The Five Temples Of Orr: Temple of Dwayna

Excerpt from Thelemic Influence Hunt (Every Tuesday, Darkhaven Server 21.00 GMT+7)

Dwayna is the Goddess of Life and the leader of the original six gods of humans, her temple is the Cathedral of Zephyr and the quest to reclaim it is related to a lore:

"When the gods Balthazar, Dwayna, Grenth, Kormir[sic], Lyssa and Melandru arrived in Tyria, it was impossible, because of their divine nature, to appear before human eyes without blinding them.

Thus they decided to fetch a sculptor, so that he could shape statues in their image.

When the eyes of the sculptor Malchor, fell upon the face of Dwayna, his heart was instantly filled with a pure and unconditional love. It became impossible for him to turn down any of Dwayna's requests. And thus the creation of the statues was commenced.

One after another, the gods presented themselves in his studio and for each one Malchor carved a statue in their image. Once a statue was finished, the God returned to the city of Arah, where no human could enter.

So it was that Dwayna finally entered the studio of the sculptor. Malchor sublimated his art so that all the grace and beauty of the Goddess radiated from his statue. And as long as he worked on the statue, as long could he enjoy the infinite happiness which the presence of Dwayna gave him.

Alas then came the fateful moment when the statue was completed, and where the goddess would leave for Arah. Unable to bear the despair that grasped him when the figure of the goddess had disappeared from the horizon; he threw himself from a cliff.
The place where Malchor lost his life now bears his name: the Strait of Malchor."
— The Story of Malchor And Dwayna
From: Guild Wars 2 Wiki

A. Escort Historian Vermoth to the Altar of Tempests
Historian Vermoth can be tricky to find, his spawn point is usually on the south-south east of the temple, simply talk to him to start the event, it's an easy fight (for a group)

B. Defeat the Risen Priestess of Dwayna
She's been buffed by the game's patch from time to time, her current incarnation now can throw wind glaives that returns to her, dealing double damage if you're standing still on it's path, pull you several times and deals a heavy melee damage, she also summons a lot of veteran risen knight with it's devastating earth spike attacks, she'll also teleport from time to time, making a really dirty job for melee preferers.

C. Drive Malchor to the Altar of Tempests
After she goes down the Historian will tell you that the statue of Dwayna in the temple is protected by a barrier which only Malchor's can dispel and he can't cleanse the temple without first dispelling it. Your job is now to find Malchor's spirit on the far west of the temple and drive him to the barrier. After you find him talk to him and it'll start an event where you will drive him towards the temple and occasionally fighting him, on the way he'll tell you how he failed abymsally to recreate first Dwayna's statue (you'll see some of his failed recreation on the first area where you find him), it's more of a story to an event

d. Legendary Fight: Defeat the Possessed statue of Dwayna

After Malchor's finally resolved to free the temple from Zhaitan's corruption he'll break the seal which will make the Statue of Dwayna came alive and summon Malchor's chisel, take out the chisels and hammers first since they'll knockback and stun you, other than that they're easy.
The Corrupted Statue of Dwayna itself has gone from lootfest to wipefest, she has two major attack, one is a fire AOE that can take out half of your HP if you're not investing on vit or toughness, usually followed by ghostfire AOE that aim on random party members and deal MEGA damage, she will from time to time use this rotation.
To counter her attacks always heal after hit by the fire AOE, use ranged weapon so you won't get hit by it since it has a somewhat short-medium range, watch out for ghostfire attack, when she shoots a needle to the sky, DODGE! because half a second later ghostfires will rain down upon your party, each of these will create an AOE so if you're not so lucky and landed near two of it you'll be guaranteed to go down, also spread out to minimize this attack's effect, still standing players must work quick to ress their teammates and the one who didn't get a ress must quickly rally.
After several minutes of nightmare she'll goes down and you'll free to loot her chest and listen to Malchor's final rant, Historian vermoth will open up his inventory for you, Rune of Dwayna boost your healing power stat and also apply regen to teammates, a good choice for support players.

 

The Five Temples of Orr: Temple of Lyssa

Excerpt from Thelemic Influence Hunt (Every Tuesday, Darkhaven Server 21.00 GMT+7)

Cathedral of Eternal Radiance is a temple dedicated to the twin Gods of Illusion Lyssa, it's located on Malchor's Leap, east of Straits of Devastation, on it's current condition the temple is a major battlefield where you must attack and defend some spot on the temple before engaging the Risen High Priestess of Lyssa itself. The circular layout of the temple is a deathtrap, filled with endless spawned Risen, Spectrals, and Abominations and you'll be constantly harassed by the risen catapults erected around the temple

There are three points that must be defended from the horde of risen, they are:

A. Protect the Pact golems until they charge the neutralizer device
This event located in the northwest corner of the temple, there are several golems here, most of them are offline, you must click the glowing tower surrounded the area and throw the charging orb into the golems, they'll come alive and will continue gathering the charge for the neutralizing device, in this moment you'll be attacked by several risen, just keep them away from the golems, after the neutralizing device fully charged the event is completed

B. Defeat the Risen forces before they construct fortifications around the Seal of Union
The Seal of union containing Lyssa Waypoint is on the northeast corner of the map, ignore the risen if you can, all you have to do is destroy the ribcages around the waypoint after it's fully destroyed the waypoint become uncontested and you can use it. It's essential to rally all people from the area.

Additional Information: on the defend the waypoint event after you claim it, there will be a champion Risen Wraith that can FEAR you so you'll fall out of the platform into the body of water below (or landed on the bottom floor if you're not that lucky), it's annoying to go around and get into the waypoint again (which will be contested during the event) so all you have to do is kill it quickly while prevent him to contruct more ribcages

C.Defend the Seal of Lyss until the Pact cannon is online
This is the last and most difficult takedown event on this meta, there are three NPC that must be resurrected and protected while they contruct the cannon, unfortunately they will take their time, sometimes abandoning it to engage newly spawned risen, keep the risen away from them at all costs especially the Veteran Abominations with stacked frenzy, it can take a long time, depending on how you perform well on keeping the risen away from the NPC

Only after completing all these events you can engage the corrupted priestess of Lyssa

D.  Legendary Fight: Kill the Corrupted High Priestess
Here you go, have a go with the priestess, she's located in the center of the temple, she can evade, block, blink, daze, running around, but her attacks doesn't really damaging, it's just annoying. BEWARE: every now and then the three seal that you claimed will be attacked again, don't let it fail! just don't! send a defend team or split your party (see additional information above), if one seal failed the priestess will be invulnerable and reset and so you must liberate the seal once again before engaging her.

And every now and then too the corrupted priestess will use his ultimate attack (Corrupted Gaze), everyone that is facing her will be dazed continuously it has a long range and she'll be completely invulnerable during this moment, so face away from her, easy? nah, she'll summon a LOT of risen during this moment and they'll out for your blood, you must engage these while not facing her, a mesmer can use his fourth focus skill to dislocate the risen, use a lot of AOE, when the Corrupted Gaze ended she'll be vulnerable again, just remember that she has a lot of HP.

When she's downed (after 10 mins or so) the temple will be cleansed, chest will spawn, and Lightbringer Brutefur will open up his karma shop for you, Lyssa has a good superior rune that you should check out, on the 5th rune you can activate elite skill to gain all boons and lose all condition, it's an awesome choice for any profession. 

Link: My guild's video during the opening of Lyssa's (and Grenth) temple

The Five Temples of Orr: Temple of Balthazar

Excerpt from Thelemic Influence Hunt (Every Tuesday, Darkhaven Server 21.00 GMT+7)

Orr was a devout country dedicated to the five original Gods of humans, it sunks into the depth of ocean before the Elder Undead Dragon Zhaitan raised it and it's dead denizens as minions, now the five temple of gods are also corrupted and cleansing them is a group event worthy of a big rewarding chest

Balthazar the God of War has a temple called Cathedral of Glorious Victory on Straits of Devastation, the first part of Orr. The pre-event must be completed if you want to liberate the temple, all of them are group event and can be a drag (almost impossible) if you do it solo, they are:

A. Escort The Invasion Pact
- Escort the northern invasion Pact squad to the Pact rally point at Triumph Plaza. Begins at Royal Forum Waypoint
- Escort the central invasion Pact squad to the Pact rally point at Triumph Plaza. Begins at Armada Harbor in Fort Trinity
- Escort the southern invasion Pact squad to the Pact rally point at Triumph Plaza. Begins at Fort Trinity.

Note: You can do one of any of these chain events, but if another escort event have been triggered you must finish it before the next progress can be started

B. Help the Pact reach the Altar of Betrayal before their morale is depleted
This is probably the most annoying escort mission on all Guild wars 2, the pact force consists of some NPC and when one of them killed their overall morale depleted, they have little HP and can't be revived but can be healed with wells and AOE heals. The NPCs are also like to rush the risen so it's your job to get the risen before they got the NPCs, sometimes Risen spawned right in the middle of the NPCs and must be interrupted/knockback before they do much damage to them. the NPCs are also like to bug out, stopped in their path, halted the entire progress of the mission and locked the temple of Balthazar until the next server reset =((

C.  Seize the Altar of Betrayal before Pact morale can be broken
When the pact troops arrived on the temple it become the defend area mission, just wipe all the spawned risen before they got to the big blue defend area and you'll be fine

D. Legendary Fight: Defeat the Risen Priest of Balthazar before it can summon a horde of Risen

This is the final mission on liberating the temple of Balthazar, the Risen Priest of Balthazar can do a one-hit-kill AOE well, summon Risen Acolyte that will heal him, and when you thought you're safe after dodging a well he fears you to it =)) and yeah he also have TONS of HP and 10 minutes countdown before he summons a horde of risen, despawn, and failed the mission.

The key to this fight is to kill the risen acolytes as soon as they spawn and watch for the priest's AOE, if you're defeated just get back to the Rally Waypoint and run from there, it's not that far, you'll probably need 20++ people for this fight. It's somewhat hard since you have to sometimes switch DPS for the risen acolyte and still must have a good chunk for the Risen Priest to counter the timer, after he goes down the pact will liberate the temple, a big chest will spawn (Rare guaranteed now) and Tactician Deathstrider will set upa a shop selling the +prec +tough +cond damage Armageddon Armors and Obsidian Shard for your Legendary needs

Being Saleh: Woe of DPS

Damage per second (DPS or dps) is a measure of the damage dealt by a person or group over one second. DPS is a more practical measure of damage output than plain damage, as it allows characters of differing levels and classes to effectively compare their damage output. The term dps is also sometimes used to describe the act of applying damage to a target (as in "all dps on the boss" or "stop all dps"), or to refer to a class whose primary role in a group is dealing damage (Wowpedia)

In my previous MMO (a.k.a WoW) DPS is essential, most of WOW's raid boss have enrage timer that increases their attack speed if they don't get killed in a set of time which will cause a wipe, some Raid Boss have something called DPS Race which when the boss have extremely large pool of HP and set of attack that has increasing damage per rotation or per phase or when it's HP gets low, so DPSers must try to maintain a as a steady DPS and pull everything they got before the healer ran out of mana or the tank can't stand the heat, as a dedicated DPS myself I know how DPS is essential on Raids and Dungeons, and DPS meter become a necessity for raiders.

Enter Guild Wars 2 where holy trinity is nowhere to be found and all damage have one attribute: the damage itself, and when it come to dungeon bosses (and some legendary enemies) DPS becomes unnecessary because depends on how you mitigate or evade the bosses attacks and also healing you won't be damaging the boss unless you have some kind of traits or condition on it, and so come the sweet taste of variation that's been lacked on WoW and other 'holy-trinity' MMORPG.

Unfortunately, variation isn't what some people looking for, as a mesmer I enjoyed dodging, lasergunning, and stabbing my enemies, a warrior however prefer to up close and personal with an enemy and brutally cut it down with greatsword skills, we both managed to kill an enemy but what differs us is time of the killing, I need 10 secs of evading and slashing, while the warrior can hack'n'slash it in 4. And so the segregation begins, on Citadel of Fire a level 75 dungeons it's explorable path one has become so easy and people are starting to farm it, of course there is always a catch in form of dinimishing returns where your loot rate and rewards diminished as time goes by when you're in the dungeon, or when a path is taken repeatedly, and so the zerg against time begins. This is when DPS term returns, most of the PUG party prefers hard hitting heavy armorer like warrior clad in berserker armor and have their offensive traits maxed out because the bosses don't have hard hitting AOE or skills to compensate with the player's DPS output, and the hard hitting trash mobs are entirely skippable.

Well, it happens before in Ascalonian Catacombs, and Anet buffed it, made it harder and even deadlier than before, and so...people stopped doing it, of course some dedicated people are still cool with it, especially the token collectors, and so AC's back in their respectable niche of players. I always complained that 'dungeons r hard' before but now I started to see the silver lining it of it, if dungeons are easy people are gonna start farming it, the class becomes segregated, chats are filled with "LF WARRIOR/GUARD COF", have their own DPS meters, gear checks and stuff and make DPS a necessary factor of the dungeon game again.

Damage Per Second isn't a term fit for Guild Wars 2, because instead of pulling 10k per sec you have to dodge, heal yourself (and allies), debuff, create combo fields for your teammates, buff yourself and others, switch weapons, ress downed characters, and of course all the while damage the boss. Sometimes you'd heal more than you damage, sometimes condition is your only weapon, sometimes kiting while evading is the only way to lure the boss from your friends and sometimes you just strive for not dying because zero HP means zero DPS and when your teammates tried to resuscitate the defeated you, the situation can quickly become -1 DPS.

Being Saleh: No More Corpse Run

When I logged on yesterday there's one thing that surprise me, apparently in the latest patch Anet decided that Corpse Run (rezzing in the waypoint when defeated in a dungeon) was not working as intended so they changed it so that all of your party must be out of combat (or wiped) before you can ress yourselves on the waypoints

Later on my surprise become a thought as I stared at my character lay defeated on the dungeon floor, just lying there waiting someone in my party which kiting subject alpha all around, rezzing someone on Subject Alpha is 89% suicide, because of all the dragon tooth and ice stuffs, no place is safe when encountering Subject Alpha, previously I can rezz on the waypoint and get back quickly to rejoin the fight, but now? I'm just staring at my screen, feeling useless, defeated has become a punishment

I'm not a dungeon crawler although I love them dungeons, since the beta I have seen how dungeon works: you're defeated, nothing is lost, just rezz on the nearest waypoint, "go back and rejoin the fray", a line I used to tell dungeon newcomers to encourage them that defeated is not a punishment, it's just costly, and the journey back is it's own challenge. But now it seems like Anet has changed the basic rules, and I didn't see the benefit of it, now I don't know how many PUG starters got scolded because half of the party has to stop their DPS and ress them in risk to get defeated themselves.

"It's okay to die" rule has become "don't die" rule, and I expect nothing good will came of it, unless dungeon is now intended to the elites and not casuals

A Worgen In Pandaland

This is a post about how I came back to WoW last December, tasting the new atmosphere of the exotic locations and new stories I'm overall sure that Mists Of Pandaria is a major advancement from Cataclysm, but the flaw is still there, and they stay the same.

As I have one character on each faction I decided to level my Alliance Warrior first, as the skill tree resets and I don't have to choose between single minded fury and Titan's grip anymore I decided to change to single handed weapons anyway, the warrior skill tree now gives us banners to buff up party's attack or defense, some change on shouts and I can now select Bladestorm (yay!), plus avatar form which used to be exclusive on dwarves. As a Fury Warrior my skill rotation slightly changed, now I can choose between small rapid attacks or big numbered skills between auto attacks, some mixed up still continue to plague me as I tried to dodge by double clicked my arrow buttons (GW2 syndrome).

FYI, the natives can dodge

The story of Alliance in Pandaria are well written and well presented, the first area (Jade Forest) is a breathtaking scenery and a welcomed departure from Cataclysm claustrophobic feels, everything from the tress, building design, road design (very2 important since you can't fly in Pandaria until max level), imagining climbing the high road until you arrive at the peak and you see a big tower on the horizon and a city on it's base, some kind like that. The story flows steadily until you realized what are you doing and at that time you said oh sh*t and then sh*t happens....

Just remember to flush next time

The PVE battles are somewhat easier, although some monsters have lackeys that has little HP and can be annoying if you don't AOE them immediately, but they add something to the challenge, the regular dungeons are EASY, believe me, having started in the patch 4.1 I expect new dungeons are mirroring them cataclysm dungeons, but they don't, MOP dungeons are easy, and fun, and they have big bunnies and monkeys as bosses, it almost broke my heart defeating them, well we're not actually killing them though :D. The heroics are also EASY, although they required some attention and reflex but it's nothing like the troll dungeons and Jin'do the PUGbreaker (pre-nerf) =))

But as I said before: The flaw stay the same, started with the creation of the pandaren monk, watching the prologue story about how wandering Pandarens decided to help Horde and Alliance is really good, but when you hit Orgrimmar/Stormwind and at the end of the story you're just like "What? Barrens/Elwynn again? travelling through time in Outland and Northrend again? DEATHWING AGAIN???!!!" I know it's unavoidable on level progressing game like WOW but grinding to 90 is... enough to give me an upset stomach =))

I only give the game a try for a week although I subbed for a month, because of my time on GW2 and after that: the unavoidable busy days. so I tried to level my warrior to the max in order to try the new LFR, I was surprised that now valor items are tied to the faction reputation but since dailies limit has been removed i'm free to do them all but still... that takes time, time I didn't have, so I ended my sub without trying the new LFR and said goodbye to lush and beautiful Pandaria, LFR won't go anywhere right? =))

The End Of Guild Wars 2...

No it's not a doomsday post, and yes I haven't been writing for like 3 months because I was grinding learning dungeons with my guildmates, and I haven't been much online this month because of works, and why the hell I used such a provocative title? I really have no idea, I like subject alpha though :D

Break Yourself Upon my BODYYYYYY!!!

 I have to redact my last post, dungeons on guild wars 2 CAN be learned (Sorrow Embrace was a gamebreaking bug) but even when you learned all the tricks there will be surprises, some months earlier Anet added new dynamic events such as the troll events on Ascalonian Catacombs that will fight with some dungeon bosses, cut out our work for us, and now you'll get some amount of token, gems, gold, or karmas from every bosses, makes the journey from the first to the last bosses is worth a while, it also makes story mode is rewarding, so every time you guide some of the newcomer there, you'll get your own reward and it won't be an entirely carrying.

Guild Wars 2 has been a great journey, ArenaNet hosted two major event and a 'love it or hate it' otherwise forgettable Karka Event (including a forgettable new area, and the it's-raining-free-precursors one time event) in two months, Halloween and Wintersday Event are huge festivities, I even enjoyed some of the jumping puzzle. I also enjoyed the vertical challenge of Fractals of the Mists, a new tiered dungeon system.

January is probably a bug fixing month from Anet, they fixed some gamebreaking huge bugs, some dungeon exploits, and even they announced to fix Fractal disconnect doom party pooper....

R.I.P: Titan's Grip, bug fixed

My guild has been on the roll, but even some of them aren't immune to the six-month-blues where there aren't enough content to whet their appetite, the World vs World vs World will started anew since now free server transfer is no more available and guesting will be live in several days (finally). There are talks that they'll add guild missions (more finally)

There's still a lot to come from Guild Wars 2, I really hope they won't be made some grievous error on Karka Event though, good idea, bad implementation, at least it was a honeymoon for some Legendary chaser though :))