Citadel of Flame: Path 1 (the superweapon)

#1 - Sept. 20, 2012, 4:55 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Ran this dungeon path twice now, the first time was with a random group consisting of a thief, mesmer, guardian, warrior (me) and another warrior.

Second time was a guild group consisting of 3 warriors, an elementalist and a ranger.

The first time running this dungeon, we were completely blind, had no idea about anything but still managed to successfully finish the dungeon, the final boss was a tough fight but we managed to brute force it with mass DPS, totally ignoring the crystals.

This was most likely helped by the fact our thief kept poison up as much as possible (-33% healing effectiveness) and our mesmer kept Time Warp for the important burn phase from 30-0%.

On our second run with a guild group with access to team speak, co-ordination was spot on, we didnt die once and cleared through to the final encounter in record time, but could we kill him.

Not even remotely close, the crystals just spawned too fast and without having a thief/mesmer for the poison/burst DPS, we couldnt even dent it’s health.

So we attempted to do it the proper way, by destroying the crystals, we tried with 2 on the boss, 3 crystal killing. Couldn’t do enough damage to the boss. So we tried 3 on the boss, 2 doing crystals. Crystals spawned just as quick as we could dispatch them.

4 on boss, 1 on crystals. Pointless, couldnt do enough damage to offset the healing.

This is so far out of all the explorable modes I have tried the only one which demands a very specific group make up to even be possible. Without a Thief and Mesmer for the poison and 10 second double DPS increase, I just don’t see this encounter being possible.

Anyone care to prove otherwise, I’d be very impressed if you did it without one or both of the above mentioned classes.

#8 - Sept. 20, 2012, 10:48 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Hey folks,

Just thought I’d pop in and drop a comment on this since I designed it. MadMossy has a great tactic of utilizing poison to diminish the healing done by the crystals in your pug group. And of course, mesmer time warp is always a great way get some team burst damage no matter what the situation is.

Crystal drops are a bit random in their placement and their quantity, but there are caps in place for it. The only real luck in this fight is the same luck you encounter every other mob with.

the MSP is a tough dude, who I built to directly counter brute force comps. I haven’t seen a group yet internally able to defeat him while ignoring the crystals, so you’re on the right path.

As for an ANet video of it being done by in-house folks, I don’t know what that would prove. If we released a video of any tough encounter being done, I don’t know if it would help, since a thing that tends to happen with those is that people will claim we’re wearing special dev armor and dev weapons.
There are some guides out there. Some of them I have read aren’t quite correct, but some are spot on. You’re on the right path though.

#12 - Sept. 20, 2012, 11:20 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Mind pointing those out? When I google Gw2 Dungeons, you don’t want to know what comes up but I’m sure you have an idea heh

I once made the mistake of searching for fan-art of the charr. Needless to say, google images can be quite NSFW with no warning lol.
But no, I’m not going to point out the correct guides for this, at least not here in the first month of the game’s release. Part of exploration is finding and solving mysteries on your own.

Mossy –
I’m not a fan of things that super hurt with no real tell. I’ll look into the crystals drop rate and frequency, and their warm-up/falling warning.
I’m not about to say this fight was tested with all class/race variations (that would take way too long). We did however test it in the following conditions related to your concerns:
-No poison
-No quickness
-Natural level 75

There’s a balance that has to be made between crystal health and frequency/amount. There has been a lot of class fixes/changes these last few weeks, and it’s very possible something could have gone out of tune. I will investigate.

#26 - Sept. 20, 2012, 6:03 p.m.
Blizzard Post

/facepalm

I knew as soon as I saw the BOON tag, that things were about to get nasty.