• Boons[wiki.guildwars2.com]
  
• How to group players for PvE content[hardstuck.gg]
  
• An understanding of squad features[wiki.guildwars2.com] and what commanders[wiki.guildwars2.com] can do in a squad
  
• An understanding of how map instancing in the open world works[wiki.guildwars2.com]

• A functional PvE build designed to be effective in a raid setting[hardstuck.gg] (Ignore builds for handkiting. Bonus points if you can provide quickness or alacrity on that character!)
  
• Portable Waystation[wiki.guildwars2.com] mastery (Bring at least three with you into the map)
  
• A commander tag[wiki.guildwars2.com], or someone willing to let you be a lieutenant in their map to practice
  
• Assigned hotkeys for location and object markers[wiki.guildwars2.com]
  
• About two hours of time
  
• Enough patience to lead strangers online towards achieving a common goal
  
• 49 other gamers who are willing to spend two hours with you (easier than you think!)

• Ascended feasts (I always provide Cilantro Sous-Vide Steak[wiki.guildwars2.com], Cilantro and Cured Meat Flatbread[wiki.guildwars2.com] and Bowl of Fruit Salad with Mint Garnish[wiki.guildwars2.com]. Mint and Veggie Flatbread[wiki.guildwars2.com] and Salsa Eggs Benedict[wiki.guildwars2.com] are also very helpful if you know you have builds in your squad that can effectively use them.)
  
• ArcDPS[www.deltaconnected.com] lets you measure damage output. Good if you want to see how effective your subgroups are!
  
• ArcDPS Killproof.me plugin[github.com] can help you identify strong players that are likely to do lots of damage given the right support. Don't be a gatekeeper!

Dragon’s End is the map in which the Battle for the Jade Sea meta happens once every two hours. It’s important for anyone playing in any level of EoD endgame; completion (or repeated participation) unlocks your turtle collection, it generates important legendary crafting materials, and serves as a highly accessible introduction to organized PvE combat.

With all of this in mind, it’s absolutely tragic that there’s frequently not enough tags to allow everyone who wants to play to join a map that will succeed. I’ve watched players attempt to join my map for the entire duration of the escort only to give up once we’ve cleared the boss without them. While I’d love to have them along, the player limit is very tight on this map. This creates an artificial capacity limit on the number of people who get to kill the boss every two hours, that being the number of active maps times whatever that player limit is. Therefore, the only viable solution to this problem is to have more maps running during each meta spawn.

Attempting this meta on a map without a bit of organization is an invitation for failure and a waste of two hours. I am making this guide to share my strategies with new and existing commanders to ensure that failure happens less often and more successful maps can be run. If you have any questions on any of the content in this guide, the best ways to get in touch with me are Discord (man0fbass#0001) and Twitter. Do not be afraid to spam me with questions; I love answering them!

The generally agreed upon etiquette in Guild Wars 2 is that there should only be a single tag on Dragon’s End. Tagging up on someone else’s map will cause players to get confused on who the leader is. If you are unable to find a map with no tag, consider helping a map that is already active. You’ll usually only find a map with no commander if you show up early or the game server has created a new one due to overpopulation in existing maps.

There are two options to get a map where you’re the commander:

1. Tag up on a map that has no commander. This is the easiest method and also gives you a head start on organically attracting players to join your squad and progressing the meta pre-event. Announcing in map chat that you’re doing the meta is a great way to attract players even before you LFG. However, you will have no idea how many players are in the map and may risk having a map where players cannot join your instance.
   
2. Force the game server to create a new map for you. To do this, pre-assemble a squad of about 25 players, then have everyone walk into the map portal near Jade Gate Waypoint at the same time. The sudden influx of players will usually cause the game server to spin up a new map that has zero players on it. This map will have no readiness in the south region and no commander tag, so have your squad members let you know if they have it. Once you’re in, drag yourself to subsquad 2 and tell everyone to join your instance. While there’s a lot more setup involved to this method, this will make joining your map significantly easier and guarantee open space for nearly everyone who wants to play.

Once you’re tagged up on a map, you need to immediately do two things. First, verify that your squad settings are set up so you are visible on the map and that anybody can join your squad. Running a private squad may cause another commander to think that there isn’t already a tag on the map and will cause confusion if they decide the map needs a commander. You should also have open join turned on so people can actually get into the squad.

The next order of business is to place yourself in subsquad 2. This makes it very easy for players to know which map they should join. I always lock myself in subsquad 2 alone to ensure players are joining the right map.

The last step you should take is to give instructions on how your squad should organize itself. To make it easier on yourself, put this in the squad message so it’s automatically printed to everyone’s chatbox when they join your squad. The three roles most commanders sort by are quickness, alacrity and DPS.

Now that you’ve set things up to make it easy for players to join and organize in your squad, it’s time to LFG. You have two options, both of which can be done at the same time.

1. Make an LFG listing. Open the contacts panel (default hotkey Y) and click on the LFG tab. Advertise your group under End of Dragons > Dragon’s End. In your group description, make sure you indicate you’re doing the meta!
   
2. Advertise in out-of-game communities. Many Guild Wars 2 Discord servers like Hardstuck and Overflow Trading Company have LFG channels for open world squads. Please make sure you are following the community’s rules when you post in these servers.

BONUS METHOD: Once you have a few wins under your belt, you may notice the same players joining your squad every day. These players have probably added you to their watchlist and may join your squad before you’ve even listed in LFG or pinged in a Discord server. This is a very good thing: it means they trust you to succeed!

In the time before the meta begins, there are several events that spawn around the map. Successfully completing an event gives all participants a stack of Dragon’s End Contributor[wiki.guildwars2.com], which grants affected players boons upon entering/exiting combat and a sizable damage/health increase. This stacks up to 10 times for a 20% increase to health and damage. In order to ensure maximum damage output, each player in your squad should get at least five stacks before the meta begins. The last five stacks come from participating in the events leading up to the boss fight. Encouraging your players to call out event spawns to each other is a great way to ensure everyone gets enough stacks.

Dragon’s End is divided into three regions: North, Central and South. Successfully completing events in each region will increase that region’s readiness meter. Bringing North and South to High readiness will grant every player on the map a 5% damage buff to Dragonvoid monsters, which includes the final boss. This is nice to have, but not mandatory. Don’t worry too much if your map doesn’t achieve this.

• Clear debris and look for survivors[wiki.guildwars2.com] is the beginning of an event chain that spans four events. Two of the events have large packs of enemies that spawn, so it’s also great for players focused on farming spirit shards.
  
• Eliminate the enraged kappa[wiki.guildwars2.com] spawns a single Elite kappa with a bounty mechanic. Its health is very low, so wait for players to arrive at the event before autoattacking it down.
  
• Void corruption events[wiki.guildwars2.com] spawn at each of the Dragonvoid crystals. In addition to having a high volume of killable mobs, bringing lots of players to these promotes the Elite enemy into a Champion, which will grant an additional loot container.
  
• Help the petitioners prove themselves to the shrine guardian[wiki.guildwars2.com] is the start of an event chain that spans two events. The second event spawns lots of killable mobs and a champion, which can net lots of experience.
  
• There aren’t a lot of high yield events in the North region, but completing them will get your map the readiness buff if that’s something you’re after. Defeat the Void-corrupted Jade Maw[wiki.guildwars2.com] counts as a north event, which players working on their turtle or weapon collections will need to kill. If someone asks for this, make sure to help them!

Once you’ve attracted players and they’ve sorted themselves by role, you can begin creating subsquads. Ideally, each subsquad should contain one quickness, one alacrity, and three DPS. Subsquadding with this logic will give you good results, but we can go even further with our optimization and tryhard this part of the setup to achieve lightning fast kill times.

• Place players in subgroups that they are most likely to thrive in when separated from the main group. This happens during the boss at 60% and 20% health. Matching player builds to the mechanics they're best equipped to handle will speed along these phases significantly.
  
  • The Void of Death and Shadow has fears, knockdowns and poison puddles. Mitigate crowd control with stability. Cleanses and healers will help players sustain through the poison damage.
    
  • The Void of Vine and Mind has bullet hell projectiles and pulls. Mitigate the projectiles with reflects and projectile destruction. The gravity pull can be walked through to stay near the group, but superspeed can help.
    
  • The Void of Crystal and Fury is a stationary enemy with a large amount of knockdowns. Melee builds will thrive as they won't need to chase a stationary target. Industrial quantities of stability are highly recommended to keep everyone on their feet.
    
  • The Void of Frost and Deception moves around frequently. Ranged DPS, builds with built in mobility, and superspeed providers are best here.
    
  • The Void of Fire and Conflagration has some movement, but not as much as Void of Frost and Deception. Any build can efficiently fight this enemy.
• Make sure that each subgroup has a maximum of one healer. Zero healers in a subgroup is also okay. To achieve this without asking players to identify themselves as healers, use the current metagame as a baseline of what players are likely to bring to your squad and work around that. Healing builds are valid in this meta and you should absolutely leverage players who decide to bring them. Here are some examples using the June 28th 2022 balance patch
  
  • Example 1: A quickness harbinger paired with an alacrity mechanist. The harbinger is most likely running a mix of viper’s and ritualist stats, while the mechanist could be either healing or playing a boon DPS build.
    
  • Example 2: A quickness firebrand with the Signet of Wrath passive effect on their buff bar paired with an alacrity mechanist. The firebrand is using a signet that’s used in the condition quickness firebrand build, so they’re probably not a healer. Therefore, whether the mechanist is healing or doing the same is irrelevant.
    
  • INCORRECT EXAMPLE: A quickness scrapper paired with an alacrity tempest. Both of these builds might also be healers, so they should not be paired together.
• Prioritize players who identify themselves as a role. Some players won’t read your squad message and won’t drag themselves to any subgroup. That is okay[en.wikipedia.org] and you shouldn’t kick them for doing so; they’ll still be on your map anyway! Instead of attempting to force players to cooperate, focus as much effort as you can on making sure the players who are cooperating with you are as effective as possible. I usually make a subsquad 1 broadcast to remind people to change their subgroup once when I run out of players to organize. Any player who drags themselves to the DPS group should be given boons before those that don’t.
  
• If you run out of boon supports, start pairing DPS players together that might generate useful boons. Some uptime is better than no uptime at all! (Example: Catalyst, Willbender, Specter, Renegade, Chronomancer)

I won’t be going into too much detail on each part of the event chain leading up to the boss, but I will include some helpful tips on how to speed up each part and make your leadership job easier. If you need a refresher on what to do for each event, MightyTeapot has a comprehensive overview. (Skip to 6:06.)

• Assigning players to specific lanes is unnecessary. As with all events in Guild Wars 2, the events will scale with the number of players doing them. A minimum of five players is needed in each lane to start each escort.
  
• Escort NPCs love to get distracted and go after random enemies they encounter along the way. To prevent this from happening, instruct your squad to clear enemies ahead of the NPC. Applying superspeed[wiki.guildwars2.com] to the NPCs also helps speed things along.
  
• Remind players to charge their Jade Protocols. It’s free boons and stats.

• Turtles can easily fly on top of the rubble. This allows the driver to slam the rubble down while the gunner fires on the void crystals. Gunners should activate the speed boost after each crystal.
  
• Remote charges can be used while you’re in a siege turtle and will give you an additional skill to do siege damage with.
  
• If the saltspray dragon champion has Phase-Shifted[wiki.guildwars2.com], you’re probably not going to be able to break its’ defiance.

• Once the champion spawns, use Springer’s dismount skill to quickly break its’ defiance.
  
• Once the champion is defeated, an updraft will spawn in the middle of the void puddle. Gliding into it will launch you into a ley line, allowing you to quickly get to the next event. You can also use the waypoint.

• You should roam around all five crystals and focus on the ones that are struggling the most. Throwing orbs is more important than killing enemies.
  
• Abandon the event 30 seconds before it completes to ensure you’re the first person on the boss platform. You have one last bit of setup to do.

As soon as the second crystal event concludes, take the zipline up to the boss platform. You’ll want to place two markers: one at Soo-Won’s tail and one at her head. Place a United Legions Waystation at the edge of the arena near both markers. The waystation at arrow should be placed around where the group will be stacking to make it easy for your squad to top up on EMPs.

Once your waystations are in place, you should give the following instructions. Example broadcasts are in the last section of this guide.

• Jade Bot waypoints are best placed at the arrow marker in the image. This is where the boss’s head will appear at the start of each phase and where she’s most likely to be at any given point in the fight. Placing the waypoint here will reduce travel time when players respawn.
  
• Take a moment to explain EMPs. Players should use them whenever whirlpools are up or the boss’s defiance bar is active. They can also be used aggressively during dash attacks to stunlock nearby enemies, ensuring safe travel across the platform. 60%/20% orb collection phases are also a great time to use EMPs: you’ll be losing them anyway.
  
• Tell players about the emergency waypoint on the airship. Make a special note that it’s free and doesn’t cost them anything to use. Dead DPS is no DPS.

Stack up your squad at arrow and let your subsquadding work shine.

Soo-Won’s attacks are somewhat random, but she does follow a few patterns. We can use these patterns to guide your squad without typing a word.

• The second acid attack in any phase will almost always be followed up by a defiance bar opportunity. Very rarely, she will acid attack as her first attack in the phase then get a defiance bar.
  
• When Soo-Won moves to the other side of the platform, she will do exactly one attack, then go back. Later into the fight, this single attack is very likely to be whirlpools.

With these points in mind, we can formulate a strategy on what you can do during each attack to guide your squad to victory.

• Make a point to intentionally position yourself outside of every attack. Players generally like to follow the tag’s movements, so you can keep people alive simply by doing the mechanics correctly.
  
• Whenever it’s time to break a defiance bar, spam ctrl-left click on your special action key. This is much faster than typing. You should do this whenever the boss shows her defiance bar or whirlpools activate.
  
• Kill thornhearts that are near Soo-Won’s head or on the way when moving during a dash. Minimizing knockbacks will keep people alive and pumping damage/CC. It's a good idea to instruct your squad to kill all thornhearts at the 20% burn phase to make sure you can comfortably kill the boss!
  
• If the boss gains damage reduction from tail, you may still be able to phase the boss and skip tail altogether. This is possible if she has 7-10% HP remaining and exposed OR if she has 1-2% HP remaining and no exposed. Ultimately, this is your call and you’ll need to practice in order to get a feel for when it’s time to kill tail. Skipping the tail is an enormous time save and should always be done whenever possible. Should you find yourself in a situation where killing tail is necessary, go kill it yourself and broadcast instructions. Players will follow you!
  
• Whirlpools will target the people furthest away from the boss, so having your squad stacked as tight as possible will make it very easy to break them out with EMP and other area CC. Don't sleep on soft cc like blind and chill; it helps!

As the commander, you should not be taking a green. Instead, choose to remain on the platform and kill thornhearts. If you want to get extra sweaty, use object markers on the thornhearts as they spawn to help your squad find them. Leaving thornhearts alive at any point in the fight is very dangerous due to their frequent knockbacks and high damage, so make sure they die eventually.

Once the boss returns, stack behind a crystal and ask for stability. Providing stability at this point in the fight ensures that knockbacks won’t force people into the tidal wave. After the mechanic resolves, remind players to refresh their EMP.


Split your squad up as evenly as possible for each split phase. I do 1-5 east 6-10 west for the 60% split and 2-4 east 5-7 west 8-11 south for the 20% split. After the phase concludes, remind your squad to refresh their EMP.

Some quick notes on the champions:

• The projectiles the Mordremoth champion sends out can be reflected to allow a mesmer, scrapper, or firebrand to achieve upwards of 100k DPS. This can be dangerous to successfully completing the phase, so always go to the Zhaitan champion to make sure it dies fast.
  
• If the 20% split phase is skewed, make a broadcast asking either even or odd subgroups to go to the island that needs help. If you split evenly, this is most likely to be west (Jormag champ) or south. (Primordus champ)

Once the boss dies, thank your squad for joining your map. It’s important to understand that success is impossible without them. You are just as reliant on your squad as they are on you for guidance. If you plan on running every day at the same time, make sure to mention it.

If you are on NA and you would like to practice commanding without running your own map, contact me ahead of time on Discord (man0fbass#0001) and I will pass my commander tag to you once I’ve secured a map. I’ll guide you through the entire process and be there to take over if you need it. My run is at reset-2 every day.

• Set your jade bot waypoint at ARROW! Use it to instantly respawn!
  
• Whenever you return to this platform, make sure you get the EMP from the waystation! Use it on the boss’s CC bar and whirlpools.
  
• If you die at any point, use the airship waypoint moving in a circle around the boss. IT IS FREE! You will not be ressed by ANYBODY, so this is your best option.
  
• GREEN CIRCLES: Those who take the green circle will be thrown off the platform. Jump back to the top! You get 6 jumps: touching a blue orb refills your jumps. Press 3 when you get back!
  
• SPLIT UP! Subs 2-6: EAST Subs 7-11: WEST
  
• SPLIT UP! Subs 2-4: EAST Subs 5-7: WEST Subs 8-10: SOUTH

[&BPkMAAA=]

Drag yourself
-sub3 quick
-sub4 alac
-sub5 dps