Guild Wars 2

Put it this way…arah is the “toughest” dungeon out so far…

You will need to tailor your stats to fit the playstyle that your skill level and traits allow

Let me give you an example of what i mean by this.

Arah is all i do. Log in, arah, chill, arah, log out. Rinse repeat.

Gear Wise

I started off Running Full Valkyrie (Power/Vit/Crit) gear with soldier runes. Basically, i was geared for vitality and toughness, leaning more towards toughness. I had 22k hp. I would run dungeons. In Arah, just starting out, i was making ALOT of mistakes, but i was pretty much safe. The gear i was running covered up most of my mistakes. As i got better and better, i started a transition from my valk gear to full berserkers (power/prec/crit). The reason? My skill level had increased and so i was finding myself in a situation in which i didn’t need all of that vitality and toughness.

I then started running Berserkers (arah armour) with soldier runes. My skill level went up even more as time went by. I then switched the soldier runes for Divinity runes (+60 all stats, 2% crit damage). I completed my exotic accessories, and popped beryl jewels on them (Power/vit/ crit %) since i was used to having at least bit of vitality. so i have gone from 22k hp to 14k hp. The benefit of this transition is that i now contribute alot more to my team. The most vitality you need if you are good in arah is 12-13k to take 1 shot from giganticus lupicus.

Trait wise.

There are so many variations. But 2 suggestions i recommend are:

15 Acrobatics – Feline Grace. MVP trait. Returns energy whenever you dodge. Pretty much means you have 3 standard dodges if you time it right.
Expeditious dodger – Another great skill. Swiftness on dodge. Great mobility and kiting which you will need a lot of.
15 Trickery – Kleptomaniac = initiative on steal, preparedness = 3 extra initiative..timed right, that is an extra pistol whip etc.

You can do whatever you want with the rest. This too can evolve as your skill level increases.

Last thing. Any decent Thief…no, player, will have every weapon available on hand for the many different situations that can arise.

However that said, the main sets i find myself using are:

s/p: Too strong in dungeons if you know what you are doing. Black powder…sword auto attack…the blind tanking you can do on mobs is ridiculous. Definitely a staple pick in dungeons where melee is permitted. Thieves Do not have the durability to be up close with d/d. And in a decent party, you will be at the max bleed limit of 25 all the time. I welcome arguments against this.
sb: Self explanatory.
p/p: Offers decent enough 1vs 1 range damage for fights where melee is not advisable
p/d: Haven’t used this recently, but on hard hitting “warrior” mobs, i like having the pistol auto and the ability to constantly cripple with dancing dagger to keep my team safe along with caltrops.

Hope this helps a little.

EDIT Magic find is said not to work because people are too unrealistic with expectations. People need to realise that if the chance of item X dropping is 0.008…then even with the max amount of MF allowed, the chance of finding it has gone up, but it will still be small because it was hard to find from the start with.

But with that said, yes, definitely invest in a cheap set of MF gear, If you are short on cash, Rare of even Masterwork with the odd omnomberry bars (30% mf) will be fine for farming orr.

Yup, It’s called the “Final rest”

I am looking to fill the last slot of my group…add me in game…i’ll be on at that time and we’ll give it a go

What is not good for the “longevity” of this game is close minded players that can’t let go of old mechanics in order to experience the new. Just because A-net did away with the traditional trinity, suddenly, everything is chaos. Do you have any idea what happens when everyone just stands and tries to all-out batter something in arah?

Most probably death.

Watch this:

Combo field setter – Sets the fields appropriate for the situation.
Mob Controllers. – Responsible for pulling mobs/separating from the heard, keeping melee mobs crippled, weakened and vulnerable.
Damage Dealer – Self Explanatory.
Add duty – At certain bosses, these are responsible for keeping adds down that would hinder self resurrection in the worst situations.
“Medic” – Yes, everyone can res, but certain players have the best setups to get in, heal up and get people out safely. (perfect example = Thief)
Projectile Defense – Guardians and their various bubbles and walls
Channel-Stopper – Example = Arah Risen Illusionists…Stoppers can focus on interrupting their beams in order to keep everyone alive and well.
Boon Support – Anyone Specced out to give useful boons when the team needs it.
Decoy/Dis-tractor – Takes aggro using various tricks and traps and summoned minions (Guild of thieves, fire elemental powder, ranger pets, stealth, cripple fields etc) so that that the rest of the team can safely escape or get to their destination.

See what i did there?

The list goes on…and on..and on..

Don’t you see what A-net has done? They have broken the walls down, and they are letting US decide the rules now. Its a much more active role assignment situation now. You can play without roles and have “chaos”, or you can create roles and win. You choose

I’ve been seeing a lot of whining about how ANET should remove “exploits” and “make adds unskippable” because it is cheapening their efforts. So i just wanted to throw out this post to put things into perspective.

Please, for a second, consider the three following “concepts”:

Player Freedom
Player Ingenuity
Player Versatility

There are many different groups of player archetypes forming now in this game…we have the whiners…the elitist bunch (one guy bragged recently of being responsible for leading the “first generation of pugs with up and coming talents”. Lol. We have the pros that keep the best info to themselves…we have the nice guys n gals that like to pass on their wisdom..the list goes on.

My point is, with all these different groups, where do we draw the line on what constitutes a “legit” run?

Let us take a few examples from path 3, the most popular path in arah.

On startup, before the 1st boss, some like to pull the 10+ scrub mobs and kill them all…some see no need to and thus cling to the right and start the 1st boss.

Just after the 1st boss on the way to the 2nd boss…some like killing everything..some like sneaking up on to the ledge just before the door guarded by 2 risen either side..killing those and stealthing running past the rest…some put themselves through the full “gauntlet” so that, as long as 2 or 3 make it through, they can pick off risen from the other side and get the whole squad through.

Do you go left at the giant or you go right through the champion spiders before the 2nd boss? I personally as a thief aggro all the spiders and lure them out after me while my team runs by unharmed to start the 2nd boss. I join them shortly after. Illegit run? Or just an interesting use of the aggro system?

Hot potato section (2nd longer part) – why not start the run halfway by using a thief/necro shadow step/return. Crafty use of skill? Or illegit skipping?

Room leading to giganticus, clear the whole room to make it easier for the dead to run back to gig fight? Or sneak over the ledge on the left and stealthily dispatching carving a thin path to the boss door, making it tricky for members to run back carelessly? Illegit?

Post gig fight? Send a guardian/thief/necro/anyone using minions to distract risen in order to unlock final wp for the rest of the team to warp through to? Or fight the whole way and incur pointless repair costs? Worth the trouble?

Making use of “secret items” placed by Anet themselves (Spy-kits, teleportation guns, elemental powder) in the dungeon? Anet placed these things here for a reason. Remember the 3 concepts i put out there at the start of this essay.

I believe that as long as you are not using any illegal exploits, there is no problem. The fun in dungeons comes from changing up your approach based on the pool of skills available to you. If not everyone is able to do things your way, use a different approach.

What do you guys think? Id like to hear your opinions.

So many useless players that want to be spoonfed EVERYTHING..perfect example above…simplify tactics against every other class but to make a point..stretching and longing out something that is not complicated.

Ready a root. Save a stun breaker. Use the about face button to avoid being stabbed in the BACK. Don’t run glass cannon. Why do people make it so hard for themselves?

Sorry for the confusing title, i.just thought it would fit into the general flow of this forum. People are still complaining and begging for this boss to be made easier. I have heard ridiculous calls for things such as a third dodge to be added…nerfed hp and damage..less deceptive targetting. To all of you i say NO FRIGGIN WAY, JUST LEARN TO PLAY…

To that end, i thought it would be helpful to throw out a few tips that have helped me along the way.

Several things:

1. You don’t really need to waste 2 dodges on his aoe..those are best saved for his auto attacks. Run into the gaps and learn to DODGE on impact. His aoe fires in two rounds.

2. If you stand in front of a circle, you will be hit by an attack travelling to
that circle. As pointed out by many, yes his “bugged” circle targeting only accounts for where the attack will land, not for any splash damage. Best way to counter this? Watch for animations and dodge as attacks hit the ground. People dodge too early or way too late and wonder why they die.

3. Toughness. Notice how in phase 2 most of his attacks go for one person? Its usually because they have the highest toughness. If you feel like you are not good at dodging his attacks…change some gear to lower toughness for the fight and spec so that the best dodger is his target. Simple.

4. Orrion truffle and meat stew. Find it. Buy it. Consume it.

5. Powerful potion of undead slaying. Ditto.

6. Have At least 13k hp or you are a liability to you team.

7. Team composition. In an inexperienced team, you’ll want a guardian or two to covup slipups with aegis. But at the end of the day if you cant learn to survive, they wont mean anything. Thieves, believe it or not, if specced and played right, should not even be downed in that fight. Ask more when inviting players. You can be a guardian but if you are specced badly, you wont help much.

8. Make use of birdseye view. When the circles aknock the camera into birdseye view and it will give you much more vision. Not many take advantage of this.

9. Ressurect your NPC. Invaluable. Can buy time on a full wipe. Can hold him from resetting if you need to duck out of combat to heal up. If anet did not intend for the npc to be of some help, it would be invisible and appear only in cutscenes.

10. Lupicus’s reset timer is VERY small. The idea is that you dodge but stay in range to keep attacking..that is where the challenge is. Positioning is key. I play in between the edge of his aoe range and him so that i can roll twice on aoe and not be hit. His aoe hits a small eadius around him first and then works its way further out. if you all run for the walls, its done. And you have to start again.

11. If you die in phase 2…auto attack. The sooner you reach p3, the better. If you heal, he walks over and hits you, you will die without having been of any use.

12. Pushing yourself against the edge of the arena takes you out of combat and heals you. Use wisely. If 2 members are fighting and one more hit will take you out, why not?

There are loads more tips and tricks that i could post here, but it all adds up to the fact that Giganticus Lupicus is One of the few True end game fights which after a bit of thought and practise, isn’t that hard at all. Get this…you can actually make a nice little profit running arah. I rarely damage a piece of armour unless i am stupid and i at least see 60s-1g per run. I am a thief that started out with 22k hp at this boss,gradually tweaking and acquiring gear that brought me down to 14khp as i learnt the dungeon. It is a learning experience. Keep at it. It has been a very enjoyable experience, and i can’t wait for the next set of hopefully, more challenging dungeons. Cheers Anet ~