Guild Wars 2

Spent ages going through the Seers path in Arah explorable, up to the Dwayna Priestess. We got the thing about gathering the Sparks at the statue, but they wouldn’t get sealed, and just follow us instead until Dwayna healed back up to (near) full health every single time, making her unbeatable.
Is this a bug, or is there some secret strategy behind the sealing of the Sparks?

edit for extra information:
This is how a fight would go with her:
First we bash on her till she reached about 50% HP while I get petrified every 2 seconds (quite literally).
Then she disappears and regens while we gather sparks and run to the statue.
Sometimes the sparks got sealed in mere seconds (somehow?), while other times it would take longer. Anyways, she would usually sit around 70-90% of her max HP after doing this.
At around 40-50% she disappears again, and we go gather sparks again and run back to the statue. However, this time there is always at least 1 spark left that just won’t get sealed, but instead continues to attack another player. So basically we all run around the circle, wondering what makes those other sparks so easily to deal with, while this last one just won’t disappear. By the time it finally does get sealed Dwayna is already back at 90/100% HP.
Rinse and repeat.

No one has even ever attempted to kill this boss? Great…

This was the only video I could find of a group finishing it.

@40s, the boss gains this blue icon on her buff/debuff bar which is an indicator of when you need to run to get the sparks. Make sure you have people assigned to each spark location. It’s possible to get someone with a ranged weapon to shoot, aggro and run back. Have someone ready with a tear in case the group gets frozen while grabbing the sparks. The sparks can be a bit buggy sometimes but just try to make sure you’re running it through all the positions. Other than that, dps hard. You need to meet a certain dps requirement to be able to complete it tbh.

*Grammar

We did have people assigned to different sparks to gather, but I guess we didn’t notice the blue thing in her status bar, and no idea why that would be the only indicator to know when she’s going to vanish, because it seems to go against ArenaNet’s way of designing the game (less looking at UI elements). So maybe add a voice clip or an extra animation instead of a small blue square icon in her status bar.

Although even with our team being not as fast, it doesn’t explain why sparks wouldn’t disappear as easily as they did in that video. If they were dealt with that easily we wouldn’t have trouble beating her either, just taken a little longer. For us there’d always be 1 spark just floating around the statue, following one of our team, while the boss regen’d back.

I don’t know about our team’s DPS, cause I was running a PUG. As for myself, I run a balanced Elementalist build, so purely DPS-wise I’m not all that great.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Simin-High-Priestess-of-Dwayna/first#post349115

It’s not bugged, you just have to down it in the first phase.

Milennin.4825:

We did have people assigned to different sparks to gather, but I guess we didn’t notice the blue thing in her status bar, and no idea why that would be the only indicator to know when she’s going to vanish, because it seems to go against ArenaNet’s way of designing the game (less looking at UI elements). So maybe add a voice clip or an extra animation instead of a small blue square icon in her status bar.

Although even with our team being not as fast, it doesn’t explain why sparks wouldn’t disappear as easily as they did in that video. If they were dealt with that easily we wouldn’t have trouble beating her either, just taken a little longer. For us there’d always be 1 spark just floating around the statue, following one of our team, while the boss regen’d back.

I don’t know about our team’s DPS, cause I was running a PUG. As for myself, I run a balanced Elementalist build, so purely DPS-wise I’m not all that great.

Yeah I dunno, I’ve never had it happen that smoothly either. I reckon the sparks are pretty buggy and they’ll probably look at fixing it. It might be too tough with a PUG. Maybe consider respecing for that fight? It’s not like there’s any damage outside of the sparks/aoe circles. I went complete glass cannon for it and didn’t have much troubles staying up.

Craig.7462:

Yeah I dunno, I’ve never had it happen that smoothly either. I reckon the sparks are pretty buggy and they’ll probably look at fixing it. It might be too tough with a PUG. Maybe consider respecing for that fight? It’s not like there’s any damage outside of the sparks/aoe circles. I went complete glass cannon for it and didn’t have much troubles staying up.

True, but I can’t reset my trait lines inside a dungeon. I’m spec’d 10 in Fire and 10 in Air (other points in Earth, Water, Arcane). For the rest I can switch to dual daggers and bring Fiery Greatsword elite, that’s about it for me.
Hopefully an ArenaNet dev could shed some light on this. At least tell us if it’s 100% working as intended, or if it’s bugged and going to get a fix. I don’t mind tough content, but I do mind buggy content.

Milennin.4825:

Craig.7462:

Yeah I dunno, I’ve never had it happen that smoothly either. I reckon the sparks are pretty buggy and they’ll probably look at fixing it. It might be too tough with a PUG. Maybe consider respecing for that fight? It’s not like there’s any damage outside of the sparks/aoe circles. I went complete glass cannon for it and didn’t have much troubles staying up.

True, but I can’t reset my trait lines inside a dungeon. I’m spec’d 10 in Fire and 10 in Air (other points in Earth, Water, Arcane). For the rest I can switch to dual daggers and bring Fiery Greatsword elite, that’s about it for me.
Hopefully an ArenaNet dev could shed some light on this. At least tell us if it’s 100% working as intended, or if it’s bugged and going to get a fix. I don’t mind tough content, but I do mind buggy content.

You can zone out and respec. You just need 1 person inside to retain the lockout.

Jim Travakh.7495:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Simin-High-Priestess-of-Dwayna/first#post349115

It’s not bugged, you just have to down it in the first phase.

Not sure about that. You can watch the full video of the same fight posted above from Joxzy’s POV here:

If you don’t have an entire group built around clearing this one fight then you can do it the way we did it.

1) Have someone in the back of the room to get 2 sparks (he gets to do nothing but pull these!)

2) Have a ranged stocking up tears and dps when she’s not managing tears/sparks, this person takes care of the 3 sparks at the entrance of the room

3) have the rest of your group DPSing the priestess at ALL times outside of her room (you can damage her while she’s stealthed!)

This method takes forever, but is easier to manage since the sparks won’t randomly swap targets or get stuck on a petrified member (or worse, the npc). To give you an idea of how easy this fight is with this approach, we had someones wireless keyboard die midfight and still managed it (we sent him to the back). We primarily did it this way because we were having issues with the sparks aggroing onto random people instead of following others onto the center statue.

This path will NEVER be worth farming, and will only be worth running if ANet ups the end reward to like 3x-4x of what the other dungeons give. Just so you know you still have a couple of pulls and another Legendary boss after Dwayna too.

Orcao.6419:

If you don’t have an entire group built around clearing this one fight then you can do it the way we did it.

1) Have someone in the back of the room to get 2 sparks (he gets to do nothing but pull these!)

2) Have a ranged stocking up tears and dps when she’s not managing tears/sparks, this person takes care of the 3 sparks at the entrance of the room

3) have the rest of your group DPSing the priestess at ALL times outside of her room (you can damage her while she’s stealthed!)

This method takes forever, but is easier to manage since the sparks won’t randomly swap targets or get stuck on a petrified member (or worse, the npc). To give you an idea of how easy this fight is with this approach, we had someones wireless keyboard die midfight and still managed it (we sent him to the back). We primarily did it this way because we were having issues with the sparks aggroing onto random people instead of following others onto the center statue.

This path will NEVER be worth farming, and will only be worth running if ANet ups the end reward to like 3x-4x of what the other dungeons give. Just so you know you still have a couple of pulls and another Legendary boss after Dwayna too.

any fraps of this actually done?
i get the teory but we actually tried this with an ok organized group (not exactly like this but around the same idea) and there was no way you could do the elements fast enough when it reached 40% +- hp and we had A LOT of dps to add on top of her in the time in between.
in the end we simply just gave up after around 30-60min trying and it just standing steady at 40% +- as the minimum :/ .

Thanks for the replies people.
Will definitely get back to this path even if it’s just to destroy this Priestess.

No Fraps of it, I was the scrub whos keyboard died… hate wireless stuff.

The DPS requirements shouldn’t be too high, our Necro normally runs Minionmancer but had to swap to a less-than-ideal offshoot of his build since Minions can’t hit invisible targets and they super mess up the sparks. Make sure you have someone who can keep the priestess poisoned at all times (including while she’s stealthed. I can’t stress enough that she just stealths, she is not invulnerable!). Luck-wise, the necro was about all she ever petrified so that probably helped a lot. Our setup was…

Support Guardian (Staff/Mace&Shield + Consecrations) on back Sparks
Staff Ele on tears/front sparks/priestess

Dagger/Dagger Sin (I think?) on the boss. He was perma poisoning
Hammer Power/Vit/Condition Damage Guardian on boss (he normally uses spirit weapons, they’re less than ideal for this fight though)
Dagger Necro w/ 2x wells, BiP, and Lich Form.

Unlike the video posted we got a ton of spark phases, but it works.

Orcao.6419:

No Fraps of it, I was the scrub whos keyboard died… hate wireless stuff.

The DPS requirements shouldn’t be too high, our Necro normally runs Minionmancer but had to swap to a less-than-ideal offshoot of his build since Minions can’t hit invisible targets and they super mess up the sparks. Make sure you have someone who can keep the priestess poisoned at all times (including while she’s stealthed. I can’t stress enough that she just stealths, she is not invulnerable!). Luck-wise, the necro was about all she ever petrified so that probably helped a lot. Our setup was…

Stealths only? That’s useful information.xD

My group did it the same way as Orcao, interestingly enough. I was the one at the back pulling the two sparks by standing at one spawn-point and picking up aggro before blinking to the other, while a thief handled the three at the entrance. Our other three members were outside beating on it at all times. Finally managed it after an hour and a half or so. Never again!

I hope to get a group and go there again this evening, and try out some of these strategies.

Here is a warrior pov of a kill

Tried the outdoors strategy, and never really got her lower than 30% or so, then people started dying or we got sparks that wouldn’t go. Then she would get back to +50% again, and go into endless loops of healing back up to 60-80%, back to 50% and stealth again, and repeat. Tried indoors and got her to 25% a few times, but same stuff happens.
After a few hours people only wanted to try pure DPS, and we got not below 50%.
This boss is seriously tougher than fighting 10 Giganticus simultaneously.

I would rather fight 10 Giganticus Lupicus then this awful boss.