Guild Wars 2

Imo vitality stacking is pretty overrated. It’s worth getting SOME vitality to survive being 1-shotted but the amount of extra vitality you need survive 2-shot is too much (well it’s alot less if you deny Lupicus of any grubs) but overall you will make phase 2 last ~25% longer which means more risks of mis-timing/running out of skills/dodges during this phase.

On the other hand, will full glass cannon and perfect dodging, it’s feasible to get him out of phase 2 before running out of dodge/survivability skills and is what my speed clear group does. But ofc you’d ALL have to get use to his AI behaviours first.

For ranger I recommend Protect Me (switch to alive pet before using it), Lightning Reflexes and Signet of the Hunt if no signet effect on self trait or Signet of Stone if you do. Use short bow+ axe/warhorn, buy a superior sigil of energy to slot into warhorn. Save Quick Shot for getting out of circles and do your best to survive. When out of dodge+utilities, switch to warhorn to regain some endurance, use Call of the hunt to outright RUN until utility cool-downs are sufficiently back up. For Pet option pick a ranged one for Phase 1 and the Pig for phase 2, keep spider/devourer dead and switch out to Pig for phase 2 for protect me and try get it to “Forage” before it dies to get you invulnerability in a bottle.

Having a method of maintaining vigor helps immensely with this encounter, every profession has a trait/skill that provides vigor except for necro. In Phase 2, Lupicus tends to focus two targets: one with shadow walk and his auto-attack snot balls at another. Being able to dodge twice as much means you can afford to double dodge out of the circles+auto attack combo. To dodge the auto-attack requires a fast reaction/good anticipationthat can only come after practicing it for so long, the animation is Lupicus thrusting his palm out in a very fast motion; the projectile flies in an erratic manner but always has the same velocity overall so dodge immediately when you see it!

Alternatively for necros or in combination with vigor for others, maintaining swiftness will allow you to 180 degree turn and run out of circles more easily to conserve dodge.

Note however, some of the aoes (not the auto-attack snotballs) aren’t targeted at the ground but TARGETTED AT YOU (you can tell if the circle is right on you, they also appear earlier than the ground targeted ones) that have some homing capabilities and the red circle fails to indicate this (they should update so the circle follows you for those shots though but I doubt that would happen anytime soon), in which case only a timed dodge will save you (assuming you don’t land into one of the ground targetted circles).

Your second line of defense then is block/invulnerability/blink/skill-dodge mechanics as a back-up when your endurance gets too low. Again there plenty of these for every profession though for necros you may have to get creative with flesh wurm.

Even after using all this and you are still dying, the only way to survive really is to try to get better at the timings and be more efficient with your dodges and skills. Though in my experience as an ele traiting for perma vigor+using mist form, obby flesh and arcane shield and burning retreat, I can kite lupicus indefinitely in phase 2 with the option of pulling out fiery greatsword to kite some more with fiery rush and spin-2-win-away. (Phase 3 is easier as a whole but impossible to solo though, much too dodge intensive to dodge punches, bubbles, siphons AND snot-balls.)

I’ve had this problem before. Tried having everyone walking back through the tunnel into the spider room? This should reset the dialogue as you come back down the tunnel and and allow her to become an enemy.

@Syde not a bug, new mobs spawn everytime the NPC is ressed so you just have to clean everything before reviving her.

If you have the frost cannon up you can try use it to snare the ghosts and try to focus/snipe them from range.

@ilr The ghost spawns with random professions so sometimes you can get 3 necromancers which makes things alot harder.

Towards the left side of the door. You will get stuck inside the door frame with a view of the other side of the room. You have to keep blinking using that view until you land on the other side. Skills that work are: Blink (mesmer), Lightning Flash (ele) and Shadow Step (thief). I don’t think Flesh Wurm (necro) works.

Much more easier to have the person who the NPC is following not participate in the stargazer fight to prevent the bug from happening in the first place. But failing that, you will have to resort to this tedious glitch method.

The low density, hard to kill trash mobs pretty much have the same loot table as normal mobs outside them though, especially risen. Thus the current problem is normal PvE with high density, easy to kill mobs with the same drop table, it is much too efficient compared to dungeon drops.

I think gathering nodes ON TOP of the future dungeon reward updates will provide enough incentive to clear trash. If they ONLY give a low chance for tokens to drop from trash people would just avoid them more to keep an even number of tokens.

I also believe a salvage items, like discarded garments/metal scrap should have a higher tier with better salvage rate of gossamer/orichalcum specifically for dungeons rather than being the same ones you can farm from dynamic events outside arah.

Add daily randomly respawning nodes around the final boss/near final bosses!

This would benefit in:
- Making dungeons more rewarding
- Node locations will provide an incentive to kill trash mobs in the way
- Allow hardcore dungeoneers to keep dungeoning to obtain resources without having to feel forced to do the boring, normal PvE

For simins, after activating her and getting her down to 50% the first time and having her stealth healing, imprison only 4 sparks while keeping 1 up. Keep hitting her until she stealths the second time THEN put the last spark in.

This method should work if you suspect she is bugging and keeps restealth/healing at 50% rather than on timer/not taking damage while stealthed like it’s supposed to. Worked marvelously for my party when the neither the standard way and attacking through stealth didn’t seem to work.

So for maximum Anet point gains, run AC 2, SE 1, CoF 1, HotW 1 and Arah 3 daily?
(Assuming daily reset with the HDE right, otherwise it can’t be infinite!)

1) No, mob levels are fixed. YOU are scaled down to the level of the dungeon but higher level gear at your level will give you a bonus to stats. However, wearing lower level gear than your current level will actually make you weaker than an equivalent toon at the recommended level. Also true for general PvE mobs.

2) Yes, but it would take much longer. At least Caudecus’ Manor Butler path is soloable given the right spec/many projectile reflections due to the mobs an bosses all heavily relying on projectiles. Twilight Arbor up path can also be two-manned due to bosses also relying on projectile reflection there though you will have to skip the trash mobs there since they are harder than the boss fights :P

ProAlex.4723:

OP, go kill every mob in Arah path 4. See you in a year.

Path 4 is would take officially longer than Fissure of Woe, Underworld and Domain of Anguish from GW1 COMBINED if you were to try to kill all the mobs. (okay exaggerating a bit but you get what I mean.)

I agree that it’s bullcharr how he resets if the target goes stealth even when if everyone else is/has been wailing on him. His aggro SHOULD NOT be lost so easily.

It’s most unfair when the thief has the 5 point minor trait that causes stealth when thief’s health goes under 25% that can’t be turned off. Basically condemns your efforts to readily reset even with just one mistake. Thieves technically could have infinite dodge and endless kiting with infiltrator’s arrow but still, forcing the thief players to play perfectly is pretty unreasonable.

Just completed the Dungeon Master title unlocked it today and realised I could have way more achievement points first before binging on dungeon farming.

Didn’t have time to do another dungeon after Arah path 4 but how exactly how does it actually work? Is it 5 achievement points for 1 path repeated or is it more?

Does it even currently work or is it broken like Lifetime Survivor? >.>

details of a workaround of this bug can be found here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Arah-Path-1/first#post628874

Okay I’ve JUST done it for dungeon master and it was extremely bugged. After going into stealth the first time she would enter stealth and heal up again at 50% after 20 seconds instead of the stated 40 seconds. Thus, she just re-enter the stealth+heal at 50% indefinitely regardless of how fast sparks were imprisoned and regardless of our spamming at her stealthed location.

It took us 4 hours with no avail until we came across a hard-to-find solution. To circumvent this, the only method is imprison only 4 sparks after the first stealth, leaving one out and letting her heal back to 80% and reappear. Only then did she truely go on a proper timer of sorts. In our case, she went down to 20% with overcompensating DPS (4-manning, full rampagers/beserkers while the one member stayed away to keep the last spark in a readily trappable location) before entering the ‘second’ stealth upon which we finally put the last spark in and she got destroyed.

Keep the person who the NPC is following FAR away from the room, back in the corridor as far as you can without being in range of the ‘trap room’.

Basically after the fight she attempts to move towards the door to open it ONLY ONCE so if she happens to be dead or dies by running into the firewall she won’t ever try to open it again.

Look at my skill suggestions again. The weapon CC’s are a core mechanic and swapping in. And refusing to swap out even one utility skill when you know is just plain stupid. But if you DON’T know what every skill does I’d suggest experimenting more on your profession instead of being hard-headed.

If you want to use a staff you’d roll a caster? That’s just plain refusing to use your character to full potential given every situation. I personally carry every weapon possible, it can even be green, not being flexible is just terrible in the dungeon environment where they want you to be able to adapt.

As a guardian, you can easily shut down two of the leaps by interrupting with Shield of Absorption/blind with Ray of Judgement/Binding Blade’s pull/Ring of Warding or Line of Warding. That’s easily 10 seconds worth of the encounter through weapon skills alone.

You don’t have to use a cookie cutter build, just learn to play more efficiently.

Adaptability is emphasized in Anet’s dungeon design philosophy, just been hard-headed alone already means you are in for a rough time.

You’re obviously not stacking any might/vulnerability or using fury at all if any trash mob takes more than 30 seconds to kill. You should be able to squeeze out at least 10 seconds from each party member so there’s plenty of leeway. And FYI Interrupting/negating the Earthshaker component puts it on a 5 second. There’s even a dodge button/free blossom rally for when you mess up!

So you’d rather have the mobs die in 10 seconds and have no challenge at all?

Fay.2735:

The encounter is fine the only suggestion I have is to remove the poison flowers that are around that room just to give people some more space to spread out and make the encounter more doable.

I think the blossoms are meant to be there so you can hit ’em to rally should you fail to CC/dodge and get two-shotted into downed state. The Earthshaker is really easy to dodge though once you get the timing right, the telegraph is the WHOOSH audio cue and the knight flying across the screen (dodge then!) with a short delay before he lands with the SMACK.

It doesn’t matter what professions you are. You just have to all coordinate your CCs (crowd control for the uninitiated) skills which every profession has to shut them down before they can shut you down. If chain them correctly, you can even do it without pulling by completely shutting down their attacks, but that’s only for competent, coordinated teams and not something a PuG could achieve

Also, you are hitting another misconception: warriors and guardians will get destroyed by the knights if they take the two hit combo. What you can do to tank is use blocks or invulnerability mechanics to negate damage and take the hits instead of the party until the two-attack combo is off cooldown again which mesmers and eles can do equally effectively but they all can’t maintain it indefinitely.

Thieves can spam Black Powder with pistol offhand to keep them perma-blind, use tripwire to knock them down as they leap over or immobilize with devourer venom.

Engineers have access can have blind+immobilize/daze or knockback + plenty of other knocks be it bomb kit, turret or gadget.

Rangers rely on pet Ai to land their pet’s CCs so are pretty meh in that department but still have snares from muddy terrain and entangle, try entangling before they leap though else all the roots will just get destroyed if timed wrongly.

Necros have Well of Darkness and the other wells also serve as combo fields for more blind spamming opportunities and fears to keep them shutdown.

Mesmers can spam interrupts through daze/knock/pulls and if all else fails, Moa one of silvers and that 10 second should be plenty of time to kill the other knight(s).

Staff eles can pre-blind with lightning surge to make the first earthshakers miss then chill/cripple/immobilize so their Earth shaker becomes more obvious as the knights reach the 600 leap distance. Dagger offhand ele can interrupt with earthquake+updraft and focus offhand can tank with obsidian flesh and interrupt with daze.

Try looking at your skills some more and try different things. These skills are on such a long cooldown because they are so powerful when used correctly. If you aren’t on VOIP you could try planning saying I’ll use X then you use Y etc etc these dungeons are meant to test your coordination.

path 1 will bug if the Warden NPC dies during the Stargazer boss fight. You can fail as many times as you want but keep the person who the NPC is following outside of the room. The Stargazer is completely soloable, and is actually easier if you do so, given enough crystals. Skipping Korga and mobs will not affect the bug in anyway i.e. speed clear all you want, just make sure the NPC doesn’t get involved in the last encounter.

path 2 can bug at the golem part where the golem with spiders swarming around it scene triggering before you reach the waypoint at the end of the puzzle, causing insta death as you approach that area due to massive ApE melee cluster-kitten. A workaround for this is to bring an invulnerability on at least one party member who can use it to survive past that area and unlock the waypoint beyond.

path 3 no bugs

path 4, NPC must be alive as you enter the Lupicus room else Lupicus will remain friendly and you will not be able to continue. Simins is doable given aggro knowledge, decent DPS and LOSing the sparks around the statue to get them into the slots. If your team cannot complete the magg bomb event path 2 without having to resort to graveyard zerging, you’re probably not gonna be able to kill Simins.

Given how these bugs have not been fixed or even acknowledged by Anet for about a month since being reported, I’d suggest using the workarounds so you can get your Dungeon Master and unlock Hobby Dungeon Explorer so you can start earning Anet points from repeating dungeons rather than waiting indefinitely for a fix.

Okay, just completed it today by having the person with the NPC leash stay far away from the boss room and soloed the Stargazer by farming crystals, spamming F when it ran out and dodging into the boss when he glowed red etc. After the boss died the alive and kicking NPC proceeded to open the door correctly. Shed tears of joy as I finally completed this path.

Through my time dungeoning, I have sadly accepted diligence in clearing trash mobs and playing the game normally often ends up with you getting kittened so this time I round I also skipped every mob possible and Korga and the whole ordeal took only 2 and a half hours (the thief in the party was a baddie, going full glass cannon and refused to take the imperitive acrobatic traits so we ran into problems with lupicus) unlike first two 5 hour and 3 hour runs done normally.

Shadow Dragon.9874:

Ok just an update. So, some days ago me and my group got to the last boss of Arah path 1 and the npc died after boss was defeated (to the instakill fire aura) and this caused that the npc didn’t proceed to open the final door.

So, today I tried the path again and found an awesome group that finished the path in a good time and this time we secured the npc so that she wouldn’t die to the boss during the fight or after the fight and this time everything worked out just fine.

So it seems that it is indeed a bug where the NPC won’t open the door if she dies during/after the boss fight. So, I’d advise people to make sure that the NPC is safe during the final boss battle, just to avoid possible problems

Thanks for the update!

So basically “exploit” the NPC follow behaviour pattern to keep her out of the boss room to by-pass this bug? Almost as bad as having to have people way-point out to get Maggs to collect Oracyte.

Well now we have all collectively lost much time beta-testing Arah path 1 specifically the causes of this bug for Anet let’s hope they can how begin fixing this in a timely manner.

The other way to bypass this bug is to exploit teleports: blink or lightning flash to get stuck in the left side of the door, then teleporting again into the other side of the room after you’re stuck in the door.

People just have issues coming to terms with their skillfulness. It’s much easier to blame Lupicus for being to hard/broken when they are bad dodging, refuse to slot/don’t know how to use survivability skills and are bad at spotting his obvious telegraphs: lean back for aoe spew, palm thrust for fast shot ball and ground punch for burrow. They made him massive for a reason!

The only true issues I have with Lupicus is when he is hit by a certain ranger effect/a certain combination of efffects (I think entangle or summoned birds+???) his texture fails to render so you eat the rapid snot ball and how easily he resets if his target stealths.

I figured it out easily before any guides came out after seeing the absurd amounts of monsters, the suit and the rechargers scattered ahead and did it in 3 tries with guildies.
Equally, being the adept thinker, I figured out the locust/grub spawn mechanics and formulated the bot formation into scatter approach with lupicus after the first wipe. Then 5 tries after that due to possibly being only geared with greens at that time we finally survived long enough past phase 2 triumph over giganticus.

Sure we all came out negative at the end of the day but this day I still feel proud for figuring those mechanics out first-hand and I’m sure that feeling of awesomeness is what Anet wants players to feel.

I also did the golem puzzle in 4 tries with a complete PuG. If you noticed, if the golem is charged, there would be a lightning bolt icon on it when you select the golem user. All you have to do is shoot the recharger to keep the icon up. Simple as that.

Anet’s dungeons aren’t like other MMO dungeons in this particular approach. Dungeons are meant to be like trial and error filled an I doubt Anet would change that. I hope they don’t. In fact, I’d prefer if there were MORE of these puzzles.

I do agree repair costs could be toned down abit traps specifically though but obviously still kept high for graveyard zergers. The high repair costs are meant to make you think and assess about what went wrong and how you can approach things differently and encourages coordination and communication.

SSS in CM path 1 can be pulled into the yard by running past him, the asura will blow up the last device and the door into the yard opens and it becomes like path 3. He is extremely kitable and you can dance in and out between ranged and melee to maximize damage output, meleeing when his back is turned to you/dodging through into him. NORMAL mobs used to force melee players to learn this type of dance technique back in beta 1 but alas normal PvE has been drastically dumbed down since then.

Evoked.2176:

Same dungeon same paths.. again and again everyday?

I personally would if they gave more achievement points instead of tokens. Don’t have dungeon master finished and hobby explorer unlocke yet… still need path 1 Arah which bugged on me twice at door to the rewards and path 4 since my guildies seem to deal no damage so I’m not sure we can make it past Simins given the rumors.

Permanently maintained 25 stacks of might + fury makes high mob/boss HP mostly irrelevant (lol ~75% increase in damage output), except for specific cases: CoF 3 destroyer, HotW underwater bosses. Fully possible with coordinated group, which explorable mode is designed around. I (mostly) see nothing wrong in that department either.

Anet has already acknowledged the atrocity of the trash mob/chest loot. But until they actually fix it I’d recommend skip 99% of trash mobs scheme and stick to farming dungeons that are short for maximum yields.

The most profitable AC all paths speed clear gets you ~1.5g + 180 tokens in 1 hour by mass skipping past first burrow, not spawning the spider queen, skipping past gravelings+traps by sending in an expert chain puller (thief/mesmer/ele/engineer who have stealth/blinks/invulnerability can do this), skipping kohler and all the way to the first objective, then skipping every trash mob to the next/final objectives, killing 2-3 breeders around the last boss as needed.

CoF path 1 and 2 takes 20? mins and path 2 is obviously more profitable if your team is competent enough DPS the mobs in the ‘sacrifice room’ for at least the first 40-60%.

SE path 1 takes 15-20 mins.

HotW path 1 takes 10 mins and 2 takes 20 mins.

Arah path 3 can be done in 15 mins if you basically skip 95% of the trash mobs and only do the 4 bosses (haven’t tried skipping smasher+huner though.)

Even without skipping, AC p1+2 and CoF p1 are still fast enough with PuGs (hence these are popular while the other dungeons especially CM, TA and CoE gathers dust.)

Completely viable options while you wait for your DR from cursed shore farming to disappear. If you value efficiency then of course you park your alts at the dungeon entrances and arrange times with guildies etc like a true nerd. If you have no fwends, stick a lvl 2 in lion’s arch to form PuGs for the easy paths if you will, anyone who don’t notice your high amounts of Anet points and question your presence with a lvl 2 are probably baddies anyway so it also acts as a nice filter.

Boycotting as many trash mobs as possible until loots are improved and awesome like mad king’s! Fingers closed it will make it into the 15th Nov update.

Okay, so do you guys remember if the norn NPC who follows you died during the Jotun Stargazer fight? I may have finally narrowed down the cause of this bug!

Had same issue about a month ago!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Arah-Explorable-Jotun-Path-not-finishing/first#post296347

I think his one-shot is when you sit right on top of him and he throws out the multiple bananas, causing you to be hit by all of them at the same time.

Yeah I posted about this issue about a month ago after trying it twice and wasting 6 hrs total… I think the problem lies the NPC dying at Jotun Stargazer but not to sure. Can’t confirm this but maybe try having someone solo the Jotun while the rest of the party stay back so the NPC doesn’t die? As much as I’d like to try it, I don’t wish to be a guinea pig again to a bug which seemingly isn’t even being investigated and waste more with this path.

In CM exp, projectile reflection is king since it makes the many range trashed mobs riflemen/enforcers/scatter-shots/archers/bombers eat their own bullets/arrows/grenades. Usually just one mesmer Feedback will get them to half-health with them shooting themselves alone! Mesmers can also trait projectile reflection on both the focus skills, Temporal Curtain and Phantasmal Warden turns CM into cakewalk since one mesmer can basically destroy all the ranged mobs by rotating these skills.

Alternatives are Guardian’s Wall of Reflection and Ranger’s Whirling Defense and Thief’s Dagger Storm though these require more coordination to upkeep if lacking mesmer.

Alternatively projectile destruction’s, Smokescreen and Swirling Aura are an option though less efficient.

Then you only have to worry about the melee-based cutpurses/thugs/saboteur which can easily be crippled/chilled/immobilised and kited.

All trash mobs in general can be dealt with by blind spamming via Black Power on Thief or Well of Darkness and combo finishers through Dark fields set by necroes.

tl;dr many options to deal with trash mobs. Mesmers shine brightest where there are many projectile mobs especially CM and SE.

gadenp.7586:

@ lynspottery

If leader bag is full, tough.

You can mail your trash items to someone and have them send it back in mail to be rid of at another time. Free storage!

Lightrayne.7829:

In my opinion, it’s their own fault if they ever have the nerve to complain why they can’t get a group for dungeons sometimes or why sometimes the quality of PuGs are low. They’re specifically restricting the pool of players that can run with them instead of being helpful and training new generations of dungeon runners to foster a better pool of players.

It’s actually due to how easy they made regular PvE. Especially the step-up from the mindless cursed shore farming to arah explorable. Some players I swear learn nothing from their lvl 80 adventures, probably partially due to most people crafting their later levels from 60-80.

The step-up in difficulty from casual pve to dungeons is just too large. You can teach somehow how to tactically approach things e.g. charge dead-eyes and dodge killshot and focus them first, focus illusionists first and dodge the chaos storm etc. What you can’t do is teach somehow how to play their class/switch weapons/dodge i.e. play the game for them. You may offer utility skill advices on how to survive against Giganticus Lupicus but it is still up to succeed. You can’t make them a better player either especially those who are too lazy to swap weapons to maximise damage output etc.

‘Elitists’ of MY kind generally seek to recruit able, independent, self-sufficient decent players who took time to train themselves as the elitists themselves likely did. (though some elitist are baddies but generally dungeon runs with elitists, for better or worse are short enough that any unpleasantness is equally short.)

Sorry but people setting the lvl80 restriction are likely aiming for a 15-20 min clear time so they can do other things and have probably done the dungeon a gazillion times and don’t necessarily want to spend time to ‘teach’ people.

If they spent their time learning the dungeon and having already suffered 1-3 hour runs, they have a right to not have to put up frustrations as such, especially when the armor fee for lvl 80 is significantly higher than that at lvl 35. Why should they have work harder to carry you when they get no additional rewards?

How about forming a party of lvl 35-only and try it out yourself? Try teaching yourselves how to dodge Lt. Kohler or scavengers. Try killing the burrows forming your own strategy on the spot. Approach the dungeon as a first-timer as a true first-timer. Only then will you truely appreciate the difficulty of the dungeon and actually have ‘fun’ doing so. And if you don’t feel free to add to the ‘dungeons are too hard/boring’ threads.

You may think aiming farm efficiency is dumb but when you need to run the dungeon 20+ times for gear, having 15-20 min runs instead of 1-2 hour runs becomes a massive difference. Who are you to judge how people value their time.

My advice: aim to play with like-minded players, you will always have more fun that way. As such, personally I find running with others who also value their Anet points (achievement points) to be more pleasant.

P.S. With a full lvl 80 team you are pretty much guaranteed to beat AC under 45 mins just through the stat difference alone. For higher level dungeons, it becomes tedious to teach people just by typing things out thus people resort to exploits/cheesy tactics like graveyard zerging CoF path 2 (in my experience CoF suicide pugs are generally also the least pleasant people of the GW2 community and of both high-ego yet terrible skill level). Really though, it shouldn’t even BE possible to succeed in explorables with PuGs.

Xyrm.5602:

My group farms Arah on a regular basis; we’ve cleared all of them multiple times, but typically stick to path 3 + either 2 or 4, depending on our mood. It’s not bad if you know what you’re doing and bring a DPS group. The mistake I keep seeing made on these forums is the advice to wear some vit and toughness gear. NO. Wear full berserker’s or rampagers (whatever is best for your class/spec), and learn to dodge.

Yeah I don’t get why people keep endorsing vitality and toughness so BLINDLY, especially the full power/tough/vit believers. Then complain about taking too long to kill anything… Crit chance on average adds 1% damage per 1% crit chance up to 50% then drops off. Condi damage and Crit Damage about adds the same amount. The difference is AMAZING especially at giganticus: oh he’s knocked out of phase 2 already and I’ve only used half my defensive utilities lolz compared to OMG this lasts forever, OMG I took a hit, my-heal-doesn’t-take-me-back to-full-next-hit-downs-me dilemma. Haven’t done path 4 but I assume it’s required to kill the last boss.

Overall, if you play skillfully, you will kill trash mobs and bosses twice as fast and not have to depend on survivability, which ends up just being a needless buffer for your health bar.

I don’t get why path 2 takes longer than path 3? There’s basically no trash mobs/you can skip the underwater sons of svanir+the first colossus if you so desire. The quaggan+boss fight is so easy too, you just have to have a mix of ranged+melee (the melees should back dodge the cone skill and back off when targetted though obviously) so you can keep nicely spread and kite the quaggans+aoe. Turn a complete 180 degree and run and you will never get hit by one of those spikes ever.

I just HATE that last boss more due to no combo fields to stack mights on/add damage so it takes forever. Underwater mechanics are so broken in general e.g. you can bandage yourself for 5x the speed of someone reviving AND you are able to channel it while swimming which just makes the boss so easy even when you eat his ‘superman’. Also, mesmers seem to do more damage while downed underwater it seems with like 10 stacks of confusion maintainable, I have yet to abuse this by mind blast spamming and bandaging to keep myself alive but not healed all the way.

Evasive Arcana already got nerfed once… It used to cast Shockwave and Updraft instead of the measly Churning Earth and Blinding Flash, so hopefully they wont so readily nerf it again… plus they’re still letting the meta settle so I doubt any trait reworks will happen soon (my poor, neglected fire line). So let’s enjoy the 10 air, 30 water, 30 arcane cookie cutter goodness while we still can

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

No thanks

words of wisdom

QFT. 875 might and condi damage is better than pumping into fire for the self-centered, weak and lack luster 3 might for 10 seconds per cantrip. AoE might from the blast combo rolling into a fire field applies an AOE 3 might stacks for massive 20(plus 6 from 30 arcane)(plus 2-4 from rune).

As far as damage output goes eles pretty much really on might stacks to do any. Arcana provides just so much through both survivability and damage to forgo.

Evasive arcana also opens up alot of avenues for cross-profession ownage. If you are roamer and your bunker guardian is getting ganked you can roll into his light fields for perma aoe retaliations and fend off the gank. If you are bunker and have a ganking thief and it turns awry you can roll into his smoke field for AoE stealth and give the thief an extra backstab to get the target low even more then finish it off with the classic static field+heartseeker spam combo for ~5 second daze to annihilate the target completely).

He only throws spiders if all 5 of you get hit from the spider bombs. Just learn the animation – left fist pound to back shake – and dodge just as the bombs start falling. It’s just basically the old sit-in-front tactic though you actually have to dodge rather than going afk.

Going in the bot formation is just etter for phase 1 since it makes the grubs all spawn in one predictable place and the locusts all concentrated in once nice killing zone instead of accumulating. Being abit more spread out gives you more time when he transitions into phase 2 if the party is slow though as long as you can focus down the grubs/fast enough.

The green missile is like an ‘auto-attack’ he shoots from his palm, it’s really dodgable once you get to know the animation, it’s tracking is also very inaccurate so you can alternatively zig-zag move and not waste a dodge. You can also reflect/deflect these bolts since they count as projectiles.

His AoE bolts are also reflect/deflectable but only with certain skills like Swirling Winds and Shield of Absorption can reliably block it due to the bolt’s AoE nature and they arrive from a high angle, though Smokescreens/Wall of Reflections and traited Temporal Curtain will work if you put it slightly in front of you instead of putting it on top of yourself. Not sure about Ranger with Whirling Defense though since I’ve always recommended they take horn offhand for swiftness instead (an the massive birds!).

It just takes awhile to get used to those timings as they the bolts seem to intentionally fly in that convoluted twists to mess with you rather than being predictably straight.

His rapid AoE palm thrusts in phase 3 is also projectile-based and it makes you feel like a hero when you stop it. The dome he subsequently follows up with after this palm thrust is like static field: you can just stand still and take no damage; trying to escape it after being entombed with dodge/block is futile though popping an invulnerability will let you pass through it completely it while teleports like lightning flash/blink will make you eat the stun once.

Going melee and whacking him in the back is viable for phase 3 but only if he’s not focusing you, AFTER he uses the aoe life steal and that you are prepared for when he turns around and targets you instead :P

Maybe phase 2 and 3 but I just don’t see how you can get past phase 1 solo without him ending up with so much toughness that you do only 0-1dmg per hit to him xD

Meh, arah explorable is enough like FoW imo, heck it even looks a tad like FoW. Giganticus Lupicus is the boss to force coordination on PuGs who otherwise fail without too short of bringing every defensive trait/utility they have. Just did a 2h+30 mins mursaat path run with a completely PuG and led them to victory (lost two people before that whom got told this wasn’t a ‘shard run’ and that those don’t work anymore, they probably went off to exploit CoF or something shrugs). The monsters DO die pretty fast if you actually have competent people in the group, not say, 5 signet warriors [we HAD one but through the dungeon I proggressively made suggestions on skills that may help us out and by the end of the dungeon the only signet he had left was the elite] and sits-on-greatsword-all-day-since-that’s-his-only-weapon at level 80 and refuses to kite mesmer [lost cause on a 5-hour jotun path run before that]).

We want it, and Anet somewhat promised it to us, but first they seemingly lack resources and have to fix that DR first >.>

“Fun impacts development. Explorable dungeons have multiple paths you can take and random events. Because of this you don’t feel like you need to play the same dungeon over and over again if you want to chase the prestigious rewards at the end, but can instead mix up that experience to keep it fresh and fun.”

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

Looking at that blog just makes me sad how things all those things sounded so wonderful back then. I think the grind is just too poorly concealed and the gambling system iterated (mystic forge) isn’t fun like getting them from dungeon runs. No-one wants to gamble with stuff they’ve managed to obtain from the jaws of the Anti-Farming code.

Sigils just don’t update tooltips or summary screens, except bloodlust etc that applies a counter which in turn does update the summary. With the sigils that extend condition, they don’t update the tooltip durations yet when applied to enemies the correct extensions are caused. Thus it is likely by extension the crit % works but just doesn’t show but because crit is random it is harder to test.

Also happens with mesmer downed skill occasionally. Worst thing is it can happen in PvP maps, had it happen to me in Raid of the Capricorn, basically removing you from the game since you can’t waypoint back.

Blossom control is unnecessary since the blossoms respawn in set locations thus you could just stand/dodge in/to blossom-less areas. If you happen to be standing near a blossom site as it respawns you WILL take damage since regardless, better off just getting downed and rallying off the blossom that killed you.