Guild Wars 2

I would like to discuss the The Protoype F-IV Golem Boss in SE.

I’m not really one to point fingers and cry ‘Bad design’, but, I might just do that at this little… Snaffu, if you’ll pardon the pun of one of our dearly beloved Asuran forebearers.

First; lets discuss what this thing does:

Attacks cause burning * Purges Conditions To Heal.

Okay:

We can purge the burning attacks from ourselves. That’s no big deal. That’s an okay mechanic.

The second one is what should cause you to sweat bullets.

If you cause ANY conditions what so ever… this thing heals itself.

This means if you have a build like me with my Warrior,

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.2.3.8.19.0.0.0.0.0.28.37.36.34.50.0.0.0.80.0.0.91.93.0.108.114.106.122.0.0.0.0.0.10.20.30.10.0

You’re hopelessly and totally fubar.

Every hit, or every other hit you do, is likely to critical and likely to cause a bleed. With that, causes a heal.

You do the math here folks.

To put it another way more succinctly:

Every critical hit I do, I have a 33% chance to cause a bleed. Every single one. Any weapon I use.

Longbow, fist, or anything else.

If I crit, I have a 33% chance to cause bleeds. If I cause bleeds, I cause condition damage.

If I cause condition damage. I cause that thing to heal.

I am useless in this fight.

That goes for Elementalist’s and their damage over time, Necromancer’s and their damage over time spells as well, guardians and their damage over time. Etc.

I don’t want to decry “Bad game design..” but I do wish to say “Bad game mechanic..” as this needs to be seriously looked at and tweaked.

Anyone else agree?

Having just done this tonight, I’ll disagree with you, simply because we had one….let’s call him “less skilled” player in our group who insisted on spamming bleed and vulnerability conditions on the boss. The heal from the conditions is almost barely noticeable, and it’s a simple matter of dpsing through the heal.

Honestly, I had more trouble with the stupid fireballs than the condition heal.

I’m guessing when you have the entire party spamming conditions, it becomes an issue.

One or two players playing durrrrr will not affect the other 3 blasting away.

I graveyard rushed him. It was embarrassing but we did what we had to do after modifying our builds to remove our condition dealing. It sucked but it worked out.

His heal is not that good with a few conditions on him, it is barely noticable.

Also you are pretty much crying that you can’t just face roll a dungeon with whatever setup you want. You have to do a minimal amount of thinking.

PS 5 signets is garbage for anything that isn’t leveling. Take some team support, you are in a dungeon after all.

I was on the same boat as you until I realized how weak his heal was. He’s not Mallyx the Unyielding, a boss in GW1 that also has a similar debuff-to-heal conversion mechanic. Difference is that Mallyx’s version was stupid-overpowered. Prototype F-IV version is well … kind of weak.

Aside from that, you should swap out some of your signets out with abilities to help your party out. For example:

• “Shake it off!” — F-IV does considerable burning damage if not mitigated. Party members within earshot will love you for taking off the burning condition.
• Mending — IMO, this would be the best Healing skill you can have as a Warrior when it comes to encounters involving conditions, but if your party members can remove your conditions as well, then Healing Signet can still work.

Banners and Shouts would help your party tremendously. “For Great Justice!” and Battle Standard are awesome! Personally, I have a tendency to use Battle Standard as an AoE ressurect. Assuming they’re not in defeated state, it works quite well.

You’ll lose out on some crit, but it’ll be all worth it when your party member’s DPS goes up from your buffs.

use your mesmer elite skill Moa on him, a lot easier then