Guild Wars 2

OK So, Just went into my first explorable mode tonight. I did Crucible of Eternity, and the Submarine Path.

Most of the dungeon was fine. We muddled through the crazy laser puzzle, and the bit with the security systems and waves of golems. We figured out the big Icebrood guy like he was nothing.

But Subject Alpha…is there a mechanic we’re missing?

The first time we encountered him was tough, but fair.

The second time (when he starts dropping crystals) was incredibly aggravating.

The third time (final encounter) took more time that the rest of the entire dungeon combined. We all died a dozen times or more, and at least 3 full wipes. Our makeup was 2 GS warriors, A staff Ele, Myself (Staff/sword_pistol Mesmer), and a Ranger. Points that I want to make:

1) This guy’s health and armor were immense. It took forever to whittle anything from him.
2) The crystals he drops: They can be killed by a warrior or two dropping 100 blades. But nothing shirt of massive burst will do it. And you have about 2-3 seconds to get the person out or they die. I get the tactic but unless you have a couple of high burst characters in range the moment the crystal appears, that player is dead.
3) There is almost no “tell” on the ground wave attack.

The only way we killed him was eventually he bugged out somehow and stopped attacking us when he was at 50% left.. We we burned him down from there.

My suggestions are simple. Please consider reducing his health/armor (or something..he all but ignored condition damage). Regarding the crystals, either give us an extra second or two to whittle them down or lower the health a little. 25% would be enough. As it stands only a very specific build of character that happens to be in the right place when it happens has any chance of breaking out.

Or, was there some other mechanic we should have been using? Some trying, like leading him into something or..I don’t know…This was the only fight in this path that could only be completed by zerging, and I feel like there should have been something more to it. Did I miss something?

True, CoE is harder than most dungeons, but that’s what make it fun. The thing about CoE’s Alpha is that you always have to be on your toes with him. You slack off and you die.

It’s not just about the teamwork, although teamwork does play an important role in defeating Alpha, but it’s also about knowing the game mechanics when dealing with him. For example you can use the tentacles to rally yourself if you’re down like 50% of the time. Some skills can break you out of snare, I play a thief, so I use shadowstep to break out of snare. In part 2 and 3, he spam quite a lot of circles, you don’t have to dodge out of the circle to evade it, you just need right timing and you will be able to dodge within the circles itself., as dodging gives you like 1 sec of invisibility.

Those are just some examples, you just need practice, that is all. You can’t expect to run a dungeon the first time and expect it to be easy. This isn’t like CoF, which, in my opinion, broke people’s expectation on GW2’s dungeon difficulties. I’ve ran CoE numerous times and I kite Alpha with only like 2 deaths, and that’s only because I also provide support for my teammates whom are dying like crazy. Last night run alone, me and another experienced thief was kiting him like 90% of the time while the other 3 ran back and forth from the way-point, both of us have full glass canon build. Although there are a few things I found broken with this dungeon, which hopefully the devs will pick up on:
1. The unpredictability of part 1 Alpha’s ground spikes. It happen way too quickly and there is no way to dodge the spikes. Which I think is unreasonable and is a bug. With a fatal skill like that, we should at least be able to dodge it one way or another.
2. The lack of waypoints in the dungeons. The last Alpha encounter is pretty tough, and people will die quite frequently, it’s a pain running back from a waypoint that’s in the middle of dungeon. Sometimes, if there’s a wipe out, Alpha will reset himself because it takes too long to run back to keep him aggro.
3. The size of the room of the last encounter is simply too small. I mean come on, with a boss that spam aoe like crazy, at least give us some room to run. It’s like you’re jamming 5 of us and an insane guy in a cramp room for the last encounter.

Well, what I’m trying to say is, you can’t just expect a dungeon to be easy. To be good at something, you gotta practice at it. If you keep running CoE for like a week, trust me, you will think CoE is quite a fun dungeon to run, way better than CoF.

I’ve only been doing CoE explorable so I don’t know how other explorable modes compare but.. alpha does seem easiest on the submarine path. The key is to have everyone get in close, even if they are ranged. That way, everyone can rez someone who has fallen, break cystals ect, it’s all right there if you bunch up.

Plus keep in mind that you don’t need to panic when you see red circles. More imporantly you don’t need to dodge out of the cicles to avoid the attacks. You just need to dodge when the attack is about to go off but you can still be instead the mass circles, and should more often than not in this dungeon. Just dodge into the guy and keep wailing away.

Also if you have stability on yourself he can’t put you in the crystals and if you are thief, steal takes you out of the crystals. Hope all that helps.

Normally I’m not on this side of the argument but if you think that Subject Alpha’s health are armor are too high then your dps is the problem. Look at it in reference to every other boss in every other instance, he’s very much on par with almost all of them (save for the drake and last boss in CoF3 which need better attacks and less health respectively). Hell, the only attacks that Alpha has that are even a threat is the bullkitten earthspike wave attack that can’t be reasonably dodged.

They already made the “trash mobs” significant easier, hence to the 1st October patch note, so bashing through them shouldn’t be a problem at all. On the part with the subject alpha, I do think he is perfect as he should be. He reminds me of a super version dagger/dagger elementalist. What it really does miss is the the tweaks. A report of subject alpha going idle has already been summited, and is noted by the development team. I also think they’re going to look through the entire Subject Alpha, with both bug fixes and balancing.

I’ve also read a post that their monitoring their dungeons. Meaning that they will be looking close at these cases, as it both effect the fun in dungeon and eventually the economy (hence the drops you get)

Beside all these things… I’d like to ask some questions about your setup as these have a significant role to play.
1. What weapon did you choose? (A weapon that provides heavy damage/ movement ability/a mix of both)
2. What are the conditions being applied? (Are someone stacking vurnability? Is some someone buffing you with might? Is someone dishing out heavy damage over time condition?)
3. What tactics are you guys running? (Should we kite the boss? Should we camp the boss at spot? Combo finisher… do not forget the outcome)
4. Is anyone using nutrition? (Food that helps you deal more damage? Food that benefits you in other stats?)
These are just few key question that may be asked before approaching a dungeon.

Oh I also forgot to add the 5th…

Consider what armor YOU are wearing… If you wear full glasscannon you know the outcome…

2 GS warriors vs Subject Alpha? That makes it sound like disaster was the only possible outcome.

Did all three paths yesterday and i must say that all last bosses should be tough as alpha…
Its simple fight where u need to keep vigor buff at all times so u dont run out of endurance for dodge…So mechanic is dodge his massive aoe dmg and break your friends out of crystals or hes dead instantly.Above that u should kill that little slugs that he spaws which heal him for % of hp…Immobilize works on on them.

1. What weapon did you choose? (A weapon that provides heavy damage/ movement ability/a mix of both)
2. What are the conditions being applied? (Are someone stacking vurnability? Is some someone buffing you with might? Is someone dishing out heavy damage over time condition?)
3. What tactics are you guys running? (Should we kite the boss? Should we camp the boss at spot? Combo finisher… do not forget the outcome)
4. Is anyone using nutrition? (Food that helps you deal more damage? Food that benefits you in other stats?)

1. I was sword+pistol and staff. Sword is a pretty decent hitter, and pistol’s #4 does impressive damage. Staff provides good support and conditions. Later I swapped staff for GS for heavier straight damage against the crystals, but it still didn’t help much.
2. We had 2 people stacking vuln, I had bleeds on him almost constantly. There was some poison and burning being applied as well, not much
3. We were doing our best to kite him. The ground wave attacks come so quickittenhat you often didn’t get time to evade them in melee. We did have some combos going out..mostly fire aura, chaos armor, and confusion bolts thanks to yours truly.
4. We were all using food…I had +vit +health regen
5. My armor’s kinda glassy, but I didn’t think damage incoming was the real problem.

My major concern was that there was no time to kill the crystals. You had maybe 2-3 seconds, maybe not even that. unless some massive burst hit them they couldn’t be killed before he dropped a dragon fang on the player, which would down them 100% of the time. Any attempt at rezzing the player would result in him flooding the entire area with dragon fangs, at which point we could either run away or risk the rezzer dying too.

The slugs were hardly an issue, nor the tentacles…the only part I really had issue with was the crystals. I just think another 1-2 seconds should be given before he gibs people.

If you can it helps to bring a teleport skill to get out of the crystals.

You know, I wrote a guide on how to deal with Subject Alpha, outlining pretty much all his mechanics and a lot of tricks, in this very section. Two hours later, you created a topic asking about how his mechanics work.

Does not compute.

Alpha HP and DPS are not fair enough to a light armor build. It took us 4 hours just to finish path 1 you know? There has to be a balance issue to be fix here seriously I feel like I lost alot of silver today just because of this stupid dungeon :P and the rewards system sure sucks so badly…

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

You know, I wrote a guide on how to deal with Subject Alpha, outlining pretty much all his mechanics and a lot of tricks, in this very section. Two hours later, you created a topic asking about how his mechanics work.

Does not compute.

Please link the thread. I want to see!

As an Engineer, I have no problem whatsoever dodging Subject Alpha’s attacks. However, he uses the Crystal Prison attack which makes me a sitting duck to his next skill!

Any advice?

First thing, you learned the encounter, you may not have it mastered, but you learned it. That alone makes you far more valuable than any specific profession on this run.

Second, in order to do this dungeon with ease and finesse you NEED group members who know what they’re doing and can communicate. Alpha’s earth attacks are brutal, but if your team can pop AoE heals while keeping the damage up on the boss all his attacks can be completely mitigated.

Crystals, as an ele you get a free ride on this one. Crystals pose much less of a problem if you have 4 on top of Alpha. If one get crystals that leaves 3 in immediate range to bust him out. Your frost bow #4 has a short cast time and can nearly drop a crystal in 1 cast. Lightning flash is a quick trip back into the fight.

When you see greenish-yellow globs fly from his body, wait a second then have your team lay down heavy AoEs. That’s when he is summoning his essences. They travel at kitten near Mach speed to reach alpha, but AoE slows and cripples work wonders. Each one you kill keeps Alpha stunned for a bit, so lay on the murder.

Edit: Also if one person marks and damages a tendril near Alpha, if a member goes down all they have to do is hit ‘t’ and attack. Mostly I die when I can’t find a tendril to rally off of, so this saves valuable time.

Double Edit: My b, I thought you were the Ele. Advise your ele about what I said, and tell him to run scepter-dagger and trait for endurance. The Fire #3 on scepter gives 5s of Vigor when the Phoenix returns. I never run out of endurance unless things get super hectic and I mess up.

Trick to the fight on sub pass is simply hug the boss.

When someone is crystalled? everyone do some aoes and it’s done.

Whoever gets aggro turns him away, tanks for a few seconds, and when they are down, rez them up. Should be easy so long as you are all in melee range.

Simplest boss in the game IMO. Btw, his dragons teeth and spikes cannot hit you if you are within melee range.

Yeah. Subject Alpha is way too hard.

In all seriousness, did your group even try to stop playing the “range and kite” game? There are definitely lots of options for this fight, melee being the easiest.