Dark Delvings

Any discussion regarding this instance can be posted here.

Managed to get past 2nd boss at last! Wilgo and I were there along with our Rangers allies. The 2nd boss turned out quite easy , just kited him around a bit and cleared the adds. Unbelievable, considering what problems we had before. Gurvand however was a different matter as we wiped three times in rapid succession. So any tip, hints etc would be greatly appreciated.

oh and I got my class quest as well

Good run last night, but it got me thinking a bit. The third fight itself seemed very normal. You have a boss and adds. Tank on boss and off-tank on adds. Very simple. This is of course excluding any special abilities the boss might do as I'm not aware of those except the corruption stacking on the tank and the knockback.

Anyways, because healing is so slow in the dark there is no way only one healer can keep up both the main tank and the off-tank. If I switched to heal Laura, Janadan died and vice versa. Also because healing is so slow I needed to just heal constantly, because I have to start the heal a lot earlier before Janadan even needed it. A Lore-Master can only emergency heal but that's it. Therefore I think our class composition yesterday made it impossible for us to beat the last boss. You definately need a captain, RK or another minstrel to heal. I googled up DD HM book 7 and came up with a strategy guide that confirms this. It suggests two healers, one/two on the main tank and the other also focuses in between on the off-tank.

I'll post the guide here so you can all have a look. Apparently you shouldn't kill the adds at all, but keep them alive like the archers in GS. We should probably try this next time. Oh and a warden should be ideal as the off-tank because of self-heals.

The GoV Strategy for Gurvand

Captain as a healer has only one advantage over minstrel: instant healing skills, that also work in 16th hall

another strategy to ponder

Gurvand Strategy

Since we have a run tonight and the optimal group for it I saw it fit to post a strategy that I have been thinking could work. While controlling all adds might work it is very tricky to get them all in a bunch and that is why it might be easier to try a hyvrid tactic. Namely keep two adds alive and kill two. That will leave the other hopefully something to do while Gurvand is reflecting. That way we will be able to take adds down fast, but also keep nice dps on Gurvand and keep the fight short.



Red = Aeskarth
Green = Janadan
Blue = The rest
Pink = First add

Alright first of all when the battle starts every body makes a run for the rune. I will mark the first add with a Sun and Janadan will get its aggro. The point is never to kill the first add because it causes the most problems when it is killed and respawns. I will mark a second add with a moon. Most likely the add north of us because then we only have to kill the adds that are farthest from us. We will kill the two other adds whenever they come. If everything goes fine the adds should come one at a time and then they will be easy to take care of.

As a general rule we're going to be close to each other and the plan is to do a GYYYYB conjunction whenever we can. The order will be Wilgo, rest 4Y, Janadan as last blue. Everybody needs to be ready for the conjucntion because if we don't get it right we get nothing. The HoT and DoT will help us a lot in this fight and if we don't get resists we can pull it off once / minute. The conjunction will not be used if we have adds on us. If this fails miserably we might switch to GGGBB instead. As a second rule; always interupt Gurvand's induction just in case even if he faces Aeskarth only. That means use your interupt skills whenever you see him doing an induction.

Aeskarth:

Tank'n'spank and insta taunt Gurvand to the wall whenever he comes. Before that feel free to kill adds if they've show up before he comes.

Janadan:

Grab aggro of first aggro but don't do too much damage. The point is once you can attack the add marked with the moon you should always stick to that one. Once both adds are on you use conviction, but not all the time. Mostly spam conviction and war-cry and try to keep damage to a minimum. When you have good aggro you can throw some javelins on Gurvand and always face him since you will be the last colour in the conjunction. If you kill moon let me know and I will mark the first add to come as moon and that will be your new priority. Also stay quite close so the captain heal is in range. Use a lot of self-heals as well.

Estendir:

Keep HoTs on Janadan and Aeskarth and dps in between. Help with the add(s) when it/they come then resume dps. Once first wave of adds are down and Janadan has the two adds under control we will try the first conjunction and after that pop oathbreakers on Gurvand.

Bonkil:

Dps and when add(s) comes take it/them down asap.

Pia:

The burglar will have a lot to do in this fight unfortunately. At start you should enrage all the adds so they will run into melee. After that put disable/DitE on the adds that are on Janadan and put counter defense and disable on Gurvand. After the adds are down and we're turning to Gurvand do the first conjunction. After that just dps, but you will need re-apply tricks and also be ready to enrage the respawned add(s) so be ready to strafe now into line of sight so you can enrage them as fast as possible. Optimally if you think it's possible it might be better to have reveal weakness on Gurvand whenever he's not reflecting and when he starts reflecting put disable on him. That way we will get a lot more dps on him and the fight will be shorter. We have to see if it's possible. You already have a lot to do.

In theory this should work if everything goes as planned, but as we know one mistake or bad luck can cost us this fight. The start is as always the most crucial part and once we get it right the fight shouldn't be too hard to control. I'll see you all at 7 pm! Dismissed! Just kidding.

Feel free to add/correct anything.

Nice thinking Janne and sounds like a viable strategy. I had retraited for max dps, thinking of controlling adds by taking them down! This included slotting defiant challenge and javelin of deadly force. However this will probably not be compatible with your new strategy. I will have reduced self heals and threat. Can the group and Jacek as leader let me know in advance if i should retrait back to a heal/aggro build. Of course I can do this before or during the instance but I'm sure we dont want to be hanging around too much. On a personal note I was happy to try max dps build but will do what is needed by the group. More importantly looking forward to getting back in the game and speaking to you guys again. Lets have some fun giving the big bad a hard time again!

8k!! Damn so close... We'll get him next time. The imporant bit is we got a lot of practice on the "phases" and I'm confident we'll get him down next week. Seems like hybrid strategies work as well as hybrid classes.

Was a pleasure doing this run and for the first time I don't feel depressed after coming out from DD.

Thanks for the work you put into the strategy Janne. It really did seem to work. Getting Gurvand to 8k felt great. I really enjoyed the run and it was good to be back. I think it really helped us to start early and clearing the first 2 bosses in half an hour. I look forward to our next encounter. Thx all

We can do one small improvement, that could help us yesterday: the 'remote' poison pot. I use the wound one on tank at first boss (not always needed, but i noticed on our previous runs it might help). As it seems only Janadan gets stacking poison debufs, other might help him with this. I noticed yesterday the first icon doesn't seem to do any harm, only says you become suspectible to following debufs, so most of us can ingnore it, I didn't notice anyone getting poison DoTs except tanking Janadan.

Well, at least I don't get any poison, just some minor fear DoTs that I can easily heal with pots. "Remote" pots (salves) are a good idea, if you think you have time to apply them.

I would also like to thank Janne for putting this strategy together - it's working, we'll get him next time