Brainstorming Challenges.

[WarBlade]

Reading Seijin's post there - and the mention of the +3 Strength rune - gave me an idea. I'll reveal the specifics of this cunning plan later (at which point you'll probably call me crazy), but first a couple of questions...

Hehe.

1.) Supposing Seijin and I were occupied from the start of the Mallyx fight to the end totally unable to assist the rest of the party in any way, can the remaining six deal with the two spawns themselves?

2.) Seijin: Got Vent working? We'll need to hog the channel and we might need just enough liquor to ride out some high stress, but not enough to get us blotto, 'cause the margin is going to be tighter than a Scottish nun.

[FoxBat]

I'd say you should have enough energy for another attack skill. The AoE ones are spammable and a bit advantegous pre-mallyx, Furious Axe or Pure Strike have good damage, you can go Protector's for 1/2-second hammer attacks, or even distracting strike for an interrupt.

If we really want another SY copy, I think it's best off paired with Dragon Slash, which could be fine in place of an ursan or something. I stick the 10e Battle Standard with Warrior's Endurance for energy reasons. (Although I guess not a problem for an all-adrenaline bar.... added a dragonslash example to the alternate builds)

[Seijin]

Reading Seijin's post there - and the mention of the +3 Strength rune - gave me an idea. I'll reveal the specifics of this cunning plan later (at which point you'll probably call me crazy), but first a couple of questions...

2.) Seijin: Got Vent working? We'll need to hog the channel and we might need just enough liquor to ride out some high stress, but not enough to get us blotto, 'cause the margin is going to be tighter than a Scottish nun.

Yes I have Vent working. I need know what it is we're doing. And as for margin of error. I like margin of error. It lets me do something random and stupid without anyone worrying.

Oh yeah, I forgot Fox mentioned something about an essence of celerity. I have 6 for those "just in case" moments while vanquishing...unfortunately for me, 95% of the time I kept them in the vault and forgot to take them out. So I was going to save them for HM Duncan. :wink2:

If we need more I can probably make some more.

50 dust
50 feathers
250g
1 skill pt

I have lots of dust, gold, and skill pts. I might be short on feathers.

[WarBlade]

Yes I have Vent working. I need know what it is we're doing. And as for margin of error. I like margin of error. It lets me do something random and stupid without anyone worrying.

That's fantastic! We'll have almost no margin of error at all. It'll be so much fun!

Oh yeah, I forgot Fox mentioned something about an essence of celerity. I have 6 for those "just in case" moments while vanquishing...unfortunately for me, 95% of the time I kept them in the vault and forgot to take them out. So I was going to save them for HM Duncan. :wink2:

Okay, well we could probably use about one.

Now that I've been pondering The Plan Most Cunning™ during idle moments at work it's time for me to jam this idea together into something resembling a build...

[WarBlade]

Here goes...

The basic idea: Without Essence of Celerity a Strength 14 Warrior can maintain Dwarven Battle Stance for 11 seconds (into a recharge of 20). Therefore two Warriors should theoretically be able to chain DBS for constant, unspecific interruption. The fun part is the person waiting on a recharge can drop Tryptophan Signet (20 second duration for Seijin and I - 15 second recharge) to slow down Mallyx's attacks by 40%.

I've made some estimates and the numbers without Essence of Celerity frankly don't look that great, but with Essence of Celerity things start getting interesting.

Here's the catch. Mallyx's skill Wild Smash has a 1/2 second activation and will break the stance if it gets through. Under Tryptophan it's still a near-3/4 second activation while the Essence empowered Warrior will be just over a second. That means a chance for Mallyx to sneak a hit through, albeit one small enough that we could consider gambling on this plan. Assuming the stance goes down the other Warrior's Battle Stance is going to be less than 15 seconds away at the most (unless both are disabled consecutively).

The other trick is keeping Tryptophan up most of the time and I can see a lot of potential for small gaps to appear while we cling tenaciously to our stances. A solution that could be anticipating the end of the effect and calling for a spike, in this case requesting a Lightbringer's Gaze spam or something. On the plus side One Tryptophan effect will be close to two stance durations, so there might well be a rough timing mechanism we can use in that.

Rough template:
OQcTE5J/H6uwWE3BAAAYmUAAAAA

Warrior Hammer PvE Battle Stance 1
OQcTE5J/H6uwWE3ZS8rYmUAImEA

Warrior Hammer PvE Battle Stance 2
OQcTE5J/H6uwWE35r4UcSUAYmEA

The first one defines the three key skills on the left of the bar. Everything else is just optional extras (as shown in the next two templates). Essentially it's just the first two skills we need to concern ourselves with and of course Death's Charge will get us some mobility to reach the target if need be. We should have a bit of energy to play with on the side, but for the moment I've concentrated mainly on adrenal skills for the extras.

Now let's see some nitpicking of this strategy before I make up my mind that it's actually a decent idea and turns out to be a spectacular disaster.

[Zed-F]

Does skill disabling work on Mallyx? If so we could consider Blackout.

EDIT: Old wiki says skills can't be disabled longer than their stated recharge. But... it doesn't say they can't be disabled for their stated recharge or less. Repeated applications of a short-duration but quick-recharge skill like Blackout could be very effective. Especially if Essence of Celerity also affects skill disable times for our side, or if we brought more than one copy of Blackout. New wiki specifically mentions Blackout as a viable possibility.

On the plus side, the timing for this seems considerably less chancy than the timing for Dwarven Battle Stance, and less prone to being interrupted. On the downside, Blackout is even more exclusive of other skill use than WB's proposal. Still if we are alternating usages between two players, that gives each person with blackout a very small window to activate other relatively persistent skills.

[FoxBat]

Even if dual DBS or blackout works against mallyx, I'm not convinced it is worth it. He just plain isn't going to hurt people under the gon except for shadow smash, which conveniently moves the target far from harm, and it significantly weakens us everywhere else. If we are concerned with momentary gaps in the SY! defense then we should just bring a dragon slasher. I think we have more than enough to kill mallyx himself now (winnowing may be overkill even), and am more concerned with dealing with his spawns.

Wiki isn't totally clear on exactly where the spawns appear. I thought it would be possible to run in, kill the spirits, and then slowly lure Mallyx back to the citadel door and fight there This in hope that the spawns would mostly appear towards that center area and away from us, so we could take them at our leisure. Yes, Summon Shadows will negate the traditional bow pull, instead we'd have the paragon constantly hitting him and people slowly backing up. He will probably summon once or twice, but we have the recharge to work within, and the benefit of 25% move speed and a well-timed SY.

If that doesnt' work for some reason, we can probably withstand keeping the ranger trained on him while the rest of the party smashes his nearby spawns. Positioning needs to be kept in mind for SY coverage though, not to mention Mallyx teleporting people out of it.

[WarBlade]

Wiki isn't totally clear on exactly where the spawns appear. I thought it would be possible to run in, kill the spirits, and then slowly lure Mallyx back to the citadel door and fight there This in hope that the spawns would mostly appear towards that center area and away from us, so we could take them at our leisure.

Last time we fought Mallyx was right at the door. So close to the door in fact that Mallyx actually Shadow Smashed Zed outside the room for a short time. We fought through the spirit effects (instead of going to destroy them) and wiped on the 80% spawn when Margonites appeared on one side of our aggro circle - To the right of the door as you look in.

We have to account for them to appear on top of us no matter what.

[WarBlade]

I've just chatted with Xyn in-game and he'll be around. Neither of us are interested in running Ursan Blessing. He's looking at Dragon Slash and I'm toying with going Warrior/Paragon with a spear and keeping the number of targets in range of Mallyx to a minimum.

Think Weapon of Warding (or other appropriate defence) for the front line and throw the Great Dwarf Weapons onto Ragnar and Zed.

It looks like I can run "Save Yourselves!" constantly if that's any use...

Now I just need to puzzle over elite skills.

[mucco]

I've looked at my bar and decided LB Signet plus Consume Soul is better than OoS and Gaze of Fury. It might be good enough that there is no further need to bring other Gazes.

Convert Hexes, even two, is not enough removal IMO. Especially because I'm not carrying any, as the second healer.