Guild Wars 2

So I was looking for something to do yesterday, and figured, wth, I’ll go start up p4 and see how far I can get.

Champ Knight + Balthazar were easy enough, got both on the first try. But I ended up stopping at Melandru, because, well…you know…Melandru x_x

Ofc the boss isn’t a problem, it’s the gorillas. I tried clearing them out, but they seem to just respawn so that there are always 3. I imagine that this would be super trivial to duo, so long as one person kites gorillas while the other AFKills the priest. But for solo, how do people deal with the gorillas?

I saw Joey and Purple’s videos where they do some trick with Randall to get the gorillas to get stuck away from the priest, but I haven’t been able to replicate it. All I could tell is that they kill Randall by the hoppable pillar stones, but I couldn’t get it to work. And Purple said it didn’t really work consistently, anyway. Can someone explain this (or some other) technique in a bit more detail?

Anyone have a trick for this? I’m aware that mountain goats can make it past this boss, but I’d rather figure out some semi-legit way to solo him.

In the few instances where I soloed/low-manned p4, I did what Purple does. Yes, it doesn’t work all the time but offering yourself as tribute for the gorillas while standing on those rocks there seems to work often enough; sadly not all the time.
I personally don’t really see another way to do this as you can’t even kite the whole time, too much immobilize. If someone finds/knows a way though, I’d like to hear it.

Every time I tried all three of them just went back to roaming once me & Ran the Man died. Is the trick to die while on the pillar?

dlonie.6547:

Every time I tried all three of them just went back to roaming once me & Ran the Man died. Is the trick to die while on the pillar?

This certainly helps for me, but it still isn’t a guaranteed “you gorilla are going to stay between the pillars and the rocks”. The game may “port” you down when dying on the pillar, that doesn’t seem to change anything though.

I’ll try to explain what I know.

First of all the gorillas can change their leash point at a variety of locations and actually a lot of mobs in Arah can and do if you haven’t noticed. Do you remember any time you’ve done Arah P1 and saw tons of elite oozes or orrian drakes not leashing and just littering the area with the crystallines? Or perhaps on the way from Korga to the last encounter some of the spiders just stayed still without returning?

For some reason it’s certain mob types that tend to be susceptible to this and while it may be an AI bug, we don’t really know. Generally speaking what works for me is that when I’m on that pillar, a flora will spawn and once it starts immobilising me while I’m on it, it moves me down next to it and I think what might have to do with it is that the gorillas still detect me on the pillar above after I’m dead. I’m not certain of this, but it could be. Also something else I’ve noticed is that depending on where I die, Randall will move/teleport to a specific location relative to the position my body is in. In the case of the pillar, he moves directly on top of me. Sometimes if Randall doesn’t die in a very specific spot, the gorillas will not leash.

I’ve found that when I’m not the only person in the party, this tactic doesn’t work unless everyone in the party wipes the exact same spot as me.

I’ve also found that sometimes even from the spot I’m ranging in, one of the gorillas will just randomly aggro at some point in the fight. No idea why but it’s really f’n annoying.

Anywho if you want to see what I do for Melandru soloing just watch me stream it sometime and it will be really easy to replicate. I can also show you the fastest warrior solo DPS tactic on it. I still have wanted to try to do a sub-2 hour Arah P4 solo without exploiting Simin (friend helping me with luring sparks but not attacking boss) on video. It’s a goal of mine so if you want, let me know if you’re ever watching and I’ll gladly do it!

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I give this a shot next time I have a nice chunk of time to kill. A huge part of my problem was that I was being too impatient to wait for the gorillas to wander away from the rocks, and they usually downed me before I could climb up >.< I really should go buy some stealth kits for my warr…

I usually don’t watch live streams while they’re actually live (come to think of it — impatience again, I like to skip around in videos :-P), but I’ll keep an eye on your channel. Sub 2 hour? Honestly I’m amazed any time I see someone solo Grenth. That alone is probably the most impressive feat in a p4 solo to me :-)

I tried again last night and got the gorillas to stick by the rocks on the first try :-) They would randomly aggro during the fight, though. I didn’t have the longbow range trait unlocked, I’ll try again with that next time.

I ended up pulling in some guildies to three-man the rest. We kept trying to clear the trees and never really doing any significant damage to the boss. Luckily one of the guildies came on mes and we let the duelists kill the priest while the mes and I cleared trees and the other warrior kited gorillas (they still aggroed :/). Made me wonder how anyone could solo it since the trees have high enough HP and low enough respawn rates that it takes too much time to clear them.

I rewatched the video and noticed that you don’t actually clear them, but let them all spawn in a small area and then go away from them a bit. I’ll try that next time, too.

The rest of the trio was smooth, though the northern sparks sometimes lost aggro at simins and had to be pulled twice O.o

We got the bloodstone to 5% and listed on the LFG for 18g. Had a very nice buyer join and shoot the kitten while we waited for a fifth. Fifth joins, some kittenbag who didn’t read the LFG.

I go to kick.

I’ve been in this dungeon for about 6 hours at this point. I misclick — “Leave Party” by accident.

Cursed shore loading screen.

mfw

The journey is the reward.

True true! Fortunately I’ve been playing long enough that I really don’t give 2 kitties about the 15g, but I did feel pretty terrible for my two guildies that helped me :-( It was the first time low manning it for all three of us, and kitten , it was a lot of fun!

I forgive you.
Was fun : )

Next time will be better! :^)

Managed to solo him last night \o/ EZPZ with the long bow traits. I went 6/0/4/4/0 and the extra healing let me completely ignore the poison. Good stuff. Now to figure out lyssa

Most annoying thing for me @Melandru now are the kitten ed roots — they seem to prevent autoattack from working >.<

You mention a faster warr DPS tactic — does it still use longbow?

dlonie.6547:

Managed to solo him last night \o/ EZPZ with the long bow traits. I went 6/0/4/4/0 and the extra healing let me completely ignore the poison. Good stuff. Now to figure out lyssa

Most annoying thing for me now are the kitten ed roots — they seem to prevent autoattack from working >.<

You mention a faster warr DPS tactic — does it still use longbow?

Farkittens “kite her around the statue, LoS her clones when they appear, 100b and then shake it off, repeat”. At least that’s what worked for me.

//They did not just censore that.

I’m [Mind Wrack]ing trying to figure out what just got kitkat’d there…

That’s more or less what I was trying, but I need to fail a few more times to learn the timings/patterns, I think. That, and I seem to panic occasionally and forget that dodging procs confusion damage >.<

At least it’s easy to rally off her clones/illusions

dlonie.6547:

I’m [Mind Wrack]ing trying to figure out what just got kitkat’d there…

That’s more or less what I was trying, but I need to fail a few more times to learn the timings/patterns, I think. That, and I seem to panic occasionally and forget that dodging procs confusion damage >.<

At least it’s easy to rally off her clones/illusions

Take the first and fourth letter of my username, add an z.

farnaz? O.o

dlonie.6547:

farnaz? O.o

Yep.

//oh I just saw why it was censored. The word after “Farnaz” was “is”. Go figure.

Because you wrote farnaz (sounds like eye) XD

Aaaaaaah ha. Got it. That was a tough one, I’m usually pretty good at “name that kitty”.

Farnaz…

Ouch. I’mma be here a while….

How many hours did it take to get the hang of her?

I think I tried for 2-3 hours before I finally killed her.

For Farnaz/Lyssa, I think this is the fastest solo I have of her if you’re still trying.
http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4394006
I lag out for a few seconds a few times in this, you’ll notice it a little after 1:40 when I’m like “wtf” because everything freezes for a few seconds so I run away and block with shield randomly.

Shield isn’t necessary but it’s not like any other offhands really help here anyways. Sword could’ve worked but I think what stopped me from using it is that I wasn’t sure whether or not retaliating from the block would count as another attack and cause me to take confusion damage.

Either way, let me know if you have any questions about it.

As for Melandru, I use the traits 65003 and I swap forceful greatsword for crack shot. The rotation that I use is with both rifle+longbow. You do rifle #3, then autoattack 3 times after and weapon swap to longbow. Since all longbow skills have nearly the same cast time, I do exactly 5 attacks with the longbow before swapping back to rifle. The opening attack with longbow is always #3, then I will do either 4 autoattacks or 3 autoattacks + pin down. If pin down is on cooldown then just replace it with an autoattack.

So it’s like this:

Rifle3 > Rifle AA > Rifle AA > Rifle AA > [swap] > Longbow3 > Longbow AA > Longbow AA > Longbow AA > Longbow AA

Replace one of the Longbow AA’s with Pin Down whenever it’s off cooldown, and if you’re planting a banner or activating signet of range then remove one of the longbow attacks since the cast time for these is similar. For example, if I was on longbow and activate SoR then I’d do only 4 attacks total before swapping back to rifle that time instead of the normal 5.

Hopefully this will make sense, because it’s a little weird to type.

Ah, I might be able to give that a try now that I’ve gotten better with the gorillas. The dual ranged approach sounds interesting, and certainly more entertaining than the LB AA AFK fest. I’ve been throwing in LB 5 as well to keep bleeding uptime up, although I supposed the crits probably keep him covered enough for the trait.

I like that LOS spot in the Farnaz video. I’ve just been using the round pillar behind her, and the camera is driving me crazy.

The problem with the round pillar behind her is that it’s absolute trash for a greatsword, but perfect for axe. Unfortunately, the axe chain will get you murdered with 25 stacks of confusion so it’s safer to begin a 100b chain as it counts as a single attack so you won’t take the confusion damage.

The pillar that I begin the fight in is ideal for dealing the most damage and wonderful for greatsword but makes it exceedingly dangerous if you happen to get RNG’d and turned into a god kitten kittening bird right when the clones spawn.

Purple Miku.7032:

The problem with the round pillar behind her is that it’s absolute trash for a greatsword, but perfect for axe. Unfortunately, the axe chain will get you murdered with 25 stacks of confusion so it’s safer to begin a 100b chain as it counts as a single attack so you won’t take the confusion damage.

The pillar that I begin the fight in is ideal for dealing the most damage and wonderful for greatsword but makes it exceedingly dangerous if you happen to get RNG’d and turned into a god kitten kittening bird right when the clones spawn.

Gah, you make it look too easy :-P Yeah, the moa attack is incredibly frustrating solo. I ended up duoing her because I can barely scratch her before I screw something up, usually mistiming a condition removal >.< I spent a lot of those attempts just focusing on surviving, so didn’t We played around with a couple classes and having a mesmer around really helped, the reflections gave some nice breathing room. I’ll keep at it, though.

The dual ranged setup at Melandru worked pretty well. I haven’t done it enough times to notice the speedup, but it was at least less AFK-y :-)