodgins or collector has too little health
• Hodgins quietly reads a book while being hit upon (more immersive would be to either fight back or run away in fear)
• When DPSing a burrow, in many occasions it does not take damage (due to known bug), resulting in messages like *Obstructed (there is nothing in the way), *Evaded (how), and Missed, which is especially noticed for melee.
• Burrows spawn also Graveling Breeders that spawn more gravelings (with no cap on how many breeders can be there). We fought up to 3 simultaneously on Hodgins path. Note that this was also while we had 2 burrows to kill.
• If you attack gravelings attacking hodgins/collector, some might follow, but most just stay, although animation suggest they should follow. Is this bugged.

Needless to say the end result is:

• Regardless of the amount of damage/ tactics we put in the npc goes down eventually
• or if we defend it, we are overwhelmed.

Suggestions for fixing the event:

1. give NPC (hodgins / Tzark) ability to fight ? as well as waaay more HP (perhaps as much as *breeder)
2. fix a hitbox bug on the burrows (i guess on any static item) -it affects more than you think
3. put a cap on how many live breeders can be there while event is running.
4. … or reduce breeder’s HP
5. if there is specific mechanic to be learned… please give more obvious hint

Given the now changed rewards system (9/25) that the tears drop only at the end, makes the whole encounter extremely frustrating, and unsatisfying. Almost every time the party wipes too many times on one of these encounters, and just gives up, and goes home empty handed, with heavy repair bills.

ANet, more than once you boasted that the QA guys can 4, or even 3 man a dungeon. Here’s a challenge: Try 3-manning AC EXP path 3 without “admin” buff and post a video.

Should the QA guys succed, i guess the encounters are OK and we just need to learn how to beat them.

The game is awesome, and I love the fact that the dungeons are hard (as long as they are hard due to specific mechanic), and not buggy hitboxes, and missing caps. It would be a shame that the dungeons that are so beautifully designed are not played due to unreasonable difficulty.

Opinions ?

I agree that these seem a little ridiculous, and could use a bit of a tweak. Personally I’d just like it if all weapons could hit burrows, volatile blossoms etc, without missing or saying obstructed. It would boost the DPS time on those burrows a lot if people could actually hit them.

Something you might try in the mean time is having someone interrupt the breeders and kite rather than trying to kill them all. That worked for us.

Did they recently make these hard I did it about a week ago and thought it was pretty easy?

No they fixed the burrows a while ago they are a joke now

Have 1 person focus on defending Hodgins then have the rest stay together and destroy burrows 1 by 1. After each burrow is destroyed kill all the mobs that that burrow spawned before moving on. Kill order should be Burrow > Breeder > mobs with KB > rest > repeat. If you aren’t focusing things down as a group you’re going to get overrun and wipe.

Same premise should work for the other path as well, I generally only do path 1 though. If you know your combo fields they become even easier.

My group did this yeseterday route 3 (protect the 2 collectors) and we wiped twice and completed it the third time.

We all switched to high aoe type weapons. For me as a warrior I switched to greatsword as I’m normally shield/mace. Greatsword let me kite the stuff in spins as well as hit the borrow at the same time.

Once we knew where all the spawns where we split the group into two and put a single person in the middle to help either side at desperate times.

The third run was close, at around 65% we lost one of the collectors. We switched our tactic to have 1 person (me) with greatsword defend the collector from the random silver or little mobs while the other 4 ran around and focused down borrows.

This worked well, I’m high toughness and vitality and was able to sustain minor damage protecting the collector while the group killed the holes and we were successful.

The quick tactic change helped us win. In conclusion, I’d say keep two alive as long as possible and if one goes down change to 1 protector and 4 seek and destroyers.

That was how we passed it. Everything after that was not too difficult. I can explain the rest if asked.

- Xhaine, Warrior

I haven’t run this for a week but I didn’t have much difficulty when I did, mostly due to my group composition. 2 Engineers with Grenadier, 2 Warriors and a Thief.

Nade and 100b spam on the burrows and for the scepter pieces we would pull the mobs to the leash point while the thief would slip in and grab the pieces. I believe she died getting the last one due to uimpatience.

Some dungeon paths require specific skills from the group. In the case here, you need heavy AoE damage.

Protecting Hodgins:

There are at most two burrows active at one time. When you kill one, another spawns. The first burrow (in front of the door) only spawns weak gravelings, so keep it for last.

Have 1 person defend Hodgins, the other 4 focus on a burrow. When the burrow is destroyed, immediately move to the next burrow. Normally you will have hit any remaining gravelings/breeders at least once, so they will follow you to the next burrow. Fight near the burrow so that you hit it and the gravelings/breeders at the same time.

After about 4 burrows destroyed, there will be only the one at the entrance left. First, clear the room of the breeders, then destroy the burrow near the entrance. After this another burrow will spawn; all 5 can attack it at once. Once it is destroyed, one last burrow will spawn. Again, kill it and you will have won.

Defending the collectors:

I’ve found this to be a DPS check. Basically, all of the group should hit the same burrow. No defenders. When it is down, move to the next. With enough DPS and swiftness, there will never be more than 1 burrow up and the gravelings will never reach the collectors since you intercept them as they get out of the burrow.

If a pack of gravelings heads for a collector, hit them once and kite them to the burrow your team is hitting. It’s important to hit the burrow and the gravelings at once, or else pretty soon you will be overwhelmed by the burrows.

I’ve seen people saying that you need to concentrate on breeders before moving to the next burrow, but IMO this is a mistake. Kite the breeders to the next burrow and fight them near or on top of it, such that the whole team is hitting both the breeder and the burrow at once. Otherwise you will have to deal with 2+ burrows at once and this is where teams get overwhelmed.

If near the end of the event, you can’t keep up with the burrows, split into two groups. At this point, you are trying to keep the gravelings off the collectors until the event is complete.

The burrows are easier to hit if you keep moving while attacking (melee). Once their “hitbox” is fixed, these events should be easier, but I think the same tactics will apply.

Edit: What I mean to say is that, with the correct strategy, these events aren’t too hard. I don’t think they need to be made any easier, apart from fixing the bugs when targeting burrows.

pugged it recently.

for hodgins, have 1 person tank the first burrow while the others dash about getting the other burrows that spawn.

For the collection thing, you need to have 1 person basically run interference. keep them near the middle of the room and have them aggro any small things that slip by, and/or distract if a burrow spawns close to a crystal.

i had to ask the question: are AC EXP path 1 and 3 just too difficult.

You forgot the question mark. Anyway, the answer is “no”.

Just read what the actual objective is and stop charging madly at burrows while ignoring everything else that’s happening around you.

Personally, I find path #2 much more of a gamble (mostly due to a couple of bugs).

Thanks to everyone for your comments, I will definitely try your suggestions with my guild, and let you know how it went.

We were quite frustrated as 2 persons hitting a burrow were missing most of the time. Sure minor movement fixes it, so no excuses here :-).

Should those methods prove to be effective, I guess I will owe you guys a big thank you, and an apology to ANet, which I will be more than happy to do :-).

Looking forward to (hopefully not so many) new wipes ;-)

Yeah, the LoS issues do need fixed. I generally have them when in air attunement against death blossums from hell in TA.

I agree with your #2 and #5 suggestion, but ive seen 3 people run hodgins in 32 minutes with no wipes. If it’s broken, there’s no way on earth they could do that graveling event. There is an order to the burrows, and specific burrows spawn certain types of gravelings. For instance, the one in the RHS corner spawns two scavengers and should be taken down 5th, right after the one beside the entrance. The first 3 can be destroyed before a breeder even spawns.

It is doable, but tricky.

My guild tried Tzark and we couldn’t put out enough DPS to down the spawns in 8 seconds, we could only manage 10 and that was at the start of the fight with all of our powers off cooldown. I think it’s bad design to tell us you don’t need special classes to do it and then punish groups without enough DPS.

Both are actually kind of easy and doable with pugs. Az far as people know the right tactics and the way to do it. Closing burrows, you need to do it in an order, or you will get to many champion spawns. And Tzark path, you need to nuke the burrows, not to defend the spots.

Defending Hodgins tactic that worked really well for us:

Have one person tank and nuke the little guys from the central burrow, don’t destroy it though.
Destroy the western burrow first and use as much aoe as possible while doing so. Sometime during destroying it or upon destroying it, a breeder will spawn that hast to be killed or he will overrun you. After that, head to the newly spawned second burrow in the southwestern chamber and destroy that too. I don’t remember if anything special spawns here, just kill it all. To be safe, we had two people leave that southwestern burrow early to protect Hodgins and finish .it by the last two people.

I forgot how many burrows you destroy until the eastern one pops up but that one is critical. The eastern burrow spawns two scavengers that will rip your group apart, especially if you destroy multiple burrows at once and have some breeder etc. running around.
The point is, that eastern scavenger burrow is triggered by either destroying a whole lot of western burrows or directly by destroying the middle one. So keep that middle one from the start, it’s just spawning little hatchlings that are manageable and destroy other burrows first! If you got past the scavengers you have virtually won. Nothing that spawns now is going to overwhelm you anymore. Just run around organized and do the burrows one by one.

It’s actually pretty simple if you get the attention of any stray mobs, then pull them over to a burrow and work them down with melee cleave and AoE. They’ll pretty much stick to you 100% as long as you’re nearby or do something to threaten them directly instead of chasing after Hogdins or the extractors. Having good swiftness uptime or strong AoE chills/cripples helps a lot.

Scavengers on the Hogdins event are a little tricky. You need to bait out their pounce at some spot that isn’t close to the burrows, then dodge away and go for free damage on the burrows while they try to gnaw away at nothing. Bring a stun break or stability just in case.

For both events, have a decent supply of interrupts on hand to keep breeders from spawning more and to get them where you want them to be, which is on top of burrows so you can AoE both instead of being in the middle of nowhere just spewing out more little adds.

Did AC explorable for the first time last night, first path 3 and then path 1. The main problems we had was that, 1. Not taking down breeders fast enough and getting overwhelmed with summons from them. 2. The burrow hitbox is crap, I tried with staff, greatsword and hammer on my guardian.. alot of the time I only managed to hit one third of the time if not less. 3. On hodgins, we had problems with one of the burrows, due to being ganked by the scavengers, but we fixed that in the end by leaving one of the burrows alive, thus delaying the spawn of that specific burrow.

Out of those 3, 2 were a matter of difficulty and coming up with the correct tactics, but the burrow hitbox really needs to be fixed.

This was my first try at a dungeon and boy was it a bad one. Granted I was in a pug but the experience was mainly bad because the dungeon had obviously not been tested.

They are easy as long as you have certain classes that have AoE + direct damage.

I actually run path 2 and 3 for token bonuses and last night we did path 3 with 4 people, including the burrow event.

The thing is, we had 2 guardians, 1 warrior, and 1 ranger, which makes it really easy to burst down burrows.

But in the case of say a necro, they are absolutely useless with killing burrows and any objects.

Also being a downscaled level 80 actually gives you quite a bit more damage then say a downscaled 50.

So I wouldn’t say path 1 and 3 are insanely hard, but they are hard under certain circumstances and with certain classes since the devs didn’t think through inanimate objects and condition damage.

Path 1 and 3 are basically a perfect example of the difference between a pug <80 group (especially with AC EM being only level 35) and a organized guild group in exotics.

I can do it with 4 people in a guild group with hardly any trouble, but a 5 random pug can make it insanely annoying and hard which is what happened the very first time I ran it. This is similar in other dungeons, such as CoF path 3 (although not the 4 part since you need 5 people for the torches).

After going through most of the dungeon paths in this game, it’s quite obvious that certain things are just not noob/pug friendly at all, especially some of the events that take timed coordination with no voice chat like I have when running with guildies.

Long story short, it’s hard for pugs or certain classes, but overall it’s not really hard if that makes sense…

For me it had nothing to do with the PUG really. i could not target the burrow without getting and “obstructed” message. Asura Ranger.

If you can’t damage something you cant kill it. If you cant do what the designers of the dungeon intend you to do it seems pretty obvious to me, it wasn’t tested or at least not properly.

I only say this because the game has been out for a while now and things like this should not be happening. They are the things that cause people to put a game down. Personally I will wait another month before I try a dungeon and decide from there whether Group PVE is being supported properly.

1. us actually the easiest one.

we have no problems doing it, but we are all lvl80 full exotics. I remember trying it at 60, it was impossible, the burrow bug is indeed quite old, hope they fix that soon. AC explo is one of the fastest and easiest dungeons from all, it´s a walk in the park compared to Arah.

You can hit the burrow when you move from side to side, using your a and d key.

Did all 3 paths today with most people being new to AC explorable. We had zero problems and felt it was too easy even.

hodgin’s path is tough, but my party managed to do it. i wouldn’t mind a slight nerf though.

tzark’s path is downright insane. one party gave up after like 3 hours on the collector’s event, and the other only did it after at least one hour and one less player (we then got another person to fill in the spot).

I’ve run AC ex extensively (got1800 tears). Here’s a few points in doing this.

For Hodgins path, you’ll want to leave the first north burrow up and kill the others. Leave one person behind to keep it from overwhelming. The point of this is to delay the spawning of scavengers (burrow on the southeast) which is the cause of wipes in 99% of my runs. After the 5th burrow is down, leave a few to defend Hodgins against the scavengers. I usually just leave 4 to defend him since I can solo the last burrow by myself quite quick.

For Tzar’s collector, it’s a DPS race. Drag elites on top of the burrow and AoE it down. This is totally depending on your group composition. If you have too many crit base, condition, or support builds in your group. You’re pretty screwed. Tell your group change their weapons ahead such as a support guardian to go GS for more burst damage.

For dpsing the burrows, if you’re melee, you have to move/wiggle around it so you can successfully land the hits. Pure power spike damage is ideal against this since conditions and crit are useless.

I hate to break it to you, but its actually balanced fine.

The thing is, All 3 paths are very easy if your in a group of all 80’s. I’ve pugged all 3 paths with guad/guard/guard/war/war before, and this isn’t exactly the highest dps party you can form, and we easily completed all 3.

The problem is path 1 and 3 is very hard if you bring low level people. 1 low-level is doable, 2 is iffy, and 3 is nearly impossible. If you’re not 80, don’t bother running anything but path 2, because you are basically leaching/praying the rest of your party is 80. The difference between scaled down 80 in exotics and someone in the 35-45 range is ridiculously huge in terms of dps and survival. If they nerfed AC exp (already the easiest set of dungeons atm) to balance for low levels, it would create unintentional speed-clear problems for groups of 80’s.

I use to think that is too hard and it should be balance, but then, most of people who are actually farming tokens are lvl 80. so I don’t know. Maybe they should balance it base on total levels of the group?

Way 1 is ok, way 3 is harder.
Some issue with burrow:
Crappy hit box, as melee you have to perma run around to hit them, channeling always miss.
They take no alteration. For people based on bleed damage like me it’s a pain in the kitten to kill that.
For a lvl 35 first dungeon i don’t think you can have enough dps to beat this

Grunf.5812:

tldr

i’ll help yo with that..my opinions are: path 2 are the most hardest part for me.and no,i’m not trolling

i’ll try to give a bit pointers on how to do path 1 and 3,my way and my guildies

so:1
path 1, protect hodgins, you will need a good amount of high output damage = dps players are almost a must..if you don’t have those,you mix and match with a good 2 players with CC skills for guarding hodgins and occasionally helping offense team to downed the burrows
IMPORTANT : there are 2 chains of event inside this room and each consist of having 3 out of 6 burrows to spawn after one being downed.here comes the trick, DO NOT!!in any circumstances destroy the burrows in front of the door (North section of the room),if you do that, it will trigger silver graveling (breeder,stalker or even scavenger).in needs to be killed in a perfect sequence, which is : west,far south west, north east, north (front of the door), south east and the final is north west.

i always done this with friends and have no problem at all and by far is the most fastest route that can be finished with my group.

now for the path 3 : same as path but don’t need any sequence, it’s just pure coordination on killing burrows together as fast you guys can and have to have CC skills whenever you guys see gravelings threatening the devices.if you see any of those near them,just aggro them to make them following you, by walking near to them or hit them once and they will come to you..

TIPS : always look out for breeders when they are gonna spawn hatchlings,coordinate this with your mates on keeping eyes to them…if any of you see them spawning,control it,it’s a must!!use any,knockbacks,stun,blowout,anything to interrupt it..

oh and one other thing…bosses and even final bosses CAN be controlled and can be extremely useful to your team!!they always have Unshakeable boons (the silver icon below health),BUT you can still control them to interrupt their power attacks.IF it’s done there will a threshold called “defiant” which usually stacks 3-5 points.this means you can’t control them at the moment,unless you reduce those stack numbers by using more CC until it disseaper.once it’s done DON’T use any CC unless your team needs to use it..

well..that’s it from me,this is trick i can share with you all,i hope you guys find it useful..good luck and good hunting

ANet, more than once you boasted that the QA guys can 4, or even 3 man a dungeon. Here’s a challenge: Try 3-manning AC EXP path 3 without “admin” buff and post a video.

Should the QA guys succed, i guess the encounters are OK and we just need to learn how to beat them.

Yeah, I’d love to see that too.

Fony if that is your group, I’m glad this was posted. I did a full guild run of this and cleared it the first time we entered the dungeon. I’m sure now that were all 80 with exotics we could 3 man it as well.

Would be fun to try… Especially now that we’ve killed all the ‘impossible’ bosses.

- Xhaine

For Hodgins: Have 1 player with a lot of CC protect Hodgins, the rest of the group destroy burrows. I’ve been the CC guy every time i’ve ran it; warrior with a hammer & mace/shield. Fear is very helpful.

For Tzark: theres multiple ways to do this.

1) Run around and destroy quickly as possible while keeping a close eye on the burrows.

2) Have 4 players destroying burrows on one half and in the middle, and have 1 player kiting the other half until it is finished collecting.

also, you could try the same strategy as Hodgins path; have one (or two) person(s) sitting near the crystal to CC any gravelings that get through the other players destroying burrows.

The hodgins event is stupid easy once you figure out the strategy. If you put as much time into creating this thread as you did in trying to figure it out you likely would have succeeded.

Hint: Have your team stack on the spawning burrows and spam AoE, rush to next burrow, again spam aoe. Ignore gravelings between burrows. You might want to consider changing from your “one weapon/skill set/build wins everything in the game” mind set and try something different.

did path 3 with another PuG last night. With me as a level 40 ranger. Whose auto attacks couldnt hit the burrows unless I jumped ontop of them.

Still doable. When all else fails, divert all attention to defending 1 of the collectors (only 1 needs to survive) and then huddle around it, blocking gravelings from approaching.

So are there people here who are good at this?

This has been a huge pain in the kitten I got 0 runs in last night and about 5 wipes. For the love of god, I just want to get my monthly achievement done.

It’s stupid easy now, as long as one person protects and the rest DPS down the burrows.

They are revamping the “entire” dungeon with the update today though.

And then there’s these two who can’t read post creation date.

Holy necro batman.

AC is hard? Did I just hear that right? With a good party you can clear all 3 paths in just over an hour. With a PUG you are looking at 1 1/2 hours.

Once you know what to do it is incredibly easy.

ophidic.1279:

So are there people here who are good at this?

This has been a huge pain in the kitten I got 0 runs in last night and about 5 wipes. For the love of god, I just want to get my monthly achievement done.

If you need help running it, contact me in game. Also to other posters, this is an old thread. This was a concern before people started having decent gear/lvl80s/ice bow knowledge etc.

yup path1 used to be “Hard”, path 3 “impossible” and path 2 <3

Just a comparison, I did ac ac all paths with a static group. It’s is our 5th alt. we started with myself lvl 35 guard tanking, lvl 43 ranger dps, lvl 50 eng dps, lvl 60 ele dps, and a 5th pug and did them with ease. We are now lvl 57, 62, 60 and 80 respectively and we are still doing it to lvl everyday. Check that your gear is updated and everyone knows the mechanics and you will be fine. We don’t even use foods.

I can fully agree, those parts are way too difficult.
I mean i sometimes need more than 1 try when i solo them on my elementalist or my warrior.
http://i.imgur.com/r2jLLeL.jpg path 3.
http://i.imgur.com/JcFDI6o.jpg path 1.

2 words. Ice Bow.
Sorry couldn’t resist.

Didn’t knew my Warrior is able to summon an elementalists weapon. Thanks for telling me!

Dub.1273:

Didn’t knew my Warrior is able to summon an elementalists weapon. Thanks for telling me!

Erm it wasn’t directed at you…

Mhh ok. :p

Iehova.9518:

And then there’s these two who can’t read post creation date.

Holy necro batman.

Hey bud, I was just giving the poster before me a bit of advice. Sorry that it bothered you, I most definitely can and did read the post creation date.