Brainstorming Challenges.

[WarBlade]

I don't know why you think ranged characters don't benefit from the skill.

I've never thought that, nor have I made that claim.

[Seijin]

Hey, so are we starting earlier on Saturday so that Mucco isn't dead tired while we're playing? And might give us a few more shots should we fail? :wink2:

[mucco]

I think Hawkmoon won't be able to join in earlier than planned.

By the way, I shouldn't be as tired as last week no matter what the start time is. There is a slim chance I won't make it though.

I remember having a problem distinguishing spirits, as the names were different from what I expected - I knew the effects but not the names of the spirits causing them.

So it is Shrouded -> Listless -> Demonic -> Tormented (optional). Will try to pay attention to them more next time. My elite does life steal, not just damage, so in general go after spirits only if you plan on killing them quickly. Else I can eat them and use my elite as a self heal.

About WB and his bar, Brawling Headbutt should fit in regardless of the build because it's an ok defensive skill and has great synergy with the team build. If bringing that skill however, it would be advisable to run a melee bar in order to not waste too much time moving to melee range and back for throwing spears. I'd be against a res sig because of no bosses for the whole fight, rather have an 8th skill. "Finish Him!" is very bad pressure, at 5 DPS for 10e which would otherwise be spent on asuran scan, and one skill slot. Good, maybe, for occasional spike damage but we aren't building for that.

[FoxBat]

Mallyx isn't that long of a fight, and you get a morale boost for opening the citadel. It's purely for a likely emergency situation when Mallyx knocks out one of our defenders, and last time interrupts on long cast times were an issue. I'd have res sigs (or death pact) on the warriors too in place of enraging if we had a shout speed boost coming from somewhere.

As for a third melee, if they are bringing parry, there's nothing that comes close to dragon slash.... although some "Charge" bar is possible, the spear attacks are probably better in absence of an elite.

I've never thought that, nor have I made that claim. :thumbsdow

I don't get the opposition then. If energy is a problem, you're better off dropping an attack skill. Used just on yourself, it's spending 10 energy for ~200 damage. Multiply that by whoever else you can get in it's radius.

[FoxBat]

I think Xyn was on to something- our problem really isn't the mallyx spawns themselves, but rather how our response to the spawns is changing our positioning, which in turn aggravates Mallyx. I do remember reading at some point that Mallyx being far away from his target, or having trouble catching them, provokes him to summon shadows more often. I'd like to hear his (or sej's) thoughts on "pinning down" and to what degree that helped, and whether we need two warriors to do it or one could sufficie. Thinking of a build with frontliner(s) dedicated to blocking mallyx, while the midline uses ranged damage to take out his spawns without undue movement.

Just for Zed, I sketched what three blackout characters might look like. The way this build has to be played, assuming it even works, is for people to get on vent and describe their blackout countdowns- something like A blackouts, then says "3,2,1", with "0" being when their own skills recharge. That's the signal for the next person to blackout. This passes around in a constant cycle. The characters can never move from mallyx, meaning the rest of the group needs to DPS the spawns out, although we should get away with just 2 healers and less passive blocking in that setup. More blind spam may be needed, but Sneak Attack is pretty sweet. Signet of Midnight is a possibility for rangers with antidote signet, unwieldly but it offers extra safety.

With the above strategy, I'm still not keen on enchantments, because one mistake can disable our defense bars. Likewise I'm not about to stack Mallyx mile-high with hexes, letting him get a huge heal if a mistake is made. An additional melee-hate hex might be appropriate for added safety.

Note the crappy kindle on the ranger is purely to trigger Ebon Battle Standard- the damage adds to kindle seperately, outpacing read the wind or anything else. We will probably be abusing this properly in the future.

[WarBlade]

I pinged a N/Rt half build to Mucco the following day which builds on the idea of dedicated blockers...

The basic idea

Take a Necro Rit with maxed Restoration, add;
- Defiant was Xinrae
- Soothing Memories
- Spirit Light
- Weapon of Warding
...and run it as a mostly conventional spot healer for the entry waves. Then for the Mallyx fight the player switches armour set (Mucco has a low life set for farming) and clings tenaciously to the Xinrae urn whilst standing in Mallyx's way as much as possible. The life reduction would probably be optimal at around 400 life where Mallyx could do no greater than 80 damage (Soothing will heal for 82). I'd probably put Seijin on melee duty versus Mallyx and have Xyn split off for the spawns.

Pro's

• Mucco is already a squishie target and creatures like him.
  
• Frees up a damager to help us take care of the spawns. I get the feeling I was hunting that Margonite Anur Kaya alone on the last run. Need damage...
  
• Spirit killer (see cons below) switches to someone on Vent who can react to voice calls. I don't seriously recommend that the backline person with the instant spirit killer on the bar expose themselves for QZ, but if that spirit happens to be in reach then the option works better for a player in voice chat.
  

Con's

• It's a gamble. It seems to me that Mallyx likes to hunt Zed early in his attack strategy for some reason.
  
• Swapping up roles again. We might be able to squeeze Gaze of Fury onto Mucco, but I'm thinking maybe Hawkmoon for the spirit split. Alternately Zed (who said he never had a chance to interrupt anything anyway) might pack the needed skill, although that option could give him energy worries or other problems.
  
• Any popup spawns' AoE or degeneration heading in Mucco's direction could get risky.
  

[Xyngynkynyn]

I think Xyn was on to something- our problem really isn't the mallyx spawns themselves, but rather how our response to the spawns is changing our positioning, which in turn aggravates Mallyx. I do remember reading at some point that Mallyx being far away from his target, or having trouble catching them, provokes him to summon shadows more often. I'd like to hear his (or sej's) thoughts on "pinning down" and to what degree that helped, and whether we need two warriors to do it or one could suffiice.

The last time I defeated Mallyx was a couple of years ago; way before hard mode was introduced and certainly way before PvE skills and consets made the scene. Back then, players had to rely on a rather complicated series of the steps but the net result was to get him as close to the door as possible and have him Summon Shadow us so that we were way directly under him. Since he has a rather large collision box and was lured to what amounts to a corner of his room defined by the door and a wall next to it; he seemed to get stuck. He remained this way so long as we remained absolutely rooted to the spot where we landed when he "Summon Shadow"ed us which turned out to be, as I've mentioned, directly under him.

My interpretation of what happened was: our position there relative to his position seemed to tell his AI something along the lines of "Hey move forward some so you can get them" but since the wall and door stood in his way, he got stuck. He couldn't rightly "hit us" with any attack due to our position and was thus stuck trying to get into a better position ad infinitum. Of course if someone moved just a bit, he sometimes turned in place to get the offender and that's when things fall apart and usually end in a wipe because that strat is depends on him not doing anything to us while spellcasters kill him. He's positioned near the door so the spawns don't bother us and the door opens when he dies so we can pull the Margonites outside the room to fight. The souls were left active in that strat.

Now I don't hear this strat or any variation similar to it being used in DoA after the many changes DoA and GW in general underwent but the key element in that strat of pinning him so he seems to not do anything but try to move seemed to have occurred during our last attempt when we pinned him next to a banister. As mentioned, we broke the pin in order to engage the spawned Margonites as previously agreed upon before the battle and that's when things fell apart.

Anyway, I believe Seijin and I were the only ones underneath him at the time but he didn't seem to cast Summon Shadows; or else not enough for me to notice. Also I wasn't being Shadow Smashed around so I believe his AI was committed to doing something else. We might have brought him down had we ignored the Margonites but that was a precarious gamble seeing as we were rather close to the spawned Margonites' patrol area. One aggro from them and I think we would've wiped just like what actually happened.

I don't know what it will take to pin him like that which is why I suggest we forgo damaging him the next time and just try to pin him initially until we more or less have an idea of how to do it. Simultaneously, it could give our healers some practice on how to heal while we engage Mallyx. If they can get comfortable enough to keep us in a stalemate while we figure out how to pin him then we shouldn't have anything to worry about. Bear in mind that since we aren't attacking, our defensive adrenaline skills won't be active as much if at all.

The key objective in that practice session will be to figure out how to pin Mallyx; preferably away from the spawn points and patrol area (i.e. the foot of the stairs). We might also gain some insights on when Mallyx uses Summon Shadows and maybe Smash if more of us are focused on observing rather than damaging him. Throughout all of this though, I still think Mucco or whoever should kill the souls.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on it.

Regarding WB's suggestion of splitting, I disagree. One Summon Shadow and the spawns will run towards all of us thereby negating the purpose of splitting.

[Seijin]

He was pinned initially when Xyn and I were on him. I couldn't tell against what though because the bastard is so huge I couldn't really tell. But once the first spawn hit, the shit hit the fan. People were worrying about mallyx and the spawn and the spirits. I think I made a move to the margonites since people seemed to be having a fit with them, thats when I first got shadow smashed and he started moving around.

[WarBlade]

Ah.

I think that's a lesson in itself. The melee warrior with the parrying skills and maybe Ward Against Melee etc. is probably best glued to Mallyx at all times.

From what I saw the Margonite spawn was nothing to be overly concerned about. Two pairs, a Warrior and Dervish duo (I think) and a caster duo of a Mesmer and Elementalist. That shouldn't be too big a threat. We can take them! Just need the monkey off our backs while we do them over.

[Seijin]

Well someone either needs to convey this ahead of time or speak up in chat that the margonites could be handled. And I didn't peel off of Mallyx as soon as the spawn came up, it was after I started to see people's health drop. So I figured they weren't under control.