Guild Wars 2

I can get it (Self Doubt Clone) down to about 67% & I can’t seem to avoid to debuff that adds time to the skill bar! This is a very frustrating quest, I am playing my Revenant! Any help is appreciated!

You need to go to the visions and press F, it will cleanse the debuff and stun the clone. I fought it for 2 hours before figuring this out lol.

It gains a stacking buff every time it takes damage that reduces damage taken up to 100% at 20 stacks. It doesn’t gain stacks while broken, so you essentially need to CC with minimal hits, then burst it down.

If you’re not going for the achievement, simply interact with the illusions on the side and you’ll gain a special action ability that breaks the target and causes massive damage.

lol, yeah I agree it’s not obvious at all. Probably the most difficult LS fight that I can remember in terms of figuring out what to do.

Khal Drogo.6952:

You need to go to the visions and press F, it will cleanse the debuff and stun the clone. I fought it for 2 hours before figuring this out lol.

Thank you so much for this. I wish they would make this clear in the game. But Haha anet.

I spent ages trying to kite off the stacks and timing the breakbar while cooldowns spiralled into insanity. Didn’t realise what to do until reading about it on here.

FireCrescent.6512:

Khal Drogo.6952:

You need to go to the visions and press F, it will cleanse the debuff and stun the clone. I fought it for 2 hours before figuring this out lol.

Thank you so much for this. I wish they would make this clear in the game. But Haha anet.

Enjoy the thread now, because it won’t be long before we get dozens of posts saying “I figured it out in 3 minutes because I’m amazing!” Followed by chastising remarks about hand holding.

Generally, though, this games community is helpful and it’s awesome.

Dear Anet. Your fearless achievement makes me want to /gg kill myself. Too bad I can’t outside of fractals and raids.

What I want to know is, why was this fight even a … well, a fight?

We’re playing The Commander, the person that went into Mordremoth’s mind/dream, and confronted him on his own terms. We went up against the Elder Dragon of Mind, and it pulled out of us our deepest fears and regrets. And we BEAT THEM.

This? A spell cast by someone that doesn’t really know us that well at all? We should have been able to walk up to “self doubt”, grab it by the head, and give a quick twist. THAT would have fit our history better, moved the story right along, and given everyone a reminder that The Commander has seen some kitten.

FireCrescent.6512:

Khal Drogo.6952:

You need to go to the visions and press F, it will cleanse the debuff and stun the clone. I fought it for 2 hours before figuring this out lol.

Thank you so much for this. I wish they would make this clear in the game. But Haha anet.

Also an icon will pop up, click it and aim it at the clone. It will not score a hit on the clone when it is down though so shoot between when it is getting up and when it is shooting at you again.

Curunen.8729:

lol, yeah I agree it’s not obvious at all. Probably the most difficult LS fight that I can remember in terms of figuring out what to do.

It’s just terribly designed. Just like the boss fights in every episode this season. :/

Yeah . . . tried going for the “Fearless” achievement point, but that crap is impossible. Tried dodging the hands multiple times, and they always hit. They could be super far from me, and it still gets me . . . as if the hit box size of the hands is much larger than the animation . . . this AP will be a nope, seems bugged to me.

Fearless will possibly win the prize for the most annoying AP in this episode. I don’t even think I have a build capable to do that.

… I managed to get Fearless without even trying by running my Sword+Torch berzerker build.

For some reason, it never got to 100% damage reduction (Or maybe it doesn’t apply to conditions?) But it was a crazy-long fight, otherwise. Had I known more about what I was getting into, I’d have gone Strength instead of Condi, equipped Signet of Stamina and Healing Signet, and just dodgerolled it to death.

Curunen.8729:

lol, yeah I agree it’s not obvious at all. Probably the most difficult LS fight that I can remember in terms of figuring out what to do.

Difficult isn’t the right word, tedious is more like it. Especially considering there are 2 achievements tied to not using the mechanic the fight was clearly designed around you using.

I gave up after getting it down to 25 health, then having it reset to 100 and being told to try it again. Nope, another battle I will never finish. Never finished mordromoth, and will never do this one so that’s 2 LS I will not complete. Really aggravated/frustrated and wondering why I bother even playing any more as it’s becoming less and less fun to play with every patch/update/LS.

If you’re doing the fight as intended, you need to get the blue ghosts that pop up around the edges of the room to help you. Someone above mentioned you can interact with them, but they also seem to have their own break bars.. I didn’t try this yet so maybe someone can confirm. This is the normal way to do this fight.

If you are going for the Fearless achievement, you want to hit the spirit of doubt as little as possible when the bar isn’t broken, or wait a few seconds for the damage reduction buff to fall off of it. However, you don’t seem to be able to avoid the hands, and your cooldowns quickly become extremely long, so you need to finish the fight reasonably fast.

Make sure you’d stacking whatever buffs are available to your profession early on in the fight, breaking the bar without hitting it too much, and then doing as much as you can while it’s broken. If your damage seems very low, try breaking the bar partway, so there’s only a little blue left showing, then waiting for the buff to fall off, then finishing the break bar.

Any time a boss has a buff, take a few seconds to mouse over the buff and read what it does. That makes it a lot more clear how you’re supposed to do the fight. Also, if health is an issue, try a mango pie or similar to help out. I tried a minion build as well (necro), but they also seem to have long cooldown on their attacks from your debuff, and the spirits tends to target them first, so I had better luck using a standard condi build.

Didn’t know about talking, beat it with phantasms on my mes. Lol

is this achievement bugged? no matter what i do i cant avoid the arms…..

You can’t avoid the arms as far as I can tell. You need to finish the fight before your cooldowns get too long from hands getting to you. I want to say I had around 4 or 5 the time I beat it without using the ghosts for help, but I’m not 100% sure.

I am editing this post because I figured out the trick, though I still believe the dev that created this achievement to be a sadist. You need to get 25 stacks of the debuff, then the hands will give alacrity instead, which makes this doable. Just stand by the door and afk until you have 25 stacks, then enter the fight.

mysticsicness.7598:

I am editing this post because I figured out the trick, though I still believe the dev that created this achievement to be a sadist. You need to get 25 stacks of the debuff, then the hands will give alacrity instead, which makes this doable. Just stand by the door and afk until you have 25 stacks, then enter the fight.

Seriously? That’s… weird, but good to know thanks.

mysticsicness.7598:

I am editing this post because I figured out the trick, though I still believe the dev that created this achievement to be a sadist. You need to get 25 stacks of the debuff, then the hands will give alacrity instead, which makes this doable. Just stand by the door and afk until you have 25 stacks, then enter the fight.

How can you “afk” when he keeps beating on you? I was downed before I could get 25 stacks even while fighting him.

mysticsicness.7598:

I am editing this post because I figured out the trick, though I still believe the dev that created this achievement to be a sadist. You need to get 25 stacks of the debuff, then the hands will give alacrity instead, which makes this doable. Just stand by the door and afk until you have 25 stacks, then enter the fight.

The hands don’t start until you have begun the fight…

Curunen.8729:

mysticsicness.7598:

I am editing this post because I figured out the trick, though I still believe the dev that created this achievement to be a sadist. You need to get 25 stacks of the debuff, then the hands will give alacrity instead, which makes this doable. Just stand by the door and afk until you have 25 stacks, then enter the fight.

Seriously? That’s… weird, but good to know thanks.

Didn’t notice Alacrity but I had 25 stacks and beat it with my clones. So makes sense to me.

It’s like 3 seconds of alacrity which honestly won’t help much with 25 stacks of the debuff and the boss attacking you.

The fight is only “doable” if you don’t have to rely on constant use of your skills such as if you used turrets or minions.

I just tried whatever came to mind actually and saw my clone losing health, so figured “ok that works keep doing it”. Will try talking when I run my alts through.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s like 3 seconds of alacrity which honestly won’t help much with 25 stacks of the debuff and the boss attacking you.

5s and applied every 20, but it’s really not going to help since 25 stacks is +125 seconds to your abilities.

Personally, I just went easy mode on a zerker greatsword warrior. Easy access CC with low cooldowns and Healing Signet out heals the damage.

I had no idea how to defeat him, I thought dodging the fists would work but it didn’t. I just had my mate keep reviving me instead lol

I had no idea how to defeat him, I thought dodging the hands would work but it didn’t. I just got my mate to keep reviving me lol

Squee.7829:

Enjoy the thread now, because it won’t be long before we get dozens of posts saying “I figured it out in 3 minutes because I’m amazing!”

I’m not amazing and I didn’t figure it out in any amount of time at all. In fact, I just got immensely frustrated and quit the kitten thing.

Those sorts of fights need to be safely tucked away in raids and dungeons where folks who enjoy that stuff can seek them out. The Living Story should be fun and entertaining and not so difficult that you need to go looking for tricks and tips on forums. Normal stuff should be fun not frustrating. Anet seem to have forgotten that.

I just managed to get the achievement. As someone alrdy said, you just have to stay alive until you have 25 stacks of “Crushing Guilt”, cause the Self-Doubt will then only have 1 stack of “Guild Exploitation” (You might need to wait for the 26. hand, but you won’t gain more then 25 stacks and the self-doubt won’t gain more than that 1 stack) – That means your cooldowns are very high, yes, but you will deal 96% of your normal damage to your opponent. So just start the fight as usual, break the bar and burst, wait for your cooldowns and do the same thing again.

I played ele using the following stuff (condi ele with survivabilities):
Traits: Fire (1-1-1), Water (3-2-3), Tempest (3-3-1)
Skills: Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Glyph of Elemental Power, Glyph of Lesser Elementals, Signet of Fire, Glyph of Elementals
Armor: Viper and Sinister Mix with Rune of the Berserker, Dagger/Focus (Almost like the condi ele build by qt)
Bufffood: Mango Pie

I just stayed at water to have 2 healing effects, 1 by mango pie and the other by “Soothing Mist”. When my cooldowns were reset I used skills 3 and 4, waited for the stacks of Dynamic Defense to disappear, used skill 5. If that wasn’t enough I switched to air using skills 3 and 5. Then to fire and burst (skills 2, glyph of elemental power, fire signet, skills 3+4). Then back to water and repeat. If Glyph of Lesser Elementals or Glyph of Elementals had no cooldown, I used one of them on water to have the elemental doing some cc as well.

So, I hope some of you (maybe elemental players) will help this
Good luck!

I got him down to like 36% the ‘painful’ way and was hitting 40 second cooldowns on skills when I said screw it and just went for the fearful achievement instead. Breaking his breakbar before doing damage sounds like a good idea. I only did the instance once so far and it was too late for me to use that tactic as you can’t seem to reset the fight unless you die (which.. well, warrior with passive health regen doesn’t die to his meager damage).

As a reaper, I wanted to use pets, but it was a complete disaster.

So, I used a standard condidps build with all utilities as frost cc and a healing signet. The fight went as follow : Use 3 frost cc, then shroud 5 4 and 1-2 until she breaks out of stun. Then kite your double while waiting for cooldowns. Rinse and repeat.

3 stun phases were enough for me to kill it.

DoctorDing.5890:

Squee.7829:

Enjoy the thread now, because it won’t be long before we get dozens of posts saying “I figured it out in 3 minutes because I’m amazing!”

I’m not amazing and I didn’t figure it out in any amount of time at all. In fact, I just got immensely frustrated and quit the kitten thing.

Those sorts of fights need to be safely tucked away in raids and dungeons where folks who enjoy that stuff can seek them out. The Living Story should be fun and entertaining and not so difficult that you need to go looking for tricks and tips on forums. Normal stuff should be fun not frustrating. Anet seem to have forgotten that.

Anet doesn’t care if the average person can accomplish their Stories with any amount of fun (if at all). Which is strange since they sell their stories to people who didn’t log in the first 2 weeks of them…

so instead of normal combat Anet will be resorting to the gimmick of the month

It’s all about solving the gimmicks and not about combat anymore….. This maybe interesting to some people but it seems silly to me.

Erzian.5218:

Syurielle.1526:

I just managed to get the achievement. As someone alrdy said, you just have to stay alive until you have 25 stacks of “Crushing Guilt”, cause the Self-Doubt will then only have 1 stack of “Guild Exploitation” (You might need to wait for the 26. hand, but you won’t gain more then 25 stacks and the self-doubt won’t gain more than that 1 stack) – That means your cooldowns are very high, yes, but you will deal 96% of your normal damage to your opponent. So just start the fight as usual, break the bar and burst, wait for your cooldowns and do the same thing again.

I played ele using the following stuff (condi ele with survivabilities):
Traits: Fire (1-1-1), Water (3-2-3), Tempest (3-3-1)
Skills: Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Glyph of Elemental Power, Glyph of Lesser Elementals, Signet of Fire, Glyph of Elementals
Armor: Viper and Sinister Mix with Rune of the Berserker, Dagger/Focus (Almost like the condi ele build by qt)
Bufffood: Mango Pie

I just stayed at water to have 2 healing effects, 1 by mango pie and the other by “Soothing Mist”. When my cooldowns were reset I used skills 3 and 4, waited for the stacks of Dynamic Defense to disappear, used skill 5. If that wasn’t enough I switched to air using skills 3 and 5. Then to fire and burst (skills 2, glyph of elemental power, fire signet, skills 3+4). Then back to water and repeat. If Glyph of Lesser Elementals or Glyph of Elementals had no cooldown, I used one of them on water to have the elemental doing some cc as well.

So, I hope some of you (maybe elemental players) will help this
Good luck!

That is a lot of effort given that condi ele beats the boss (with achievement) before even having 10 stacks.

YOUR condi ele? Or are you claiming you know about all condi ele?

For people who had no trouble with this fight, I’m happy for you. Apparently you think that all players will have the same gear, or knowledge of the game, or skill at character creation, fighting, whatever. What is easy for some people is not easy for everyone – think everyone can play the flute or build a house?

People / threads that complain about difficulty don’t benefit at all from replies like “it was easy”. That’s just people bragging.

Erzian.5218:

That is a lot of effort given that condi ele beats the boss (with achievement) before even having 10 stacks.

Well, I couldn’t do it in that few stacks, so I had to do it otherwise. Just wanted to share my experience with players who might think it’s helpful ^^

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Djinn.9245:

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Squee.7829:

Enjoy the thread now, because it won’t be long before we get dozens of posts saying “I figured it out in 3 minutes because I’m amazing!” Followed by chastising remarks about hand holding.

Generally, though, this games community is helpful and it’s awesome.

Look at the hyperbole and whining some of the responses are in this thread and then ask yourself why there are any sort of ‘chastising remarks about hand holding’…

Dont’ see the connection.

Some few, vocal people want to act like this fight (which isn’t hard if you engage your brain ever so slightly… hard for some people, I know…) is the end of the world, ruining their lives and making them want to contemplate suicide… when its just a dang game. And not even that hard of a game either.
When you come off as /that/ whiny and over-entitled over something this trivial (and it is trivial…) then yes… people are going to respond with sarcasm.

But hey! If people just want all these fights to become ultra-boring ‘Press-the-big-butten-here-to-win’ kind of snooze-fests, then all the more power to them, I suppose…
I’ll laugh when the forums become full of ’I’m bored! This game sucks!’ kind of posts… likely from the very same people.

The fight is already like that if you speak with the NPC and use the new ability.

What a lot of people are complaining about is going for the other achievement that requires you not to speak to the NPC. This makes the fight much more difficult because of the very long cooldowns and need to endure through the enemy’s attacks. Currently the only way people have found to do this is either with minions/turrets/clones doing the damage or setting yourself up with very high sustain (e.g. warriors healing signet) and just whittle away at the health bar.

The problem with the above is that it excludes some classes. Now, if there was a reliable way to avoid the debuff, as dodging doesn’t appear to be working, then there wouldn’t be an issue.

Its nice that anet is trying to add in emulation to there game but they forget that the combat and skill effects are so engulfing to most players that every thing else is lost. Yes it took me a good 30 mins before i worked out what i had to do i was realty focused on the fight and skill use. That why they realty need to make more “tells” on players skill then just simple “the other player moves there hands some to tell you they are casting something so get out of the way” not sure why they added it to npc effects but not on play vs play effects.

I did it (Feareless) as a zerker tempest sceptar/warhorn with conjured weapons. It’s not as hard as we make it out to be (and it’s miles less annoying and tedious than the achievement “Leave It To Me”).

The key is to do the most damage you can before your stacks get high. I got her down to 30ish% at like 20 stacks. It’s much easier once you start getting Alacrity as it really does make a difference. Near the end I just camped water for a bit for the heals (playing it safe).

CC, then burst as much as you can. Afterwards, wait for your CD’s while running around and then rinse and repeat.

Erzian.5218:

When I tried for the first time, I was running fresh air ele. I tried 2 or 3 times without success. But guess what? I didn’t run to forums to cry about it like a little baby. Instead I read the buff description, figured out that I should try to hit it as little as possible and changed my build to try out that approach. To no surprise, it worked.

You don’t need perfect gear or mechanical skill for it. All you have to do is THINK about the encounter and adjust your strategy.

Its not about thinking or not its about nose from skill and effects. Most of the time ppl toon npc talking out. A human can only see so much and focused on so much at once. There a lot of demand in this game to split what your looking at with very low down time in-between. Its the reason why a lot of ppl when the game first came out did not like gw2 combat. So to fix that you add in types of tells more then what the npc is saying or a “show you” effect where something trys to do what you need to but fails because its not you (monklys jumping on walls in metro to show you wall jump and ppl still did not get it but at least the game tryed).

This game over all lacks tells for combat i think is the main thing that needs to be looked into. They have the tools to add them in but i guess they do not want to overload players. Maybe a setting to let you see it at different levels would be the best effect.

DoctorDing.5890:

Squee.7829:

Enjoy the thread now, because it won’t be long before we get dozens of posts saying “I figured it out in 3 minutes because I’m amazing!”

I’m not amazing and I didn’t figure it out in any amount of time at all. In fact, I just got immensely frustrated and quit the kitten thing.

Those sorts of fights need to be safely tucked away in raids and dungeons where folks who enjoy that stuff can seek them out. The Living Story should be fun and entertaining and not so difficult that you need to go looking for tricks and tips on forums. Normal stuff should be fun not frustrating. Anet seem to have forgotten that.

This pretty much exactly. The fact that we are discussing it in this way on a forum is an indicator of the encounters failure. The open world, living story, etc. is not the place for crushing challenge or raid-like mechanics that must first be grokked by progression raiders and later communicated to the masses. This is an example of how not to design an encounter of this nature.

Ayrilana.1396:

The problem with the above is that it excludes some classes. Now, if there was a reliable way to avoid the debuff, as dodging doesn’t appear to be working, then there wouldn’t be an issue.

That’s the critical issue.

I’ve heard rumors that minions might be able to take the hit, but then they run up the defense stacks too much. Without being able to dodge the claw, eventually, the buff the shadow gets makes all damage null anyway (4% incoming damage mitigation per stack).

The overall design isn’t the failure. I knew everything I needed to do for passing both the general event and the achievement, but there was something in the execution that got mucked up (the claw, obviously) which soured the experience.

Has anyone tried using consumables such as Fire Ele, Pet Whistle, pod turret, and so on?

Ayrilana.1396:

Has anyone tried using consumables such as Fire Ele, Pet Whistle, pod turret, and so on?

I meant to but forgot to bring any. However, I did find that once you figure out the requirements this fight actually isn’t so bad. Which is saying something since I am terrible at these Story fights.

I just won this fight on my Berserker (which may seem obvious but I lost it twice before I figured it out). A couple hints that helped:

-Have Regeneration
-Kite while your skills are on cooldown. I spent a very boring time running in circles waiting for ALL my skills to come back up. Then I hit all my progression and then ran around again.

And back to Ayrilana’s question, I didn’t have any consumables but my Berserker does have Runes of the Privateer and my Parrot did help with damage

Ayrilana.1396:

Has anyone tried using consumables such as Fire Ele, Pet Whistle, pod turret, and so on?

Yes, I tried. It’s a bad idea. They just stack the dynamic defence buff and die fast ^^

Ayrilana.1396:

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Djinn.9245:

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Squee.7829:

Enjoy the thread now, because it won’t be long before we get dozens of posts saying “I figured it out in 3 minutes because I’m amazing!” Followed by chastising remarks about hand holding.

Generally, though, this games community is helpful and it’s awesome.

Look at the hyperbole and whining some of the responses are in this thread and then ask yourself why there are any sort of ‘chastising remarks about hand holding’…

Dont’ see the connection.

Some few, vocal people want to act like this fight (which isn’t hard if you engage your brain ever so slightly… hard for some people, I know…) is the end of the world, ruining their lives and making them want to contemplate suicide… when its just a dang game. And not even that hard of a game either.
When you come off as /that/ whiny and over-entitled over something this trivial (and it is trivial…) then yes… people are going to respond with sarcasm.

But hey! If people just want all these fights to become ultra-boring ‘Press-the-big-butten-here-to-win’ kind of snooze-fests, then all the more power to them, I suppose…
I’ll laugh when the forums become full of ’I’m bored! This game sucks!’ kind of posts… likely from the very same people.

The fight is already like that if you speak with the NPC and use the new ability.

What a lot of people are complaining about is going for the other achievement that requires you not to speak to the NPC. This makes the fight much more difficult because of the very long cooldowns and need to endure through the enemy’s attacks. Currently the only way people have found to do this is either with minions/turrets/clones doing the damage or setting yourself up with very high sustain (e.g. warriors healing signet) and just whittle away at the health bar.

The problem with the above is that it excludes some classes. Now, if there was a reliable way to avoid the debuff, as dodging doesn’t appear to be working, then there wouldn’t be an issue.

I just did it with a condi necro.

Break -> apply condi
Run around until the bar is breakable a gain
repeat

I made the mistake of using the shout heal as well which was probably not the best choice but it was successful anyway so I guess it didn’t matter that much.

Edit: also had Epidemic so that is two wrong skills … >_>

Finished “Fearless” earlier today with full Berserker Revenant with Schoolar runes and used Hammer for heavy 1 hits and Staff for CC. Took about 7 minutes.

I rarely complain on the forums about boss fights and such but I have to say that for a ranger/druid the fearless achievement is impossible to do. I’d love for a game developer to show us rangers how to do the fight. I’m not using any dmg abilities until the break bar is gone so the boss won’t get any damage resistance boons on him, yet the best I manage is 50%.

If any ranger/druid has any advice here, feel free to share. If this achievement is only for warriors or something, I think you’ve done something wrong ArenaNet.