The Garrundar the Vile Skirmish and How I hate it.

rokkwarr

My points on why are as follows.

1. Trappers ignore unstoppable on GWF's
2. Usually 3 trappers on the map at the same time.
3. Mystics capable of causing widespread AoE damage almost rapid fire.
4. Mystics ALSO capable of healing other mobs (as a AoE apparently) including OTHER mystics.
5. More than 1 mystic at once on the map allows the mystics to AoE heal eachother and all mobs around them including Garrundar the Vile
6. This "Skirmish" is tougher than most dungeon runs I have been on EVER.
7. Did I mention the trappers?
8. and the Mystics?

I mean, is it just me seeing this or do others have the same issues? Every time I get this as a daily from Rhyx it ends up costing me nearly 5G in potions alone...
Is there some secret to finishing this skirmish as I haven't been able to do it even once. Everybody just quits.

zargorius666

You need to separate the mystics and either quickly kill them or better, throw them off board. This requires a competent CW or eventually a DC. I hate that skirmish too and I think it's pure waste of time, it's not even funny to play it - just a chore. One of the first times I did it it took the group about 45mins to end it as nobody knew how to deal with the situation - I didn't quite just for the respect for my team mates.

rokkwarr

Yeah, I was on my cleric at the time trying to get the upper hand on positioning however those **** trappers had aggroed on me and kept pulling me from target. A MMO is supposed to be fun, not feel like a chore that goes nowhere.

trapublican

It's one of the skirmishes where it shows you who the bad players are. Had a group yesterday refuse to listen to me about either separating the mystics or throwing them off the edge (2 CWs anda GF in the group so it should have been easy) so I went afk for just over 10 minutes and came back to see them still foolishly fighting them, ended up just leaving since it wa obvious they'd never finish it.

rlrobr

It is by far the most difficult skirmish in the game and, as mentioned above, you need to separate te Mystics from the dragon and (ideally) quickly kill them in order to achieve victory. The problem is that most players on that level don't know how to play their classes properly, are not used to a somewhat difficult content and, most of them, are not willing to listen to someone's instructions and follow a strategy. The result is that very often people simply give up after several minutes struggling.

I think you should complete it once if you want the title, otherwise just skip it - it doesn't worth the time.

[Deleted User]

Some of the monsters also fall off the edges of the map, making it hard to finish.

fondlez

1. Get a ranged player or GF to get aggro on all Mystics, kite and separate them from the Dragon.
2. Nuke dragon till dead.
3. Focus target same Mystic until all Mystics dead.
4. ???
5. Profit.

The main problem with this Skirmish is actually not completing it and the achievement, but collecting the chest reward. This is because quite often one of the Mystics will get stuck under the map (this is not due to players using CC on them or falling off the edge of the map, it is random) and continue to aggro the group, making it all but impossible for either anyone or all to loot the chest reward due to remaining in combat. This bug was stated as fixed months ago, but still happens to this day.

It is far from the hardest skirmish in the game (*), though it would be for players upto that point. I have completed it on five characters first time since beta with no issues other than looting bug.

(*) That acclaim probably belongs to Abherrant Assault due to an un-CCable Thoon, add spam and aoe. Another "good" one is Battle for the Bridge if you decide to do things the hard way by not aggroing each giant from range individually and preferably without having a healer!

sockmunkey

Yea knocking can be bad. Ive seen mystics end up under the ground several times. It made the fight unwinnable. They could still attack and heal and you could do nothing to them.

Also its not the hardest skirmish. Battle of the bridge is far more annoying. Even after it became open to level 60s

tornnomar

I'll stick to my fun little Dread Ring Skirmish.
I needed therapy after the first time I ran that.

chemboy613

I admit i have only done this a few times, but this is my favorite skirmish! The others are all faceroll easy, don't have a cool dragon, and you can't throw the adds off (shows you how long ago i did this).

I just love it

The fact it is hard makes it good!

ironzerg79

It's so crazy to see a group event that actually forces the group to work together, instead of just spamming DPS skills to get to the top of the charts.

Mystics appear, focus fire on, focus fire the other, get back to the dragon. Repeat until dead.

imsmithy

I grew to hate the Mystics on this Skirmish lol , it's worst when you finally manage to beat the skirmish and go for the chest and you get hit with the bug where some bad guy is stuck under the map stopping anybody claiming the rewards xD

kolatmaster

chemboy613 wrote: »

I just love it

The fact it is hard makes it good!

That right there is the Holy Spirit! :cool:

pitshade

Generally speaking, I love pirates and the undead. Back in my PnP days, lizardmen were among my favorite monsters, and yet Pirate's Skyhold is one of the three levels I am always glad to put behind me when leveling a new character. There are a number of reasons but the ones relevant to this thread are the trappers and marsh mystics. The trappers are one of the mobs that gain cc immunity while jumping, which never made any sense to me. Worse, they're AOE net attack suffers from two different bugs. The first, touched on in the OP is that cc immunity doesn't stop you from getting pulled. Blocking, Villain's Menace, Unstoppable, even a shift dodge won't stop you from getting pulled if you stay in the true AOE of the attack. (all of those will stop the daze effect but you still get pulled and the daze lasts only slightly longer than the animation of getting pulled so it doesn't mean much. Note that I said true AOE. The red splat doesn't actually show the area that the power effects. It's actually much wider and shorter. If you dodge sideways, you still get hit despite being out of the red. Dodging backwards, even if you stay in the red, makes you totally avoid the attack. So there are really two different bugs at work here, the effect mostly goes through cc immunity and doesn't match what you see on the ground. Combine all of that with the trapper's own cc immunity while doing it and it's a headache for ranged characters and a major pain for melee. Add again the fact that lizardfolk have stealth so you never know if a group of mobs has a trapper, it all becomes rage inducing.

The mystics would just be tough spellcaster types if not for the fact that they are always encountered with other mobs and frequently in areas that are patrolled by more mobs. Given that they have a persistent AOE and an AOE heal, what would otherwise be a challenging encounter can become a horrible one. I've seen fights that last for minutes involving multiple players in the sinking town when mobs are respawning and patrols arriving, while the mystic keeps healing the ones still standing. A high density of mobs on the main path of a zone is another of my pet peeves, especially when the level is as long as Skyhold is, though fortunately the are no mystics along the direct route from the beginning to the end of the map, the only ones you have to kill in the questline are the one in Skull Fortress and of course, the Scalefather. It's telling that a Marsh Mystic/Bruiser? boss should be one of the most hated in the solo part of the game.

Some thoughts on the skirmish. I've beaten this three times with four attempts. The first time, I quit the party when they wouldn't focus the mystics which had by this point healed the dragon from around 20% health to 60%. The second time, I played a wizard with repel on mastery and hurled the trappers and mystics over the edge as quickly as I could. More recently, I ran a rogue and then a cleric through the skirmish. With the first, I and another rogue were able to DPS the dragon while a two fighters tied up the mystics. (I had the Ancient Mul set, I think the other guy did too.) For my cleric, a GF and ranger took the boss while the rest of tied down the mystics - I used exaltation on the tank when I could. The dragon went down about five minutes before they did, successful but still frustrating. The point of all this is that there are few ways of dealing with the skirmish. The best is repel - with enough stacks of arcane mastery it will launch mobs far past the point where they may land on the side of the cliff. Failing that, separating the healers from the dragon seems to work the best. The dragon attacks aren't that hard to avoid, so splitting the party is viable.

As for the mobs spawning under the map, it's not just mystics that do it. On my cleric's run, we had a bruiser did that before the dragon showed up - delayed it's arrival actually. I convinced the rest of the party to retreat back to those little altar things and after a few seconds, the bruiser sort of rubber banded out of the ground and over to us, where we dispatched it.

grogthemagnif

Hunter Rangers can also do well if they concentrate on the Trappers/Mystics. Splitshot gets their attention and Rain of Arrows wears them down fast. Then you can splitshot, or if you have time aimed shot at the Dragon.

terrycloth

Battle for the Bridge is the first skirmish I had a group wipe on repeatedly. No, we didn't pull the giants apart (didn't think it was possible; it looked like they aggro'd on us automatically from a huge distance and if we didn't rush them we ended up fighting them in an even worse location), and OMG there was nowhere to stand that wasn't in one red circle or another. x.x

orangefiree

This skirmish isn't as bad as it looks because you can run back in about five seconds. I do wonder what it will be like when the call to arms for it goes up though. Overall, I found it fun and different. I ran it three or four times while leveling my ranger and have seen several tactics work.
Focusing down the mystics has worked.
Kiting the mystics away also works good.
I have never seen it glitch when knocking them off though I think only one of my groups was able to do that.

The kiting was the tactic used at least twice and seemed to work the best, I don't know if anyone has mentioned this already or not.

ghoulz66

It's a pain in the butt when your team doesn't work together.

But there should be more fights like that which aren't mindless hack n' slash n' zap n' shoot.

Other fights are usually just mindless ADD spam that eventually kill you. Mobs here aren't extremely lethal, but the combo of their specials works together really well and it really forces your team's priorities.