Guild Wars 2

I love Guild Wars 2, I love all of the dungeons and I am a huge fan of the Fractals of the Mist. I also really enjoy the final dredge fractal encounter, where you have to kite the boss underneath buckets of lava. It is very challenging and rewarding to coordinate. However, I feel that two of the fight mechanics make the battle a little too punishing, in a way that isn’t fun. I think if one or both of these mechanics were removed or toned down it would remain a very balanced, difficult fight that would be less frustrating to PUG.

Heal Mechanic If the group misses a lava bucket, the boss heals a large percentage of his HP. I’ve read that this can be interrupted but haven’t had a group pull it off before. The problem is this, the really good groups and even PuGs who are capable of interrupting the heal are likely also skilled enough to simply complete the entire encounter perfectly, without missing any lava buckets, so they will never have to do the interrupt. On the contrary, less stellar groups who do a decent but not perfect job coordinating are already going to be having problems with that, let alone stopping the regen.

The heal mechanic just isn’t very fun; all it serves to do is undo progress on the fight. It would still be very challenging without the heal mechanic, it would just be less tedious.

Downed Players The boss seems to like going after Downed players, which really gets in the way of the whole kiting process. Especially when the boss drops his 1-shot mines on a downed player. If he were recoded to target Downed players much less frequently or not at all it would still be a skillful, but less frustrating encounter.

On Fun In my recent encounter with a group, there was a potential for a really fun story to tell. We had the boss down to ~35% and everyone was dead except for our Asura warrior buddy. Slowly but surely the Asura managed to kite the boss around in circles, and after the 5th or 6th pass finally managed to finish getting one of us back up. Then we rezzed the whole party while he kept kiting. This would be a great story to tell, of triumph when hope seemed lost—except in the time it took him to get us up, the boss’ heal mechanic had brought him back to full health. We would have been better off wiping intentionally. It just erased our progress and that sort of thing usually isn’t a good time.

Thanks!

he starts to kneel, you hit him with a stun, knockdown, fear, knockback and he stops healing. I’ve had it interrupt even if his defiant stacks are still available. I run a guardian and once i figured out how to stop his heal i swapped to Hammer, Hammer of Justice, Bane Signet and became dedicated to keeping his heal from happening. and I’ve told pugs to have atleast one CC on demand to keep his defiant low to make sure he doesn’t heal.

OP obviously did not explore all his options regarding the boss. It was neither hard, nor was it boring. It kept my character moving, forced my companions to time their stuns and drag him just under the lava. If I poured too early, we suffered for it. If I poured too late, just the same. It was easy to do both.

I liked the boss, actually. It’s a nice change from another MMO where you can sit in the back hitting ‘1’ and ‘2’ and kill ‘bosses’.

Had the same issue last night (dredge mining suit) our lava pourer was a little drunk though and it was my first time running this fractal. Sadly we couldn’t complete it due to time restrictions but the next time I run it there are some things I’ll do differently…

a) Interrupt when he’s healing and make sure the group knows that this is critical if you miss a lava drop.

b) When Mister Bossman is in position for a hot dose of liquid rock get someone to cripple/chill him so that he won’t move out of position if the kiter is forced to move.

c) Tell the group to relax but stay focused, being impatient will lead to extra frustration, it’s simply a repeat of the same mechanic over and over again.

We spent well over an hour on this boss today. I think 1:15 fighting him. Could not do it. Got him down to 10% at one point. But if things go bad, he recovers too easily.

My only problem with this boss is that he takes a bit too long to kill, even when you aren’t making any mistakes and he doesn’t decide to chase the lava pourer up the ramp.

Fighting him just isn’t interesting once you know what you’re doing. The other bosses at least require you to switch up what you’re doing.

Hi all,

I have run this dungeon 10+ times now and only have been able to complete it 2 times.
I have run this with my own guild and several pugs and everybody that I know finds this more than frustrating. For me it is the least fav dungeon to be in, and it comes to a point where people rather stop as soon as they see that we are getting this dungeon.

Non the less I am wondering what you all think is the best method to get both bosses down and which group make up you all think works the best. Really appreciate your answers.

—
P.S I had this dungeon the last 10 times I went into the fractals. Do you all feel that Dredge fractal seems to be picked the most every time you go in?

Well imagine how much fun I had when I went into a fractal once and endlessly die from the human who was defending the front gates from the charr… i was instantly reminded of why i don’t run dungeons anymore

tigirius.9014:

Well imagine how much fun I had when I went into a fractal once and endlessly die from the human who was defending the front gates from the charr… i was instantly reminded of why i don’t run dungeons anymore

You are probably dying from the burning oil, not the boss.

He probably is, get a engi with grenades or anyone else with serious ranged damage and take out arrowcarts on sides, then oil, suprised most people aren’t smart enough to realise what is killing them.

As others have said, slows used when boss is under lava=fantastic
rupt when he starts to kneel and normally he stops the heal
if you have somone with reflect abilities, I believe you can hit him with his own bombs for massive damage.

worst bosses in my opinion;
jellyfish, hes easy, you can SOLO him.. there is no challenge.. but thats okay all and all, the part that makes him worst, is the fact that even with 5 people he takes freaking forever.. even if you lead him to the cages. And I’ve never been in a group that could manage to lead him to a cage regularly -.- some one is always out of position, always, even when we are on teamspeak.

The other worst one, the volcano boss. That destroyer harpy thing is just kittenedly annoying. Half the time I can’t tell i’m about to be shot by an arrow and put in to agony because hes flinching or there are too many particle effects from others. So I end up taking serious damage. And then trying to knock down his rock shield while 10+ lava elementals are bombarding me is just… ow.
Hes the most difficult in 10+ but beatable. You just gotta dodge that kitten arrow.
As for the dredge boss, hes cake, only thing i’d change about him.. make him take more damage and make his heal less potent. It really sucks when things go bad in a bad way (agony + bombs taking down the guy dumping the bucket for instance, and who ever is on stuns.) and then he heals two or three times, bringing him back up to full health. Fully resetting cause one person gets downed is just STUPID.

I agree with the original post. This boss gives certain groups a lot of trouble. It obviously favors more sturdy players, but the big problem has to do with condition damage. Only the damage dealt while he’s superheated really counts and I believe only the direct damage gets boosted. So many of us have condition builds and use ranged skills that are mostly condition damage. Forget the bleeds and burns and find your skill that’s direct.

I’ll also add that using immobilizers and traps at the pour spots works great.

The illusion of knowledge is your worst enemy.

Other groups have dealt with the dredge boss without much issue, so you’re clearly missing something~

If you have a mez in your group, use feedback before he sends out bombs for rediculous damage.

DreamOfACure.4382:

The illusion of knowledge is your worst enemy.

Other groups have dealt with the dredge boss without much issue, so you’re clearly missing something~

The first poster showed they have good knowledge of the fight while you’ve contributed nothing but your fortune cookie wisdom. There are no secrets to this fight, and while some breeze through, for others it’s the hardest fractal moment. Since nobody can solo this boss, we all will eventually be part of one of the latter groups unless you run with the same 4 people every time. That’s what you’re missing.

Run around in circles, stun/daze/knockback/fear boss when he kneels, don’t melee boss, don’t stand in circles. Have a thief or 2 people do lava/ The thief can stealth to drop agro while he poors the bucket, or have 2 people running the bucket (1 as backup in case the other gets agro. No one should ever die if you don’t get hit by bombs. I can’t see why this boss would every cause groups this much trouble.

The dredge suit boss does seem significantly harder than the ice elemental one, mostly due to two things:

• Bombs can 1-shot some classes. Easy enough to avoid once you learn the timing (jump when the 2nd bomb is thrown and you’ll avoid both), but can still fail due to lag, etc.. The fact that aegis reflects them gives guardians (yet again…) an advantage (or a reduction in skill requirements, if you prefer).

• The “ground pounding” AoE seems to have infinite range.

Also, due to the fact that downed players are still targeted, if a player gets downed he’s pretty much dead (unlike with the ice elemental, where it’s much easier to revive downed teammates).

Still, I find this one of the more interesting bosses in GW2, I just think that (like most other bosses) it has about 30% more HP than it should. By the time a group gets the boss down to 50% they’ve pretty much figured out the fight, and after that it just starts to get repetitive and boring.

For people having trouble with him, these would be my tips:

• If you have a thief in the party, assign him to be the official “resurrector”. He should run to the downed player, use AoE stealth to avoid being targeted, and revive the player. Everyone else should stay away to avoid having bombs thrown at the downed player.

• The boss always throws two bombs at each player. Dodge when the second bomb is thrown; no need to waste your dodge as soon as the first one lands, it won’t explode straight away.

• The bomb AoE circles are bugged (same as with every other boss in GW2); the actual damage radius extends about 1 or 2 steps outside of the circle. Make sure you are at least two steps outside. When in doubt, dodge, don’t just run.

Beyond that, the tactics are the same as with the elemental boss. Make sure he’s under the bucket, slow him when he’s there, don’t use pets or minions that might delay him between buckets, etc..

P.S. – I agree with the OP that the boss’ heal mechanic is kind of broken. He should never heal more than 2x in a row between buckets. In other words, if you get him down to 10% and then need to spend a lot of time reviving people, he should only cast 2 heals; after that he should only heal again if he’s hit by a bucket. With the current design, suiciding ends up benefiting the party in terms of time, although it’s obviously much easier than reviving 4 players, which doesn’t make much sense.