Guild Wars 2

I’ve done my fair share of dungeons, and they’re all pretty okay difficulty wise, there are some minor kinks that need sorted out, but other than that they’re manageable.

But then there’s Twilight Arbor. That place is a mess if I ever saw one, jesus christ.

First off: The volatile blossoms. These need to be toned down a notch. End of story. Either decrease their damage, or nerf their spawn rate. It’s not fun having 3 of them spawn on top of where you’re standing in the space of 15 seconds, pretty much killing you in the process. They also very frequently become obstructed for no reason, effectively rendering them invulnerable to all but AoE damage. Now couple all this with the fact that they’re very similar to background elements, this makes it almost impossible to avoid them during hectic boss battles.

Second: The nightmare vines. These guys are fine, except for one minor detail. They keep spawning. Endlessly it seems. We wiped a few times on a combination on Volatile blossoms and vine spit, which apparently seems to make more nightmare vines spawn. At one point there were at least 7 of them up, including the champion one. It’s impossible to dodge that much AoE consistently, and because their puddles stack, you get pretty much instagibbed.

The worms are hard enough by themselves, but throw another 6 of them in, and you’re in for some fun.

I never got farther than that, because every time I try, someone from my team up and leaves out of frustration. And I’ve been close to doing it myself too a couple of times.

I seriously hope this dungeon isn’t considered finished, because everything in there is pretty much over the top. How can a party of players at level 80 with full exotic gear have this much difficulty with it when it’s intended for level 55? I shudder to imagine new players trying this out.

I have no idea how people deal with any of the above issues, but I myself am never stepping foot in that dungeon again until it’s been changed.

TA is considered one of the easier dungeons by difficulty and length.

Volatile blossoms have a slight delay on bloom, for a melee the auto-attack aoe by itself should clear any that spawns within range of you. Their damage is tick based, with quick condition removal their damage should not be a problem.

Nightmare vines have almost no health, they die within 10 seconds. You should be clearing these vines fast enough so when you do actually get to the Greater Vine there shouldn’t be much up. Additionally the Nightmare vines have a ranged target preference over melee, as long these vines have 1 valid ranged target they should not target melee.

I’m not going to go over the “cheese” strat for this boss as I’m sure our wonderful sticky guide thread will show you how to exploit this encounter with ease.

Regarding the blossoms, I agree on a nerf to damage or, even better, a little longer time between the time it’s spawned and the time it damages you (1-2 sec) so that you have time to kill the thing before dying.
As for the nightmare vines, you’re doing it wrong. For this 1st boss, you should ALWAYS focus the adds before hitting the boss, except at the very end when 2 adds spawn at the same time. Know that when you’ve killed all the adds and begin to attack the boss, it will spawn an add at X, Y, Z% HP …. (for instance, add 1 at 80%, add 2 at 60% …).
Also, to avoid those crazy red circles, stay in melee, they only throw them at range .

But then there’s Twilight Arbor. That place is a mess if I ever saw one, jesus christ.

Yep, it’s probably the easiest explorable right now, and definitely needs a buff in difficulty.

First off: The volatile blossoms. These need to be toned down a notch.

No. Actually, their damage should be increased, because it’s too easy to survive them. How you SHOULD do them is clear one part, then wait a bit, then clear the next. This means that you can go to the second part you cleared, kill the blossom on the first part once it spawns and move to it, which makes you save from blossoms entirely.

Blossoms are also very helpful, because you can use them to rally in seconds.

Now couple all this with the fact that they’re very similar to background elements, this makes it almost impossible to avoid them during hectic boss battles.

Do the above, and not only are they almost impossible to die on, they also help you. Clear learn to play issue, you need to adapt to the dungeon here.

As demonstrated, blossoms require no change. Your playstyle requires change.

We wiped a few times on a combination on Volatile blossoms and vine spit, which apparently seems to make more nightmare vines spawn. At one point there were at least 7 of them up

This is major fail on your part. MAJOR fail.
First of all, there can only be seven of them up, tops.
Second, it works like this: The first ones spawn more if you kill one of them. once vine 5 and 6 are up, killing either of them spawns the boss. What you do is damage both of them to near dead, then kill both of them.

You now have a long, free time to wail on the boss. First part where you and your group failed.
Second, if your damage is very low, additional vines will spawn. You need to burn them down. If you cannot burn down a vine before another pops, your damage is WAY too low and you have no business in an explorable to begin with.

If you have “6 +boss”, then failed at killing repopping vines or had terrible damage.

Clear learn to play issue, dungeon does not require a change.

Kill fines → make boss pop → hit boss until new vine → kill new vine → hit boss again. Do this, and this boss is a snoozefest.

PS: Try to melee them. They are nearly helpless in melee range.

I seriously hope this dungeon isn’t considered finished, because everything in there is pretty much over the top.

Seriously. It’s one of the easiest explorables.
It should be considered unfinished mostly because it’s too easy.

It was my first explorable, by the way, and I never had any issues with it because it’s just so easy. Even AC story is harder than it.

How can a party of players at level 80 with full exotic gear have this much difficulty with it when it’s intended for level 55?

Because you need to learn how to do the dungeon. Sorry, but that’s really the reason. You do not try to adjust to mechanics, you do not try to deal properly with the blossoms, you do not try to deal properly with the boss.

And then you die. This is how it should be. Meanwhile, groups that do this properly have zero deaths and do this instance in less than 30 minutes.

I think it’s sad that people immediately cry for nerfs without even consideringt that they themselves might be the problem.

@ zef
easiest? Haha what? AC is the easiest by far. Hell the Vevina fight is harder than everything in AC explorable ;o

However yes. The death of the 5 vine spawns the boss. The vines have only 1 attack in melee, that is very easy to dodge. If your team can cluster around the vines they will go down fine (I’ve had to solo the champion before while my team messed around with the other vine, and it only hit me twice)

I thought TA was one of the easier dungeons. The only thing I can’t stand about it is firing at a blossom and seeing “Obstructed” a million times.

Here is a video guide of clearing TA explorer up path in 20 mins, its actually not that hard, and use flowers to rally up and they aren’t a problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAtkittenOSZOA&feature=plcp

Saying that TA is one of the easiest, it’s obviously trolling.

However, it’s not that difficult as the OP says, you just need to master the dungeon, which may require more runs that, let’s say, CoF or AC

Trafalgar.5247:

Saying that TA is one of the easiest, it’s obviously trolling.

However, it’s not that difficult as the OP says, you just need to master the dungeon, which may require more runs that, let’s say, CoF or AC

After having done every path in every dungeon (With the exeption of Seers path Arah where we didn’t get past simin on our 1 and only try) I can pretty much confirm that TA is in fact one of the easier dungeons. The wurm is easy once you know how to handle it, just give it a few runs and try to adapt your approach to it, and it will be a cakewalk soon enough. And Vevina is really all about stopping attacking when you’re confused, and rez downed allies as soon as you can.

Scyte, as someone who has does every path in every dungeon. Im not disagreeing that its one of the easier ones if you know what you’re doing. However the wurm alone wipes groups who dont know the specific strategy for it, which is not immediately obvious.

Same with fights like vevina and the 3x knights.

Meanwhile any PuG with at least a reasonable level of skill/gear can blaze through most other dungeons without a care in the world. Easy? Sure if you know what you are doing. Easiest? Not by a long shot. PuG friendly? Not as much as most other dungeons.

I would argue that TA is one of the easiest in terms of difficulty, however it does have more of a learning curve than other dungeons. The tactics are simple, yet executing them for some players can be more difficult. Once learned it is easily one of the easiest dungeons, as wiping is pretty near impossible.

I dont give a crap what you dam pro leets say about these dungeons for the regular player they area impossible. When this game was being developed it was said all of the professions had a chance to help one another. I don’t care if there are 5 thieves in the friggin dungeon they all should be able to make it. But no we got lied to it takes a special team with special set ups to do any dungeon in this game. I myself have a thief I know I aint perfect with her and probably never will be but I know overkill when i see it. The dungeons on this game are pure overkill unless your team is super pro leet. My teams are not and they should not have to be. I do not care about time like I have to do it in 20 minutes what I care about is accomplishment if that is not there then no point in trying. Go ahead tell me how frigging easy they are and I will tell u to F@#k off. The respawn of this game is stupid the regeneration of this game is stupid no boss should regenerate on this game and once the other bad guys are done they should not respawn in a boss fight. Im really really close to quitting gw2 I played gw for over 6 years but I may just find another one to play or not. Not like it matters cause you already sold me the game what does the anet team care lol

Couldn’t agree more with Zefiris.8297.

Lol, TA isn’t hard at all if you know what to do.
It’s not that easy either, I would put it around the middle.
In my opinion as far as difficulty goes is:
Arah>=CoE>SE>TA>=AC>HotW>CoF>CM

Well, AC shouldn’t really by that far in the list, but the downgrade to lvl 35 make it annoying for me.

The only thing in TA that is needed is extra waypoints its no fun to run back the whole dungeons trough those blossums alone.

@LONGA: ! Most annoying thing there ever. Running the 100 miles when you happen to die at the near end of the dungeon.

I believe TA difficulty is totally fine, actually they’ve sneak fixed it a bit imo. There used to be more/frequent blossom spawns and poison hit around 300+ damage more in the first weeks. The difficulty feels totally fine now and it’s a matter of l2p issue actually. Bring condition removes, control and focusfire and you’ll be fine. Blossom obstructed issue is annoying though (seems to work on curved projectiles, but not on straight ones like rifle).

@Chyanne Waters: No I don’t believe “5 random thieves” should be able to clear this dungeon by face smashing it and not working together. That only results in people graveyard zerging yet another dungeon, not getting the point of the dungeon mechanics and QQing how dungeon is too hard/shallow. This dungeon doesn’t take no special team nor special setups. I’ve ran this multiple times with totally random setups, guildies and pugs.
I even carried some pug group through it, who said it was impossible for them and they needed a “tank”. After a bit of laughing for the “tank” part, I decided to help them out and everything went nicely.
3 rangers+necro+warr (me) cleared it without a problem that time. Get someone to do the call targets and explain the mechanics. Focusfire and coordination prevails.

But if you feel like you don’t want to adapt to the dungeon and feel like the dungeon should adapt to you, then I believe you really need to find a new game.
GW2 dungeons should remain to be about interesting mechanics (needs more), challenging fights, cooperation&coordination.

I’m not trying to be elitist nor am I insulting you or anyone who have trouble with it, in fact I’m more than happy to help anyone tackle this dungeon. If you need an extra member for party, feel free to whisper me ingame.

Redamz.5038 on what base are you rating dungeon difficulty ? I’ve done them all except arah since on my server it’s somewhat always bugged when I want to do it with my friends, and I find them all about equal.

I agree there are some path that are longer ( take SE path 2 I think, the one with the 2 golem boss at the end) or maibe require a bit more teamwork ( again take CoE Alpha) but I haven’t come across something I coulden’t clear with a pug (I’ve done my full SE set with pugs and not once did it happen to not being able to complete the instance)

The only really downside I see on dungeon atm it’s the inflated HP on some bosses and not enough WP for those that struggle to clear something and wipe.

Regarding TA again, the blossom are only a minor nuisance at best, and a bless sometime with instant rally :p
Considering that you can skip like 70% (completly made up number but you get the point) of trash it’s also one of the faster.

Having ran TA many times on all paths, I can confirm that it’s quite easy as long as you know what you’re doing. I remember my first explorable mode run, where my whole party ragequit on the first hound pull because we didn’t know what to do with the blossoms. After we learned how to deal with the flowers, the dungeon became easy.

Heck, you can rally off blossoms.

The problem with TA is that the difficulty seems to just ramp down as you get through. With the exception of forward/forward, the nightmare vine and the dogs at the front are harder than anything else in the instance. PUGs I’m in often wipe 5 times on these then manage to just zerge through the rest.

@op if you’re struggling with the beginning portion having a guardian in your group, and asking everyone to slot condition removal skills will make it a lot less of a headache.

here my friends
here is a trick to those wurms

MELEE THEM!!!

the end of story.

oh and if you consider TA is too hard… you’re bad or either you should just stop doing dungeons.

TA is one of those easy to learn, difficult to master sort of dungeons. It will punish you if you make mistakes, but is pretty easy if you don’t.

Blossoms are targetable for a few seconds before they “bloom” or activate, so you just need to keep an eye out/spam AoE.

You can rally on the blossoms if they take you down.

Wurms are easier in melee. The wells they create are small enough to be stepped out of (opposed to dodging). dodging in this case might just put you into a patch of blossoms…

And lastly, kill Nightmare Court Knights, then Sorcerers. Everything else is not as big a threat. Those Knights are killer.

It sounds to me like you got your butt kicked by mechanics. That will happen, but it does help if at least one person is in your group that knows the instance well enough to give you a heads up. (It’s up to the rest of the group to listen)

TA em is easy. I have farmed all 3 paths and had full armor set and weapons a week ago. The only hard part is probably the 3 knights with general fight in for/for path.

I wish some pug groups would not choose to skip contents. Sometimes, skipping resulted in more death.

I feel at this point, all explorable modes are now becoming relatively too easy. I did AC yesterday, OMG, AC em used to be hard, now it’s sooo boring.

TA is not hard, its just annoying. I still farm TA once a day cuz its relatively fast though.

My personal preference for a fast dungeon run will be AC2=CoF1>HotW1>TA up>CM3=CoE1>Arah3