Video

Thanks for the feedback! I don't record our voice chat due to multiple reasons, one being that we don't even speak English. As for a voice over, my microphone quality really isn't great and I'm not sure how well this would be received. I did think about doing guides a while back, but at least for the older raids & strike content I feel like there are already enough sources out there. So, I never got around to it, and just keep uploading decent-ish PoVs with music (which I personally do like, to each their own) and some info the the description for people who want to know more. Regarding a voice over for this specific video / fight, the strategy we're using is quite similar to earlier double wall strat kills but with some adjustments for our group; I'm not sure how much our symbols differ, and we do use 3 mesmer portals. I don't think our strat is pug friendly, but other strats out there are (such as UNIT). However, since we're going for some more kills as we want the Despair achievement, let's see if I decide differently. Really not sure though.

@@Nanax3 Ah okay understandable. Thanks for the information :D

That's fine IMO. It means that you will heal frequently in addition to Regeneration. Plus you also have heals outside of Celestial Avatar (CA); if you need burst healing and don't have CA ready, just use Staff#5+#3, if you need more use Staff#2, Mace#2, your healing skill, if it's a healing skill with a Water combo field like Healing Spring you can also combo Warhorn#5 & Mace#3 before swapping to staff and burst healing there, and you can target allies with Staff#1 (&#2) if necessary. Depending on the boss & group, you can also cast Glyph of the Stars just for its active healing, and with Nature Magic's Invigorating Bond your pet F2 also heals. And finally, a good Druid will know when to delay their CA for certain mechanics such as Vale Guardian greens, Gorseval's cc, Samarog's cc, etc. while still keeping up CA boons. The issue I have with alacrity being on CA skills is when I have trouble filling up CA, which can happen during down phases (for example at AH CM bomb/laser phase, OLC CM puzzles, Xera gliding phase) or on low pressure bosses with an offhealer, especially if it's a barrier healer like Scourge.

It's basically just a different strategy, that IMO, assuming everyone knows how the strategy works and acts accordingly, is better than duo kite. However, getting people to act accordingly can be hard - though duo kite has similar problems. With solo kite, the 2nd healer can tank the Mech while still providing their boons from range. That way you don't have a dps with basically no boons away from the stack, increasing squad dps. As soon as the Sniper ports away, the player with the first shot has to react properly and go to triangle (to the zipline closest to Minister Li's platform), and everyone else (except for tank+kiter) has to stack on the opposite site of where the Sniper ported to; we usually make sure our commander does that and everyone can just follow. However, sometimes it seems to be very hard for people to stack on tag or go to triangle if targeted like they should. With duo kite, you need that dps tank who will barely have any boons. Additionally, the group has to stack at a safe space (next to the zipline closest to Minister Li's platform) and also be there before the Sniper even ports away, so that they will never get any shots and both Kiters will actually be able to handle all 3 shots. This is something that pugs don't do properly though, and oftentimes people end up too close to one of the Kiters and get killed by Ricochet - so, we basically have the same problem as above (not positioning properly), plus the need to know when the attack will happen before it actually happens. Since both strategies need the stack to position properly and will probably fail / produce some collateral damage if done wrong, IMO it's better to pick the strategy that increases squad dps and therefore shortens the fight and potential for mistakes -> solo kite

What's staff? Can I eat that?

Not as reliably as via Staff#5. Staff#5 does not have a target cap, so everyone who touches the wall gets regen - the limitation here is the shape of the wall, so it should be dropped on the way while the squad is moving to hit everyone. The healing trap has a target cap of 5, so as long as someone of my party stands in it, they'll get the regen instead. There's no way to predict when the offgroup and my group will stack at (mostly) separate positions, making it a big gamble. However, I'm not really satisfied with the healing glyph either as I felt like I did not heal the players I wanted to when I pressed the skill. Might be worth experimenting ~

@@Nanax3With natures vengeance I actually prefer Water Spirit over Glyph anyways. It can range heal, doesn't need to be in CA (big to restore CA energy), heals more in total and the big portion is split in two parts, which reduces overheal. (Envigorating bond doesn't feel useful anymore with all the boons from mace). EG: When both groups drop to 50 or 40%, cast WS + St5+St3 - the first slam + staff combo will top your group so the second slam will hit the offgroup for sure. Maybe that's an option too.

@@dfg12382 That's a good point. I rarely use Water Spirit, but with Nature's Vengeance it actually gets a big boost. I think that's the option I'm gonna experiment with first, especially in a setup like in the video. Thanks!

Probably too much :'D Though I do have some templates & copy&paste lots of stuff from my old descriptions. And spending time analyzing my recordings helps me identify what I can improve on in the future, so I don't really mind the effort.

fr fr. Pretty useless in its current state.

They were one of the players we picked up via LFG, so I can only make assumptions here. Looking at other logs from that evening, they did usually properly rotate between weapon sets on those bosses (I did not check their whole rotation, just if they did in fact weapon swap like SC suggests). In the video, they were one of the players who got feared off at the 40% breakbar even though their positioning was correct and helped rezz up a downed player later on. They were also in the non-healer sub in which boon uptime, especially on defensive boons (regeneration, protection), wasn't great, and were on low health for quite some time before entering shroud - basically their 2nd health bar, preventing them from getting downed. Additionally, on Sloth there are frequent breakbars which mess up / lead do breaks in rotations. So, all in all, while obviously there's room for improvement rotation-wise (which there is for almost every player), I'd say it was a mix of multiple unfortunate factors which lead to this particular gameplay. Your question suggests that you (only?) looked at the Simple Rotation tab in the player summary of the Reaper player. If you did not already do that, I'd encourage you to have a look at the combat replay tab (at the top next to the boss overview), select the player (click on it in the group overview on the right), activate "show buffs" and check the "conditions" checkmark (above the group overview), and start the combat replay by pressing on play below the map in the middle. That way you can observe almost everything that player was doing and get an idea for stuff that cannot easily be seen by looking at the rotation alone (such as their hp, boons, conditions, positioning, which boss mechanic happened when, etc). In fact, arc dps logs provide tons of information if you know where to look, which is what makes them so great!

Well, welcome back :'D If you've got more questions, feel free to ask! Though I don't have the in-depth knowledge on Chrono like I have on Druid.

Well, I guess we have different opinions on this matter. At the time of recording, Ice Bow was the only utility skill on ele with proper breakbar damage, and since you need a lot of cc in CM I took it. I also used it exactly for that reason in the video; while I wasn't fast enough at the 2nd add phase to get value out of it, I did get cc value out of it at the 1st and 3rd add phases. Another benefit of Ice Bow for a healer is its increased healing power combined with Ice Bow auto attack, however tbf I did not use it for that. As for Eye of the Storm, if you really don't want to take a cc utility, it might be a viable alternative - I don't see a reason to use it on cooldown though and instead use it at specific moments such as when you need to run away from mechanic pulls, want stability for the wurm knocks, or to speed up the transition phases. As for Rebound, I brought it as an on-shit button for situations in which we might have a few downed players, others are low, and I need to stabilize the squad again. However, this did not happen in the video, so there was no need for me to press it. The alternative is the elemental, most likely used for healing, condi cleanse, and cc on water. Both options are viable, I preferred the 1st one back then.

@@Nanax3 well you can see that if you dont use rebound and ice bow for 99% of the fight = they are both useless and other skills would be better. rebound is prob most trash elite,since when your group is on verge of dying you failed as healer anyway and waiting for them to actually proc rebound is even worse than to go for more heals. ice bow is nice idea but its clunky asf and the fact that you are locked from your weapon skills while holding it makes it more like meme tier. (also no boons on bow and 0 utility) over all tempest is very under tuned and could use many buffs.

@@critical-thinker666As I said, we seem to have different opinions here. IMO those skills aren't useless, I've explained my reasons before so I won't repeat them. The group can be on the verge of dying due to them eating up mechanics that can't be outhealed that quickly - on XJJ CM, an example case would be camping Ankka's ranged AoEs or getting caught in one of the many (basically) 1-shot AoEs. Using Rebound there as an assurance for ppl not to drop immediately while healing is valid - you don't have to stop healing just because you used Rebound before. Additionally, depending on the boss, Rebound can save the run (examples include CA shields fail, Q1 cc fail) or just be incorporated in the strategy used (for example Sabir waves). So, Rebound isn't trash either. I'm aware Ice Bow is clunky, but it can still be used and add value. As I said, you do get a healing boost with it. Its utility is healing, hard cc, and chill. Being locked out of weapon skills is annoying, but the only skills you don't want to miss out on are Fire#4 and Earth#4, others can be skipped for a rotation. I very much agree with Tempest being undertuned. That's the reason I didn't play it in a long time - I currently play mainly Druid, and Tempest just lacks behind in basically everything sadly.

@@Nanax3 well you can do easy math. REBOUND doesn't do SHIT unless ppl actually proc it by dying and than it heals for 4k and its on 60 sec cd. (most of them gona heal while under effect of rebound making it even more useless) ice golem heals for 7k every 10 sec, so by taking rebound you losing 42k healing every minute. eye of the storm is AOE stunbreak with superspeed and prob best utility skill ele have available. its just shame that HAM can do all this (and more) by pressing 4 buttons and tempest needs to play piano to even upkeep alac let alone his trash tier ccs.

@@critical-thinker666 Rebound is (unless it's used for a strategy) designed to not "do shit". That's the nature of an "oh-shit"-button. That does not mean that taking an "oh-shit" button is useless. However, your math is flawed. Ice elemental scales with healing power, so let's roll with your 7k to keep it simple. Its active heal skill cooldown is higher than 10s; it has 15s cd, so 12s with alac. In addition to that, the elemental will die after 60s and be on cooldown for 40s, 32s with alac. If you press its active heal skill on cooldown and manage to instantly cast it when you spawn the golem, then you end up with 42k; I'm not sure if this is actually feasible though, so I'd go with 5 casts only for 35k healing. But then you have 32s of no healing, so you're at 35k healing per 92s, which means you're at roughly 22.8k healing per minute (27.4k if we go with 6 casts). Easy math. What this does not consider is that healing should be used reactively, so you actually don't want to press this healing skill on cooldown, and we'll end up with even less healing per minute. So, we're back at having 2 viable alternatives, and I chose the one I liked better. As I already said, by taking Eye of the Storm you won't bring a cc skill, and my preference is on having access to cc in this fight. If your preference is having superspeed for mechanics, a stunbreak or - even better - stability to prevent those knocks in the first place, then you do you. 2 viable alternatives. Ye, guess that's where we agree. Tempest sadly doesn't really compete with other heal alacrity options. It can still be fun to play for a change though.

No, cc modifiers do not affect pet skills. Which cc pet is better depends on how fast the breakbar is over plus how you manage your pets. Both Pink and Black Moa do 300 breakbar damage, so 600 in total if you do F2 - pet swap - F2. Gazelle and Electric Wyvern do 232 on their F2 plus 200 (Gazelle) / 232 (Wyvern) on one of their non-F2 skills. Assuming you have them on guard, that means you can achieve almost 700 breakbar damage if you do F2 - pet swap - F2 and the 2nd Pet has time to also cast their non-F2 cc. If you want to tryhard, you can set your pets on passive, and let them attack when the breakbar starts for an additional non-F2 cc before swapping Pets (~900 breakbar damage). In case of the Wyvern, you actually also leave a Lightning field which can be combo'd with Leap Finishers for additional dazes (100 breakbar damage) from your allies. However, this means more pet micro management and needing an ally to increase the cc output over double Moa. I personally don't like to play that pet management minigame since tracking the non-F2 cc isn't really easy and I already have enough buttons to press during breakbars. However, I recently started to swap my cc pets on certain bosses with long breakbars (e.g. Sabir); I'm probably not gonna do that for bosses like Xera though.

Ok but wiki says moa cc is 200? So is it outdated info?

@@XmantiX Yes, it is. A few months ago there was a balance patch that changed a lot of Ranger pet skills. Before the change, Pink Moa did 200 breakbar damage in 1 hit, and Black Moa did 300 breakbar damage over 3 hits. Since that patch though, both Moas share the exact same skill with 300 breakbar damage in 1 hit. Thanks for letting me know about the outdated wiki, I'll fix that!

​@@Nanax3 Oh nice. Free cc.

Or perhaps full minstrel with like one giver ring?

@@XmantiX I personally prefer Giver over Minstrel since I am lazy and only use one high Toughness set and on some bosses bringing more Vitality just means you have to heal more; Vale Guardian greens or Deimos Mind Crush always hit for a percentage of your maximum health, so having more health = more healing needed. I am also not a big fan of temporary boon duration buffs that rely on specific triggers that aren't always feasible like Natural Balance; for example, Warhorn#5 is important for quick might ramp-up at the start of the fight, so it cannot be delayed until after CA, so it will always miss out on the buff, plus I noticed I quite often use it shortly before I enter CA again. I'm not sure if that's really that big of a deal in the end uptime-wise, but I just prefer to always have 100% boon duration and not worry about something like this. Depending on your set-up and boss, you might even need Verdant Etching for Protection uptime - I don't have a specific boss in mind here though.

I dodge into the wall behind me. I get the evade frames, but since there's no actual space for me to go, I just stay in place. When edge-tanking, any tank can handle blues like this

I actually started to push on ham recently. I've also heard of pam/rifle mech push, but I've never seen one or tried it myself - we usually have a healer push and ranged dps classes (cVirt, cScr,...) cleave the golem down, manually targeting it if necessary. I'd assume the pushing itself on pam works similarly to ham; On ham, I start with Flamethrower#3 and follow up with Rifle#4, and I can immobilize the golem with Rifle#3 if necessary. There are some (dis)advantages / tradeoffs that come to my mind: A dps push can take care of the golem (push+dmg) by themself, which can make its coordination easier. However, Druid push usually runs a trait due to which its longbow skills pierce, making it easier to reliably hit / actually push the golem with its pushes. If the heal pusher doesn't want to tank (which is more common than a tank+push person), you'll need a dps tank or have to take a 3rd healer. But you're gonna lose dps anyways if not playing the fight super risky (ie push very close to / through the group and have the golem die from that cleave damage without dps actually focussing on the golem). A dps push can make sure that the golem stays farther away from the group, minimizing the groups potential to CC the golem and mess with the pushes, but loses boss dps in the process. A pam has to make sure their mech stays on the stack for boons while handling the golem. Also, Mech's Rifle push is only a launch, so it takes longer and the golem might die before it reached the push's full range. I think both strats should work just fine as long as the players do their jobs properly and are aware of their disadvantages (mainly no piercing vs. no dmg) ^^

​@@Nanax3 PAM Soloing TD loses around 15k in my own experience against what I have done in the fight as boon dps like quick harbinger. Usually I use F6 on Desmina and push using Battling Ram -> Rifle 4 -> Rifle 3 while killing TD alone saving Force Signet in case something goes wrong. Also rest of the Squad 100% Ignores TD only having to worry about CC or when Tanks moves Desmina trough Middle. I did a guide for PAM pushing if links are ok and you want to check how it looks? czcams.com/video/PIrMTuPAVqc/video.html&t Losing 15k dps but Benefits is cleaner easier push allowing everyone else to focus Desmina and ignor TD making it easier for everyone in my own experience.

@@xezzee What do you mean by "PA Soloing TD loses around 15k [...] against [...] boon dps like quick harbinger"? Are you comparing your push PAM DPS to quick Harbinger DPS? If so, this comparison isn't really meaningful since quick Harbinger does way more DPS than PAM anyways. You have to compare the DPS of non-pusher PAMs to pusher PAMs to get a better idea of the difference. I'm also not a big fan of Personal Battering Ram (PBR) for pushing. It is another launch, so it's not as fast as a knockback, but this might actually be okay when killing a TD solo. Flamethrower#3 pushes for 400, PBR for 450; this difference is negligible. However, PBR only has a range of 130, while Flamethrower#3 has a range of 300. IMO Flamethrower's range is just more convenient, especially when paired with Rifle's 1200 range. So at least for a ham push, I'd opt for Flamthrower over PBR any time - this might be different for a PAM push though. I've had a look at your video, but I only watched the first part about SH. Here are my thoughts: Overall, this actually looks really nice. I especially like how you make sure to stack the golem AoEs on top of each other and how you delay your follow-up push and immobilize to deal damage in between. However, don't be afraid to start a new stack when the boss moves away; it's fine for the golem at 3:32, but the next one at 3:53 could have easily been pushed to a new stack closer to the squad (let's ignore that unfortunate pull from your squadmates). You always want to be close to the stack - that's where the boons and heals are. This also becomes more important when doing CM, as the wurms from the beginning keep respawning and might damage/down you while being far away from your allies. I really like that you mention to disable autocast on F2/F3. However, you don't provide logs and delay your F2/F3 quite a bit (F3 for about 26s total, F2 for about 50s total). I understand that you want to use those skills only when you're in range because of the penalty from Mechanical Genius, but with that much delay on the skills I wonder about the actual boon uptime. While you do show the buff table in-game, it is very hard to read it due to how it's formatted, and provides way less information than a log (Did players stack properly? Did players get their boons corrupted? How was your mech placement? Did someone else help generate boons in your subgroup? etc). One minor tip: I noticed that you constantly face the middle of the arena at the start of the fight; The first Golem spawns 20s after SH hit 90%, and there's always a wall that reaches the middle exactly when the first golem spawns, so you can start to look for golems shortly after SH hit 90% hp. Some minor notes about spelling: You keep writing "Battling Ramp" or some variation of it, but the skill is actually called "Battering Ram". Plus, at 4:06, it is "break" instead of "brake". So, the way you're dealing with the golems can result in the benefits you mentioned (cleaner/easier push, everyone else can ignore golem). However, there are some obvious drawbacks: First of all, when everyone else just straight up ignores the golem, this can actually result in unwanted interference with the golem, such as that long range pull that happened to your last golem. People just generally lose awareness of the golem, which is something I personally don't like, as stuff like this fosters players not knowing what to do if something goes wrong / recognizing it too late (for example, moving out too late when a golem explodes on the squad) or actually doing stuff wrong (for example, interfering with your push). Also, you're losing quite a bit of boss DPS by not having others cleave the golem at all. This also means you're dealing with the golem for quite some time, again leaving more room for mistakes/problems/interferences (such as bad walls like at 3:32 or worse, or allies CCing the golem badly). Additionally, you don't help cc SH at all - but that's just a minor point, as a pushers first job is to take care of the golem. Having seen your video just further strengthens my opinion: It's a viable alternative strat and can work fine. But, just as the heal push strat, it also has drawbacks, so it's not superior to it IMO.

@@Nanax3 Dyslexia and ADHD are fun combination ❤ People have not said anything when I speak about Battling Ramp 😂 I will just write PBR onwards. Thank you for the tips. a Ramble which I tend to do: 1) If Tank is Pushing I can do around 26k dps on Quick Harbinger as an examples, there are other options too. On that run I did 11k dps on Desmina, I did add Logs in the description. It seems I lost around 3k dps because I targeted TD (total dmg 14,7k minus 11,5k desmina dmg) but I also lost roughly 3k dps because I ran Battling Ram. I'm confident that I can reach 20k as PAM if I'm not pushing. 2) ADHD and Dyslexia causes me to have limited vision when I'm playing and I sometimes forget what I'm doing. Looking middle is habit more or less to cover that but also to see which of the wall combination and direction I have to face when I start pushing the TD 🤔 right away when I saw the Flame Walls I moved behind it and started the push there. The TD usually spawns when the Flame Wall is middle so knowing before hand how to best push is good idea. 3) I prefer PBR as I feel it gives me more control and feels better but yeah, the range is the hard part. Even if I used Flamethrower I would still position myself to knock the TD sideways first before knocking it out. The only problem is abnormal movement from TD which happened on last push and I was out of the range because the TD Didn't home to off-tank? Pushing all TD on the same spot was just coincidental. 4) I see pushing TD higher priority than CCing and my options is pretty much Force Signet if I wanted to CC. CC only problem when people die because of bad pushing in my experience so I prioritize keeping the Arena Clean so people don't randomly die. 5) I actually find CM easier to push as PAM. I usually do the fight on CM and prefer doing it on CM but they wanted to do Normal as Tanks didn't think they could do it. Simply because 3 middle flame walls cover large area and unlucky 6) You don't need to push perfectly and can do more mistakes where you push them. On large arena having 3 middle flame walls forcing to go on the edge with badly positioned death field has killed few of my runs on Normal. On CM those are less of the hassle as the arena is smaller and thus much cleaner. Only difference for push being respawning Worms which can get in a way of Rifle 3 sometimes but for that I use Force Signet. 7) Staying a live usually is not a problem. CM you need to stay more close to the squad and stay pushing as little as possible. But even then I find it easy to stay alive. 8) For sure it will build bad habits for players. But in my experience a lot of people in PUGs don't know how Druid pushes and it is common for someone to CC the TD close to Squad and forcing people to move which they never do. This will just make it worse for those cases. The biggest problems are when 3:32 Desmina is moved middle if the Tank had moved earlier and Desmina was middle at the same time TD spawned it would not be uncommon to see it die there 😅 One of the reasons why I pushed the way I did, I saw the wall and right away went to push it away without wasting my time without thinking where as long it was out of the way knowing I have Shift Signet for escape if needed. 9) I have used auto-casting commands so long that I keep forgetting to press F2 F3 when I set them on manual cast 😂that is just bad play on my part and need to play more to fix it. 10) Having people cleave the TD before pushing it out is the normal strategy people use, PAM can also use that allowing other people to use Epidemics and letting the TD closer to the Squad allowing you to push it out of the arena more easily. But if everyone ignores the TD avoiding damaging it and avoidign CCing it the benefit is that the fight becomes easier but it also builds bad habits for sure. It is also easier to push on the side if you can use your whole kit. Start with either utility followed with force signet before Rifle 4+3 gives you longest distance on push and Force Signet has 16s cooldown if you have Alac and don't use Elite which I didn't do and is a DPS loss.

Yes. Especially on Sabir, Stormsoul is great as it not only increases some Tempest cc skills, but also the SAK, which I usually get to use about 3 times each breakbar. However, if you just want to boost your cc, you can use Sigil of Paralyzation instead while keeping the Arcane traitline stuff, which is almost as good as Stormsoul - actually, I should have swapped the Concentration sigil in my gear to Paralyzation, as I was overcapping Boon Duration with my set up; I just didn't do it since I tend to forget to swap my gear back. If you want to play cc bot and use both Stormsoul and Paralyzation sigil, you'd probably need to up your Boon Duration though.

Hey o/ Currently, the strongest healers are Firebrand for Quickness, and Mechanist and Druid for Alacrity. Since Tempest provides Alacrity, it is usually compared to Mech and Druid, so I'll do this as well. Sadly, Tempest is just the weakest choice out of those 3. However, if you're willing to adjust your traits/skills according to the encounter (and your team) and play it well, Tempest can be pretty decent. The probably most important thing to do as a Tempest tank is to ensure that your overloads hit your group. This is especially important for Fire Overload, since this is your main Might source, but it only has 180 radius. So when tanking, make sure to hug the middle of the boss' hitbox, and hope for your team to stack properly on the other side. Due to Tempest's dependence on overloads for boons, you want to be on the stack very frequently. This is basically the main "problem" due to which certain tasks, that are usually done by the healer, are way harder or nearly impossible compared to Druid and Mech, as you cannot be on range as much without dropping boons. Some examples: Kiting on Sabetha is quite hard. I'd not recommend to push on Soulless Horror (Druid is the best pusher currently via Glyph of Tides + Longbow 4), to kite on Dhuum, or to tank on Qadim the Peerless. It's also not easy to tank Qadim's legendary adds. And you probably don't want to get an Agony on Cairn. Overall, I'd generally recommend to play Mechanist or Druid as Heal Alacrity if you're a beginner raider, and swap to Tempest later on when you're comfortable on the encounters. Plus, this way, you have a Druid or Mechanist as a backup if Tempest doesn't work out. However, if someone else is doing the "hard" jobs for you (the boss specific stuff I listed above where Tempest runs into problems) and you have a 2nd healer with you (which most groups have anyways), then Tempest can certainly be played, even as tank (except for on Qadim the Peerless IMO). About gear: Your normal non-tank set should be a mix of Harrier and Magi. If you're tanking, you can swap Harrier to Giver 1:1, and/or you can take some Minstrel pieces. On both sets, you want to be on 100% boon duration, and then fill the rest of the stats with as much healing power as possible, and as much toughness as needed (some bosses hit like wet noodles, so you just need enough Toughness to be the tank, while others hit pretty hard and it's advisable to take as much Toughness as you can). Vitality can also be nice, but on some bosses you want to avoid having extra Vitality, since some attacks deal a fixed percentage of damage to you, which means you have to heal more if you have more total HP. You always want to run Monk runes, and your sigils are usually stuff that enhances your healing (e.g. Transference, Water), boonduration if you're not capped yet (Concentration), or cc depending on the boss and your build (Paralyzation). You can check out the equip I used in the video, there's a link to the build in the description.

I actually did not know that, I've never noticed that green fire going around it. Thank you! I only knew that you can walk inside the AoE if you got hit by the attack, yeeted back and lost your soul - do you know if this is even true then, as in can you walk inside the AoE after the green fire is over if you don't have your soul yet? Or is it really only during the short amount of time during the green fire that you can safely get it back, as everyone can walk in the AoE at that point?

Not entirely sure, didn't get into that situation yet. Im pretty sure if it doesn't insta kill you, it ticks you down heavily but dodging into ur soul and then moving out could work

Alright, guess that's something I'm gonna test then. I just always assumed that if you lost your soul you'll have some kind of invisible buff that prevents you from getting downed inside the Dhuumfire. But if you can just always stand in it as long as the green fire isn't complete yet, it sounds likely that my assumption isn't true. Anyways, thanks again for the information, great to know how to greed a bit more for dps :)

Anyone can walk into the aoe before the green fire completes the circle. There is no buff that allows a person that has lost their soul to walk in. Similarly if you walk in after the green fire is complete it's an insta down whether you have your soul or not.

@@xedes Aight, that clears everything up. Thanks!

I mean, I'm pretty biased, but I can only say: Go for it! That's part of the beauty of Gw2: You can drop in and out of it very easily.

Yes, I'm using arcdps that I customized via its settings as well as a custom font and some arc dps plugins. I highly recommend checking out Areki's arcdps customization guide: czcams.com/video/7DfU76Q6viE/video.html It's a quite long video, but it covers everything except for the initial installation, which is just getting the d3d11.dll file from delta's download page (www.deltaconnected.com/arcdps/ ) and putting it in your Gw2 folder next to the Gw2.exe. Plugin files (for example arcdps_unofficial_extras.dll) go in the bin64 folder.

No, this build works on other bosses, too. People probably say that you shouldn't use Giver's because that might force you to tank when you shouldn't (for example, someone else wants to tank) or don't want to (for example, you're new and aren't comfortable yet), and for the most part I agree with that. On most raid bosses, the player with the highest toughness will be the tank. In the video, I wanted to be the tank, so I used my tank set. If you don't want to be tank, you should use Harrier's instead - it's the same minor stats, but has power instead of toughness as main stat, and is basically the go-to stat for healers. So if you're just starting out, I'd recommend to use Harrier's, and get some Giver's trinkets to swap in if you need to tank, as that's enough for most bosses - there's only a few bosses on which I'd recommend to take as much toughness as you can (for example Twins or Soulless Horror).

@@Nanax3 thanks for the detailed answer

As in all of my recent videos, there's a link to the build I used in the description

That's just a habit. I do have some reasons why I do it, but I never tested if they're actually worth it. I do it to have my pet deal some damage (being merged with it only grants toughness and vitality which is useless for damage - if you're struggling to stay alive, keep being merged for those boni) + for a buffer for my defensive boons. Usually, my pet will receive some boons from the stack, so due to the adept soulbeast trait Fresh Reinforcement I receive its boons when I merge for the Mind Crush, and due to the master soulbeast trait Essence of Speed it might also extend the boons I already have if my pet had quickness (that's rarely the case though). Still, it's usually a small boost for my defensive boon uptime (at the cost of some stats - though you can reduce that by only being unmerged for a shorter duration). Though that was not the case in the video, and should only be done if the handkiter can actually survive it: In case of the tank not having enough toughness, I can reduce my toughness (usually 1.380) to 1k by unmerging (-200) and using stone signet active (-180), thus losing a lot of defensive stats and an oh-shit button. During the short duration of Mind Crush I can merge with my pet for my block and get the 200 toughness bonus, but it won't affect who's tank cause Deimos is doing the mechanic anyways, as long as I unmerge again afterwards. Since I always unmerge when I can, I actually only have 1.180 toughness and therefore my tank can take less toughness if they want to.

@@Nanax3 interesting take, I think I'll try these micromanaging when I get more proficient with my slb hk

Yes, I did. I'm using safe spots for all 3 knockbacks from Deimos. I made a quick illustration: cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/790238526867767336/1062206554625036328/Deimos_HK_10_safespots.jpg The red dots are the 4 statues - those are the ones you have to kill in the pre event to destroy the shackles. You can basically draw lines in between those statues and therefore know where you'll be safe: You are safe from the first 2 slams when standing on the orange rectangle - don't go too far back, as otherwise you will be out of range for the hands and someone in the stack will get them instead. For the 3rd slam, you want to go to the green area, cause the knockback hits further back (so the orange line is not safe anymore), but only hits in the middle of the arena. (Obviously, don't get too close to the stack during the third slam to still be the player furthest away from Deimos) It's possible that the actual safe spots are a bit bigger, but that's what I use and works for me :)

@@Nanax3 Nice, thanks for the reply. That sounds really helpful!

@@Nanax3 For the sub 10% phase, the hands didn't spawn for me this week when moving to the rear statutes.

@@hotpie5302 Do you have a log of that kill? My thoughts for possible reasons are: You were too far back and therefore out of range, which caused someone in the stack to get hands instead; or you might have been too slow walking back / someone got knocked behind you, and therefore someone else was further back and got the hands instead. Or maybe they were just buggy and didn't spawn at all - which I've never seen though. All of this can be checked via the combat replay of the log though, if you have one ^^