Guild Wars 2

tldr: Are there any off-meta tactics to make sloth easier for beginners? And are there specific points where volatile poison should be dropped?

Hello everyone,

My guild has been progressing through raids, we typically can one or two shot VG, Gorse and escort (all bosses we have trained). When we were first learning VG, we did some non-meta tactics to make it easier. For example, we had 5 people go to green circles every time, just to make sure that mechanic was taken care of. We also adopted a minstrel chrono tank, to make things a little easier. We also brought hammer guard a few times.

The next boss we are trying to get onto farm status is sloth, and I was just wondering if there are any off meta strategies that can help create a safer kill?

We have experimented with a few things. We have tried having eles run the water trait line instead of the fire trait line for auramancer off healing. We have tried magi druids and zerker druids. We tried minstrel chrono and zerker chrono. We tried having a rev camp ventari tablet (this isn’t very helpful because slubblings inside the projectile protection bubble can still hit you it seems).

We have been good about getting volatile poisons out to the wall the last few runs. But around the time we get to have the fourth person eat the fourth mushroom, it seems like the first and second volatile poison aoes have grown and are still in our way. Is there an agreed upon spot for dropping these poisons? It is almost like we are rotating around the room too fast. Is that even possible given the timers? In pug groups, I always just drop them as far back as possible.

Its not so much that we have a single giant group wipe. It is more so that we slowly lose people over the course of the fight. In particular people getting downed on the green stuff as the fight progresses.

Any tips?

Here are a few tips:

1. Have your chronos pull in the slublings as often as possible without killing whoever is eating. This is easier if you hold the Sloth close to the middle instead of toward the edge. By pulling them in you’ll keep their numbers low so they don’t pressure you down.

2. For poisons, if you drop them on the wall you should still have room against the opposite wall when you come back around. Have your slublings eat wider and slower so that you have more room to move around. The first and second volatiles should only be a few seconds away from despawning by the time you get to shroom 4.

3. Do not walk on the green stuff. Keep the sloth well ahead of the green stuff. You want to stay in a position where if you go down there will be plenty of time to res before the green spawns on top of you. Also make sure everyone gets a stunbreak from the fear.

4. Projectile destruction. Druids have sublime conversion. Necros have cpc. These protect from the slubs. Necros also can epi bounce which is useful for some groups that have difficulty pulling adds. Don’t epi your slub though.

That’s all I’ve got off the top of my head.
GLHF

Learn to block(destroy) the spore attack and the fight becomes near effortless.

thrag.9740:

Its not so much that we have a single giant group wipe. It is more so that we slowly lose people over the course of the fight. In particular people getting downed on the green stuff as the fight progresses.

Why is that so? Are your druids not doing their job or is it because of people failing mechanics?
1) Make sure your get stunbreak every time. Bad eles sometimes waste their gale song for the ground AoEs, which means they won’t have it for his fear. You need to absolutely make sure that everyone will be broken out of stun every time.
2) Call out shake attacks and try to block them with distortion. If someone goes downed anyway, be prepared to res them quickly.
3) Have druids watch out for people with posion. If they are low on health and have to drop poison by a wall, they will need to be healed specifically since they’re not in the main stack.
4) Make sure to pull and kill ads as often as possible. People can die to them too. Eles and warriors should place their AoEs to hit slubs along with the boss. Mesmers should spam focus 4 often, druids can pull with axe too. If you can’t pull, make sure you have some kind of protection against the ads (reflects or projectile destruction).
5) If people get downed far away from the group anyway, bring a transfusion necro or have druids take search and rescue.

As for the poisons, you generally just bring them back as far as you can. You’re dying to the “green stuff,” are you moving him fast enough, or is he sleeping on the edge of poison? Are you taking a path that makes a very narrow road in between the poison floor? I find the best success is to go along the wall from the first to second mushroom. Second slubber eats toward the center, then toward the third so you have a large space, and can bring slothy close to the slublings. Third slubber can take a mostly straight path. The the fourth eats a wide path to the next one. This gives you a lot of space for dodging the slam/aoe attack, without having the poison floor too close.

You can run a very safe comp here. Necros and druids can pull downed people to the group. Druid can run nature spirit, in the event that the shake downs a bunch of people. So if you’ve got 2x chrono, that’s a lot of reflect and they can invuln most shakes. 2x druid- has Search & Rescue, Nature Spirit, Protect Me (covers the tempests if their Gale Song is on CD), projectile defense on staff. Place healing spring directly under him after a shake. 1-2x necro- Plague Signet to take condis and stun break, Corrosive Poison Cloud for projectiles, Epidemic for slublings, and shroud 4 for a clutch res.

People getting downed to the green stuff is really a l2p problem though, they can’t just stand in it.

Assuming that Chronos run the inspiration trait line, they have a minor trait that cleanses conditions in a 240 radius when they use a healing skill. This trait synergises nicely with their healing mantra, which then can be used to cleanse fear. Might help a little bit

Bring dragon hunters and necros with as 2nd weapon set a gs for the pull. Also necros can help with transfusion ressing and the DH f3 can Block the shake/wet dog. Both have better cc than eles as well.

1. Have a good eating mushroom strat (eat close to the center so druid can put spirits easily in the middle, adds pulling is easier also, moving sloth is faster also). Usually each slubling only need to eat 3-4 mushrooms.

2. Have chrono and druid, guard pulls adds from time to time.

3. Chrono distort during shake, this mechanic is the most dangerous that can wipe your group in a split second. Guard can block, Rev can block or glint heal, Ele can use focus invuln or mist form (but this is like the last last resort coz d/f and mistform sucks).

4. DPS hard. I feel if you you cant kill after around 6 mushrooms, you will most likely fail coz of the adds pressure.

gin.7158:

3. Chrono distort during shake, this mechanic is the most dangerous that can wipe your group in a split second. Guard can block, Rev can block or glint heal, Ele can use focus invuln or mist form (but this is like the last last resort coz d/f and mistform sucks).

D/F does not suck in this fight and gives you a real easy out for the spores if your ele’s know what they are doing.

If you have problems, my exp. is that the best carry is a full magi heal temp, slotting “cleansing waters” from water traitline. Overload water is now a super strong condi cleanse that let you ignore shakes completely. (have the temp stand on sloth and jump up/down during shake).

make sure the temp healer is in a group alone, no reason to buff him and he need to be able to heall all.

Thanks to everyone for the help and advice. We got a sloth kill at the end of last week, and we also got one yesterday night. I don’t think it is quite on farm status like the other 3 bosses our guild clears, but we are getting better.

Ultimately our comp was (as best I can remember) :
zerk ps -magi druid – zerk chrono – viper necro – zerk ele
zerk ps – magi druid – zerk chrono – viper necro – condi ranger

I was sort of in the position of commanding, and I think one of the most beneficial things I started doing was paying close attention to timing. In particular the spawn timers for ads. What I did was, if someone was about to eat mushroom, but it was within 5 seconds of an ad wave spawn (6:30,6:00, 5:30, etc), I would have the eater wait, call out for epis and pulls, then tell everyone the eater was eating.

I can’t say I had the timing for this down perfect after the first 3 mushrooms, but the first three mushrooms I made sure we pulled and epi’d perfectly, and I think it helped get us off to a good start. We ultimately killed him during the 7th mushroom being eaten.

Additionally, the burning stacks from the condi ranger made the epi a lot more potent I believe. In the future I think condi ps would be a very beneficial change to make, not just for burning on epi, but also for their tremendous cleave potential.

I also made sure to tell everyone how I would handle volatile poison for each specific class, and I think this led to fewer people being downed on green stuff. This plus druid search and rescue and our transfusions allowed us to get 10 people to the end of the fight. The tips I gave were:

warrior-run defiant stance heal, and pop it after taking some damage while running the volatile poison out, additionally you can swap weapons to mace shield if needed

necro – go into death shroud as you run the poison out, bring consume conditions instead of blood fiend

chrono- distort or shield 4 while running the poison out

druid – staff teleport to get poision out, and also self healing

ele – focus 5 earth while running poison out, mist form as a utility over feel the burn is an ok trade off to make.

First, gratz on the Sloth kill! As you mentioned, once the first kill happens the fight does become easier as everyone ‘knows what worked’ and thus kills the boss with less mistakes.

That in mind, going through your self-analysis I hope I might be able to interject some more assistance to help smooth out your sloth kills for better progression to Trio and obvious Matthias (He will be a treat for you guys).

So, you seem to have found a fairly decent way with handling Epis and slublings, communicating with your friendly slubling on waiting to eat until after epis are called is a good method, but training your necros on increased awareness around when and where the mushroom is spawning is probably the easiest method, if you can get your necros doing epidemics without callouts and avoiding your friendly slubling that mechanic is cake.

You are correct that Condi PS is terrific for the encounter, but a word of advice, the Warrior needs to be careful about where his firefields are being placed. It’s very easy to lay fields down on the path where your next slubling is going, and it will hurt a bit, not necessarily kill but it’s avoidable damage. It’s all about the angles honestly.

Poison is a particularly nasty mechanic, you can use dodge rolls to ‘evade’ the green goo ticks per second but if possible make sure the healer is alert and heals AFTER the drop, for a brief few seconds said poison person would be double dipping.

Warrior Defiant Stance is a safe method, eventually when your warriors get more confident, have them run the Berserker Heal for more Bursts and DPS. Furthermore if they drop a Longbow Berserk Burst before heading out, popping that heal sustains them in the green since it heals on damage done.

I definitely agree that getting all of our members to the point where they are aware enough that me calling out pulls and epis is unnecessary is a good move. Our guild will get there eventually, it was only 2 months ago we were struggling to get 4 people to stand at vg green circles, but now we either 1 or 2 shot him, so I am confident we will get there.

I am really starting to learn more about what playing druid entails. Druid is pretty much the only class I don’t have/haven’t played. I think, the second something like a volatile poison spawns on a player, we need to have a druid dedicated to making sure that player stays alive.

thrag.9740:

I definitely agree that getting all of our members to the point where they are aware enough that me calling out pulls and epis is unnecessary is a good move. Our guild will get there eventually, it was only 2 months ago we were struggling to get 4 people to stand at vg green circles, but now we either 1 or 2 shot him, so I am confident we will get there.

I am really starting to learn more about what playing druid entails. Druid is pretty much the only class I don’t have/haven’t played. I think, the second something like a volatile poison spawns on a player, we need to have a druid dedicated to making sure that player stays alive.

Volatile poison doesn’t really do any significant damage to players. I mean, obviously that player dying is bad because it drops the poison, but it should only take a second or two to dash back a couple steps to drop.

Its not so much that the direct damage from the volatile poison kills people. I think that while running away from the boss, people get killed by ads and the green floor.

Obviously we can combat this several ways. First, our eaters need to make sure they clear area to drop poison. Second, if we do a good job of killing ads, then moving outside of projectile protection is not as big a problem. But remember, this is a progressing guild team, and so we are still improving in these areas. I think telling a healer to baby sit poison runners will give us more leniency with these mistakes.

ppl forget as soon as they hit their special action button (to drop poison wherever) they need to immediately dodge back or invuln or something. It’s prob a timing issue when they aren’t aware of what’s downing them.. then they’ll blame lag or something unrelated

so don forget: hardest part is not running to drop poison, hardest part is moment u drop poison and then stand in it (for whatever reason). 1 tick of that even basically enough to down any light armor class, bc it’s red poison aoe combined with grn poison floor.. mostly lethal

somewhat same mechanic on matt. somewhat same reason ppl down so much on well mechanic even on matt

ex. I see a brainless ps war run to corner and drop well, he only pops heal (defiant stance) when he’s running back and low on health. this is prob worst time to pop that heal.. like cmon use ur head bro

thrag.9740:

Its not so much that the direct damage from the volatile poison kills people. I think that while running away from the boss, people get killed by ads and the green floor.

Obviously we can combat this several ways. First, our eaters need to make sure they clear area to drop poison. Second, if we do a good job of killing ads, then moving outside of projectile protection is not as big a problem. But remember, this is a progressing guild team, and so we are still improving in these areas. I think telling a healer to baby sit poison runners will give us more leniency with these mistakes.

So obviously I can’t comment exactly on how to do this because each group does it a bit differently, but I can share my experiences for my group.

Green floor is never an issue for our volatile droppers. Green floor becomes an issue if your slublings actually start eating too much, because then it starts to catch up with you quicker. What you want the slublings to do is eat as little as possible while still giving you guys enough room to maneuver. Usually we have our slubs eat more or less directly to the next shroom plus maybe 1 or 2 spots towards the center. This way we never worry about the green floor catching up and there’s always space to drop poisons.

Those 1 or 2 spots towards the center are important. We don’t continually pull sloth along with the slubling eating. What we do is pull it to one of those spots towards the center and leave it there until we’re forced to start moving it again. While there, myself and the other mesmer are continually pulling the adds into the boss, and the eles and such are dropping aoes that hit the center of the arena. This means that we’ll almost completely clean up the adds every time we stop to dps, allowing the volatile poisons to be dropped without worrying about getting destroyed by the adds.

A few tips for the druids, since you aren’t at the point yet where they could go full damage meta and only ever have to worry about offensive buffs. They’ll eventually find less need for all of these defensive tools and tricks of course once the group progresses further:

-This is the most important one. Master the useage of Quick Draw.
It is one of the most versatile traits you have. They can make up for whatever your squad is lacking by slightly adjusting their builds.
Two staves to keep resetting Sublime Conversion for a very high wall uptime or by running one off-hand axe for more CC or pulls and another reflect. They can reset their avatar Lunar Impact for an extra ranged heal to aim at the person running poison. They can reset avatar Rejuvenating Tides for better GOTL uptime if they are having trouble with it, despite the double druid setup. Or simply use it as a part of their rotation to increase personal DPS if nothing else is needed.
- They should get used to destroying their spirits right when Sloth is about to be moved. To be able to reapply it at the next location for proper buff usuage.
- Spirite of Nature is another great tool. The skill is kind of frowned upon but I have had multiple runs with inexperienced groups where I was able to res 3-5 players that way, which actually made the run a success. This includes knowing where people usually wipe and precasting it if needed. They can even use it to res themselves if needed.
- They can use Evasive Purity if they find themselves getting poisoned constantly.
- Druids should get used to healing someone from range without having to run with them constantly. This is also important for Matthias.
- Something that applies to everyone, not just druids. People need to know everything they can do to make it a success and then eventually work on excluding defenses for better damage and more outright efficiency. How much you can exclude depends on your group in the end.

Can confirm Spirit of Nature can be used as a massive safety net in W2.