Guild Wars 2

I have tried over 10 times to complete the last story segment of season 2. My only conclusion is that the only way to do it is if you happen to be a warrior or a guardian. The attacks come too quickly, there is no way to stop them, and there is no way to even fake them out to the other side or otherwise mitigate them.

With my thief, which is my only lvl 80, it is not possible to light all 5 flame points before earlier ones go out. On my last attempt I tried for over 2 hours and still couldn’t get the ring of fire lit the second time. At no point in any of my attempts did I ever have more than 3 points lit. The channel time is too long and you have to dodge away from the points so many times that usually by the time you light a new point the previous point has gone out since you are too busy dodging to deal with the extinguisher shadows, assuming you haven’t died for the apparent expectation by the designer that you can dodge 4-5 time in a row.

This is the worst boss fight I have ever seen in any game in my life. If this is how the bosses in HOT and LW3 are going to be designed, I may just stop playing.

did you try to kill the shadow skelks periodically? they are the ones that put the fires out

Smothering Shadows will spawn after each quarter of the ring is lit – each time you light a quarter, it will spawn a single Smothering Shadow.
You can kill Smothering Shadows by being lit by divine fire and attacking them – killing them, however, will remove the buff forcing you to get it again before you can light the next portion of the ring.
The best way to counter that is to remain standing in the ring Rox creates and range the Smothering Shadows down as you will be immediately re-buffed.

More specifically (than what Beorn said, as Turamath ninja’d me ), the method is to stand in the white circle, range down the shadows (they die in one hit if you have the buff on you), then trot over to the next part of the circle you want to light. Staying in the white circle to take out the shadows means the buff gets reapplied instantly so you can light the edge fire without having to wait for another white circle.

The instance is completely doable, both solo and in a party, as long as you know what to do. The knockbacks are annoying if you’re not on a class with easy access to stability, but they won’t stop you from finishing it. Check out everyone’s post above mine; they all gave good tips on what to do.

also when you lit the fire braham will cast sanctuary which will give you stability so you can finish lit the fire, just lit the one where the sanctuary is cast

octagon.6504:

Video looks edited. How long did it actually take to learn and beat the patterns?

Personally, I made a video back then primarily in response to the complaints, so I did it naked with all the achievements. Before making it, I had only played the encounter once when it was originally released for the story, and this video was my first attempt at doing it (technically second, but only for the clean start). It’s a very simple encounter if you know how it goes. For example, the rocks that drop in a line across the room is actually a timer that shows you when the dragon is going to pop out to attack, so you need to light a fire within that time.

What an odd choice of a topic to resurrect.

For what it’s worth, finding a group of people and replaying this instance a solid 5 or 6 times in order for everyone to get all of the achievements was enjoyable though. One of my better GW2 memories.

Yeah – if someone on this thread is having trouble with this fight – just ask a friend to help. They might even get an achievement out of it.

azureai.9764:

Yeah – if someone on this thread is having trouble with this fight – just ask a friend to help. They might even get an achievement out of it.

This is the problem. How will people ever learn they’re doing it wrong if they can simply group up, AFK it and win with the achievements.

Healix.5819:

This is the problem. How will people ever learn they’re doing it wrong if they can simply group up, AFK it and win with the achievements.

The actions you need to perform are specific to this encounter, and after you complete the achievements there is no reason to ever play it again.

First, thanks for the video Healix!

As a new player, I reached the first Shadow of the Dragon encounter last week (at the Summit with the Pale Tree, The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2), got wiped out a dozen times, then took a break.

I was looking for advise on the Internet because I was quite frustrated. I stumbled over this thread and expected the worst. I watched the video, set up my thief built appropriately, and went in again yesterday. Only died 4 times or so before I won.

To my surprise, the encounter consisted only of the Shadow of the Dragon and tendrils (and one fragile minion). When I got him to zero HP, I fully expected him to respawn with full health, but that didn’t happen.

I confused the encounter at the summit with the boss fight at “Point of No Return”. So I guess I will face the Shadow of the Dragon again, including the ring of fire thing. Not looking forward to it to be honest.

So for anyone who’s having the same problems I had: being wiped out by the first encounter. If you search for tactics and come to this thread, note that there are two Shadow of the Dragon encounters in Living World Season 2. The first one comes at the end of “The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2” and is not the one with the ring of fire that the video here shows.

The second one is the final of Living World Season 2 and has the ring of fire thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYpHSeJct9k

That wasn’t clear to me when I searched for “Shadow of the Dragon”, and maybe it isn’t clear to others.

In addition to the tips for those fights that people here gave, I will add one: stay calm, bring a towel. If you die, take a deep breath and sip on your tea before rejoining.

I died 1-2 times when I first did that. Not so hard. I even did all the achievements tied to it solo.

Classes make a pretty big difference though. It was super easy with Ranger and Warrior. But also doable with other classes. I don’t think it is too hard. Then again I played a lot of solo Games like Devil May Cry, Demon’s/Dark Souls, Resident Evil which have comparable hard bosses with lots of mechanics. It’s just a matter of exercise.

There is a reason why Braham throws a blue circle after each phase. It provides you with stability if you forgot to bring some yourself.

The fight boils down to:

- don’t get hit by the flowers (easy enough, run through the middle of them)
- pick up the divine fire buff
- either run to the blue bubble Braham created or use you own stability to light a point up
- stand in dinvine buff area while ranging down shadows to prevent them from puttin gout fires
- rinse and repeat

Side not, the attack pattern of the dragon is always the same. His Headmunch can not be stabilitied through if I remember correctly, his stomp attacks (the ones with the big aoe cone) can.

Now thief is in a thougher spot than most classes granted due to lack of easy stability. In that case, you just have to work with Brahams shield he provides.

Got to love people like OP. Have you considered that YOU might be the problem.

Strangely thousands of other players on different chars managed to do it