Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure why so many people are under the impression that warrior is the best for this boss solo. If I had more AR on my ele I’d be DYING to try this with D/F on level 50. ALL DEM PROJECTILE BLOCKS <3

Not to mention that hella nice cleave range with air auto.

Pretty much the only part that I’m sure would p*ss me off would be the cannon phase, seeing as you have to move like a freaking cheetah when solo to outrun those AoEs.

Claiming that they released this armor stat combination with the intention of shifting people away from DPS gear just because they buffed one of the bosses in higher level FotM is a very bold statement. You assume way too much.

Whether or not you feel like the boss encounter was fine the way it was, they intended for it to scale differently so they changed it. People have been whining about wanting new gear stat combinations for ages, what’s the big deal?

Also with everyone claiming that Mai Trin was perfectly fine the way it was… food for thought:

I’m pretty sure that first of all way way way more people have been able to solo Mai Trin with relative ease than Molten Duo and we’re just going to leave the Joke Maw encounter out of this seeing as it can be done nearly half-AFK. Whether or not that is relevant at all to you, most PUG teams struggled significantly less with Mai Trin than with Molten Duo in my experience unless I went on very low levels where people still have their dodge keys unbound and stupidly try to revive during cannon phases. Perhaps your experiences were a lot different than mine… I don’t know.

I personally think a buff was justified, but evidently I’m outnumbered here.

Omg fairly oddparents@@@

http://i.imgur.com/TXDWJBJ.gif

Oh, I wonder why it doesn’t say the post was edited then… actually no one’s posts are saying that anymore. Forums are crapping out on me!

Strength runes still #1 for soloing: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4586394

I tested some more with scholar vs strength on Berserker Abomination in Arah P2… Strength is definitely better by a noticeable amount even with 100% scholar uptime. Realistically you have to break out of your 100b chains quite often to make sure you maintain scholar buff. I didn’t even bother to try it on Lupicus because of the glitched RNG swarms. NO ONE LIKES YOUR SWARMS LUPI. STOP IT.

You must have had an interesting high school experience if 16 year olds looked like that in your area o_O

What even are you talking about ODB? How is healing/toughness gear going to help at all? You have to block the teleport projectiles, not tank them.

Faux.1937:

Mount Everest isnt impossible to climb the top but dont expect 90% of rock/mountain climbers to reach the top. And then dont say its easy if you can.

It my be fresh air for the 1% of players, and a good organized team might be able to do it after multi tries (I havent seen a level 50 done yet with a group). But dont expect the entire game to be elite.

Im a very good player, i can solo arah, I can solo fotms and have, but I know this is a problem and not even fun.

KNOWING you can be 1hit killed b.c another player moved slightly close than you isnt a fun idea.

I don’t expect 90% of the players to be able to beat the boss. It’s the endgame content and I expect a large chunk of the population to struggle greatly with it. Actually, let me retract that statement and say that I’m glad that’s the case but with GW2 I would naturally expect it to be doable without knowing what’s going on based off of so many bosses in the game. I never said it was easy so I’m not sure why you’re telling me not to say it.

I don’t expect the entire game to be elite.

It’s your opinion that the situation with Mai Trin is a problem. I’m willing to bet that most people will agree with it, sure, but that doesn’t change whether or not I feel the same. Claiming something is fun or is not fun is also subjective and I don’t like how you’re declaring it as if it’s a fact that it isn’t…

Purple Miku.7032:

The only thing that 1-shots you in this encounter at all is her teleportation projectile which has to be blocked. I don’t believe this needs to be changed because there’s a very obvious tell for it except perhaps make it only damage the person that she targeted. This seems fair, because it doesn’t make sense for the entire party to be instantly ganked due to someone else’s mistake.

This was the next post of mine after the one you quoted which I’m guessing you missed. In any case, I agree with the last thing you said.

Yeah the biggest problem is that the reward system is just absolute trash and barely even justifies doing FotM runs in the first place, so if they were to adequately buff any encounters in the other fractals it wouldn’t do much besides cause the majority of players to cry about it. I think that the fractals should feel more and more difficult as you progress but that’s most of the time never the case (at least for me).

Trust me I know all too well about how it feels for a fight to seem trivial when alone but a complete pain in groups… it’s part of the reason why I like soloing content (among other reasons too). Getting punished for someone else’s mistake is really irritating at times depending on what it is. I think the best example of this would be someone aggroing trash mobs that everyone else is trying to avoid, but Mai Trin also fits the bill for it too. I really can’t stand it when I can’t get her into the debuff field because people keep pulling her in random directions. >:@

Well thank you for enlightening me more about necros. I find it ridiculous how ill-equipped they are for PvE— all classes should have access to at least one block and have strengths/unique buffs/party-wide boons to offer for group play.

By the way I agree with you about how it seems a little odd to go through a relatively trivial FotM run and suddenly a challenging boss. However I don’t think that the problem is necessarily the boss being too hard as much as that the other ones aren’t hard enough (too many people can get by without even having to learn the mechanics of an encounter).

Many will disagree with me, but I’m OK with that.

@deSade
I could hardly tell much of a difference between the level 30 and 50 Mai Trin before the patch other than the agony ticking, but I can’t help but feel you’re exaggerating a bit on that. I get what you mean, and I didn’t try Mai Trin at level 10 yet. Have you? I’ve only completed her at 49 since the patch so far with pugs.

I’ve thought Jade Maw was a ridiculous encounter for a long time lol. I personally find it obvious that something that can be done with so little effort and considered as the last boss in our endgame content (except level 50, because those veteran mobs are STRONG) is in desperate need of change, but each to his/her own. One thing about what you said that I want to point out is that the Mai Trin change was a surprise to me and I didn’t expect to see it in the patch notes. I don’t have high expectations with ArenaNet considering they still allow people to skip Lupicus in Arah, for example. To me the chances of them touching up on FotM/Dungeons each patch is almost non-existent unless it’s directly related to the gem store.

@Novaan
I’ll admit that I don’t know very much about necros so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. If necromancers seriously have no blocks to use, that sounds like they need to be tweaking the freakin’ class not Mai Trin >.>

I already knew from endless bickering on the forums that necromancers had nothing unique to offer utility-wise for group play, but no blocks either? Wow.

http://puu.sh/9UfDf.png

Am I losing it, or is there really not even any build posted? This is all I see lol

Tree.3916:

Thaddeus.4891:

Greatsword is the most optimal setup ya, but not the only good build. Pure Axe build is less than 1% less DPS, which is nothing and the old GS + Axe/Mace is about 6-7% lost in dps only compare to a pure GS build,

Just a heads up the Pure GS build is only like 2% better than 6/5/0/0/3 because the 6/5 build can camp GS too

This.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Horrik’s AoE is also a problem on it’s own as with it’s massive damage increase the fact that they actually have a little more range than indicated by the red circle is way, way more dangerous than before.

I haven’t noticed Horrik’s AoE rings having that issue as much as I have the ones during cannon phase. I guess I’ll take your word for it, but they seem OK to me.

Well thinking about level 50 molten duo, I’m pretty sure that basically everything that touches you will either 1-shot you or come close to it if you have low health pool (an ele for example). Doesn’t that seem adequate when describing Mai’s attacks now?

The only thing that 1-shots you in this encounter at all is her teleportation projectile which has to be blocked. I don’t believe this needs to be changed because there’s a very obvious tell for it except perhaps make it only damage the person that she targeted. This seems fair, because it doesn’t make sense for the entire party to be instantly ganked due to someone else’s mistake. This reminds me of alphard’s bugged pull which would instantly kill anyone who didn’t evade it along with the whole party. I always thought that it was perfectly fine and great for it to OHKO the person who was pulled but not the entire party.

So putting that attack aside, what about the electric AoE projectiles that can’t be blocked and can only be dodged? Those once again have a pretty clear tell and I don’t really think should be changed.

Horrik’s AoEs are very easy to get away from giving you a good ~2 seconds to get out of the way.

That leaves us with her regular attacks where she applies lots and lots of bleed stacks + deals lots and lots of damage provided you don’t move or evade once she starts hitting you. I don’t see anything wrong with them :/

I agree with you about giving players more of an incentive to kill Mai Trin but I honestly don’t think she should be toned down. In fact, I think if anything the changes to her seem very in line, considering this is supposed to be our endgame content here. The only tweaking I’d support would be what I mentioned with her projectile teleport only damaging the person she teleports to instead of it being AoE, significantly increase the rewards (but not only for just Mai Trin, I mean for FotM in general), and removal of the pointless timegate cannon phase.

Yup, that’s literally all there is to it. I personally like to use whirlwind to evade away when he begins bouncing and dodge into him on the 6th bounce to avoid the risk of not closing the gap fast enough.

I’m not sure what options for a thief there are besides that one heal skill that makes you go backwards or whatever. I should make a thief and solo on it. Maybe.

Lol

It’s a lot less forgiving now and you’ll die if you don’t block her teleport projectile attack, but I think it’s about time people have a reason to coordinate better and learn this boss’s mechanics well.

I actually think that the encounter itself is fine, but replace the stupid timegate cannon phase with something else or change it. That’s the only part that I think needs to changed because it’s just plain goofy. You can’t attack the boss at all and don’t do anything but stand outside of red circles.

Now, your last statement… “Please resolve this!”

Think about what you’re saying… you’re telling Arenanet to resolve the issue of you and your teammates not being able to beat a boss. The situation is subjective because it’s not an impossible encounter at all as plenty of groups have been able to beat it since they buffed it yesterday.

Darnit. I wanted to do this too but I don’t have people willing to help me roll a Mai trin to try it

SUPPORT.

I’d love this too.

Giving me reasons to care about exploring maps = <3

I tested scholar and it totally surprised me as I was beasting on Wraithlord with consistent >40k 100b’s, but I’m pretty sure that it was only because I wasn’t getting hit at all that I felt like I was doing better than with strength. For the average person learning an encounter or struggling with their rotations/evasions I definitely think strength is the better route as it’s more forgiving and has an unconditional +5% damage modifier rather than a very demanding conditional requirement of having nearly full hp for a 10% one.

I also bought a second ascended set to test with, so keep in mind that whether or not you have exotic will certainly make a bit of a difference with your results.

IvanTheGrey.2941:

I take that back.

He’ll just knock you down no matter where you’re at.

I’ll stream it soon to show what I do

You’re right. He’s also giving you his opinion though. I agree with him that it seems silly to make the claim that stacking in combat kills immersion when there’s a plethora of other things out there that do a much better job at it.

Big Jay.1479:

I still think they are useful for Phalanx Strength builds, but that being about it… Back to Scholar I guess….

They’re still very good runes and are the best for soloing content, but for good groups and even lousy PUGs you will want to be using scholar even more so than before.

I’m updating the guide to clarify a few things.

First of all as most people know, strength runes received a little bit of a nerf today. This does not change whether or not they’re the best rune set for soloing, but what it does change is what you should get for group play. Before this patch hit, it was reasonable for you to be using strength for everything because the difference in damage output between strength and scholar wasn’t too noticeable. In PUGs, this was even more of the case but in organised groups then you’d always want to be in scholar.

The change now does little, but makes the difference more apparent in groups. I now suggest that you use strength runes only in solos and scholar runes for essentially all group-play. It’s annoying, but you’ll benefit more so now from grabbing a second set so that you can swap between the two depending on the activity.

If you aren’t loaded, you probably want only one ascended set to use. If this is the case then make your ascended armor set with scholar runes and an exotic set with strength runes. My reason being is that unless you literally only solo and never plan to do high level FotM, it’s more practical and less limited to do so.

Another thing I want to clarify is that now since the nerf to strength runes, the DnT condition warrior build is the best DPS against heavily-armored bosses. Before today it was tough to tell because in a vacuum they’d end up with very close results and in practice it varied depending on the player/what they were fighting. While the two are still relatively close, it is worth mentioning that I’m confident that in a solo setting it will be superior.

However, I want to make sure that anyone who reads this understands that this only is the case with bosses that are heavily armored. Light and medium bosses berserker will be faster by a pretty significant margin. Because of this, it’s generally more reliable and practical for clearing through full solo runs to use the fast hands/berserker build. If you want to push for the fastest possible boss times on things like Berserker Abomination, Korga (untested — I’d love to see some tests with the condition build against this boss!), Lupicus (assuming a literally flawless phase 3), you’ll have the greatest potential with the condition build.

So, whether or not berserker was slightly better or not than condition on heavy bosses before today, it’s definitely not the case now. The strength rune nerf certainly isn’t nice for soloing to say the least.

maha.7902:

Airships, pistols, rifles, tanks and lasers in a universe with swords, shields, heavy plated armour, characters fully encased in steel having less survivability than a scantily dressed light armour class with “soldier” gear on “kill immersion” – but I’m not asking for them to be removed. There are also things like legendaries shooting ponies, footfalls, basically anything steampunk, swamps full of generic undead, players wearing stupid looking outfits which are aesthetically horrible. I’m not asking them to be removed.

I must admit this is one of my favorite posts I’ve seen on the dungeons forum for a while.

All of my yes. Well said, 100% agreed, and lol’d at the steampunk comment.

Not sure what you’re referring to but if you mean simply stealthing when it splits (assuming NPC is dead too), then all that happens is the two vile oozes will relocate depending on where you killed the ancient ooze. It so happens to be the case that if you killed it at the coral, the vile oozes move through the wall.

All the elite risen will deathwalk through walls too. It doesn’t seem so much as a glitch as it is simply overlooked and weird.

moar invisible walls in Arah?

Edit:

rumors abound that the arah p1 corral for ooze is fixed

Hah, I wasn’t using it anyways

Too bad this boss is probably one of the worst designs for a boss in the entire game.

I was surprised when I read that too but I definitely can say that I found it surprisingly easier to get faster times on level 50 to solo Mai Trin than level 38. I figured it was all just clumsiness on my part but now I wonder…

Oh, hm. I didn’t really expect that to be the case because it sounds kind of weird but cool to know.

As if damage needed to be nerfed anymore than it already has.

All they really had to do was add a tradeoff to the damage, like scholar runes have. The 7% damage is basically unconditional because of many options for might there are.

What they should have done was have it provide you damage based off of how much might you currently have. For example, 10+ stacks of might 5% damage, 20+ stacks of might 7% damage… etc.

He actually used the defense trait to reduce shield block cooldown, and alternated between that + sword OH blocks for it. Pretty smart move, but I’m sure it could be done without having to perhaps… but I think I saw Nova trying it on stream before and he probably did try a lot of other methods.

Well no abyss dye… but the purple hate. :\

http://puu.sh/9SdMT.png

This is basically as close as a legit solo for it as you’re gonna find. I tried everything I could think of but what it completely boils down to is the sparks luring. That’s the only thing that I’m held back from.

I’d say that I’ll give it a try but I’m gonna be honest here… this looks like a heap of kitten of a boss >.>

Probably won’t bother with it lmao. Maybe I could be persuaded into it but you know how I feel about Hotw ;_; might ragequit

A lot of people don’t understand what exactly causes this bug to happen so I’ll explain it below.

After the cutscene, the NPC does an animation and takes the chicken from the cage, which will trigger the Passage Waypoint to appear and the final part of the path marker to appear where the ritual will take place.

If you run past the spiders and aggro them along with being hit or causing the NPC to get hit, she will shoot back at them briefly before actually reaching the cage. If you manage to get too far ahead of the spiders so that they lose sight of you then they’ll turn around and finish off the NPC instead of just leashing back to their original location. She’ll be killed before she gets the chance to actually take the chicken out of the cage, resulting in the step getting interrupted and stuck.

When you revive her, she’ll stand still and do nothing. The way to fix the issue is quite simple— aggro the spiders again, pull them over to where she is, and attack them/get attacked by them while standing near her. She’ll no longer be stuck as it’ll trigger her to attack back and once this happens, the waypoint will appear shortly after because she’ll grab the chicken as you run past.

It’s as simple as that— no need to restart the instance from scratch!

If you wish to avoid this problem from happening in the future there’s a pretty simple solution:
Use stealth. If you don’t aggro those spiders at all, she will absolutely never bug at the chicken cage ever.

Looks like an awful boss… guessing you probably tried longbow + axe/sword and it wasn’t enough to survive the bird kitten yeah? :/

I was referring to a non-bugged kill though :|

@OP
Either way assuming the best that you didn’t exploit the bosses and had someone come to help for Simin, good job.

If not, people are going to be bitter about you declaring it as a full solo if it wasn’t. It would’ve been a good idea to either include “without simin” in the title or explain what you did for her somewhere.

Silvia.9130:

Tree.3916:

No, you didn’t.

Sparks dont run themselves.

You weren’t into p4 in the last 4-5 months

Pretty sure he knows about how the bosses in that path are bugged most commonly.

Simin can be “solod” provided you have someone helping lure sparks, at least I know this for certain with warrior seeing as that’s how I always do Simin when I solo P4.

I’ve tried it on an ele a few times, but you have to sacrifice a pretty significant DPS loss by traiting 4 in earth for stability. Armor of Earth simply doesn’t cut it because of the long cooldown, even including Obsidian Flesh. In the end I simply wasn’t able to get it done on an ele because of the really awful RNG with the aoes which basically 2-shot an ele from full hp.

maxinion.8396:

It’s not ZERK’s fault for realizing necro brings nothing useful to the table. They do decent dps and have moderate survivability and can provide a bit of blind and weakness— but there are other classes that are better at all of that.

Ranger, on the other hand, has unique bonuses like spotter and frost spirit. That makes them good.

Take a look also at what’s happening to Mesmer. Time warp is seen as less important, and guardians have enough reflects and other types of support. The only unique thing a Mesmer can do is portal. So for the most part, that’s the only reason to bring a Mesmer. I main a mes, so it sucks to realize that, but that’s just the way it is. I play ele and warrior in most dungeons instead.

Are you trying to shoo Sandy away?!

D:

maha.7902:

considering boons have such short range, I would make the assumption stacking was intended.

Lol ikr. That’s what runs through my mind most of the time when I read threads with people whining about this stuff.

Iris Ng.9845:

To me, it’s a clear indication of some distasteful guy. Like, I want mah gurl to be sexy so she haz to wear a short skirt and show lots of cleavage. But I want her to be a mysterious beauty so let’s give her a hood and dye the clothes in a dark color, like Abyss. Oh wait, I’m a sensitive guy so it haz to be purple. And don’t forget to show off the l33tness with T3 accessories (because not everyone can afford T3!) and the Fractal Capacitor. Now let the world marvel at her beauty… Sort of.

!?!?

WAT U SAYIN.

Saint is correct. There is pretty much nothing exciting about repeating the exact same thing over and over and over again. I wouldn’t even bother if I didn’t enjoy trying to beat my own personal bests for Arah soloing. Even that grows horrendously dull after a while, which is why I get my fill after a path or two usually and normally don’t do much else besides a pug on my ele here and there.

The content itself is nice, but it has pretty lousy replay value in comparison to say… dungeoneering on Runescape used to have.

A lot of people don’t agree but I really loved the concept of “random” mob spawns and not knowing what room you’d walk into next or knowing what boss you’d have with absolute certainty. I think that to ensure people are more interested in an activity, it needs to have the element of surprise incorporated to a certain degree. Once you know exactly what’s going to happen, it becomes arduous to a certain degree and the exploration aspect is gone. Sure one could argue that you’d eventually reach the point where you’ve tried all possible outcomes and it’d lose its excitement after a while, but what other options for variety do we really have?

If Arenanet simply makes new dungeons, they’re going to just end up the same way all the other ones will in the end.

Unfortunately with what I’ve mentioned in regards to my little Runescape nostalgia example, it would require a lot of development time and testing to implement a system similar to that in GW2.

Sanderinoa.8065:

;__; another tournament nobody wants to invite me to.

Sandy sadcasting

I want to be on your team Sandy!

I can definitely foresee a lot of problems implementing something like this but I’m not gonna lie — it sounds interesting nonetheless.

I think with more discussion of it and some modifications to the ideas/solutions to some of the cons a few of you have come up with, this could be a nice addition to GW2.

This can happen to basically any dungeon NPC and a lot of the times engaging in combat nearby them will result in them getting unstuck. I know it works for Illyra in Arah P3 when she gets bugged at the chicken cage. However, most of these bugs are easily preventable. For this example in particular with Illyra all you have to do is ensure the risen spiders don’t kill her after the cutscene (you can avoid this by stealthing as you run past so they never aggro). Likewise for Brie, you can avoid this bug by not running too far ahead of the NPC before getting to the area I believe.

Scorpion Over Lord.9036:

@Purple Miku, lol, no dude, it was in no way directed at you, saying i agree that pugs blame a class for being bad, its not the class but the people playing it. Wasnt saying you playing that class sucks LOL, id be sticking my foot in my mouth if i said that. Please excuse my English, its my 1st language :P

I thought so, just wanted to make sure I understood you properly that’s all

Thanks for clarifying.

@Scorpion – Sorry but your reply to me is kind of confusing. I’m not really sure what your point is and if you mean to direct it towards me.

robertul.3679:

How about mobs that los players instead of the other way around? Then they fgs them.

l0l this made me laugh irl.

I’m visualizing a charr warrior in full CoF with a rifle getting FGS rushed by Subject Alpha and it’s a really satisfying image.

Scorpion Over Lord.9036:

gabbe.8503:

And ofc ppl arent as good as others and somehow engineers, rangers and necros are moslty those noobs that cant control the class for some reason but still would you take good necro over good warrior in your team in CoF or TA for example. I would say about 80% of ppl will pick the war….

Yeah id still take the good necro…if i had doubts about the person playing necro i wouldnt have him in my party regardless of class. Thats why i duo’d Arah with a guildie playing necro.

To be honest I almost always prefer other classes to pug warriors these days. I’m too used to seeing rifles and banners of defense or people camping dolyak signets, so I agree with you and I’d much rather take a necro if I was certain that the person playing it was going to be using everything that’s available to them to perform at their best.

Who the hell doesn’t like having elementalists in their parties…? I stopped reading the OP after this nonsense:

“So pretty much everyone knows that rangers, thiefs, necromancers and engineers are unwanted for dungeons. Same goes for elementalists sometimes. Guardian is excellent support and then group needs just dps so 4 warriors or memer that povides a bit support with time warp, reflect, stealth and portal tricks.”

I seriously HATE this Cof P1 mentality that noobs won’t let go of. Warriors have some of the lowest potential DPS amongst all of the classes in optimal conditions. They’re fantastic for pugging because of the self-buffing potential, amazing regen from healing signet, high hp pool, and utility offered from various weapons like GS. When it comes to straight DPS, eles and thieves have the highest.

OP if you want to be taken seriously, you aren’t doing a good job at presenting yourself… especially because you are commending that trashy Nemesis video xD

I welcome eles with open arms! The only ones I don’t want are the ones that aren’t equipped for DPS. I don’t appreciate people trying to burden me in dungeons/fractals with their WvW builds regardless of what class they’re on.