Guild Wars 2

As the title suggests my guild is getting closer to finally defeating this thorn of a boss. Our roster is filled with mostly casuals, who have been raiding for the last six months or so. A few weeks back each of our 10 man team finished getting geared, and I believe we have the mechanics down, with that said for the past couple of weeks we have been consistently getting VG down to 14-18%.

We are not perfect by any means, some of us still get ported here and there by green circles, sooo my question is, do we have to be perfect? Is one green circle going to screw us? Or is it a case of polishing our DPS now?

One green circle won’t screw you if you can recover properly, or if you anticipate it will be missed, if you get downs it will lower your dps depending on how long it takes to get them back up, also the teleports do hurt quiet a bit, once your guild gets the mechanics down better you should be fine, and if you are still failing then look at your dps rotations and so on.

So let me add, I play Warrior, and I can only concentrate on my own DPS.

One question for any Warriors on here, in Stage 1 when we have pinned near the speed mushroom should I at any point use Bladetrail? I’m thinking no, but well I’m obviousily not sure. Also, someone explain to me what good the banners do after the split when we’re pulling him in a circle. Somehow chaos always ensues, so even the best laid plans (banners) are probably being missed by our party.

Most groups shouldn’t miss a single green circle for the entire fight. Getting in TeamSpeak and calling out every green helps. Moving the boss into the killfloor early also helps.

The dps check is really low so don’t worry too much about it.

Put your banners in the center, the tank should be pulling the boss in a circle with a reasonably low diameter.

Thanks people.

So it is still a mechanics issue, as we still get ported a half dozen times before he enrages. Also I would say we haven’t discovered a great solution to seeker clears.

If you’re able to get it to ~15% I’m confident you’ll be able to kill it eventually. You need to figure out where’s your problem and focus on it. If you’re having problems with green, then assign one more person to it permanently. You’ll kill it slower but it will be much safer. If you’re hitting the enrage timer by the end of the fight, you’ll need to polish your gameplay in general and pull off better DPS.
If you’re unlucky with the green and it spawns in a lit-up area, make sure you coordinate your actions. Either have the green team go to it and try to heal through the damage, or have everyone stack at one spot and revive those who go downed. If you panic and the team splits up without coordination, that’s most likely gonna cause a wipe (or at least a couple of deaths which will inevitably lead to a wipe).

The benefit of warrior banners is gonna depend on how close to the middle you kite him. If you place the banners near the center and you don’t lead him too far away, most people should get the banners’ effects.

Bring two Magi druids.

Well it is our guild, so we had to form a team from ten willing people with a few subs.

Our team comp is 2 PS, 1 Mes, 2 Druids (condi), 1 Engi, 1 Thief, 2 Guards (1 dps, 1 is our tank), and our healer is an ele. Some of the team comp changes but we always have 2 PS, 1 Mes, the healer and the tank.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Thanks people.

So it is still a mechanics issue, as we still get ported a half dozen times before he enrages. Also I would say we haven’t discovered a great solution to seeker clears.

have a gaurdian using hammer for knockback. mesmers using their pull and druids using glyph of tides to push them back as a warrior you dont really use bladetrail all that much. at least its not entirely important for you to. the main skill is auto attack banners and hundred blades.

If you’re getting titled by green ciricles its best to learn their spawn pattern and rate. Additionally you need to tell this to whoever you assign to green ciricles – Get there and Survive first, DPS second.

If you being teleported, your melee stack needs to learn the golden rule of dodge or max melee.

For seeker control this usually falls (atleast when i raid) to our engies and druids, if one should for whatever reason spawn in melee DH can clear it with Banish.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

So let me add, I play Warrior, and I can only concentrate on my own DPS.

One question for any Warriors on here, in Stage 1 when we have pinned near the speed mushroom should I at any point use Bladetrail? I’m thinking no, but well I’m obviousily not sure. Also, someone explain to me what good the banners do after the split when we’re pulling him in a circle. Somehow chaos always ensues, so even the best laid plans (banners) are probably being missed by our party.

You shouldn’t be concentrating only on DPS but watch out also for blues and CC when needed. Bladetrail is only used when boss not against wall, otherwise it’s a dps loss. If your stacking on wall and he’s near edge, don’t use bladetrail.. just cut that out of ur rotations.

Banners when boss is mobile is an issue, I just put em most times in the nearest colored area (unsafe zone) from where u start. You could also put em right in the center, if u coordinate with ur tank a priori and he agrees to kite boss within the innermost concentric circle, thus guaranteeing entire pt would get the most out of banners the whole while they are up.

sophiewhite.3149:

the main skill is auto attack banners and hundred blades.

If your definition of rotations for war is ‘spam hb and aa’ then ur doing something seriously wrong. This is a watered down version where it’s somthin comparable to Rev rotation maybe only there’s the distinction, war is not have same mechanics as rev.

It’s like those terribad players who’re so awful they somehow struggle to play a simple class like war. The role of ps has been advocated by many as being ‘braindead’, then what is the term for players who have trouble with the class mechanics, such as understanding the role itself and how mechanics work?

In a sab group once I came across a pair of outstandingly useless wars who didn’t know what their role was. Stacking with rest of grp, mindless aa drone dps, and refusing to listen or change their behaviors despite repeated advice is like an affront to ur class. Me and another dude got so fed up with it after we realised the wars were determined to be useless, that we both insta left over that. I even give them a caustic shout out before I also dipped. L2p war community..

nagr.1593:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

So let me add, I play Warrior, and I can only concentrate on my own DPS.

One question for any Warriors on here, in Stage 1 when we have pinned near the speed mushroom should I at any point use Bladetrail? I’m thinking no, but well I’m obviousily not sure. Also, someone explain to me what good the banners do after the split when we’re pulling him in a circle. Somehow chaos always ensues, so even the best laid plans (banners) are probably being missed by our party.

You shouldn’t be concentrating only on DPS but watch out also for blues and CC when needed. Bladetrail is only used when boss not against wall, otherwise it’s a dps loss. If your stacking on wall and he’s near edge, don’t use bladetrail.. just cut that out of ur rotations.

Banners when boss is mobile is an issue, I just put em most times in the nearest colored area (unsafe zone) from where u start. You could also put em right in the center, if u coordinate with ur tank a priori and he agrees to kite boss within the innermost concentric circle, thus guaranteeing entire pt would get the most out of banners the whole while they are up.

sophiewhite.3149:

the main skill is auto attack banners and hundred blades.

If your definition of rotations for war is ‘spam hb and aa’ then ur doing something seriously wrong. This is a watered down version where it’s somthin comparable to Rev rotation maybe only there’s the distinction, war is not have same mechanics as rev.

It’s like those terribad players who’re so awful they somehow struggle to play a simple class like war. The role of ps has been advocated by many as being ‘braindead’, then what is the term for players who have trouble with the class mechanics, such as understanding the role itself and how mechanics work?

In a sab group once I came across a pair of outstandingly useless wars who didn’t know what their role was. Stacking with rest of grp, mindless aa drone dps, and refusing to listen or change their behaviors despite repeated advice is like an affront to ur class. Me and another dude got so fed up with it after we realised the wars were determined to be useless, that we both insta left over that. I even give them a caustic shout out before I also dipped. L2p war community..

im not telling him not to use other skills. but those are the important ones you need to keep full uptime on. this is not quantify. this is a casual group. he doesnt need to be attempting to do max dps and killing himself not paying attention to mechanics because of it. its VG not mattias. the important thing for a warrior is to keep their might stacks and banners up and try to dps while doing it. but the main dps source will always be other classes.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

So let me add, I play Warrior, and I can only concentrate on my own DPS.

One question for any Warriors on here, in Stage 1 when we have pinned near the speed mushroom should I at any point use Bladetrail? I’m thinking no, but well I’m obviousily not sure. Also, someone explain to me what good the banners do after the split when we’re pulling him in a circle. Somehow chaos always ensues, so even the best laid plans (banners) are probably being missed by our party.

No to bladetrail in P1.

So here’s the general Warrior low-down for EZ VG funtimes:

P1: Blue Circles are the worst for you in this phase specifically because you are not kiting the boss around. This is also a really good time to practice the DPS rotation as you have to manage your dodges if you really want to escalate your DPS. Essentially, if you want to be a boss, you will want to never have 100% endurance, do your HB and AAs mixing in the Dodge for damage. GS3 I would recommend you use when you mess up only, asking you to tie that into your rotation here could be worse.

P2: My only recommendation for both of these phases is that if you are doing the cleaving strategy for blue and green guards, depending on how many other sources of CC there are, to flip over to Ma/Sh for Blue Guard CC and stay in that weaponset as you finish off Green guard. Do not use any major CCs like ShieldBash, Skullcrack or Headbutt on Green’s CC bar, you can use the Mace 3.

P3: As transition happens put your banners down in the exact center and continue to stay in this weapon, as what your biggest job is here is breaking the very first breakbar of VG in P3 and P5 literally as fast as you can. When VG summons the Green circle, pop your signet of fury for the full Adrenaline, and blow up that breakbar with MaceBurst, ShieldBash, Mace3 and Headbutt. Swap back to GS and continue your strat around the circle, building might, swapping for Breakbar etc.

P4: Same as P2 including transition.

P5: Crunch time, you are breaking that first bar super fast. If a melee gets down the priority is to ensure you are NOT IN BLUE CIRCLES when you REZ. Wait for circles to pass, they won’t nuke the downed but they can screw rezzers over in this phase, and get him up fast. Just keep it up, remember that you will have a breakbar every other section so have Adrenaline up for those sections. For clarity, P5 goes Red first, Blue, Green, and Red again. Should be dead at this point, and do NOT be afraid to follow your tank into the hotzone if they are pulling across to create a safe Green Circle, you are a warrior, you can take the heat with your health pool.

Does this help? This is just a broad terms for you only as a Warrior.

Well maybe I was a little unnecessarily harsh there but I mean even a role like ps u would think it’s so simple but in the end it all comes down to rotations, I mean let me try a rotation of just hb and aa and see how the dps compares.

war dps is alrdy pathetically low. I’ve stress this many times and I hate this fact. We have 20k dps on an average day, and I’m still running str runes cos I would need em for pugs outside of raids. I can’t imagine just stack not move, a rotation alternating between hb and aa – I can’t imagine how much worse that would be. So because I can’t know it, I will give u benefit of doubt that ur advice not necessarily wrong

Point is ok, it’s just VG.. but even then, u want to maximise ur grps chance of success so u can actually kill it. I’m not saying he have to be perfect but I mean dodging or avoiding blues, swap set to cc in cc phase, this is going to reinforce future behavior in other raid content if he decide to continue.

If he slacks, aa’s the whole time, doesn’t run boon duration stuff or fails to understand mechanics like what to avoid and what not to, he will similarly approach other raid boss. Suppose he continue w1 like after 1st time they kill vg they decide to continue to next boss.. which is dps check but even if support dps doesn’t need to be perfect, I would at least want it to be at that level where it does make a significant difference – a bad warrior with basic hb rotation would clearly do noticeably worse dps than warrior with more varied rotation. The gap need be wide enough there be need (and enough room) to improve as player. Maybe this is not the case, I dunno, but I would want it as such

To the people arguing about warrior rotations, there’s really no rotation but more like skill priority rather. Arcing Slice>Hundred Blades>Whirlwind Attack>etc. with GS AA actually having the least priority if you have any other gs cooldown available. Arcing Slice is the best dps if the target is under 50% and it’s important to use whenever available above 50% to upkeep Berserker’s Power. It’s also important to keep up Stick and Move-bonus as much as possible. Using Blood Reckoning (for the adrenaline gain obviously) instead of other healing skills is a dps increase aswell if you don’t lack survivability because of it.

Thanks for all the good info guys.

So at P1, I drop my banners, dodge and immediately hit Head Butt, burst, and then 100b up to another burst, dodge & AA. Is there something else I should be trying to sneak in?

war dps is alrdy pathetically low. I’ve stress this many times and I hate this fact.

I agree nagr, war dps being lower than a casters is laughable. Do you think the Hulk’s dps is lower than Scarlet Witch’s?

usually one druid can manage seeker alone with glyph of tide and staff 4 and also celestial 5 etc etc. but this druid can not be permanent green person… he can be backup for green and he goes in between zerg and green, keeping everyone hp above 90% at all time. :p

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Thanks for all the good info guys.

So at P1, I drop my banners, dodge and immediately hit Head Butt, burst, and then 100b up to another burst, dodge & AA. Is there something else I should be trying to sneak in?

war dps is alrdy pathetically low. I’ve stress this many times and I hate this fact.

I agree nagr, war dps being lower than a casters is laughable. Do you think the Hulk’s dps is lower than Scarlet Witch’s?

Don’t forget the heal → Arc after the first Arc in berserk. Other than that, pretty much. Just remember to keep your endurance low, and skills on cooldown (pretty sure just the bladetrail when it won’t get the return hit shouldn’t be used over AA).

As for warrior DPS. Yes DPS warrior should be a tad higher than it is, but PS warrior is probably higher DPS than it should be honestly. The amount of offensive support it provides is just too much to warrant good DPS. I’d love to see them boost Axe builds up to be higher DPS but of course giving up the support while doing so. As for the analogy, comics don’t have to worry about balance of power in the same way video games do. The Hulk in comics has been killed/banished because no one could stop him if he goes on a rampage, where if you play any marvel video game you can take any other character and beat Hulk in a hand to hand fight… basically not a reasonable analogy.

Talindra.4958:

usually one druid can manage seeker alone with glyph of tide and staff 4 and also celestial 5 etc etc. but this druid can not be permanent green person… he can be backup for green and he goes in between zerg and green, keeping everyone hp above 90% at all time. :p

With an Engi in their group honestly they shouldn’t need the druid helping with seekers though having a druid healing the circle team and having tides when necessary is not a bad idea. Engi tossing chills/immobs/cripples on the seekers saving Air Blast/BoB for green circles generally does the trick just fine.

Jerus.4350:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Thanks for all the good info guys.

So at P1, I drop my banners, dodge and immediately hit Head Butt, burst, and then 100b up to another burst, dodge & AA. Is there something else I should be trying to sneak in?

war dps is alrdy pathetically low. I’ve stress this many times and I hate this fact.

I agree nagr, war dps being lower than a casters is laughable. Do you think the Hulk’s dps is lower than Scarlet Witch’s?

Don’t forget the heal -> Arc after the first Arc in berserk.

Actually you should pop the heal after second arc in berserk, to make sure you squeeze 100b twice into your berserk mode and activate arc one extra time. This doesn’t really matter when there are ads to cleave, but when facing a single enemy, that’s when managing your cooldowns and adrenaline during berserk mode comes into play.

Edit: Also I’d like to add (because Sykper’s earlier comment might mislead you), that activating signet of fury during combat is a VERY bad idea. You should only do it when your group is absolutely desperate and you need every single bit of CC to be able to break the bar (at which point you’re not very likely to have a shot at beating VG anyway). Doing so makes you miss out on a significant chunk of your personal DPS as well as diminishing your ability to generate might because you’ll crit less often, lowering the group’s overall DPS even further.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Jerus.4350:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Thanks for all the good info guys.

So at P1, I drop my banners, dodge and immediately hit Head Butt, burst, and then 100b up to another burst, dodge & AA. Is there something else I should be trying to sneak in?

war dps is alrdy pathetically low. I’ve stress this many times and I hate this fact.

I agree nagr, war dps being lower than a casters is laughable. Do you think the Hulk’s dps is lower than Scarlet Witch’s?

Don’t forget the heal -> Arc after the first Arc in berserk.

Actually you should pop the heal after second arc in berserk, to make sure you squeeze 100b twice into your berserk mode and activate arc one extra time. This doesn’t really matter when there are ads to cleave, but when facing a single enemy, that’s when managing your cooldowns and adrenaline during berserk mode comes into play.

Danke, didn’t know that.

After 6 Months and VG to 14-18% is rather long… Even our 2nd raid group took him down after about 2-3 weeks which consisted mostly of casuals.

The problem is that the last 10-20% are the hardest. I don’t want to shatter your dreams but if people are still getting ported away after 6 months of trying, I would question the ability of your group. Still, good luck to all of you!

Vg doesnt have a big dps check and missing greens aint that much of a problem especially with ts. The problem (if there is one) is bad cc and poor seeker control. Mark my words it’s these reasons 80% of the time. The other is either bad healing as in healer focusing wrong people as well as the tank pulling either too slow or fast.

But usually its bad cc and poor seeker control.

Well proto what can you do? We are what we are, a casual guild that has attempted the raids as best we can. I would rather fail with these people, than pug into a group that rinses and repeats the VG regularly.

It’s a choice we made long ago to stick it out & see what happens, for better or worse.

ProtoGunner.4953:

After 6 Months and VG to 14-18% is rather long… Even our 2nd raid group took him down after about 2-3 weeks which consisted mostly of casuals.

The problem is that the last 10-20% are the hardest. I don’t want to shatter your dreams but if people are still getting ported away after 6 months of trying, I would question the ability of your group. Still, good luck to all of you!

I doubt its the ability of the group.
I’d actually put this on the group lead if anything.
Most groups suffer this fate when learning and its actually quite common. What’s needed is good leadership and reminders not to tunnel vision. If everyone does their part the group would likely be fine.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Edit: Also I’d like to add (because Sykper’s earlier comment might mislead you), that activating signet of fury during combat is a VERY bad idea. You should only do it when your group is absolutely desperate and you need every single bit of CC to be able to break the bar (at which point you’re not very likely to have a shot at beating VG anyway). Doing so makes you miss out on a significant chunk of your personal DPS as well as diminishing your ability to generate might because you’ll crit less often, lowering the group’s overall DPS even further.

The key here is that I was assuming the group is having problems all over the place.

Ensuring that VG’s P5 transition goes off without a hitch gives the group more time to practice their other issues. Warrior can still easily maintain 25 stacks might without Signet, group DPS won’t be an issue. And you know very well that Warrior Personal DPS doesn’t compare to the true DPS professions.

But yes, if you want to get technical, if he plays well enough he can avoid popping signet all together and be perfectly able to calculate when he will be out of Berserk, not popping Berserk while maintaining Berserker’s Power and still do the full powered Skull Crack after the split phases. I echo some of the statements made before that the group likely is very casual and hasn’t gotten adjusted to killing VG yet, hence my advice was set at such a level.

Well yeah, I agree that extra CC can save your group from a wipe in phase 5. Although if you’re struggling for CC, you have some better options (thief can blow up the breakbar with no effort whatsoever). Also I’d very much doubt that warrior (since we are looking at a very casual group here) would be able to maintain 25 might during absence of any crucial precision buff (fury sig/spotter/fury buff/discipline banner) unless he has strength runes AND fried dumplings.
So in my opinion it would be the best to make sure people can do at least their basic jobs. Pretty much every single class in their composition has insane amounts of CC available to it, so if at any point the CC is lacking, the group has much bigger issues to be concerned about than warrior not using an extra skull crack.
Also the argument that warrior’s personal DPS doesn’t matter because it’s not a DPS profession is very wrong, because if everyone thinks that way, there’ll be 1-2 people doing any reasonable amount of DPS to the boss and the rest is just watching. And in a group like this, every tiny bit of DPS makes a huge difference because they might even have problems with the enrage timer.
I still stand by what I wrote – using signet of fury for the active should only be done in a very desperate situation. Most of the time it’s gonna simply result in a loss of precious DPS and prolong the fight unnecessarily, putting the group in much bigger danger.

A lot of guides you find online are designed to maximize dps, but in reality VG is such a loose dps check, that if you are struggling to kill him, you can sacrifice dps for safety. If your actually hitting the enrage timer, most of these tips are bad. But if your hitting the enrage timer, you probably have boon up time issues and rotation issues.

If the enrage timer is not your issue then here are some general group tips:
- 5 players go to green every time. Good solution if people are getting downed and not making it to green circle.

- Smart classes to green circles only. Don’t send a gs warrior or a staff thief. Smart ranged classes like condi ps, scepter guard, condi engi, condi necro. I hate staff eles here. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a staff ele get downed in a green circle. Also, necro is very tanky here. If people are getting downed and not making it to green circles, have them swap to necro (btw flesh golem is a great long range cc for break bar issues). Condi mesmer might be good here too, haven’t tried, but interested.

-2 healers. One goes to green circles, one stays with the boss/tank. The healer on green focuses on the green circle team, and makes sure they don’t get downed. Druid is great for this, as they have the glyph of tides to deal with seekers.

-non zerker tanks are OK. I have a minstrel chrono for tanking. Its fantastic. Being able to tank a few hits without going down allows the tank to focus on the much more important aspect of positioning. Nothing will wreck a group faster than a green circle spawning in a lit section because a tank messed up. If your tank is going down, have them swap in some toughness gear.

Warrior specific tips:
-A smooth split phase is all about burst. You want to kill the blue guardian before the green guardian is even able to walk over to you. The way you do this is to make sure your group has might via bursting. With all the down time before split phase your might probably drops to 0. As soon as blue guardian spawns, pop your heal skill (5 might for the group). Go berserk if you can, and use arc divider as soon as he is no longer invulnerable. Popping fury signet for adrenaline is fine, especially if your not getting quickness, and need the attack speed boost. Use 100 blades to generate more might, as soon as the first green circle spawns, wait for 100b to finish then whirl wind through the blue guardian to the green circle, then use blade trail, then use arc divider. Make sure your entire team understands you need to burst here. You need fury, and quickness as well. If blue lives long enough to stand near green, make sure you cleave them. But honestly, if your healer is inexperienced, this is a situation you realy want to avoid.

-If your group is consistently too slow with the break bar, you can weapon swap. Reserve headbutt for every time the break bar phase happens. After headbutt, swap weapons to mace/shield, use skull cracker (non-berserk mode, it is much more cc) then shield 4 and mace 3. If he still isn’t broken, pop your fury signet go berserk mode (taunt), and use skull grinder (more cc). Is popping fury signet a dps loss? You bet. You know what is a really bad dps loss though? A green circle spawning in a lit section because the break bar took too long and the tank couldn’t move the boss.

-seeker control a problem? Use a greatsword with force+accuracy rather than force+air, and bring stomp. Is stomp a dps loss over might signet? yeah of course. But so is your tank getting downed from seekers, not moving the boss, and a green circle spawning in a lit section.

Again, most of these tips are to be used when you have an excess of dps. If your hitting the enrage timer, tune your group in the other direction.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

war dps is alrdy pathetically low. I’ve stress this many times and I hate this fact.

War dps is hardly pathetically low. If your looking at qt’s golem numbers, that is going to give you a very inaccurate view of what damage your doing in a real raid scenario.

Here is a video of qt killing gorseval with a dps meter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yetoDwSifyE

The highest dps warrior is hitting 14k while the highest dps ele is hitting 24k. But recognize, gorseval is practically designed for staff eles. A large stationary hit box. VG is almost the opposite. Moving, medium size hit box.

Additionally, I would expect qt to play at a higher level than typical pug groups you play with. And I think most of us would expect ele dps drops off faster than warrior dps as you begin to take away skill level.

I’m not saying warrior dps is higher than eles, but its not insignificant by any means.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Well proto what can you do? We are what we are, a casual guild that has attempted the raids as best we can. I would rather fail with these people, than pug into a group that rinses and repeats the VG regularly.

It’s a choice we made long ago to stick it out & see what happens, for better or worse.

Yes sure, it’s okay, haven’t said anything else. As the next comment suggests the leader should call out all the necessary things. Like when to dodge out of the fields etc. The leader has an enormously important role.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Well it is our guild, so we had to form a team from ten willing people with a few subs.

Our team comp is 2 PS, 1 Mes, 2 Druids (condi), 1 Engi, 1 Thief, 2 Guards (1 dps, 1 is our tank), and our healer is an ele. Some of the team comp changes but we always have 2 PS, 1 Mes, the healer and the tank.

You team composition in my opinion is your hardest and own placed obstencle in defeating VG. I know some people are opposed to the so-called mirror comp that became relevant with the recent nerf on the mesmer Signet of Inspiration, but there is a very good reason why most groups run this setup. First you need 2 PS warrs – those are essential to be split into 2 groups, 1 into each to provide might to each group, since banners dont apply to more then 5 people. For VG you’d want to have one power ps and one condi ps. Then you have 2 druids. Again, best to be split into 2 group, 1 in each – 1 healer and 1 condi. The condi druid is perfect to be assigned to green circle, where he can provide healing for the other 3 squad member assigned on green and provide seeker control – especially essential if you have a squishy class like staff tempest assigned on green. The healer can focus on the group that stays on VG and also on keeping your healthy. The last of the so called mirror comp should be 2 mesmers. The nerf to SoI, made it essential to have 1 of those in each of the two groups as well, since one mesmer no longer can share boons across the whole squad, but only to 5 people. That essentially means that running only 1 mesmer deprive 5 people from your squad getting any quickness, which is a huge dps lost. If they also dont get much into the mesmer wells, they probably dont receive high alacrity uptime as well, which is another huge dps lost.

Also there is a reason why people run chronotanks, instead of any other class. The mesmer have a huge variety of dmg mitigation skills like evades, blocks and invul’s, which makes him the perfect candidate to tank VG by not moving him at all during the first phase. This provide a huge dps increase, since mesmer can tank VG, while standing on top of blue aoe circles and mitigate the effect by blocking or invul himself and if traited distort another 5 people of your squad, which will ensure VG stays in the aoe that your squad rain on top of him. Those are the mirror comp classes that every successful raid squad always brings. The rest are the dps dealers, here you can bring 4 tempest, or mix tempest with DH’s and thiefs. For green circle ensure you have high mobility classes assigned like 1 condi druid for the benefits I mentioned earlier, 1 staff temp with lightning flash and burning retreat. You can also assign the condi ps on green duty and place a reaper if you decide to bring one or the engi as well, since condi engi can also help with seeker control.

During split naturally you want your condis to go to red guardian, while the secondary mesmer can go and pull the green guardian, so you can cleave blue and green together fast and efficient, without losing much time during the split phase.

If you want to try and increase your dps during the second phase, you can try to have the tank move VG only between two sections of the platform, ensuring that VG stays largely on one place, increasing by a lot your dps. If you manage to nail down the boss encounter in that way I am sure you will very soon get your first VG kill. Good luck

So we get VG to split (for us at usually 6:35 or so), is that our problem? Are we losing too much dps early? I’ve always thought it was P3 & later…

DresdenAllblack.1249:

So we get VG to split (for us at usually 6:35 or so), is that our problem? Are we losing too much dps early? I’ve always thought it was P3 & later…

Yes, thats pretty low dps. When dps is good you should be split him at around 7;00 mark or even 7;10 mark. First and second phase are essential to put as much dps as possible, because there isn’t too much moving, unlike the third phase. I would suggest to practice rotation as well. Bad rotations are often the problem with lack of dps, if you nail down the boss mechanics.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

So we get VG to split (for us at usually 6:35 or so), is that our problem? Are we losing too much dps early? I’ve always thought it was P3 & later…

That’s still doable, but you’ll be cutting it close unless you somehow gain traction on the way.

If possible record your next attempts and people will be able to give much more detailed response based on what they see going on.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

So we get VG to split (for us at usually 6:35 or so), is that our problem? Are we losing too much dps early? I’ve always thought it was P3 & later…

I’m going to share this with you, and everyone else I suppose haha. This is a long time ago, in my early stages of raiding. Hopefully this can help your group in some way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ntksWzsNB8 (It’s a bit of a boring video but I did not record with sound and I really have no idea how to add music or anything to it. I don’t usually share my videos)!

This group took a while to nail down VG. If you notice, our first split phase is at 6:35, and we still got the kill. One thing we did to try to save time, was to start the fight only after the second set of blue circles go off. This gives time to get VG in place so everyone starts DPS at the same time. Also note the very first seeker will aggro to somebody. Figure out who that person is and have them move it away. Second time saver was to only move VG between two sections during phase 3 (this is shown starting around 2:50 in the video). This can also help with DPS since the group is not constantly on the move. The tank just has to be aware that after the current section gets two green circles, it’s time to switch sections.

Otherwise, you just have to make sure everyone is performing/avoiding mechanics properly. Too many teleports are going to slaughter your DPS. Circle team needs to make sure they can see the whole area that the circle can spawn in (if you notice, I’m always turning my camera to look for the circle spawn). The can adjust their field of view in settings to help with that. Melee group should have their UI volume turned way up- you can hear the blue circles and simply move out of them or dodge if necessary. Breaks need to happen quickly so you don’t end up with a circle in a bad place.

Coming from a person that just started raiding this week (consistently). My practice group killed VG after maybe 1-2hrs. Greens circles should always take priority over dps.

We assigned 5 ranged people (necro, engi, druid, ele, ele) to circles, so that way we always had 4. By the time the fight was over we had never missed one, because people called them out as soon as they spawned. And our comm made sure we were there, even if it meant lowering dps. The last 3-5% we said screw it and skipped the last green for the kill.

So we raided Saturday, and like code we got VG down to 14% most of the time. This may be just what it is, but regardless of what happens with VG & our guild I want to thank everyone for all the great advice. If nothing else it has helped my own DPS & experience greatly.

Happy holidays all.

So.. I couldn’t see anyone pointing this out..
“some of us still get ported here and there by green circles”

The green’s don’t teleport, the black/blue ones do.
VG will do a 180 turn when they are about to spawn, this can give you an extra second of warning for them if you watch closely.

Some tips:
—-Get swiftness on the light team. <— this is probably one of the big reasons you miss lights.
—-move VG early so you don’t get light on the illuminated floor sections. Having the tank hold it on the edge of the sections helps a lot.
—-Protection/heals when the light ends, it has some damage on those in the circle.
—-Don’t have to be inside the circle the entire time its up, just the last few seconds. <— this’ll help save any blue teleports hitting the light team.
—-an extra with high mobility or ranged for light can help in case someone is slow/teleported.
—-assign a 5th person to light. It’ll make things a lot more consistent. DPS shouldn’t ever be an issue on VG.. ( if it is.. start gear checking)
—-dps should be behind VG not getting cleaved
—-dodge/distort(/block?) the blue teles.
—-make sure buffs are up. I find most druids suck at covering decent GotL uptime..
—-banners/spirits towards the middle of the arena so they apply when you move sections.
—-scrappers with res gyros can help reviving people, without a huge loss of dps. Also, condi class is covered that way.

No, these won’t necessarily get you the fastest kill, but a consistent kill is better than a wipe and retry.

Dunno but if ur guild is raiding this weekend or sometime this week, let me know since I’ve got nothing better to do with my time. My hunch is that most of ur problems either revolves around ur greens team or ur tank. I’m prty good tanking now so I can come to conclusion what the problem is. Also dunno if u know this but timing past 25% is diff from the earlier one, so ill see what’s up. Thats if ur willing to let ur current tank sit out I mean

Like I said lemme know. If ur getting to 10% ish then it’s def not a problem with ur team comp tbh