Guild Wars 2

So I have run ALOT of HOTW. I have two full armor sets working on a third and have 3 weapons from the dungeon. Anyways when I normally run path one we focus on the retaliation totem and DPS beyond the regen/protection totems. The most recent foray into path 1 I had a guard that kept screaming to take out the protection totem which I said okay let me just please this jerk…. The boss took much longer than normal and people kept going down because they were dying to his retal… So I come to the community… What totem do you guys normally focus on HOTW path 1? Retal? Protection? Regen? Just curious.

Retal. Then again, my mesmer GS auto currently hits all 3.

For the fastest kill you keep the boss at the protection totem and melee cleave them down. You can totally ignore the other 2.

Thought protection one was the priory too.. maybe just not the best party

The retaliation shouldn’t be a problem if player’s dodge attacks appropriately. Their own healing skill should be able to allow them to recover the retaliation damage.

My party has always done just Protection totem while cleaving the boss. Poisons destroy the amount he regens, so if you have poison, you’ll kill him just fine.

The retal does next to no damage. Maybe if you’re a full zerker flamethrower engineer who only uses #1 or something it could sting a bit, but I don’t notice the retaliation damage at all on anything else. The regen is very minimal. The prot totem, however, extends the fight by a considerable margin. Hit both the boss and the totem at the same time whenever possible. His whirlwind attack also gives you a nice opportunity to lay into it since you can’t really do much to the boss himself when he’s flailing around.

Prot totem.If you die to retal it means your taking massive DPS from butcher, then using haste and trying to burst him down and cant out heal. If you fight butcher normally, even with insane high DPS, it wont kill you. However, if you slip, get hit with ice breach, cleave, get taken down to 4k hp from melee, AND THEN START to burst him, retal might kill you.

TLDR: Newbs who cant dodge regular attacks – kill retaliation+ Prot
Players who have learned how to dodge the big attacks – kill protection only

Depends on the party, if you have a lot of low health high damge members (theives and eles) then go for retaliation. Poorly specced eles who dont change attunements can really suffer from the retaliation, it drains my health so fast but i can just out heal it.
Saying that when I go I don’t care which we kill as long as everyones on the same page and not typing “kill this one” during the fight and dying whilst typing then its always pretty easy.

Yeah, my guild lures him to the protection totem, keeps him there, and then aoes it and the boss down at the same time.