Everybody moaned about the final tree. Problem was the standard dungeon speed tard mentality. The tree spawns massive shitloads of spiders, who each had a further few sets of spawns themselves.
HOWEVER there was eventually a point where they would run out for a couple minutes. Which would have been, and even more so now, enough time to kill off the tree assuming your group didn't go retard and pull/spawn some more. That last part about not pulling more, that's where people ran into so many problems.
What's really funny and heartbreaking at the same time about the whole mess: The ONE time I got to run the path with a group of total dungeon newbies, this was their first dungeon path ever so they actually listened, the tree went down clean because we had the spiders under control. We killed off the group in front of the tree, had to a few times until they quit, then burnt the tree a bit (new group, game still early so meta wasn't fully entrenched), and had to do some more spiders, but when we get it to about 40% or so (less than 50, but not much) we went whole hog on it and finished it off. I thought it was a feat of legend, and tried teaching it to some rather experienced runners who I normally did these things with. And it sucked to try it with them because one guard refused to range OR deal with spiders, the Ele wouldn't quit AoE, IDK WTF the Mesmer was up to... it was just bad. And all because they had their heads screwed into a certain way of playing.
I think it was removed to the detriment of the game. Similarly with the watered down mobs we've been facing since LS season 1. The Molten Alliance, Aetherblades, Watchwork horrors and Toxics all were good strong mobs who you needed to think a second before charging in at. The Aetherpath oddly doesn't really even give it's namesake justice compared to how they appeared when the LS1 was live.
Yea, I miss that path because I knew how to beat it. And having to change how you approach something is a healthy and welcome thing for me in GW2, they have the fluid combat system for it, but it just doesn't get to shine for more than a couple weeks at the time in PvE it seems :(
Hope HoT brings back some of those difficult, but fun kinda of fights from yesteryear.