Guild Wars 2

My party and I may well be missing something obvious, and if so, then so be it…

That said, we had a party of four, myself as an Apothecary BM Ranger, a Guardian, a Warrior and an Elementalist. Took a bit to get a groove going for pinging the mines, disarming them, and getting Subdirector NULL onto them to remove his shield.

Once we did though, and I was finally paying attention, I noticed he had zero conditions. Okay, I get it, he can’t have conditions applied with his shield up. Shield goes down, pet is ripping into him, I start stacking… or more appropriately, trying to stack conditions. NADDA. No weakness, bleeding, poison, vulnerability, chill… nothing. Not a single skill across my Sword, Dagger, Axe, Torch, Sharpening Stone skill, Entangle… not even my pet or any other party member could apply a condition. Again, this is AFTER his shield is removed.

We wipe… we start again. HEY! I can apply conditions, sweet. There’s his first application of his shield, it’s gone… stack conditions! Wait… WHAT?! Once again, couldn’t stack conditions. Four tries, same story…

Just played him for the first time, and as a Necromancer I was getting really angry that the guy wouldn’t take any conditions. How could ANet design a boss that was so blatantly anti-condition necro? But I see videos where the guy took conditions the entire fight so I guess it must be a bug.

I see in the patch notes it says “Fixed a bug where Canach was able to take condition damage while temporarily immune to players”. I bet the ‘fix’ got applied to Subdirector NULL as well.

Also, it’s bugged in another way. Once we got to the phase where he applies the DoT, he can no longer have his shield removed. All mines instantly explode if you try to trigger them with ability 2 with the mine detector, instead of becoming landmines for him.

As a warrior, we killed Null last night and “On My Mark!” did not work on Null, at all. Funny thing was it worked Tuesday night. (And yes, I was trying to apply it when the shield was down) Very frustrating to not be able to add vulnerability to a boss with as many get out of jail free cards as Null has.

Blind doesn’t work on him at all
Worked fine yesterday, nice patch…

I did the fight multiple times on my necro and it was so easy. However, today I couldn’t do any damage. I’m conditionmancer so I could only support with wells. NULL wouldn’t go below 30%. Please fix it.

This clearly not a bug but intended with the last update. They saw that conditions made him too vulnarable and easy to kill (and he is very easy in my opinion). This doesnt mean you are wrong in your opinion. Just stating that this thread belongs in the southsun cove discussion section and not in the bug section.

Maybe change your role in the party as a condition-orientated player. Pick up one of those rifles and and lure him to mines and use skill 4 to CC him

I don’t think this is intended, because while my utility didn’t work to add vulnerability, some weapon attacks from party members did, it’s just there would be 2 stacks of vulnerability before they would fade or he’d shield up.

mercury ranique.2170:

This clearly not a bug but intended with the last update. They saw that conditions made him too vulnarable and easy to kill (and he is very easy in my opinion). This doesnt mean you are wrong in your opinion. Just stating that this thread belongs in the southsun cove discussion section and not in the bug section.

Maybe change your role in the party as a condition-orientated player. Pick up one of those rifles and and lure him to mines and use skill 4 to CC him

No that is not what they meant in the update – here is their statement:
Fixed a bug where Canach was able to take condition damage while temporarily immune to players.
This means you are wrong in your opinion. The devs patched to fix condition damage being applied WHILE the shield was up. Unfortunately they then broke it far far worse than it already was. Once the initial shield comes down, no one is able to use conditions for the rest of the fight.

I’m really surprised there is no official response in this thread.

Naginto.4597:

mercury ranique.2170:

This clearly not a bug but intended with the last update. They saw that conditions made him too vulnarable and easy to kill (and he is very easy in my opinion). This doesnt mean you are wrong in your opinion. Just stating that this thread belongs in the southsun cove discussion section and not in the bug section.

Maybe change your role in the party as a condition-orientated player. Pick up one of those rifles and and lure him to mines and use skill 4 to CC him

No that is not what they meant in the update – here is their statement:
Fixed a bug where Canach was able to take condition damage while temporarily immune to players.
This means you are wrong in your opinion. The devs patched to fix condition damage being applied WHILE the shield was up. Unfortunately they then broke it far far worse than it already was. Once the initial shield comes down, no one is able to use conditions for the rest of the fight.

I’m really surprised there is no official response in this thread.

Probably because almost nobody is taking this ‘explorable dungeon’ seriously so ANet isn’t making it a priority.

He is certainly bugged. Just tried fighting him, but after the first shield he becomes immune against conditions. It’s not just a display glitch either. We got him down to almost half of his health before he even got the first shield. After that we needed ages to take him down. Once the debuff struck we just didn’t have enough dps to kill him in time.

This fight is extremely frustrating in PUGs post-patch — taking away conditions makes many builds useless. Add to that the way he randomly detonates all the nearby mines and then immediately puts up a shield while using a stacking debuf to damage the party — I can’t see how this is supposed to be fun. Several times we got him < 5%, but then he did that and we died while trying to get him to a mine.

I spoke with some guildies, who went in with a non-condition team, and they had an easy time. I guess the PUGs I was in just had too much condition damage (though I went in with a zerker warrior) — but I like the mechanics of conditions, and find the game boring when it encourages everyone to switch to zerker / crit DPS builds.

I’ve done almost all the other dungeons (except SE exp), and I’ve enjoyed them even when I’ve been in groups that fell apart. This just seemed like masochism. On the bright side, if you keep putting out content like this I’ll come to my senses and stop spending so much time playing this game.

I’ve been in to fight Null ~20ish times now (about 4 hours of fighting) all post-patch, with a variety of groups.

I’ve been in with good groups and I’ve been in with bad groups. I’ve yet to defeat him.

The closest I got was with a group with a warrior, a necromancer, a thief, an engineer and an elementalist. We got him down to a sliver of health before we all died.

As far as I can see, the only way we would have been able to defeat him is if we were extraordinarily lucky and he didn’t shield after applying electrolyze or if we had more straight dps builds in our team (as opposed to the condition damage which doesn’t apply).

If it isn’t a bug, it seems unfair that an otherwise perfectly good team should never be able to defeat Null without an ungodly amount of luck.