Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been noticing a pattern lately in parties I join when I comes to Fractal of the Mists.
9/10, they want to avoid the Grawl Fractal all together because of this fight.
If we enter that fractal, they want to return to the lab to try again. Never have I heard anything positive about this fractal. Usually it’s “….this one….” or “oh **** I hate this fractal” and so on.

Everything’s all hunky doory until the final boss.
After hours of attempts, different parties, different classes, different tactics it keeps ending up as a failure.
My opinion of it was simple “Man, this fight is kinda unfair, and this is only difficulty 10!” then a fellow party member summed it up.

“It’s broken.”

And I feel like I have to agree with everything that goes on.
The no-cast time firestorms he spams.
The arrows that make you take regular damage, agony damage, and engulfed in flames that make you take fire damage and do fire damage to anyone near you.
The lava pools that appear.
The floor that catches you on fire making reviving people a pain.
The horde of slimes that appear and swarm over you, slowing you down with each hit and seem to keep coming and coming.
The boss who always seems to be next to the NPC he’s about to heal off of.
The fact the boss will sometimes drop agro and fully heal. (Had this happen twice And i’m not referring to where he floats to a NPC to heal. Like, he just stops attacking on the spot and heals completely from whatever HP he was at). Kinda sucks when he’s 1/2 dead, drops agro and heals, then attacks again, thus restarting the battle cept the party isn’t at 100% health, are waiting on cooldowns, and one guy is usually dead by now.

So I’m making this thread to get the opinions of others who have fought this fractal boss and what they feel about him (Maybe even show a few tips/strategies. Already know that if you run away from him a good distance you can drop combat to fully heal, etc), and hopefully let ANET see that perhaps they should look into this boss a bit.

Edit – Been asking around Lion’s Arch about the fight, getting tips, etc… and so far it feels like you have to have specific classes during the battle (Guardian or Mesmer) who can reflect.
Gonna keep doing some research into the fight~

Please stop this, it’s like 1 of maybe 3 fun boss fights in this game where you have to move and use skills at right time if you don’t want to make it harder.
We need petition to stop turning GW2 in Hello Kitty.

Nope, I’m 100% with you. It can be fun and still require a bit less. It’s not even a matter of if you are good at the game, it’s a matter of the whole team having to be god at the game. Which, when dealing with PUGs, isn’t always a very likely situation…

I’ve failed on shaman maybe 5 times total and I run 48 almost daily. If your teams keep failing, you might need to look at how you are approaching the fight and/or communicate with your team more to get a game plan.

I think the fight can be less annoying than the champ grawl before him (I swear they increased vet spawn rates and rocks don’t spawn when they need to…

1) The adds, if ranged, should not immobilize and spawn closer to the boss, otherwise they should just be melee mobs. This mitigates the need for a class with anti-projectile walls, which as it stands trivialize the most ‘difficult’ part of the encounter. I’m sorry if anyone is currently under the impression they are a better player for stacking behind a wall of reflection before engaging the mobs.

2) The 2 separate anti-melee dive bomb attacks need to be on the same CD, so that attempting to melee the boss isn’t just going to burn dodges 90% of the time. This will help shorten the encounter and thus alleviate the sustain requirements (aka a support class).

Here’s a tip i personally love using. If you have aggro and are trying to avoid the agony arrows without wasting a dodge roll. Then get 900 units away from the boss and “q” + “e” spam strafe. His arrow is just slow enough that at 900 units you can trick the A.I. and dodge it without wasting a roll.

If you want the best chance to not have the boss attack the villagers then drag him to the center close to the lava. This way he has to travel a long distance and if you have a slow or chill (apply before the shield is up), you can slow him down and easily take the shield off.

Reflect shields above all are the easiest way to deal with the boss.

There’s a reason why fractals seem to be much more difficult/painful when you’re doing the 0 – 30 brackets.

I’m aware that some fights might be harder for some people and pugs, and I’m not trying to be an elitist but that fight is still very doable in level 10, please don’t nerf it.

Just like Shuguard said, just stay away from the boss to prevent the agony or have a reflect. This encounter is great (or at least to me) because you are in constant movement, not just spamming auto attacks to kill the boss.

Just my opinion, hope you can get the hang of the fight and enjoy it.

Hate to say it but… actually I don’t hate to say it: this is an L2P issue.

Sorry m8 but this is hilarious. Someone is actually complaining about level 9-10 fractals. never thought I’d see the day.

It’s a fight that overly relies on certain class mechanics not available to everyone. If you are in a PUG group that doesn’t have a member of X profession (or doesn’t know what they are doing), it can be impossible to carry depending on your class more than your ability. And like I said earlier, the majority of the problem is with the poor choice of adds, otherwise it’s just another fractal encounter that zones melee.

Anyways it can’t be solely written off as ‘l2p’.

“I cannot do content that requires me to do more than to sit and tap!!”

D:!

getting old now

randomfightfan.4091:

Sorry m8 but this is hilarious. Someone is actually complaining about level 9-10 fractals. never thought I’d see the day.

Where have you been? I saw people asking for 15 ar in level 10 fractals and then leave as soon as they got cliffside, go figure.

Anyway, it’s reassuring to see that nothing changed. Never question yourself, your build, your gear, your skills or especially your knowledge of the encounter; point fingers at game mechanics. Wipe? It’s too hard.
Orrrrrr you can always blame your team, if you’re short on excuses.

It’s unfortunate there are so many players around willing to enable selective content just so they can pretend to be better than others.

What do you think you’re doing in this encounter that takes so much more skill, rather than composition? Strafing back and forth at 900 range until it’s time to stack behind WoR?

The fact is that the reflection skills are broken. They trivialize some content which isn’t designed with their use as a given, or cause headaches for every group that does not have access to them when it’s what the encounter is based on.

Which is why the adds that spawn in a large area around this boss should not all have a ranged CC that can’t be mitigated with stability.

Surely there is somebody who is confident enough in their own ability to say that this boss is disproportionately difficult at higher levels without the use of certain profession limited abilities.

I suppose it’s also OK that most of the fractal bosses can either camp their AoE a significant portion of the time, or have an auto attack that is too frequent to dodge and subsequently zone any melee who have aggro. Unless of course you’ve got a guardian tank.

Avylin.2635:

It’s a fight that overly relies on certain class mechanics not available to everyone. If you are in a PUG group that doesn’t have a member of X profession (or doesn’t know what they are doing), it can be impossible to carry depending on your class more than your ability. And like I said earlier, the majority of the problem is with the poor choice of adds, otherwise it’s just another fractal encounter that zones melee.

Anyways it can’t be solely written off as ‘l2p’.

Of course its a l2p issue. I’m not familiar with the engi or the necro, but every other class has some sort of block or projectile absorb/reflect. So unless engi and necro don’t have anything (which I doubt), and unless you’re running with a full necro engi team, then it’s absolutely a l2p issue. Every encounter in the game in fractals or dungeons can be easily beaten once you learn what to do. CoE is an awesome example. People run Coe for the first time and go holy crap. But once you learn the encounters and what to do its one of the mokittenn dungeons in the game. This boss fight is hard but if you know what to do, class set up wont be the end all of the fight. Sure it’s easier for some classes then other, but it’s not impossibru.

Block skills that last for 3 seconds and cause you to be in animation that prevents you from helping your group dps the adds isn’t useful at all unless it’s to run behind the WoR. The best argument that the adds are OK is that you can usually lay an AoE large enough to rally quickly after downing if you’re caught out.

This can be done without and blocks or wor tho, why are people so caught up in these abilities being what wins the fight? I try to be constructive when I post, but people argue and won’t listen or be open minded about things, and that seems to be the case on here a lot. Watch a video guide or something, make a guardian yourself if you think you absolutely need wor. This can be done without it.

I have to agree with Avylin.

Avylin.2635:

It’s unfortunate there are so many players around willing to enable selective content just so they can pretend to be better than others.

What do you think you’re doing in this encounter that takes so much more skill, rather than composition? Strafing back and forth at 900 range until it’s time to stack behind WoR?

The fact is that the reflection skills are broken. They trivialize some content which isn’t designed with their use as a given, or cause headaches for every group that does not have access to them when it’s what the encounter is based on.

Reflection trivializes a lot of the pve content. If you state that it is “doable at 10 without it” then, allright everything is doable if you can eat the shaman arrow and the add’s projectiles without feeling punished heavily…
It’s just saddening to see how some people jump to making fun of others and suggest that you lack skill if you dont enjoy the fight mechanic. Makes me wonder where the skill comes into play at the shaman encounter. Finding the capslock button to tell PUG groups they shall stack on WoR? Because actually using the abilities isnt what makes the fight fun.
I can enjoy the fight because, as someone already stated, it forces you to keep moving, emphasizes rally mechanics for newer players and has a telegraphed one-shot mechanic that is harder to dodge the closer you are.
Being forced to use reflect at 30+ (or 40+ depending on your AR and if you are full zerker) isnt a fun mechanic, it just excludes whole professions and leaves them as feeling useless, if they get even a chance to pug high level fractals.

I would nerf the attack where you take aoe damage every second at your location (can it even be dodged?) otherwise I think the fight is okay. It’s really a l2p issue.

You just need a guardian which makes this encounter a whole lot easier. Sorry to say but trinity exists; there are classes, though not mandatory at lower levels, that decides failure and success in your run especially at the hardest dungeons.

Avylin.2635:

It’s a fight that overly relies on certain class mechanics not available to everyone. If you are in a PUG group that doesn’t have a member of X profession (or doesn’t know what they are doing), it can be impossible to carry depending on your class more than your ability. And like I said earlier, the majority of the problem is with the poor choice of adds, otherwise it’s just another fractal encounter that zones melee.

Anyways it can’t be solely written off as ‘l2p’.

The challenge only starts when adds appear. The champ shaman alone is not a problem.

This is not a representation of what each class is fully capable of
These are merely a few reflects/projectile blocks that i can think off the top of my head

mesmer
temporal curtain + warden’s feedback trait
phantasmal warden + warden’s feedback trit
feedback

guardian
wall of reflect
shield of avenger
sanctuary
shield of absorb

elementalist
magnetic aura + trait powerful auras (party reflect)
swirling winds (it might be broken for this fight, shall confirm)
magnetic wave

thief
daggerstorm
smoke screen

ranger
whirling defense

==========
Other skills that help manage adds

race: sylvari
Root racial elite

engineer
Lots of AoE immobilize and cripple

ranger
barrage
other aoe immobilize and conditions

Warrior
longbow F1 > 3 > 2 > optional: banner down > pickup and 5 (for might )
warbanner : so many butts saved by warbanner

Necro
tons of bleeds
epidemic

too lazy to think of more

warrior shield 5 is only for burst protection/dodge alternative, better use warhorn 5 (also a blast) for damage mitigation

Aside from “reflects” team has to AoE bomb the grubs FAST

so unless you plan on rolling with a team composition of 5 warriors then I dont think there’s a problem here

You should make a petition to buff the loot instead. This boss is great but the loot is crap even at 48.

Do not hate me but i’m a guardian and i have few things to say on the topic.

First of all, lower fractals like lvl 10, are easier and harder at the same time. How is it so you ask, i myself am only lvl 38 but i’ve done lvl 46 once, so i can tell you that at higher lvls you just don’t have to tell people what to do, everyone have all the needed utills and know what to do with them, but the damage you take at lvl 10 is considerably smaller than lvl 40+.

Another thing is the assumption you need certain classes to even start a fractal. At lower lvls not so much, even tho it is helpfull to have a guardian for example. But even so it’s not a class you need but a certain type of utillity, like reflection, which is not guardian-only, so many times a good elementalist was helping me reflect projectiles.

Also you say that reflection trivialises some encounters, only thing i can say to that is: and what is wrong with it?? I’m playing mmo’s because i like playing with other players, by choosing one class i’m choosing a set of skills i have. Other players are there to help me fill the gaps in my skills/utilities. Encounters are made that way so you have to utilise a various set of skills, like shield of avenger.

My feeling on the matter is this, you want to take reflections from guardians… Which would be ok if we really were OP. Which we are not, we are probably the lowest of the low dps wise. We are true support in gw2, i can help party survive but even if i go full dps i hardly do any dps. So when you take reflections/some low heals/blocks what will be left? A class noone plays because it is completely useless.

You guys say that high lvl fractal runners want everything to stay the way it is because we/they fell so pr0. It’s not true, this game does not have many difficult content so we want one thing we have to stay unchanged. Maybe one thing could change: We want moar l00tz.

TL:DR Read the wall of text.

Imbued shaman is fine…

PvE balance is horrible……

What you need for this fight is:
appropriate antiprojectile and a strong aoe burst:

I.E. 2 guardians and 2 warriors and maybe a thief (unfortunately most thief players are uberbad :/)

Now they keep nerfing CC and burst of every profession and buffing those 2 due to PvP

we strongly need a PvE balancing patch….the situation is completely broken….
I don t think any other mmorpg has ever seen such unbalance as we have now in PvE.

@bread.
Seems swirling wind does not work against elementals any more post patch…still to test it accurately but they trashed focus completely…..
Also what you forgot to say is that antiprojectile alone is useless if not paired with appropriate dps to get rid of elementals FAST.

LordByron.8369:

@bread.
Seems swirling wind does not work against elementals any more post patch…still to test it accurately but they trashed focus completely…..
Also what you forgot to say is that antiprojectile alone is useless if not paired with appropriate dps to get rid of elementals FAST.

lolwat? wow that’s quite crappy of em. shall test too, ill update when confirmed.

and yeah, have to aoe bomb fast

Thief dagger storm also never reflected the elemental projectiles. Some MIGHT get reflected but they usually tend to bash through your spin and damage/root you. Probably wouldn’t happen if you were able to sit still but you need to be moving on that map. Same thing happens with Lupi but if you stand still while spinning, you will reflect.

two thing they should do. 1 Agony animation should be half visible, right now its not at all. 2. Remove immobilize from fire eles. Everything else fine as is,

Nuka Cola.8520:

two thing they should do. 1 Agony animation should be half visible, right now its not at all.

It is very visible.

i bet if we play together you can t evade 50% of his Attacks

Its visible as long as you don t have all those particle effects covering the shaman.

i.e. visible 1VS1….invisible 5VS1

not to mention the bug of the istant 1shot after shield :/ that can easily wipe a group

LordByron.8369:

i bet if we play together you can t evade 50% of his Attacks

Its visible as long as you don t have all those particle effects covering the shaman.

i.e. visible 1VS1….invisible 5VS1

not to mention the bug of the istant 1shot after shield :/ that can easily wipe a group

You bet wrong.

Very visible, with all those particle effects.

This Champion is one of the easiest to solo with a Ranger. Keep him at range, move back and forth to confuse the AI, entangle him when he bubbles/shells and take out the grubs.

Using a tank pet is great because the pet will keep his attention while you continue to take him out from range.

Razeor.6271:

LordByron.8369:

i bet if we play together you can t evade 50% of his Attacks

Its visible as long as you don t have all those particle effects covering the shaman.

i.e. visible 1VS1….invisible 5VS1

not to mention the bug of the istant 1shot after shield :/ that can easily wipe a group

You bet wrong.

Very visible, with all those particle effects.

He’s right you know, if you pay attention his arrow attack is very avoidable. If you can’t dodge his arrow attack you should probably stick to 1-9 and practice more.

randomfightfan.4091:

Thief dagger storm also never reflected the elemental projectiles. Some MIGHT get reflected but they usually tend to bash through your spin and damage/root you. Probably wouldn’t happen if you were able to sit still but you need to be moving on that map. Same thing happens with Lupi but if you stand still while spinning, you will reflect.

I’m not familiar with thief as i rarely play mine, please explain further.

do you mean reflect only activates if you dont move? and when you move there will be no reflect?

Razeor.6271:

LordByron.8369:

i bet if we play together you can t evade 50% of his Attacks

Its visible as long as you don t have all those particle effects covering the shaman.

i.e. visible 1VS1….invisible 5VS1

not to mention the bug of the istant 1shot after shield :/ that can easily wipe a group

You bet wrong.

Very visible, with all those particle effects.

I agree with less particle effects and damage numbers especially all the crits cover up the enemy, there should be an option with VERY low profile effects, it’s annoying.

But my main problem in this fight is the obnoxiously huge enemy HP bar and portrait. Maybe because of the angle i normally play with. Either introduce back the custom UI in gw1 or give us the option to disable the HP bar. For now what i do is tilt the camera sideways just so i see what the shaman is doing.

The flaming shaman boss is a problem later on if you have a team full of glass cannons and no utility, otherwise its fine .. if a bit on the hard side .

Yeah. He shouldn’t be able to do any damage. He should just sit in the middle of the room and use the /dance emote while we hit him down in 1 min. That sounds much more fun.

L2P

I’m not familiar with thief as i rarely play mine, please explain further.
do you mean reflect only activates if you dont move? and when you move there will be no reflect?

The eles punch through your reflect and damage you with their projectiles. If you want to do good damage and not die you need to drop smoke screen first (or use someone else’s wall) and use that for cover as you storm. At least you’re able to spread conditions around and not die if you do that. Wish you could just use the storm and not get kitten if you get focused.

He’s right you know, if you pay attention his arrow attack is very avoidable. If you can’t dodge his arrow attack you should probably stick to 1-9 and practice more.

How is it a practice more issue if the player can’t see an animation past a wall of blue, wall of red, wall of purple, lines of player attacks (mesmer gs, unicorn ponies (dreamer), blue glowy balls, etc.), flowers growing on the enemy (kudzu), green poison auras, and a whole bunch of other partical effects to go along with the partical effects the boss already has on himself. Then there’s also all the bright, flashy lights that come from your allies (guardians mostly). That isn’t L2P, that is a He’s freaking hard to see issue. Not everyone has perfect eyesight. After a hundred 48 runs I still have a hard time figuring out who he’s aiming at if there’s a guardian in the group blinding you every 2s.

randomfightfan.4091:

How is it a practice more issue if the player can’t see an animation past a wall of blue, wall of red, wall of purple, lines of player attacks (mesmer gs, unicorn ponies (dreamer), blue glowy balls, etc.), flowers growing on the enemy (kudzu), green poison auras, and a whole bunch of other partical effects to go along with the partical effects the boss already has on himself. Then there’s also all the bright, flashy lights that come from your allies (guardians mostly). That isn’t L2P, that is a He’s freaking hard to see issue. Not everyone has perfect eyesight. After a hundred 48 runs I still have a hard time figuring out who he’s aiming at if there’s a guardian in the group blinding you every 2s.

So you finished 100 level 48s eating every single flame arrow along the way? Your guildies have the patience of saints to tolerate that.

Ranged Autoattack→ Reflect & FocusFire → Reflect & AoE Bomb
Repeat → Win

If you keep your distance and constantly move left-right, you have a fair chance of dodging every arrow, even if you do miss the dodge roll.

Razeor.6271:

Nuka Cola.8520:

two thing they should do. 1 Agony animation should be half visible, right now its not at all.

It is very visible.

Its very poorly visible when you have mesmer/clones spamming Spatial Surge and other effects on him. Its his main attack, it should be waaaaaaaaay more visible.

We beat Shaman regularly at high levels (30++) without Guardians when using our alts just as easily as with guardians.

You don’t need WoF or SoA to win. You need a team that knows how to avoid and mitigate damage properly for their class as well as understand mob mechanics, movement and how to position them.

Unfortunately, GW2 doesn’t really push the player to learn mitigation/avoidance as much as just full on dps with some dodges. It takes some use of skills also (and you can still do it all wearing full berserkers dps gear… even on your guard).

Blind skills can also go a long way in this fight. In fact, I’ve personally had some of my best takedowns in this battle when we’ve had a condition Necro in the group. Go figure… who would have thought?

Open your minds and find new possibilities. Don’t just listen to the other strats people post but think differently and think of new ones.

This fight most certainly does not need a nerf. The only thing it needs is a SERIOUS buff to it’s loot table. FotM loot is uber terribad.

It’s a fractal that requires everyone to know what they are doing. What’s wrong with that?? You want it nerfed because you can’t dps down shaman in 5 secs with your 100b??

I hated that but once I ran more than 20 full fractal run, I learned that fight and I just love the complexity of that fractal. Every dungeon should have something like that.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

randomfightfan.4091:

How is it a practice more issue if the player can’t see an animation past a wall of blue, wall of red, wall of purple, lines of player attacks (mesmer gs, unicorn ponies (dreamer), blue glowy balls, etc.), flowers growing on the enemy (kudzu), green poison auras, and a whole bunch of other partical effects to go along with the partical effects the boss already has on himself. Then there’s also all the bright, flashy lights that come from your allies (guardians mostly). That isn’t L2P, that is a He’s freaking hard to see issue. Not everyone has perfect eyesight. After a hundred 48 runs I still have a hard time figuring out who he’s aiming at if there’s a guardian in the group blinding you every 2s.

So you finished 100 level 48s eating every single flame arrow along the way? Your guildies have the patience of saints to tolerate that.

Lol you like to exaggerate for effect don’t you? Since you can’t understand what I wrote I’ll simplify it. No guardian on the team = can see the boss easy = easy to dodge arrows = easy win. Guardian on the team = can’t see crap so you use walls and never get hit = easy win. Sorry we can’t all stare at a lightbulb for 5 minutes and still see fine. Like many other people, staring at phosphorous blue for long periods of time gives me a headache so I try not to stare at it.

I have 5 characters at 80, with Elementalist complete with all Ascended/upgrades. I do Fractals Lv10 – 33. I stopped doing Ac long time back. Due to the players there are mostly rage quitters and community of players have bad attitude (mostly). I don’t blame them when game is built on annoyances.

Avylin.2635 ’s end quotes are the best ! Just did Level 10 on my warrior after the 28 May 2013, patched. Battle Standards does not rally down state players. Failed 2 to 3 times when i used it. Never failed on me before the patch.

“Honestly, I’m beginning to
wonder if a dungeon dev team
ever existed in the first place.” – Siv
—————————-

The Dredge dungeon got more annoying. Hence I am sticking to my rule of not spending anything on real-money.

I have supported the gem-store in the past back in October – December 2012. To a point I realised after I leveled up to 80. The end game content is just full of bugs and built around annoyance not fun mechanics (please do not quote Ac Path 2, I hate that dumb mechanics and not that it is hard. It’s just not fun if u are doing it more than once). Not to mention we are forced to go with Pugging.

Rewards are BAD, end game content has just too much annoyances (makes raging players grow) the result is not fun. I will keep trying until I give up on this game. Sad to say this, I only have good thoughts of the game when I started in October 2012 – January 2013.

My final verdict, As time goes by I find that my negative experience with Guild Wars 2 is growing. Will continue to do so on not spending on gemstore with real-money, to a point if game gets worst I will stop it complete and only have negative opinion on this game for new players.

Nikaido.3457:

Episoph.5289:

Reflection trivializes a lot of the pve content. If you state that it is “doable at 10 without it” then, allright everything is doable if you can eat the shaman arrow and the add’s projectiles without feeling punished heavily…

You are supposed to dodge the friggin arrow. I don’t even need to read more, your original premise is already wrong enough.

At higher level the reflection is for the grubs, you’re still supposed to dodge the arrow and no decent group would waste reflection skills in between phases, we all dodge arrows, we keep the reflection out of cooldown for when the grubs spawn.

At lvl 10+ the level of damage done by the grubs is not that high. If you can’t handle them without reflection, too bad.

Maybe i should have put my statement that i enjoy the arrow mechanic and the fact that you are supposed to dodge it at the start instead of the end of my post. Or maybe, just maybe, you should consider reading complete posts prior to to replying – eases up the potential misinterpretations.

Guess i could have worded it better, allthough i said “everything is doable if you can eat the shaman arrow” to emphasis the amount of leeway you get at level 10 fractals, because everyone knows that you dont use reflect for the arrow alone and just dodge them. From your following statement i see you agreeing with my original postulation which consisted of (to paraphrase here):
“When someone says he can do it at lv 10 without certain reflection skills and brings that up as an arguement over the evaluation of the encounter, then that is rather silly in my humble opinion, since the dmg values of the grub adds are not punishing enough to make it challenging without said reflection.”

So if you reread my post or just take my paraphrasing here (which i hope clears it up a bit) we can agree on that matter?

Bread.7516:

Avylin.2635:

It’s a fight that overly relies on certain class mechanics not available to everyone. If you are in a PUG group that doesn’t have a member of X profession (or doesn’t know what they are doing), it can be impossible to carry depending on your class more than your ability. And like I said earlier, the majority of the problem is with the poor choice of adds, otherwise it’s just another fractal encounter that zones melee.

Anyways it can’t be solely written off as ‘l2p’.

The challenge only starts when adds appear. The champ shaman alone is not a problem.

This is not a representation of what each class is fully capable of
These are merely a few reflects/projectile blocks that i can think off the top of my head

mesmer
temporal curtain + warden’s feedback trait
phantasmal warden + warden’s feedback trit
feedback

guardian
wall of reflect
shield of avenger
sanctuary
shield of absorb

elementalist
magnetic aura + trait powerful auras (party reflect)
swirling winds (it might be broken for this fight, shall confirm)
magnetic wave

thief
daggerstorm
smoke screen

ranger
whirling defense

==========
Other skills that help manage adds

race: sylvari
Root racial elite

engineer
Lots of AoE immobilize and cripple

ranger
barrage
other aoe immobilize and conditions

Warrior
longbow F1 > 3 > 2 > optional: banner down > pickup and 5 (for might )
warbanner : so many butts saved by warbanner

Necro
tons of bleeds
epidemic

too lazy to think of more

warrior shield 5 is only for burst protection/dodge alternative, better use warhorn 5 (also a blast) for damage mitigation

Aside from “reflects” team has to AoE bomb the grubs FAST

so unless you plan on rolling with a team composition of 5 warriors then I dont think there’s a problem here

Warriors can also trait to reflect (not common but hey it’s something) and engineers have their shield and a trait or 2.

But yeah, as painful as this boss can be, he is doable with a semi competent group.

So funny how there’s a thread right next to this one, with a video, by someone who just solo’d this boss at level 13 fractal (not a guardian either).

Clearly, this fight does not need any nerf whatsoever and people just need to, and I hate to say it, learn-to-play.

Please buff shaman battle, and make it mandatory.

1. It’s shorter than dredge by 10×.
2. It weeds out the terribads.
3. It’s too ez atm.

Shaman battle isn’t that bad. Dredge is 10x worst not because it’s hard, this level just takes forever, Anet to balance dredge and nerf the mobs amount by a lot to bring it on par with other levels.

The harpy level also needs some nerfing, those 4 champions have ton of hp.

Scarn.1703:

Razeor.6271:

LordByron.8369:

i bet if we play together you can t evade 50% of his Attacks

Its visible as long as you don t have all those particle effects covering the shaman.

i.e. visible 1VS1….invisible 5VS1

not to mention the bug of the istant 1shot after shield :/ that can easily wipe a group

You bet wrong.

Very visible, with all those particle effects.

He’s right you know, if you pay attention his arrow attack is very avoidable. If you can’t dodge his arrow attack you should probably stick to 1-9 and practice more.

L2p right?
I still wonder how this non constructive posts are tolerated here….

If its visible, giving more visual clues won t change ANYTHING.
If its not it will change.

Also i did lvl 48 Yesterday at last phase alone Killing the last 4 elementals and ressing a player……with an ele….

clearly l2p issue…….if only all this proplayers posting on forums did exist in game……

P.S: also its another stage that shows how unbalance and horrible pve is atm….
It just makes weapons and professions unviable by design and other professions makes the fight almost boring….

@Lord Byron

You could argue the jade maw is “dodged” more often by virtue of the icon above players’ heads. Putting something above a player’s head is definitely the gateway to more “Simon says” game mechanics and a higher chance of player success when asked to respond to a thread.

In my opinion, one of the major problems of PvE is how ground heavy it can be. Particularly when playing an Elementalist, the ground floor makes up 66% of the picture or more all the time. The Fire Shaman is not only covered by effects, but also by its own 2D UI overlay statusbar.

On the upside, you never end up in one of the lava pits when playing character heavy on ground targeting. Compare this to a double pistol thief, who barely looks at the ground, centers the fire shaman correctly, but more often gets surprised by lava pits. I do not say this lightly, these are my observations of fractals 38+.

This encounter has competing game mechanics and skill requirements which either force you to look up or look down. Managing those competing mechanics adds another layer of complexity to the encounter which already has sudden changes between a calm stage and a high activity stage. On top of that, it is an encounter where your utility skill choices really matter. Therein lies the difficulty of this encounter.

Naturally, if you learn to master all these things, the encounter is easy, meaning you can learn how to do it better. Just don’t expect the game to drop any hints on what you were doing wrong or Youtube videos to actually explain something.