Ascalonian Catacombs - Explorable mode - Tactics

[noaru]

I would like to edit this first post as a tactics compendium for this particular dungeon based on the experience and after-many-wipes reports of brave RPS groups.

Encounters:

Common:
Spider queen
Lieutenant wossname
- pulls everyone to him, immobilizes/stuns(?) and then does some high damage aoe - avoid at all costs
- some sort of ranged weapon + LoSing around pillars is highly recommended

Path #1 (Hodgins)
-There are two burrows at the start, one near the door and one in some corner
-Kill the corner one first, it spawns a breeder; target him down
-Do not kill the burrow near the door until no other burrows are left, it will spawn two leaping gravelings who will kill you
-After the breeder is down, three people protect Hodgins, while two people (with as much DPS as possible) kill the burrows
-If you protect Hodgins, AoE heal is a good idea

As a sidenote, burrows seemingly spawn less stuff over time, but do spawn deadly stuff when they die, so keep that in mind and don't destroy all burrows as fast as you can, you will get overwhelmed.
Also, Hodgins is the worst NPC in the game, but that's another story.

Thanks to Labbes and his group.

Path #2 (Detha / Ghost Eater)
TBD

Path #3 (Tzark / Colossus)

You get sent to the Lovers' room and that's where the first (only?) encounter of this path happens. You have to defend two spirit collectors while they uhm collect. They're on opposite sides of the room and you'll have a lot of graveling burrows spawning to attack them. I suppose this is phase 1 of the encounter, but we didn't manage to beat it so I don't know what follows.

Objective: defend the collectors (quite low hp) while they charge. If both are destroyed the encounter resets.
Problems:
- burrows appear at set places in the room spawning a lot of small mobs and from time to time bigger ones
- the small ones need to be aoed down
- the big ones hit like a truck and one particular flavor (the Breeder) spawns even more small ones
- the burrows have big models and small hitboxes making them hard to hit in melee
- splitting your forces to defend both collectors results in getting overwhelmed, while defending only one collector means the encounter will be so much longer

Tried and true:
TBD

Attempts:
- given enough dps, mow down each burrow and its spawns before another one appears. Not doable, we tried with two time warps (quickness elite from mesmers) but you still end up wasting too much time on the bigger elites or on "obstructed, miss" buggery with the burrows themselves.
- nuke the first two burrows and ignore the rest, while defending one of the crystals and killing breeders ASAP. Still getting overwhelmed with spawns after a while.
- kite kite kite. let them spawn and kite'em around the room. haven't tried this one but it has potential.

[noaru]

Pain... so much pain. We did a run through a part of the explorable mode last night - the one where you choose to battle the colossus or something like that.

Overall it is not much harder than story mode, but there are some fights where it feels overtuned (at least for a lvl 45 character). We had issues with not enough dps/aoe dps or not enough survivability and I partly blame the lack of dps on the fact that even if you get downsized to level 35, a level 80 char will have full traits and better gear stats overall than a level 40ish guy.

What happened is that we passed the spider queen reasonably easy, very chaotic fight with traps and adds everywhere. Then we ran into lieutenant wossname and managed to get him down with me dieing 100 times to that stupid pull+stun+oneshot (due to having only melee weapons equipped). We thought we had it good though and it was at the next encounter where things got impossible - see above.

We ran with Guardian (me), Elementalist, 2x Mesmers and a Warrior. Two of them were lvl 80 even.

[Screwie]

Ouch, that sounds very nasty. What happens if you fail to protect the spirit collectors? Insta-fail the dungeon?

Maybe ome combination of protections/controls (thinking warding from guardians, plus stuns, chills and fears from others) to simply block swarms from reaching one collector while the rest of the team protect and wipe out the other side?

Looking over my lvl 40 build I'm not sure what I would bring to a fight that sounds like it demands a lot of anti-swarm AoE. I'd be tempted to try the Fiery Greatsword elite skill, as it comes with a decent amount of high-damage AoE, has a low cooldown (for an elite) and comes in pairs.

[noaru]

Once both collectors are destroyed all mobs despawn and the encounter is reset. That usually happens before everyone is killed, so retrying this encounter is easy.
There is none of that "oh I died I can just run back from a waypoint" due to the fact that if someone dies you start getting swarmed (we didn't have enough dps with everyone alive) and fail the encounter.

The problem is that you need heavy aoe for the shitload of small ones but also you need to do good single target dps on the big elites - oh and dodge around because they hit hard.
The greatsword guardian (with 20% smaller cd on skills and big symbols) is amazing for mowing down the hordes of small adds, probably warrior aoe spec as well.

[Howlee]

The lieutenant's pull>whirlwind>aoe death can be avoided by losing it. I don't know the tell he gives but as ranged stay close to a pillar (if you ever played a healer in nagrand arena in wow you know the drill).

He also had one attack that seemed to be some kind of power-charged melee attack? I noticed him stopping, drawing back his weapon and starting to mega man buster blaster-charge. I'm not sure what it lead to cause I was hidden behind said pillar way before he released

Also he has that "can't be knocked down" buff, but I'm pretty sure he can be snared. Several times when he went for me I saw him limping around crippled and slowed down.

The spider wasn't very hard at all from my pov. Watch out for red circles on the ground and use condition clearing abilities to get rid of the poison and the snare would be my take on that encounter.

Looking over my lvl 40 build I'm not sure what I would bring to a fight that sounds like it demands a lot of anti-swarm AoE. I'd be tempted to try the Fiery Greatsword elite skill, as it comes with a decent amount of high-damage AoE, has a low cooldown (for an elite) and comes in pairs.

Greatsword was great for the graveling burrows fight. Even with 20 earth 12 water the sheer amount of adds just tear through anything, and the greatsword mobility really helps to survive while still killing stuff. For this fight I probably would've preferred a more offensive trait build (more damage, less adds, no problems) but for the other parts of the dungeon (the route we took at least) defense all the way baby.

[byteCrunch]

The lieutenant's pull>whirlwind>aoe death can be avoided by losing it. I don't know the tell he gives but as ranged stay close to a pillar (if you ever played a healer in nagrand arena in wow you know the drill).

His tell is leaping into the center of the area, you have about 1/2 a second to react. Or you can avoid the fight altogether and just walk around the edge and continue on.

[squirrelfanatic]

His tell is leaping into the center of the area, you have about 1/2 a second to react. Or you can avoid the fight altogether and just walk around the edge and continue on.

Thread resurrection because I need to know if this is still true. Passing by would save quite a lot time in this Dungeon, but then you wouldn't get the waypoint (and miss out on the sweet chest), which is very helpful lateron.

Might be worth a try if the Troll doesn't spawn. If he does, one could simply pull the guys into each other and finish off the adds / venture on.

Thoughts on this?

[Labbes]

I don't think that killing Kholer triggers anything in particular, so with AoE invisibility skills, I guess it would be possible. You do lose out on waypoint and chest though, and since he's not a very hard boss (very obvious tell for his instakill), I personally don't think it's worth it.

Also, here's how to beat the graveling room in Path 1 (Hodgins)*:
-There are two burrows at the start, one near the door and one in some corner
-Kill the corner one first, it spawns a breeder; target him down
-Do not kill the burrow near the door until no other burrows are left, it will spawn two leaping gravelings who will kill you
-After the breeder is down, three people protect Hodgins, while two people (with as much DPS as possible) kill the burrows
-If you protect Hodgins, AoE heal is a good idea

As a sidenote, burrows seemingly spawn less stuff over time, but do spawn deadly stuff when they die, so keep that in mind and don't destroy all burrows as fast as you can, you will get overwhelmed.
Also, Hodgins is the worst NPC in the game, but that's another story.
*Disclaimer: Not my plan, stole it from RPSers I ran the dungeon with.

[squirrelfanatic]

Good idea with not killing all the burrows straight away, hadn't thought about that. Kholer isn't very hard, true, but he may cost you a few silver if your team mates are not quick enough with the ressurection.

Don't know if this works at particular boss, but in general it is not a bad idea to have a few of these lovely little helpers on you when you go ... dungeoneering. They do wonders when you are trying to get one of your mates up and don't want to be focussed on.

[noaru]

Updated path number 1, cheers Labbes!

Probably many ran this by now, I'd like to get some tactics for the other two paths. Come on, don't be shy!