Guild Wars 2

Does anyone know how to beat Leurent and the three nightmare court knights on TA explore F/F without exploiting their leashing mechanic to pull them one at a time? Every group I do this path with use the leashing trick, but I’m wondering if there’s a way to actually do this fight legitimately. A straight up encounter seems suicidal, since even one hit from one of the knights is pretty much game over unless you have something to counter knockdown, and there’s no close by waypoints so you can’t just zerg the encounter.

If pulling wasn’t a legitimate tactic then there wouldn’t be skills specifically for that purpose.

I did it the other day with a decent group. I don’t remember our exact composition but I do remember the two key elements that we used to get through without a problem.

We had a level 80 guardian (me) in near-full exotic armor that was repeatedly stacking aegis to block attacks and using a breakstun to get out of the knockdowns by the knights. I would go down a lot, but people would be able to res me and I would get up and keep tanking.

Secondly, and more importantly, we had a trap ranger. The trap ranger would just drop traps all over the place, namely spike and ice traps, and megaslow all the knights. Their cooldowns took forever to recharge and they were left default attacking us instead of using their mega-cool instakill knockdown combo. We had enough DPS that we were able to take down all three knights plus Laurent without anyone dying and without having to de-aggro any of them.

It was the first and only time I’ve been in a group that could do it straight-up (which is sad on ANet’s part), but it worked.

tl;dr: Stack chills and have a Guardian with tons of aegis.

A Stun breaker and good stats. Stability is always a plus too. Ive noticed people dont every modify their traits abilities + skills mid battle typically, they really should to maximize efficiency and survivability.

CC is the way to go, chills, immobilize, fear, blind, daze, stun, even moa. Skills like plague, well of darkness, glyph of storm in earth attunement, etcetera, etcetera. Also, dodges. Done it few times with firsttimers so it can’t be that hard if you use that thing between your ears. And swapping major traits before boss fights (even trash) is actually using that thing.

I don’t know why you called it “exploiting leashing”, you use the term “exploit” so loosely. I’ve always known it as “pulling” and it’s not and exploit, it’s a tactic and in many MMO’s it’s a skill that players should master.

It’s exploiting their weak AI not to follow normal group aggro rules. That’s…just what it is. It doesn’t have to be a bannable offence, or even a ban-deserving offence, it’s not a prescriptive statement, just an accurate description of the tactic.

On the topic of avoiding it, one thing that ties into what StevieMJH said that he didn’t cover is that for some mobs like knights, crippling/chilling actually wrecks their leap range too, since it’s apparently coded as a sprint or something (likewise I would expect them to get stuck on ele staff air 5, but didn’t test.) So that helps a LOT, quite apart from the CDR reduction and kiting ability.