I just solo’d Victory or Death on an Engineer, with just pickup gear from the storyline and wanted to offer my thoughts on the experience, and mention some bugs with the mission. This will contain considerable spoilers for those who haven’t done it yet.
Gear was mostly level 70-80 Rare armour with 1 piece 60 rare, and 1 80 exotic. Weapon was rifle, 80 exotic. Back and amulet 80 rare, no accessories, 2 level 57 and 80 rare rings. Stat combinations pretty random.
Stage 1: Tri bosses.
Pressure plate part was pretty easy. The boss inside was half dead before he even gave attunements. What became immediately apparent was that even with all of Destinys Edge there, I got all the aggro I downed once, mainly because with a broken hand I couldnt manouvre. Caithe never took damage, I could have left her to do it all.
Obelisks died quickly and Bloated Creeper boss went down fine. Risen Knight came for me exclusively again and attacked so quickly I ran out of endurance. I downed once, but so far so good.
Stage 2: Giants.
Tried to get on a cannon, no go. Kept getting kicked off. When I finally got on one, I fell through the ship and died! Rest of the battle was annoying, trying to get on a cannon long enough to reflect a shot back at the giants (attack option is gone) before I got killed by the 2 deck mobs that kept respawning. CC in group content is okay I guess, but massed CC in a solo mission is infuriating.
Stage 3: Towers/Mouth
Ooze tower was a cinch. Orrian tower less so since they kept respawning. Again I downed and died but would have been OK if I could have manouvred properly. A challenge but possibly if you’re on your game. Gorilla tower was okay, the Orrian Eyes could be picked off from a distance. Constant CC from the Orrians was hugely annoying.
The Mouth… totally annoying. He didn’t spawn Fiery Orbs very quickly and I did get killed once which wouldnt have happened if, once again, I could manouvre well. Because of that I kept running out of endurance and got taken down. Still, a decent challenge.
Stage 4: Dragon Champions.
This part seemed OK. Challenge was set just right, even if again the CC spam was infuriating. Got each champion down in 2 fire-rounds, and got chance to heal between mob attacks.
Stage 5: Glory of Tyria and Zhaitan.
Oh dear.
Large AOEs are barely dodgeable at all but the mobs went down ok. The problem is that between during one of the cutscenes I became surrounded with mobs, and before I could react, a second one started. At the conclusion of that one I was hit with a tidal wave of CC, and stuns. Only a very quick change to bomb kit and slamming on dodge as fast as I could prevented a down and inevitable death. AI allies of course stood there doing nothing. Got through the rest of the mob stage fine.
Then came the problem – the cannoning of Zhaitan. While you are on a cannon, Zhaitan throws a massive pool of poison which you can barely survive if you immedately get off the cannon and double dodge back. If not, and I couldn’t, you can expect to be pretty much insta-killed.
A quick res, back onto a cannon, and now I also had to face Tendrils of Zhaitan as well. I stuck to my guns, got Zhaitan down but… the Tendrils didn’t die. So while all the ally AIs stood around and cheered, I got downed and killed again.
All in all the experience was… okay. If I had all 80 Rare or Exotic gear I am sure I’d have made it through no problem despite my limited manouverability right now.
Pro: I think the challenge is set about right for the most part. Better players than me wouldn’t have downed at all except maybe to the Risen Knight.
Con: The practically insta-killing Risen Knight which exhausts your evade options too quickly. Absolute constant barrages of CC. Annoying near-instakills on the Glory of Tyria’s cannons.
I hope this helps any players that may be concerned about the soloable VoD storyline.
