Guild Wars 2

Since there are many people requesting me for this guide, I have written one. I hope it helps you to understand how the Aetherpath dungeon should be done and is not made for skipping/ignoring some parts.

I’m sorry if my english is bad, i’m spanish.

- Pre-starting -
Any profession/build can work really well here. You are not limited by anything based on professions since everything is designed to be done or failed based on teamwork. I’ve seen groups of 4 rangers and 1 warriors succeed, groups of 2 necro, 2 mesmer and 1 warrior succeed and groups of thieves, elementalists, mixed, newbies to 80, 12kAP groups… And every group succeeded because they followed the directions and didn’t ignored the mechanics.

- First trash pulls -
Right after speaking with Caithe, your group will need to face a corridor with some nasty flowers that you might destroy ranged (Note: Running is suicide). Right after that, you will find a room with 3 different pulls. 2 Elite dogs and some small ones, 2 Big enemies (when left one dies, spiders come) and some spiders in the back. Instead of hitting a random enemy, your group should kill the dogs first, then kill the left big one, then focus on the petrifier spider and finally kill the 2nd big guy and all the others spiders.

That will open the door to another trash room, have someone to hit the wurm and then run back as soon as possible because you want to kill 2 elite dogs first. There are some areas that your group might need to focus on reviving if someone gets downed. After the dogs dies, your group can safely go up and kill the 7 wurms. They will do moderate damage but it’s really easy if you just take your time and avoid the areas. There will be 2 more wurms in the other side of the room, kill them to open the door to the oozes puzzle.

- Ooze puzzle -
This room can be done in 1 minute or 40 minutes, it all depends on the strategy. The room has 2 paths and fire delimiting each of them. The goal here is to move 1 ooze that will appear at the beginning of each path, to the end of itself. It could be easy, so you will have to deal with 7 elementals that will try to kill the oozes. Most groups might just want to protect the oozes, and although that’s a valid strategy, that’s not a “for every proffesion” strategy, since you would want mesmers or guardians. What I’ll give you here is an strategy that works in less time (1 minute) and can be done by any profession (yay, no kicks because of professions).

Things to have in mind:
1: The oozes only follow you if you have the blue target buff (can be obtained by a plant near the oozes).
2: Moving too fast makes ooze run into fire (don’t do that).
3: Moving too slow makes ooze stops and tries to hit you (don’t waste that seconds).
4: If ooze hits you, it probably instakills you.
5: The oozes must reach the gears at the end of each path at same time (synchronized by less than 10 seconds).
6: The elementals will ignore you and go after ooze if they are 1200 range close.
7: The elementals will reset if they run to the other path.
8: The elementals will respawn in 15-20 seconds after they die (individually).
9: There’s an achievement here: don’t get hit by fire (That include the fire in the ground and also the elementals attacks).

So… the strategy works with 4 roles (and can be done by 4 players, 5th is possibly not needed). Designate 2 players to wait outside room for a “GO” signal. They will never hit elementals or help the other 2 guys. These two players should not have pets or minions. They will be the ones moving the oozes to the end of each path, but again they will just watch and do nothing until the “GO” signal.

The other 2 players with high DPS or survivability ones will enter the room first and go to different paths. They will kill the ooze on each side first in order to be able to move elementals around (Really needed, because otherwise the elementals are stubborn and will only focus on oozes). Then they will hit all elementals once or twice and RUN to the end of each path. If that’s done right, those 2 players will have all elementals at the end of the paths. At that point, if they didn’t missed any elemental, they will give the signal “GO” and start killing elementals doing big Area attacks.

The result of that strategy will be: all elementals dead when oozes are in the middle of the paths, none of the oozes got hit and it will go synchronized since they started at same time and never got slowed. It can’t go smoother than that.

What do you do with the 5th player? That’s your wild card, you can put the 5th player helping whoever it needs it most, usually the 2 players to help in the killing phase of elementals. It’s your choice.

What happens if someone screws it before the signal “GO” or an ooze dies? Call for a reset and go out of the room to repeat the strategy. Trying to do it without a reset it’s pain, fail, pain, more fails. Being not synchronized equals pain and not worth it.

- After Ooze puzzle –

The next pulls are easy but can be a nightmare. That’s because some specific enemies abilities needs to be controlled.

1: The steam machine will summon endless enemies until it dies (If it gets involved into the fight, kill it ASAP).
2: The taskmasters can melee you with 25 bleeds and range you with +7 confusions, be ready and clean that.
3: There is 3 invisible pulls each 20 meters more or less. They appear when you run near them, but a pet, a field or any other skill will make them appear (I use 3 from Bow on my warrior). That’s why if you are in trouble, you must retreat back to ooze’s room instead of pushing ahead.
If you kill them with that 3 things in mind, you won’t probably die and everything will kitten until first boss room. As a random fact: the wurm, spider, and the 2 guys in the water don’t need to die unless you want to kill them.

- Sparky and Slick -

This fight is based in 1 simple rule: 4 fighting, 1 not.

The group will need to fight two enemies with easy mechanics: The man throws oil, the robot burns it up, the ooze cleans it. Your job is to clean all the oil while you fight them. Each oil will stack a poison in the entire room and you can’t cure/clean/stop it unless the ooze eats up the oil.
How to clean oil? The ooze will put a blue target on someone random, that person must move ooze to the oil as soon as possible while everyone else fight. And that’s the whole fight, quite easy.

Stuff that you want to know:
1: Slick does almost 0 damage, that means that if you kill the Sparky (robot) first, you only need to clean the oil to be safe.
2: Slick throws the oil to you, don’t stay too far away from the ooze because moving it around the whole room is TOO SLOW (caps needed).
3: Sparky (robot) does a big firestorm attack which is easy to notice. Don’t stay in melee range when he does it, you’ll eat up several fireballs and die.
4: If Sparky (robot) pulls you to him: immediately dodge back, because he’s gonna knockback you with damage.
5: If the ooze dies, you get 10 tiers of poison, a cool way to commit suicide (Never kill the ooze).
6: Sometimes 3-4 players get the blue target buff, notice if the ooze is chasing you, if he’s not, keep attacking but be careful.
7: If ooze is after you but you don’t have the blue target buff, no matter what, move it to the oil (priority of the fight, person with the ooze, don’t rez, don’t fight, always oil).
8: Sparky haves 50% less health than Slick and does 300% more damage.
9: When Sparky (robot) dies, the Slick (man) shoots 2x or 3x more oil.
10: Strategy is to kill Sparky first and then melee Slick, that will make all oil appear near Slick (man), and the ooze doesn’t need to be moved too far away (but make sure he never hits anyone).

As you noticed, that’s a big survivability fight. A group can be alive there 3 hours as long as they clean the poison, that’s not a DPS race and it’s not how it was designed to be. Try to do it based on the known mechanics of this guide and a group of 5 newbies with 800 AP can complete this boss on 1st try.

If you missed the directions: Kill robot first, then melee the man. Person with blue target above the head just moves ooze to oil to clean it.

- After Sparky and Slick –

You will fight some trash enemies, 2 players will pull the taskmasters. Kill them without going up the ramp, because up there, there’s a generator. What’s a Generator, you ask? It’s a machines that summons endless holograms until it’s destroyed. The holograms doesn’t do big damage but they explode when you destroy them. The generator is immune to damage, so how can you destroy it? The answer is to explode holograms just near the generators which will break it.

Right after that pull, there’s a steam machine trying to make an ambush in your back. Track it down and nuke it before it spawns several enemies. The Next room will have 2 generators. Nevertheless, you want to be really careful because there is a Steam machine hiding in the back. The group should try to break down the first generator and then destroy the steam machine ASAP. After, destroy the 2nd generator and all other enemies. Three enemies around the corner might come to you. If they don’t, just pull them.

If anything goes wrong in that room, a downed person can easily revive by killing an hologram.
After that, you will have to deal with 1 more room with a Steam machine in the back. Again kill it first and then focus on the rest of the enemies.

- Foreman Spur -

Jump down carefully and don’t die. This room is filled with a lot of enemies, and there’s an achievement of killing the boss before the enemies to get it (That’s not suggested for first timers but you are free to try). The achievement can be done by killing the 2 patrollers in the left side. Then 10 enemies in the corner where you had to jump and also the steam machine patrolling around. If you do it well, you’ll have the last 2 rows of enemies alive. If by chance an enemy that you don’t want to kill comes to you, just run to the corner and they’ll reset (pets, minions, don’t screw that).

Now the strategy for the achievement would be to drag Foreman Spur to that very corner and kill him alone, but his skills are more or less deadly for an inexperienced player in the fight.

1: He can throw some axes, small areas that cripples and damages you if you step on them (don’t step on them).
2: Seriously, DON’T step on them (there’s always someone…).
3: He can do a whirlwind, it will drag you if you are in melee range and move you all the way, killing you in the process. The whirlwind also reflects projectiles and a double dodge is not enough to evade it, but it helps a lot. Whirlwind only targets the person most far away. You can trick it having someone noticeable away and everyone else closer to boss.
4: He gets a big Aura, it’s a giant circle at 30 meters around the boss when he casts it. The Aura won’t let you exit (stun) but it will let you enter. The aura also reflects projectiles if you are outside it.
The strategy is easy: Don’t step into areas, stay 5-10 meters away always, double dodge if whirlwind goes after you, stay inside aura and range him until he dies. Then just kill all other enemies and you’ll have the achievement.

If you didn’t want to try the achievement, the strategy is the same but you can kill all other enemies before boss and have a bigger room to deal with the boss skills.

- Electricity Puzzle –

The next room, ramp up, it’s tricky even to get started. There’s 1 meter of room where everyone should be waiting before it starts. That’s because the floor inside will be electrified and the door behind you will be closed (porting anyone outside into electricity).

The goal here is divided into 3 phases: Get the platforms 1 by 1. The four platforms must have 1 different player on the top of it. Move the enemy to the control panel.

Seems I’m having a hard time with English tonight. I’ll just list the features of the room:

1: The achievement is of course: don’t get electrified.
2: The room pattern is easy to notice: the whole room moves to 1 direction. Whole room going north, or south, or west… but not individual pieces. It’s the entire room, which makes easy to see where to go next.
3: After getting each platform, the room allows 2 seconds of no electricity at all (Some groups use that time to get to platforms, but only works with already “captured” platforms).
4: When 4 platforms are used, it summons an enemy. The person in the last platform might be able to pull it to the control panel with a 1200 range weapon. Allowing this puzzle to be completed by 4 players and not 5.
5: If you dodge in an electrified floor, electricity won’t hit you for damage, but you will lose the achievement. If a pet/minion is electrified, you might lose the achievement.
6: Don’t let a guardian gets first platform, pulling the enemy away from them it’s a nightmare (lol personal opinion here).

- Final trash pull –
No info needed to say, just kill them as same as you killed all other enemies. Notice the blocked room in the right side, you will need that later (let’s call it the chest door).

- Final Boss Room –
Before the final boss joins, you need to destroy 8 generators. There will be 4 corners of the room that might be electrified (they will, for sure) and some platforms, use them to be alive. The generators can be soloed and I encourage that for sure, because explosions can wipe out someone and you don’t want 5 players dead in the same second. Solo them and if someone dies, you can rez. (NOT stacking).

When all generators are destroyed, 3 simultaneous things happens:
1: checkpoint. Even if you wipe, you will never need to destroy generators.
2: Boss joins (obviously).
3: Boss throws gears (yes, in the very first second, that’s a big IN YOUR FACE moment), dodge as soon as you can move.

The boss will have 4 different skills, all of them easy to track.
1: A melee grab, if boss is chasing you and he finally gets to you, the chances are 95% to grab you and throw you far away.
2: He throws some gears, they last 90 seconds i believe.
3: If he gets greenish and 1 arm is up, he will do a big frontal attacks that can instakill light players. Timing an evade for that is really easy because the “channeling” of the boss hit will give you 3 tiers of Torment. On the 4th one is the big hit, so… 1…2…3… DODGE! easy to time.
4: If he gets greenish but the arms are up, he will Inmobilize you and the most problematic feature of the fight: he got buffed.
The buff (Yeah, bold words. It deserves it).
The buff will tier from 1 to 30, and if he gets to tier 30, you will have to eat up 5 big AoE attacks AND 1 corner of the room will be electrified. Not stopping the buff is the easier way to wipe in that fight. But how do you stop it? Easy, do you see that hologram in the room? what can you do with it? Exact, explode it in the boss face, that will stop the buff tiering up.

Here are some more fun things to have in mind:
1: Holograms are ranged, boss is melee. Moving boss to holograms is easier than holograms to boss.
2: Holograms will reset to position if they go too far away.
3: The center of the room is always electrified, never step there.
4: The boss can throw you into electricity or gears, don’t get grabbed.
5: Control your pets/minions. I wiped most times that i’d like to say just because boss didn’t move because he was busy tanked by a pet.
6: Boss can only hit 1 person if you dodge the gears and the AoE, that makes the fight easy to do because if someone dies, it takes 1 person to kite the boss while the others just go and Rez
6: Stopping the buff is the priority, not rezzing or getting away (you wouldn’t believe how many times i actually suicided near an hologram, just to make boss come to me and the hologram and kill the hologram in “downed” mode just to be able to Explode it in his face and revive myself. That’s on the table guys, anything to stop the buff).
7: The gears are always throw to where you are. If you see he throws gears, just move 2 meters and you’re safe.
8: This fight is easy to solo, this is a big battlefield and you can kite around.
9: NEVER force a reset or get everyone out of combat in this fight. The chances of bugging are high and if boss resets the holograms will no appear. With no way to stop the buff, you are dead in no time.
10: If everyone is in melee, the boss won’t throw gears.
11: When he get buffed, he’s inmune to all damage and conditions are cleaned.
12: Surviving tier 30 is easy with some skills, such as Endure Pain of the warrior or Shadow mode from necros (no idea about the right names in english). You can also time 2 dodges to get only 3 of the kittens. You can also avoid all damage if you are really far away in the other side of the room.

I’ve done this figth 100+ times and i can tell you: Nuke/Zerk him is possible, but I don’t like it, feels like cheating.

The strategy that my groups usually run goes this way: Everyone always range him. Dodge gears, dodge big AoE and DPS while you can. If he gets buffed, everyone stop DPS and move near the hologram (if you go before the buff, is even better). Boss will go to you, throw some gears, dodge them again, then explode the hologram in the boss face. If the buff is stopped, DPS until he got buffed again. Rinse and repeat.

- After final boss –
After final boss there is an event of 10 minutes where you can use your shiny keys and get more achievements. The events are all in the West exit of the boss room.
1: Defend some allies from rnemies attacking down where foreman Spur was.
2: Caithe requests help with a secret room.
3: A ship captain will try to flee.
4: Three ships needs to be destroyed.
5: Find and open 5 chests.

The three achievements involving this event are: help in caithe room, do all the five events, open all the chests yourself.

But the only achievement that you must have in mind is in Caithe Room (Broken Clockwork), because someone will miss that one if you want to do all the others. In order to do all the achievements, you will want to make this call when the final boss dies: “1 person jump down and defend, 2 follow caithe, 2 do ships”. The one defending just need to jump and kill enemies, the 2 with caithe will need to kill some veterans and big enemies (careful with their flamethrower) and the 2 destroying ships will need to first go ramp up in the right side (not the top one), they must first kill the ship captain, then come back to final boss room, at the west exit there’s a chest with granades. Get some and go to the top (using the middle ramp again), then aim for the ships and shot them 1 granade to each of the 3 ships (red lights will dissapear if you suceed).

When your group suceed all those events, team up in the Port of the foreman Spur room and run to get chests. Where? right after the electricity room, in the right side. That wall sometimes is blue, but you can go across it, at that moment notice 2 different paths: 1 goes down to water, 2nd one goes around the corner and continues. First you want to go to the top one.

Top one: In the first choice, turn left, then right, then right again, then jump when you need to not fall down and you’ll be in chest 1. Jump down now, find the sneaky cave entrance in the right side of that room and enter the cave. As soon as you need to make a choice, go Left for chest 2. Come back and take the right side this time (inside cave) to get the chest 3 at the end.
From there, you should port back to the Foreman Spur port again. Go up, go across electricity room and enter again chests door, but this time go down to water. As soon as you get into water, you should have yet 3 minutes left. Go to the right, check the minimap red big circles and find the last 2 chests, they are easy to get.

That would be all.

- Final thoughs -
The dungeon is long, is fun, but it’s a proper dungeon that creates bounds with players. If you advices it right in the LFG (Good attitude players, patient, 1+ hour, no rush, etc). You will have a good group that will learn with you, help you, have fun, protect you… instead of the usual selfish rushers players.

I hope this guide helps more people and encourages some of them to pay attention to the fights, same as i did when i noticed all what’s written in here. Every enemy/boss haves special skills and mechanics and there’s always a way to deal with it. If you just ignore it, you will have a lot of times when you will have no clue why the enemy didn’t died if you were hitting skill 1,2,3.

^^ Have fun in Aether!

Killing Slick first is definitely easier. Once he is dead it’s really hard to wipe no matter how bad your team is. Unlike killing Sparki first which causes way too much oil for pugs to handle.

And not sure if mentioned, but blocking a gear prevents it from appearing which is really useful when reviving people.

Wethospu.6437:

Killing Slick first is definitely easier. Once he is dead it’s really hard to wipe no matter how bad your team is. Unlike killing Sparki first which causes way too much oil for pugs to handle.

And not sure if mentioned, but blocking a gear prevents it from appearing which is really useful when reviving people.

Not mentioned. And specially for pugs, the damage Sparki usually does is insane because they are not really that good geared. Slick has also 200% health as sparki, and again the average damage of a pug is not that big. The sooner Sparki dies, the easier the fight is done because it’s all about oil and if the group managed to go beyond the ooze puzzle, they can just move 1 ooze to the oil.
That has been so far my personal experience on these last months.

Sparki’s Flame Blast does about 4.5k damage (if you get hit by both projectile and AoE) every 4 seconds which results in 1.125k DPS. If average ranging guy understands to dodge back when getting pulled in, there isn’t really any other damage source.
If Sparki rotates his aggro and average ranging dude occasionally dodges then Sparki will do really low DPS to him.

And now compare to Slick. Few puddles up and pretty much everyone takes 600 DPS. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Few times I have pugged they have always wanted to kill Sparki first because of “guides”. Then we proceed to wipe ~5 times until they are willing to kill Slick first which usually works at first attempt.

Wethospu.6437:

Sparki’s Flame Blast does about 4.5k damage (if you get hit by both projectile and AoE) every 4 seconds which results in 1.125k DPS. If average ranging guy understands to dodge back when getting pulled in, there isn’t really any other damage source.
If Sparki rotates his aggro and average ranging dude occasionally dodges then Sparki will do really low DPS to him.

And now compare to Slick. Few puddles up and pretty much everyone takes 600 DPS. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Few times I have pugged they have always wanted to kill Sparki first because of “guides”. Then we proceed to wipe ~5 times until they are willing to kill Slick first which usually works at first attempt.

I’m not saying that you are wrong or i’m wrong, i just wiped every time the group tried to kill the man first. That’s because the PUG players will need to actually do double damage while cleaning the oil. If the can keep oil controled that long, keepint it controlled a bit more isn’t an issue.
Although i’m not sure what you tried with killing sparki first, i’d say that you killed him and then poison got your group? that’s probably because they tried to range the man. As soon as Sparky dies, everyone should go to melee range of the man. Then cleaning is really easy and you dont need to deal with damage. All what it takes is to be aware of where ooze is and not moving it far away by forcing the man to shot at you closer.
Neverthelees, it’s not the fireball what kills most people in my server, it’s burned oil + firestorm. That firestorm should never be melee’d, but some people still do it.

Keeping oil controlled becomes an issue when Slick starts shooting two puddles at row (below 75%) and much more often (when enraged). IF you have someone doing random stuff then you will wipe no matter what you do.

If you can get your group to melee that means they are listening which already makes them much better than some guys I have met. Not sure how you are able wipe then though.

Sparki won’t use firestorm until he reaches 75% so he should only use when he is alone. And then it’s really hard to wipe when you can just run and get out of combat very easily.

Maybe your experience is before the fixed dungeon. Anet tweaked it a bit in the last weeks, for example now a person can’t tank all the elementals because they will reset if they move too far away, needs 2 persons. Sparki is now using firestorm at random times, i’ve seen it above 60%.

By the way, running away to get out of combat is ridiculous. If by chance Slick shot oil at you while trying this, you will have oil really far away from the ooze and lose a lot of time moving the ooze there.

Cleaning 2 or even 5 oils from slick is not an issue if everyone is melee because the oil will be really close and the ooze can clean all it in no time. And in the worst case, it’s after the 75% health of Slick, wich can be burned fast if something goes wrong.