Guild Wars 2

Not anything to brag about really, but… I suppose you can take it as an example that if someone as bad/poor as me can do it, then you can as well. :p

Thief in full Berserker gear (Exotic, two ascended pieces). I used Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew (100% chance to gain 1 stack of Might when dodging, 40% faster endurance regeneration) as a consumable.

30 Acrobatics
Vigorous Recovery (III) – I wanted to be able to dodge often seeing as I felt like I was made of cake instead of flesh and bone if Liadri ever got a chance to smack me.
Fleet of Foot (VII) – Allows you to remove the dangerous conditions Liadri inflicts if you accidentally get hit without having to waste a skill slot (and far more often, to boot).
Assassins’ Reward (X) – Just to keep some healing and sustain going. Needless to say, I got hit rather often despite being able to dodge a lot.

20 Shadow Arts
Slowed Pulse (II) – I really only went this because I wasn’t using any Deception skills. Everything else feels rather useless considering that Stealth behaves rather kooky in the Queen’s Gauntlet in general.
Power Shots (VII) – I was primarily using my short bow, so the extra damage was appreciated.

20 Deadly Arts
Venomous Strength (IV) – For the damage, I was having issues with it.
Quick Venoms (VIII) – Again, higher poison up-time for the damage. I suppose I could’ve replaced either one with Potent Poison (V) as well.

Only used my Short Bow. All my other weapons were melee, which felt like a bad idea as a squishy Thief.

Skills

Withdraw – Low cooldown for high Vigour uptime and also grants an extra evade if things go hairy.
Spider Venom – Condition damage.
Skale Venom – More condition damage!
Scorpion Wire – For pulling clones so I could get to phase 2 quickly. I let the first and third walk normally into the zones of light, I pulled the second.
Thieves Guild – Some extra burst, though they’d usually die pretty quickly.

Rather simple strategy. Get through phase 1 as quickly as possible and then run around in circles while shooting down Liadri. Due to the jump/chain nature of the Short Bow’s auto-attack, my poison charges would usually end up being wasted on her clones, but I still managed to get her down shortly after I popped my venoms for the third time, so I suppose the battle took 2 minutes or so. The Short Bow’s second skill has the quirk of not being obstructed by the Orbs, meaning that you can safely take them out from range.

This strategy would’ve likely been less painful with a Carrion gear setup, some Tuning Crystals and if I could afford to go deeper into the Trickery tree, but the things you do when you can’t afford a new gearset at a whim. :p

As far as I understood, the OP’s point was that punishing doesn’t equal challenging… I mean, would the encounters in Queen’s Gauntlet be any less difficult if you’d reappear alive by the Ringmaster, regardless of whether you lost or won? If you didn’t need to use tickets to attempt the encounters? Liadri would still be oneshotting you, walking into Deadeye’s mines would still be a horrifyingly bad idea and so on.

Yes, I’ll admit punishing mechanics gives you more incentive to succeed and so on, but in the context of the Queen’s Gauntlet, it would change absolutely nothing regarding the difficulty of the encounters available through it (if you removed death/ticket costs/etc).

If anyone’s interested in learning more about Challenging vs Punishing games, feel free to take a look at http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/when-difficult-is-fun :p I found it quite enlightening. Queen’s Gauntlet arguably sins at a few points, but succeeds at a fair few as well.

Still working on Liandri at least, ~20% or so was my best attempt. Here’s hoping I can be bothered farming more tickets for another night of bashing my head against her. :p

That would’ve been nice. Though about Wind, I currently find Sun even more broken. Doesn’t even require much practice with the aiming and you can immediately get from the Crystal to your base with two extended Light Dashes. All the while it also counts as an evade, meaning you’re powerless to stop it. :/