Guild Wars 2

Constantly, I see people complaining about how you need a bunch of people with the Nuhoch Stealth Detection mastery to beat Axemaster Gwyllion. Well, this isn’t true. I don’t have that mastery yet, but I love doing this event. Here are a few tips I have found.

1. Axemaster Gwyllion follows a set pattern when he moves. He always moves to the same locations and always in a counterclockwise direction.

2. Follow Mesmer illusions. Especially melee ones. They are entities that will ignore his smokescales entirely and follow him wherever he goes. This is especially helpful if he didn’t unstealth in between locations, as they are the best indicator as to when he has moved on.

3. If no illusions are following, pay attention to your melee auto attack chain. When it stops cycling, move to his next location. Elementalists will have to just follow the group, sorry.

4. His breakbar is pretty small. A single Reaper can break it even with 20 or so people at the event (I’ve done it several times). That said, help out. Once you learn his locations, you don’t even need to be able to see him. Reapers conveniently have their CC cooldowns typically line up with each of his movements, but they are far from the only class that can do it (just the one I have the most experience with).

5. For crying out loud, break his bar. If you don’t, everybody gets to play the ressing game, which means his bar doesn’t get broken for the next time he does it. Just throw hard CC at his location if you can’t see him. One or two per person will be far more than enough, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

6. Smokescales are secondary. They typically die off to the AoE and cleave damage on the Axemaster himself, but only if people actually follow him.

7. Go and fight one of the other five legendary minions being fought concurrently within the same 20 minute limit.

8. If the four other legendary minions died before Axemaster, then go and have a soda, because you are on the most pro map ever and are not needed.

(I understand you have good intentions and I hate to sort of be an kitten , but encouraging players to fight Axemaster when they dont have the mastery is not a good thing)

MadRabbit.3179:

(I understand you have good intentions and I hate to sort of be an kitten , but encouraging players to fight Axemaster when they dont have the mastery is not a good thing)

It works perfectly fine if you take a minute to learn the fight. The mastery is not needed to beat Axemaster, but paying attention to when he moves and knowing where he goes is.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

MadRabbit.3179:

(I understand you have good intentions and I hate to sort of be an kitten , but encouraging players to fight Axemaster when they dont have the mastery is not a good thing)

It works perfectly fine if you take a minute to learn the fight. The mastery is not needed to beat Axemaster, but paying attention to when he moves and knowing where he goes is.

Nah, it’s not. I mean, like even if you spam 1 over and over with a melee AoE autoattack and all AoE CDs, you still can’t complete a full auto-attack rotation without a target, so even in that best case scenario, you are still bringing less DPS to the table then what you would bring if you fought another boss fight.

And that’s like best case. I would imagine most people who go to that fight without the mastery are scaling the event up while only doing like a 1/3 or 1/2 of their DPS potential. And if that DPS potential sucks to begin with, you’re just dragging down the group even more.

Since like half of the VB night maps I randomly drop into don’t make it to like T4 to begin with, it does make a difference.

Axemaster is the 2nd easiest boss in the zone, so there is just no map in which he is going to be alive while everything else is dead, so you can always be bringing full DPS to another boss fight.

And if you are on that one map that has killed everything else but Axe (I’ve never been in map like that and I’ve dropped in and commanded a lot of VB maps), it’s the most pro map ever. They are fine without you and by showing up to “help”, you are just pointlessly scaling the event more when you can’t bring full DPS.

I mean, the only rare scenario when I can think of where it would be warranted would be one where you had some composition of players that enough CC to break the bar, but not enough AoE to drop the smokescales as soon as they pop.

Like the fact that you repeatedly do the event while not having the mastery isn’t something to brag about. You are just basically being selfish.

You do realize that skill chains advance if you hit an enemy, regardless of if said enemy is visible or not, right? Everyone can melee him for full DPS just fine.

There are a lot of skills that won’t fire without a valid target. Without the ability to use those, DPS can’t be full in many cases.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

You do realize that skill chains advance if you hit an enemy, regardless of if said enemy is visible or not, right? Everyone can melee him for full DPS just fine.

No, I don’t realize that, because it’s not entirely true and completely not true for common PvE classes that don’t melee. I have to go back and double check, because I only attempted to fight Axemaster without Nubochi Detection once before I realized how silly that was and went other bosses. But I am pretty sure the game treats that stealth mechanic differently and it’s like your hitting thin air, because I specifically remember my staff auto on daredevil not advancing the chain.

If I run my staff elementalist and camp fire, the most I can do is spam Lava Font and Meteor Shower off CD. I can’t hit with Fireball unless I target a smokescale and do splash damage, so “everyone” cannot melee him for full DPS just fine.

But, like, you are missing the point. You are trying to rationalize doing a fight with a handicap that “maybe” you can get around and be “mostly” efficient when it’s not ever needed. There’s 4 other bosses you can be helping with and you are just doing the one you objectively contribute the least, too, because you “like the fight”.

Even if I conceded to your advanced knowledge of doing the Axemaster fight with an unnecessary handicap that you don’t ever need to do, the full DPS is still dependent on knowing movement patterns so you can be sure you are actually hitting the right spot. That’s never needed with other 4 bosses you can help with that you can actually see.

HoT Map Meta’s aren’t like open world Cyria bosses. You have to think about what is the best for the overall map to reach the T4 and where you can contribute the most. But people rarely do, which is why HoT PvE is toxic at times.

Do the other bosses. Get the mastery. Come back and do Axemaster. There is no non-selfish reason for this except very rare scenarios where you being there is the best of bad options.