Guild Wars 2

So my wife is interested in getting the dungeon set from TA, and as we both enjoy going around and fighting champions together, I thought trying to duo Twilight Arbor would be fun. She mains a Ranger, and I main a Mesmer. She has a full Exotic Berserker set, I have Full Exotic Berserker and Rabid, with Ascended Trinkets for both, and 1 Ascended sword.

I am looking for suggestions on what would be some good builds for the two of us to use to complement each other, as well as any strategies or things to watch out for when trying to duo a dungeon, as we have not tried this before.

Not sure if this should be in the Dungeons category, but…

These are general ideas I can think of as I am not that great a player to be soloing dungeons.

There are portions in TA up and forward wherein stealth is good to have, but as neither of you plays a Thief (don’t think Mesmer’s Mass Invisibility and Veil are enough) you’d have to just run through or prepare to kill everything. Both of you being mostly Berserker gear may mean some parts would be more difficult if you aren’t particularly skilled (especially for the forward path).

For the Forward path, the portal event (and the long run after) and the battle with Leurent may be tricky. The final boss may require one of you to kite those oakhearts while the other stands at the double dmg spot.

For the Up path, the hordes of spiders before Malronna (particularly the ones with Stonetouch Spiders) is the only problem battle I can think of. There’s also a part after Malronna wherein you may benefit from running (or stealthing) pass enemies.

There’s also the mandatory Vine battle before you get to choose a path that has a lot of AoE’s and poison (along with respawning Elite Vines and the poison flowers).

Ranger/Mesmer will be extremely difficult to get through to TA boss without dying.

I do not envy this task.

Your best bet is definitely getting a full group. TA is run pretty frequently, so if you create a LFG looking for people, you should fill up in no time and be on your way to TA set!

Ranger/mesmer isn’t the best comp for soloing that’s for sure. In solo, your pet and phantasms will die, lowering your dps, mesmer direct damage is really low, and ranger has the sword aa problem. If you have other classes, it should be more suited. I duoed it with ele/guard, ele/war, ele/thief ( yeah I loved playing ele before patch) and engi/ war recently, all were smooths runs. Can’t tell you an approximate time because I wasn’t paying attention but it’s not that long. For builds since you won’t need reflects except at fyonna, take a direct damage build ( possibly mantras) without getting deep into inspiration for focus reflects, you won’t need it. Ranger meta is 6/5/0/3/0, lb/ sw/x, but lb is suited for burst fights, greatsword is better in lowmanning imo.

For strats, clean the first blossoms before getting to the hounds, mass invis them, run past the whatever it’s called mobs, dodge the stomp aoe/ take mantra of concentration for stability, and get out of combat to reset your cooldown before doing the wurms. For the wurms, run and dodge to avoid the poison fields, kill them 1 by 1, if you down rally off a blossom. The mesmer should interrupt the knockback aoe to save time. When the champ pop, melee it if possible, since your dps will be low you may have to retreat a little to regain your life. Then for forward, run past blossoms, kill them ( with ranger mainhand axe probably), ooc before fyonna, retrait for reflects, try to not targer her as much as possible, and chain reflects ( ranger should use offhand axe). Skip again, mass invis the knight/sorcerer combo, ooc, retrait to max dps, kill the adds with a breakstun and stability ( rampage as one, signet of the wild, mantra of concentration) Then dps the tree to death with reflects and you’re done. Think that’s all.

Or you can lfg/ ask me if i’m online, I can trio and take a high dps character to make it faster. Good luck.

I would say forward path is definitely more time-consuming solo/duo than up path because the last few fights are harder, there is the Knight guy before Leurent who is very hard to fight in open if you don’t stack in corner, also the Tree boss in Forward is waaaay too long to do solo because you have to kite the mobs the whole time. The only hard part of up path is Fyonna, hard to do her solo and took me a few tries. I think I have the only warrior solo for this boss (without reflects) but I had to use PVT set and my traits were also wonky (this is before the patch that let you change traits whenever). I’m tempted to do it again with a zerk set and adrenal health build, but I don’t think you ‘need’ reflects for her. The rest of up path is really easy, there’s an exploit spot you can use for the champ so you won’t get hit (again, something they should fix) and the Tree boss for up is now even more of a joke, because no turrets spawn at all since the Sept 9th patch. You could easily do it solo now with no reflects, maybe just one blind/dodge occasionally and that’s it. Here is the solo I have for this path, in case your interested (it’s months old, but not much is changed).

I’ve been soloing TA forward on thief and mesmer for a while now, and it works fine in duos as well. However, this will involve running past most of the mobs. The mesmer will do fine by chaining Veil, Mass Invisibility, The Prestige (torch #4) and Decoy. The ranger will have a bit of a harder time, but harpy feathers and using Greatsword’s block should allow you to make it out alive without much of a hassle. If anything, the mesmer can make it up ahead and portal the ranger if things go wrong.

Build-wise, just go for whatever you’re comfortable with. “Meta” builds work just fine, and keep in mind you can switch traits around between sections. The mesmer will want to bring focus reflects when dealing with archers and perhaps go deep into the Chaos line to get longer lasting stealth when skipping stuff.

For my first solo, I took some pointers from this video. I encourage you to look at a few, especially ones without stealth skips so you can see how people managed to get through sections. All in all, TA forward is a good place to start and learn to solo/duo since most encounters have blossoms which you can kill to rally.

Good luck!