Guild Wars 2

Basically I’ve looked up the descriptions of these two buffs that appear on Champion level mobs and up, but I can’t seem to make sense of how exactly they work or what I should do about them.

Unshakable grants Defiant when the creature is targeted with Control Effects, and using Control Effects on the creature removes Defiant. I’m thinking of an infinite loop of silliness here.
The target is immune to Control Effects while Defiant is up, but does Unshakable stop working when Defiant is active? Can anyone elaborate on how I can remove Defiant, or if I should even bother?

Edit: I should clarify that I am also asking this question because it doesn’t appear to be a 1:1 when it comes to gaining Defiant per Control Effect. I saw a mob with a stack of 13, and according to the tooltips that doesn’t make sense.

Unshakable in itself reduces the effectiveness of Blind to 10% and reduces the duration of Weakness and Immobilise by 50%. Additionally, when the Champion mob is affected by Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull it will gain X stacks of Defiant. The number of Defiant stacks is dependent on the number of players within a certain radius of the mob; it is default to 3 stacks for one player and scales up.

Defiant, in addition to Unshakable, will negate all sources of Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull. For each of the above Crowd Control effect negated, one stack of Defiant is depleted, until zero at which point the Champion is susceptible to Crowd Control.

The purpose of these two buffs is to prevent Champion and higher level mobs from being steamrolled by the umpteen enemy players assaulting it with chain crowd control, thus forcing players to have to only use their Crowd Control effects only when they absolutely have to, e.g. interrupting a channeled attack. After applying Crowd Control, players will then have to work to deplete the Defiant stacks without needlessly going over the limit.

The amount of Defiant gained seems to come from the scaling of the event, and every CC the boss is hit with removes one stack of Defiant. When all stacks are removed, the next CC will affect the boss, and the Defiant stacks will come back.

Ojimaru.8970:

Unshakable in itself reduces the effectiveness of Blind to 10% and reduces the duration of Weakness and Immobilise by 50%. Additionally, when the Champion mob is affected by Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull it will gain X stacks of Defiant. The number of Defiant stacks is dependent on the number of players within a certain radius of the mob; it is default to 3 stacks for one player and scales up.

Defiant, in addition to Unshakable, will negate all sources of Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull. For each of the above Crowd Control effect negated, one stack of Defiant is depleted, until zero at which point the Champion is susceptible to Crowd Control.

The purpose of these two buffs is to prevent Champion and higher level mobs from being steamrolled by the umpteen enemy players assaulting it with chain crowd control, thus forcing players to have to only use their Crowd Control effects only when they absolutely have to, e.g. interrupting a channeled attack. After applying Crowd Control, players will then have to work to deplete the Defiant stacks without needlessly going over the limit.

THIS needs to be on the wiki. How did you find out about the number of stacks?

adragon.1234:

Ojimaru.8970:

Unshakable in itself reduces the effectiveness of Blind to 10% and reduces the duration of Weakness and Immobilise by 50%. Additionally, when the Champion mob is affected by Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull it will gain X stacks of Defiant. The number of Defiant stacks is dependent on the number of players within a certain radius of the mob; it is default to 3 stacks for one player and scales up.

Defiant, in addition to Unshakable, will negate all sources of Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull. For each of the above Crowd Control effect negated, one stack of Defiant is depleted, until zero at which point the Champion is susceptible to Crowd Control.

The purpose of these two buffs is to prevent Champion and higher level mobs from being steamrolled by the umpteen enemy players assaulting it with chain crowd control, thus forcing players to have to only use their Crowd Control effects only when they absolutely have to, e.g. interrupting a channeled attack. After applying Crowd Control, players will then have to work to deplete the Defiant stacks without needlessly going over the limit.

THIS needs to be on the wiki. How did you find out about the number of stacks?

Live testing. I have (attempted) soloing some Champion mobs and noticed the 3 stacks after knocking it back. In dungeons, bosses gain 5 stacks of Defiant, then during massive boss fights such as the Megadestroyer in Mount Maelstrom or Centaur High Shaman in Arathi Highlands gain over 20+ stacks due to the zerg.

I am now actually curious to try out Mesmers’ Moa Morph on Champions… 10 seconds is an awesomely long time…

ZetaStriker.9142:

When all stacks are removed, the next CC will affect the boss, and the Defiant stacks will come back.

Ah, they come BACK. So basically, in a group of 5 people, every 6th CC attempt will work. The first 5 remove his defiant stacks, the 6th one lands, 5 stacks come back, rinse and repeat. Can someone confirm this?

Godsend.1643:

ZetaStriker.9142:

When all stacks are removed, the next CC will affect the boss, and the Defiant stacks will come back.

Ah, they come BACK. So basically, in a group of 5 people, every 6th CC attempt will work. The first 5 remove his defiant stacks, the 6th one lands, 5 stacks come back, rinse and repeat. Can someone confirm this?

Yes this is basically true, very easy to see in any dungeon run when fighting a boss who has Unshakable and very few people in your group have or use CC. First CC will affect it, it will gain 5 stacks of Defiant, each cc will deplete one, then when they are depleted, it will be vulnerable to one CC and then gain 5 more stacks of defiant