Guild Wars 2

I’ve had no problems mostly with PuGs in any place beside Volcano.
When I get Volcano with a PuG I already know what will happen; people will somehow die at Imbued, maybe try once again then leave.

What’s up with this?
The encounter does not really seem to be too hard to me.
Everyone just needs to DPS and move, when adds pop you AoE them in a second, then continue DPS and move.
If you’re focused too much you’ll go down and if you’re really unlucky he will place AoEs in your face and defeat you, but outside this there is no gimmick that should wipe a team so easily.

Please don’t post things like “lol I beat imbued with 3 people while watching animes and standing still” elitist falsehood, just give me some real pointers to make PuGs not fail me on this one every single freakin time.

Do not DPS it too fast. I have helped 3 groups over the past few days and noticed some heavy groups would DPS the shaman so fast, my cooldowns were not recharged yet and I had JUST used my heal leaving me with little options to deal with the massive ADD’s. Remember, he only bubbles at certain percentages of HP. There is technically no “rush” to dps him down, unless your party is dying from the agony arrows which ofc, is extremely possible but even if someone dies, the team can res easier during this phase than during the bubble ADD phase. Make sure the add’s die, teammates are “ready” for the next wave in essence.

The problem is a team of 5 will never be perfectly in sync, someones cooldown will always be on recharge, and you cant perfectly coordinate it. So make sure if your relying on, lets say, a mesmer to feedback, that the mesmer is ready most importantly.

AoE pressure kills (like Lupicus phase 2).

Imbued Shaman used to be really annoying to me, but quite honestly it’s one of my favorite fractals now – and to the OP, I have to agree, I don’t actually find it that difficult.

The key here is simply projectile defenses. Guardians have Shield of the Avenger and wall of reflection, Mesmers have wardens and feedback, Elementalists have a variety of focus skills, or earth 3 on the staff, etc.

I have to agree that probably the single worst mistake in this fight is trying to rush it. He shields at specific percentages of his health, so you know when his adds will spawn. Use that. If you just try and bullrush him, you get flanked by his massive horde of adds, and eventually you’re simply overcome because you’ve over extended.

For Pugs, I suggest being the person in the party to call out when he’s going to shield. Before the fight even starts, make sure everyone is on the same page about your plan for this fight – We like to refer to Pugs as anonymous bads, but most of them are players, and if they’re not complete kittens, will be more than happy to wait a few seconds to get synchronized if it means not wiping later.

Tips:

1. Don’t rush this fight. Rushing leads to over extension, which leads to downs.

2. When he shields, things like immobilize, chill and cripple help immensely in giving you more time.

3. If you, or others, have the ability to go into this fight with projectile negation/reflection – Then make sure they know it and do it! Things like Medic’s Feedback on the Mesmer is a literal lifesaver, and giving people any kind of safe haven from projectiles is important.

4. The boss isn’t going anywhere, and this ties back into the “don’t rush”. After his shield is done, focus on killing the adds. Wipe them out completely before even looking at the boss again, his HP will stay right where it is.

Over all, taking this fight with a slow and steady mentality is, I believe, key to making it as painless as possible in random groups. But also, being the person who will speak up and make sure everyone is on the same page will help a great in preventing terrible experiences that could have been avoided.

Alright. Fears (Or at least Fear Me) will work on his shield provided he doesn’t have stacks of defiant. He will, when feared with the shield up, move the opposite direction at roughly triple speed. Co-ordinate with your team beforehand to say “Please make sure he has no stacks of defiant” (Probably the hardest part to understand for a pug :/), then fear him, and then you have roughly 30 seconds to clear the lava eles. before taking down the shield.

Given that defiant is an issue that pugs have trouble with (Because paying attention to it is useless 100% everyhere else), you also want to say to everyone to be patient and take it slow but safe. If you move him to the middle (He will follow if you swap sides) then there’s a much better chance that he wont go for a villager right next to him, and you can be a bit safer. Patience is key, you don’t want to rush in, die, and then have 4 team members rush in to try and res you.

Also potentially his most dangerous attack, the one that applies agony and a decent amount of burn damage, is the hardest one to dodge because it has the most subtle wind-up. Once you learn that one he’s practically soloable.

Honestly, our best workable strategy for this fight?

Me.

Any bleed thief running signet of malice and daggerstorm with appropriate gear makes it a very easy fight. When the adds pop, I SR the group to draw all aggro from the adds, move directly under the boss, drops caltrops, and Daggerstorm away. After four seconds, the group breaks their stealth and starts wailing on everything with aoes.

The bouncing projectiles+and reflection all in one ends up turning the elementals against themselves, which helps the bleeds and party clean up. Simultaneously, it’s also stacking a good half of the hits on the shield and crippling the boss for a near eternity. The caltrops further enhance the cripple on the boss and bleeds on the adds, and usually, if the group has a lot of high-powered AOE, the pack is dead and the shield is gone before daggerstorm is over. If there’s not as much aoe Avaliable, the shield is down and cleaning up the adds is still pretty fast due to the largely uniform damage they’ve taken from the bleed DoTs.

Every class has skills that make this strategy a snap. Mesmer/guardian bubbles speed it along, necro plague, engineer supply drop/grenades, warrior/ranger/ele AoE, etc.

We’ve found it hands down the easiest way to beat the encounter with minimal risk.

The problem with most PuGs is the lack of communication. And that leads to faildungeon, not just with the Shaman fractal (I like this fractal the most actually) but with any other dungeon. People tend to be selfish and they don’t try to resurrect downed players (until they’re dead, which means you spend a hell of a lot longer reviving them) especially if the boss is hovering near them. Agony hits like a mack truck. People run into lava pools and then they don’t try to rally using the lava elementals when they’re available. It’s okay if you’re only having to pick up the one person but if three out of five in your party are just going down over and over again, prepare for the ragequit.

Some classes help more than others. As soon as I put up wall of reflection the rest of the party swarms behind me which is awesome. But you don’t need to run this fractal with any class specifically and DPS doesn’t matter – this boss needs to be taken down using the slow and steady mentality. You just need to make sure that everyone is spread out around the island, make sure that two people are kiting the boss if someone is down so that the other two can go resurrect (i.e. don’t be selfish), and if you have a skill that can help like wall of reflection, keep updating the rest of the team about your cooldowns and whatnot.

Any PuG can succeed anywhere with adequate communication. Don’t be afraid to tell people to slot in useful skills – I’ve learned more about my own class when people tell me to use X and Y skills in dungeons than I have experimenting on my own. And also don’t be afraid to tell people that you’re about to go down – better to tell them beforehand so that someone’s nearby to help rather than have everyone clustered on the opposite side of the island while your downed HP bar drops to zero.

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

Any PuG can succeed anywhere with adequate communication. Don’t be afraid to tell people to slot in useful skills – I’ve learned more about my own class when people tell me to use X and Y skills in dungeons than I have experimenting on my own. And also don’t be afraid to tell people that you’re about to go down – better to tell them beforehand so that someone’s nearby to help rather than have everyone clustered on the opposite side of the island while your downed HP bar drops to zero.

This I’ve found very true. People that know their class, know their build, and most importantly know that swapping to different utilities for different encounters is an intended and vital part of the game can usually clear just about anything. People don’t give rangers a lot of love, but honestly, they’ve got some really useful skills for certain situations. Search and rescue is hands down one of my favorite reasons to have a competant ranger in the group for instance. I still feel like they could use a bit more spirit love. Ranger spirits in GW1 were literally game changing, but still balanced. We should really put that power back in the hands of rangers as a viable support option.

Top 5 things to do with Angry Grawl:

1) Learn to dodge. No, seriously, learn to dodge. Every time I see you get hit by an arrow when there’s nothing else going on, I want to hit you with my wrench.
2) Bring CC for the oozes. Good CC. Not ranger-tier skills of a line target cripple, I mean Freeze Grenade, Caltrops, Frozen Ground, Line of Warding, etcetera. Pope’s idea of Daggerstorm is actually quite genius – reflecting those DoT roots will probably wreck most oozes, not to mention crippling them for a healthy duration.
3) Bring a block / invuln skill. For classes that don’t have this, use a blink effect. The only class that doesn’t actually have either of these is ranger. Go figure. You’ll want this in case you end up walking into those impossible-to-see AoEs with the root effect and massive damage – if you get chained by this from the several oozes, you’re gonna die without an escape mechanism.
4) Reflects! If you have a reliable one, bring it. It’s not essential, but it takes a ton of pressure off players. I wish so badly they’d make engineer’s Toss Elixir U reliable (I currently see it as “33% chance to be useless”), but wall of reflection, smoke screen, and feedback (best mesmer utility in PvE by leaps and bounds!) are all outstanding.
5) Blinds. Flashbangs, leap of faith, warrior’s bow 4, etcetera, all of them are great for mitigating the ooze damage. Longer duration blinds are great (like flashbang) because blinds won’t go off until they either expire, or one thing misses. Every time you blind something in this manner, that’s like 3-4k health saved.

I will say this though – avoid bringing rangers. They were good when Search and Rescue could cheese Jade Maw. Now they can’t, so try to encourage 1 of 2 things – either for Anet to buff Rangers (either through pets or giving them more AoE), or for your ranger friend to level an alt.

Also for all the elementalists out there, please bring your focus to this fight. If you don’t have the focus, buy one for a few silver. It really can make the difference between winning or wiping here.

Focus air4 give your whole party 6 seconds of full projectile immunity. After that, earth4 gives yourself additional 3 seconds and then earth5 additional 4 seconds for a total of 13 seconds of immunity before damage even starts to break in. Then you still have your dodges at your disposal and the defensive utilities like arcane shield if you choose to use them.

The add-part of the fight is really about surviving and damage mitigation. When the adds are down, don’t dps the boss until you have fully recovered and essential cooldowns are available.