Guild Wars 2

I don’t do a lot of dungeon running and when I do it’s usually CoF p1/2 or SE p1/2. The easy stuff. One of the things I like about MMOs is that you can be doing the same thing daily but with different groups it can feel like a completely different run (sometimes good, sometimes bad).

Yesterday I joined a group (aptly advertised as a noob run) for AC. Anyways, we nestled up in the corner, grabbed the spider, and proceeded to get annihilated over and over again. I thought this was supposed to be a pretty fool proof strategy but it didn’t seem to be working. I’m not sure what makes this work with one group and not another.

In an effort to get better at dungeons in general, what exactly are the mechanics that make this strategy work? We were all pretty squishy, should we have been alternating reflects?

(I’m an engineer btw).

Side note: Is there a guide for basic dungeon strategies?

http://gw2dungeons.net/
There’s your guide.
As for the spider, how exactly were you guys wiping? Poison pools on the floor or just not outdpsing the web spray?

emachine, if someone was not stacking on the spider it could’ve ruined you all.

You either go out there and kill it as it was meant for or stack in the corner.

Why?

The spider won’t do the poison pools at melee range but will target that one guy away and cast the pool.

So either get to the bigger room and dodge the pools or EVERYONE stack in the corner and fight at melee (faster and easier).

Maybe that happened to you and wiped your group.

Holy cow, that site is great. Can’t believe I’ve not come across it before. I assume it was a poison pool as we all went down in a relatively short period of time. In combat awareness is probably something I should be working on because I don’t have a definitive answer for you.

Thanks for the link.

You’re welcome, if the pool was actually the reason you wiped then refer to mesket’s post. If the spider just wiped the floor with your group just using her web then it was a lack of dps/protection/regen/cleanses and healing from other sources.

emachine.2706:

Holy cow, that site is great. Can’t believe I’ve not come across it before. I assume it was a poison pool as we all went down in a relatively short period of time. In combat awareness is probably something I should be working on because I don’t have a definitive answer for you.

Thanks for the link.

This boss usually wipes groups because of the main issues why PUGs suck at stacking. The issue is that they start to take some damage. Instead of staying in place to still get boons, etc, they dodge away and try to stay out of combat. Instead of easily being ressed, the whole party now has to stop stacking and res them, or let him die.

The issues that’s even worse with the spider queen is that it targets that one range player, and spews poison. It will only do this attack when it recognizes somebody at range. I’ve been in a party before going very well stacking, some PUG gets low, then dodges backward. 3 seconds later we wipe due to poison.

Melee: Stay stacked. Don’t move, burst her down. No poison

Range: One person is recognized at range and poison attack triggers.

reflects don’t work on the spider queen by the way, only on the little ones

if you are having trouble outdpsing the spider queen the most important thing is to spam condition cleanses for the bleeds and weakness.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

reflects don’t work on the spider queen by the way, only on the little ones

if you are having trouble outdpsing the spider queen the most important thing is to spam condition cleanses for the bleeds and weakness.

Lol.

If you’re having spider problems I feel bad for you son, but I got 99 problems and the queen aint one.

I don’t think the problem is ranged or melee, the problem is moving. The spider queen sprays poison if anyone moves. If you stack to melee near the stairs and even one person moves an inch, she sprays poison and it’s pretty hopeless because there is no escape or room to dodge.
You can also range her, spread out, just do not move if you don’t want to be sprayed with poison. And don’t run to rez someone who is downed. You will both be poisoned and die. Better to let them rez themselves.
You can even have half the party melee her and one or more party members range. As long as nobody moves.

^
But then nobody can dodge, which is a bad idea, lol.

Group healing. That’s the major difference.

Ah, didn’t realize how important stacking was for that fight and how one person could mess it up. Now that I think of it I do recall seeing one member of the group hanging out on the bannister and/or gate.

^ If the boss never cast her red circle. No one mess up. You just lack the healing/defense or dps to kill fast enough.

You can try dodge into the wall condition removal for her big melee range attack. That’s what killing most pug. But that dont’ stop your teamate from dieing.

Having guardian, elementist, engineer who heal helps a bunch.

Syrenead.6327:

I don’t think the problem is ranged or melee, the problem is moving. The spider queen sprays poison if anyone moves. If you stack to melee near the stairs and even one person moves an inch, she sprays poison and it’s pretty hopeless because there is no escape or room to dodge.
You can also range her, spread out, just do not move if you don’t want to be sprayed with poison. And don’t run to rez someone who is downed. You will both be poisoned and die. Better to let them rez themselves.
You can even have half the party melee her and one or more party members range. As long as nobody moves.

Nope, I dodge into the corner. Usually on my ele. So I fire#3 into the corner, and FGS #3 into the corner.

It’s a ranged issue, not a moving issue.

Teleporting skills, mesmer phantasms or blink do not have effect on the Spider Queen spraying poison. But running around, that’s what causing her to spray poison aoe’s. Dodging in the corner might not count as moving to trigger the poison attack.

Syrenead.6327:

Teleporting skills, mesmer phantasms or blink do not have effect on the Spider Queen spraying poison. But running around, that’s what causing her to spray poison aoe’s. Dodging in the corner might not count as moving to trigger the poison attack.

“running around” aka into range distance.

Ethics.4519:

Syrenead.6327:

I don’t think the problem is ranged or melee, the problem is moving. The spider queen sprays poison if anyone moves. If you stack to melee near the stairs and even one person moves an inch, she sprays poison and it’s pretty hopeless because there is no escape or room to dodge.
You can also range her, spread out, just do not move if you don’t want to be sprayed with poison. And don’t run to rez someone who is downed. You will both be poisoned and die. Better to let them rez themselves.
You can even have half the party melee her and one or more party members range. As long as nobody moves.

Nope, I dodge into the corner. Usually on my ele. So I fire#3 into the corner, and FGS #3 into the corner.

It’s a ranged issue, not a moving issue.

^I second this. I have had times where I didn’t pay attention and ran around the corner into her, and then immediately tucked back to the corner and no poison. When I see poison it is usually caused by someone who took some damage, began moving backwards out of fear, causing the heavens to open and pour acid on us.

yeah, pretty sure that the AOE is (at least most of the time) triggered by ranged movement. I’ve accidentally dodged out of the stacking spot before, and she didn’t use the AOE.

I still donr get how anyone dies to spider boss. I routinely solo him (her?) when the rest of my party fails to stack properly and gets killed by poison.

Just watch the boss for like 30 seconds and you’ll figure out its pattern.

Dand.8231:

I still donr get how anyone dies to spider boss. I routinely solo him (her?) when the rest of my party fails to stack properly and gets killed by poison.

Just watch the boss for like 30 seconds and you’ll figure out its pattern.

I have a tendency to not pay attention in that fight since its so easy. So if a stack fails, I generally don’t notice it until I was spiked down. 12k HP is rough when pugs fail on simple things :/

Funnily that part was kind of missing from gw2dungeons. Well, it will be there… very soon.

Oxxy.7068:

^
But then nobody can dodge, which is a bad idea, lol.

Dodge into the wall

I was talking to the guy sugesting that the aoes were triggered by movement instead of range, so, no wall in place.

If your team is squishy then that ideally means berserker gear (or naked?)
Have an Ele drop Fiery Greatsword and do the old “untargeted Fiery Rush into the wall making sure you’ve got auto target turned off in options” and bam, no more DPS issues.

Dolan.3071:

If you’re team is squishy then that ideally means berserker gear (or naked?)
Have an Ele drop Fiery Greatsword and do the old “untargeted Fiery Rush into the wall making sure you’ve got auto target turned off in options” and bam, no more DPS issues.

I am team?

Oh, so exploit the FGS? Got it.

just a theory, never tried it, but I think the spider ends up in two spots, between the fences and you or stuck in the pillar. I tend to see that when it’s on the side, you’re ranged and groups tend to die. when it’s in the column, it’s almost foolproof. The kiter could go up the stairs first and drop into the stacking area once spider is through the door properly, forcing the spider to get stuck inside/behind the pillar so everyone is melee range.

Ethics.4519:

Dolan.3071:

If you’re team is squishy then that ideally means berserker gear (or naked?)
Have an Ele drop Fiery Greatsword and do the old “untargeted Fiery Rush into the wall making sure you’ve got auto target turned off in options” and bam, no more DPS issues.

I am team?

Oh, so exploit the FGS? Got it.

Oh wow that’s a shocker, fixed it!

Exploit? What are you from Define or something?

emachine.2706:

Holy cow, that site is great. Can’t believe I’ve not come across it before. I assume it was a poison pool as we all went down in a relatively short period of time. In combat awareness is probably something I should be working on because I don’t have a definitive answer for you.

Thanks for the link.

That’s why I HATE the stack…. slightest little movement and everyone else in your party Dies b/c they’re too dumb to dodge roll out of it. As sword ranger… it’s not exactly UP TO ME when I move an inch or two to the left. (also means not FGS’ing or Ursan, and I can’t use any of my Lunges for setting up Combos which kitten es me off even worse and hurts my entire potential). … Doesn’t mean I won’t stack, but I am very leery of any party who can’t beat this part W/O stacking. It can also means they need 2-4 attempts to do Hodgins Graveling Room unless I’m the one kiting adds and holding their aggro

^^^ can’t offer any advice re melee ranger (which i am quite a fan of myself, but not well versed at it). though, interestingly, if we do “fail” at Spider, most often it will take a couple more tries than not on Hodgins burrow scepter room.

I wish i had a ranger to test this out but, since esc is kittening useless in this game and i’m highly against clicking in the middle of my screen to reset my target, i usually use GS and sword #3 on my guardian while targeting the spider (which means i’ll move a bit to the back) and it never sprays her poision because of that… so i really doubt ranger autos will break the stack…. but then again i may be wrong, next time i do ac i’ll ask a friend of mine to join on his ranger and try it out.

I don’t think breaking stack affects anything, or maybe I’ve just been lucky not to trigger it. I’ve rolled out of the stack several times before (into that tiny passageway) and she has never cast the poison AOE on the party.

perhaps she has to have aggro of the person moving. I’ve only seen her cast it when the guardian/person pulling is slow and spends a while at range rather than breaking LOS. but for whatever weird kitten reason I have had fights where the queen suddenly teleports and ends up behind us and casts her poison.

At least when soloing you can move freely as long as you stay within certain range. That’s why I’m bit reluctant to believe those “Move an inch and it casts poison” posts.

‘I am the Queen Spider!’
‘Oh, someone moved a step. RELEASE THE AOE FROM HELL!’

that is how the spider works, either way DPS it back to where it came from

I find that hard to believe.

Oxxy.7068:

I wish i had a ranger to test this out but, since esc is kittening useless in this game and i’m highly against clicking in the middle of my screen to reset my target, i usually use GS and sword #3 on my guardian while targeting the spider (which means i’ll move a bit to the back) and it never sprays her poision because of that… so i really doubt ranger autos will break the stack…. but then again i may be wrong, next time i do ac i’ll ask a friend of mine to join on his ranger and try it out.

Most of the time NO, It’s not supposed to.
But if there’s even a slight desynch…. or start chain too early…

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Ethics.4519:

Syrenead.6327:

I don’t think the problem is ranged or melee, the problem is moving. The spider queen sprays poison if anyone moves. If you stack to melee near the stairs and even one person moves an inch, she sprays poison and it’s pretty hopeless because there is no escape or room to dodge.
You can also range her, spread out, just do not move if you don’t want to be sprayed with poison. And don’t run to rez someone who is downed. You will both be poisoned and die. Better to let them rez themselves.
You can even have half the party melee her and one or more party members range. As long as nobody moves.

Nope, I dodge into the corner. Usually on my ele. So I fire#3 into the corner, and FGS #3 into the corner.

It’s a ranged issue, not a moving issue.

^I second this. I have had times where I didn’t pay attention and ran around the corner into her, and then immediately tucked back to the corner and no poison. When I see poison it is usually caused by someone who took some damage, began moving backwards out of fear, causing the heavens to open and pour acid on us.

Same here, dodge into the corner if you don’t have an interrupt off CD.

For the Engie OP:

1. Heal turret for extra heal condition cleanse, learn to spam overcharge it and blast it for the extra heal quickly, or pick it up after the overcharge. 2500+ heal on a ~16 second cool down for the team if you don’t blast it, and 3600+ for the team on a ~20 second cool down if you do, plus it’kittenting you for an extra 2500.

2. Blinds don’t work incredibly on Defiant bosses, but keeping one in your rotation isn’t hard for a little extra insurance. Bomb and Grenade kit have good blinds in them, and FT #5 is OK… but try not to use it for damage, despite what the engie forum says, the damage is lacking.

3. You have a wall for the little spiders (doesn’t work on the queen) in Toss Elixir U, it will give you a smoke wall or a Wall of Reflection (suck it, guardians), both can be useful in AC on several boss fights (Kholer self-pull ftw).

4. I have NO idea about your load-out, but if you are running p/s, a very viable build for kits, don’t ever use the auto attack for anything but pulling, it is arguably the lowest damage auto-attack in the game.

5. Learn how to stack might for your team, my engineer guildie has been working on a bomb/thumper build that stacks like 12 might pretty easy on the whole team, using things he runs normally (except for thumper turret, which I love for trolling).

INB4 FT Engie Hatred… lolol