Guild Wars 2

By now you should know what boss I’m talking about.
Yes, it’s the boss that should not be named… But I will do anyway: Simin
Simin the unkillable. Destroyer of planets. Breaker of PUGs. God of gods. The impossible.

Yes, I have actually killed her (have Dungeon Master title). I’m not coming here to ask for help. I’m here to report broken content that is in need of a fix ASAP.
But first a little history on my experience with this hellish boss. (skip for the point of the post)

So, last week as I was getting close to finishing my Dungeon Master title, and successfully running Arah groups, I thought I’d give path 4 a try. Thinking it might take an hour or 2 or 3, like the other paths, with the hardest boss there being Giganticus Lupicus. Relatively smooth sailing through all the pre-GL bosses for a group consisting of people new to path 4. Well, even GL wasn’t much of a problem even. Grenth was a piece of cake. But then… the nightmare begun.
So we were up at Dwayna, thinking it would be another joke boss just like any of the others before her. Well, we got our butts kicked for several hours straight, and getting nowhere close to beating her. So after already spending 3 hours in the dungeon before even getting there, another few hours were spent killing the unkillable. Eventually the group fell apart as it was like 2AM already.

So after a bad first experience I seeked revenge. I made another group the next day. We got through the dungeon much faster this time. Up until Dwayna again… Another night of getting our butts kicked without getting anywhere. Again, the group fell apart and gave up at 4AM or so.

A few days later I felt like getting stomped into the ground (aka running Arah path 4) again. Made another group and set off earlier this time. Doing pretty well…. until Dwayna. Man, we thought we’d have the DPS this time. I read forum posts, watched videos, studied tactics for this fight. We had Warriors and Guardians with greatswords and berserker gear. Hell, we even had one guy with the legendary sword Twilight. We thought we’d be able to take this motherkitten down for once and for all. But of course she had to kick us around again. Our group broke apart several times, but I had 1 guy sticking with the party this time, and he recruited new guys several times. Over the course of hours we’ve gone through multiple groups. Explaining strategies. Thinking of new things to do.
And at last we finally got it down. After a fight that went on for so long she finally got killed. But man, it wasn’t easy. It was tougher than 10 Giganticus’s combined. Even the Elder Dragons themselves must’ve feared this thing. I thought I was already asleep and dreaming when I saw her falling to the ground. Wondering if this was reality. But yes, it was. It’s possible to kill her. But only after the toughest fight you’ll ever see in this game (PvE).

(continued)

HOW THIS BOSS IS WRONG
Okay, so on to what is wrong with this boss, and why it needs a fix.
First of all: dungeon difficulty inconsistency. Compare her to the difficulty of the other god bosses in that dungeon. Neither of them are particularly challenging. They go down without much problems. Then you get to this boss, and it’s like bashing your head on a brick wall. Except a normal brick wall would eventually break, while this one continues to regenerate for ever… and ever… and ever.
Not only is this boss by far the toughest thing in the Guild Wars universe, but it isn’t even an end boss. I mean, if it were Zhaitan being that powerful, okay… it would’ve been believable. But a simple priestess being this hard. No way.
I’ve successfully PUG’d my way through every dungeon instance. Pretty much all of them felt like a good healthy challenge. This one felt like being tortured in the fires of Hell. Nowhere else have I seen PUGs fall apart so much as on her.

Second problem. It’s not obvious how to beat her. So an average team thinks: Well, I suppose we gotta lure all 5 sparks to the statue thingy. Well, WRONG. You don’t lure all 5. Are you out of your mind? Of course not!! Because if you do she’ll keep stealthing and regenning back at 50%. So an average fight goes like this:
Hit her to 50%HP.
She stealths.
Team lures sparks.
Boss returns at 60-90%HP.
Hit her to 50%HP.
And that goes on in a loop. Till the end of times.
So the only way to actually beat that is to first lure 4 sparks and let her regen back. Then the next time she stealths you lure 1, and she’s back again. That’s the only way I’ve found that works for getting her below 50% consistently.
So the average team never figures that out on themselves. Ok so after the 50% barrier, you hit the same thing at 25%. No matter how you do your spark runs, she’ll regen back at 25%. And if you let her back at above 50%, you’ll have to start all over again (for extra fun).
So the only way I found to get past this is to lure her outside the cave (thanks for the forum people for the tip), have 3 people DPS the hell out of her. Have 1 ranged guy throw tears at stoned DPS and run 3 sparks. Have 1 guy sit in the back waiting for spark spawns. Because if you keep her in that cave, everyone gets aggro on those sparks and it’s just one big mess that doesn’t get you anywhere ever.
So only using this method grinding the HP off her bar, running sparks, repeat, repeat and repeat until she finally dies and stops healing.

Like what the kitten is going on here?
How did this pass quality tests? Play tests? Are you kitten me?
Not to mention we have to prepare to have fun. Yes, that’s right. One does not simply kill a Simin. You first have to gather a bunch of tears in one spot, so you don’t actually run out of them during the fight. ArenaNet themselves have stated they don’t want people to prepare to have fun, but to just have fun from the start. What happened to your philosophy on this fight? Why do we have to grind tear spawns to get a chance of beating her?

(continued)

Coming to the next design philosophy contradiction. Reading UI elements. Yes, if you want to effectively run this fight, you gotta watch UI elements or else you lose out on a lot of DPS or time running sparks. Only by watching the UI you can tell when she stealths (it shows shortly before she vanishes). Turning into stone shows a debuff before it actually happens. So any group that knows to look at UI is at a clear advantage over people who don’t. Why can’t these things give clearer hints? Like a voice clip or animation before she vanishes. And a particle effect for those who are about to get petrified.

On to my next point. The obvious one. Over the course of 3 runs I’ve probably been there with 20 or so people. It took 20 people and reading forums and watching videos and coming up with all sorts of borderline exploit tactics to finally grind the HP out of this boss after hours upon hours of trying. A well-designed game doesn’t do that. It should be clear from the start what the kitten is going on and what the kitten we are supposed to do. It would be excusable if it were a puzzle game, but Guild Wars 2 isn’t. Compared to any other dungeon content in this game, this fight is a mystery. You’ll be sitting there asking yourself what the hell is going on with this fight. You never get anywhere, so first you think it’s luck involved when you somehow get her below 50%. Then you think there must be more to the fight, so you try stunning her to interrupt her stealth mode. But no that doesn’t work.

CONCLUSION
This fight is way too vague. This fight is not fun. It drags on for far too long. Inconsistent difficulty compared to the rest of the dungeon (or game). It contradicts ArenaNet design philosophies. It needs to get fixed-
(inb4 people claiming how they faceroll this boss for breakfast with their ultra leet dungeon guild – you don’t impress me)
tl:dr Learn to read or move along.

I think this boss is not well designed and well tested.

There exists a problem when there are virtually no DPS requirement for any encounters in the game, until this boss. There are almost no lock outs (there is one in Arah as far as I can remember) and no enrage timers. Combined with lack of performance measurement (damage meters), players that built and geared towards survival are able to grind and wear down most encounters even way point zerging some at various points. Then they ended up facing this boss, the first wake up call on their lax and poor DPS rotations (pressing 2-3 buttons off CD zzz) and non-optimal builds/utility setups.

This encounter is not the best designed sure, but it is not even close to 6 hour/3 day or w/e marathon as people make it out to be. The most (not counting learning) we have ever spent on this encounter is 10 minutes, spark mechanic is frustrating at times sure, but when you can down 50% of her health bar in 45-50 seconds, it doesn’t take more than few rotations til you hit 2 relatively smooth spark run.

I really love the design of Simin, but it’s obvious that the boss hasn’t been tested properly, as it’s buggy as all hells. Once they fix the bugs she may become one of my favourites.

SgtSarcasm.1653:

I really love the design of Simin, but it’s obvious that the boss hasn’t been tested properly, as it’s buggy as all hells. Once they fix the bugs she may become one of my favourites.

Really?

A boss revolving placing sparks with unknown aggro mechanic into 5 circles is your ideal design of a boss encounter? Its almost a 100% tank and spank otherwise, with moving out of circles that does less than 10% of your health in damage.

This encounter is very lackluster, absolutely no depth, and extremely boring after 1st kill.

There are plenty of better designed bosses in this game, although they are tuned very poorly, nevertheless they are far more engaging and fun than this disastrous encounter.

Kevin.2176:

Then they ended up facing this boss, the first wake up call on their lax and poor DPS rotations (pressing 2-3 buttons off CD zzz) and non-optimal builds/utility setups.

Yeah, I’m sure we were having kitten poor DPS with 2 Warriors and a Guardian all using greatsword and in exotic berserker gear. Yet she stealthed at 25%. She stealthed at 15%. She stealthed at 10%. She stealthed at 5%. Then she fina-kitten-lly died. And this was after hours with these people trying all different sorts of things, and finally coming up with something that actually worked.

DPS didn’t seem to matter a thing, because of her 50% barrier, and then of her 25% barrier. No matter how fast or how slow we got her to 50% or 25% HP she would always stealth at those marks.
Well, I’m wrong. The only time when DPS seemed to make a difference was when we had our DPS hitting the spot where she went invisible, to really slow down that regen of hers.

Yeah… hitting the invisible boss. What an obvious mechanic. Brilliant design. /applause for ArenaNet for coming up with genius ideas. That was the only way, combined with super fast spark runs, to get her downed.

Kevin.2176:

Really?

A boss revolving placing sparks with unknown aggro mechanic into 5 circles is your ideal design of a boss encounter? Its almost a 100% tank and spank otherwise, with moving out of circles that does less than 10% of your health in damage.

This encounter is very lackluster, absolutely no depth, and extremely boring after 1st kill.

There are plenty of better designed bosses in this game, although they are tuned very poorly, nevertheless they are far more engaging and fun than this disastrous encounter.

This.
There isn’t much skill involved. It’s just bringing along your best DPS buddies and have 2 people run those sparks. Your team won’t ever wipe on this boss. Yeah, how exciting. What a thrilling encounter. It surely put my skills to the extreme limits… /yawn. More like making me fall asleep…
WTB more bosses like Giganticus and Alpha.

Milennin.4825:

Yeah, I’m sure we were having kitten poor DPS with 2 Warriors and a Guardian all using greatsword and in exotic berserker gear. Yet she stealthed at 25%. She stealthed at 15%. She stealthed at 10%. She stealthed at 5%. Then she fina-kitten-lly died. And this was after hours with these people trying all different sorts of things, and finally coming up with something that actually worked.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, having melee DPS with exotic Berserkers isn’t your free ticket to scoring a night with Dwayna.

Are all members of your party using the proper food/potions? with maximum group DPS traits and the knowledge to properly line up DPS cooldowns?
Poping DPS cds during high might stacks/group haste/banner duration/fury up time etc makes a huge difference than just mashing your keys off cd.

With our latest clear we were able to take her to 50% within 42ish seconds (it helps a lot to rewatch the fight in fraps), she stealthed three times total on our kill. I’d be surprised that your group is struggling that much if you are outputting the same DPS as us.

Just a note, hopefully this helps, her 1st restealth is % HP based, the rest of restealth is based on a timer. So yes, DPS matters a lot, it is pretty much the entirely fight (Unless you utilize the DPS her while shes hidden strategy, which in my opinion isn’t intended).

Kevin.2176:

Just a note, hopefully this helps, her 1st restealth is % HP based, the rest of restealth is based on a timer. So yes, DPS matters a lot, it is pretty much the entirely fight (Unless you utilize the DPS her while shes hidden strategy, which in my opinion isn’t intended).

I didn’t find this to be true in my experiences. I’ve had her down to 25% many times with different team setups and strategies, and every time at 25% she would stealth.
So far I can only remember 1 single time she didn’t stealth at 25%. Happened yesterday, and it was the first time I saw her hit 10%. After that she got back to higher HP and it took hours trying things to get her back to 10% again.

Eventually we found the only way to break her 50% and 25% barrier is to:
-DPS the spot where she stealthed
-Run the sparks fast enough before she regens more than 10% back, or else she stealths again at the 50% or 25% barrier no matter how much or how little DPS you do. And the only way to do this fast enough is to have DPS hit her while she’s stealthed to slow down her regen enough to give spark runners the time to do their thing.

This has been the case for more than double digit kills we have had on her. You can easily confirm this by letting her be after shes under 50%.