Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

Yesteday i’ve been doing the fractal in the cave with the imbued shaman boss (the one where the ground is on fire and you need to keep moving to avoid getting fire dot) at level 20 and 30, and after countless tries all my groups kept failing.

After looking for some time, I think this is the right thing to do: when the boss reaches 75% – 50% – 25%, his shield pops up and larvas are spawning.

Focusing the boss shield is a bad idea because then you have to deal with larvas and the boss at the same time, which is difficult.

Focusing the larvas only is also a bad idea because if you do, the boss will kill a human and get back to full life.

So here is the key: someone needs to immobilize (root) the boss as soon as his shield comes up with a long duration immobilize skill, then you kill the larvas while the boss can’t move, then when all larvas are dead you break the shield of the boss and you keep going.

The best root skills are Entangle from ranger and Binding Roots from any human race player using Avatar of Melandru form.
These 2 skills can immobilize the boss when shielded for 20s in a row, which gives plenty of time to kill the larvas.

Hope this helps!

Yeah it’s 1 tactic.
Another is, depending on your group, focus the bubble while being in melee range and have guardians pop block projectiles barriers, mesmers with feedback, eles with #4 with edit : focus (not scepter) while attuned to air etc …
In other words, focus bubble while protecting your party and then kill larvas.
This boss becomes incredibly easy with a guardian doing this anti projectiles barrier and then pulling all mobs at the same place

Agree, just a tactic like many others. Useful, why not. I can tell you, no need to root, a couple fear on boss and all larva will be dead (or at least most) when he’s charging back out of fear. Fearing larvas same time too, results larva phase is more easy. See, just an other tactic.

KratosAngel.7289:

Yeah it’s 1 tactic.
Another is, depending on your group, focus the bubble while being in melee range and have guardians pop block projectiles barriers, mesmers with feedback, eles with #4 with scepter while attuned to air etc …
In other words, focus bubble while protecting your party and then kill larvas.
This boss becomes incredibly easy with a guardian doing this anti projectiles barrier and then pulling all mobs at the same place

Scepter doesn’t have a #4

I think you’re referring to the focus.

Which I doubt your ele will have. I’ve run with a lot of eles and have never seen an ele besides myself use a focus in a dungeon.

You can have guardians popping reflect/absorb like crazy during add phase. This is a video of me and another guardian owned the boss with near range immunity.
:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyl-wrwTIb0&feature=youtu.be

Yeah sorry I meant focus for number 4, sorry for kitten mistake >_<

I never thought about using Avatar of Melandru form for that fight. Thanks for the protip! The group I usually run with usually has at least two fears packed to fear the boss away from the sacrificial subject to give us a lot of time to deal w/ the elemental adds.

Protip for necromancers: If you have at least 10 points in death magic, using the Greater Marks traits will make your marks unblockable, allowing you to fear the boss with your staff 5 ability. This is also handy for other annoying bosses that like to block for an eternity like the charr fractal boss or the midway boss in dredge fractal.

Warriors: the “Fear Me!” ability works pretty well in these situations too!

Fear works with staff, regardless of that trait point. Still ye, make it working better in general, but not needed on the fractal we are talking about here.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Fear works with staff, regardless of that trait point. Still ye, make it working better in general, but not needed on the fractal we are talking about here.

For a long time I had no points in death magic and whenever I tried using my staff 5 on him, it would just say “blocked.” Same thing with the Death Shroud fear. Maybe I wasn’t pressing 5 hard enough or I was somehow missing a very slow target with the mark. Can anyone else confirm this?

Also there isn’t always a cut and dry method to some of these more challenging encounters due to varying class variety when pugging fractals. All advice is useful as most people don’t run with the same groups, so people need to learn to improvise and contribute with any utility they can.

Uhm. I don’t have marks unblockable, i remember it working as expected. I’ll pay more attention next time to check if fear triggered. For what i remember i have fun pushing him away. Maybe was him just moving and my fear was blocked?
I’ll check next time.

Reflect works on adds cuz all they do are projectiles.

I used to use a strat similar to this, but I would fear the boss away when he was in the shell giving us time to kill the adds before popping the shell. They nerfed this strat though and now fear does nothing to the boss.

It seems like now that I can’t use this strat, this boss is the hardest boss in the game. The other night I got to this boss on scale 28 and wiped for 2 hours before everyone gave up. Tonight on scale 30 our group we wiped on him for an hour before deciding he was too hard for us.

Both of these groups had no guardian though, and at least 1 person with low agony resist who would get downed constantly from the arrow.

I personally think this boss needs to be nerfed if you absolutely need a guardian to be able to kill him. At lower scale fractals (1-20) this boss isn’t that bad, but at high scales the adds can take you from 100% to downed in less than a second. Change the scaling on adds’ damage and health and this boss would be well balanced imho.

There are 2 things any high level fractal runner needs in their inventory, Ash Legion Spy Kits, and Potions of Elemental Slaying. Potent Potions of Elemental Slaying cost less than 10copper each, and the -8% elemental damage makes a huge difference. Also very helpful during the snowblind fractal, and the elemental at the end of dredge. It’s actually very surprising how seldom food use is as well, unless its magic find. Even if you buy the cheap stuff, with like +70 toughness or something, that’s a huge difference.

Highly suggest picking those up.