Guild Wars 2

Liberated at 10:52 p.m. server time on NA Jade Quarry.

Liberated on NA Tarnished Coast at 10:27 a.m. server time.

Life Transfer and Egg-laying are supposed to be interrupted, only in theory however.

CC in this game is horribly designed for open world PVE, because the implementation of Defiant stack is a punishment for using CC rather than a reward.

I was in a zerg, interrupting the champion and causing 63 stacks of Defiant due to scaling. This means one single untimely CC mistake will result in a very harsh punishment.

CC won’t work for open world PVE for these reasons:

1) PUGs can never be corrdinated in removing Defiant.

2) It takes just ONE CC mistake to screw up the whole removal effort.

3) The event scaling for the number of Defiant stacks exponentially aggravates the punishment.

4) For many open world champions, soft CCs like cripple, chill, blind, etc only last for some length close to 0 sec.

That’s why most people in open world PVE don’t bring CC weapons or utilities.

P.S. On the subject of the egg-laying of the champion spider, the anticipation part of the animation is the same as its web-pull, egg-injection, and even normal attacks. So, trying to interrupt the egg-laying is a risky gamble.

Liberated on NA Jade Quarry at 5:38 a.m. server time.

This is what went wrong with preventing the egg injection.

To begin with, the champion risen spider has bad animations because the pull, the egg-laying, etc, they all look the same.

As another important fact, the champion usually come with lots of spell effects on it, turning into a white blob, and blocking the animations.

Also, this is not a lone mob like Lupicus where a player gets to spend all defensive resources on just one single mob. The champion spider mostly shows up in a scaled-up event, meaning there’re other scaled-up mobs at the same time to starve a player’s resources.

Moreover, the champion spider spawns multiple veteran hatchlings that immobilize constantly to shut down dodging. Blocking works but not all professions have the access. How about hard CC? It’s a joke to coordinate a pug in an open world event to remove defiant stacks. Removing the immobilization at the cast of egg injection and then dodging might work, but not every condition removal is instantly activated and the timing will be off. Removing the immobilization immediately is wastful since other hatchlings will re-apply it. How about preventing getting immobilized in the very first place? Good luck spotting those tiny animations in a sea of ppl and effects.

Lastly, in a scaled-up event where mobs are hidden in culling, fight what cannot be fought?

So, dodge the egg injection you say? Only if it was a single-player soloing encounter.

Answer this, humming bird. How does one cheese a player? Ambiguous animations blocked by spell effects plus culling.

If remaking animations/effects is costly and impractical for a company, how about a fun, actiony work-around? Like the philosophy behind the downed state, implement a recuperation for a failed prevention.

Make each jump stop the next tick of egg injection, so a player will have to keep jumping for the duration. See how much praise there is for the design, when ppl found out the shockwaves in Molten Facility could be jumped over ranther than dodged like a true action game?

Or use shuffling to shake off the eggs by rapidly pressing left an right for certain times.

Or just plain silly and type /dance to remove the effect.

This is one of those horrbile unfun designs that can not be countered. The player just have to suffer the damage like those Karka effects.

At least in games like Left 4 Dead, Alien vs Predator, etc, the player can use the “interact” button or just use movement/jumping to shake off the attachments.

Those “new” implementations from Anet are really not fun at all. I totally lost my faith in this dev in this patch.

Temple of Balthazar
4, taking the south route, the easiest but the longest (the more the harder)
Of course, 1 of them must know when and where to spawn camp during the final escort.

Temple of Lyssa
Seals: 2 or just 1 with non-condition build for walls
Priestess: 6 (the more the harder due to the scaled-up adds in the April 30 patch) or 4 using rez rush (this is very brutal)

Temple of Dwayna
Escort: 1
Priestess: 1 ranged (separate the 2 vet acolytes from her and kill them off somewhere else, and then stand on top of and behind the historian to let him tank her in the hallway)
Malchor: 1
Statue: 2 ranged or just 1 ranged necro with boon corruption (ofc, remove armor so the historian can maintain aggro on the statue)

Temple of Melandru
Escort: 1
Priest: 1 ranged in the coral tree (there won’t be healing phases unless the event has been scaled up by the previous failed group)
Interruptor: 3 (the more the harder due to the April 30 patch) or just 1 if you’re lucky that the veteran acolyte doesn’t spawn at the wrong time.

Temple of Grenth
Cannon building: 1 but it takes forever to rez Footi while fighting mobs at the same time.
Escort: 1
Priest: 2 (1 of them either in an alcove or on top of the coffins tanking the priest, while the other at the waypoint killing shades and adds), or just 1 long ranged profession on top of the coffins shooting the priest at max range while ignoring the shades (the more the harder due to scaling)
Defending Jonez: 6 with lots of CC, stability, and heals (coz of the April 30 patch), and with knowledge about waves (the more the harder due to culling)

The type of action game that is Dark Souls will NEVER work in GW2 open PVE. Video game PVE combat consists of these parts:

1) The character’s abilities.
GW2 is an MMO, in which people demend “PVE class balance”, “PVP player balance”, and “ability diversity”, i.e. restrictions on cooldowns/builds/stats, whereas a single player game can go as wild as the imagination, and players can CC the hell out of a mob.

2) The player’s skills (brains/tactics/reflex/judgement).
GW2 is an MMO for the widest denominator of the market. Mechanic like mass combat rez is the general teaching material that wins most fights throughout the game.

Who needs skills or tactics to overcome obstacles, when one can simply call a zerg and label it “teamwork”.

3) The mob’s abilities.
In an action game, attacks are made slower, intervals longer, and the telegraphs clearer, because of the need to allow human reaction.

An MMO atack timing is traditionally faster because of passive defense stats that require no human reaction.

GW2 mostly uses MMO attack timing, which is faster and more often, except for some 1-shot attacks.

If GW2 was to adopt the action game timer, all animations would have to be redone.

4) The AI executing those abilities.
GW2 is an MMO, whose computation workload is on the server’s CPU for all users, not on the client’s CPU for just 1 user. Due to the limited CPU resource, MMO AI will always be dumb with little or no team synergy, and more HP and damage output are the common band-aid.

5) Terrain where the combat takes place.
Pathing is an AI. An MMO cuts down server workload and dev budget by avoiding calculating jumping or climbing. Therefore, PVE combat ends up on boring terrains with mechanics like pathing invulnerability/regen.

When is a flying creature in GW2 really flying, as in the hit-box being in the air not on the ground, and a player must use jump-attacks to take it down like in most action games?

6) Execution lag.
Internet transmission (online games) takes longer than internal transmission (single player games). Dodging can be “dodgy”.

7) Visual presentation of information.
In an action game, the “action” is the center of interest, so the player can see what to “react” to. The cameras put the action on the center of the screen, even when the mob is huge. Also, combat text and SFX are made to NOT steal the thunder of the “action”.

GW2 is an MMO, where the chacter and player’s damage number are the center of interest. The camera ends up with the character blocking the mob, or the mob partially off-screen, and meanwhile the combat text, target frame, and SFX distract the player’s attention away from the “action” of the mob.

My conclusion
Video game combat is only difficult when the opponent is smart. Higher HP/damage alone only makes boring combat.

If GW2’s open PVE was like Dark Souls’, yells like “need more for Grenth” would be all over the maps.

Liberated at 11:00 a.m. server time on NA Tarnished Coast.

Firstly, the settings are already a deal-breaker to begin with. Why would a flying creature fight on the ground? It’s like Jet Li losing his legs sitting on his butt full-time.

Secondly, the presentation is bad. The camera shows only the legs of the dragon. The target frame blocks the legs along with all the flashy spell effects. Tilting up the camera screws your ground-target attacks, let alone the camera is now sitting on the floor with the character blocking the screen.

Besides the leg hacking and leg staring, the mechanics require players to engage things other than the dragon itself most of the time. Is it a dragon fight or walls/pillars/adds fight?

Dragon fights should take place in the air, across a huge portion of the map, involving players trying to get on and struggling to stay on the back/wings/tail/nape of the dragon. Aerial battles should be aerial like in Dragons Dogma (not Skyrim).

You want level difference? Try stomping all egg sacs in that area, and you will trigger an event, in which a champion spider spawns who constantly summons an army of low level spiderlings. Then it’s Dynasty Warriors time.

Liberated at 11:30 a.m. server time on NA Jade Quarry.

Liberated at 8:09 a.m. server time on NA Jade Quarry.

Liberated at 9:41 a.m server time on North American Jade Quarry.

Open on US IoJ from 5:13 a.m.

In general, GW2 stands for Guild (missions) Wars 2.
In WvW, it’s Ganking Wars Too.
In mystic forge/salvaging, it’s Gambling Wars Too.
In legendaries, it’s Grinding Wars Too.
In the temple of Grenth, it’s Griefing Wars Too.

Working as intended.

The DR debuff persists even after logging out or zoning like guild banner buffs. You need to stay logged in on that character while NOT touching any dynamic events for about 30 min.

Never yell “need more for Grenth” but instead, yell “need more for shades.”

Shades’ levels scale with the number of participants, so they can range from 80 to 84. Indeed, the HP of a lvl 84 is too much for a single player to handle.

Corruption aura only affects players withing 600 units of range while in line-of-sight. To slow down the stacking, split shades up and use pillars or corners to block their line of sights, or simply just use ranged attacks.

Corruption has a duration of 60 sec and shades cannot go past the waypoint. So, run to the entrance tunnel and stay there for at most 60 sec, and then all stacks will be gone.

A player loses all stacks of corruption when downed. To deliberately drop all stacks, drag shades past the waypoint when he/she is about to reach 25 stacks. Since shades can’t go past the waypoint, just bandage to get back up.

Of course, don’t try any of the above if the priest is onto you. If you hide behind a pillar or try to get to the waypoint with the priest on you, Jonez will eat ice for sure.

Balthazar and Arah reaching failure is not a result of a long chain, but of NPCs’ stupid AI making them stand in harm’s way, and also of players acting like looters mobs instead of bodyguards.

What this game needs is better AI such that fighting mobs is similiar to fighting real PvPers, and secondly, non-griefable mechanisms for encounters that require ppl to do different things so as to co-op, instead of a mindless zerg where everyone is doing the same thing.

Terminologies:
Bubble – a domed area with a healing turret inside where no weapon skills but utilities and elites are allowed. All projectiles inside of, coming into, and going out of the dome are destroyed. Every now and then, the dome grants invulnerability to players and NPCs inside, but interrupts all skills such as bandage, and also pushes enemies out.

Spike wall – an area with a wall made of spikes, located between the bubble and the vista. Players can jump on top of the wall or use it to line-of-sight enemies.

Tank – the current aggro holder.

Phase 1 – embers
Pick them off one by one. Don’t stand in lava fonts.

Phase 2 – Drakin with sword warrior abilities
The NPCs will keep Drakin crippled. So, just kite.

Phase 3 – greater embers
Pick them off one by one. Run away when it turns into a tornado.

Phase 4 – Drakin with Wolfmaster (from Wayfarer Foothills) abilities (plus melee attacks)
The tank keeps kiting Drakin through the bubble to deny all his attacks (axe throws are destoyed by the dome; axe strike and double chop are out of reach; distance is maintained by dome’s push).
Damage dealers stay on top of the spike wall and use ranged attacks so they can never draw aggro (due to blocked pathing). Stop attacking with projectiles during Drakin’s whirling defense.
P.S. Flamethrower engineer is the best tank to maintain aggro for this, since kits work inside the bubble, and flame can go through the dome.

Phase 5 – veteran imps & embers
Pick them off one by one. Dodge the diving attack from the imp.

Phase 6 – Drakin with Flame Legion shaman (from Plains of Ashford) abilities (without the fire aura this time)
Use the same tactics with the shaman fight from Plains of Ashford.
The tank runs around the spike wall and plays peekaboo, so that Drakin can never have line of sight to use fireballs, and his charge attacks will end up in the spike wall. The tank only needs to dodge the lava font AoE (animation: Drakin puts both hands on the ground).
Damage dealers spread around the spike wall, use ranged attacks, and do NOT chase Drakin when he’s out of line of sight. Just be patient and spam GTAoE at the spike wall.
P.S. The camera around the spike wall is rather bad compared to that cave in Plains of Ashford, so the tank has to rely on audio cue to dodge the AoE.
Bomb/grenade engineer and shortbow thief are the best tanks to maintain aggro for this, since explosions go through the wall. Just spam GTAoEs at your feet while you run.

Shadowstep can NOT be triggered in melee range. Camp where the nobles spawn so they are in melee range when they show up, and then there will never be any shadowsteps.

However, it’s hard to pull off in a pug from my experience of more than 50 runs. People just don’t follow orders to camp their spawn points.

There are only 2 waves of nobles during the event.

The 1st wave of nobles spawns at the north edge of the broken road/pavement, south of the vista, right after the wave of going uphill, i.e. behind the team. This wave is the hardest becaue people just love chasing the mobs in the previous wave uphill to the south, leaving the NPCs behind, while the nobles spawn behind them in the north. The death toll usually is at least 40% of the morale.

The 2nd wave spawns in front of temple waypoint, right after the wave of veteran acolytes. This wave is easier for pugs because they spawn in front of the team.

BTW, the veteran acolytes are the deadliest thanks to culling. They continuously spawn suicidal bombers (plague carriers) and risen in droves, which culls the acolytes themselves.

It’s nothing new at all. In fact, it’s a very old scaling.

Counter transformation with another transformation. It’s true for most events involving transformation.

There is a pair of diving goggles in the temple, which is a transformation effect. So, use it to counter drake transformation.

Tonic is another transformation that can be used as a counter, but I don’t know if it’s been patched or not.

FYI, the priest of Melandru is extremely easy to solo. Just shoot him from the top of the tree without him seeing your feet, and you’ll take 0 damage for the whole fight without even having to move at all.

As a matter of fact, the whole meta event chain can be soloed. The only hard part is the 2 veteran acolytes in the last wave of the escort to the temple.

Boon hate? Hate the boons on your enemies? What a weird name!

It’s more like “boon love”, since you are going to love the boons on your enemies.

Toughness does affect aggro. I will explain it with the example of how I soloed the statue of Dwayna with my rabid conditionmancer.

The statue of Dwayna has a PBAoE blind that also grants itself soothing mist, a non-removable self regen, which is triggered if the aggro holder is within 600 units of range.

To deny her soothing mist, I had to let the historian NPC tank. At first, I kept drawing aggro away from the historian. Not until I took off my rabid-runed gear could I stop drawing aggro.

Finally, soothing mist was totally denied for the statue during the entire fight. All that’s left to do was corrupt her regens and dodge her tears for 30 min.

That’s the story of how the statue was killed by an NPC and a naked necro.

Champions need to have much much better AI. It’s the intelligence level of the opponent that makes combat fun.

Orr is not fun for me because the mobs there are still as dumb as anywhere. They only serve to annoy.

The mechanism for the temple of Grenth is extremely easy, not tough at all, but highly griefable. What makes the event “tough” is the people.

Anet should make more events in which teamwork takes place, like roles/tasks requiring people to split up and do different things at the same time, meanwhile making events greif-proof.

How about a workaround such as using grouping to get guildies on the same overflow?

Yes, the mobs’ AI is boring, and so is the Lyssa effect.

However, I find it fun outsmarting the guy who programmed the pathing for the Risen King.

Observe the dumb pathing of that eyeball, and you can easily solo it standing still with cleave/GTAoE attacks while taking no damage at all during the entire fight, even under the effect of Lyssa.

The culling is so ridiculous. After the patch, the 2 veteran acolytes beside the priestess of Dwayna now spawn an army of risen, which causes the priestess to stop rendering. This happened when I was soloing her, that is, there were no other players around!

As far as I know, shades do 0 damage to Jonez, because Jonez is immune to corruption.

- Killing acolytes, spiders, anbd wraiths
The easiest objective. For the whole fight, a player only needs to wait by the waypoint and drag them to the waypoint for the kill when they spawn.

- Killing shades
This requires knowledge of how corruptions work, and how many/when/where shades spawn. The number of shades scales with the number of participants. Let’s take a look at the case where the number of participants is fewer than 5.
At 100% of the priest’s health, 1 shade spawns in the left room, which then immediately moves to the priest at the skill point.
At 75%, 1 shade spawns in the right room, which will not move unless aggroed by players or Pact NPC.
At 50%, 3 spawn in the left room.
At 25%, 4 spawn in the right room.

Corruption stacks up on a player every 3 sec per shade, while in line-of-sight and within 600 units of a shade. Each stack lasts 60 sec. When 25 stacks are accumulated, the player gets downed, losing all corruptions and becomes immune to it.

Before shades spawn, a shade-killing player should:
- get out of combat by going to the tunnel to wipe aggro from the priest of Grenth
- get the buff by walking over the green pools in the left or the right room so as to be able to damage shades (the buff is lost when the player is downed or out of the event area).
- go to the respective room to aggro them, so that the shades will not go after the player(s) tanking the priest.
- lead the shades to a safe room (to avoid ice storms), or an alcove (to avoid vortices), or simply the waypoint (to avoid all attacks from the priest) and then start killing them.
- when there are around 20 stacks of corruption, get out of combat by going to the tunnel to drop aggro of shades (at 25, a player dies, no matter what).

- Killing the priest of Grenth
The hardest objective that requires the most skills, which ironically is the most common objective most players pick and then fail at.

The most important thing in killing the priest is – before attacking him, line-of-sight/position him correctly, so Jonez won’t die from his ice storms.

The priest’s attack pattern looks like this: vortices, ice storms, frost bolts, ice storms, frost bolts, and repeat. Here are the details.

Shadow strike (aka vortices)
A ground AoE, appearing anywhere within 1500 units of the priest, when stepped on, deals 2.5k damage, applies one stack of vulnerability, and then teleports the victim somewhere 1000 units above, if applicable.
The vortices can overlap, so a player can be hit multiple times resulting in instant death.
The animation for this attack is that the priest waves his staff 3 times above his head and then the vortices appear one after another.
To counter this random and chaotic attack, run into an alcove when the animation starts to play. The low ceiling of an alcove will prevent the teleportation from happening.

Ice storm (aka ice spike)
A delayed ground AoE of 4k damage in the form of a falling ice shard, generated at the location of each player within 1000 units of the priest without the need of line-of-sight.
The animation for this attack is that the priest raises up his arm. The ice lands one second after, so walk away from or dodge them.
There is a limit to the number of ice storms that can be generated.

Frost burst (aka frost bolts)
Three slow-travelling projectiles with the middle one aiming at the current aggro holder and the other 2 at 2 random players or NPCs. Each bolt hits for 3.5k, chills the target, and spawns a suicidal ice elemental that self-destruct on impact for 500 damage.
This has a range of 1200 units and requires line-of-sight, either of which is the criteria for the current aggro holder to move the priest with.
The animation for this attack is horrid, because the bolts are fired at the same moment when the animation starts to play. However, it always takes place immediately after the ice storms hit the ground. So, dodge/relect them when the ice storms land.

TL;DR Pick the objective you can handle. You don’t need to do them all. It’s about teamwork.

There are 3 objectives in this event:
- killing acolytes, spiders, and wraiths, so Jonez won’t die.
- killing shades, so players won’t die from corruptions.
- killing the priest of Grenth.
A player is awarded with a gold medal even if he/she does only one of them.

So, pick the one objective that is appropriate for your skill level and you can live to contribute more to your team!

Just killed the priest of Grenth on IOJ (and as usual, failed the last event). Turrets tanking on shades still works in soloing when Pact NPCs are all dead.

Just opened temple of Grenth on TC with my engineer and found out that turrets can NOT aggro shades anymore.

Just opened temple of Grenth on JQ with my engineer and noticed that turrets are affected by corruptions.

I will break this down by the reasons why zergs fail from the most common to the least.

Aggro shifts – More people (especially the inexperienced) means more good-willed folks trying to rez, which in this game acts as the “taunt” button. That’s why most of the time the priest of Grenth moves towards the infamous staris where most people are, and drops the ice storms on Jonez to death.

Corruptions and shades – Shades spawn at 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% of the priest’s HP, and their corruption auras stack every 3 sec, which eventually cause players to instantly get downed when reaching 25 stacks. With a number of participants fewer than 5, there is only 1 shade at 100%, 1 at 75%, 3 at 50%, and 4 at 25%. However, the event scales by multiplying the number of shades. The more people, the more shades at each wave, the faster the corruption stacks to 25.

DPS and shade spawns – The inexperiecne people do not know the importance of killing shades to stop corruption auras, and also do not know when shades spawn. Most of time they just keep attacking Grenth and cause more shades to spawn, resulting in wipes after wipes due to 25 stacks of corruption. The more inexperienced people, the faster the HP of the priest goes down, the faster the shades spawn before the existing shades are cleared.

Ice stroms – Like Subject Alpha, these AoE circles are generated where players, pets, minions, turrets, and NPCs are, within 900 units of the priest, so more people means more red circles, albeit there is a number cap. People tend to favor spreading out, and as a result, ice storms are spread, causing less room to move around. If people stack on top of each other, ice storms also stack, causing instant death to people who do not get out of them in time.

Vortices – Although the number of vortices do not scale with the number of people, they are very unfriendly to good-willed folks who try to rez, due to its nature of spawning gradually and randomly in a huge radius of 1500 units of the priest. The more people, the more trying to rez, the more rezzers getting caught in the vortices.

Acolytes, wraiths, spiders – They can spawn at the entrance, or any of the 3 rooms of the temple. The more people, the more they are, the higher chace Jonez get killed by the ones spawning at the entrance.

Frost bolts – This is the only attack of the priest favoring zergs in this fight, which hits hard around 3.5k each and chilles whoever gets hit. The projectiles move slowly and always come after ice storms in 3 bolts at once, aiming at 3 different targets if applicable. The middle one is always at the current aggro holder, while the other 2 at 2 random people or NPCs in line of sight. The more people, the less chance one will get hit repeatedly, except for the aggro holder.

Notes:

Corruptions fall off every 2 sec when out of the range of shades (around 500 units). If you’re not tanking the priest, run to the entrance tunnel to lose aggros on shades and stay there for a while (kill some mobs while there to help Jonez) if the stacks are too high.

Shades only do damage to corrupted targets, that’s why they can not kill Jonez, or downed players, or evern turrets (pets and minions, sadly though, can be corrupted). I used Supply Crate to tank shades as an engineer in my soloing.

Due to low ceilings, hiding inside alcoves near the skill point prevents players from getting thrown up in the air by the vortices. (Make sure to fully stay inside an alcove and then just dodge/walk away from the ice storms.)

Standing on a vortex deals around 1k damage and applies 1 stack of vulnerability, which however, is still a better deal than instant death.

Vortices can overlap. In the worst case I’ve ever experienced, it’s 3k damage plus 3 stacks of vulnerability, which is still better than getting dropped 3 times in a roll to an instant death even with the trait of 50% falling damage reduction.

Vortices do not appear all at once. They gradually appear one wave after another in a random pattern within 1500 units around Grenth. So, instead of risking dodging from one vortex into another, hide in an alcove and stand on them!

Hiding in an alcove by the skill point also line-of-sights Grenth away from stairs. (To some extent, because Pact NPCs fighting Acolytes, spiders, or wraiths, have a chace of taking aggro away from players and causes Grenth to move to the stairs.)

Most of the time, shades and mobs are aggroed by Pact NPCs running towards Grenth. However, by the time the last wave of shades spawns from the right room at 25% of Grenth’s HP, Pact NPCs could not get into the temple due to increased mobs’ activities in the tunnels.

The last wave of shades is usually what causes a lot of deaths for a low DPS group. The number of shades scales from 4 to 8 or even more, when 5 or more players are participating in this event. With the normal rate of corruptions stacking every 3 sec with 1 shade up, 8 shades mean 12 sec till 25 stacks of corruption, i.e. the final moment that instantly downs a corrupted player no matter what.

So, if all players are hiding in alcoves by the skill point, there is a good chance that the last wave of shades will all stay in the right room without getting aggroed.

Hence, hiding in an alcove by the skill point solves all 3 common problems – vortices, Grenth’s position, and last wave of shades.

The downside of hiding in an alcove is it’s harder for ranged players to strafe/walk away from Grenth’s slow-travelling frost bolts, which hit the current aggro holder and 2 other randomly-chosen unlucky targets.

Another interesting fact is that vortices have a hidden multiplier that increases falling damage. Even without the falling damage reduction trait, a normal fall from that height can not kill a player with full HP. I’ve personally tested this by jumping off of various places of this height in this room after getting tossed up and using air-control to land in a holding cell, on a rafter, on a scaffold, and on top of a broken pillar.

This tip comes from the experience of a bomb/grenade engineer who has successfuly soloed this priest 3 times with hundreds or maybe even more failed attempts.

TL/DR – Hide in an alcove by the skill point.