Guild Wars 2

Let me start by saying that me and my party so far have done AC, CM, TA and SE on all paths story mode and explorable so we are patient, Think through tactics and aren’t exactly unskilled so no this isn’t another ’It’s too hard winch thread’ as I like the difficulty involved.

We do however have several issues with the Searing Effigy fight:

Issue 1 – AOE:

Too much AOE too often, entirely unpredictable and almost instant damage with no way of telling where it will land and often several overlap making it impossible to dodge all the time or recover from. For squishy classes like myself (Mesmer) it’s pretty much an instant downed.

I can only dodge twice at a time but even that doesn’t matter because if it just happen to hit me I’m downed any way (Plus there’s the fire trail that follows and hits you unless you dodge on top of that). There’s no way for me to avoid the damage effectively for any period of time regardless of skill. Completing a fight shouldn’t be a gamble but skill based.

Solutions:

- Reduce the amount of AOE
- Give more time between the red AOE circle showing and incoming damage
- Make the AOE more predictable

Issue 2 – Damage output vs Healing & Professions Rendered Useless

There’s several ways we figured we can go about completing this fight which we’ve seen confirmed in various places we searched for advice. All of which require insane DPS output and endurance.

The problem being is that certain professions are made with support/control in mind rather than damage such as Mesmers. We have two Mesmers in our party, One who uses a phantasm build which is rendered useless with the phantasms dying in the AOE and my build for damage and healing.

Problem with this is that my most effective DPS comes from the One-handed sword/pistol combo which is Melee range which = death. Greatsword is doable but then isn’t amazing damage either.

I’m not set up for condition damage so clones and shattering are too weak for the amount of dps required. Trying to focus on healing with mantras is a big no no since it wastes time needed to DPS. So this instantly renders both me and the other Mesmer useless. Not to mention Issue 1 killing us constantly.

Dungeons should be completable by all professions and it’s highly unfair that Mesmers and similar are rendered useless in this fight regardless of build/trait setup or skill.

Solutions:

- Fix the AOE issue above which should help significantly
- Make it so phantasms are immune to the bosses abilities or at least buffed significantly
- No AOE in melee range, Instead have some other ability that you can dodge away from. Keep the fire trails but make them start a short distance away from melee range (Would be nice to see a fight where melee has the advantage over ranged).

Conclusion:

I love the hard dungeon fights WHEN they are doable with tactics, patience, teamwork and individual skill. I do NOT like fights where no matter how skilled you are there’s nothing within the players power to prevent being killed or for the party to successfully complete the fight because professions are rendered useless or cause a huge disadvantage.

Us Mesmers have a bad enough rep without there being fights that specifically makes people want to avoid Mesmers. Please fix this fight so we can continue our progress.

Edit: Me and the other Mesmer went into the fight specifically to attempt to dodge/prevent being killed. I got downed once by an ‘attack’ that took all my health. Yet there was nothing there attacking me, No AOE or trail of fire nor was I being ‘burned’ so is there some skill he does that’s not mentioned? Some other issues we’re the random AOE being so unpredictable it’s unavoidable.

It’s also making it unwise to use any ability other than auto-attack because that one half of a second you’re placing ‘Radiation Field’ for example is half a second too much (That is with placing where the cursor is option enabled). which means you do no where near enough DPS to be of much use.

A well thought out and constructive post that highlights the glaring issues with this boss. The mechanic, in my opinion, is quite simply broken.

ArenaNet made a big thing about breaking the trinity, making dungeons accessible for all types of player but for this boss, it doesn’t seem to be the case. All the posts I’ve read and videos I’ve seen from people who were successful have been just to nuke it with heavy dps or stack an excessive amount of conditions. This means you have to have players who are traited as such, and does that not go against one of the major aspects of this game?

Exactly I can understand people having to swap weapons, slot skill abilities and the swappable traits as I do this all the time. I do not agree that people have to swap their entire builds and gear around to fit one fight not that it would make much difference on this fight, Mesmers are just useless in this one.

You can go one-handed/pistol combo for high dps which is melee which = death
Phantasm build, phantasms get killed which = useless
Shatter build, clones are one-shot easily and are more about applying confusion type CC’s not DoT’s and are more about Burst damage with the shatters which would be hard to build up seeing as clones get killed easily which = useless

I’d really like to be able to complete this fight. This is a serious balancing issue which I hope will be addressed asap so I can actually earn the Dungeon Master title + Achievement.

It’s one of the harder fights there is, but Mesmers are fine on it if you just swap to a different spec and actually make the fight easier due to Time Warp.

Use Greatsword + Mantra Traits (Slotting Healing, STABILITY, and Cond Removal ones) so you have 3 charges of each and 4% more damage for each charge. On your attacks, make sure to pick up the clone on roll talent and every time you do 2, 4 + roll shatter your clones.

Mesmer does a ton of damage via that method, and just use mantra of stability the instant you get knocked down.

Helheimr.2485:

It’s one of the harder fights there is, but Mesmers are fine on it if you just swap to a different spec and actually make the fight easier due to Time Warp.

Use Greatsword + Mantra Traits (Slotting Healing, STABILITY, and Cond Removal ones) so you have 3 charges of each and 4% more damage for each charge. On your attacks, make sure to pick up the clone on roll talent and every time you do 2, 4 + roll shatter your clones.

Mesmer does a ton of damage via that method, and just use mantra of stability the instant you get knocked down.

I run a semi mantra build with healing and tried to use it in combination with the Greatsword but you don’t really get time to build up mantra’s due to the high amount of unpredictable AOE and you can’t dodge when casting a mantra without breaking it. Since all the AOE happens so often the 5 seconds it takes to cast a mantra is often 5 seconds too much.

Not to mention that it’s not the knockdown ones that are the real issue but the instant damage the AOE does.

I use Mantra of Pain for damage and healing with the heal allies trait and the use mantra 3 times trait. I barely found any reasonable time to cast mantra’s in this fight because of the AOE.

I also use the trait where you dodge and leave a clone behind but since you need the dodge to get out of the AOE, The clone just gets left behind to be killed.

Your suggestion is viable but relies a lot on luck rather than skill which is the problem with this fight. You can probably do it with A LOT of luck but no matter how well I’m doing eventually I get hit by an unpredictable instant damage AOE and downed because there were 3 of them overlapping each other one next to the other.

The AOE needs some balancing I feel so that with skill you can avoid them. The fight relies too much on a gamble which makes it highly unfair and not so much skill based (This is not to say a party who finishes it isn’t skilled just that a party who isn’t that amazing can beat the fight with sheer luck).

The AoE crystals dropping has a decently long period before they drop again, which is plenty of time to recharge mantras should you need to do so.

Optimal strategy for the boss is to unload elites (everyone in the group) and burn him down to 70%. From 70% to 30% the boss no longer heals, so you have one person kite the boss around while everyone else heals up and prepares spells. Once your elites are off cooldown, you then burn the boss from 30% to dead. It’s critical for the 2nd burn part to either move him to a part of the room that doesn’t have a lot of crystals, or have everyone ranging the boss so that he doesn’t summon a large amount of crystals near him, as the closer he is to crystals the faster he heals.

I main Mesmer and run 0 pieces of vit or toughness and have no issues surviving on this fight. MAKE SURE TO CLEANSE THE BURN CONDITION or you take double damage from everything.

Helheimr.2485:

The AoE crystals dropping has a decently long period before they drop again, which is plenty of time to recharge mantras should you need to do so.

Optimal strategy for the boss is to unload elites (everyone in the group) and burn him down to 70%. From 70% to 30% the boss no longer heals, so you have one person kite the boss around while everyone else heals up and prepares spells. Once your elites are off cooldown, you then burn the boss from 30% to dead. It’s critical for the 2nd burn part to either move him to a part of the room that doesn’t have a lot of crystals, or have everyone ranging the boss so that he doesn’t summon a large amount of crystals near him, as the closer he is to crystals the faster he heals.

I main Mesmer and run 0 pieces of vit or toughness and have no issues surviving on this fight. MAKE SURE TO CLEANSE THE BURN CONDITION or you take double damage from everything.

Thank you for your advice al though this is what we’ve been trying we will be attempting to do this fight again and I shall attempt the above again. Either way I still think the fight relies too heavily on luck and could do with some balancing.