Escort

2 years ago, last modified 10 months ago

Requires: Mesmer with Portal Entre and following masteries: Bouncing Mushroom, Forsaken Thicket Waters and Ley-Line Gliding
OR Multiple Players with Bouncing Mushroom, Forsaken Thicket Waters, and Ley-Line Gliding masteries

Almost every group relies on a Mesmer with Portal Entre. However, sending a DPS and a Support duo with access to Stability, damage, and sustain can also work.

Escort has many one-shots that mobs can knock players into, so this encounter benefits from classes with shared Stability. Additionally, Immobilize, Chilled, and Crippled can help keep the adds from reaching and killing Glenna.

Scholar Glenna

In this fight players must bring Glenna to the end of a path, capturing towers along the route. At the end of the path, players must kill a miniboss.

Scholar Glenna is a friendly raid NPC that joins players in each raid wing. During this encounter, players are tasked with escorting Glenna to the castle. In turn, Scholar Glenna will summon Ley Lines for players along the route.

“Babysitting”

Once the encounter has started, all players within a radius of Glenna will gain a special action key that calls her towards that player.

One player should be assigned to protect Glenna by using their special action key to keep her away from enemies. This player should also keep Glenna moving into white circles along the route, where she will summon Ley Lines.

Additionally, Glenna will have 15 stacks of Surveilled. She will quickly lose these if no players are within 1,000 range of her. If she reaches 0 stacks she will die, wiping the group. The player assigned to Glenna protection should stick near her at all times to ensure she does not die to Surveilled. Often a Druid is assigned to babysit Glenna as they can heal any chip damage she takes as well as use one of their many multitarget Immobilize skills to prevent mobs from approaching her.

When players enter Wing 3, they will see a path leading towards a bridge. Upon approaching the bridge White Mantle mobs will close a gate and drop the bridge, preventing players from advancing. The squad can then talk to Scholar Glenna to start the encounter.

The player handling Glenna should bring her to a white circle near the bridge. Here, Glenna will summon a Ley Line that players can use to glide across the gap. Interacting with a bridge mechanism will allow Glenna to join the squad. When Glenna approaches the gate she will plant a bomb, allowing players to advance to Escort.

Mines

Along the route players will encounter mines. These are not targetable until a player walks inside its larger (white) circle. Mines will oneshot players or Glenna within its smaller (red) circle. Players should skim the outside circle and drop ranged damage on the mine. Mines will respawn, so be aware of any mines behind you!

Tunnel of Respite

Known as: cave

The Tower Mesmer’s role is to ensure four towers are capped. To reach the first tower, this player must travel through the Cave, which is a tunnel filled with Toxic Spores and enemy mushroom mobs. Throughout the cave are Thicket Waters that heal players with the Forsaken Thicket Waters mastery and temporarily prevent the player from losing health to the Toxic Spores. The player should run from water to water, dodging, blocking, and cleansing attacks from the mushrooms along the route.

Towers

Once the player has left the cave they can access a bouncing mushroom to the first tower. Towers are captured if there are more players within the capture circle than there are enemy mobs. Three strategies exist:

Killing the mobs until there are more players than enemies
Porting the squad into the tower
Pushing the mobs out of the capture circle (a.k.a. “Solo Cap” or “Solo Tower”)

In general, as the mobs have tons of stuns and fears, players avoid the first strategy. However, if players choose to use this strategy they should leave one enemy on the tower as killing all enemies will cause them to respawn.

Most groups rely on the second strategy, making Mesmer the popular tower pick. Mesmers can portal the squad into the tower to outnumber the enemies. Players do not need to be visible to capture the tower, so by using Mass Invisibility the squad can avoid enemy aggro and quickly and safely capture the tower. If taking this approach players should be careful to avoid attacking the mobs as this breaks the invisibility.

As Portal has a long cooldown, tower mesmers should Mimic Portal Exeunt. This makes the steps to capturing Towers:

Drop Portal Entre on Tower
Glide to group
Clear mobs on the ground
Mass Invisibility
Mimic Portal Exeunt
Capture tower

From here, the Mesmer can either use the cannon on the tower to help the stack or wait anywhere safe for Glenna to summon the next Ley Line, allowing them to glide to the next Tower and repeat the process.

The third strategy can be unreliable but can be tried at each tower without penalty. The tower geometry is such that the capture circle isn’t perfectly aligned with the tower itself. Pushing all of the mobs against the edge of the tower, in direction of the next Ley Line spawn, can push them out of the tower enough for one player to solo capture the tower.

Mesmers bringing Focus and Greatsword can solo capture the tower. Use a shatter skill before gliding for Stability, use Into the Void (Focus 4) near the center of the platform, then swap to Illusionary Wave (Greatsword 5) to push the mobs against the edge of the tower. For extra leeway, Continuum Split can be used to double Illusionary Wave (Greatsword 5).

Illusionary Wave (Greatsword 5) only pushes 5 targets, so Enemy Necromancer minions can make the skill miss one of the enemies. Additionally, the tower capture circle can be confusing – tower Mesmers should always bring Portal Entre in case this goes wrong.

Decoy can be used before bouncing up to the first tower to avoid mob aggro. This makes the first tower a perfect opportunity to practice solo capping.

Wargs

Once each tower has been captured, two Wargs will spawn at the front and back of the route. These Wargs will fixate on Glenna and do massive damage to her. Immobilizes, cripples, chills, floats, and blinds can all work to either slow their progress towards Glenna or make their attacks miss.

Typically players will either assign one DPS to stay at the start of the escort route to kill the back Warg, allowing the stack to focus on killing the front Warg. However, some groups will simply handle each Warg as they approach.

McLeod

Once the final tower is capped, players will fight McLeod the Silent. Glenna should be left on the stairs right under the final platform, as she will not die from abandonment and the Wargs won’t easily reach her. Unlike other raid encounters, players can revive fully dead allies at this point, though reviving is extremely slow. If the tower Mesmer is running a very safe low DPS and low utility build, they can glide around the route reviving any dead players.

McLeod and the 2 copies will teleport to the furthest player within 5,000 range. Players should stack as close as possible to McLeod and stay between both of the copies during these phases to avoid issues with the teleports.

At 75%, 50%, and 25% boss will split into two copies with red and white marks over their heads. Players will also gain marks over their heads, signifying which split of McLeod they can damage. McLeod will also spawn a Warg that the squad should cleave down to prevent it from killing Glenna.