I was too tired to be fully cognizant of what was going on, but Shadow Smash was a real problem from a healers perspective. That is usually what got people (including myself) killed. Part of the damage is armor-ignoring which sucks, but part of it was also that we were getting too spread out trying to avoid mallyx' teleporting antics, and thus getting outside para shout range. This was more pronounced when we scrambled to try and get QZ down. I'm not sure how much tryptophan was on mallyx but, it looked like our warriors had a hard time catching up to him without a speed boost.
With his spirits down, Mallyx himself is not all that hard to damage. We were taking and recovering from some deaths though, and that became too much when the margonites were added in. And yes, I HATE quickening zephyr.
The consumeable complainers can argue their own case, but I'm miffed they didn't say
anything beforehand, when we were very up-front about it in this thread. It is doable without but the builds need to be different.
Anyway I found
this build for Hero-waying Mallyx in NM without consumeables, while we can't actually use it, we can probably learn something from it.
-The build is extremely defense-heavy. Three restoration healers, SY gon and war, 2 Defensive Anthem Paras and 1 Expel para, all with motivation skills. Of course paras still do decent spear damage, but less than what we had.
-Flail and Asuran Scan on the warrior. Yes, both are useless against Mallyx himself, but they are still relevant against everyting else, including mallyx's minions. Mallyx by himsef is manageable, mallyx plus his spawns are problematic.
-Death Pact Signet. Yes, this skill has a significant drawback, I don't know if we want that. But on the other hand, it is a 3-second hard rez, and with the amount of dying we did, we need to keep to hard rezzes.
-2x Defensive Anthem + WoW: no we can't bring 2 DA, but non-stance blocking is a strong defense against shadow smash.
Some thoughts on us implementing:
- Stances, conditions, hexes ETC can be used against mallyx minions if they are effective enough. Asuran scan is completely insane since the cast time was removed. If the energy can be managed, it will buff your own attacks far beyond "I am the strongest!" or the like. Flail is also incredible for speeding up Dslash spam. Ranged characters like zed and WB can bring IAS stances at not much risk too. We had wyrm bring Pain Inverter at one point, which he claimed was fairly effective. With casters giving us so much trouble, daze could be useful, old standbys like Broadhead arrow (+epedemic?), maybe a Technobabble somewhere. The other condition maybe worth adding is spammable deep wound on one of the characters.
Although its none of the above, some AoE is also a viable idea for downing groups other than mallyx, albeit they werent' always so nicely cramped. A spinter weapon, cyclone axe, or whirlwind might be useful, though our warriors can comment better on enemy positioning.
- Its not in the above build, but if we want Tryptophan to actually do anything, our warriors need to move faster. Enraging charge is nice in that it gives adrenaline, and that it ends when you catch up to mallyx, reducing the chance of wild smash. "Charge" is an unstrippable run buff, which also has the side effect of helping other teleported targets get back together faster, but that eats an elite.
- At the risk of frustrating hawk even more, I think we should turn her 4 pips into a restoration healer. (You did play rit a fair bit right?
) While keeping the squish from the frontline, that provides important fallback slack when one healer dies, or QZ is harrasing us, and it also ups the critical spirit count. It also frees up Mucco to focus a little more on spirit eating. Lightbringer signet is great energy management all by itself, but Offering of Spirit can be added if even more is desired. The only other semi-but-not-really relevant elite I can see is Dwyna avatar, mostly that would just soak up migrane. Could also give Xinrae's a try, but it seems that we really want Weapon of Warding on potential smash targets.
Once this move is made though, we don't have our hex removal anymore. That means either I drop Word and go Divert Hexes + emergency heals, or we get someone else to bring expel. Zed could do it, but I'm sure we'll hear him (somewhat justifyably) complain about expelling hexes while simultaneously watching to interrupt hexes. Wyrm is kinda busy with the SY spam. A warrior could do it but they give up a lot, as it will consume strong elite choices and much of their energy.
I've insisted on Word of Healing because none of the other non-enchant, non-elite monk healing options are remotely efficient, and a restoration ritualist outdoes them all. With a dervish-turned-rit healer though, it might be possible for me to focus on "emergency heals" with infuse and heal other, leaving typical pressure for them to deal with. Then I could make Divert my elite, and focus remaining slots into some secondary with relevant defense. (Dwarf weapon on a healer type is, in retrospect, probably not worth it.) The other crazy option is to go /rt secondary and taking advantage of those efficient restoration heals, with LB sig to power it.
-If I push elementalist secondary, I could bring wards in. Ward vs Melee would grant us passive blocking analagous to Defensive Anthem. I tested tryptophan with ward vs foes and they don't stack, but our warriors should comment on how consistently they could get tryptophan off. Stability could be useful depending upon the knockdown order of shadow smash; does it KD first then teleport, or teleport than KD? Would the stability ward still prevent the knockdown?
Regardless of the above, the bigger issue with wards is that they are static, and we were all over the place in that battle. Summoning shadows aside, we'd need to maintain a formation for wards to do everything, instead of kiting in 8 different directions. I'm not sure how viable that would be.
-Beyond wards and extra heals I'm not sure what other defenses we can bring in. Shelter might be helpful against those smashes, but it's hard to find a good place for it and we don't have any spawning power. Our warriors could boost their HPs for a larger buffer with endure pain, or "feel no pain" if they can stay drunk. Warrior's Endurance type has the energy to cast Breath of the Great Dwarf (or even a ward?) as I suggested for optional, but party heals didn't appear the main issue there. Condition shutdown like weakness can be used vs non-mallyx, but casters and QZ were the main things harrasing our SY armor.
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I suspect most of us had similar problems with it -- at least the non-adrenal-based characters, and especially our healers -- which is why I was highlighting it. 