Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone.
I just completed 23 runs of Arah days ago. I have done it with static groups, random people, good folks and bad folks so I want to write a guide which helps people to do Arah. I hope you guys can find it useful.

General guide
Patience.
Communication.
Skipping the right mobs.

Which path should I take?

Path 3 > Path 2 > Path 1 > Path 4

For average players,
Path 3 takes ~1.5 hours
Path 2 takes ~2 hours
Path 1 takes ~2.5 hours
Path 4 takes ~3+ hours

Please make sure you have more than enough time when you are new/grouping with random people.

Path 3

General mobs encounter

Illusionist
It should be the first piority target to nuke down. It is melee friendly.

Mage
It should be the second piority target to nuke down.

Elementalist
It is not melee friendly unless you stay in its back. Reflection works extremely well here.

Hunter
It summons eagles. Its axe can bounce targets. Reflection is also working good here.

Gorilla
It has a melee skill to knock you down for 8 seconds.

Boss 1

Kill crasher first.
You just need to dodge the crasher’s melee skill so you won’t get one-shot. You may get killed if you fail to remove the Immobilized condition.

Path to boss 2

I want to include this bacause I find some people wanted to skip all these mobs along the path. I can do this too but it is not recommended since people used to spend more time due to fail skipping attempts.

You should kill 9 more silver mobs then you can slip through freely without aggroing any mobs along the way until you meet spiders.

The spiders can also be skipped by running through them. You just need to run to the far end until they lose their aggro. It can also be done without aggro by stealthing.

Boss 2

Some of you may already know there is a safe spot in this encounter. Otherwise, just dodge red circles.

Path to boss 3

Get some swim and kill some gorillas. Then you have to pass the ball to open the gates. Note that you catch the ball when it collides. So don’t throw it to the ground.

A new waypoint is activated after 2 gates are opened. You should teleport to the waypoint and continue.

Giganticus Lupicus

It has 3 phases.
P1: 100%-75%
P2: 75%-50%
P3: 50%-0%

Whenever it changes phase, it has a pale blue rez icon on him which grants him invulnerable.

General tactic for phase 1

Everyone should use a range weapon, stay at range and stack up.
Target priority should be Grub > Swarm > Boss.
It is very immportant to nuke down the grubs to prevent the boss to get damage stacks.

General tactic for phase 2

This phase is the hardest phase. It has 3 abilities which require you to avoid. You should stay at range and keep moving in this phase.

First ability is shadowstep with ~1 second animation. It is easy to dodge/run out of it if you have swiftness/skill. It always uses it on a particular member until he/she dies. It is important to know because you can manage rescuing other downed members.

Second ability is AoE with red circles on the ground. You should dodge/run out of it.
Please keep in mind they are projectiles and they do damage before they hit the ground sometimes.

Third ability is single-targeted shadow bolts. It seems not to be avoidable and predictable.
From my experience, sometimes I ran around and it did not hit me while sometimes did. Therefore, you should keep your HP more than 10k so that you wont be killed by one single hit.
Besides, you are most likely to be going to die with hit by this ability twice in a row if you have lost more than 2 members.

Endurance gain skills, teleport skills, damage evade skills, vigor boon, aegis boon, health regen food, endurance gain food and potions are highly recommended in this fight.

Pug tactic for phase 2

Everything is the same except you need to lure him back to the waypoint. I do not recommend this in general unless you are in a pug group.
You should have at least one person in its aggro range and sight so that it won’t get reset.
Thanks to the latest patch, it won’t go back to the arena when it reset.

General tactic for phase 3

It always chases a particular member (appears to be the most tough one). Apply cripple, chill or immobilized when it is moving can help the one who is being chased(cursed).
Most of his abilities have a red circle on the ground and can easily be dodged.
Rescuring downed members is also easy in this phase.

Path to final boss

All you need is one member to run through 3 groups of mobs and reach the chicken.
After you reach the chicken, you should keep running, jump down a cliff, avold the champoin giants and keep running to the boss.
A new waypoint will soon be activated so the rest of your party can teleport to the waypoint and proceed.

Final boss

At first, you have to capture the pillars (just like sPvP) and kite everything.
If you get many mobs aggro on you, you should kite them in the center.
You should not go to the boss’s pillar as well.
All you need is patience when someone don’t really know what to do or not doing very well.

Path 2

General mobs encounter

Deadeye
It can one-shot you when you are at range.
You should get close and it should be the first piority target to nuke down.

Inquest
It can perma stun a single target. Any interrupting skill or stability boon can help.

Other mobs
Sentinel, berserkers, etc. should be the least piority to be killed.

Boss 1

You may want to range this boss and dodge the red circles on the ground.
Melee may get killed instantly when he throws the ball.
It is a fairly easy boss.

Path to boss 2

One person get on the golem while others get the gun.
The golem can generate a shield to protect all of you along the way.
The gun is used to provide charges to the golem.
There are guns along the way for you to pick up.
Note that the shield buff can stack while the charge buff cannot.
The gorillas can do damage to you regardless the shield so you have to dodge them.

tl;dr

The golem:
You should keep pressing “1” and dodge the gorillas.

The rest:
You should target the golem and charge it whenever it does not have the charge buff
You should also dodge the gorillas with the golem.

Communication is important.
It is important to demonstrate how the golem dodges and how the charge/shield works before you run.

There will be a waypoint and a crystal sucking all the mobs at the end of the path.

Kill 3 more mobs and prepare to skip through a bunch of mobs.
You can take off your gear before the skipping.

All you need is to keep running until you run down a cliff.
It is not easy to people don’t know how to avoid Deadeye’s one-shot skill.
To avoid it, when you see red-circle animation on your feet, you dodge.
The red-circle animation is as same as the warrior’s “On my Mark!” shout.

Boss 2

There will be 3 inquests and a boss in this fight.
The inquest will drop a gun when killed.
The gun is used to deactivate the rage mode of the boss.

Path to boss 3

Nothing special.

Giganticus Lupicus

Same as every path.

Path to boss 4

Follow the torches in the swim.
The mines are detonated after 1 sec you walk over it.
If you have a memser/thief, the mobs can be skipped by stealthing.
A new waypoint will be activated behind a group of 4 mobs after the minefield.

After activating the waypoint you should slip through the mobs.

Boss 4

When she teleports to the middle, you should hide behind the crates.
You can also run very far away from her when all the crates are destryoed.
You should also kills clones as fast as possible since they do tons of damage.

If you were dead, don’t respawn because the entrance would be blocked once the fight started.

Path to final boss

Kill 6-7 groups mobs until you can slip through.
It is also funny to see the grubs hate the inquests as much as we do.

Final boss

First, you need one high dps to activate the console and get a buff so that he/she can do insane damage the boss.
This member should have no problem to take out at least 75% of the boss hp.
Once the buff on him/her ends, a second member should activate the console and damage the boss.
The rest of the group should deal with the incoming mobs.
It should be arranged before the fight.

Once the boss hit 50%, everyone should damage the boss, dodging the red circles.
Also the entrance would be blocked once the fight started.

Path 1

Path to boss 1

Kill annoying oozes, turrets and spiders to clear some space for the boss fight.

Boss 1

It is melee unfriendly.
You should keep at range and kite him.
When it hit 20%, it will split into 2 champion oozes and drop a key.
You should grab this key asap to Jotun and run back to the entrance so the oozes’ aggro can be reset.

Path to boss 2

Annoying oozes and drakes.

Boss 2

You have to kill 9 mobs under sunlight and you will get a damage stack.
The more stack you have, the more damage to you, the more damage you do.
You should get out of sunlight if you can’t take the damage anymore.

Path to boss 3

Nothing special. If there are mobs along the path, just skip them.

Boss 3

There are 4 water holes around the room. You need 1 member at each water holes to stand on it.
Once 4 water holes is plugged, the boss will come out from the center.

You should apply burning condition to the boss all the time or you will suffer from endless stun.
If your group have problem applying burning condition, you should use the whiskey.

Giganticus Lupicus

Same as every path.

Boss 4

This boss is skippable.
Everyone will skip it unless you want to spend 20 more minutes in this life-consuming dungeon.

Path to final boss

You have to deal with 2 champion spiders and a bunch of silver spiders.
Trapping skills are very useful here.

Final boss

Before the fight, everyone should find the reflecting crystals along the way.
All you have to do is reflecting the boss damage.

Path 4

You rarely see people LFG/M for path 4 because many of them cannot kill the boss, Simir.
I strongly recommend not to run this path unless you want the title.

Although Simir is killable,
but with years of gaming experience and even I was used to be the guy who studied tactics for top-rated raid guilds in WoW,
I believed Simir has serious mechanical design flaws.

I think that’s the result of the lack of PTR, lack of QA testing and awareness from the designers.

Thanks for the long reading! Happy weekend.

Good guide. You should look at adding parts to the wiki, it’s very lacking at the moment.

Nice guide, hopefully pugs will read this and stop posting on the forums about how ridiculously hard ‘’final boss’’ lupus is. The babbling about studying tactics and simin design flaws at the end seems to be a bit unnecessary, as studying tactics for a game doesn’t really say much, nor do you elaborate upon these so called design flaws.

I do like this guide, might actually attempt to pug Arah now, and I agree…Simin is just….awful. We had a pretty good, fully geared, all on ts, guild group. Made it past lupicus alright, did everything else perfectly, got to simin and it was just horrible. Once we got the sparks mechanic down, we started actually making progress, got her to 25% then the sparks just would NOT go in, and as a result, almost an hour of trial and error whittling a boss down with our not so dps centric team, she fully healed. This continued for another 2 kittening hours then we went to bed. Usually when randoms complain about a boss being too hard, we shrug it off, because they’re usually bad at the game. But this one is actually hard and takes some actual effort and rediculous coordination to pull off. I’d put it at completely undoable in a pug, unless you managed to get matched up with some pve legends which hardly happens.

I remember doing Arah runs with you while you were on AliceStormz ^^.

I like the guide, but I don’t really agree with nuking the mages second. Hunters are a little tougher to kill but they do a ton of nearly unavoidable damage (+annoying pets)

And hopefully Simir gets looked at soon

Excellent guide here Only tried path 3 and 2 with guildmates. Looks like we can do Path 1 as well.

Trick to beating simir: High DPS, 2 experienced people lure sparks, one for each side. pull simir against the left wall (your left from entering). When she goes invis you continue to dish out the damage, because she doesnt move and still takes damage in invis mode. 3 will be DPS 2 lure, constant DPS from the 3 with fast luring and one designated de-petrifier and one backup should be enough to take this boss out without much trouble.

“You rarely see people LFG/M for path 4 because many of them cannot kill the final boss, Simir.” its not the final boss and its an easy kill if you know how…

Chalice.1280:

Usually when randoms complain about a boss being too hard, we shrug it off, because they’re usually bad at the game. But this one is actually hard and takes some actual effort and rediculous coordination to pull off.

Oh, the ironing.

Path 4 is not as difficult as some people make it out to be. Yes it is much longer, but Simir can be easily handled. You need 3 high dps melee classes and preferably 2 ranged dps. I wouldn’t recommend it to most PUGs as it does take a lot of coordinating, preferably through a voice chat to call freezes and what not. Still possible though. My group was 4 friends on voice chat and a random guardian who was told what to do via chat. Warrior, Guardian and Thief as melee dps, Ele on tears + Ranged DPS, Ranger on back wisps.

Pull Simir outside the cave (By the rock and the water is a good spot) and have the 3 Dps stay on her the entire fight (Even dpsing when she is invisible as she stays in the same spot she was the after vanishing). Poison makes the fight even easier when she goes to heal. One of the Ranged should stand by the Tear just on the edge of the cave to help the melee people stay unfrozen and DPS. Also remember to prioritize getting people unfrozen over the wisps. The other ranged should just sit in the back of the cave ready to run wisps. Once you get her past certain percentages she doesn’t try to heal to full again.

After her there is also one more boss, the final boss is a combination of all bosses fought up until that point. Make sure to kill the wraiths and dodge fire and the fight is easy. It’s also a super short run back if you die and way point.

I managed to do Simir with a pug yesterday without any bug after some time. We cornered her into the wall in the cave and had two designated spark catchers. The others would aoe the place she goes invis because she still takes damage (you don’t see damage numbers, but she is just INVISIBLE). As a Necro, I also utilized all my poison for a total of 20s~ -33% healing to the boss giving the spark team some time to do everything properly. The group at the corner with the boss wouldnt move an inc in case we could aggro the boss.

Our party consisted of a guardian, necro, mesmer, elementalist and a ranger. The ranger and mesmer dealt with the sparks, I pumped out a lot of regen to our front-line and went full dps with double dagger (+ the poison) and the elementalist provided great aoe for when she went invis. One of the biggest factors was probably time warp from the mesmer though, once you get a good timing after the first time she goes invis you can go full dps and blow your cooldowns with 10s of quickness. It was challenging but it is 100% doable. Probably will get nerfed though or some QoL-changes to the sparks because they mess up a lot.