Guild Wars 2

This fight is a missive zerg. There are so many enemies that any melee class can’t hope to keep up with the spawns and survive. You end up going down constantly if you need to melee. I use a Thief/DD as my “story” character, and by the time this fight was over, I was naked. Please stop designing content where melee-focused characters and classes are inherently disadvantaged.

I’m sorry to say…but get good. I say this as a Thief who was in soldier’s, using D/D and P/P. I was mostly in D/D because of the amount of mobs. Shield never went below 30%, health never dropped below 50%, mobs were cleaned up easily. If need be, switch to Signet of Malice as your healing skill and just let the Death Blossom’s tagging heal you. If there are 3 or more enemies around you, that’s 9 ticks of healing. Spam it 3 times, and you just got 27 ticks, and possibly 0 hits on you.

As a DD thief, too, I see where you’re coming from, but this is why you carry some range with you, too. You can’t always fight at melee range. At least thieves can’t. I can’t speak for other classes. I was mainly using a short bow during the fight, and switching to daggers when there were few enemies. This is just a case of having to adapt as the situation demands. For the most part I don’t have too much of an issue with DD in PvE, but I’ll agree that it’s a disadvantage in this fight. Even then, it’s not completely out of the question to switch from melee to range, in the fight. Just keep your distance when your health is low, utilise dodges and heals well. Stealth and run, if you need to. It wasn’t that hard to survive, really.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

This fight is a missive zerg. There are so many enemies that any melee class can’t hope to keep up with the spawns and survive. You end up going down constantly if you need to melee. I use a Thief/DD as my “story” character, and by the time this fight was over, I was naked. Please stop designing content where melee-focused characters and classes are inherently disadvantaged.

I was on Rev solo and had no issues. If you’re running into difficulty then you can always team up with others.

I also found this to be an intense fight, but I was able to accomplish it on my first try and get all achieves (shield > 50%, never downed) using melee (Rev, not Thief). However, this brings up something that I think is very important:

Personal story needs difficulty settings. I (and perhaps others) would welcome some sliders to crank this fight up to even more insane levels (e.g. maybe the bombs no longer insta-kill enemies or drop the boss’s shield). Others who may be newer to the game or to videogames in general might have trouble finishing it at all, but they should get to see the story too.

Single player games often have difficulty settings for this very reason, and I think the personal story instance of GW2 could benefit here as well.

Anyways, to answer the OPs troubles, I recommend the following:
-wait to throw the bombs until you can knock out multiple opponents. There may be too many to kill at a reasonable pace otherwise.
-Try equipping skills or traits which give you sustain. Invigorating Precision on Thief might be very helpful here (if running power build, though I guess with DD you’re probably running condi)

You also cannot possibly fail the instance so there’s no rush unless you’re going for an achievement.

i use the glassiest build on warrior(zerk armor, discipline+strenght+berserker traits) and its fine, just pay attention do mobs mechanics. kill it or it kill u. the big one(i guessed his name) doesnt do much damage.

ugrakarma.9416:

i use the glassiest build on warrior

Me too, Berserker with full zerk and whatnot, and I only went down once (not defeated, just downed), and then Lazarus showed up and I had a chance to heal up. I ended up getting the achievement for not being defeated too. So it can be done…

Ayrilana.1396:

You also cannot possibly fail the instance so there’s no rush unless you’re going for an achievement.

That’s a separate issue. Having no stakes is a bit disappointing. And also of course I was going for the achievements; why wouldn’t I?

I did this with 2 friends. That worked great. There was no way I was going to put myself through soloing it.

I soloed this one with my reaper. Went in completely blind, had it kind of rough when the vet destroyer spawned, but managed to get all the achievements except for two (Kill 40 destroyers with pustule bombs, and prevent the shield from dropping below 50%)

If I took the time to prepare beforehand, I might be able to get the shield achievement as well.

I was a thief as well and died everytime I ran to grab a postule bomb. 8 destroyer’s pounding on me while I did so because I was in fear of the shield breaking. It was hovering around 2% for ages.

Anyway, when I finished it and left, found a group of players standing outside asking if I’d like to group with them for it. We did it no problem as a group and got a lot of achievements along the way. I also got a mastery point out of it. Glad I went back in with the group even though I had just finished it beforehand.

I was a Staff Thief, and I did die a lot, and agree that it’s pretty difficult for one person to handle all those waves coming from different directions. I hate escort/tower defense missions under the best of circumstances. Luckily as soon as I got out of there, I noticed several groups forming and went in with one. With a full party the entire mission was a complete cakewalk, the enemies didn’t even get close to the shield, for the most part, and my health was never at serious risk.

Managed to solo it without dying on a glass fire staff ele. I hadn’t looked at the achievements at all beforehand, so I wasn’t prepared. What proved challenging was that I had to keep all of those mobs in my AoEs while avoiding them. I think that it would have been much easier if I was using fresh air, and could just move around spamming overload air in melee.

As a daredevil, you have more dodges so you shouldn’t be having major issues clearing this. Though it is true that different professions have a different time in this fight. I am sure that the fight will be very easy once I get my necromancer there. Maybe this means that certain professions need some elite specs that can help them in solo encounters, if Anet insists on making them more difficult with new releases.

I mean, if you want to make a true solo challenge for something like a necro, you basically have to make it almost impossible for some other professions at this point.

Soloed it first, and although I managed, it wasn’t exactly smooth on my chrono. For the record, I switch between range and melee and am very, very lazy in my approach. For the first time in forever, I actually bothered to look at my build and beat it into submission for the instance and Ember Bay, and although definitely not the strongest when it comes to DPS (either a personal best, profession best or game best), the fact that I live and remove many pesky conditions with more wriggle room helps. I also had Hubby join in for a re-do of the last instance so we could do achievements. It goes much, much better with just one other person, and a little communication. We got all the achievements we wanted, although I couldn’t be bothered to do the one where you kill 40 of them with the bombs, as it takes a few instances to do it, and only the person with the bomb gets credit (we did get this one for Hubby).

Wouldn’t know what to advise specifically for a thief, but if you have any decent AoEs available, those could be something to look at it. Bring a friend if all else fails.

Bear in mind there’s a part of the instance where you’re scripted to be overrun for the sake of story, but it’s manageable before and after. Use the pod bomb thingies on the general beasties and vets, and then on the boss beastie for an easier time bashing them down.

EDIT: I should probably say, Hubby is an ele, and can probably out-DPS me three or more times over, but can’t remove more than a condition or two (or something) in his current build. It’s possibly a complimentary set-up we used in the story instance, which may also help you out if you run it with someone who does stuff you can’t, and vice versa.

Ohoni.6057:

I was a Staff Thief, and I did die a lot, and agree that it’s pretty difficult for one person to handle all those waves coming from different directions. I hate escort/tower defense missions under the best of circumstances. Luckily as soon as I got out of there, I noticed several groups forming and went in with one. With a full party the entire mission was a complete cakewalk, the enemies didn’t even get close to the shield, for the most part, and my health was never at serious risk.

Yeah, it’s brutal. Can dodge big hits, but not a dozen small hits. And daredevil is heavily power based and melee. I did use p/p to stay at ranged, but it just can’t keep up with the spawns as it is single target dps.
I am sure that condition damage on a shortbow would have been a cakewalk, but I ain’t buying all that equipment to attempt to run a viable condi build on a daredevil just because a pve area hasn’t been balanced properly.

I did it several times (for the achievements) on my Staff Daredevil too and that was a piece of cake. Only the Destroyer of Hope is a bit of a pain. For the rest, make sure the mobs are grouped, and Bound+Vault onto them: they die in 2 hits and you have perma-evade… Only 2 things did put me in danger: the AoE at the end if I’m out of endurance (or more accurately if I’m not reactive enough when I must use Signet of Agility to refill it) and picking the pustules when there’s a bad spawn and the trash mobs attack me (maybe I should kill them first since it literally takes 1 second and a half).

Long story short: if you play a thief, use a weapon with a better AoE (staff), don’t go full berserker if you’re not a pro player (use marauder) and learn to dodge.

Sir Mad.1092:

I did it several times (for the achievements) on my Staff Daredevil too and that was a piece of cake. Only the Destroyer of Hope is a bit of a pain. For the rest, make sure the mobs are grouped, and Bound+Vault onto them: they die in 2 hits and you have perma-evade… Only 2 things did put me in danger: the AoE at the end if I’m out of endurance (or more accurately if I’m not reactive enough when I must use Signet of Agility to refill it) and picking the pustules when there’s a bad spawn and the trash mobs attack me (maybe I should kill them first since it literally takes 1 second and a half).

Long story short: if you play a thief, use a weapon with a better AoE (staff), don’t go full berserker if you’re not a pro player (use marauder) and learn to dodge.

I used staff and it’s grabbing the postules that killed me every time. How do you wipe out all the groups so fast with staff to pick up the postule in time? The groups attack from multiple sides and it takes me more than a second and half to kill them.

edit: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, BOUND! I didn’t even think of this. What equipment you using too? I have one more achievement to get there and would like to try solo to improve my game.

Again, it takes 2 Vaults…

Sir Mad.1092:

Again, it takes 2 Vaults…

Not quite. There are vets, and some destroyers are harpies that randomly evade. I’m honestly trying to get practical advice here.

Well there are like 2 or 3 Vets, they’re not an issue… As for the harpies, if you see they’re evading, pick up the pustule while they’re dancing in the air.

And for more survivability, I’ve used Withdraw traited to remove conditions (for the poison), and Omnomberry Ghost. As always when I don’t need to steal boons, I’ve also used the trait that triggers Haste on steal, plus the trait that reduces the recharge for Tricks, for more spiking (Weakening Charge is better when you have Quickness).

Sir Mad.1092:

I did it several times (for the achievements) on my Staff Daredevil too and that was a piece of cake. Only the Destroyer of Hope is a bit of a pain. For the rest, make sure the mobs are grouped, and Bound+Vault onto them: they die in 2 hits and you have perma-evade… Only 2 things did put me in danger: the AoE at the end if I’m out of endurance (or more accurately if I’m not reactive enough when I must use Signet of Agility to refill it) and picking the pustules when there’s a bad spawn and the trash mobs attack me (maybe I should kill them first since it literally takes 1 second and a half).

Long story short: if you play a thief, use a weapon with a better AoE (staff), don’t go full berserker if you’re not a pro player (use marauder) and learn to dodge.

Extra tip, use Signet of Malice if you have to, Caltrop, and Dagger Storm. So many enemies pop up that your health WILL top off just from the Dagger Storm’s procs on SoM. The procs that Caltrops gives is a bonus.

Sir Mad.1092:

Well there are like 2 or 3 Vets, they’re not an issue… As for the harpies, if you see they’re evading, pick up the pustule while they’re dancing in the air.

And for more survivability, I’ve used Withdraw traited to remove conditions (for the poison), and Omnomberry Ghost. As always when I don’t need to steal boons, I’ve also used the trait that triggers Haste on steal, plus the trait that reduces the recharge for Tricks, for more spiking (Weakening Charge is better when you have Quickness).

Thanks for the reply. It’s advice that helps. I want to try this solo as I feel figuring out how to do this will improve my overall daredevil experience.

Redfeather.6401:

edit: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, BOUND! I didn’t even think of this. What equipment you using too? I have one more achievement to get there and would like to try solo to improve my game.

I gotta go to work so I’ll make it quick, but full marauder, except for the trinkets (2 valk + zerk, the rest zerk). See the post above for the traits / skills. Grandmaster 3 in Critical Strikes may help surviving as well (steal life on crit), but that’s a small DPS loss.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Sir Mad.1092:

I did it several times (for the achievements) on my Staff Daredevil too and that was a piece of cake. Only the Destroyer of Hope is a bit of a pain. For the rest, make sure the mobs are grouped, and Bound+Vault onto them: they die in 2 hits and you have perma-evade… Only 2 things did put me in danger: the AoE at the end if I’m out of endurance (or more accurately if I’m not reactive enough when I must use Signet of Agility to refill it) and picking the pustules when there’s a bad spawn and the trash mobs attack me (maybe I should kill them first since it literally takes 1 second and a half).

Long story short: if you play a thief, use a weapon with a better AoE (staff), don’t go full berserker if you’re not a pro player (use marauder) and learn to dodge.

Extra tip, use Signet of Malice if you have to, Caltrop, and Dagger Storm. So many enemies pop up that your health WILL top off just from the Dagger Storm’s procs on SoM. The procs that Caltrops gives is a bonus.

That’s good advice too. I instinctively bring impact strike just to smash breakbars. But I don’t remember seeing any breakbars in this instance, so dagger storm would be better elite I think!

The fight is fine. It’s challenging, but not punishing.

For the record, I died. But, I had a revive orb and went on to win.