Guild Wars 2

I’m getting a little tired of people range-exploiting the HoTW troll. He’s an easy boss, and meleeing him is much faster anyways. Here’s a few tips:

1. When approaching, he will use “Fear Me!”. Make sure you have stability or area-condi removal to deal with the Fear condi. (Healing Spring, Cleansing Flames, Shake it Off, etc…)

2. Double dodge his shockwave attack. Yes, that’s right. You must double dodge his attack, and the entire fight is balanced around it. Assuming you double dodge it, then you should successfully have enough endurance before he uses it again.

3. Counter his daze spam/thunder-bolt thing, through Stability and projectile destruction. Elementalists should be using Swirling Winds, and Guardians should spam ability. (Note, I am not sure whether or not it can be reflected, but I am positive it can be destroyed)

Follow these 3 basic strategies, and e should be dead in no time.

Easy boss, requires just a bit of competence and strategy, but still easy. Seriously, learn it, and you will love how easy this boss becomes.

No need to double dodge, just dodge into him or into a wall if you pushed him to one.

1) Yup, though personally I pull him to a corner, which I’ll go over later
2) Kinda right. If you’re in the open, yes a double dodge is the safe bet, however you don’t need to. His jump attack has 2 parts to it. One is an initial shockwave underneath him, the second is an aftershock that hits an area around where the initial wave hits. The problem here though is if you’re in typical melee range your dodge will put you at range which will have you needing to dodge the aftershock as well. To prevent this you can do one of two things:

• Back up and dodge into melee range so that you end up right under him, this will have you completely safe from the aftershock, though you may lose a swing or two of auto attack while you back out to dodge in.
• Use a wall/corner and dodge into that, if you remain consistently right under him you’ll not need to dodge the aftershock as again, you’re in melee range and not at risk.

3) I haven’t had much success with projectile defense against his daze /shrug, I’ll have to try again, I’ve typically just run a stability rotation and dodged his attack when I’m on guardian.

As for the pull spot, what I typically do is this:
The old tactic was you run up the stairs, across the bridge, then jump back across onto the house to avoid the wolf agro before jumping down on the troll. Well instead of crossing the bridge just jump right down onto that wall on the left as you start to cross the bridge. Get to the end of that wall and you could get out of combat. Then drop down and look to the right you’ll see 4 guys, kill them quickly, then stack in the corner right below where you got out of combat. Then simply tag the troll, run back to the stack spot, and wait for him to get into position to attack, if you attack early he’ll sit at the corner of the building and not hug in tight with you and you may need to double dodge.

This spot works great for two reasons. One being that you only need to single dodge the jump as talked about above, but the second is that even if feared you’ll just run into the corner, no worry about running away and screwing up your position and what not. That spot has made the fight much easier for my group, though I kinda like fighting him more in the middle or screwing up the stack to make it a little tougher… but I’m a masochist when it comes to stuff like this sometimes.

I just want to confirm that Projectile defense does not work against his auto attack, you need to dodge it. Also if the targeted person dodge it, it will not bounce. For the wave, staying melee and dodging toward him will make you evade both hits.

It’s a good idea to bring energy sigil or vigor for this fight, as well as a condition cleanse. If you get hit by the auto attack, you will get weakened, and thus have less dodge, and get hit again. If you do get hit once, use your condi cleanse.

After beind feared, he will generally use his auto attack, when the fear end, wait 1/2 second and dodge toward him. Or you can use stability/cleanse to get rid of it.

I’m not convinced… Won’t this negatively this impact my ability to tab out and check email during the fight?

You’re forgetting the caliber of people that usually run HOTW is not exactly high and sometimes having the range option does save time if you end up with subpar people. Meleeing him is essentially the same as fighting Subject Alpha from COE and while it is straightforward and easy most pugs don’t got the timing for it.

DeathPanel.8362:

You’re forgetting the caliber of people that usually run HOTW is not exactly high and sometimes having the range option does save time if you end up with subpar people. Meleeing him is essentially the same as fighting Subject Alpha from COE and while it is straightforward and easy most pugs don’t got the timing for it.

I’d like to think that the people who take the time to read this will be able to melee it, and not only that, but teach others how to do it as well. He’s a pretty easy fight if you set up and play correctly, much like Alpha, which in my PUG runs usually goes smoothly.

Every guardian just spam ability!!!
Edit: You can dodge once for the big jump anywhere. You just need to time it right and try to end up right in his circle. Or hers.

Now only if pugs could read forums :/

RSLongK.8961:

Now only if pugs could read :/

ftfy. At least a lot of them can’t.

Reflect doesn’t work on the projectile. Other than that I agree with the OP, however I only melee him with groups I trust.

RSLongK.8961:

Now only if pugs could read forums :/

They can’t even read LFG’s.

Kain Francois.4328:

s:
1. When approaching, he will use “Fear Me!”. Make sure you have stability or area-condi removal to deal with the Fear condi. (Healing Spring, Cleansing Flames, Shake it Off, etc…)

I don’t have stability, but I’ll use Well of Blood and remove the condition. I guess I could also use Lich Form or Plague, but then that thing will be on recharge for so long, that I’m pretty much dead by the time the Troll does this attack again.

Kain Francois.4328:

2. Double dodge his shockwave attack. Yes, that’s right. You must double dodge his attack, and the entire fight is balanced around it. Assuming you double dodge it, then you should successfully have enough endurance before he uses it again.

Okay, I double dodge.

Kain Francois.4328:

3. Counter his daze spam/thunder-bolt thing, through Stability and projectile destruction. Elementalists should be using Swirling Winds, and Guardians should spam ability. (Note, I am not sure whether or not it can be reflected, but I am positive it can be destroyed)

I don’t have stability or projectile destruction. Now I get hurt.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

snip

are you trying to Solo the Troll? or are you running with a group?

if you are running with a group the rules apply as above. As a Necromancer you are reliant on the rest of your team for the stability.

If you are soloing, that is a different story all together.

The only thing I hate about the troll is that every single skill it has is unblockable, without the game itself telling you beforehand. This is obviously incredibly confusing to non-veteran players, and even if you’re experienced, it’s just annoying to feel like your usual support tactics are negated.

Many core mechanics (aegis, reflections, absortion) are literally useless in the fight and so are a lot of native damage mitigation methods. Hell, its untelegraphed fear is even undodgable – talk about making a lame fight.

The reason it’s so easy is the super-low HP pool, you can easily kill it before people run dry on dodges and stability.

because super elite players always skiped the troll in AC, they now don’t have a clue on how to fight it in HoTW but hey! they complete the dungeon super fast so they must be pro!

(you forgot to mention that you should also spread around him to diminish the chances of getting all ground tremors in the same direction one shoting any distracted guy… if you spread around him, at melee range, his ground tremor goes into 5 different directions)

Mesket.5728:

because super elite players always skiped the troll in AC, they now don’t have a clue on how to fight it in HoTW but hey! they complete the dungeon super fast so they must be pro!

(you forgot to mention that you should also spread around him to diminish the chances of getting all ground tremors in the same direction one shoting any distracted guy… if you spread around him, at melee range, his ground tremor goes into 5 different directions)

Strawman argument. The “super elite” players that skipped the troll also know how to fight HOTW troll. You don’t see those type of people complaining about it in the forums.

It’s usually the newbies that don’t skip the troll in AC but get owned by it that also don’t know how to handle it in HOTW.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

…

I don’t have stability or projectile destruction. Now I get hurt.

OP was wrong, projectile destruction doesn’t work on any of the Troll’s attack. So you are on par with any other class when it comes to that.

As for stability, 1. you don’t need it, just bring a stunbreaker and 2. You have multiple sources of stability, one of which is traited DS (3s stability on a 7s cd, which is pretty dam good)

edit: inb4 frifox (untraited wardens don’t count :p)

Aleth.9630:

its untelegraphed fear

It’s highly telegraphed. So much misinformation.
It’s an easy and fun boss unless you are a necromancer but if that’s the case why are you in pve? Reroll.

Enjoy your ascalon catacomb tokens. Lazy copy/paste revamp was answered by even more lazy play style. The camera angles ain’t great for melee. It is the same troll we’ve seen before. It gave the wrong rewards. It just didn’t work. Ergo..no one took it seriously apart from the OP. Just 2 cents worth.

Tom Yzf.5872:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

…

I don’t have stability or projectile destruction. Now I get hurt.

OP was wrong, projectile destruction doesn’t work on any of the Troll’s attack. So you are on par with any other class when it comes to that.

As for stability, 1. you don’t need it, just bring a stunbreaker and 2. You have multiple sources of stability, one of which is traited DS (3s stability on a 7s cd, which is pretty dam good)

edit: inb4 frifox (untraited wardens don’t count :p)

As good as Foot in the Grave is, I dislike the fact that I have to retrait just to get a decent source of stability. Well, at least SR gives 200 Ferocity… Other than that you don’t have good stability sources. Yeah, you could use your transform, but meh…

DeathPanel.8362:

Mesket.5728:

because super elite players always skiped the troll in AC, they now don’t have a clue on how to fight it in HoTW but hey! they complete the dungeon super fast so they must be pro!

(you forgot to mention that you should also spread around him to diminish the chances of getting all ground tremors in the same direction one shoting any distracted guy… if you spread around him, at melee range, his ground tremor goes into 5 different directions)

Strawman argument. The “super elite” players that skipped the troll also know how to fight HOTW troll. You don’t see those type of people complaining about it in the forums.

It’s usually the newbies that don’t skip the troll in AC but get owned by it that also don’t know how to handle it in HOTW.

I guess I need to add more details for readers like you… im not talking about the “super elite” but the many many elite wannabe who try to make a pug run a speed run… the newbies don’t have much chance when they stay alone against the troll because the “pro” (complaining) are ususally fighting the next boss.

point is: Nerfing it is dumbing the game down because of reasons… the boss is in the first dungeon, learn to fight it or endure a long range fight.