Guild Wars 2

yea not going to lie, it’s become a real problem even getting groups to run Arah explorable mode due to the toughness of giganticus lupicus for new groups. i must have spent a total of 5hours yestarday trying to beat giganticus, with about 3 different groups.
1.)i’m tired of hearing people say “oh just get better” when i ask for help.
2.) i’ve checked the wiki and try to do what it says, but for the most part we never got past phase 2, only once did i get into phase 3 with the last group, and we got him to like 20% health before we all dropped.

so simply, Anyone got hints on how to beat him? for me personally the shadow walk isnt tough it’s the 12k projectiles he flings out at random, and also some minor problems with getting enough endurance to consistently dodge his shadow walk +the red circles of doooom. phase 3 i was doing ok with, but i guess it all just fell apart >.<

is there any way to drag him to a way point to just go at him naked until he dies? at least then i know i’ll be able to complete the dungeon

Read the posts a few below this one.. 2 general things that will help you a lot 1) undead slaying, +10% dmg done, -10% dmg taken 2) endurance food buff, i think it was orrian truffle or something, +40% endurance regen.

Seems you know most of the things out there, so just a few tips I found helpful:

1) have team chat of some form, have the most experienced player shout out which attacks are coming out next, and phase changes
2) spread out for phase 2/3 as far as possible,
3) if you are very low, but rest of team is surviving well, you can always run out of combat for a fast regen, better than running all the way back,
4) and lastly, having a cohesive group is the key, try to work with a specific group of people instead of trying different groups all the time, when the roles are set for each person and they know what they are doing, it’s way more managable

Didn’t you post in the thread dedicated to teaming up for it? I think I added you to /Friends. …First of all post all your gear b/c I just changed my gear the other day and noticed some interesting differences and it’s made Stage 2 easier than when I was running mostly major-mercy runes.

The problem is I don’t think most people can do this with dodging alone which is what the forum blowhards would have you believe(along with their sage-like advice). In this case, I think seeing is doing … as well as running buffs that reduce the impact of stage2’s Randomness. I looked for Youtube videos of this but my Adobe Player plugin Codecs are scrambled so I’ll have to do a full system reset before I can actually see them to recommend one.

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But just for sake or argument?? I’ve held his aggro a couple times for 5-10 minute spans and I’ve only got 15K health. (yeah I know…I’m so bad at this game)

Having a method of maintaining vigor helps immensely with this encounter, every profession has a trait/skill that provides vigor except for necro. In Phase 2, Lupicus tends to focus two targets: one with shadow walk and his auto-attack snot balls at another. Being able to dodge twice as much means you can afford to double dodge out of the circles+auto attack combo. To dodge the auto-attack requires a fast reaction/good anticipationthat can only come after practicing it for so long, the animation is Lupicus thrusting his palm out in a very fast motion; the projectile flies in an erratic manner but always has the same velocity overall so dodge immediately when you see it!

Alternatively for necros or in combination with vigor for others, maintaining swiftness will allow you to 180 degree turn and run out of circles more easily to conserve dodge.

Note however, some of the aoes (not the auto-attack snotballs) aren’t targeted at the ground but TARGETTED AT YOU (you can tell if the circle is right on you, they also appear earlier than the ground targeted ones) that have some homing capabilities and the red circle fails to indicate this (they should update so the circle follows you for those shots though but I doubt that would happen anytime soon), in which case only a timed dodge will save you (assuming you don’t land into one of the ground targetted circles).

Your second line of defense then is block/invulnerability/blink/skill-dodge mechanics as a back-up when your endurance gets too low. Again there plenty of these for every profession though for necros you may have to get creative with flesh wurm.

Even after using all this and you are still dying, the only way to survive really is to try to get better at the timings and be more efficient with your dodges and skills. Though in my experience as an ele traiting for perma vigor+using mist form, obby flesh and arcane shield and burning retreat, I can kite lupicus indefinitely in phase 2 with the option of pulling out fiery greatsword to kite some more with fiery rush and spin-2-win-away. (Phase 3 is easier as a whole but impossible to solo though, much too dodge intensive to dodge punches, bubbles, siphons AND snot-balls.)

i’m running a ranger with 20marksman 20wilderness 30nature with power condition damage precision(working on getting precision to vitality) i also run the +10 -10% damage/damage taken along with a condition damage consumable(i guess from now on for phase 2 i’ll run the endurance buff consumable) my runes are +condition damagecondition duration

Thank you that’s very helpful….

If I’m not mistaken… nearly all condition spec’d Gear never has Vitality as its highest stat but rather tied for second with Pow/Prec? … what might work better here (since DPS isn’t nearly as important as just not being randomly 2-shot seconds apart) … is lots of healing, toughness, vitality, Vigor (as was mentioned already) and full inclusion of Soldier/Shaman’s Runes & Crests….

I’m not saying that it’s fair for so many dungeons to gate their content behind Gear-Score. But chances are very high that the other people you tried this with were also having some issues with the Priority of their Stats and were skewed a bit much towards DPS instead of Survival. (and I’ll try get you into one that prefers survival this week if we get our more reliable regulars together again).

For ranger I recommend Protect Me (switch to alive pet before using it), Lightning Reflexes and Signet of the Hunt if no signet effect on self trait or Signet of Stone if you do. Use short bow+ axe/warhorn, buy a superior sigil of energy to slot into warhorn. Save Quick Shot for getting out of circles and do your best to survive. When out of dodge+utilities, switch to warhorn to regain some endurance, use Call of the hunt to outright RUN until utility cool-downs are sufficiently back up. For Pet option pick a ranged one for Phase 1 and the Pig for phase 2, keep spider/devourer dead and switch out to Pig for phase 2 for protect me and try get it to “Forage” before it dies to get you invulnerability in a bottle.

theshaman set from CoF gives i believe Vitality, power condition

theshaman set from CoF gives i believe Vitality, power condition

+VIT as the primary stat?? The wiki says no:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shaman_Reward_Breastplate
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Pretty sure that’s why everyone regards ALL CoF rewards as Glass Cannon gear.

Imo vitality stacking is pretty overrated. It’s worth getting SOME vitality to survive being 1-shotted but the amount of extra vitality you need survive 2-shot is too much (well it’s alot less if you deny Lupicus of any grubs) but overall you will make phase 2 last ~25% longer which means more risks of mis-timing/running out of skills/dodges during this phase.

On the other hand, will full glass cannon and perfect dodging, it’s feasible to get him out of phase 2 before running out of dodge/survivability skills and is what my speed clear group does. But ofc you’d ALL have to get use to his AI behaviours first.

yes i’m wrong, thought it was 34 vitality nevermind, but i’m going to get a full set of that and start transmutating it onto other armors :P.
as for utilities my utilities will more than likely look like lightning reflex, protect me and i might run a stone spirit for protection or search and rescue as last effort to revive downed allies. my elite probably will be rampage as one(for the swiftness) or nature spirit

Stone Spirit sucks imo cos 1) it tends to die, 2) chances of getting random shotted AND random proctection gain at the right time = too much RNG. With wilderness 5? You already have protection from dodging in case you miss the dodge (lol).

Search and Rescue likes to bug out (pet derps and doesn’t rez anything). The pet’s like… 10 seconds later “Oh you want me to rez him!”, “Oh nvm I’m dead lol”.

yea the #3 on pets is bugged to hell, same as the search and rescue, but beyond lightning+protect me i cant think of any utility that will do much, maybe just keep sharpening stone or signet of hunt?(do you really even get a 10%speed increase? i never saw the difference)

I only trust Zypher for quick-revives :\

Reviving in general also seems to be the #1 enemy of uncoordinated Teams in this encounter and is one of my top complaints about it as well. (It’s very antisocial to be forced to keep running around waiting for his randomish aggro & random-bolts to “settle” before it’s safe to attempt to Rev a crucial teammate).

PM me in game, I’ll carry you when I’m on Like I do for everyone else… With no reward.

Yeah good idea… if you work out a time frame with Silleh, PM me also and I’ll be there.
You obviously want to learn to beat it yourself as well and not have someone else do it for you everytime. But it wouldn’t hurt to see how others do it (first hand) either.

yea, i would like to learn to beat it, problem is also finding a group of people who’ve done it before so that we all pull our own weight so to say. right now not beating it i feel im not contributing at all

Well for me I find lupicus quite easy as a guardian with a survival build and keeping a distance with everyone using ranged attacks, as long as you pay attention to the paths hes running its quite easy to dodge almost all of his attacks. I do find however his stage 2 attacks to be a little bugged compared to where the red circles are and where the actual attack hits, however they may have intended it to work that way, but as long as you survive stage 2 the rest is easy peasy. If you find yourself still struggling with him watch some youtube guides no one likes a noob.

As a thief its pretty easy, just gotta becareful of his shots and AoE.
other than that Lupicus is the only reason i enjoy arah, haha!

Apparently dodging red circles is a pretty hard thing for people to do in this game.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Apparently dodging red circles is a pretty hard thing for people to do in this game.

Dodging the circles isn’t the tough part with phase 2 GL, it’s the projectiles that just about 1 shot you even when your outside those circles.

^That’s correct^, how anyone could have completed this fight multiple times without noticing that, I do not know (unless they themselves were being Carried too).

But as has been said about them multiple times now in multiple threads, there’s other “Bolts” launched out apart from the “red Circle” bolts. And that bolt has no red circle attached to it because it does not have a pre-determined trajectory like all AoE’s have. Infact I’ve seen them land mere feet from my character’s hitbox and not deal any damage. I’ve also changed running directions myself right as it’s being launched which is what all the experienced players will tell you to do to avoid it… only to be hit directly by it when other times I’ve ran in a straight line and watched it literally curve around me somehow. ….Again, it’s not an AoE, it’s not affiliated with those red circles, and its trajectory isn’t a straight line. We probably can’t even trust its particle sprite to synch up with its collision hull since it moves so darn fast and this game lags fairly often.

Reflecting it, gaining Aegis or invuln right as its cast, or just having a ton of hitpoints is about the only way to be completely sure you won’t be downed by it if you’re already injured (and your heal is on recharge). … better yet, just don’t get hit by anything else in the first place. Then you can pop your heal the instant the first random bolt hits you. (it’s very rare for a second one to hit you unless Lupi’s aggro is concentrated 100% on you). …and maybe someone else can confirm if they’ve seen the “Evaded” message when they successfully dodged one? I haven’t noticed but maybe I just didn’t time my dodge perfectly

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forgot to mention:

Phase3 s much more predictable but can only be soloed if you have a really quick C/D swiftness buff (like guard staff) and Stability boon + Stability trait or some other escape gimmick that won’t reset his aggro like Invis/Camo currently does. An immobilizer also helps a lot.

I just ran Arah exp for my first time today and managed to have a successful run with minimal wipes. The two others and i were lucky enough to have two other people who had done the path before to explain the lupicus fight to us.

Honestly i wont be much help here because i’ve only done it once, but as a tanky specced warrior with DPS gear i managed to only be downed twice and never had to actually make a run back.

I guess i would suggest the high survivability is what makes the big difference in that fight? We did not have any endurance buffs or anything, and i was not even close to getting 1 shot by the projectiles in phase 2.

I can’t say much more for any class other than warrior, but a tankier build seems to be the way to go by far for him.

Maybe it’s just my timing but ‘Evade’ tends to pop up twice whenever I dodge away from the ‘bolt’ and once if I dodge into it. If I had zig-zagged beforehand and somehow confused the bolt, dodging shows no evade I probably didn’t have to dodge those ones. Being loved by Lupicus as semi squishy ele at +500 vit and +200 toughness he likes to camp bolts on me while camping the guardian with shadow walk so the others usually only have to dodge the circles/rez each other unless I go too far away from him/get downed and lose his bolt aggro. I’ve also noticed the person with shadow walk aggro will get shadow walked if they get downed until they die.

In phase 3 generally person with shadow walk aggro will get bubble/aoe fists aggro, again being bubbled even if they are down until they are dead while the person with bolt aggro gets single target siphon and more bolts coming their way.

We 3-manned lupicus on our first Arah run and 2nd attempt at the boss. At that time I looked up some tactics/videos about that boss and I was suprised that he was easier than I was lead to believe. If phase 2 is the problem then I suggest staying near max range (you can actually reset your hp when you go too far, I dislike that), keep boss constantly in view, keep moving and if you see him looking at you and he flings his hand, just dodge the projectile. It’s quite slow moving. With the projectile and shadowstep the key point is not to dodge too early. Don’t dodge the life siphons, just run away from him, you’ll save your endurance for the big attacks.

I figured out his mechanics before guides were out wand we beat him on the 5th try with full mf green gear (lol those were the days!). It’s much easier standing at max range since you’re guarantueed safety by just moving back but don’t try to enforce it too much since if he’s in the middle of the room, you risk having camera freak out as it gets near the walls and not be able to see anything.

The single target life siphon has super long range so just walking away from it is often not feasible, the aoe life siphon though is walkable for sure.

Did path 3 in arah exp for the first time two night ago (heck had not even done any storymode). We had trouble with lupicus, but in the end, it was just down to nailing the tactics really. I dont want to know how many tries though but three of us were there for the first time, and two of us didnt even have exotics. Heck I even had a green scepter on my guardian and some random yellows I picked up from the tp!

Its all down to quick thinking and good timing! Of course being on teamspeak in an all guild group helps.