Guild Wars 2

So basically I think Mossman in the swamp fractals needs a better tell/build-up or whatever you personally call it on his agony projectile.

The lighting, size of Mossman, and size and speed of the projectile make it incredibly difficult to dodge. This isn’t exactly fair when you’re doing things like level 48 and his agony is a minimum of 18% per tick and will usually result in death if you aren’t at full health. If you have a guardian in the group, it’s even more difficult with their fire, but that’s just a profession mechanic and has problems across the board.

What I would suggest would be as follows:

1. Make him bigger. Mossman is too small for the amount of damage he can do.

2. Give his projectile a noticeable colour that stands out. It’s blends in too much with
the fractal

3. Decrease the speed of his projectile. It should take slightly longer to hit you to give you enough time to notice it and dodge.

4. Give it a proper telegraph. He needs an actual telegraph for this attack. You can’t see it when you’re running around and he’s too small to notice.

These 4 changes would ultimately bring him in-line with other bosses that deal agony and would remove his artificial difficulty, while still making him somewhat challenging if the group isn’t careful.

Before responding, please keep in mind this is from a perspective of level 48, where he not only does high agony damage but also does decent damage with his wolves and other attacks.

Probably the best advice I can give.

See his armpits? Dodge asap.

That’s not his agony attack though. That’s his melee attack which doesn’t deal agony.

The issue is his agony attack (the thrown axe) has no noticeable telegraph

Even worse, that he can throw axe at random people, while chasing someone else. So it’s even harder to react to it.

Even worse, at higher levels ( like 79) he can throw his axe, while in stealth, hit you, and still be in stealth while you’re on the floor dying.

He does have a small telegraph (you can see when he starts throwing) but its duration could use some increase.

I agree we can improve mossman’s animation. To some people, shaman’s arrow is hard to see with all the particle effect, but I find Mossman worse. Fire shaman is at least in the air and doesn’t move much. Mossman however is constantly chasing some and in stealth. With a guardian burning him or a ele bringing down some meteors, it is really hard to see his attack.

Get good scrub lel L2P. Habitat = Ground etc.

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In all honesty though, even at lv48 this guy fires his agony stuff from and remains longer in stealth than not. Sometimes he stealths, runs around, instagibs two people nearby, shoot an agony axe on his main target and restealth again in less than two seconds. Also he is always after my 1836 armor Mesmer for whatever reason. He seems to like people wearing light clothing.

I would also like to add that Mossman is 10x easier than Bloomhunger, who can still wipe the floor with bad party comp or just if your group doesnt dodge or get rid of spirits in time, while Mossman is almost only about the guy, who has main aggro, kiting him around the place. I recently figured out that the Fury buff from the spirit multiplies his damage by around 2,5 times. Just as a FYI to people to take it out first. The Might buffing one didnt seem to increase its regular damage much.

In all honesty though, even at lv48 this guy fires his agony stuff from and remains longer in stealth than not. Sometimes he stealths, runs around, instagibs two people nearby, shoot an agony axe on his main target and restealth again in less than two seconds. Also he is always after my 1836 armor Mesmer for whatever reason. He seems to like people wearing light clothing.
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errr… players with higher toughness will usual keep aggro the boss more often

You don’t want to kite Mossman too much or he spends a lot of time stealthed. When he uses Blazing Axe (like dagger but more damage and also does Bleeding!) he gets weird effect on him (like roots or something?). He tries to get close to his target for teleport + Gouge. If he fails to do this after like 10 seconds he will stealth instead.
And then he usually re-stealths right after that.

Wethospu.6437:

You don’t want to kite Mossman too much or he spends a lot of time stealthed. When he uses Blazing Axe (like dagger but more damage and also does Bleeding!) he gets weird effect on him (like roots or something?). He tries to get close to his target for teleport + Gouge. If he fails to do this after like 10 seconds he will stealth instead.
And then he usually re-stealths right after that.

Aye, that’s why you need an anchor. And every decent and self-respecting group uses him.

It sucks but what we found that works best is to let him hit you if he goes stealth. Since we have at least 1 thief on the team, we rotate 2 people meleeing (so he doesn’t invis as much and dies faster), thief sr the 2 downed so they res fast, players swap and melee back up. If everyone melees they drops in 1-2 hits if you can’t see what’s going on, if everyone kites, he stays invis for over a minute at a time.

What they really should do with this boss is give him the stealth mechanics that the players feel. He should only have 4 seconds of stealth and have 3 seconds of revealed after those 4 seconds. If anything, he should get stealth if he hits someone instead of if he isn’t hitting anyone. It’s not like he’s refreshing his stealth, he’s just chasing the players and getting free stealth from nothing.

Pop reflects when he drops out of stealth. Problem solved.

I can’t spot his animations at all. Guardian fire really is an eyesore that obscures everything. I just put down smokescreens as a thief and then watch the group kite him out of 900m range. Doh.

aIJay.8125:

Pop reflects when he drops out of stealth. Problem solved.

Your problem is solved only if you range him. Which is much easy than group melee in 40s. If your group is melee him, your problem isn’t solved because he might just pop right next to you, when every one is clustered together. You still have to dodge to the other side of the reflection, which is now start getting complicated. Pop reflection then dodge, about the same time when he appears. You probably were dead by then.

How about this
1) guessing time, pop reflection, wait, dodge to the other side if he appears on the same side.
2) or just dodge

aIJay.8125:

Pop reflects when he drops out of stealth. Problem solved.

You clearly didn’t read my comments either. He often throws his axe while still in stealth. Gl seeing that coming

Celly.5912:

aIJay.8125:

Pop reflects when he drops out of stealth. Problem solved.

You clearly didn’t read my comments either. He often throws his axe while still in stealth. Gl seeing that coming

reflects stay on the field for awhile and he appears on the mini map.

The real problem is that reflecting his attack will not break his stealth.

What Mossman should simply do is face a player, stand still, raise his arm in the air and yell out “BEHOLD! MY AXE!”, while lightning flashes around him, and then simply throw a brightly glowing projectile at the player he’s facing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

What Mossman should simply do is face a player, stand still, raise his arm in the air and yell out “BEHOLD! MY AXE!”, while lightning flashes around him, and then simply throw a brightly glowing projectile at the player he’s facing.

Its gotta be super slow moving as well and heatseek.

Bring more reflect. Bring more guards for aegis. It’ll make your life easier. When playing Mesmer I hide behind my phantasms. Kind of like a human shield.

Bring a thief. Stacking reflection will make most fractals much easier.

MakersMark.8420:

Bring more reflect. Bring more guards for aegis. It’ll make your life easier. When playing Mesmer I hide behind my phantasms. Kind of like a human shield.

Bring a thief. Stacking reflection will make most fractals much easier.

Who cares? That is not what this topic is about. Read the actual topic. Hell, read the title of the topic.

every telegraph needs a revamp imo..

I read the topic, don’t think he really needs any changes. Never had a problem with Mossman.

MakersMark.8420:

I read the topic, don’t think he really needs any changes. Never had a problem with Mossman.

The topic isn’t about whether you personally had any issues with him or not. It’s about him not telegraphing his attack at all. Which is a fact. And lots of bosses are like that. You should care more about these things, because the game would be better for it. Boss fights would be more exciting and fun if they had proper tells for their moves.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

What Mossman should simply do is face a player, stand still, raise his arm in the air and yell out “BEHOLD! MY AXE!”, while lightning flashes around him, and then simply throw a brightly glowing projectile at the player he’s facing.

I burst out laughing in the middle of a library. Thanks for that.

I don’t think you could see the flying axe with the lightning flashes or the flames coming out of his kitten or whatever, but at least you’d hear BEHOLD, MY AXE and have half a second to panic wondering who he’s throwing his axe at.

I agree though that at 48 most fractals are unforgiving – you will die if you don’t dodge every single agony attack – but is Mossman going into stealth for half a minute, then unstealthing long enough to throw an axe before going back into stealth for another half a minute over and over again if you’re trying to kite while someone else is ressing or whatever really working as intended?

Celly.5912:

Even worse, at higher levels ( like 79) he can throw his axe, while in stealth, hit you, and still be in stealth while you’re on the floor dying.

He does have a small telegraph (you can see when he starts throwing) but its duration could use some increase.

This happens even at 48.

A telegraph is pointless if on fractal 48 he is routinely spamming stealth and throwing axes while in stealth.

The stealth spam on this boss is just really dumb at higher levels. All he does is chase a guy around for minutes while in stealth, and the guy’s only option is to keep running and hope he unstealths, or eat the 1-shot double dagger strike from stealth to make him come out. And hope that when he goes down because he ate the melee strike to unstealth him, the boss doesn’t immediately throw an axe on his downed face and defeat him.

You could just melee him which is better. Here is a 4min melee run at 48. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYjjRaOlfI

All you have to do is dodge his charging axe attack which has a decent tell and time to evade it. If 2 people die one kites while the others revive then we start meleeing again. It takes a lot less time. You just need some reflects and a capable guardian or 2. Once I started to melee him I never went back. Ranging takes forever and if you wipe doing it you will be sad at all the time you wasted.

obal.3218:

You could just melee him which is better. Here is a 4min melee run at 48. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYjjRaOlfI

All you have to do is dodge his charging axe attack which has a decent tell and time to evade it. If 2 people die one kites while the others revive then we start meleeing again. It takes a lot less time. You just need some reflects and a capable guardian or 2. Once I started to melee him I never went back. Ranging takes forever and if you wipe doing it you will be sad at all the time you wasted.

Interesting that every character beside yours is human female.

He has a huge female fanbase.

haviz.1340:

obal.3218:

You could just melee him which is better. Here is a 4min melee run at 48. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYjjRaOlfI

All you have to do is dodge his charging axe attack which has a decent tell and time to evade it. If 2 people die one kites while the others revive then we start meleeing again. It takes a lot less time. You just need some reflects and a capable guardian or 2. Once I started to melee him I never went back. Ranging takes forever and if you wipe doing it you will be sad at all the time you wasted.

Interesting that every character beside yours is human female.

Not really.

It’d be more interesting if it was a party of asura.

haviz.1340:

obal.3218:

You could just melee him which is better. Here is a 4min melee run at 48. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYjjRaOlfI

All you have to do is dodge his charging axe attack which has a decent tell and time to evade it. If 2 people die one kites while the others revive then we start meleeing again. It takes a lot less time. You just need some reflects and a capable guardian or 2. Once I started to melee him I never went back. Ranging takes forever and if you wipe doing it you will be sad at all the time you wasted.

Interesting that every character beside yours is human female.

Mossman is no match for my harem. Now if only they didn’t have manly voices on mumble….

obal.3218:

Mossman is no match for my harem. Now if only they didn’t have manly voices on mumble….

Such a shame.

obal.3218:

You could just melee him which is better. Here is a 4min melee run at 48. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYjjRaOlfI

All you have to do is dodge his charging axe attack which has a decent tell and time to evade it. If 2 people die one kites while the others revive then we start meleeing again. It takes a lot less time. You just need some reflects and a capable guardian or 2. Once I started to melee him I never went back. Ranging takes forever and if you wipe doing it you will be sad at all the time you wasted.

2 guardians 3 warriors lol.

This is not about melee with other classes. This is about 2 classes which are the best damage soakers, one of them bringing ridiculously long projectile denial thanks to traited shield alongside group defensive boons/healing, and the other class absolutely destroys all the others except maybe thief in damage output while giving insane offensive group synergy.

That melee attack of his that is not the charged attack will easily remove 60% of a berserker light armor’s hp. About half of a medium armor target’s HP in berserker gear.

And to top it off, neither those berserker eles or mesmers or rangers or necros will have the DPS to make this strategy as smooth once reflection cooldowns are recharging.

Every melee strategy seems easy when it’s a bunch of warriors doing it propped up by a guardian or two.

Zenith.7301:

obal.3218:

You could just melee him which is better. Here is a 4min melee run at 48. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYjjRaOlfI

All you have to do is dodge his charging axe attack which has a decent tell and time to evade it. If 2 people die one kites while the others revive then we start meleeing again. It takes a lot less time. You just need some reflects and a capable guardian or 2. Once I started to melee him I never went back. Ranging takes forever and if you wipe doing it you will be sad at all the time you wasted.

2 guardians 3 warriors lol.

This is not about melee with other classes. This is about 2 classes which are the best damage soakers, one of them bringing ridiculously long projectile denial thanks to traited shield alongside group defensive boons/healing, and the other class absolutely destroys all the others except maybe thief in damage output while giving insane offensive group synergy.

That melee attack of his that is not the charged attack will easily remove 60% of a berserker light armor’s hp. About half of a medium armor target’s HP in berserker gear.

And to top it off, neither those berserker eles or mesmers or rangers or necros will have the DPS to make this strategy as smooth once reflection cooldowns are recharging.

Every melee strategy seems easy when it’s a bunch of warriors doing it propped up by a guardian or two.

I’ve taken a mesmer, thief, and an ele as a 5th spot and they tend to do just fine. Having optimal groups and strategies for 40+ isn’t really a lol. It’s needed unless you want to be in there for a lot longer.

obal.3218:

Zenith.7301:

obal.3218:

You could just melee him which is better. Here is a 4min melee run at 48. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYjjRaOlfI

All you have to do is dodge his charging axe attack which has a decent tell and time to evade it. If 2 people die one kites while the others revive then we start meleeing again. It takes a lot less time. You just need some reflects and a capable guardian or 2. Once I started to melee him I never went back. Ranging takes forever and if you wipe doing it you will be sad at all the time you wasted.

2 guardians 3 warriors lol.

This is not about melee with other classes. This is about 2 classes which are the best damage soakers, one of them bringing ridiculously long projectile denial thanks to traited shield alongside group defensive boons/healing, and the other class absolutely destroys all the others except maybe thief in damage output while giving insane offensive group synergy.

That melee attack of his that is not the charged attack will easily remove 60% of a berserker light armor’s hp. About half of a medium armor target’s HP in berserker gear.

And to top it off, neither those berserker eles or mesmers or rangers or necros will have the DPS to make this strategy as smooth once reflection cooldowns are recharging.

Every melee strategy seems easy when it’s a bunch of warriors doing it propped up by a guardian or two.

I’ve taken a mesmer, thief, and an ele as a 5th spot and they tend to do just fine. Having optimal groups and strategies for 40+ isn’t really a lol. It’s needed unless you want to be in there for a lot longer.

With 2 guardians soaking, of course they do fine. I’d love to see you replace the warriors with non-warriors, however.

It’s just that it’s no surprise that stacking guardians and warriors, except maybe one mesmer at most, is the profitable strategy of this game’s PvE.

Guardians eliminate all the heavy risks of meleeing for a group.

I would never advise a group that isn’t following that stacking to try to melee the boss. Somebody will go down, people will try to rez and the mossman will do a charged dagger port attack on top of the downed player and kill him and down the rest.

obal.3218:

I’ve taken a mesmer, thief, and an ele as a 5th spot and they tend to do just fine. Having optimal groups and strategies for 40+ isn’t really a lol. It’s needed unless you want to be in there for a lot longer.

Any idea what is 2nd guardian running?

Yeah I would really like to see a group melee him with 1 thief, 1 nekro, 1 ele, 1 ingi and 1 ranger…
Does anyone ever melee him without guardians?

Anubarak.3012:

Yeah I would really like to see a group melee him with 1 thief, 1 nekro, 1 ele, 1 ingi and 1 ranger…
Does anyone ever melee him without guardians?

Does having 1 guardian with no toughness/vitality counts?

Anubarak.3012:

Yeah I would really like to see a group melee him with 1 thief, 1 nekro, 1 ele, 1 ingi and 1 ranger…
Does anyone ever melee him without guardians?

I do. I’d rather die meleeing him without any projectile reflection than going ranged.

Nikaido.3457:

You don’t want more than one person having any sort of toughness in the group. It completely breaks doing things like kiting the ettin otherwise. I have never successfully taken the ettin on me in a pug with other people wearing toughness gear, while in our typical run we can always get him to stick completely to the anchor. Another tough guard = aggro ping pong between the two.

Toughness isn’t the only aggro mechanic. Unless warrior with no chest piece equipped (1764 defense) gets more aggro than 2 other heavies (2127 defense). He also can’t do the most damage since he lacks 101 power and 5% crit dmg.

@haviz: Its more about his heal, WoR, aegis and so on… Even without Toughness/Vitality he’ll pull aggro. I’m one hit as a thief (maybe with luck I have about 5% HP left) so if I don’t dodge his autoattack I’m down at lvl 48.

@Dub: ok… lets say “Does anyone ever melee him successfully without dying at lvl 48?”

Anubarak.3012:

@haviz: Its more about his heal, WoR, aegis and so on… Even without Toughness/Vitality he’ll pull aggro. I’m one hit as a thief (maybe with luck I have about 5% HP left) so if I don’t dodge his autoattack I’m down at lvl 48.

I almost don’t get his aggro as a guardian. And if I do, I got 1 shotted when he hit me at 48+. So heals have no use.