Guild Wars 2

My guild group (mesner,warrior,ranger,guardian, and me – warrior or guardian) has a terrible time with Subject Alpha in CoE. We handle all the other dungeons with ease (haven’t done Arah explorable yet). I have viewed just about every video/guide available. I understand the 2 sec. dodge, ice, circles, stack melee, cleave others out of crystal, where to stand, etc. We are all well-geared (exotic/ascended). I then went in as a warrior with a pug group looking for one on the final boss. At first we wiped (I was the last one standing), and one member apologized for screwing up. The second try we burned Alpha down in no time, and no one took much if any damage. I sense there’s something magic here that I’m missing – from impossible to piece of cake. Any advice would be sincerely appreciated.

Did you remember to only press 1,1,1,1,1,1 AND dont dodge? Sometimes people forget to not dodge and the magic cant activate. jk jk some one more experienced will answer

What gear stats do you use?

Alpha is one fight that I’ve really noticed the difference between zerk/non-zerk gear. If everyone is dealing high damage, the fight goes quickly and smoothly — he dies before anyone has a chance to screw up.

Tankier parties have more trouble with him, at least when trying to stack. The fight will take quite a bit longer and there are just more chances for things to go wrong.

For instance: I remember one particular back-to-back CoE run with two different parties. One was tanky, the other was zerk. We spend, no kidding, 3 hours with the tanky party, and Alpha was taking 3-6 attempts each time. In the zerk party, he just melted in about 20 seconds (I’m exaggerating, but it felt like it…).

Real tanky partys with “useful” builds can simple facetank him. No need to dogde anything, not even the frostpillar.

Subject alpha has different attacks depending on which of the 3 paths you choose.

If you are doing path 1 he just does his ranged rock spike attack and his burning attack. His rock attack is not a big problem if everyone is in melee range and you’re group has decent dps. His burning attack can be aegis cycled by your guardian or simply dodged when you see him put his hand up.

If you are doing path 2 he has a big aoe ice circle attack and the burning attack. When you see the huge aoe ice circles count to 3 then dodge roll. After you dodge roll and see the evade frames your guardian should then use an aegis to prevent you from getting hit from the burning attack. So 1,2,3 dodge, then aegis.

If doing path 3 just dodge the ice circles the same as in path 2. Your guard doesn’t have to aegis after the dodge in this path.

Hope this helped, if I missed anything someone please let me know.

Aside from simply zerking him down, if you are forced into actually dealing with his attacks where your party is not sturdy enough to face tank, he has clear telegraphs for the abilities that generally can take people down if he is alive for too long.

For paths where he casts AoE fire also applying burning, he throws his fist up.
For paths where he casts earth spikes, he slams his fist down.

Fire can be blocked, both can be dodged, earth is unblockable but can be side stepped if your close enough, all ice abilities can be dodged and blocked as well.

The unblockable teeth attack functions a lot like Magecrusher’s putrid blast, you basically need to learn the timing and pre-emptively dodge it if you are in melee (if you are ranging then whatever you can see the tell from a mile off).

And berserker parties do actually have to deal with the mechanics, crazy I know.

Don’t stack on Alpha. It does more bad than good.

Stacking in a corner makes the whole party eat the Teeth of Mordremoth (directional cone shaped earth spikes that get bigger further they are from alpha) in p1/3 and will quickly wear down your party the longer you fight. Be in melee but surround him in a tight circle. This way only the person who gets focused will take dmg and rest of the party can attack in peace. If someone goes down, rez ASAP. Getting downed on Alpha is very unforgiving.

If your hp pool is low then in p1/2 dodge/block as soon as Alpha raises his hand and glows with fire. This is to avoid getting burned.

For p2, dodge out for the AoE attack and pause for 1s. As soon as he summons dragon tooth run back in to attack. This way you’ll avoid AoE as well as the burning attack all with a single dodge. Burning gets applies only if you’re within ~250 of Alpha and a single dodge thrown you farther than that making Alpha summon the tooth over you instead of applying burn on you.

If you plan on dragging out the fights then bring vigor and evades/blocks. No vigor is viable only when you zerk dps him down quickly but if you fight longer than ~30s then you will run out of endurance and die.

I support the posts above and I’d say that they pretty much explain everything about Alpha. I just want to add a couple of words to frifox’s post.

The Teeth of Mordremoth is the only attack that makes me sad when we get to fight him and I’m on my ele. Personally for me, this is one of the most unforgiving attacks in the whole game.

Now this is something I can’t really confirm but I’ve noticed that this particular attack is either not being triggered as often or does not do the same amount of damage when all the players are stacked on Alpha as it would do when you have people running around the room. I think I’ve noticed that when Alpha is in the very corner next to the door for example and everyone is stacked on him, the earth spikes will even go up the walls instead of hitting the party.

Thank you all for the considered and well thought out comments. Our group gear is balanced, but on the PTV side. The fights are dragged out. I will study what you recommend and hopefully we can do it. Any other suggestions are welcome as I will be checking back to this forum.

winterchillz.2564:

Now this is something I can’t really confirm but I’ve noticed that this particular attack is either not being triggered as often or does not do the same amount of damage when all the players are stacked on Alpha as it would do when you have people running around the room. I think I’ve noticed that when Alpha is in the very corner next to the door for example and everyone is stacked on him, the earth spikes will even go up the walls instead of hitting the party.

There are few specific corners where alpha’kittenbox center is same spot as the wall (not 0.000001 away from the wall as probably should have been) and therefore his attack starts on the wall and not the floor where all the players are stacked (0.00001 from the wall). It’s nice but with all that cleave unless everyone is EXACTLY in the corner alpha will get pushed out and then RIP goes your stacksploit. (example)

The other thing you’re seeing is often when you range alpha hits you with multiple teeths. The teeth overlap and many times you get hit by two, not one, teeth. When stacked in a corner the 2nd tooth is too far and can’t reach you so you’re hit with only one. If you move out even ~200 from alpha’s center then you’ll bite the 2nd tooth as well and welp, you know how much that hurts on a zerk ele. (example of eating 2 teeths)

winterchillz.2564:

I support the posts above and I’d say that they pretty much explain everything about Alpha. I just want to add a couple of words to frifox’s post.

The Teeth of Mordremoth is the only attack that makes me sad when we get to fight him and I’m on my ele. Personally for me, this is one of the most unforgiving attacks in the whole game.

Now this is something I can’t really confirm but I’ve noticed that this particular attack is either not being triggered as often or does not do the same amount of damage when all the players are stacked on Alpha as it would do when you have people running around the room. I think I’ve noticed that when Alpha is in the very corner next to the door for example and everyone is stacked on him, the earth spikes will even go up the walls instead of hitting the party.

mordremoth teeth deal less damage the closer you are and are subject to glancing blows.

dlonie.6547:

What gear stats do you use?

Alpha is one fight that I’ve really noticed the difference between zerk/non-zerk gear. If everyone is dealing high damage, the fight goes quickly and smoothly — he dies before anyone has a chance to screw up.

Tankier parties have more trouble with him, at least when trying to stack. The fight will take quite a bit longer and there are just more chances for things to go wrong.

For instance: I remember one particular back-to-back CoE run with two different parties. One was tanky, the other was zerk. We spend, no kidding, 3 hours with the tanky party, and Alpha was taking 3-6 attempts each time. In the zerk party, he just melted in about 20 seconds (I’m exaggerating, but it felt like it…).

full zerk team will melt alpha in under 20 seconds. So it probably felt like 20s for a reason

IllegalChocolate.6938:

mordremoth teeth deal less damage the closer you are and are subject to glancing blows.

That’s a myth. All teeth hit equally hard and no, his hits do not glance.

@OP: Not gonna talk about pros and cons (wait, there are basically just pros ^^) of getting full zerk gear or mixed assassin, there’s plenty of info about it out there. Just get it.
I am assuming your team is not having problem with the very first Alpha encounter for every path. There is very little mechanics to it and you only have to get his HP to a half. The problem can easily come up in the following fights. Since you’ve been in PTV so far, the fight prolongs enough for him to start summoning adds which heal him on contact. Also, as there’s no elementalist in your group, you have no way how to efficiently deal with them. My advice would be to get an ele and blast alpha with as many AoEs as possible. Glyph of Storms + Icebow 4 + LH 4 should do the trick.

For Path 3, I find that if you get your dodge timing down to the veeeeery last moment to dodge the Teeth of Jormag (the ice rings), so long as you remain in melee range (either by dodging into a wall, or dodging through him), your evade frames also carry you through the Teeth of Mordremoth.

Many good advice has already been given, so I’ll just stick to a few things I’d like to add:
- Subject Alpha is all about positioning and timing; if you fight him while he uses teeth of mordremoth, try to always stand in/behind it
- if someone has issues dodging those heavy AoE circles in p2 and p3, try to figure out how many AA swings you can do until you need to dodge. Met a couple of players who always failed those dodges while trying to count 2 seconds in their mind, but after I told them to find the right amount of swings with their weapon of choice they succeded every dodge with ease
- though I agree an Elementalist won’t hurt your party, there’s really no need to get one at any cost (unless you aim for some speedrunning with pre-might stacking etc.); example: we did CoE p1 last wendsday with two “first timers”, group was Guard, Mesmer and three rangers. No voice used, just a few written explainations before the fight (told them to melee and what attacks to watch out for) and guess what- no casualties, super smooth run, mobs (including alpha) simply melted.
- you (and the rest of your party) might want to change gear and builds a little more towards dps. I’m not saying “play meta and go full zerk or gtfo”, but give yourselves some goals stats wise. e. g. assuming your sitting at 25% crit chance try something like “let’s see how well I’ll do after lowering some vit/toughness in favor of a 35% crit chance”. And as soon as you get comfortable, push that boarder further towards more offensive power.

I thought he was one of the easier bosses. The only times my groups had trouble (regardless of gear, sometimes he dies fast and sometimes slow) is the p1 final fight where his attacks aren’t telegraphed by huge red circles. There it helps to have someone healing if your dps is bad. Otherwise count 3 dodge works perfectly. It’s possible to dodge everything. I’ve been in groups where no one’s health goes down the entire fight.

It’s not a hard boss but it can become an unforgiving fight.

Regardless of the path, if your team piles up too many mistakes (not dodging) and too many players are down (and soon to be dead), it’s going to get hard.

But if you know how to dodge, and move around Alpha from time to time to at least try to avoid the red circles, it’s not a hard fight.

And having a guardian, like always, makes things easier. But it’s not mandatory.

However, as it has already been said and is true for pretty much every encounters in GW2, the more the fight drags on, the harder it’s going to get. Endurance will be low, skills will be on recharge and the general health of your party will be lower.

Think of PVT gear as training wheels. It’s nice to learn an encounter and you’re class, but once you have the hang of it, take them out and move to something that will increase your damages. Just like a PVT guy is better than a dead-in-2-seconds zerker player, a fully-living-with-no-trouble-PVT wearer would be more useful in berserker’s.

The boss is very easy, maybe you confused the two versions of it, since p2+3 are different (I think, haven’t played since a couple of months).

In the dodge version of the boss, it can happen that the AoE doens’t hit you at all and you can burn down the boss, happened a couple of times. Anyway, usually you have to dodge, but if you have the timing in your head, it’s very simple (unless you have lags).

The other version is even easier, just hug and burn it down. Since stacking is the meta, the ice block gets destroyed in seconds. Just one thing: it’s important that you have the dps, so zerker meta is vital, otherwise it takes too long and your resources deplete.

We do every version of him even with not very skilled guild members fine every time. Gear is not important.

It is always the same: stack on him, regardless if you are melee or ranged. It’s easier if he is pushed or pulled to a wall once the fight starts, but that’s not a requirement. It’s just a bit easier.

Once the red circles appear on your position, count 1..2.. and then dodge against the wall so you don’t actually move away. If the fight is not at the wall, be sure to return to him immediately, so he is not running around to follow you. This way party members who get frozen are always in melee range, so everyone just continues to deal damage to Alpha and are destroying the ice block at the same time with their AoE attacks.
And you have 5 seconds to rezz in case someone misses the dodge and goes down.

Depending on how offensive the party is, it is taking longer or shorter, but the strategy is all the same.

The main point is to dodge exactly at the moment the damage is dealt, because you are invulnerable during the 0.5s dodge. You don’t dodge to get out of the red circles, you dodge to avoid the damage instead. So the 1..2.. counting is essential.

Few tips I’ve picked up in game and from people like Frifox.

Subject alpha p1: Fire attack + Teeth attack + bugged crystal attack for the second two spawns only I believe. Normal 1..2…dodge timing but instead of waiting for red circles use the fire attack as your tell, if you start counting after that and dodge you’ll dodge the teeth attack. On the second/third spawns you have the crystal thrown in which ruins the rotation so be ready to adjust

p2: easiest imo just watch circles, 1…2…dodge

p3: you have the p2 and p1 parts added together, for this you often have the teeth coming directly after the red circle attack happens. So see red circles, 1…2…dodge, and try to make that dodge as close to the last possible increment of time as you can because then you can still be in an evade frame when the teeth come.

That’s my main thing, except when I screw up the burning attacks and crystal attacks are the only thing that I ever let touch me. So I do still have some damage coming in.