Guild Wars 2

A few weeks after the first raid wing was released I went on a break from GW2. I’ve been playing again for the past couple days and I’m looking to get back into raiding. Killed VG a couple of times and almost got Gors quite a few times but never happened. I was curious which wing in your opinion is easiest? Perhaps even the easiest bosses (out of curiousity, I know you have to start at the first encounter for each wing)? I’m the kind of play who likes to watch youtube videos multiple times, to learn the fights inside and out before trying my first time. I figure I’d start with the easiest wing anyways. Thank you and much appreciated.

Escort and Trio are considered the two easiest raid encounters. Although, they are more like glorified events than they are bosses. After those, KC and sorta VG are the easiest bosses; KC because the mechanics are simple and avoidable, and VG because everyone pretty much has those mechanics down by now.

Gors and Sloth are about on-par with difficulty. Ultimately, they are simple enough, but groups frequently wipe to them. Sabitha, Matthias, and Xera are by far the hardest bosses.

So I would stick with those in my first paragraph until you feel comfortable progressing.

Learning with someone experienced would be the fastest way to catch up. I know all the mechanic after 1 month raiding, Dulfy guide helps a lot. The rest is just practicing to do mechanic properly

I would say wing 1 is the easiest. Wing 3 is pretty ez also, but xera would be hard if your tank isn’t good or know what to do.

Great thank you for the replies, very informative. I’ll look into wing 1 to refresh as well as wing 3. I’ll review other builds as well to better understand what my squad mates are doing during the fight.

Wing 3 hands down is the easiest

If you have an experienced and good tank, wing 3 should be by far the easiest wing. Wing 2 terminates at Matthias, by far the hardest raid boss. Wing 1 doesn’t have any particularly hard bosses, but they’re all fairly challenging.

Wing 3 has two very easy encounters, keep construct is a rather straightforward fight, and Xera has almost 100% of the difficulty loaded on the tank, not the party.

Fay.2357:

If you have an experienced and good tank, wing 3 should be by far the easiest wing. Wing 2 terminates at Matthias, by far the hardest raid boss. Wing 1 doesn’t have any particularly hard bosses, but they’re all fairly challenging.

Wing 3 has two very easy encounters, keep construct is a rather straightforward fight, and Xera has almost 100% of the difficulty loaded on the tank, not the party.

Hardest parts of Xera:
Using leylines
People coordinating when teleported
Rez bug

If you have party members who are proactive you shouldn’t have any problems, it’s the ones that don’t speak up that I find are problematic as they don’t say what they’re going to do when teleported.

Wing 3 has the Escort Event which is easy. Keep Construct which can be cheesed by enough Damage but also relies on bad RNG and Xera where the Fight boils down to. Kill Shards and push the Button

Wing 1 has an awareness Check. A DPS Check and a Coordination Check. Nothing too difficult.
Wing 2. First Boss needs good amount of Coordination and Mechanic awareness and was a kittenblock Boss before he got nerfed. Second Encounter is easy and then Matthias comes in and punishes your every Mistake.

first wing is preaty easy

Razor.9872:

Escort and Trio are considered the two easiest raid encounters. Although, they are more like glorified events than they are bosses. After those, KC and sorta VG are the easiest bosses; KC because the mechanics are simple and avoidable, and VG because everyone pretty much has those mechanics down by now.

Gors and Sloth are about on-par with difficulty. Ultimately, they are simple enough, but groups frequently wipe to them. Sabitha, Matthias, and Xera are by far the hardest bosses.

So I would stick with those in my first paragraph until you feel comfortable progressing.

I started raiding 5 days ago and this list is 100% correct. I love the challenging content and now have my 1st 5 insights. Getting a group when you are learning sucks but once you learn it is fairly easy to complete.

I find wing 2 the easiest one of all three. Sloth is probably the hardest among first bosses (since pretty much everyone knows VG mechanics by now and escort on wing 3 is a joke), but then trio is really easy and Matthias can be done just by stacking obscene amounts of sustain.

I’d like to point out a very important thing: everything (mostly) mentioned here is highly subjective. Difficulty is subjective and this applies to raids more than anywhere else. Usually it depends on who you run with.
For example, my static group to this day has a lot of trouble with Xera and we need multiple tries to successfuly kill her. This is mostly because w3 is the newest and we don’t have a lot of practice yet. Mattias, on the other hand, which many people describe as the hardest boss, we usually kill on the frist try even if we receive bad RNG. This is because we practiced him extensively and people feel comfortable handling his mechanics.
I find that w1 is the easiest for us, w2 slighly harder and w3 even harder. Simply because the earlier wings are around for a longer time and people have more practice with them. But again, that’s just my point of view and doesn’t necessarily apply to other people.

The one thing I see most people agree on is that Trio and Escort are the easiest encounters. I have the same experience and would recommend every starting raider to try out. After that, feel free to study up on any boss and go for a kill. Only you can judge how hard something is for you. Without trying you will never know.

Easiest raid? there’s a heart in Fireheart Rise where you raid a flame legion encampment. Should take you about 2 minutes

Wing 1 is the easiest, Wing 2 is the hardest and Wing 3 is very annoying because the fights are too obnoxious, KC and Xera are way longer than they should be.

On Xera I think Anet missed an opportunity with her. The first Human Phase is fine but the second one is too similar to the first one. After I saw her big Bloodstone Form, I kinda expected to fight this Form in the last Phase with different Mechanics. Like Mythic Archimonde in WoW. Something that worth being called the last Boss of a Raid.

my order, easiest to hardest:
1. KC (3.2)
2. Trio (2.2)
3. Escort (3.1)
4. VG (1.1)
5. Sloth (2.1)
6. Gors (1.2)
7. Sabetha (1.3)
8. Xera (3.3)
9. Matthias (2.3)

oh, I should add that Twisted Castle, aka TC event, found after KC, is found to be quite annoying by many. Similarly, the events before Gors (time-gate, kill many mobs, another timed runthrough, JP/points) are an unnecessary waste of time. Other events are much more likeable.

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I still dislike the Sabatha fight intensely. To me it just isn’t fun and I find the throwing the bombs bit really fiddly and unintuitive. I actually didn’t think Matthias was that bad and ditto Xera. But the end 3 bosses of each wing are the hardest, as they should be.

However, even seasoned groups can still wipe on VG. Also lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen experienced raiders get one shot on a mine in escort.

I tend to do the raids at least 3 or 4 times a week. Sometimes I run with very experienced people and sometimes with inexperienced players. In some ways, I almost prefer running with the lesser experienced players. I know I will get stuff down with the “elitests”, but those kinds of guys are very intolerant of any mistakes, yet if they make any themselves- and they do- it’s “oh my bad lol etc”.

We did Sab last night and the pressure to perform was enormous even though I’ve done her many times. I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

Mitch.4781:

I still dislike the Sabatha fight intensely. To me it just isn’t fun and I find the throwing the bombs bit really fiddly and unintuitive.

But it is just an aoe? How is that fiddly and unintuitive?

I’ll just say that the hardest is prob Matthias,for pugging. The boss practically tests the group on mechanics,reflexes,overall awareness. One attempt and you can single out the chat code spammers……

Suffice to say that running it with experienced guildies makes the boss very fun instead of tedious like any other boss.

Razor.9872:

Mitch.4781:

I still dislike the Sabatha fight intensely. To me it just isn’t fun and I find the throwing the bombs bit really fiddly and unintuitive.

But it is just an aoe? How is that fiddly and unintuitive?

I’m referring to the mechanic where you have to throw a bomb on the platform to port your teammate up. It just feels contrived. It’s probably my least favourite fight out of all 9 fights.

Mitch.4781:

Razor.9872:

Mitch.4781:

I still dislike the Sabatha fight intensely. To me it just isn’t fun and I find the throwing the bombs bit really fiddly and unintuitive.

But it is just an aoe? How is that fiddly and unintuitive?

I’m referring to the mechanic where you have to throw a bomb on the platform to port your teammate up. It just feels contrived. It’s probably my least favourite fight out of all 9 fights.

Right, that is just an AoE.

Mitch.4781:

I still dislike the Sabatha fight intensely. To me it just isn’t fun and I find the throwing the bombs bit really fiddly and unintuitive. I actually didn’t think Matthias was that bad and ditto Xera. But the end 3 bosses of each wing are the hardest, as they should be.

However, even seasoned groups can still wipe on VG. Also lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen experienced raiders get one shot on a mine in escort.

I tend to do the raids at least 3 or 4 times a week. Sometimes I run with very experienced people and sometimes with inexperienced players. In some ways, I almost prefer running with the lesser experienced players. I know I will get stuff down with the “elitests”, but those kinds of guys are very intolerant of any mistakes, yet if they make any themselves- and they do- it’s “oh my bad lol etc”.

We did Sab last night and the pressure to perform was enormous even though I’ve done her many times. I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

This is why you raid with guilds. To know who you raid with, their strengths and weakness, and to avoid kids playing king of the hill.
Nobody is perfect at everything and at everytime of the day. Someone who’s usually very good can perform bad if not in the right state of mind for raids. Stress can help performing better or completely ruin it.

But then you gotta figure. A lot of the toxicity/calling out is more about showing off than anything. They don’t know you. They don’t care about you. All they get by doing that is the fake feeling that they’re superior to the average player in a game.

Razor.9872:

Mitch.4781:

Razor.9872:

Mitch.4781:

I still dislike the Sabatha fight intensely. To me it just isn’t fun and I find the throwing the bombs bit really fiddly and unintuitive.

But it is just an aoe? How is that fiddly and unintuitive?

I’m referring to the mechanic where you have to throw a bomb on the platform to port your teammate up. It just feels contrived. It’s probably my least favourite fight out of all 9 fights.

Right, that is just an AoE.

And I find the action key fiddly and unintuitive. Is that ok with you?

Mitch.4781:

Razor.9872:

Mitch.4781:

Razor.9872:

Mitch.4781:

I still dislike the Sabatha fight intensely. To me it just isn’t fun and I find the throwing the bombs bit really fiddly and unintuitive.

But it is just an aoe? How is that fiddly and unintuitive?

I’m referring to the mechanic where you have to throw a bomb on the platform to port your teammate up. It just feels contrived. It’s probably my least favourite fight out of all 9 fights.

Right, that is just an AoE.

And I find the action key fiddly and unintuitive. Is that ok with you?

Probably means you have it bound to something hard to hit. Try finding a better binding for it.

I would almost say VG is the easiest because once you’re used to it, you can beat him easily without deaths. The only reason we still wipe sometimes is because a green field spawns way behind us on charged ground

Amaimon.7823:

I would almost say VG is the easiest because once you’re used to it, you can beat him easily without deaths. The only reason we still wipe sometimes is because a green field spawns way behind us on charged ground

That’s just experience talking. Yeah, my group doesn’t have the slightest issues with VG anymore…but that’s because we’ve seen him by far the most times, done the mechanics for the longest, spent so much time on that boss we could practically do it blindfolded at this point. VG still has quite challenging and demanding mechanics that cannot be ignored.