Guild Wars 2

My static group has been stuck on gorseval for the past month. There are two things that seem to consistently be a problem for us, and nobody is sure how to fix it.

1) when we go to the wall, we cant consistently aggro the adds to follow. Some stay back in the middle and we have no idea why. Whats the best technique for this?

2) blue orbs. We generally have 2 eles on orb duty, but its usually out of control by the last phase and we cant make it to the wall for the last updraft. I dont play ele at all, so I dont know waht it takes to clear the orbs. I guess my quesiton here is; if an ele is on orb duty, is that ALL they should be doing, or are they splitting there time between orbs and dps on gorseval? The videos of gorseval clears I have watched are all pretty clear of orbs. I dont know. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

1. Check your druids spirits. maybe they’re not blowing them up. Mobs aggro on those spirits. That’s what usually happens.

2. Ele’s split their damage ofc. Just assign 1 ele north, 1 ele south on split phases. Have them clear some orbs before you go to the wall for your 3rd draft, almost certainly you wont’ have orb problems then.

Is your Mesmer focus pulling the mobs? Granted they have to be relatively near the wall before the pull.

You’re eles should be spamming lava font and placing it so it hits 2 orbs as often as possible. A lava font and 1-2 auto attacks will kill the orbs. I’ve don’t it before with one ele and still won. At the last phase you will want to focus on clearing orbs in your path and ignore some that are on the opposite end.

We have tried lots of methods for aggroing the mobs. We have a chronotank who is trying to pull the mobs with focus, and its the method we have had the most success with, but especially in the later stages, we miss a few. So you are saying pull them once we get to the wall? I’m not sure when our tank is pulling the trigger, so I’ll pass this along. And spirits, gotcha. Will make sure they are gone. Same for mesmer clones ect..

Clarification on the ele thing. So you are saying that during the split phase, one go north and clear orbs, one go south and clear orbs? Should they not be worrying about taking down those spirits walking to gor? just go after the orbs for that time period?

1) For the Spirits. Do you guys have problem for the first 2 updraft or for the 3rd and 4th? Because for the 3rd and 4th it’s maybe because of eggs. If someone get caught in the egg at the middle, you will have problem with spirits. Othwerise, a Chronomancer pull, good movement and a Viper necro epidemic are all great ways to take care of them. Spirits, pets, minions, phantasm. etc all can be a problem. Phantasm are something that people often don’t think off, but they can cause big problems.

2) For orbs. Ele should only put most of their laval front on orb and let those lava front do the big job. After 6 sec of lava front orb should be at 10-20% so they are easy to kill when you need to pass near theam. They should also prioritize. Between updraft 2 and 3, they should take care of all orb because overtime they might be too big. But when you are near updraft 3 and 4 they should only focus on the region in front of your updraft 3 and 4. Don,t mind if there is orb near updraft 1 and 2, you won’t go there anyway.

Use the breakbar and the split phase for ele to focus a bit more on orb. You don’t need as much dps in those phase than in the rest of the fight. Better take 10 more second in the split phase and clear orbs than to walk around orb for half the fight.

1. Like someone said above, the adds will agro on minions/spirits/pets, so make sure if this is a problem for you that your rangers are calling their pets/destroying their spirits and any classes with minions are either switching to different utilities, or not summoning them at that point.

2. I main tempest and am usually the only tempest in my party for Gorseval (thus the only one clearing orbs). I can tell you how I do it and hope that that helps? Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any additional questions either in-game or on here (though obviously I’m in-game way more than I’m on here).

The first thing I would check is just to make sure your eles are running completely optimal builds as this makes orb clearing wayyyyy easier (full berserker gear, with either some assassins stats or food/whatever they need to get up to 100% crit, fire/air/tempest lines with the correct traits, etc.) At the start of phase 3, when orbs are first spawning, I stay stacked with the group and continue to dps gorseval normally, except I drop every lava font on an orb, and never on a boss. I continue to meteor shower, overload: fire, and auto attack the boss. If I stay stacked and maintain 25 might and grace of the land buffs, the lava fonts I drop on the orbs during this phase will kill the orbs without any additional autos (this is why having a fully optimal build is so important, so you don’t have to waste time autoing the orbs). Also make sure if you have any burnzerkers, the are positioning their scorched earths so that they hit any nearby orbs as this can help out a ton. It’s also important at this point to make sure that your tempests are in the group with your chrono as the alactrity is incredibly helpful in keeping the orbs under control. After my group has pulled gors to the wall, I drop lava fonts on any orbs in range, but if there are none I just dps gors as normal. After the updraft, I usually glide all the way back to the middle of the arena while my group stays by the wall (as the usually do before cc phase) and focus only on orb clearing before cc phase and gors teleports back to the middle. At that point, I go back to my lava font on orbs, everything else on gors rotation while making sure to focus on places where the spirits will spawn in the split phase so my group can hold them effectively. During the split phase, I focus almost exclusively on orbs, while sometimes using meteor shower or overload on the spirits if I happen to be nearby, but keeping fonts on the orbs. During this point too, because the group is not stacked, the orbs usually require one or two autos in addition to a lava font to kill. So I make sure I put a few autos on each orb while I wait for lava font to come off cd. It’s also important here to try to be near the zerg in case you get low so you can be healed, as going down can cause havoc for orb control. At the end of this phase, I generally find that I have cleared every orb except for the one or two that have just spanwed and so after this phase, I ignore the north side of the map (as my group takes the two north updrafts first) and only use lava fonts on orbs that will be in our way for taking the next updraft, but focus most of my dps on the boss. The orbs will be a little out of control by the very end of the fight, but if you just focus on keeping the south side of the map clear (assuming you take the north updrafts first), there should be enough room for your group to dps while getting the kill.

The only last thing I can say, is make sure the rest of you group is bringing as much dps as they can. The more dps the rest of the group is able to bring, the less pressure the tempests will feel to focus dps on the boss, thus providing them more time to focus on orbs. If you’re running with two tempests, I’d recommend having one on orb control and one on dps who occasionally drops fonts on orbs to help out but you can easily keep the orbs under control with just one tempest.

thanks to all for the info. The more I think about it, I think it may be the eggs giving us a problem, because it always in the later phases and we arent 100% on NOT gettign egged yet.

@ Soft black. Thanks for that great response. I’m not an ele so I cant put it to use myself, but I’ll refer my raidmates over.

Your eles are putting themselves out of position, make sure they are in range of enough might(next to a ps war works great) and plenty of fury. The ele can rotate around the centre of the arena and stay in range of nearby buffs while throwing max range lava fonts.

Optimized build, life steal food, terrible utility, 25 might + fury will clear an orb per lava font, have your eles keep checking in all directions with a large FoV to work on orbs as they spawn rather than trying to play catch-up.

Jayjaydee.3827:

thanks to all for the info. The more I think about it, I think it may be the eggs giving us a problem, because it always in the later phases and we arent 100% on NOT gettign egged yet.

If that’s the case then ya it’s problably the eggs. When Gorseval start his breakbar everybody (except those in charge of cc) should slowly move toward the 3rd or 4th updraft. They can’t dps the boss at that precise moment anyway, and they shouldn’t stay on the black goo anyway. So best they move toward the right updraft. The 3rd and 4th updraft have a very short window so any eggs or delay before people run to the wall can have drastic consequence. Gorseval might be too far from the wall and the dps will be less and spirit might be too far to get killed.

Jayjaydee.3827:

My static group has been stuck on gorseval for the past month. There are two things that seem to consistently be a problem for us, and nobody is sure how to fix it.

1) when we go to the wall, we cant consistently aggro the adds to follow. Some stay back in the middle and we have no idea why. Whats the best technique for this?

2) blue orbs. We generally have 2 eles on orb duty, but its usually out of control by the last phase and we cant make it to the wall for the last updraft. I dont play ele at all, so I dont know waht it takes to clear the orbs. I guess my quesiton here is; if an ele is on orb duty, is that ALL they should be doing, or are they splitting there time between orbs and dps on gorseval? The videos of gorseval clears I have watched are all pretty clear of orbs. I dont know. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

1.) If the problem is not pets or spirits, the most likely reason for this is that your entire party isn’t moving to the wall fast enough. I can’t say for sure since I obviously haven’t seen video of your group, but it happened many times when I played ele and tried to stay back a bit to clear extra orbs that the spirits would aggro onto me since I was the only one left in the center, and then one or more of them would never make it to the outside. You need to get on your group members to move to the wall quickly when it is time to go – no staying behind to clear orbs or dps or feed your cat. it is also possible that your tank is moving too late in general, but this shouldn’t be an issue assuming he runs all the way to the wall when it is time to move.

2.) I play ele almost every time on this fight, and at this point I am usually the only ele in 8-10 man runs. Here is all the advice I can give regarding clearing orbs:

A.) Having higher party dps makes orb clearing easier. If gorseval dies faster, fewer orbs spawn and the ones that do have less time to grow. With two eles this shouldn’t be an issue anyway, but you may need to take a hard look at your party comp and your players’ dps rotations.

B.) Leave the stack as little as possible. Lava font has 1200 range and the edge of it can hit further. When you leave the stack two very bad things happen. First, the bug/feature that causes gorseval to aggro onto the furthest person away can cause him to move. This can cause a severe loss of party dps, which gives orbs more time to grow. Second, when you leave the stack you stop gaining might/fury. Not having enough might means that it takes more attacks to clear an orb, and you will spend more time clearing each one.

C.) Don’t be afraid to use non-lava font skills on orbs, especially when they are grouped up. 2 orbs near each other? Glyph of storms that kitten. Oh look at those 3 orbs over there, too bad my lava font can’t hit them all. No problem, lava font 1 or 2, and drop a meteor shower on that kitten. Lava font on cooldown? Ice Bow 4 that kitten (assuming you run Ice Bow, I usually take feel the burn because it’s easier and gives a small heal but tbh I’m not sure which is better). This isn’t always optimal, but it gets the job done and your group isn’t going for speed clears anyway. Eles are very high dps on Gorseval, but your group should have the dps to kill it without you min-maxing your skill usage. A 6 man kill was just posted, if your group doesn’t have the dps for a 10 man kill then that is not the ele’s fault.

D.) Clear every orb you see that is within a reasonable range immediately, until the second split phase is over. Then only clear orbs where the remaining updraft(s) are located, or any orbs which are encroaching on the middle where he jumps to do the ground pound.

E.) Tell your team to stop being little kittenes and just run into the orb to CC the spirits. On the pull-gorseval-to-updraft you should not stay behind to clear, as this can mess up the spirit aggro as stated in my response to question 1. So you can only clear the ones that are close enough to gorseval’s pull path. This means orbs will build up on the opposite side. When you land the circles might start to get big. It’s ok. Just clear what is on your side until he goes to ground pound, and then clear the orbs during the ground pound. If there are orbs still there when the split phase happens, tell your guy at top right or whatever to stop freaking out, you’re coming to clear orbs, just CC him and grab the orange spheres afterwards to remove the orb debuff. Also kittenty protip, if you get downed and come back up via rally on spirit/res the debuff is removed from you, I have actually done this a couple times but it’s pretty suboptimal, lol.

F.) Learn how to not go down. A downed ele cannot clear orbs, unless you are downed on an orb and your auto lava font trait procs, but this is a poor solution to the problem. Getting you back up also wastes dps. Use overload during ground pound for protection, try to avoid the spirits if they’re up, stay on the heal stack as much as possible, and most importantly DO NOT GET SLAMMED. If your ele is doing these things and still getting downed consistently then you need to politely tell your druid to watch some videos and get good. It can also help to bring a little extra healing on non-druid classes, like the ele trait that heals when you apply an aura, or the engineer can bring inventions instead of tools/scrapper for extra healing and negligible dps loss.

G.) In the same vein as F, when you are clearing orbs during split you should know where your druid is. Eles take a lot of environment damage relative to other classes, and it’s ok if you need to walk over to your druid for heals, or he needs to walk over to you. If your group is having trouble with killing the spirits that give gorseval the 10% damage buff, this can be a big problem for eles, as the environment damage is amplified as well. So hopefully you you fix issue #1 it helps with issue #2.

H.) Have a good build. Be crit capped with zerk/assassin. Use runes of the scholar. Have ascended staff+trinkets at least.

I.) Put at least 1 tempest in a group with your chronomancer. Alacrity works wonders for orb clearing as well as party dps. (This should probably be one of the first things I said, lol).

J.) Practice, I know you said your group has been at it for a while, but practice still helps. The things I layed out here are pretty conservative, once your eles know the fight well and your group is consistent they will know where they can cut corners to get in more dps.

Sorry if this is too much. Good luck, hope this helps!

P.S. If you run with only one ele, you still need one other person clearing orbs during second split phase. Condi war or engineer is fine.

I want to just disagree with two points Dinosaurs made, but overall I think their comment is also quite helpful. Hopefully between mine and theirs, your eles will feel better about their job.

1. I don’t like telling your spirit holders (during split phase) to run into orbs to hold the spirits. If your orb clear is good, this shouldn’t be a problem in the first place, but if it is, have them call out where they need orb clearing, and have your tempests start working on that ASAP. Most of the classes that hold can at least apply soft ccs (in this case meaning anything but immob) from range and should avoid getting the orb debuff if possible. Obviously if it’s a choice between wiping and getting the orb debuff, get the debuff but if you’re finding that’s the case a lot, I’d predict that there was some other problem you’re probably just not seeing.

2. It’s pretty unnecessary to have a second person clearing orbs during the second split phase. I am the only one clearing orbs in my group and I can always clear every single orb during that phase by myself and leave us a completely clear arena for the next updraft phase. Obviously people can help out if it’s not a loss for them (sometimes my revs like to run over and kill orbs right when they spawn because you can auto them far enough away to not get debuffed) but it’s not strictly necessary to assign an extra person to do this at all.

I’ll be raiding tonight so message me in-game if your group needs any help!

softblackcarbon.1537:

(in this case meaning anything but immob)

Why anything but immob? Are you saying you can’t immob the Soul Spirits? Or you talking about a specific profession that don’t have immob.? Because you can totally immob a Soul Spirit.

Thaddeus.4891:

softblackcarbon.1537:

(in this case meaning anything but immob)

Why anything but immob? Are you saying you can’t immob the Soul Spirits? Or you talking about a specific profession that don’t have immob.? Because you can totally immob a Soul Spirit.

They mean the access to ranged immob options, given meta builds/comps is limited.

What TaxZero said. In GW2, immob is considered a soft cc so I basically wanted to make the differentiation for condi war, which needs to be in melee range to apply immob. Lots of the other classes can hold the spirits from range and have immobs from range as well.

Condi Warrior have Pin Down, Condi Engineer have Glue Shot, D/X Tempest have Magnetic Grasp, Staff Tempest have Shock Wave, Druids have entangle.

All of those are part of meta build so I don’t see it.

softblackcarbon.1537:

I want to just disagree with two points Dinosaurs made, but overall I think their comment is also quite helpful. Hopefully between mine and theirs, your eles will feel better about their job.

1. I don’t like telling your spirit holders (during split phase) to run into orbs to hold the spirits. If your orb clear is good, this shouldn’t be a problem in the first place, but if it is, have them call out where they need orb clearing, and have your tempests start working on that ASAP. Most of the classes that hold can at least apply soft ccs (in this case meaning anything but immob) from range and should avoid getting the orb debuff if possible. Obviously if it’s a choice between wiping and getting the orb debuff, get the debuff but if you’re finding that’s the case a lot, I’d predict that there was some other problem you’re probably just not seeing.

2. It’s pretty unnecessary to have a second person clearing orbs during the second split phase. I am the only one clearing orbs in my group and I can always clear every single orb during that phase by myself and leave us a completely clear arena for the next updraft phase. Obviously people can help out if it’s not a loss for them (sometimes my revs like to run over and kill orbs right when they spawn because you can auto them far enough away to not get debuffed) but it’s not strictly necessary to assign an extra person to do this at all.

I’ll be raiding tonight so message me in-game if your group needs any help!

1.) I guess it depends on how you split up your team during the split phase, we usually send one person to 3 of the spirits and then zerg them down one by one. If one of the people who is alone has an orb covering their spirit, we just have them walk in and CC the spirit anyway. Then once the orbs are clear they just pick up the orange orbs. Most of the time it’s probably fine if they wait, but if theyre the last person the zerg comes to or something there could be problems if they wait too long. DPS during the split phase doesn’t matter unless your damage is so poor that you are hitting the enrage timer so taking the dps hit is pretty unimportant.

I certainly would not advise the entire zerg (5-7 players) walking into the orbs.

2.) From the perspective of players who aren’t practiced at clearing orbs, two players are necessary. If they are having trouble with orbs already I don’t want them to think they should be cutting back on orb clearers, lol. And again, dps during split doesn’t really matter so there is little incentive to not have two players clearing orbs to get them down as fast as possible.

Dinosaurs.8674:

1.) I guess it depends on how you split up your team during the split phase, we usually send one person to 3 of the spirits and then zerg them down one by one. If one of the people who is alone has an orb covering their spirit, we just have them walk in and CC the spirit anyway. Then once the orbs are clear they just pick up the orange orbs. Most of the time it’s probably fine if they wait, but if theyre the last person the zerg comes to or something there could be problems if they wait too long. DPS during the split phase doesn’t matter unless your damage is so poor that you are hitting the enrage timer so taking the dps hit is pretty unimportant.

I certainly would not advise the entire zerg (5-7 players) walking into the orbs.

2.) From the perspective of players who aren’t practiced at clearing orbs, two players are necessary. If they are having trouble with orbs already I don’t want them to think they should be cutting back on orb clearers, lol. And again, dps during split doesn’t really matter so there is little incentive to not have two players clearing orbs to get them down as fast as possible.

Ok, that’s fair. We zerg the same way you do. So if one of my three holders has orbs around them, we usually have them wait and just chill/cripple/do what they can from range while I run over and clear their orbs. And sometimes they can just clear on their own (like engis) while still holding the spirit. I guess my point is that if you can get away with not getting debuffed that’s always better than taking the debuff. But you definitely shouldn’t wipe to avoid getting debuffed.

During split phase, yes I think it’s totally fine to assign two people to orb clearing. But I would try to avoid it for other phases. Like I said, if people can help out without taking much or any of a dps hit (hello scorched earth), definite do it as it will only make life easier. But I wouldn’t assign anyone else to orb clearing exclusively. If you’re having trouble with just 1-1.5 people clearing orbs in non-split phases, there may be other issues you need to address. I’d always aim for the optimal and then deal with the sub-optimal if it’s necessary.

Thaddeus.4891:

Condi Warrior have Pin Down, Condi Engineer have Glue Shot, D/X Tempest have Magnetic Grasp, Staff Tempest have Shock Wave, Druids have entangle.

All of those are part of meta build so I don’t see it.

Compare that to the number of ranged chill/cripple/slow application. The numbers by comparison are limited.

That is all the OP was saying. Stop over thinking it.

2.) Having one or even multiple condition warriors is an easy way to max damage and still clear orbs. They should damage both Gorseval and any orbs in close or medium range with their aoe fields.
You can do it easily by untargeting Gorseval, moving into position to aim at the orb and have Gorseval on you or inbetween. It is much easier than it sounds if you get used to it.