Hey folks -
Last night, several guildies and I trekked into Arah Path 4. One of us had a strong working knowledge of the path, and though I wouldn’t call any of us “elite” players by any means, our group included all strong players (including our guild leader). We know each other well, frequently team up for dungeons, and we had voice chat set on Skype so we could coordinate. With the recent updates to Arah, we were certain we could finish up Path 4 and have fun.
We were wrong.
The Path leading up to Simin went well. We had little to no trouble. (Though groups of two or more Hunters and their Risen Eagles can go to kitten and kitten themselves). We trounced Giganticus Lupicus in one go. The other bosses seemed cake in comparison.
We knew the strategy for Simin: Pack a bunch of tears near where Simin would be fought; Get Simin down to 50% and in that spot away from the statue; have one person kite the northern sparks and one the southern; have a low DPS player ready with tears to salve petrification; thwack Simin with DPS when she reappears. Our group was composed of two rangers, an elementalist, an engineer and a guardian. Three of us were built toward conditions.
The first try did not end successfully. Simin went down to 50% very quickly and we took our places. Spark runs were difficult, since Randall and ranger pets kept attracting the Sparks’ attention. And the Sparks’ attack animations cost us precious time when they should have been moving toward the runes. Eventually, Randall was killed and the Spark runs went better. But we noticed we didn’t seem to be making any headway; Simin was teleporting away too quickly for us to whittle her down, and our conditions weren’t helping after she disappeared. We seemingly weren’t winning a war of attrition.
We let her regen to full, then tried the tactic of holding a spark to force Simin immediately back out of stealth. This does not work. We finally decided we weren’t doing enough DPS and reset the boss. We all made as many modifications as we could to our builds to add DPS.
What we didn’t realize at the time is Simin’s 50% reset bug was taking place. Our second attempt made that clear. At one point, immediately after appearing, she took three hits, went invulnerable and disappeared again – that is not hyperbole. It was beyond aggravating. Even on our most flawless Spark runs, her healing was undoing most, if not all of the damage we were able to do in the shortened time she would give us.
We tried desperately to get Simin to stay below 50%. But after more than an hour, late into the evening on a work night, we had to call it a day. Four hours wasted because of one (bugged) boss fight.
I know people have done this boss fight, and Arah is supposed to be difficult. People will undoubtedly come onto this thread to claim how easy Simin is with their group of four Hundred Blades warriors and a Mesmer. But for our group (an experienced one with working knowledge of this dungeon and path), this fight was frustratingly impossible.
In addition to the 50% reset bug (again, she once gave us literally 2 seconds to attack her before going invulnerable and invisible again and multiple times gave us less than the minute I understand she is supposed to), there were multiple problems that worked against us in this fight:
@ The Sparks would aggro onto the NPC or Ranger pets, which can’t be stowed during a fight;
@ The Sparks attack, which causes them to stop pathing;
@ Simin doesn’t carry conditions over when she goes invisible, making conditions like burning completely useless. Condition damage builds seem unviable for the fight.
Aside from the above, this boss battle was both irritating and unfun. No one in the party ever went down fighting Simin. The fight was just an annoying war of attrition, which neither side would win. Simin is an irritating bag of HP after an overly long dungeon. Whereas a fight like Giganticus Lupicus is challenging, Simin was at best obnoxious and at worst bugged.
Maybe we could have done something better, but I can’t think of what. With our builds and the challenges we faced, the fight seemed insurmountable even with changes in tactics and experienced players. That’s not fun.
Your thoughts and feedback are appreciated, as is constructive criticism.