The Spirit Vale Megathread

[4KhazModan]

The Spirit Vale released today, so what does everyone think about it? How is your progression going?

Personally, my guild went in for about 30 mins, just to see the fight before we actually have our scheduled raid this weekend. I went in with my Druid and the heals were insane, basically 100% uptime on my Celestial Form. We got the first 3 mobs down just fine, and we managed to survive the Vale Guardian until the enrage, although we didn't hit phase 2. We went in completely blind and it wasn't until afterwards that I went and looked up the fight myself.

[Arlee]

I really enjoyed my time in there last night. The mechanics in the first boss fight are really interesting. It's also awesome how the first fight requires having people with different specs to get through the phase where he splits to the three colors. Then the phase after where different sections of the floor light up and he does the interruptible "rain of bubbles" thing was really neat as well. Looking forward to seeing the rest of everything The other thing was it took us a little bit to realize it's completely possible to avoid the being teleported across the room thing, that made a huge difference.

My only real complaint is it can be really hard to see the bad red circles in the middle of all the player spell effects ><

[4KhazModan]

The other thing was it took us a little bit to realize it's completely possible to avoid the being teleported across the room thing, that made a huge difference.

My only real complaint is it can be really hard to see the bad red circles in the middle of all the player spell effects ><

Yup, it can be tricky to dodge as it only shows up for a second before it goes off. There was was attempt where we stacked up in the green circle but then the boss hit literally everyone with the teleport and we all got teleported out of the circle, wiping the raid when it went off.

[Kantalope]

I pugged it for about an hour just to get a feel of the fight. We managed to get past the first transition phase once. I was on a full zerker ele, and the amount of unavoidable aoe damage aura felt a bit unnecessary. It forced me to be one of the people stacking on the lightning in order to get druid heals because even using my heal and water staff heals on cooldown, it would be impossible for me to keep myself alive.

While GW2 has always had a play as you want mentality, this encounter pigeon holes the raid into playing specific classes. I can't imagine this being done without a druid healer. The requirement of high condi damage further pigeon holes the raid. Will it be good for the game to force diversity? Only time will tell, I guess.

[Deleted]

I'm a little sad. I was there for the raid weekend, I had the whole weekend off.

Now it's released and I couldn't even login on GW2 because I'm too busy.



Y u no release on weekend

[4KhazModan]

I pugged it for about an hour just to get a feel of the fight. We managed to get past the first transition phase once. I was on a full zerker ele, and the amount of unavoidable aoe damage aura felt a bit unnecessary. It forced me to be one of the people stacking on the lightning in order to get druid heals because even using my heal and water staff heals on cooldown, it would be impossible for me to keep myself alive.

While GW2 has always had a play as you want mentality, this encounter pigeon holes the raid into playing specific classes. I can't imagine this being done without a druid healer. The requirement of high condi damage further pigeon holes the raid. Will it be good for the game to force diversity? Only time will tell, I guess.

The Druid should be coming to you to heal you, as there isn't really much unavoidable damage I found.

[Kazgrel]

Found on reddit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNotF5NPz-8

If that doesn't get you amped at all, you may not have a pulse. :P

[Kantalope]

The Druid should be coming to you to heal you, as there isn't really much unavoidable damage I found.

The aura seemed to pulse ~1.8k damage. That's about 16% of my ele's base health per tick. I didn't time between ticks, but they seemed to be fairly frequent.

[carnifex2005]

Found on reddit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNotF5NPz-8

If that doesn't get you amped at all, you may not have a pulse. :P

Very cool. Also cool, the Ghostly Infusion that can drop from any of the bosses in Spirit Vale. Here's video of one of the first ones to drop...



That infusion is also able to be sold on the Trading Post, so that could be a very nice source of income for raiders. I'd love to get one.

[Arlee]

The aura seemed to pulse ~1.8k damage. That's about 16% of my ele's base health per tick. I didn't time between ticks, but they seemed to be fairly frequent.

There is an aura which does periodic damage to everyone, the tooltip on it says it does 1500 a tick but it wasn't too much trouble for us to deal with. We did have a druid in our group (this druid also came with me and our other condi person to heal us while we killed the red dude) and I think we had one other heal focused player. Additionally I used the hell out of rebound, the ticks weren't a huge issue for us. The larger issue for us was people getting into the green circle fast enough (and not leaving too soon) and people getting out of the teleport circles quickly.

[Kantalope]

There is an aura which does periodic damage to everyone, the tooltip on it says it does 1500 a tick but it wasn't too much trouble for us to deal with. We did have a druid in our group (this druid also came with me and our other condi person to heal us while we killed the red dude) and I think we had one other heal focused player. Additionally I used the hell out of rebound, the ticks weren't a huge issue for us. The larger issue for us was people getting into the green circle fast enough (and not leaving too soon) and people getting out of the teleport circles quickly.

Ya, it's not too bad if you have a druid healer. It almost feels like druid healers are forced because of it, though. That's really my only gripe. They're pushing you into the trinity when they've always been against it. Not saying that one way is better than the other, but it's really a huge change in game mechanics.

[Svifnymr]

Ya, it's not too bad if you have a druid healer. It almost feels like druid healers are forced because of it, though. That's really my only gripe. They're pushing you into the trinity when they've always been against it. Not saying that one way is better than the other, but it's really a huge change in game mechanics.

That's what I didn't like from that video above. Camera zoomed all the way out, talk of tank, heals, brought back memories I didn't need.


Anybody running Scrappers for the remote rez? :-p

And also, any Lore stuff out of the raid? Haven't really seen much, and the wiki seems unable to catch up.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Couldn't get into a group for the raid on LFG, strange considering I'm a Druid and (supposedly) I'm a dedicated healer spec. Hm...

[Black Rider]

Any guild that streams their raid?

[Maarius]

Ya, it's not too bad if you have a druid healer. It almost feels like druid healers are forced because of it, though. That's really my only gripe. They're pushing you into the trinity when they've always been against it. Not saying that one way is better than the other, but it's really a huge change in game mechanics.

It's not imho, you still can play with regular waterfield-blasts, or warrior-shout heals. It's just that you now have the option to play with a dedicated healer as well. Woodenpotatoes explained how he played a aura-share Elementalist when they defeated the first boss (and almost the second). It's not a direct heal profession but rather a supporter which helps allies with buffs like protection and other shields/auras.

[zito]

So what's the story in the raid? It's suppose to be the after effects of the living world storyline.

[Maarius]

So what's the story in the raid? It's suppose to be the after effects of the living world storyline.

From what I've seen it's a sidestory. Some bandits have captured some of our people. Don't know more about it though.

[barackopala]

I killed vale guardian, the events that come after that are interesting, except one of them (the wall event) outside of that they're quite nice, a bit filler but it's fine.
If you're having probs with VG 3rd phase i'd recommend that you dont interrupt his "disco ball" phase so you can have an easier time dpsing it.

[Deleted]

From what I've seen it's a sidestory. Some bandits have captured some of our people. Don't know more about it though.

I've only seen a couple of streams but it looks like as you get further in the bandits are sacrificing the kidnapped pact soldiers to something or other. At the end of the raid you can rescue some and there's some reveal dialogue which I haven't seen. It sounds like it could be white mantle related though.

[Black Rider]

Any news about second wing?