Guild Wars 2

(Never been to Dungeon forums, sorry if this thread mirrors another)

Hey guys, it seems a lot of people feel as if bosses cannot be stunned/dazed because of the Defiant stacks on them, and I wanted to explore this concept a bit more. I’m not much of a dungeon or world-boss player, so I could use some assistance from those who fight bosses regularly.

From the wiki…

Defiant is an effect that grants immunity to most control effects. It is caused by Unshakable, an ability possessed by most champion and legendary rank enemies.
When a creature with Unshakable ability spawns, it will gain Unshakable effect. When successfully affected by a control effect, the creature will gain a minimum of 3 stacks of Defiant, but potentially many more depending on how many players are nearby, based on event scaling. Stacks of Defiant can be removed with additional control effects, and once all stacks are removed, the creature is vulnerable to control effects once again, and the cycle repeats. When no stacks of Defiant are present, a control skill CAN apply control to the creature, but it will also apply Defiant, preventing further crowd control from being applied (until they’re removed). For example, interrupting will have no effect unless no Defiant is present; if no Defiant is present, the creature can be interrupted but this will immediately apply more Defiant.

In a 5-man dungeon, will a boss only have 3 stacks of defiant on them? If so, wouldn’t it be possible with proper coordination to time dazes/interrupts on bosses by intentionally wearing down their Defiant stacks?

From a Mesmer perspective, Mantra of Distraction gives you 2 on-demand dazes. Almost all Mesmer weapons have some form of control-effect (Pistol- Stun / Sword- Daze / GS- Knockback / ect.) so assuming the rest of party throws in one or two control effects of their own, the Mesmer can manage interrupts on bosses without any need to change traits/gear.

My question is.. is this possible, and how valuable would it be for Dungeons/Fractals?

Yes it’s possible. Coordinated groups do it often. Mesmers are very good at this, as they can also daze shatter removing 3 stacks in one go, or 4 if you trait correctly.

It’s valuable in certain instances, such as the boss in dredge, where you can wear the stacks down and interrupt the heals.

Some bosses just have way to high of stacks or are outright immune to it, like Mei Trinn, where it actually would be very useful.

Also, in uncoordinated groups, you have bearbow rangers (I even had one using a pig…. a pig! in CoE), GS mesmers, and rifle warriors that spam knockbacks on cooldown nullifying all dps hits and attempts to remove stacks.

The dredge fractal is a good example of a place where a group absolutely can and should tear down the defiant stacks, and then wait to stun as he is about to heal. I can’t think of too many other examples where this is critical, but I see good groups doing this often at Howling King in ACp1 as well (knocking him down for a few seconds can be quite helpful in letting you regenerate endurance, etc.).

Mesmer offhand weapons are, of course, awesome for all of this.

The biggest problem is coordination. You want to save up the stun, once the defiant stacks are gone, for a moment where the boss is going to do something Really Bad— heal, huge AoE damage, etc. PUGs are going to often just spam their stuns after you do the hard work pulling the defiant stacks back, and waste the actual stun on some moment that doesn’t matter (looking at you, bearbows and gs mes’s). A coordinated group can benefit hugely, though.

Bosses have 3 stacks of defiant if you’re soloing. In a party of 3, it’s 5 stacks — not sure how many for a party of 5, but definitely more.

If you have a group that can communicate well, you can still CC bosses. If your group can’t/won’t communicate, you’ll get people resetting the stacks at the worst moments.

Generally it’s better to just dps than waste time removing stacks for 1 cc. CC is more for pvp in this game. Defiant is a necessary evil in pve it seems, CC is too op on bosses without defiant.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Bosses have 3 stacks of defiant if you’re soloing. In a party of 3, it’s 5 stacks — not sure how many for a party of 5, but definitely more.

The number of stacks depends on proximity of people when the actual stun goes off, no?

In terms of good players managing the defiant stack, I guess the better PUG players know not to use poor CC when the defiant is gone. They let someone with a strong CC skill use it at the right time. That can work even in a speed clear group with zero communication.

maxinion.8396:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Bosses have 3 stacks of defiant if you’re soloing. In a party of 3, it’s 5 stacks — not sure how many for a party of 5, but definitely more.

The number of stacks depends on proximity of people when the actual stun goes off, no?

Yes (if you mean after a successful stun).

laharl.8435:

Generally it’s better to just dps than waste time removing stacks for 1 cc. CC is more for pvp in this game. Defiant is a necessary evil in pve it seems, CC is too op on bosses without defiant.

This. In theory, it sounds like great gameplay to coordinate, remove all stacks, and then use CC to stop the boss’ main attack. But usually, the boss just uses the same attack right after getting back up so there’s really not much point.

There’s very little point to using CC in PVE against bosses. The time it takes to take down the Defiant stacks can be better spent with pure DPS. It’s a broken system really. What was supposed to prevent players from stun-locking the boss, ends up granting the boss a permanent CC immunity, and that’s a design flaw right from the start. The biggest problem, is that Defiant is based on the number of nearby players, and not the number of players using CC skills. This results in disproportionate Defiant stacks on the boss. There’s also a lot of coordination required to get even one CC to land at the right time, and with very little reward. In some dungeons it can perhaps be useful on a very rare occasion, if you can keep your party members from just spamming every CC skill they got. But in the open world Defiant renders CC skills useless. The whole mechanic should be revised. Right now it kills an important game mechanic.

Oddly enough, the game’s designers seem quite happy to allow stun locking on players in pvp and wvw. How does that make sense?

I should make a “Let’s yell” about this issue. I like my style.

An offhand pistol thief is perfect for removing defiant stacks quickly.

Zelyhn.8069:

I should make a “Let’s yell” about this issue. I like my style.

Without defiant spiky fruit and pistol whip would rule the world.

Our guild uses it on Mai Trin, she is easy to pull stacks off of, then yank her into the blue cannon fire. There a some cases where a few seconds of daze or stun could mean the difference between easily meeting a certain point in a challenge, and having it either drag on, or lead to a wipe.

People you don’t want to interrupt:

Kholer

(feel free to add names)

A group and I actually used this strategy for the last boss in AC P3, trying to interrupt when it used the ROCKS FALL DOWN EVERYWHERE move (since NPC is unreliable at times).
Obviously nowadays, most people just stack under the pillar and easily kill the boss but before that strategy was prevalent and after the boss could actually get interrupted (I think there was a bug when AC was first revamped), we tried to kill the boss by getting rid of its defiance stacks and interrupting it when it used the falling rocks move (since its other moves are easy to deal with).
Coordination is needed but it was pretty cool. But stacking is easier

Obviously most bosses you can have everyone dpsing it down so having 1+ people trying to get rid of defiance stacks lowers their dps (usually) so it’s not “optimal” but I could still see it working for a lot of bosses. But like people have said above, it’s the “coordination” that could be the biggest problem.

Apo.5301:

A group and I actually used this strategy for the last boss in AC P3, trying to interrupt when it used the ROCKS FALL DOWN EVERYWHERE move (since NPC is unreliable at times).
Obviously nowadays, most people just stack under the pillar and easily kill the boss but before that strategy was prevalent and after the boss could actually get interrupted (I think there was a bug when AC was first revamped), we tried to kill the boss by getting rid of its defiance stacks and interrupting it when it used the falling rocks move (since its other moves are easy to deal with).
Coordination is needed but it was pretty cool. But stacking is easier

Obviously most bosses you can have everyone dpsing it down so having 1+ people trying to get rid of defiance stacks lowers their dps (usually) so it’s not “optimal” but I could still see it working for a lot of bosses. But like people have said above, it’s the “coordination” that could be the biggest problem.

That’s pretty neat. When did you trigger the interrupt? When he starts with the aerobic twists?

Yep that’s when you want to interrupt him.
Last call would probably be the end of the animation for the howl.

A 3-man team can easily interrupt it by using the right utilities or another weapon set.
Killing it becomes slower though.

Interrupting the enrage on the abom in arah p2 is very important.

I’m still working on a solo with no rifles nor interrupts for the Challenge though.

Burning defiant stacks is a job for a given member with a given weapon set I think. It would be easier than trying to synchronize a whole party (I often see PuGs burning stacks as soon as the weapon skill that interrupts is off CD).

Enaretos.8079:

Yep that’s when you want to interrupt him.
Last call would probably be the end of the animation for the howl.

A 3-man team can easily interrupt it by using the right utilities or another weapon set.
Killing it becomes slower though.

When I first started doing that dungeon regularly, that’s what my group did. However, he just uses the skill shortly afterwords anyway (I guess NPCs also get the 5 second recharge on interrupt). How are you able to interrupt him so that he doesn’t recast so quickly?

You have to interrupt late in the animation for it to go on full cooldown.