TL;DRWe need help on this fight because we are stumped on how to handle the Boss with two vines at once.
Summary of our experience below.
My group of friends could use some serious help with the Nightmare Vines encounter in Explorable Twilight Arbor. We’ve been so set on running the place because we love the Nightmare Armor, but we can’t even get past the first encounter.
Naturally, we expect a challenge. We’ve cleared Story and Explorable for AC and CM with varying levels of difficulty while having fun doing it, same goes for Story TA. (I LOVE the last fight, by the by)
But man have we hit a major difficulty wall with the Nightmare Vines! Worse, it’s before you even choose your path, so we’ll have to fight them every time.
At first clearing the room is a little rough but plenty doable, as the regular size Nightmare Vines pop up. In fact, I sat off to the side with my Mortar out for most of our very first encounter, completely safe from harm. Eventually though, I felt cheesy so I abandoned my mortar and headed in to fight on foot. I died immediately entirely due to my own fault, and then the Boss Vine spawned and it wasn’t long before the rest of the party dropped.
So then comes our first “clean” encounter with the Boss. It was hell for the ranged classes, including myself. The melee classes were merrily hacking away while the three of us Ranged were doing a constant dance of dodging, rallying, reviving, and Waypointing. A time when we were all up was non-existant, and we were barely contributing to the fight anyhow because of all the effort we put into just surviving.
But admittedly, at this point it’s fair to say we just didn’t know the fight well enough and had to wipe a few times to get a feel for it.
The Melee didn’t understand our problem, not realizing that their constant safety came at the cost of our constant deaths. They suggested we all stack melee because it’s “safe” there. That time they realized what we were saying and we scrapped that plan quick after they just shelled our neatly bundled up team.
So we decided to opt for one of our Elementalists to run in his Swiftness setup and spend most if not all of the fight being a running target who would clear out Volatile Blossoms. It worked well for the Boss with the Living Nightmare spiders in the Story Mode after all. For my part, I decided to go back to shelling the Vines from far off and the Healing-Oriented Ele would stay with me.
The plan was to go with our experience so far. The Vines seemed to ignore Melee and hate on the Ranged if they are separate, but I was ignored while Mortaring. Therefore, we would try to make them focus on the Uncatchable Elementalist and the rest of us would be fine and dandy.
Things… did not work out as intended. The running Elementalist was fine, but suddenly the Vine’s targeting did not go as we had expected it to. The Vines did NOT focus on the elementalist. Melee was no longer safe and neither was I, they went after me very quickly. We scrapped that plan and thusfar, we’ve been completely unable to predict or control who will be on the receiving end of the Vine’s hate.
Considering that, we all tried to go for a “Medium Range” style approach. I switched to my Flamethrower as part on an effort to manage the Volatile Blossoms. We’d just buckle down, take care of ourselves and Focus down the summoned Vines as they came up. This was the most successful approach. It was hard, but we managed to chip down the Boss Vine’s health and handle the smaller Vines it summons.
And then we hit the moment it summons two Vines at once. Death was swift.
Here we also hit a major Quality-of-Life problem with the encounter. The smaller Vines do not reset after a total wipe, meaning we were staring at beginning the fight against the Boss and two Vines. Worse, a third if it was damage enough to summon another.
It got to the point that whenever this happened, we would accept having to throw one death into the fight so we could kill one vine and begin again.
Even so, we would get consistently slaughtered late into the fight whenever he summoned the Two Vines at once. Without any way to control where or who they target, 3 Vine’s worth of scattered AoE death is too much for us. We’re already deep into a fight, with Cooldowns running and Endurance/Health not at maximum. We also can’t simply scatter because of the Blossoms. Their respawn speed is fast enough that destroying them any more frequently than an “as needed” basis is just a waste of time.
The Vines are very good at covering for each other, and we just don’t know what to do.
I like Dungeons, I really do. I love how we’re responsible for both ourselves and the rest of the team and each fight we win feels very rewarding. It sucks that the Armor Set we love is tied to a Dungeon with a boss we can’t beat.
So, help?