One of the objectives I set for myself in Guild Wars this year was to tackle the high-end PvE content in the game and accordingly, I took on the Elite-rated dungeon, Slavers; Exile, and beat it twice with Heroes and henchmen.
(There was, of course, the little matter of the dozen failed attempts but we shall speak little of that. Moving on, moving on …)
Slaver’s Exile is accessed through the quest, The Last Hierophant, which can only be acquired after you beat the main campaign of the Eye of the North expansion. It involves assassinating four sub-bosses in three different dungeons before tackling the boss of the bosses, Duncan the Black.
It’s tough even in Normal Mode and I shudder to think what it might be like in Hard Mode.
There are the standard overlapping mob patrols of the tougher missions and quests in the game but the thing that stands out about Slavers’ Exile is the mobs tend to be very well balanced with individual foes possessing very effective skillbars. Battles tend to be challenging and victory is never assured.
The death penalty mounts rapidly in this dungeon and the careless or inexperienced player will soon find his party hitting the dreaded 60 per cent DP cap. This can happen right at the outset as some mobs are dangerously close to resurrection shrines at the starting points. If your party should wipe (which is all too easy to do), you respawn at the shrine, are immediately set upon by the same mob that wiped you and wiped again. It’s a vicious circle that will continue until you swear and give up for the day.
Tricksy
I went into these dungeons blind without knowing what to expect so the various tricks the designers employed proved to be a nasty shock. Narrow corridors that favoured enemy elementalists, respawning spirits that provided health rejuvenation for enemies, multiple pop-ups designed to surprise players as they target a mob, high hills perfect for enemy rangers …
There were ways to counter these enemy advantages but it took me a few tries to work out the best approaches. These tries took a lot of time and involved a lot of frustration. I had frequent opportunity to curse my henchmen’s slow reaction to AoE attacks and repeatedly boggled at my Protection Monk Hero’s choice of spells. While Slavers’ Exile is certainly doable with a Hero/henchman party, expect to do a lot more micromanagement than usual.
It generally took me an hour to take out each of the sub-bosses and once they were all despatched, the dungeon containing the boss of bosses was unlocked. The fight against the titular Hierophant, a dwarf of a decidedly spiritual nature named Duncan the Black, was classic ArenaNet: drawn out and with rewards that scarcely commensurated with the effort taken.
Oh look, a gold shield for my Mesmer.
Bear country
I’m sure Slavers’ Exile will be a snap with an experienced all-player party but another annoying thing about this Elite dungeon is PUGs restrict themselves to only three builds: r9 ursan, SV Necro with Swap, and HB Monks.
The Ursan thing is particularly exasperating. If one skill is dominating the high-end PvE game to this extent, somebody screwed up badly somewhere. But the real problem here is ArenaNet isn’t offering any incentive to players to try anything else. One of the game’s main strengths is its large pool of profession skills and the complex interplay between them. Designing a skillbar to fit the situation or mission (which is not unlike building a Magic: the Gathering deck) should be one of the real draws of the game but it isn’t because players have determined the most effective skillbars are drawn from a very small pool of skills.
It’s probably too late to fix this for Guild Wars but here’s hoping Guild Wars 2 doesn’t suffer the same problem.
