Guild Wars 2

Im currently farming for sunrise, and I need lodestones for that, best places are pretty much fractals, the forge, and coe chests. I pretty much run this dungeon every day, and notice a lot of people struggle with it, or flat out refuse to do it because it is too hard, so maybe this will help a little, this is my tactic to conquer the inquest. I play full glass dps mesmer btw

The start
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You fight ice elemtals and wolves, the ice elementals will do a short range aoe ice blast that will 1shot most classes, if you melee it, dodge when it starts, its damage lags by about 2 seconds from the animation, its prefered to range.

Something to keep in mind for all paths, Subject alpha will always do a pboae burning, in addition to his path specific mechanic. On his second and third fights he will spawn undead tendrils. These are EXCELLENT rally tools for when someone goes down. He also imprisons 1 player from time to time. Teleports will remove you from the prison, power based damage is required to break them. At first oppurtunity break free someone stuck in a crystal. On the last fight essences will spawn, and he eats them to heal a small amount, they have a bit too much HP to kill before they get to him because of how fast they move, so just deal with it and dps him harder. If someone goes down during an alpha fight, its less than 50% chance that you can res them because of how fast the aoe comes. Any blocks or invulnerabilities make this fight that much more easy

Turret Golem:
The golem is common to all fights, he is a spank and spank boss, no special tactic is required. The turrets will give him boons, it is recommended that you kill protection and retaliation (if you have enough dmg, else just protection) when they respawn. Ranged dps can dps without fear of taking dmg (except from retaliation) by standing behind the thing just to the left of the doorway. Reflects own this boss.

Path 1
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Subject Alpha:
P1 Alpha fights by dropping a dragon tooth aoe, and then a room aoe in a directional cone.
The dragon tooth is easily avoidable, walk out of it.
The cone is more difficult, I feel its animation is too fast, however it is 100% avoidable, here is the trick, after he casts dragon tooth, he will face his cone target (dragon tooth takes 2 seconds to finish). After dragon tooth finishes, if he is facing you, count to 2, on 2 dodge either sideways, or towards him. It is easiest to accomplish this when everyone spreads out a little or stands on a different side of him.

Hacking the security console:
An endless supply of bombs will appear and explode in your face, they take two or three hits to kill, just kill them while the hacker works.
Have the person with the least power based damage be the hacker.
Everytime a security layer is hacked, 3 golems will appear, kill them before you hack another layer, or you will have to deal with 3 more, and it can quickly get out of hand, this approach is safer than the other approaches ive seen, commonly groups want 4 people to run around like chickens and try to hold agro on the golems and bombs while one person hacks, and it fails quite often resulting in massive gear damage.

Bjarl:
Spank fight, let him charge into a pillar to remove his armor, then dps

Path 2:
Subject Alpha:
In path 2 the alpha fight is a dragon tooth, and a roomwide aoe. You have enough time to walk out of the roomwide aoe if you start exactly when it starts, else just use one dodge, probably the easiest of the alpha fights.

Path 2 and 3 share a explode a door encounter, bombs spawn and 2 golems spawn, ignore the golems and kill the bombs. After the door is gone, the only potential downfall is the abomination, he builds frenzy anytime he hits something so dont get hit.

Husk fight:
This is probably my favorite encounter in the game. Have 1 person continously clear blossoms and thorns. The other 4 people grab the guns, and subvert the golems into going and exploding on the husk, this works 10% of the time. So stand on different sides of the husks platform (not on it), when the golems come and stand next to you to explode, use the #2 skill on the gun and push him into the Husk.

Path 3:
Subject alpha: This alpha has both the cone aoe and the room aoe, if you push him into a wall you can stack on top of him and take little to no damage, just have one person be a dodger as insurance in case he moves a little and the people stack on top die.

Destroyer: This fight imo needs some changes from anet, its a stupid fight because its mechanic is NEAT!!! but refreshes to fast. So instead here is a method that tries to bypass the mechanic a little bit
3 people from the group (with the least ranged dps) will activate the turrets at the same time.
2 people with high ranged dps will stand on the destroyers platform JUST outside the shield range, the shield WILL knock you into a fiery death, so be careful. There is enough room to run back and forth out of the dragon tooths he will cast on them. When shield goes down dps (he fire shields himself so bring a heal/condition removal)
This fight takes about 10 minutes because you only have 2 people attacking.
The destroyer also never moves.

What anet SHOULD change about this fight is
1) change the floor from lava, into a floor that is only lava when the shield is up, while shield is down the floor becomes cooled stone you can walk on and only take reduced damage over time, and not super burn, no safe zones for someone to stand while the shield is up
2) Have the shield be down for 1 minute, not 10 seconds,giving everyone time to come down and dps, warning 15 seconds, 10 seconds, and 5 seconds prior to the shield via some flashy animation.
3) Have the destroyer move around while the shield is down, and when it goes back up he goes back to his shield
4) More smaller platforms to jump down to the boss, closer together, or more stairs to get up out of the pit that are all close to a lasergun. As it is now the stairs are the ONLY way up if you are in combat.

CoE is my favourite dungeon, especially path 2 fights against Alpha. Definitely one of the most fun fight in the game, in my opinion.

One interesting thing to note about Alpha’s giant AoE, is that if you time your dodge correctly, you can dodge while inside the AoE. As in, you don’t have to dodge outside of the circle to survive.

Thanks for your guide. I hope it’ll bring more people to CoE!

Path 1 has the easiest Alpha. Everyone get in melee range and laugh as he attacks you with a low dps fire AoE.

Path Alpha 3 does not do a PBAoE burning. That is only attached to p1/2 with Dragon’s Tooth.

Alpha cone attack (p1/3) can be avoided by standing inside his body. Hitbox for move starts about whatever his arms length is away from his body.

You do not have to walk out of the rings if he is using the earth ring version on you. Center is safe zone. If there is mist in the air, it’s ice version, and only the center circle is a damage zone. He will always target one person with ice version until they die complete/go out of range.

Easiest and fastest way to kill him by far is to have all 5 stack and melee. Switch off on condition removals if in p1/2 to remove burning (Warrior with 3x shout + soldier runes + warhorn + warhorn trait can do this solo with 100% burning removal, every time). Dragon’s Tooth does not get summoned on people in melee range. Dodge roll in p2/3whenever mass circles comes up and ice appears (which it will appear under everyone stacked if all 5 stacked). Everyone stands inside him when he cones in p1/3. Crystals will break easily from natural melee AoE.

Mark T buffs can be reflected/negated with projectile interfering skills so that he never receives them. Can also be stripped. Also can be interrupted at will to cancel spins. If you melee, you can keep hitting him while he spins by standing behind him. Picks one person to aggro for the entire fight until they die/go out of range.

Bjarl does not have unshakable. After he runs into a pillar and attacks twice or so, stagger your CCs to extend the time it takes for him to reapply armor. You can greatly decrease the amount of time it takes to kill him with a small bit of coordination.

You only need 2 people with rifles to get 100% of golems to walk into husk. Use subvert skill after the golems have walked off the initial platform and right when they stop walking. Alternatively, just aggro them close to the boss platform and use #2 skill to butt them in. You can use any normal knockback to do the same, too.

If you have swiftness, you can easily jump back up the red platforms, even while in combat.

I’d like to add that if you have a mesmer in your group for the turret golem, tell them to use either 1h sword (auto attack) or phantasmal disenchanter (or even both) for constant boon stripping. Makes it so you don’t have to kill the turrets at all and everybody can just dps the golem and make the fight very short.

Jaqen Hghar.4625:

I’d like to add that if you have a mesmer in your group for the turret golem, tell them to use either 1h sword (auto attack) or phantasmal disenchanter (or even both) for constant boon stripping. Makes it so you don’t have to kill the turrets at all and everybody can just dps the golem and make the fight very short.

Actually im a mesmer, and i take shatters strip boons

A couple pro tips:

Path 1 – Hacking the security console:
Have 2 people hack the console and destroy those 2 waves of golems at the same time. Then have 3 people hack and you can either run to the next fight or destroy the rest of the golems with out the bombs spawning.

The people who are not hacking just need to do aoe or cone damage around where the console is. The bomb guys die quick and you don’t have to run around like headless chickens.

Path 3 – Destroyer:
3 people hit the lasers and everyone jump down to the boss and dps burst damage. Having a mesmer for group quickness makes this fight a breeze. Go back up the stairs when you start to see the fire shield appearing and repeat. Should take only 4-5 rounds or less depending on dps and if no ones dies. This seems to be a higher skill fight if you don’t want to do it the boring way.

If you can use group swiftness (or just have whoever uses the turrets use swiftness on themselves), you can just jump back up the red platforms rather than take the stairs. It’s a lot faster to do so that way. I wouldn’t jump back up the platforms without swiftness and while in combat, though.

good additional t ips people! CoE is easily one of my favourite dungeons, mechanic wise.D a few more from my side:

Alpha fights (P2/3):

• i think someone mentioned this already, but in case it was missed. for Alpha’s mega AoE attacks, you just need to all dodge for an invincibility frame. nothing like everyone stacking and dodging all in sync. it’s a sight. especially for a PUG hehe – just know that the attack happens after a short delay after you see the red circles

Path 1 – Hacking:

• i would recommend 2 —> 3 hackers as well and take care of the 6 golem’s at once. i’ve seen in Strife’s videos that they LoS the golems outside of the room so they’re all bunched up and just AoE them down
• a lot of my guildies and pugs i’ve run with prefer doing it 1 —> 4 so they deal with less golems. however, for the 4 people hacking, you need a REALLY capable person to be able to AoE / cleave all the golems so the 4 can get the hack done in time

Path 2 – Husk boss:

• good you noted to spread out! if your group is not careful, and you use #1 to guide the bomb golems or #2 to knock them into the Husk, if your allies are for whatever reason nearby and they get hit, it can get pretty tough to have to res them.
• during one PUG, one of them was like, “wanna let me solo this boss?” we’ve all done it before cept one guy, and he didn’t mind either, so we watched this guy just run around the husk boss’ platform in circles, with waves of bomb golems chasing him and they just kept blowing up the boss. he had to heal, protect, block, etc to negate dmg but it was done pretty easily. after the boss was down to health, we told the new guy to try out the plasma cannons so he would know what to do enxt time. just an alternative. i love this fight too, so i’d usually wanna jump in but was tempted to see. so this is a workaround as well lol if you don’t have the group dynamics for whatever reason.

Path 3 – Destroyer boss:

• if you’re in a PUG, for the first few times firing the laser, make sure you guys get the timing done. ime, it usually takes a couple sessions to ensure we’re all on the same page. after that, the 3 on the canons can start to jump down as well. use the platforms if you can (it’s easily doable without swiftness as well, but definitely helps!) one thing to watch out for is the knockback AoEs from the Destroyer. now with increased range. so use your blocks when you can or dodgerolling on the platforms can be tough, but can be done. prefer blocks though.

I’ve been spamming COE since weeks, it’s by far easier and less annoying than HOTW and Arah, and the rewards are way better, since Charged Lodestone / Core drops there.

I’m farming for Bolt and since I only need Charged, this place is quite imba, i hope people spam it more often so its price drops down

akamon.2769:

good additional t ips people! CoE is easily one of my favourite dungeons, mechanic wise.D a few more from my side:

Path 2 – Husk boss:

• during one PUG, one of them was like, “wanna let me solo this boss?” we’ve all done it before cept one guy, and he didn’t mind either, so we watched this guy just run around the husk boss’ platform in circles, with waves of bomb golems chasing him and they just kept blowing up the boss. he had to heal, protect, block, etc to negate dmg but it was done pretty easily. after the boss was down to health, we told the new guy to try out the plasma cannons so he would know what to do enxt time. just an alternative. i love this fight too, so i’d usually wanna jump in but was tempted to see. so this is a workaround as well lol if you don’t have the group dynamics for whatever reason.

This part is interesting since I haven’t heard about it. I’m actually making new CoE 2 and 3 vids probably tonight, this sounds like a pretty good speed run strategy. So it sounds like the one person didn’t even pick up a gun and just ran straight into the husk circle after agroing a bunch of the mini golems and then using something something like renewed focus, warrior shield, or enduring pain, letting all the golems charge up, and then explode on the boss after he moved out of the way? Very interesting, going to try it tonight.

Yes, as long as you can tank the bit of damage + bleeding you get from staying close, you can just aggro the golems up to you while you stay near the boss, let them set up shop, and get out of the way. I do this if I’m stuck killing patches and I see a golem that nobody is taking care of. I don’t believe it to be any faster than properly using the rifles, though; the golems will always walk up to a certain point before they try to aggro something, and they don’t walk any faster when aggroing something compared to when subverted. While there is a small delay on how long it takes for golems to start moving after being subverting, they also explode with little delay after reaching the husk compared to having to let the golems bunker down and do their full countdown which this strategy relies on that makes it faster overall to just rifle it.

I did not include tips that require specific abilities to complete, since I least of all want to see groups requiring specific professions

I also did not include the exploit to finish p2, and then bug into p3 and p1 if you have a mesmer, I would rather see anet fix that than encourage its use