Guild Wars 2

The legendary dredge powersuit is just incredibly annoying on any difficulty past 1. On difficulty 1 it was actually a fun and interesting fight. Unforgiving, but you could learn what not to do and what to do and down him in a reasonable amount of time.

But on difficulty 2…jesus. I can’t even count how many stupid, kitten design decisions went into the higher difficulties of this. I’ve done quite a few difficulty 2 fractals and none of them are anywhere near this frustrating. This one is primarily frustrating because of random components.

-aggro is random. We repeatedly had the legendary powersuit aggro the person up top waiting to pull the switch. This should never happen.

-the boss should never target downed players. Again, there are no aggro mechanics to pull him off and his aoe attacks make it suicide to try to rezz anyone. If he decides to aggro someone who is downed, that person will die. Then once they are dead, you can’t send someone back to rezz them because, again, aggro is random and he’ll turn and go after them and you can’t drag him to the next switch.

-the bombs are insanely stupid: making a ‘dodge or die’ mechanic is just fine. However, you can’t put in a ‘double dodge or die’ mechanic on a boss that also does other powerful attacks that need to be dodged. Additionally, he doesn’t drop the bombs all at once: more than once we dodged from one set of bombs only to have a new set of bombs appear behind us MID DODGE and kill us as the dodge finished. This should never happen. Plus your kittenedly idiotic field of view often means you can’t even see that two dodge lengths behind you has bombs there until you’ve already committed – at which point you die.

-whose idea was it to put a fight that depends so heavily on moving out of red circles on a SNOWY background? The pale red circles are incredibly hard to see against the white/orange of the floor. I have a similar problem with the glowy yellow platforms in the harpy platforming section of a different platform – maybe eyes suck, but I just can’t barely see them at all.

-You should never, ever, ever, even kittening think that a boss that heals to full endlessly is a good idea. Just….holy kitten. If the players haven’t killed the boss in xx minutes just end the encounter and call it a wipe. Make them start over from scratch. Making him heal to full if you mess up is just another in your long list of interesting mechanics that you waste because health pools are too big and encounters take too long. Once people ‘get’ something they shouldn’t be forced to repeat it over and over and over and over again.

- the switches need to be a lot more responsive

-the lava needs to fall faster

-the lava needs to hit a wider area – multiple times we had him standing on the burnt patch on the ground and even though he looked like he’d been hit, he never got the debuff

-this entire encounter seems designed to say ‘kitten you’ to illusion/phantams mesmers. He goes after them all the time, which is absurdly kitten given the very precise positioning requirements needed in this fight. You can’t even use them after he is attacking someone else because aggro is random and he can just as easily suddenly turn and go after them and run out of the circle at the wrong moment. And it takes so long for the lava to come down that not even carefully stripping his defiant stacks then immobilizing him under the lava is sufficient to stop this. So the only solution is to tell the mesmer to just not use his build – which then gets you to the low dps problems I mentioned above.

This is, bar none, the worst encounter I have ever seen in a video game. Not even the worst WOW dungeons were this bad in terms of sheer stupidity. This is the most unpleasant and unfun gaming experience I have EVER had in my life. Yes, even worse than Dark Souls. The fact that the rest of the fractals at difficulty 2 are, while tough and often merciless, generally sensible and doable and some of them even fun, only highlights what a clusterkitten of fail the dredge one is. It’s 10x harder than any other level 2 fractal I’ve done so far. We spent 2 hours on it and eventually decided to just quit after about 10 deaths each. 2 hours! You can do an entire run of 6 fractals in less time than that! Inevitably someone would get screwed by bombs appearing behind them mid dodge and die and then you no longer have the dps necessary to get him down, or he’d wander up the ramp after the person trying to use the levers and we’d have to reset and start over.

Why does he even reset health anyway? Each rotation we were doing about 5-10% damage to him. You don’t think having to repeat the same thing 10-20 times is enough on its own? He has to try to heal up to full in between all this?

You’re absolutely crazy.

This is one of the smoother fractals. I have never had excessive trouble with it, even bringing a few groups into it blind.

Which fractals are you finding less smooth than this one?

In my experience everything through difficulty 3 can be done fairly reliably and quickly with a group that pays attention and listens, even if no one in the group has seen it before. This one is easily orders of magnitude more difficult, even for people who have seen it before.

The only ones I can think of that have required more than two attempts are the swamp/mist collection one: which is still extremely easy if your group coordinates and knows what they are doing, and the charr assault on ascalon one, which is still pretty easy if your group knows how to handle the siege.

I don’t think I’ve ever wiped on difficulty 1 of the legendary dredge powersuit. The random and unavoidable death by bombs in difficulty 2 is what makes it so infuriating – along with the random aggro switching to the lever puller, which has not happened once at difficulty 1.

Perhaps the server was just performing poorly and normally the bombs are supposed to spawn all at once so you can see where to dodge and where not to dodge – but that was definitely not happening tonight.

Yah. This is on of the more enjoyable fights imo.

We did him on level 12 earlier tonight, no problem.
There was one time i started swearing on TS because it looked like he’d ran out of the lava, but he apparently was Just inside it and still got the debuff.

While this is one of our least favourite fractals, it’s not because of this boss, this boss is more like “Yay, we’re finally done with the bloody place, onwards to more fun!”

To people who don’t have trouble with it (and I’ve had no trouble with it at 1)..

-how do you handle him going after mesmer pets? Just not use them?
-do you ever have him aggro the guy up on the ramp? How do you handle it?
-how do you avoid getting killed by bombs that spawn as you are rolling? Has it just never happened to you? Or have you seen it happen, recognized something that causes the mid dodge bomb spawn, and taken preventing measures?

- Our Mesmer is a shatterer, bigger problem are Ranger pets (our regular group has 2 Rangers, a Mesmer, a Guardian and a Thief), who we have to call to us at times (though we generally cba with it and jsut keep them on passive, like half the fights in the fractals…). Also, we make sure the entire group moves towards the next place, nobody stands around in random directions.
- He’s never aggro’d the guy up the ramp for us, which generally tends to be me (Ranger) or the Thief.
- While i’ve dodgerolled the bombs, it’s not my usual tactic – there’s actually plenty of time to walk out of them, especially when you’re constantly moving anyways like I am. I also tend to be at long range. For the rest of the group, i haven’t noticed the bombs being a problem either, but we tend to be pretty mobile, even the Guardian

-how do you handle him going after mesmer pets? Just not use them?
> shatter them after they did their job

-do you ever have him aggro the guy up on the ramp? How do you handle it?
> dun hit the boss from the ramp, its your problem, even if they hit you, i dun think you will get 1 shoot

-how do you avoid getting killed by bombs that spawn as you are rolling? Has it just never happened to you? Or have you seen it happen, recognized something that causes the mid dodge bomb spawn, and taken preventing measures?
> because you are using melee weapon and too close to him, we advise everyone use range weapon and keep distance for good space/view

Vorpal.4683:

To people who don’t have trouble with it (and I’ve had no trouble with it at 1)..

-how do you handle him going after mesmer pets? Just not use them?
-do you ever have him aggro the guy up on the ramp? How do you handle it?
-how do you avoid getting killed by bombs that spawn as you are rolling? Has it just never happened to you? Or have you seen it happen, recognized something that causes the mid dodge bomb spawn, and taken preventing measures?

- shatter or dont use them or adjust the kind of illusions
– if you cant find someone that gets rarely aggro, he can stay out of combat
– bombs are getting thrown below the players, and all explode at once
means you can either dodge the actual explosion or avoid walking behind each other

Sadly our mesmers was staff/condition damage as opposed to shatter. But thanks for the tips.

Our guy up at the lever wasn’t attacking them, but still got aggro anyway. Our rezzer would get aggro without attacking as well, even being on the opposite side of the room from the golem. Very strange!

As a guardian I felt like even using my only ranged weapon (scepter) bombs would still land on me. Of course I would be moving on the way to the next point, so those were generally easy to get out of, often without even dodging. And I generally had aegis up so that even if a bomb did hit me, it would be blocked.

However whenever we clustered at a the next lava drop point, he would throw bombs there, and then someone would always die it felt like from getting hit by bombs that would spawn as he was dodging. Then the monster would sit there and hit them till they were dead despite the efforts of the rest of us to pour on the dps and pull him off

Don’t cluster up, spread out and stay mobile, it is possible to get him in the right spot, but the person calling down the lava needs to be really on the mark.

“Don’t cluster up” pretty much goes for nearly every boss btw
Temporary clusters for healing or quick ressing work, but in general, don’t.

Maybe you just had a bad group. I’ve seen a large number of pug" groups at lvl 10~ now. Don’t have a vit/tough built class using the control panel and he won’t aggro there. His HP regen isn’t even a problem at level 10 with good co-ordination.

I’m with Vorpal. This one makes me want to drown a puppy. A boss that repeatedly heals himself fully? Where can I sign up for that?

Wombatt.2546:

I’m with Vorpal. This one makes me want to drown a puppy. A boss that repeatedly heals himself fully? Where can I sign up for that?

You can sign up on the box that says “I don’t understand the concept of defiant stacks and crowd control”.

Seriously, this is THE easiest boss fight in the entire game, not counting Agony after level 10, which is just a pain all around.

The sudden appearance of 20 or so dredge in the rooms before it were harder than this boss.

I totally run this with low survivability gear (magic find set) and didn’t down once on difficulty 6. I consider myself to be a competent player that is good. So maybe it’s just team coordination.

Auesis.7301:

Wombatt.2546:

I’m with Vorpal. This one makes me want to drown a puppy. A boss that repeatedly heals himself fully? Where can I sign up for that?

You can sign up on the box that says “I don’t understand the concept of defiant stacks and crowd control”.

Seriously, this is THE easiest boss fight in the entire game, not counting Agony after level 10, which is just a pain all around.

This is most definitely not the easiest boss in the fractals. The underwater jellyfish is wayyyyy easier, and wayyyy faster. I’m not saying its hard, im just saying it’s not the easiest.

I have to agree with OP. After 2.5 hours of trying (and never succeeding) to kill this boss with a group which had no issues otherwise, I’m completely sick of this.

Here’s a tip, so long as the boss has the fire debuff on, it can’t heal itself. Simply have one person up top, and go clockwise. There is a small patch of dark ground on each end that you can’t miss(the entire ground is white, except for these areas)
Lure the boss there and tell the person up top to drop the liquid. The fight is extremely easy if you do it this way.

Problem is everyone has to pull their weight. If one player can’t position properly and gets aggro or someone snares when pulling it will take long.
+ Fear OP.

Step in, take control, give each specific person specific instructions if you have to. Ran it no problem on level eleven tonight, no voice chat, no fancy tricks. Maybe I’ve just been lucky with my parties, but once you get the groove down its really easy.

Man this thing is even easy on Difficulty 10…. you’re doing something wrong

This game need difficult content. We asked for it, here it is! Enjoy!

PS. It’s not even difficult in the lower levels, just takes some coordination and communication. It’s great with content that can suite both cassual and hardcore players. Keep it up Arenanet!

The boss fight requires some form of communication or previous experience from each person participating. You have to keep maneuvering it to the right directions, stay alive and keep the debuff on the boss at all times if possible. Once it tries to heal, try to interrupt the healing in some way, although it’s not always possible. You don’t have to run between each switch, just two will be enough.

If the boss goes after the person on the switch, you might want to change the person doing the switching more dynamically and have another person without aggro go up. Everybody has to respond to what the boss is actually doing, not what it should do because it does a lot of things it probably shouldn’t do.

I’m not saying I just ran through it, we did it with 4 and had a lot of trouble because of the seemingly random aggression. But it can be done.

more nubs for GOD of NUBS!111 im comlite this on 15 lvl.

^ above.

it’s more difficult with pugs for coordination, even if they’ve done it before. it’s doable but could be more frustrating and sometimes you might fail.

This ones easy as long as the guy who is pouring the lava isn’t kitten

Btw anytime it does heal, you can stop it from healing by interupting it (i generally use Fear Me! on my warrior to stop it if it occurs). Just have everyone in your group somewhat clustered around the dark spots for the lava (falling lava doesn’t hurt you btw) to position it easier. Also, when the boss shoots out the mines in 2 waves, they actually explode at the same time. Don’t roll too early….

Just immobilize him when he’s exactly under the bucket, and res people when he’s far away from them. Did it on level 4 yesterday, and we had trouble simply because we needed to get our coordination right. It doesn’t help if people keep pulling him away from the buckets, or if someone keeps using the levers too soon. All it takes is one competent person to time the levers right, and another competent person to immobilize him directly under the buckets.

It’s actually perfectly fine. There’s plenty of ways to keep him from healing even if you mess up on the buckets, and a simple immobilize once the boss is on the rather obvious patch of ground that doesn’t have ice/snow on it makes landing the lava fairly effortless if the person with aggro isn’t completely unaware of what’s going on.

The boss is not the most easy one but he’s absolutely doable, even if Agony kicks in and nobody in your group has Agnoy Resi yet:

- Bombs can be reflected, so use your walls and domes, you can at least block the second wave
- make sure that pets, minions and illusions don’t get behind the boss; if they do so kill them if necessary
- used Signets and Co to rezz downed players from afar or just send someone that really is out of combat
- don’t cluster even if you want the boss to stand on a lava spot
- you can use CC skills to control the boss in the lower levels, but don’t get used to it, he will get the usual “immunity”
- the player the controls the lava tubs shouldn’t participate in the fight at all and get out of combat on a regular base, he won’t get aggro this way
- remember: the fight is about survival, if you are low on HP run out of combat

That fight is actually rather easy – it does not help, of course, if sole team communication is done via chat – verbal communication via TS or similar is a big help.

Do NOT use melee weapons – it makes dodging so much more difficult and if you spent too much tiem rezzing people the fight drags on.

Have Mesmers shatter their illusions when they have done their damage – avoid the scepter.

Rangers keep their pets on a leash.

A good team usually manages to find out who has aggro from the boss. The whole team should move clock- or counterclockwise from lava drop poin to drop point. Should the boss start to heal you should interrupt him – Mesmer GS #5 and whatever the other classes have.

Mesmers (possibly Guardians as well, didn’t test this yet, though) can make use of the reflective shield ^^ Preferably when he’s about to launch his bombs – count in your head to get a feeling for the interval.

If you have a Mesmer or a Thief on top of the ramp they can stealth to lose aggro + the Thief can shortbow #5 to hop to the next platform.

I don’t like this fractals, mostly because it’s long and I need to be focused most of the time. There are also problems with damage scaling, I’m playing as necro, my fear can for example interupt his healing or help with ressing someone but my damage is moslty from bleed. And bleed damage on him is constant.

This boss is also anti melee. It’s also another boss that makes ranger just useless, because pet would just agro and make this kiting very hard. And ranger on passive pet is just waste of spot.

Still comparing this fractal to others it is long. First part with those swithes can be done in maybe 2 minutes with my group (mumble, guild, knowing what to do), but there are a lot of mobs, some champion etc and because of last boss mechanic it really can’t be done fast because it’s really hard to dps 100% on him.

Another fractal which I don’t like is ascalon war fractal. I have low fps there, those veterans spawning everywhere was made by some moron (war where enemies spawn from air in the middle of enemy camp? what a sane human made it). Enemies AI is great, they love to chase me around, seek me, fight with me, but AI of charr npc is just…idiotic.

If your primary damage stat is condition damage you should control the lava tubs or focus on support. If there are more condition damage dealers in your group the one with the lowest direct damage should do it.

Rangers are not useless they can still pick ranged pets which also hit hard enough and also the boss is anti melee, Guardians, Thiefs and Warriors can still do very impressive damage with their ranged weapons.

Vaporal you are just bad…

I was in a pug group when we did the powersuit level. Took us forever to finally beat him. After the first wipe we started running him to the buckets but couldn’t get him to always stop in the drop zone. We were slowly knocking his health down when I had to go down to rez some of the team. Someone else took over the bucket role.

At one point I saw damage numbers of 4-6K and even a 13K. As a Necro I only get those numbers with seige weapons but never13K. At first I thought it was because I had been dropping buckets on him but after thinking about it, maybe he becomes extra vulnerable (10-20x damage) when he’s burning and walks by the central cooling tower. Something to check out next time.

I’ve done it multipl times above level 10, its starting to become one of my favourite ones. Hated it because it was slow in the beginning, but now I’m enjoying the challenge. Even the fight before the endboss gets more fun every time I progress.

This is another easy fractal. That fight is so easy. Choose 2 different drop points and just go from one to another. The second you pour lava on him you start moving him back to previous location. Everyone who is dps’n him sticks together and moves together. Agro doesn’t matter if you stick together. When boss is on sweet spot root him place and pour.

This fight on high lvl fractals is as easy as fractal 1 lol. This fractal isn’t difficult in the least. A hard fractal is dolphin mode. Easy but I hate it so very much lol

This really is not hard.

Gajumat.4068:

This is another easy fractal. That fight is so easy. Choose 2 different drop points and just go from one to another. The second you pour lava on him you start moving him back to previous location. Everyone who is dps’n him sticks together and moves together. Agro doesn’t matter if you stick together. When boss is on sweet spot root him place and pour.

This fight on high lvl fractals is as easy as fractal 1 lol. This fractal isn’t difficult in the least. A hard fractal is dolphin mode. Easy but I hate it so very much lol

You haven’t played a tanky or supportive character if you think this fractal is THAT easy on high level. I have to work rather hard to stay alive against the champion dredge boss.

It’s not that hard. There are only seven things you and your group need to know to complete this fight.

A> Designate two switch pullers, A and B. If A draws aggro mid-fight, A goes down, B goes up.

B> If you are not kiting this boss all the time, you are doing it wrong. You pull, dump, and pull to the next. You DPS the boss while pulling. If you’re melee, either get very good at it, or have a ranged weapon in your pack specifically for this fight.

C> Make sure everyone knows which point to pull to. Usually this means picking two points and just moving between them. Some groups like to just loop around the room. If your CC works here, use it to keep him under the lava point for easier dumps.

D> Teamwork! This fight is easy when the entire team is on the same page, pulling to the same location. This fight is nearly impossible if so much as one person decides to be on the wrong side of the boss and starts a game of aggro pingpong.

E> Interrupts! Stuff happens, sometimes you lose the heat and the boss attempts to heal. Make sure at least two players are packing an interrupt. These three players should usually not be on lava duty, but on the ground where they can be sure the interrupt won’t be obstructed or out of range.

F>Pulling takes priority. This includes downed players, dead players, your own HP bar, etc. Any action with the potential for pulling the boss in the wrong direction is the wrong action. If someone is down and behind the boss, you either leave them or send a stealther to loop around after the pull has moved out of aggro range.

G>Ressing! Quickly ressing downed players is extremely important in this fight if you want to keep the pull going. The boss will pull whether you are hitting him or not, and there are only four of you on the ground at any given time, in front of the boss and in the direction of the pull. This means you have a built in grace period to res that player. Drop everything and do it. Be ready to dodge out of that res as soon as you see a bomb, and be ready to run right back and finish it after the bomb explodes. If you can’t make the res by the time the boss gets to the downed teammate, see point F.

The most annoying this in this fight for me is the massive health pool and the healing, we interrupt but it doesn’t always work. Bombs aren’t a prob for me as reflect works on them and does quite a bit of damage reflecting them back on him. Last time we ran it with 3 guardians, i told the other 2 to use wall of reflection, like 1 person got downed to bombs.

PopeUrban.2578:

It’s not that hard. There are only seven things you and your group need to know to complete this fight.

B> If you are not kiting this boss all the time, you are doing it wrong. You pull, dump, and pull to the next. You DPS the boss while pulling. If you’re melee, either get very good at it, or have a ranged weapon in your pack specifically for this fight.

Don’t melee, even if you are good at it. You will be halting the boss way too much, especially if some one is slowing or crippling (some guy always is lol).

I’m a guardian ankittenep a staff or scepter around, staff if my teammates are silly and backpeddling 24/7 so I can give them speed. I keep a lot of evades and blocks for when he is near the burnt spot. I keep the black spot between him and me so he moves right on it and then I tank him for a few secs, either with blocks or evading. Works perfectly if your teammates don’t pull him away (usually this doesn’t happen). I know you don’t have to do this, but it’s way more secure and you don’t risk spending even more time on the fight.

EDIT : Why does “and” “I” “keep” get changed to ankittenep?

OP should refer to this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/The-biggest-problem-with-Dungeons/341547

Vorpal.4683:

This is, bar none, the worst encounter I have ever seen in a video game.

In that case, you have exclusively played brilliant games your entire life. Congratulations, that’s genuinely quite a feat.

Giganticus lupicus is way harder then this powersuit!