Guild Wars 2

In the past I have made a post praising Harathi Hinterlands as being my favourite zone in the game. Today I came across a familiar fight to many who venture this area – Gargantula the (champion?) spider. Gargantula is a timed spider boss who is going to eat a Seraph captain if you don’t kill it in time. It has quite a large amount of health and it is found in a cave with a bunch of other spiders constantly spawning around it.

If you are going to solo this fight, be prepared for it to be long and drawn out. Why? Because frequently throughout the fight it will become invulnerable (with the buff, not some weird bug) and regenerate all its health while spawning a bunch of spiders and you start all over. I read on the wiki this happens four times. You have 12 minutes to kill it and each time you have to drag its health down it will completely heal and you start all over again. The worst part is there appears to be no way to stop it and there is absolutely no indicator that it is part of the monster design. Each time the health regain is the same as the last, I had no idea why it was regaining health, I thought I was doing something wrong (besides having soloed the boss on my ranger in the past, although I only killed it three times).

Why would anyone think it’s good design that a boss (with an already massive health pool) that regenerates it’s health multiple times with no differences between each health regain and no difference between each phase, it’s exactly the same once it regenerates – DPS the boss down again? Why would you make this fight that tedious? It takes forever to take it down once, let alone four times. I ended up leaving the cave angrily after the third reset (I had about 3-4 minutes left but by then I was kitten and really bored of the fight). I understand this is a group event and killing the boss with multiple people would be easier, but every time I’ve been in this area – with other people around – people end up leaving after the first reset and those that know better don’t even bother entering the cave.

Guild Wars 2 seriously suffers from mistaking time sinks for increased challenge. Increasing the time it takes to do something doesn’t make it more challenging or rewarding, it makes it tedious and boring. This boss is exactly that, and the reward is not even remotely close to being worth the time or effort. If you were going to go this route it would have been far better to give some kind of indicator that it has extra health bars (although I think most people agree after the karka that extra health bars as a mechanic is kittening terrible and GW2 has no need to give NPCs more health than they already have), some kind of way to possibly prevent the health regain or altered mechanics during each stage. The current design is long, tedious, boring and outright confusing.

I just killed her and logout now hehe , if you have enough people is fast, every time it start I notice this event on the map /M so more people come to help

remember link the waypoint near

The only problems that I had with Gargantula is when our group pushed it into the wall and it reset -_-
The boss is really far from the hardest and most unfair ones.

I fought this boss once. Until I read this thread, I assumed it was bugged and kept resetting. I agree that there should be some kind of indicator that the mechanic is intentional, either through a visual cue (like the karka shell) or a simply counter on the event description.

One of the better world bosses in the game IMO. At least I remember her for what she can do.

Actually I think this is one of the better bosses, most of the games bosses aren’t soloable at all, Gargantula can be even if it is very very difficult.

Conncept.7638:

Actually I think this is one of the better bosses, most of the games bosses aren’t soloable at all, Gargantula can be even if it is very very difficult.

The most difficult part of that fight I ever encountered was having to fix my manicure(after 5 min of 1-2-3-4-5 pressing, my finger slipped and a nail broke Q.Q). I could never view endless hp as difficult. Now, if there was a fine mechanic to prevent the healing…as it is right now you basically put your glass cannon shoes on, mash buttons for 10 min and hope your dps is high enough to take it down before the timer ends.

Gargantulla resets health because she consumes the babies that she spawns- kill them asap. It is not a bug.

Last time I did it with another person and we had a smooth time, but after its 4th heal we had no time left because we came in late. It’s definitely an easy boss to fight, but the healing is just really annoying and time consuming.

Alpha Drake at Bloodtide Coast is a example of boss done right. Same as Gargantula, it has a time limit in which you need to kill it before Phill the Fisher gets digested. It has fun mechanics like eating players and vomit out small crabs along with its stomach acid. And it has a tail swipe to punish careless melee fighters. It’s the perfect boss to test a characters ability. Now if the tail swipe and normal bite damage increases, and eating a player cause it to heal a little, then it would be perfect.

Morrigan.2809:

Gargantulla resets health because she consumes the babies that she spawns- kill them asap. It is not a bug.

Got video of a kill without hp regen?

TWMagimay.9057:

Morrigan.2809:

Gargantulla resets health because she consumes the babies that she spawns- kill them asap. It is not a bug.

Got video of a kill without hp regen?

of course not.
I have seen this myself though as I’ve killed her quite a few times- we normally just /say kill the babies and people do as soon as they spawn- her health goes up but not by much and she is easy to take down.
It is just a tip- check it out yourself.

i remember this spider, it was a couple of months ago, i think we killed her with like 6 people, and yes she regenerated hp but didnt cause trouble

You want hard, try the crab in the plant people starter zone. The one that turns you into a crab to fight it. Soloing is hardly possible.

Morrigan.2809:

of course not.
I have seen this myself though as I’ve killed her quite a few times- we normally just /say kill the babies and people do as soon as they spawn- her health goes up but not by much and she is easy to take down.
It is just a tip- check it out yourself.

I have tried it. Never worked. Killing the spiders or not killing the spiders, the boss always remained invulnerable until it filled the hp. Thus why I asked for a video of that actually working/happening. Kill him…her…it today and fraps it, shouldn’t be all that hard….

TWMagimay.9057:

Morrigan.2809:

of course not.
I have seen this myself though as I’ve killed her quite a few times- we normally just /say kill the babies and people do as soon as they spawn- her health goes up but not by much and she is easy to take down.
It is just a tip- check it out yourself.

I have tried it. Never worked. Killing the spiders or not killing the spiders, the boss always remained invulnerable until it filled the hp. Thus why I asked for a video of that actually working/happening. Kill him…her…it today and fraps it, shouldn’t be all that hard….

Isnt that the reset that happens when you pull a mob out of is place?
It gets invunerable and heatlh resets, worse is when this happens and they continue to hit you while he is being reseted.

This concept in my opinion is the worse concept i have ever seen in a mmo (so far the only thing i dont like in gw2, even when a mob is on a hight or lower spot and says invunerable or gets reseted).

TWMagimay.9057:

Conncept.7638:

Actually I think this is one of the better bosses, most of the games bosses aren’t soloable at all, Gargantula can be even if it is very very difficult.

The most difficult part of that fight I ever encountered was having to fix my manicure(after 5 min of 1-2-3-4-5 pressing, my finger slipped and a nail broke Q.Q). I could never view endless hp as difficult. Now, if there was a fine mechanic to prevent the healing…as it is right now you basically put your glass cannon shoes on, mash buttons for 10 min and hope your dps is high enough to take it down before the timer ends.

Ahahaha yes, that’s hilarious!

Aeolus.3615:

Isnt that the reset that happens when you pull a mob out of is place?
It gets invunerable and heatlh resets, worse is when this happens and they continue to hit you while he is being reseted.

No. It’s an actual mechanic of that particular fight. The boss will just become invulnerable, spawn small spiders and fill its hp.

Yeah, these are group events for a reason. They’re meant to be taken by groups. It’s NORMAL not to be able to solo this.

Kill the baby spiders when they spawn, and there you go.

I think it even says below the health bar of a baby spider when selected that it defends the mother or something to that effect.

TWMagimay.9057:

Conncept.7638:

Actually I think this is one of the better bosses, most of the games bosses aren’t soloable at all, Gargantula can be even if it is very very difficult.

The most difficult part of that fight I ever encountered was having to fix my manicure(after 5 min of 1-2-3-4-5 pressing, my finger slipped and a nail broke Q.Q). I could never view endless hp as difficult. Now, if there was a fine mechanic to prevent the healing…as it is right now you basically put your glass cannon shoes on, mash buttons for 10 min and hope your dps is high enough to take it down before the timer ends.

If it’s so easy then why do you have to rely on a crack build to take it down? :\

I go with my standard melee condition build, lil’ tanky but mostly invested in condition damage and duration, and there’s a lot more to it than just a big HP pool. Dodge at the right times (obviously), take down the adds QUICKLY or the timer will run out before you can kill it, use condition removal, and kite perfectly, because if you stand still she can basically one shot you with her melee attack.

However yes, I will admit, she is much easier if you are ranged, but everything in GW2 is easier for ranged characters, some thing even to the point that you might as well not even try do them as a melee. But that isn’t something specific to Gargantula, that’s a design flaw that stretches over the whole game and a great many of the boss fights.

A few times I fought Gargantula, and more often than not a player would be in the tunnel to the cave, the spider would walk towards them, and they’d walk further away from the cave. The difference between reset and a NPC mechanic of gaining HP, is with reset the NPC goes back to the starting location. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen it, but I’d guess when it gains HP it doesn’t go back to starting location?

Kiting it in a small area (in the cave). If other player gets aggro, the fun mystery aggro where a boss just finds another player to be tasty for the moment… don’t run away and leash the boss. Leash the boss=reset. Just some aspects I remember to watch for. I never tried it solo, and would not. I recall engineer turrets being placed very close to the entrance of the cave (not inside the cave), and thinking that when the turret had aggro, the spider rest a few times.

Veteran and Champion Karkas… you have a health bar for their shell, and another health bar for after their shell is destroyed. Double health bar NPCs.
DCUO, an enemy (batman/joker) will be attacked, when the health bar reaches a certain point (25%), it triggers a cutscene, and then their health is 100% again, and might go on for 4 rounds (cutscenes).

Gargantula must be thinking, “hey! your health went up!” too.

ophidic.1279:

Yeah, these are group events for a reason. They’re meant to be taken by groups. It’s NORMAL not to be able to solo this.

Kill the baby spiders when they spawn, and there you go.

I think it even says below the health bar of a baby spider when selected that it defends the mother or something to that effect.

Groups? In my MMO?
They might as well change the genre to MSO. Massively single-player online games…

So, when ANet just adds health to a boss, people complain the fight needs new mechanics. When ANet adds new mechanics (like health regen via consuming other foes or anti-kiting), other people complain that the fight is unplayable.

Typically, people misunderstand boss mechanics. For example: there’s an imp boss that becomes invulnerable for long periods of time, but all you have to do is destroy a nearby totem and she’s weak — yet nearly every time I’ve been nearby, someone is yelling in /map or /local chat about how invulnerability is broken.

I wouldn’t say that Gargantula is the Best | Boss | Ever, but she’s hardly the worst one.

im running a mace/shield guardian and i assumed it was bugged when she did the full regen, so i waited for back up and when none arrived with 4 minutes left i attacked again but didnt have time to kill through her 3 regens! it should be clearer.

There’s one other boss I found, during the personal storyline, which wound up really challenging at the time until I backed off to rethink. Basically . . . a champion hammer warrior, with that huge health pool and massive damage output. Sure, you get one of those uber-NPCs to help you but if you let them tank and they go down (and they will) you’re close to out of luck.

I was playing a warrior too and was going for full offense until I stepped back and weighed my options. I went Mace/Shield and dueled him throwing up block (Mace skill 2 or Shield Stance) to weather those harsh attacks while using the two stuns (Mace skill 3 or Shield Bash) to drop him out of his Defiant.

It took a while but he was not knocking me off the walls, though missing the blocks once had me needing to kite him for my healing to take affect. Enjoyable, and I don’t know how I’d have taken him as another class (My ranger could not have done it, for instance. The space was far too confined.)

On topic again? That spider is one that practically requires a group, rather like my experiences with the Giant of Nageling. Sure, I could slowly chip him down but he tended to reset before I dropped him below 50% for some reason. I like there are bosses which sort of require groups to take them down reliably.

(On the other hand, Nageling being locked down because nobody is around who wants to take the Giant . . . mostly since there’s no reward . . .)

love this boss

This boss and Champion Wasp Queen are very similar you must kill the adds or they heal the main boss. Its a common over used game mechanic and I seen it in other games.

Her hp is actually less each time, it’s not noticeable when you’re soloing because it’s still a lot of hp, and it might even depend on how many babies she eats (she’ll regen either way but how much her total hp is might depend on how many babies she got). It’s a very soloable boss, I know it can be frustrating, but if you’re finding you don’t have enough dps to get her before the timer ends, get a group, 3 people with horribad dps can get her well within the time limit as long as they aren’t dying every 2 seconds. On a side note, anotehr boss i wish had this mechanic was the hungry drake boss right inside bloodtide coast that eats the fisher guy, you have a time limit to get him out before he’s digested but all it takes is 2 or 3 people with good dps to burn the boss down in a matter of seconds. If it had this mechanic where it regen’d sproadically because it was “digesting him” then it would be a really fun fight.

TWMagimay.9057:

Conncept.7638:

Actually I think this is one of the better bosses, most of the games bosses aren’t soloable at all, Gargantula can be even if it is very very difficult.

The most difficult part of that fight I ever encountered was having to fix my manicure(after 5 min of 1-2-3-4-5 pressing, my finger slipped and a nail broke Q.Q). I could never view endless hp as difficult. Now, if there was a fine mechanic to prevent the healing…as it is right now you basically put your glass cannon shoes on, mash buttons for 10 min and hope your dps is high enough to take it down before the timer ends.

Guess what? Simin from Arah (path 4) is just like that!

Group events are not made for lone heroes. Whoever tries and fails should not complain.

This boss regens health – it’s not a bug unless you move it far enough away from its spawn.

a boss that is not made to be soloed can’t be soloed?

i see no problem here. next we’ll want the harathi overlord to be soloable as well.

If I can’t solo boss/champ content I can’t get my legendary weapon.

I log in for ten minutes a day to an hour a day, there is too much content I will never see and I can’t ever reach the top of the imaginary leader boards because those who play more than me can accumulate more of everything (except loot, and I hate DR).

When I do play I see that almost everyone I party with, run past, or see in town with a TP’d welfare legendary, are just noobs and a drain on my time. It is much better for my time and playstyle to just run solo.

Anet – please remove any remaining group requiring content or nerf it down to solo’able, also fix RNG/DR/Precursors and implement an inspect button ASAP (don’t make me party up to inspect kthnx).

Further to my sarcasm, two groups of players here – one lot who couldn’t see what was going on with the encounter and mistook it for bugged/broken, and are still there now demanding that people prove to them it is not. I will not call you the “DBM conditioned”, nor “Void Licker” as it is offensive to people who do spend large amounts of time licking things for a passtime to be grouped in here.

Then the other group who saw the encounter and the single slightly out-of-the-norm mechanic built into it, and worked it out. I will call you anything excepting “Muppet” today.

Wasn’t there a bug where you can’t kill either of the bosses if they are in each other’s AOE auras that needs to be fixed in some dungeon?

I just completed this map the other day, i have to laugh, all these Champion bosses floating around in a “dead” map, are we suppose to solo these or what?

The only boss i see effectively killed is the Modniir thing at the top like clockwork the rest just sit there for days untouched because they have zero rewards..

So to those that all think they are so easy to kill, maybe you should go kill them occasionally …