Guild Wars 2

Well, our somewhat experienced in other explorables group just tried to do Tzarn’s path in Ascalonian Catacombs and we found out that, while we have no problems staying alive, keeping both, or even one, collector is plainly impossible if you’re not running a team setup with this specific encounter in mind.

Are there any tips for that? We’ve tried every strategy we could think of, from focusing burrows or elites to trying to keep them off collectors via kiting and lines of warding/immobilizes, but finally gave up after 1,5 hours of trying. Even if we attack them, they usually won’t leave the crystals alone.

It doesn’t help that some of the burrows are plain bugged. The very first one that spawns – as a ranger, shortbow attacks result in “Obstructed”, GS attacks don’t yield even that, they simply don’t hit anything even if I’m standing right on top of it.

Me and some friends eventually did it….after 2 hours of trying. It was incredibly difficult, and I don’t even remember how we did it, probably pure luck. A big goal though is to always kill the breeders and stun them before they spawn more. If it makes you feel any better, that is the hardest part of the dungeon, the boss is stupid easy…….

I’ve done this a few different ways – there are some strategies out there that suggest a specific kill order and pacing for the burrows, but the way that I’ve seen works fairly consistently with pretty much any group makeup is to kill the first few burrows, then when things start getting a bit hectic you get to the point where you’re doing protective things to stop the mobs from getting to / damaging the NPC. If you are lucky enough to have a thief in your group, have him switch his trickery trait to Uncatchable and dodge around a bunch for caltrops, as well as running caltrops as one of his slot skills. If you’d like a thief to come along with you who has experience doing it, yell at me in game. I don’t really need or want anything from AC, but I’ll be happy to help.

edit: What Penguin said is absolutely true — Breeders are always a high priority and interrupting their telegraphed cast that looks to be the one that summons more gravelings is very important.