Guild Wars 2

Wow, I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but WOW, Subject Alpha is… not what I would consider challenging. Rather, it’s frustrating if not annoying at times.

It seems that in all the groups (4 total, 1 succeeded) that I’ve been a part of all say the same thing: grave rush it.

I know about the post detailing strategies on how to deal with it’s attacks but still, but not everyone visits the forums and it took the team 40 minutes just to deal with him during the final fight in path 1.

Also, yes, I know that the giganticus is much worse than Subject Alpha.

In terms of difficulty, I think this particular fight needs to be looked at a few times and then a few more times over.

You shouldn’t have to grave rush it if you and your party brings enough defensive/support utility and dodges most of its attacks, and attempts to res any downed people.

Not a fan of Subject Alpha either. Very tedious fight.

- He has a large health pool, further exacerbated by his abilities, which seriously cut into DPS time
- His AoEs sometimes hit the imprisoned player (pretty much a guaranteed trip to the floor, and then to the nearest waypoint)
- Having to fight him three times feels like really weak dungeon design

Sounds like it was frustrating because your groups were graverushing the entire time. He has a bit of learning curve but as you get used to him you’ll die a lot less. I might have 1 or 2 deaths across all 3 routes these days.

I think within a couple encounters I learned most of everything about him so you don’t need to look up guides if you’re observant and your party shares observations with each other.

One of the bigger things is just having everyone on top of picking up someone as they go downed and breaking imprisonment quickly as well.

Yeah, we stacked 4 people in the face of the boss so if anyone went down we could res them before the next attack hits.

Another tactic which would be interesting but a havent tried, is to mark a tendril as a target, have the ranged player get it down to low hp so if anyone gets downed all they have to do is press ‘t’ and attack to rally.

Ender.3508:

Yeah, we stacked 4 people in the face of the boss so if anyone went down we could res them before the next attack hits.

Another tactic which would be interesting but a havent tried, is to mark a tendril as a target, have the ranged player get it down to low hp so if anyone gets downed all they have to do is press ‘t’ and attack to rally.

That… I can’t believe I never even thought about that before! I’d probably have to test it out when I run through the other 2 paths later today!

Beware of front door. I refuse to do it until I have a really good group.

Path 1 is a joke. Just have everyone hug the boss close, and whoever has aggro turns him away from the group so his frontal aoe won’t kill ya.

The person with aggro will go down, but with the other 4 group members on his face, rez time should be like half a second.

EDIT:
Point of hugging? his spikes and dragon teeth don’t spawn within melee range

I finished path 2 a few hours ago. Is it just me or is alpha’s attacks worse in path 2 compared to 1? His ice bursts look like they have 2 circles: the actual hit radius, and a larger radius which does nothing. That’s really confusing when you run through it the first time.

Also, his earth spike rings aren’t so bad. It’s the ice bursts that I found annoying. I think I might not want to do path 3 now.

You and everybody else complaining about this are ridiculous. Just try to think of what you can do to counter his attacks. It’s not even remotely difficult..

Wow, and all this time I’ve been standing next to it hitting it with AoE only to find out it’s AoE attacks also target me at close range. How did you guys do that?

You have to have your entire party stand next to him, otherwise he will use his other attacks.

DanteZero.3569:

I finished path 2 a few hours ago. Is it just me or is alpha’s attacks worse in path 2 compared to 1? His ice bursts look like they have 2 circles: the actual hit radius, and a larger radius which does nothing. That’s really confusing when you run through it the first time.

Also, his earth spike rings aren’t so bad. It’s the ice bursts that I found annoying. I think I might not want to do path 3 now.

I find him on path 1 much more annoying, because you can’t really see the earth spikes coming. On path 2 it’s easy to dodge everything he throws at you once you get the timing right.

Honestly, the first time I faced him, I came on here and ranted and raved on how ridiculous he was. But after doing this several times a day for over a week, it’s really not that bad and kinda cool.

The key thing I tell every group is, you don’t need to dodge out of circles in order to evade attacks, only dodge a second or two after the rings appear on the ground. You can also stand in the center of the rings if it’s an earth ring spike attack.

The biggest problem, is not Alpha, but rather the players and whether or not you get a group of people that can process what’s happening and adapt to what needs to be done. Sadly, unless it’s guildies, you really have no way of knowing this.

But I’ve learned from running this so much, there isn’t one way to do it. It’s more about everyone’s play style and how you can best work together to do what needs to be done.