Guild Wars 2

Right, since I just recently – yesterday – finished up my COE P3 finally since ppl are so scared to go there for some reason, I thought I would add my own 2 pieces of copper to the forums about it.

The stacking methodology for Subject Alpha works…albeit requiring a decent amount of Toughness. So that addresses a few encounters with Subject Alpha.

The other mechanic, millions of red circles: It is so easy to handle these. Once the red circles spawn, count to 2 (as in 1, 2) and then dodge. A little bit of timing practice has you evading successfully.

I play hammer guardian in there and melee Subject Alpha with little trouble doing this, in fact it’s great fun. I dodge then hit my hammer attack #2 and jump back on him. Repeat as you need.

The good thing about this 1,2 count is that everyone can then stack (melee & ranged), which minimises the chance of dodging into another million red circles and also allows the crystal entombed player to be released in 1 or 2 seconds from the aoe in one place.

Try it, it works, however, once you’ve got this down it may highlight some other more irritating places in COE than Subject Alpha

I advise people to turn on or turn up their in-game sound if they haven’t already. When Alpha uses the Earth and Ice AoEs, there is a “crackle” sound effect before it strikes. It’s hard to describe, but with sound turned up you hear it very clearly. Just as that sound effect finishes, dodge. It works every single time, and you can sponge all the other attacks if you’re close (the Earth Spikes and the Fire PbAoE).

Alpha doesnt require toughness. Fastest groups are zerker, if your stacked, even if one gets downed from Alpha’s melee, you have 4 people ressing instantly as your on top of them. Also, I have tried to fight him in path1 on a guardian with over 2,310+ toughness and Alpha can still do enough melee damage to me to kill me if he focus’es solely on me. So your gonna die if he wants you too, its just how fast can you burst him down before he can do this enough to where it overcomes the team.

JJBigs.8456:

Alpha doesnt require toughness. Fastest groups are zerker, if your stacked, even if one gets downed from Alpha’s melee, you have 4 people ressing instantly as your on top of them. Also, I have tried to fight him in path1 on a guardian with over 2,310+ toughness and Alpha can still do enough melee damage to me to kill me if he focus’es solely on me. So your gonna die if he wants you too, its just how fast can you burst him down before he can do this enough to where it overcomes the team.

Yeah, in my instance I mean toughness to a point where you aren’t being one-shotted constantly becoming a liability to your party. I don’t really have much to say about zerker groups, I don’t run them or have a build for it.

Mostly the advice in this post is for the players that are getting to Alpha for the first time or having trouble surviving him in a PuG or noob-to-the-dungeon friends group.

I would like to try playing my mediums/light armors in CoE but have no idea where to start, all I have is zerker gear atm and dont wanna buy bad armor or armor just for CoE. Also want to be able to do some damage so if anyone has a guide for that, it would be appreciated. Not so much specific classes, just in general for non-heavy.

JJBigs.8456:

I would like to try playing my mediums/light armors in CoE but have no idea where to start, all I have is zerker gear atm and dont wanna buy bad armor or armor just for CoE. Also want to be able to do some damage so if anyone has a guide for that, it would be appreciated. Not so much specific classes, just in general for non-heavy.

My static dungeon team and I do CoE every night, and we have plenty of light/medium armor classes coming with us from time to time. From experience, I have to say that the dungeon is more about learning the mechanics rather than trying to gain a statistical advantage in survivability. Typically, the reason you down/die is due to mistiming a dodge roll or other relevant survival skill, no matter how much toughness/vitality you have. The light/medium classes that run with us rarely down/die because they use the appropriate skills for every situation and time their survivability tactics accordingly. I’m not sure if this applies to the CoE PuG community, but with a coordinated group, you can just focus on offensive stats to kill things quicker, which effectively means you survive better.

JJBigs.8456:

I would like to try playing my mediums/light armors in CoE but have no idea where to start, all I have is zerker gear atm and dont wanna buy bad armor or armor just for CoE. Also want to be able to do some damage so if anyone has a guide for that, it would be appreciated. Not so much specific classes, just in general for non-heavy.

Use zerkers becuase if you don’t dodge alpha’s aoe you die with whatever set you’re using. Maybe you’ll be left at very low with a soldier’s set but you SHOULD be dodging every alpha aoe he puts down.

Source: used to do coe every night. This is not a min/max boss where you want to tweak your build, this is personal skill and twork, pure and simple.

JJBigs.8456:

I would like to try playing my mediums/light armors in CoE but have no idea where to start, all I have is zerker gear atm and dont wanna buy bad armor or armor just for CoE. Also want to be able to do some damage so if anyone has a guide for that, it would be appreciated. Not so much specific classes, just in general for non-heavy.

As Lightrayne pointed out above it really is about knowing the instance and that applies to every dungeon in the game.

Aside from that, I changed my armor for better non-zerker team viability to Power/Precision/Toughness with Soldier runes on my guardian, and on my mesmer also Power/Precision/Toughness (not the best I admit but successfully completing a bosskill with minimum party wipes is more important to me) with Superior rune of the Pack, since I like to go into melee range with my sword and the party can get nice buffs when I get hit.

Be aware tho, apparently Toughness does have some affect on the aggro tables in the game and you may find yourself a target more so than the rest of your party, so finding a good balance there is also key Found this out the funny way when I was Lupicus’ kitten doll for the night, or rather his rabbit.

I was hoping someone could help me out here, I tried CoE Teleporter path today, first time in CoE exp. It was a bit of a disaster really. Three of us were new to it and the other two kept tactics close to the chest… usually until we had found out the hard way.

Thanks for the stacking tip, that was never suggested by our ‘experienced’ party members and seems to be the prevalent tactic. We were all ranged classes and so kept our distance, there were times when the floor was entirely covered in aoe, the only way out was invulnerability from skills or a well timed dodge.

I read in another thread that was written months ago ‘mesmers beware’, I am now assuming this is because of clones… now this could explain some of our difficulty and the reason why that final room was almost entirely paved with aoes at times; aoes weren’t just x5 they were x8, 1 more for each active clone.

I just wondered if anyone could give me a firm positive or negative on this that’s up to date. Thinking about it now, that’s kind of the point actually isn’t it, with clones, they’re supposed to be just like the player so it does make sense they’d be targetted, I was just hoping for a definite ‘yes or no’ from some people with experience, before I launch into my next pug demanding that I and other mesmers create as few clones as possible.

Thanks in advance

JJBigs.8456:

Alpha doesnt require toughness. Fastest groups are zerker, if your stacked, even if one gets downed from Alpha’s melee, you have 4 people ressing instantly as your on top of them. Also, I have tried to fight him in path1 on a guardian with over 2,310+ toughness and Alpha can still do enough melee damage to me to kill me if he focus’es solely on me. So your gonna die if he wants you too, its just how fast can you burst him down before he can do this enough to where it overcomes the team.

Uhh no offense but 2310 toughness isnt much.

Folk.2093:

JJBigs.8456:

Alpha doesnt require toughness. Fastest groups are zerker, if your stacked, even if one gets downed from Alpha’s melee, you have 4 people ressing instantly as your on top of them. Also, I have tried to fight him in path1 on a guardian with over 2,310+ toughness and Alpha can still do enough melee damage to me to kill me if he focus’es solely on me. So your gonna die if he wants you too, its just how fast can you burst him down before he can do this enough to where it overcomes the team.

Uhh no offense but 2310 toughness isnt much.

2310 toughness is ALOT. 2310 armor is not. with 2310 toughness, you easily have 3200 armor.

Praxis.4976:

I was hoping someone could help me out here, I tried CoE Teleporter path today, first time in CoE exp. It was a bit of a disaster really. Three of us were new to it and the other two kept tactics close to the chest… usually until we had found out the hard way.

Thanks for the stacking tip, that was never suggested by our ‘experienced’ party members and seems to be the prevalent tactic. We were all ranged classes and so kept our distance, there were times when the floor was entirely covered in aoe, the only way out was invulnerability from skills or a well timed dodge.

I read in another thread that was written months ago ‘mesmers beware’, I am now assuming this is because of clones… now this could explain some of our difficulty and the reason why that final room was almost entirely paved with aoes at times; aoes weren’t just x5 they were x8, 1 more for each active clone.

I just wondered if anyone could give me a firm positive or negative on this that’s up to date. Thinking about it now, that’s kind of the point actually isn’t it, with clones, they’re supposed to be just like the player so it does make sense they’d be targetted, I was just hoping for a definite ‘yes or no’ from some people with experience, before I launch into my next pug demanding that I and other mesmers create as few clones as possible.

Thanks in advance

If you’re talking about the icy circles that create earth spikes, the number of circles is irrelevant to survival because you’re supposed to dodge the impact (count 1…2…dodge) as the circle itself is harmless. We’ve had several mesmers that spammed clones to their heart’s content and we had no problems. This was with much of the room covered in the icy circles.

I personally prefer people spreading out, then I don’t need to dodge at all when he drops AoE’s (unless I get the “misty” one, which is rare.)

Dolan.3071:

I personally prefer people spreading out, then I don’t need to dodge at all when he drops AoE’s (unless I get the “misty” one, which is rare.)

Takes longer to kill if everyone is ranged.

Dolan.3071:

I personally prefer people spreading out, then I don’t need to dodge at all when he drops AoE’s (unless I get the “misty” one, which is rare.)

The dodging method is a waste. The blue mist can be avoided by having one person sit out in ranged distance. That gives the melee in the group the ability to just “sit” there and dps. Alpha’s damage from his ice attack is triggered if you aren’t in the center of the AoE. If you stay in the center of it ( even if they all overlap ) you are safe. SO LONG as you have a person in ranged dodging the blue mist and fire/earth, its easy and keeps your dps safe.

His earth and fire are a joke. I run full berserker gear without any Toughness/Vit traits. Granted I use life-stealing food and dungeon pots. They keep me up through those attacks. If you aren’t using consumables in dungeons, I don’t know what to say…They are cheap and Very useful – Dungeon Master tips

Ioflux.4369:

Dolan.3071:

I personally prefer people spreading out, then I don’t need to dodge at all when he drops AoE’s (unless I get the “misty” one, which is rare.)

Takes longer to kill if everyone is ranged.

I should’ve been more clear, I didn’t mean all ranged haha. Just the guy getting targeted stands far away and rest stand wherever they want (I don’t seem to get hit even when standing on the edge of someone else’s ring) :/

Dolan.3071:

Ioflux.4369:

Dolan.3071:

I personally prefer people spreading out, then I don’t need to dodge at all when he drops AoE’s (unless I get the “misty” one, which is rare.)

Takes longer to kill if everyone is ranged.

I should’ve been more clear, I didn’t mean all ranged haha. Just the guy getting targeted stands far away and rest stand wherever they want (I don’t seem to get hit even when standing on the edge of someone else’s ring) :/

Or you could just dodge it.

Pffft dodging when you don’t need to only wastes time. As well as the fact that everyone has to get the timing perfect, whereas this way only one person needs to and the others go AFK.

i get annoyed at PuGs who (despite being told to stack in melee and dodge after two) decide theyd be safer running around at range; causing the other (non perfect timed evaders) to run into their AoE; or getting crystallised and call for ‘help’
- though i suppose thats partly to do with my hatred of dungeon players who will never ever go melee because they’re ‘squishy’

Linguistically Inept.6583:

i get annoyed at PuGs who (despite being told to stack in melee and dodge after two) decide theyd be safer running around at range; causing the other (non perfect timed evaders) to run into their AoE; or getting crystallised and call for ‘help’
- though i suppose thats partly to do with my hatred of dungeon players who will never ever go melee because they’re ‘squishy’

I know right, someone who puts points into defense will out damage a zerker sitting at range, the damage drop is crazy.

But hey, a random PuG tried the usual stacking method and it just fell to pieces too quickly, one person wouldn’t die at a time it would be 2-3. Which goes downhill pretty quick from there when you get hit with a crystal.

I’m missing why stacking is relevant to all of Alpha’s AoE attacks. It just guarantees that you have to dodge with the proper timing, which is good, but not that much different than if everyone was spread out.

That said, having everyone in one spot is good for really fast revivals, breaking the crystals with cleave damage and such… I just don’t get why people say it’s the solution to the AoE damage, when the solution is really just dodging with the proper timing.

So can someone explain what I’m missing here?

Actually the alpha’s attack mechanic is quite simple and when done right the people in melee can afk and only 1 person (the one at ranged distance) has to worry about certain attacks.

The alpha has 3 aoe attacks

1) ice/earth ring spam attack
2) fire aoe tooth attack
3) the earth line attack

The only attack where people do not understand how the mechanics work is the ice/earth circle spam attack.

The ice/earth spam only exist on p1/p2.

Each time you encounter the alpha in the path he will target 1 person the whole fight with a special ice/earth spam. This person that is targeted will get an icicle attack that only deals damage if you are within the inner circle of his aoe. To find out just spread out and range him until his ice/earth attack pops up. You will know who he is targeting because you can see underneath them that the ground below them isn’t frosted at the beginning of the attack but becomes more frosted the longer the aoe circle is down until the attack triggers after a certain amount of time. To avoid this attack all you have to do is walk out of the small circle and it will never hit you. The key here if you’re targeted is to stay ranged so that you don’t accidentally put your aoe circle on them and vice versa.

For those who are not targeted, you should stack up and when you see the mass spam of aoe circles just stand still and you won’t get hit. This saves unnecessary dodging and makes the dungeon a whole lot faster and easier.

Alpha is really easy once you get used to his attack mechanics

(yes I always do all 3 coe paths everytime the rewards reset, either on my full zerk thief or paladin guard)

In regards to the method where one person stands ranged and the others go melee while that does work well it sometimes backfires due to the fact the ranged character will get crystalled and subsequently obliterated by the ice spike. Having said that if the other team members actually watch out for that too you can easily break the crystal but far too often pugs go afk and forget about it completely.

Agent Spire however fulfills this job the best. I believe no player character can tank as well as she can against Alpha :P

There is also a nice “bug” where if there are many ice/earth spikes stacked, just stand in the middle and you won’t get hit, no bleed no dmg. Problem is it’s really random. Many times with no endurance and the spikes come I won’t get hit. Or when I use Blurred Frenzy (I’m a Mesmer) I won’t see any “invulnerable” signs when the spikes hit.

@bladedhonour the ice/earth spikes come in paths 2 and 3. Path 1 has earth line and AoE fire. Trust me, I run all paths everyday.