Let's Review — Hall of Chains | Guild Wars 2

It's been a bit since the previous entry, but we're back on track for weekly raid reviews. This week we're stepping into the PoF wings, starting with wing 5, the Hall of Chains! I don't have anything else to say on the matter, so let's get right into it.

Into the Hall of Chains

Though the information I can find about it on the wiki is sparse, there was apparently a bit of a lead-up to wing 5's release. Shortly after Halloween 2017, players noticed that dead bodies had appeared in Godslost Swamp and Reaper's Gate, both locations in Core Tyria with ties to the Underworld. Some of the corpses belonged to priests of Grenth, and players who happened to main Necromancer might've gotten additional context that these unlucky individuals were murdered by hordes of undead. Players could actually encounter these enemies as well. There was also some cryptic lore implying the priests were answering some sort of "call" by a mysterious figure known only as the Red Lady; during the Shadow Behemoth world boss, a mysterious red spirit would also appear.

Following this evidence eventually leads Glenna, the Commander, and your nine favorite non-canon friends to enter the Underworld, which they find under siege by Dhuum. Dhuum was the former god of death before Grenth usurped that position; after the human gods decide to abscond from Tyria, Dhuum seizes the opportunity to escape the bindings placed on him as Grenth's influence wanes. Despite the best efforts of Desmina and the Seven Reapers, he devours many of the souls sent to the Underworld, both by redirecting the River of Souls to his former prison, the Hall of Judgment, and by sending out terrifying creatures known as Eaters of Souls. It's likely that the similar foe we face in the PoF story, and which we use to revive ourself, is actually one of Dhuum's minions, so in a way Tyria would've likely ended several times over were it not for Dhuum's escape plot. Regardless, we can't let him keep eating everyone's souls, so we're sent in to stop him.

Soulless Horror

Lore 

When we arrive in the land of the dead, we find that Desmina has been compromised. As she defended the denizens of the Underworld from Dhuum's army, she realized it was a losing battle and was eventually forced to split her spirit from her body in a last-ditch effort. This transformed her into the mysterious spirit that was seen in the open world, while her body became the Soulless Horror. In order to reunite her with her body, it's up to us to beat it up really good.

The Fight

SH has three main gimmicks that work together to build the flow of battle. The first is the pair of red and green runes that sit on the ledge before the fight. Both of these must be interacted with before the fight can begin, and each player to touch one will gain a SAK. These two players are the tanks for the encounter. Over time, the active tank will gain stacks of a debuff, Necrosis, that heavily increases their incoming damage. When this stacks up too high to handle, the other player must use their SAK to shift the boss's focus to them and become the new tank for a while. This means both tanks need to be aware of the other's status, and losing one tank is incredibly bad but technically not an instant wipe.

The second main gimmick is Surging Souls, commonly just called flame walls. These hole-in-the-wall AoEs will spawn to one side of the arena, then slowly drift across it. Any player who touches the flame AoEs is instantly killed, so the tanks must lead the group safely around based on where these walls are. Notably, you can't just stand in the middle and react to each approaching wall due to the third main gimmick, Tormented Dead. These adds spawn in the center of the arena and aggro on the current off-tank. They aren't dangerous on their own, but they're incredibly frail and drop a large, long-lasting AoE upon death that does significant damage. They can be pushed off the edges of the arena, however, so one player is usually tasked with doing exactly that to keep them from clogging up valuable floor space.

You can already see how just these three core mechanics make for a much more difficult design philosophy than the HoT wings did. The PoF wings generally demand a lot more in the way of personal responsibility, in addition to generally being much more punishing. SH makes this immediately clear. Your group is expected to have three players performing special roles (very skilled players can simultaneously tank and push TDs, but you usually only see this in organized groups), and both the flame walls and TDs are very punishing mechanics that can result in a death, or a full squad wipe, if handled wrong just a single time. As a result of how TDs work, this is the single most condi-favored fight in the game, as it's very, very easy to actively grief your group and nuke down a TD in a bad spot if you're on a power build.

Of course, these aren't the only mechanics, either; there's even more going on, forcing you to keep track of multiple threats at once at all times. The boss herself performs several attacks which can be quite damaging, including one where she casts a circular AoE followed by a more dangerous outer ring, and one where she creates two sets of four AoE cones. What you'll really need to watch out for are the Spinning Scythes, small AoEs that wander randomly around the arena. They move slowly, but deal significant damage and corrupt boons, so you always need to be on the lookout. At three points throughout the fight, the outer edge of the arena will also crumble; you have to avoid falling off, and this also means you get increasingly less space to work with as the fight goes on, making failed TDs more punishing. Finally, SH will sometimes use Death Bloom, an attack where she creates eight cone AoEs around her. Every second time this happens, she'll erase all current flame walls and gain a CC bar, and must be quickly CC'd or else she'll wipe the squad. This adds yet another variable you have to keep track of throughout the fight.

SH is a frantic encounter that does a really good job of immediately establishing just how much tougher the PoF wings are going to be compared to the HoT wings. The punishing nature of its mechanics and the RNG involved in flame wall placements can make it frustrating at times, but from a mechanical perspective I think it's very well designed. The mechanics work together quite well to form a cohesive fight all about proper positioning, maintaining a clean arena, and keeping track of many additional variables.

Challenge Mode

Soulless Horror has the unique distinction of being the one and only fight that experienced groups actually consider to be easier on CM than on normal mode. Stacks of Necrosis build up fast and flesh wurms respawn, sure, but if your tanks know what they're doing the former won't make a difference, and the latter is so irrelevant that I didn't even mention them in the original rundown. The biggest change is that the arena gets smaller much faster, with an additional ring crumbling off right at the start.

Why does this make the fight easier? Well, flame walls are one of the main obstacles to getting a clear, but the safe spot you're intended to stand in for them can be anywhere across the arena. With poor RNG, you can get wall patterns that force you to run back and forth constantly, which in turn reduces your DPS significantly and allows other mechanics to become more of a problem. As the arena gets smaller, however, certain flame wall patterns get disabled since their safe spots no longer exist. The smaller arena in CM makes walls more predictable and reduces the potential RNG of poor patterns, making for an overall smoother fight if your group is already confident in handling the other mechanics.

Verdict: 8/10, 8.5/10 (CM)

River of Souls

After we defeat the Soulless Horror, Desmina reassumes control of her body and enlists us in the battle against Dhuum. To reach him, we'll first have to follow the River of Souls before cleansing the corrupted statues of Grenth.

Lore

The River of Souls is a flow of literal actual souls that travels through both the Underworld and the Realm of Torment. When humans die, they travel along it to their proper resting place. Right now, however, Dhuum has redirected the river to his former prison so that he may feast upon the souls of the damned and empower himself. This is decidedly a very bad thing, but it's also convenient for us, since we can follow the river straight to him. The river is, however, guarded both by guardian spirits and Dhuum's invading forces, so we'll have to fight our way through.

The Encounter

River of Souls is another event-type encounter. To complete it, you must escort Desmina all the way to the end while protecting her from enemies and other hazards. She can be healed, as well as granted buffs, so the most common strategy is to have a dedicated player give her constant uptime of Superspeed to massively speed up the rate at which the encounter progresses.

The river itself will apply a debuff, Soul Siphon, to all players, which constantly deals significant damage to them. The only way to avoid this damage is to stand in the protective bubble around Desmina, but the other mechanics serve to prevent you from staying in safety. Rifts will appear along the track, with have a stack of 10 buffs instead of HP; each hit takes off a stack, so fast attacks and multi-hits are best to take them out. While active, these rifts will pull players towards them and spawn adds. There are also tough adds called Enervators waiting at set spots along the river that will take down Desmina's barrier until they're killed. Players will also occasionally be targeted with a spread that drops a dangerous bomb on the ground, and will have to dodge walls of flame similar to those from the previous encounter, though these ones only down you. Finally, there will be some adds that try to suicide bomb Desmina and must be CC'd.

There's quite a lot going on here, but the crux of RoS is that it's a long escort quest. Players dislike long escort quests, so naturally they'll gravitate towards the strategy that speeds it up the most, the aforementioned Superspeed. The problem here is that players are a priority target for buffs over NPCs, and combined with the spreads that you have to drop in good spots, having the whole group on the boss can actually be detrimental. As a result, the most common strategy for this event is to have most of the group run ahead, outheal the damage of Soul Siphon, and kill Enervators ahead of time, then just wait at the end of the river while a small team of 1-2 players do everything else.

This unfortunately causes RoS to hit the same problem that plagues Spirit Woods and Prison Camp—it consists mostly of waiting. For most of the group, they can literally stand up from their computer once they reach the top. I previously criticized Spirit Woods for being long and boring, but what I didn't go over is that there's actually an incredibly cool skip you can perform on that encounter. It's interesting both in execution and theory and adds a lot to the experience. The reason it doesn't save Spirit Woods form being sucky—aside from the fact that it's difficult and niche enough that less than 1% of groups will ever use it—is that only one (1) member of the squad gets to actually enjoy doing it. RoS faces the same issue. There are some interesting mechanics at play, but only a couple members of your squad are ever actually engaging with them; everyone else just walks up the river, kills the Enervators (who don't even fight back), and then takes a smoke break.

I think the waiting aspect of this one isn't quite as bad as SW or the Prison Camp, at least. In those, there's still stuff going on that forces you to pay attention to the game; the issue is that the things going on are just incredibly slow and boring. RoS at least has the courtesy to literally stop giving you anything to do whatsoever. You can use it for a bio break or a snack run or to just tab out and check something else, and that at least makes the waiting less annoying than in the other events. Still, I can't in good conscience give a high score to an encounter where you spend most of it scrolling Twitter.

Verdict: 5/10

Statues of Grenth

Up next are the three statues of Grenth, each of which is guarded by a minion of Dhuum. We must defeat all three in order to cleanse the statues and open the path to Dhuum. The game treats this section as one encounter in every way that matters, but it's really three encounters in a trenchcoat. The statue bosses are much shorter and simpler than a typical raid boss, and each is more like a puzzle than it is a real fight. I'm going to rank them as three separate encounters, obviously.

Broken King (Statue of Ice)

The Broken King is a simple puzzle boss with a toughness tank. Aside from the dangerous cracks he frequently creates and the cone AoE he aims at the tank, this fight has just one mechanic: greens. Every 2% of his HP you deal, he'll spawn a green circle in a random location. If a player isn't standing in that green when it activates, everyone takes massive damage. However, standing in the green gives you 1 stack of a debuff, Frozen Wind, and if you do a green while at 3 stacks you'll be frozen for a while and take heavy damage; these debuffs gradually wear off over time. The boss also cannot be killed until all active greens are solved.

The puzzle to this fight is twofold. You need to moderate your group DPS (to ensure that you don't spawn more greens than ten players can handle) and communicate efficiently about which squad members are capable of taking which greens. This encounter is uniquely immune to powercreep, and the puzzle itself is actually a pretty novel challenge for players to complete, especially in a game where so many other fights can be trivialized with high DPS.

The one issue with Broken King is that the gimmick it's built around makes it inherently slow and boring. Having to moderate your group DPS is interesting, but in practice it means you spend a lot of time standing around. I've talked about "burn time" in other encounters, where you're just standing there doing nothing but your rotation, but against Broken King you can't even do that. The whole point is that you have to take it slow and be patient. That's novel, but it doesn't exactly make for something that's very fun.

Eater of Souls (Statue of Death)

The Eater of Souls also hasa toughness tank, but its puzzle is a good bit more complicated than the Broken King's. In fact, I'd wager this might be the fight that the lowest % of raiders actually understand the mechanics of, rivaled only by Dreg Shark. That said, I think the mechanics actually have a really nice flow to them once you do understand what's going on, and of the three statues this is the one that feels most like a real fight in addition to being a puzzle.

Placed on the ground of the arena are four rounded square shapes, or dominoes. Occasionally an add called a Twisted Spirit will spawn near the edge of the arena, and killing it shoots a bunch of orbs of light to random positions around the arena. Collecting an orb gives you access to a SAK you can use to throw the orb elsewhere. Throw all five orbs at a domino marking to light it up, then kill the EoS while it's standing on that domino. When it dies, the EoS will revive itself at full health; if you did everything else correctly, it'll also spit a bunch of orbs into the sky. You'll usually need to do this twice.

The second main part of this puzzle is a second variety of spirit that starts spawning later into the fight, Lost Spirits. These are friendly NPCs with a green attached. If nobody's in the green, it becomes a damaging shockwave. Otherwise, anyone in it gets turned into a floating soul and must fly through the air, moving up and down to collect the floating orbs from earlier. Collecting five orbs returns you to your body, and a total of 20 orbs need to be collected to finish the fight, so have four players take the green. The number of orbs collected will be represented by the six torches on the wall lighting up. Once all are lit, the EoS can't regenerate anymore; kill it and you win.

This is all complicated by just two attacks form the boss itself. It'll occasionally belch out a persistent AoE cone towards the tank. Additionally, when players take the green and become souls, it will gain a CC bar and try to suck one of them in.

Altogether, this boss feels really complex when you're first learning it but is actually really simple once you know what you're doing. The whole fight is just a series of events that directly cause/enable the next in line. (Kill Twisted Spirit → collect orbs → SAK to domino → kill EoS)x2 → 4 players in green → collect orbs → kill EoS. Learning how it actually works and getting good at blitzing through the steps is really satisfying. Where this boss suffers is once again from downtime. Like Broken King, you can't actually kill EoS until all the mechanics are dealt with, so there's no point in doing your rotation. There isn't too much wait between the mechanics, thankfully, and there are also generic adds to beat up while you wait, but it's still a bit uninteresting outside of the puzzle. Even so, I think this is genuinely a very underrated fight. It's easily my favorite of the statues.

Statue of Darkness

You can choose which order to take on the Broken King and the Eater of Souls in, but the third statue but always be the last one you face. Taking place in the cave underneath the Hall of Judgment, this encounter tasks you with simultaneously killing two bosses, the Eye of Judgment and the Eye of Fate.

The area consists of two mazes, divided by a raised rectangular platform, one to the north and one to the south. Each of the eyes start in the mazes, while atop the central platform are Light Orbs. The squad must split into two groups to deal with each eye, and each group must leave a player on the central platform to collect and transfer Light Orbs to the rest. Orbs can be thrown or activated to stun nearby enemies, and the bosses start out untargetable until a Light Orb is brought near them. They will repeatedly attempt to use an attack that applies fear before teleporting away, so each group must use the Light Orbs to keep them continuously stunned until they are killed. Each stun consumes the orb used, so the two players in the center must keep collecting new orbs and tossing them to their respective group.

This is a very delicate encounter. The basic mechanics are very simple, and if done will groups can easily clear it in under a minute without either eye teleporting. The main issue is that hitting an eye with any sort of hard CC effect can negate the stun currently affecting it and allow it to teleport, so it's very easy for careless players to make things much harder. Once an eye teleports, not only do you need to navigate the maze to track it down again, you might also have to deal with Light Thieves, enemies that try to steal your orbs, and the Minotaur that prowls each labyrinth. As mentioned above, the eyes must also be killed at the same time, so a teleport on one side significantly complicates things for both sides.

Of the three, this is the one that feels most like a proper puzzle, and actually solving it and learning to do it efficiently is very satisfying. On the other hand, it suffers from being one of the most frustrating encounters to do poorly on, and it's very easy for things to go wrong very quickly from just a single player using a CC effect without realizing. Once you have the proper strategy locked down and don't make any mistakes, it also ceases to be interesting, since you just kill the eyes in one go super fast; kind of a lose-lose situation for this one.

Verdicts: 5/10 (Broken King), 7/10 (Eater of Souls),  6/10 (Statue of Darkness)

Dhuum

Lore

Dhuum was the original God of Death, the very embodiment of death itself, but he was also a cruel overseer. He consumed the souls of the dead, prevented ressurection, and was all around a pretty terrible guy. He would be challenged by Grenth along with seven mortals, who would later go on to be known as the Seven Reapers, and usurped and imprisoned. After Grenth abanonded Tyria with the rest of the human gods, Dhuum was left free to try and take back his throne, the details of which we've already gone over.

Tutorialization

There's a decent amount of tutorialization for Dhuum's mechanics in the previous encounters, though a lot of it is indirect—mechanics that have a similar core concept, but are executed differently. Dhuum uses the same AoE of cracks as Broken King. He requires a more complex setup with multiple tanks/kites, like Soulless Horror. His main gimmick is a pattern of greens which send whoever takes them into the air to collect orbs, much like Eater of Souls. For as complex a fight as Dhuum is, the rest of the wing does a decent job at priming you for him.

The Fight

As mentioned above, Dhuum's main gimmick is the series of greens that occur throughout the entire fight. The Seven Reapers are positioned in a circle around the arena and each have a health bar; enemies can attack and kill them, so you must keep them distracted and occasionally heal the Reapers if they get hit. If a Reaper dies, it's game over. Every thirty seconds, one of the Reapers is targeted with a green, and if a player doesn't take that green the Reaper dies. Whoever does will be sent high into the air as a soul and has 15 seconds to collect 5 of the orbs that spawn at the edges and flow towards the center, after which they'll return to their body on the ground. While they do so, it's important to avoid the deadly beam of light in the center and to seek out and collect a large orb which will prevent a future Enforcer spawn.

Taking a green gives you a debuff called Fractured Spirit for 80 seconds which prevents you from doing it again, so you need at least three players taking turns to properly handle the mechanic. Greens are generally handled by the tank, the kite, and a third volunteer. Enforcers, mentioned above, are adds that spawn in the four corners of the arena (plus an additional tow at the beginning) and must be killed before they reach a Reaper. Dhuum doesn't actually join the fight until seven of these have been killed, and properly collecting large orbs can prevent more than those initial seven from appearing. In addition to these Enforcers, adds called Messengers will spawn around the center of the arena. These deal heavy damage to anyone close to them and will go after either a nearby Reaper or the first person to aggro them, and they die automatically after a while after being attacked; it's the job of your group's kite to handle these, luring them away from Reapers and preventing them from attacking the group while also handling some of the greens.

The final mechanic that'll show up before Dhuum does is Arcing Affliction. This affliction will occasionally be applied to a random player, who then has a chance to run away from the group before the timer expires and they release a dangerous explosion. You can also use a SAK you gain to manually detonate the bomb, but this isn't recommended in most cases, as the affliction will go to someone else right after. Finally, Dhuum himself joins the fight, and you can start to see more and more that this, similar to Deimos, is a fight all about managing your positioning and the positioning of the boss's mechanics to ensure that they don't get in the way of your core mechanics, primarily greens.

Dhuum himself has a decent variety of attacks. Some of these are pretty standard—he'll hit the center of the arena and summon a sprawling pattern of AoE spikes, toss out a bunch of circlar AoEs in a large area around him, or create a cone that pulls anyone hit in. Generally, the group will stack behind Dhuum and very close to him to avoid these attacks, which are directed by the tank. What you really need to watch out for is Death Mark. Dhuum will occasionally target a random player, teleport to them, and spawn a large, circular AoE at that position which lasts for two minutes. Anyone who touches the AoE gets knocked back and has their soul split form their body; to rejoin the fight, they must walk back and collect their soul. If they fail to do so quickly, they'll be killed. After that the AoE is just a source of damage, but it can prevent players from doing greens if placed poorly, which is why precise positioning is so important.

An attack Dhuum will start using deeper into the fight is Soul Shackle. Two players will be selected, and electricity will arc between them. The subtle VFX are the only indication of who you're shackled to, but you'll have to quickly find out and run away, or else you'll both be taken down by ticking damage. Once you're far enough apart, the shackles break. The last mechanic you'll have to worry about is Greater Death Mark. Dhuum teleports to the center and splits everyone's souls from their bodies, dealing heavy knockback to them. Then, as you're trying to collect your souls, he begins sucking everyone into the center while pulsing out damage; if you get sucked in, you're probably dead. This attack is best handled by putting your back to the wall to quickly and easily collect your soul, then stacking together for healing and boons as you resist the pull.

Altogether, the entire fight revolves around managing the arena so that you can continue to defend the Seven Reapers as they complete their ritual. You'll need to take down Enforcers, properly kite away Messengers, occasionally clear out the weak Deathling adds that spawn, properly place Death Marks, and tank Dhuum in the correct spots so your squad can continue clearing greens and avoid major knockback from Greater Death Marks, all the while also dealing with affliction and shackles. It can make for a fight that's very hectic at times and very slow at others; depending on how many mechanics you get targeted with, you could be incredibly busy or have a lot of burn time.

Dhuum's final stand comes at 10%. Everyone gets sent into the air as though doing a green, though they have more time than usual to collect orbs and revive themselves. Once down on the ground, you must split up to the positions of the Seven Reapers, who have sacrificed themselves, and press the buttons in each position simultaneously to make Dhuum vulnerable. This is complicated by the fact that only the center is safe; while out at the bullets, you'll take pulsing damage, so you probably only get one chance before you need to regroup at the center and try again. Succeed and you get 20 seconds to damage Dhuum and finish the fight, though with lower DPS it may be necessary to do this multiple times. The seven buttons means that losing more than three people in the earlier phases is essentially a wipe, though it is possible for someone to do multiple buttons with good mobility.

Challenge Mode

Dhuum CM is one of the very few encounters I won't be able to properly rank in this series, because it's one of the very few I haven't done. I've cleared encounters harder than it, but this one I just haven't ever gotten around to, as my fullclear group doesn't do it and I'm not in a particular rush to find a different group to try it with. Regardless, I'll give a brief explanation of what's different.

The one new mechanic is that there will be a miniature Dhuum called the Ender's Echo present for the entire fight. It will charge across the arena in a straight line, then turn around and target another player each time it hits a wall. Anyone caught by it is grabbed by the football tackle, dragged along and dealt heavy damage until they die unless they're broken free by breaking the Echo's defiance bar. Its movements add a ton of complexity to the fight, since it otherwise consists of a lot of standing still in the correct positions for dealing with various mechanics.

Besides the Echo, Dhuum also gets a bunch more HP, and healing the Reapers becomes significantly harder—by a factor of 100. Combined with the overall decreased DPS form being forced to deal with the Echo, these actually prove to be very significant changes. The fight will be much longer in CM, giving you more opportunities to make mistakes, and both the length and the inability to easily heal Reapers makes those mistakes far more punishing.

Verdict: 8/10

I was pretty split on where I should rank Dhuum. From a mechanical perspective, I think this fight is very well-designed. Everything works together well, there's a lot of depth in the special roles required, and there's even a small bit of interesting strategic variety. The fight suffers from the long periods of burn time you can experience if you aren't doing a special role, though. If you're unlucky, you could go pretty much the whole fight without doing any extra mechanics aside from the Death Marks, and that means you're just following the tank around and doing your rotation the whole time except when you reposition for the GDM. The first phase before Dhuum shows up is also a pretty boring slog with a lot of genuine downtime where you literally aren't doing anything. 

Your enjoyment of this fight will swing a lot from clear to clear, and while I think the fight is put together well, I can't say I actually have as much fun with it as I do with even a lot of the fights I've put at 7/10 below it. I know he's a fan favorite, but I think this fatal flaw keeps Dhuum from really being ranked any higher; the fight can be really boring sometimes, especially since its mechanics work in a way where all of the most important parts are effectively "on rails".

Conclusion

Wing 5 concludes with Deimos being bound once again and Desmina assuming control of the Underworld. It's a wing of mixed experiences, I think. Soulless Horror and Dhuum are pretty great fights, but both can also be really frustrating. The stuff inbetween is a bit more mixed. I actually like Eater of Souls a lot, and the design of the eyes is pretty good as a puzzle, but overall it isn't enough to make me or my static want to actually do the statues each week; we always skip them now that that's an option.

It's been good to get back to these reviews. I think wing 5 is overall the one I enjoy the least, since I don't super vibe with Dhuum and even SH is sometimes a bitch to get through if your group's having a bad week or you just get bad RNG. Anyways, let's update the tier list!

I feel like Dhuum not being higher might be a controversial decision, I know a lot of players really love that fight. SH being above it is definitely a very hot take, but I think it has a much more solid mechanical identity, and I prefer the way it frantically throws mechanics at you over how you spend so much time just slapping Dhuum's right leg.

Next up on the docket is wing 6, which I'm very excited for. To me, wings 5 & 7 have always felt almost like they were a sort of "reboot" of raids as a system—there's just something about them mechanically that feels different from what came before. More on that next time, though.