Guild Wars 2

Has anyone else noticed that defending Hodgins from the gravelings is impossibly hard? Was running it in a group with 1 Guardian (me), Warrior, Ranger, Necro, and Thief. We went through 10 times before I was DC’d by my 2 year old.

Initially I tried guarding Hodgins while the others took out the burrows one-by-one, but I kept getting overwhelmed with 15+ stacks of bleeding even with 3 shouts and PoV. Then we split into two groups to take the burrows down faster, but still one or two would get overwhelmed and then Hodgins would die.

I’ve never run the AC explorable paths before… do the gravelings keep spawning as long as the burrows are up? Would it be better for the whole team to defend Hodgins to overcome the initial wave and then start going after the burrows? Any other strategies would help.

Because of the massive numbers the burrows now spawn, the stage will be very laggy and culling will often occur, elementalists are a must have.Your best bet would be having 1 person defend for the front burrow, the other 4 take care of the rest. 2 elementalists dropping ice bows, other 2 take them, and 2 at a time rain arrows onto the burrows. After the first 2 on the side and the corner, front guy can take care of the burrow and move on the the next one on the right, the rest of the team follow and drop fiery greatswords and destroy the remaining 2 and/or defend Hodgins.

I did it the other day. We kept losing Hodgins even with a very savvy Mesmer guarding him, often on the last burrow.

What finally worked was powering down the first three burrows, then mopping up most of the gravelings with incidental damage to burrows, then clearing out the last. We did have an Elementalist giving us swords and bows. I was on my Guardian for protections, boons, and Elite heals.

I thought I’d be able to easily sub my Necro for my Ele also. Couldn’t do it. Went back for an Ele. Had the ele guard Hodgkins and the rest take down the burrows.

I haven’t been back to try it (our group of dungeon noobs also had trouble with that bit), but I’ve been told that it’s actually not a good idea to attack the burrow that opens right by you, in the door you came in. Apparently leave that for later, because crushing that one opens a worse one. Perhaps someone with more experience can vouch for that, as I said I haven’t been back yet. Good luck!

You leave the one by the door alone and kite the spawns, but kite them AWAY from Hodgkins. There should be all attack teams take down the first burrow. For the one in the back corner only 2 or 3 to start off, then 2 to finish up. Everyone should then head to the front, mopping up little gravelings as they go, get the newly spawned front burrow and door burrow at the same time, by this time you only have 2 left. One in the bottom corner behind Hodgkins, which should be dealt with very very fast, then one all the way across the room behind the shelves in the top corner, that one you don’t need to worry about so much, just clean up spawns as you go to keep them off Hodgkins. It’s still no cakewalk even with a good team and now that the little gravelings can spam max stacks of bleeding on you constantly, it makes it extremely difficult for pug groups or uncoordinated teams. The trick to this, as with most dungeons seems to be massive amounts of aoe, despite their stance on aoe being overused and overpowered.

Eas, easy way, have an ele drop an ice bow, you use skill 4 on the first one on the left, you start heading to the right side while they go to the back one and the ele uses skill4, when that is done you can use skill 4 on the one infront of you, ele can on the right cornor and all your left with is the door and the very last one. As a ranger i one shot burrows with an ice bow so its a little easier but those can damage almost 90 percent ususally.