Guild Wars 2

20 (10% damage / Spotter) / 20 (pet heals on crit / honed axes) / 0 / 0 / 30 (Natural Healing and your choice of specs)

Sword/warhorn and axe/axe

Berserker gear and trinkets with rune of the ranger (exotic / superior runes)

DRAKES!

Drakes are the key. Their blast finisher in Healing Spring will AoE heal from S.A.‘s targeted attacks and well timed dodges/sword evades will save you from the AoE (I do not recommend Hornet’s Sting because of possible lag preventing it from triggering on time…this is distinct from the auto-attack issue by the way). Along with Signet of the Wild, this build will result in something rangers on this forum keep telling me is impossible:

a) Keeping pets up on Subject Alpha
b) Melee subject alpha with ranger

I just double checked this last night and it works great. This is the same build I used in my DPS PvE video, Faelwan’s Burst Ranger…Chuck can play too!

Remember, drakes do the tailspin blast finisher when they are first swapped! This is on a 40s CD; with Healing Spring’s shorter CD and 15s Pet swap, be sure NOT to swap to drake pre-maturely or else you’ll miss the heal.

And this heal helps the whole party particularly when a guardian isn’t around. This setup works best when everyone stacks and melee’s alpha, as people moving around and causing S.A. to run around will make the fight longer and more difficult.

Don’t forget: Subject alpha has different attack sequences in different paths so be ready for that! Don’t waste your endurance.

CoE, like all dungeons, is hard the first few times you play it because you aren’t sure how to defeat the various phases and bosses at first. If you lose a few times, find a group of regulars and practice together. For me, I run with some really good players (a thief, a guardian, etc) and we’ll usually PUG one or two players. We simply dominate Subject Alpha much like how players dominate Slave Driver in CoF. SA is harder because you have to dodge his attacks though, while Slave Driver just, well, until recently, he just basically took it straight to the face.

No comments on Healing Spring + drakes in terms of melee ranger?

I do it all the time, double draking in dungeons is awesome. Has never tried it with subject alpha though… -ponders-

I did this fight for the first time yesterday on my new ranger, I used double Jaguars they never died either, I believe it’s just boss stacking saving your pet not any drake tailspin I can’t remember my pet even being hit by aoe at all when we all stacked, not that an aoe heal couldn’t be good for your group but an aoe heal every 30seconds probably doesn’t do all that much, how much does it heal anyway?

I think it’s a 5000 heal per ally in range; hey, if you had that kind of success on Subject Alpha right away, I have to give you props. If played wrong S.A. wipes parties. In glass cannon, I do take damage on SA though and the drakes saved my hide more than once, particularly on the timing changes in path 2.

Chopps.5047:

I think it’s a 5000 heal per ally in range; hey, if you had that kind of success on Subject Alpha right away, I have to give you props. If played wrong S.A. wipes parties. In glass cannon, I do take damage on SA though and the drakes saved my hide more than once, particularly on the timing changes in path 2.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_field
Blast Finisher, at level 80, heals for 1320 + 0.2 * (Healing power)

I can keep my cats alive on alpha. Drakes do abysmal dps and the blast finisher is unreliable and overall not worth the massive dps drop.

nerva.7940:

I can keep my cats alive on alpha. Drakes do abysmal dps and the blast finisher is unreliable and overall not worth the massive dps drop.

That’s what I was thinking too and I read someone say the aoe only targets the 5 players when you stack and never even attempts to hit the pet wich is probably true cause I honestly can’t remember even trying to manage my jaguars other than swap them, I just let them chew the boss and dodged the aoe for myself.

I should say I work hard to keep my pet alive when I need to and can it’s just this fight required the least ammount of petmanagment of any I can recall.