It really depends on how you are planning on playing these classes. Staff Ele is among the highest personal DPS in the game right now. You said you hated playing DPS classes though.
It’s really great that you already did so much research, so I’m probably not going to say anything new but: If your DPS is low you can give all the support in the world, you will still be a deadweight. There is just no way around that. You can’t outheal the hard hitting attacks. For that, blocks or in the case of projectiles, reflects are a lot better. So all you are going to do, is provide support (condition cleanses, minor healing) that a full DPS spec will still provide to a certain degree.
I would say a Staff Elementalist is your best option. You can switch to Fire attunement and stay in it quite a lot for decent DPS and then switch to Earth, Air or Water to spam whatever supporty skill you fathom. It’s the only build that combines both options (support, dps). As a Staff Guardian you are pretty much a running joke (literally, it’s a joke among the better players) and Scepter is outlandishly bad against small targets.
TL;DR: Staff Ele
One thing I would like to add: If you ever want to join speedruns, by which I mean the casual PUG speedruns, you will have to get out of your comfort zone. No one will take you if you don’t bring meta gear/builds/skills. This is just a heads up, since it’s the way it is. Not meant in a negative way.
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With a ranged support setup you will always be a deadweight. That being said, a Scepter/Staff Guardian would probably fit your playstyle or a Staff Elementalist camping Water and Earth.
A ranger would be an obvious choice in terms of ranged combat but the group support options are limited.
Inb4 kicks
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Wow someone just redirected me to this post. I had actually read it when Miku posted it, but I was just duoing Arah P4 and I could not get 3 sparks to keep aggro. I tried walking backwards, hitting the invul mobs (lol), but one would always lose aggro.
This explains it! tyvm for this post.
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No, for the most part it’s a discussion about getting an insight into the direction of where the game is going. Since the red-posters aren’t allowed to divulge we’ve been specifying what kind of content that isn’t LS-based that we’d like to see. But it seems that in the short term at least, LS is all we’re gonna get.
It’s like some kid getting spoonfed awful veggies and waiting painfully for dessert.
But that was clearly not the intention of the OP, or at least I think it wasn’t. Not that I have a problem with that, it’s just that we all know this discussion will never yield any consensus. Certain well known posters will always reply to this by saying “it’s not what the majority wants”. Whether listening to the majority is a good thing or not, is not part of the thought process. At the end of the day it’s good for business and it doesn’t take Wu Tang Financial to point out the importance of finance in the MMO business.
Anyhow, I simply don’t see a point in having a discussion that’s been had a thousand times already.
So the original post was about a possible roadmap or simply more transparent communication. The poster specifically mentioned dungeons and made it crystal clear, that this was his personal view.
Fast forward 14 pages and people are having the ages old “what is meaningful content?” discussion. Why?
This was never about meaningful content, or any form of content, it’s about informing players of the direction of the game. If someone would tell me that GW2 will focus on casual players in the future, while only maintaining Fractals and Dungeons in case new updates break existing content, I would quit. I am in the same situation as the poster was a year ago. I am hoping for more hardcore content and I would be severely disappointed if, a year from now, I would find out that this form of content wasn’t even planned any longer. It’s a year I could have spent catching up in another MMO.
At this time I would probably pay for a well written comparison of high end PvE in both games. I recently bought FF:XIV because I honestly thought I was done with GW2. I even left the top tier PvE guild I had joined after mere weeks since I was ready to jump ship. Switching from one MMO to another, for someone who has been no-lifing GW2 for a year now (and playing for two), is quite the task. I am a hardcore PvE player so that’s the only thing I am looking for in another game.
I had done my research so I had a rough idea of what FF:XIV is about, especially in terms of raids and dungeons. What none of the videos, commentaries or reviews could prepare me for however, was how the game felt. This is actually a really important topic and it’s something that is often not mentioned in professional reviews, probably since it’s so hard to describe.
In GW2 you have this responsive, agile combat system. It’s a bit like playing a standard 3rd person RPG with some tab targetting injected. FF:XIV felt like I was steering a huge cargo ship through sludge. No dodging, just repositioning yourself and a very strange feeling of being on ice skates. Apparently this is server lag and an intended thing or maybe it has to do with the game’s engine. It just felt really weird and unresponsive. So there I was spamming my skill rotations and just casually walking out of AoEs. This was a very big negative. In a game in which I will spend the majority of my time fighting things, having a combat system that feels so strange that I actually notice it right from the start, is not a very promising beginning.
Anyhow, I stopped playing after a couple of hours and went back to my safe zone GW2. In addition to the combat and responsiveness the graphics were also rather underwhelming. Extremely low res textures (console compatibility says hello?) and a somewhat sterile art design didn’t add to my pleasure.
I never got to see any dungeons or raids but from what I read it’s primarily about learning encounters and having the gear. This may sound trivial but what I mean by this is that the difficulty, according to streamers/reddit/enix forums is not about blocking, dodging and general skill but simply knowing when a) happens everyone go to spot b). When boss does attack #1 all gather up on tank. When players #3 and #7 have debuff x they have to move to the east and west circle. Feels very … artificial, but maybe I am wrong. What this means is that an extremely skilled player can’t just transfer his knowledge over to the next dungeon but rather has to learn & wipe everything from scratch. To a certain extent that’s the case with anything but in GW2 there is a noticable level of skill transfer over to unknown content.
So … long story short (early morning, I am bored, SORRY! Q_Q) I’d like to give the game another chance but for that I’d need an equally ambitious, like minded, hardcore PvE player give me a small comparison with some strong points in favor of FF:XIV.
Interesting, now that I think about I haven’t seen head pieces drop either.
As far as I know, most of the current MMOs have dungeons that are primarily challenging because you don’t know their mechanics. It’s not like you master combat as in learning how to block, parry and riposte and then simply transfer these skills into dungeons. Instead, you have to know where to stand when the boss does attack x, or what to do when players 1 and 2 have icon y above their head and so on. FF:XIV is a good example for that. Therefore, dying in order to learn a dungeon is to be expected in most current MMORPGs as far as I know.
For the rest of the OPs post, like vayne stated, there’s too many flaws to point them all out before having had breakfast.
It gives me the ability to always bring the class that maximizes the efficiency of the dungeon or fractal run.
I can’t believe so many people are arguing against fire camping for staff elementalists. You’d think that with so many guides, the speed running videos, the world records etc. people would have learned that the 2nd Ele will mostly play staff and camp fire unless they need a blast (earth) or swiftness (air) or a quick condi clear (water) so people can get ooc quicker. Apart from that, stay fire. I know this post is completely pointless and it’s been said a dozen times but … I have an urge to comment on things like that.
Skins are fine? Are you mad? Skins are terrible. You can run a thousand fractals and not get the skin you want. You can be the best or among the worst of the fractal runners and it doesn’t really make much of a difference. The better player will merely be able to do more runs in the same time thereby getting more dice rolls. Having a token system that allows you to make constant progress would be the sensible thing to do. It would be very easy to adjust the cost of skins so they’re not dirt cheap nor impossible to get. If there’s one thing games don’t need in excess it’s RNG. It’s just a lazy way to design rewards.
My build is for support and healing. Frost Spirit is a standard for me, as is my massive healing over time. It does a fair amount of damage, but it’s much better at getting the group as a whole to do tons of damage while living through big hits.
I don’t want to be mean, but the FF:XIV download is taking so long and I’m bored so here it goes: Healing is a wasted stat in GW2 PvE. Support heavy builds are equally bad. I know, we can all play how we want and that’s okay. I just want you to know, that if you ever want to take your game to the next level, you should get rid of the support/defense and learn to live without it while still dealing far superior DPS. There’s a reason for the meta.
And yes, I know there’s certain situations in which blabla etc.
The Guardian trick everybody is talking about is the following:
Equip Wall of Reflection and use the Consecrated Ground trait. Now push Lupi into the wall, and just DPS through phase 1. During his first transition phase use stability and then just place a wall ON TOP of the wall that you just pushed him into. When he does his AoE attack in phase 2 you will reflect all the projectiles and usually burn him from xx% to zero. It also works with temporal curtain or feedback.
For anything else I suggest Brazil’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZZS4QIdid4&list=UUXb625IE1vjylfTRW3-B6Lg
Guardian in all its cheesy glory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZp-CqJyGXc&list=UUHYN7WPNOROPyFjT86oOJrQ
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The reason why I wrote “The gem store ruins everything” is that most of the new skins that I consider worth getting (just my opinion!) are gem store items. Its understandable though, seeing that it is ANETs primary source of revenue or at least that’s what I’m guessing. I do realize that you can buy those armors with in game gold and if you do the entire daily dungeon tour you’ll have more than enough gold. On the other hand, it makes the game seem like work more often than not if the best way to get anything is gold.
Subscriptions theoretically give developers the freedom to do what they want without always having to consider revenue options. Anyhow, I had a lot of fun in gw2 and its a really great game. Best MMO I ever played. That’s also why I sometimes get so very angry with the current direction of the game, simply because of my (formerly) strong emotional attachment to it.
Youre honestly discussing a Nomad’s wearing Staff wielding Guardian in open world PvE? Good one!
nah, I tried to calc around nomads, it just isn’t worth it.
Also, staff is garbage, the amount of dmg you’re not doing while casting it doesnt trade up the might stacks you hand out.
I use staff on my guardian pretty much all the time. In an out of dungeons. This weapon has the best output of HEALING and might with the right trait and gear. Skill 4 have fast CD and might is always welcome. Also the healing output is insane. The OP has issues with mobs from tequatl? Weird, he must be playing with lazy ppl slacking the dodge button.
For example, try my guardian Fractal 50 – Archdiver, fire seal in the mid. Never failed to loose a person to date.
You do realize that every single hardcore PvE guild uses either GS/Sw+F or Hammer/x for Fractals on a Guardian*? Staff is among the worst you can do. Healing as a stat is about as bad as it gets. It’s been two years and yet people who are trying to discuss builds still don’t understand the meta and why it’s better than whatever crap they come up with.
*With Mace and Scepter having niche uses
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I don’t. I’m a PvE player and it stopped being remotely challenging a year ago. I stuck around because I had a slight gaming addiction and was just getting more and more and even more ascended gear. Then some day I hooked up my Xbox again, played Bayonetta (had just read reviews about Bayonetta 2) and since then I haven’t logged in. I suddenly realized how nice it is to not feel compelled to run my daily dungeons for money, to have a complex and skill heavy combat system and to be able to play on my own schedule instead of having alarm clocks for Karka, Teq, daily dungeons and then waiting for people for FotM 30,40,50.
I had fun exploring GW2, I enjoyed becoming a hardcore PvE player, but I guess my MMO times are over unless someone were to release an MMO that caters to competitive players. Furthermore I really miss subscription based MMOs. The gem store ruins everything.
Yeah please make fractals more annoying. Thats definitely what you want to focus on and not on the, for lack of a better word, “rewards”.
Just had this in Thaumanova. Was fun doing Reactor on 40 …. you had to go to LA to change skills. That’s pretty much another low.
Kinda typical of this games’ community. The moment you mention raids everyone thinks “instanced, challenging” and starts wailing.
I enjoyed the Marionette fight. That being said, it wasn’t even remotely challenging for any half decent guild. Everyone who mentions world bosses as examples for raid content should really check out NoTriggers links. Open world raids that are meant to be done by PUGs have nothing to do with the kind of challenge and complexity that instanced high level raids in WildStar or FFXIV have to offer. This game has A LOT to offer for more casual gamers so I would really love it if they could give us just a bit of content for hardcore gamers. I’ve had this discussion a thousand times but no I don’t think everyone should be able to succeed at anything. You just got to know your limits and acknowledge the fact that others put in a lot of work and effort to be better at something.
I am aware of that. I’ll give it a try today and record it, seems I was just wrong about his range.
I didn’t test this but it was my impression that standing in his “frontal cone” will get you hit even if you’re at 300 range. For the 2nd fight that is. But I might be wrong and it’s just a subjective feeling.
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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwQtsq8Rv5LUqwXRm3xOYnr1oYsitaiSi
This should cover everything.
And about the 300 LW range: It does help, but for some bosses like Archdiviner you still might get hit since their melee cleave range is out of this world. For those bosses it’s all about positioning.
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ANET just released a patch that turned the phrase “too overwhelming to new players” into a running gag. Do you really think that what you are asking for is in line with their current design direction? There’s people who complain on the forums about being unable to do Personal Story missions due to their high difficulty and those are the players who are smart enough to navigate to the forums, so they’re already part of the “veteran mmo community”. The majority of the players has never entered a dungeon or visited the forums, yet they appear to pay the bills.
I agree with your complaints but I think this is futile.
This thread…
Why are you even having this discussion with him? It’s obvious from the very first post that extremely little thought went into this and the rest of his (re)posts didn’t make things any better. This should be bookmarked and saved offline then /closed
As long as you’re not into Fractals, sure.
How does a warrior bring stability without losing dps?
Elementalists max dps might rotation is fire→air→ LH. No water attunement that’s what I was talking about. L2p scrub.
I don’t PUG.
Regeneration for old tom is pretty useless. Earth ele/untraited warden burst down. You’re going to lose scholar almost as soon.
I am constructive, you’re just really bad.
blabla
No sane warrior will bring his own stability. It is a huge DPS loss. No sane elementalist will bring stability, it is a huge DPS loss. I mean, are you actually suggesting that an Ele brings ARMOR OF EARTH? /maniacal laughter (And no, traiting into Earth Embrace doesn’t count either)
No elementalist will swap to water attunement for might stacking unless you are playing Dagger/Focus which is only being used in Fractals. Don’t tell me how to play a class that you obviously only play in extremely casual PvE.
Elementalists nowadays usually start in fire, go straight to Air and then drop the LH. Together with the party this will easily reach 25 stacks. With a focus under certain conditions they might use Comet but it’s not really necessary if the party is organized and everyone uses blast finishers.
And now this is really important. Please write this down. Try to memorize it:
REGENERATION IS USELESS IN HIGH END PVE
Give me ANY boss where regeneration makes a difference. The heal from VoR is useless for your party and useless for yourself. Most bosses will melt in less than 10 seconds. Their attacks can be dodged. That’s it. All you need is DPS, DPS and more DPS.
You know why else VoR can be nice? To get rid of conditions, making people go ooc quicker so you can break that world record. So don’t worry about “wasting that precious” heal. You don’t need it.
And for …… stop dissing Aegis. Why would I spam Aegis? Do I look like a …. button mashing …? I use Aegis when I see the Ele channeling Ice Bow 4, when someone runs out of dodges vs Archdiviner and informs me of it in Teamspeak. I use it to mitigate damage in certain instances (especially Fractals 50) where an Aegis is equivalent to a heal of 6k+ HP.
Anyhow, I had a great time in this thread. I guess it’s time to go. Bye bye.
@Michaeas Magister.1589
By competitive PvE I mean organized full berserker groups with Best in Slot gear running meta builds going for a time that is not far off common world records. If it takes your group 10 minutes to do CM P1, even if the run is smooth and everyone is having a great time, I wouldn’t consider it competitive.
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Your pet is a weapon if you don’t trait for it wont be good. Every class has trait that affect it class mechanism your not required to trait into it but don’t complain when it sucks.
Other classes trait into weapons since the traits are found in viable trait lines. Traiting into beast mastery is a significant dps loss and doesn’t prevent my pet from getting killed.
traiting for defence is always a dps lose. A dead pet is a 30% damage lose pick your poison.
How does traiting prevent my pet from dying to Lupicus AoE for example?
Why can’t you use S/P and D/D and swap in a SB for blasts when needed? D/D for Bosses, S/P when you need the cleave. I fail to see how recommending a single set will help the OP.
Guardians are mandatory for high level Fractals. Reflects and Aegis save lives.
They are the only class with access to group wide, reliable condi removal, stability and reflects while still dealing competitive DPS.
No skilled player in PvE uses meditations. No competitive party would ever have 4 people bring personal support skills when the guardian can be offensive and supportive at the same time.You, dude, should have read better what I said about “wall being our only usefull tool”.
Before you criticize the class, learn to play.
This is the classic comment which makes me /ignore. thanks.
I read every post and it simply is not our only useful tool. The fact that you don’t know this shows me you have no clue of Guardians in high level PvE. Hell, you “forgot” about Virtue of Resolve and Purging Flames condi cleanse, how basic is that?
You keep ignoring Aegis while bringing up meditations which are 100% useless in competitive PvE. You mention Warriors as an example of condi cleanse using a significant DPS loss skill (Shake it off).
You think Virtue of Justice blind spam is useless because of the cap I mean that’s just outright [really mean word]. How is blinding 5/7 enemies bad? As soon as the first one is dead you can spam it again…
You consider regeneration useful when in fact its bullkitten and what is that argument about having to stack to apply vuln? Did you unbind dodge or what?
What about stability? No let me guess, every class can bring their own! GG
And what kind of support build are you talking about? Elementalists with staff don’t swap to water in a good party unless its a very specific situation (slowing down Volcanic Boss). They camp fire attunement. There simply is no support ele in competitive PvE.
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Your pet is a weapon if you don’t trait for it wont be good. Every class has trait that affect it class mechanism your not required to trait into it but don’t complain when it sucks.
Other classes trait into weapons since the traits are found in viable trait lines. Traiting into beast mastery is a significant dps loss and doesn’t prevent my pet from getting killed.
Guardians are mandatory for high level Fractals. Reflects and Aegis save lives.
They are the only class with access to group wide, reliable condi removal, stability and reflects while still dealing competitive DPS.
No skilled player in PvE uses meditations. No competitive party would ever have 4 people bring personal support skills when the guardian can be offensive and supportive at the same time.
Before you criticize the class, learn to play.
Probably untargeted. They removed stacking fields in the same place. When rushing over a burrow you just place all the fields in the burrows hitbox but they are not overlapping afaik. Correct me if I’m wrong.
No one read the patch notes? They said “Arah P2 was too overwhelming for new players so we disabled it”.
There are numerous gameplay mechanics that rely on player interaction, they just weren’t necessary for mere dungeon completion when enough FGS were present. Dungeons in general are so easy that you can get away without making use of intricate mechanics but as soon as you start doing more ambitious speed clears there’s more interaction. Stealth, stability, might, fury, aegis, deep freeze, grouping up mobs in the open, swiftness, condi removal, projectile defense, removing defiance, keeping up cripple or immobilization all rely on interaction to a certain degree an that’s just a very spontaneous list. Like I said though, you can finish AC just fine without most of that and I guess thats alright unless you want to exclude a large amount of players from some of the dungeons.
You guys still bother hoping for that? Dream on. Fractals are so low on their priority list that were more likely to see space travelling tengu before we get to do something with our rings or fractal skin boxes.
At first I thought you guys were crazy since Shield of the Avenger is super important in some Fractals… then I realized that the class I main has the ability to use an actual Shield. Totally forgot about that in those 2000 hours of hardcore PvE …
That is what i mean, why you think end game is high skill encounters, because it was in all the other mmo’s before gw2.
So you expect it to be so, but end game is, what to do after lvling, and i have said it already there is so much stuff to do after lvling.
It has nothing to with other MMOs. I myself define endgame as something you do after you have done all the casual stuff. Experienced the story, discovered the world, geared out your character. After that, it’s all about horizontal progression but the rewards are skill gated, with varying levels of skill. That way people with limited time can still participate. So again, to me, endgame = after casual stuff is dealt with.
Subjective. To me, endgame means high skill encounters. The only such thing in gw2 are Fractals and maybe Arah. Crafting, getting a legendary, leveling in WvW… all those things can be achieved by the most casual and lazy gamers you could think of. That’s the opposite of endgame to me. A good system is something akin to fractals with increasing difficulty levels. Even the less ambitious players can enjoy them, but a higher level would then require more dedication. Following this – my – definition of endgame, gw2 doesn’t have a lot of that.
What you are trying to create is a useless dungeon/fractals guardian and there’s no way to sugarcoat this. Every class has sufficient success to healing skills in regards to dungeons. In high level fractals a lot of classes will get 1 shot, whether or not there’s a guardian in knights armor standing next to them is of little relevance. Taking and holding aggro in this game relies on far more than just toughness.
There’s a reason this game has such an all encompassing meta which happens to be all about dps. If you want to completely ignore that you can play any build you like. If it’s about healing and support it is always going to be really bad for dungeons and fractals and you will always be a burden on your team.
19 members, getting closer to the cap
All i ever hear about are people complaining that this game actually takes skill, but when i get into a dungeon, what do people do? they don’t have any fun with it, they stack, they take the easy route (instant gratification) which requires no skill whatsoever, i don’t get the mentality of these people i really don’t. Am i missing something?
You win the internet for today. Where did you find that giff??!!!
I was on the floor, rolling, laughing. Literally! Best gif of the year.
17 members atm and daily 50 fractal now!
Bumping for Fractal glory! Our guild dropped 3 sparks in the last month!
50 is better. It does not have a mistlock instability that makes the run take longer, it has better drop rates. There is no reason to run anything besides 30 40 50 if you have the AR.
What we offer:
- The average guild member has a high level of expertise when compared to PUGs and is using meta builds all the time
- A tightknit of guild mates for high level fractals and more competitive oriented dungeon running including Arah duos
- Teamspeak
- Website
- A familiar environment where everyone knows each other
- Environment that allows and encourages personal improvement without making you feel horrible for not achieving perfection.
What we are looking for:
- Not recruiting warrior or thief main right now!
- FULL BERSERKER gear including weapons and trinkets (on characters you bring to guild runs) – exceptions are WvW and PvP obviously…
- Daytime and nighttime weapon sets (force/night, force/accuracy etc.) and if you want to run Arah with us Force/Undead
- Knowledge of the common meta builds
- People who use dtguilds.com, youtube, reddit and the forums to keep up to date
- Basic dungeon knowledge for AC (1,2,3), CoF (1,2), SE (1,3), CM (1,3,) TA (fwd up), CoE (1,2,3), Hotw (1)
- English speaking and Teamspeak using
- 18+ or we’d have to censor TS and guild chat
Our philosophy:
If you fulfill our requirements, we will teach you what’s left to reach our dungeon running skill level. After that, if you’re fine with that level, you can do whatever it is you like as long as you keep up your dungeon expertise. No one will push you any further. If however you are willing to improve beyond what’s required, we will always do our very best to help you with that. All in all, we have a rather laid back attitude. We want to enjoy our dungeons and fractals in an efficient manner without devoting our lives to the game. We are not competitive.
We currently have 19 members who are all focused on PvE although some of us enjoy the LS, WvW, tPvP and casual levelling of alts etc. As a whole, we are not devoted to being competitive, however some of our members take this game pretty seriously so if you enjoy that you are more than welcome to make a friends group within the guild which strives for records.
This group of players (~4-5) is on a very high level in PvE. We take our runs seriously but we keep this attitude to ourselves. We’d love to have more players with such dedication and ambition, but you should keep in mind that this is not what we expect from the average member and it is nothing our guild can provide as a whole. Our elite group is focusing on Fractals right now and we are always looking for Elementalists who can run level 50 Fractals and can FGS Mossman, Dredge Boss etc.
EU GUILD!
Contact ingame:
Veydar.5017
Nomadsmoker.3201
Jables.8130
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1. Solo Arah for fun
2. Realize it’s not fun after the 100th time
2. Ask in g chat for Fractals
3. Get frustrated that no one is available
4. Skyrim
5. Do a Fractal
6. Log off
I am pretty sure that it took me around 14 hours. I bought 30 slaying potions and when I brought him down the first time on my Guardian I was at 13, although I rarely maxed them out since I usually got annoyed at some point and quit before the 1 hour mark.
I had ZERO experience in Arah, except for doing it once about a year ago for my dungeon master. I didn’t know anything about him except that there’s something about Grubs. So I watched countless videos, failed and watched them again. When you’re watching such a video for the first time you do notice that he does an AoE attack and the person is dodging or using blocks but only after failing a couple of times I realized that I had to manage my dodges, blocks and invuls rather carefully. So I watched it again and again knowing where to look. I repeated this process countless times especially for p3.
After that, I did it on warrior (took 3 attempts) and thief (don’t remember, maybe one or two lol). Once you know his attacks in and out it’s very easy to do it on other classes although I don’t have a necro so … ;>
It was one of the best experiences in this game since it introduced me to soloing serious content and just made me a better player. After this I started soloing other things and started caring about the time not just about doing it. So, totally worth every second!