Guild Wars 2

Hello Rincewind. Probably good to take a break if it’s driving you to raging.

If you do decide to come back, I’d like to offer some advice from a fellow non-leet warrior. I tried a variety of weapons and builds but ultimately a piercing shots rifle build was what killed her, and I found it much easier (to control the encounter) than anything else I had done. Some tips that worked for me:

I bought a full set of rabid gear on the TP, armour, amulet and rings. I bought green quality which did not set me back much. I bought and applied 6 Superior Runes of the Krait (which are cheap). I already had an exotic zerk rifle but I added a Superior Sigil of Earth and a Superior Sigil of Agony (both also cheap). End result is that the rifle put out a lot of moderate damage but looong duration bleeds.

My build was 2/6/2/2/2. Basically everything is set up to (A) put bleeds on Liadri, (B) maintain swiftness and © get rid of cripples. Liadri is a movement fight, not a dps race, and the build aims for that.

Traits were Strength II (Restorative Strenght) to get rid of cripple if needed. Arms II (Furious Speed) for good swiftness uptime. Arms III (Deep Cuts) for longer bleeds. Arms IV (Crack Shot) to pierce the visions and consistently shoot Liadri. Defence II (Dogged March) for less cripple and a free Regeneration. Tactics II (Lung Capacity) for more options to get rid of Cripple. Discipline VI (Signet Mastery) for synergy with Strength II.

I used 2 swords (for no particular reason) in Phase 1 and Rifle exclusively for Phase 2. I found not worrying about switching weapons allowed me to focus more on the kiting and avoiding visions/shadowfalls.

Skills were Healing Signet, Shake it Off, Signet of Stamina and Endure Pain. HS and SIO are for Cripple control. Signet of Stamina gives you slightly more dodges (more on dodging later) and Endure Pain is an “oh kitten” button to survive one shadowfall (I did not need it on my kill-attempt). Signet of Rage is a free swiftness and nice dps buff (save it for Phase 2).

Some Tips for Phase 1:

• As soon as you enter the Arena, select Liadri and Cntrl+T. This sets her as your target and you can then target her by tapping T. You will lose her on occasion, its great to be able to retarget her easily.
• Do all your attempts on the same arena. This is because at the same arena the Phase 1 light areas, shadowfalls and visions always spawn in the same place and in the same order. Memorise the order and you will find P1 much much easier.
• Take the time to position yourself well before throwing the 3rd orb and starting Phase 2.

Phase 2:

• The most important thing to remember is you cannot dodge all the shadowfalls. You must run out of most of them, and only dodge when seriously pressed. My attempts got much better when I became more confident in my running and therefore had a dodge available when I really needed it. Hence all the anti-cripple skills.
• You already know that the P2 shadowfalls cycle through the arena. The idea is to keep running in circles while shooting Liadri. Focus on surviving rather than killing Liadri, she does not have that many HP and the bleeds will slowly wear her down.
• I ran at a distance approximately halfway between the center and the edge. Too close to the middle and the visions/Liadri get you, too close to the edge and there’s too much distance to cover to the next safe area.
• On running: you must (!) circle-strafe, not run. This means facing the middle and strafing (as in the Q or E keys) to get away from the shadowfalls. This allows you to run and shoot Liadri simultaneously.
• On the orbs that pull you: don’t worry about them too much. If you can easily break one, do so, but don’t go out of way for them in P2. Yes, they might kill you, but they will also occasionally save you. The pull-orbs are the strongest element of luck in the encounter, and you do need some luck to kill Liadri
• Final thought: there is plenty of time to kill Liadri if you keep a steady pressure of shooting and bleeds (I only used autoattack and Rifle2 on cooldown, no rotation to worry about). The primary objective is not dying. All your focus should be on that.

Wow, this post got crazy long. Apologies. Hopefully some warriors find some use for it.

I did her with a rifle in green rabid gear I purchased from Trading Post.

Longbow is probably a more optimal weapon but I found it hard to always land the heavy shots on a moving Liadri and rifle with Piercing shots made it much easier. Swiftness on crit took care of most of the movement speed issues.

Joining the club as well.

I missed the gauntlet first time around, and I gather she’s quite a bit easier now… /shudder. I estimate it took me 60ish tries with various builds until I finally beat her by buying some green condition gear and circle strafing her with a rifle…

Great event, nice to do content that needs learning and perseverance, and where success or failure rests squarely on your own shoulders.

Since yesterday’s patch wearing the Medium Vigil Armor Chestpiece causes graphical glitches on both arms of Charr – multiple blade-like growths – most visible on the left arm with weapons drawn. Please see screenshot.

Interesting answer. To clarify:

I use the word ArenaNet because that’s just the name of the company.
I have not named any staff member.
I find my petition quite reasonably framed, not a demand.
I do not mention conspiracy anywhere. Nor do I recommend circumventing the rules.

I just want to know if customer support does these kind of retroactive fixes or not. Other games do, but as this is the first issue in GW2 since launch that upset me personally enough to contact support, I simply don’t know if it works that way.

As for retrying, I have been. It’s just very unfun to keep reattempting something I know I should not have to. If you are succeeding with ease after the patch you are simply a better player than I.

Best,

Dan

Hey OP. Grats on the win and thanks for the vid.

It’s not really matching up with my experience though, I find I often get Veteran spawns very close to the Plunderer drop points who linger ie don’t run to the treasure but hang out for a (long) while before running. Maybe Veteran spawn location is also partly RNG?

Dear ArenaNet,

Tier 4 Candidate Trials are a profoundly unfun event. I think enough has been written about why this is so, so I will not go further into it.

I’ve attempted it (solo – the easiest way) dozens of times. And I’ve succeeded exactly once, when everything (spawns, crits at the right time) was just right. By the skin of my teeth.

Unfortunately, because of the bug with the Achievements, I was not given credit, even though I had completed tiers 1-3.

I was vaguely annoyed, but I think I reacted in a sensible manner. I used the in-game tool to report the bug, attaching an in-game screenshot with that tool that shows beyond any doubt that I had completed the event.

All that I asked was for your support team to check the issue and grant me the bugged Achievement once it was clear I had completed the content. In my experience with other MMOs support teams are quite responsive with this kind of thing. I care little for Aetherized skins but the Achievement is important to me because – hey – it was a real achievement to me. I did after all successfully complete the content.

I have not received a response yet (it’s only been two days), but being unfamiliar with GW2 in-game support I must ask: Is this request so unreasonable? Can I expect a retroactive fix, or will this be a case of tuff stuff, you shoulda succeeded at the super-difficult event after we fixed the Achievement bug you did not know about?

Appreciate any response.

Best regards,

Dan

@MassDelusion.
No.

Tier 4 is not impossible but (maybe) a little too hard, especially for certain classes.
The problems with the design as it is now are:

• It encourages solo-play while it is presented as a group event.
• It encourages (is actually only possible through) non-fun behaviour such as avoiding enemies and playing with aggro range.

Possible fix in design (off the top of my head):

• Spread out the spawn points across the map.
• Victory is accomplished by surviving all minutes.
• Groups spawn from the spawn area and attack the players. These groups should be similar to dungeon packs in power.
• If a plunderer successfully takes gold and gets away, additional enemies spawn and/or score/treasure/chance of skins is reduced.

“I really don’t see all the arguments about doing it solo either, since it is supposed to be done with a group.”

Well, it’s much harder in a group than solo because of the mechanics of it and how they scale the encounter. But more to the point:

“I simply find it funny when people whine about lack of challenging stuff in the game, and then when something is challenging people whine about it being challenging.”

This is a hollow argument. Example: you order steak at the restaurant, and it is undercooked. You complain. Next week you order steak again, this time it’s overcooked. According to you, you cannot complain because last week you said the steak was undercooked. Meaningless.

I just completed Candidate Trials tier 4 Event (solo) for Ellen Kiel.
I had earlier completed tiers 1-2 (got the achievement) and tier 3 (got the 1/2 achievement).
I got the event successful reward and saw Kiel talking to her first mate, but did not get the achievement.

Considering how extremely difficult this particular event was (at least to me), it’s extremely frustrating to not get the reward. Please fix this.

I’m more concerned about the issues actually granting the Achievement.
Personally, I finally managed to solo T4 Kiel today after about 15 tries over a couple of days.
So I get the event completion but not the achievement, even though I’ve already done T1-3 and have the relevant achievement / half-achievement.
Judging by other threads on this subject I’m not the only one.

Quite frankly I was ready to throw my keyboard out the window at that moment.
Having my hard work and moment of success pulled from under my feet was very frustrating, and I’m wondering whether I want to go to the pain of attempting a win on T4 again.

I posted a bug report but I don’t think ANet give out retroactive achievements for this kind of thing.