Guild Wars 2

Can some explain to me the mechanic of Old Tom in FotM and the proper way to go about defeating him? Thanks in advance.

Alright. He’s fairly simple overall, but he becomes challenging at high level fractals without guardians, multiple thieves or multiple x/focus elementalists.

The main mechanic is the fan. This fan will shut down his poison cloud. In order to activate the fan, there are 2 slots which require a dwayna crystal to be placed into to activate. The crystals can be found in front of the fan. The general strategy is to go around the sides of the area he’s in to avoid aggroing him and depoit half the crystals on each side.

After you set up the crystals you can initiate the fight. The best strategy for doing this is to have 1 player assigned to each crystal spot and one to the fan. When the posion cloud reactivated they need to rush back and reinsert crystals and retrigger the fan.

Now, in order to survive tom’s poison bolts, the best strategy is to use the guardian’s shield of the avenger and the thief’s smoke screen to absorb the bolts, placed on top of him the shield will absorb all his bolts and the smoke screen can absorb all on one side(maybe all of them I’m not certain). I believe most reflect projectile abilities do not work, but I think most, if not all protection from projectiles works.

At low level fractals, I believe it is perfectly possible to get a tanky character to tank his bolts and to just stand behind them and dps him down(at least it was when I first started fractals, I haven’t done low levels in long enough that I don’t know if it’s been changed)

Just adding on to the Smoke Screen point – last time I played Fractals, 42 I believe it was, you were able to plant the Smoke Screen directly on top of him such that the projectiles would get absorbed from all angles. Not sure if it’s still possible or if Smoke Screen even works now – it’s been a while.

If you don’t have much in the way of stopping the projectiles, you can also go for a ranged approach by the consoles for the crystals. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies in those corners that you can use to shelter from any shots that come your way, and you can still shoot away safely.

Under Level 10, you don’t even need the crystals. Just have the squishiest person stand at the fand to activate when necessary =)

If someone assigned to the machinery goes down they need to be revived quickly. Other than that, players shouldn’t cluster together due to Tom’s chain lightning. I’m guessing that players can hide from the poison spray behind a variety of obstacles such as turrets, pets, or each other.

Auesis.7301:

If you don’t have much in the way of stopping the projectiles, you can also go for a ranged approach by the consoles for the crystals. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies in those corners that you can use to shelter from any shots that come your way, and you can still shoot away safely.

Its a good idea to hide in there yes, but be aware his Pull skill has still hit me there before and it does alot of damage. I try to heal and run back if im targeted

also make sure you get the poison cloud debuff before you turn the fan on or it won’t work

dunno for thief shield but devs thought swirling wind was not supposed to block bosses projectiles last patch.

shield of the avenger still works….yet its really pointless that devs render useless sklls whose ONLY purpose is to block projectiles.

If we are not supposed to CC, to condition and to block projectiles what are we supposed to do?
DPS

maybe that is the reason why this boss at higher level is just a DPS check:
You fail if your dps are not enough OR you don t have a warrior in party…. like lava fractal veterans.

If you are a mesmer, just get 3 (untraited) iwardens up.