Mold

I don't think I'll ever again accomplish something as important as influencing this attempt. You're a legend, Ser. I hope you didn't leave the restaurant napkins too damp.

Maia's chart skllz warrant nothing but admiration from me!

Thanks for posting this, Kintari! I'm going to nab a sword and try this out.

Group 1

• 1 dps warrior (w 2x banners)
• 1 harriers druid
• 1 chrono
• 1 dps
• 1 dps

Group 2

• 1 soulbeast (w/ spotter instead of healing barbs? or is that too much of a nerf?)
• 1 healing Rev
• 1 chrono
• 1 dps
• 1 dps

Splendid. Giving The Kilt one last bath before the new housing development knocks it down.

Good to know! Given that CC is lower on most new DPS specs, druids will need to do more breakbar work moving forward (chronos too).

Wow. I also remember this, somehow. All of the names/titles don't register, but I remember those sweet graphics.

Thanks, Mevic!

And yes to everything Pyro said back in Sept! We will still need those three utility classes--nothing's changed there. That's 6 spots in every raid. We need condi dps for some fights, power for others--that's likely to continue.

It's also worth noting something Bone brought up last night (and others have been talking about, I'm sure): some of the newer elites that are occupying highest DPS slots at the moment lack CC (and depending on the class, vulnerability application). So, we'll have to pay a bit more attention to ensuring mechanics are covered as we explore new elites in the DPS roles.

gorgeous!

I'm moved over and ready for Reaper (Chrono/Mez is always there too).

I definitely did not shatter on the pictured clip, but I presume Strange did. After that event, I was shattering whenever there was an add nearby. I think distorting for every mind crush after the 50% mark is probably the smart play moving forward.

No doubt that necro is the best option in terms of add control. Good tips re: deploying that class most effectively. If we collectively want to give it a shot, I'm OK with it. Perhaps having chronos distort all smashes in the first 50% will gain us back a bit of the dps we'll be losing. We're a bit constrained because, of our three dps, one is locked on staff DD. If we have a high-level condi lurking somewhere who's not already locked into another role, I see no downside to bringing that over any of our dps.

No matter what we go with, I think we should

• have chronos distort smashes during the first 50% and distort mind-crush afterward
• tweak the tanking approach to get us closer to center, making it easier to lend a hand with suppression while cleaving boss
• make it the second chrono's job to stay at Deimos's toes to proc blacks as much as possible in a predictable spot (I think strange is already doing this, tbh)

If we do not go with a necro, here's what I'm proposing:

• we dedicate our condi druid to add-control task, keeping that person up with me after 50%.
• we bring two eles for add suppression, taking frost bow and rebound
• we prioritize letting eles go ham in the last 10%.

And two questions:

1. re: the last 10%. Does the black proc remain the same? first to boss after the tank? Or is it now just first to boss since there's no more aggro? If it's the latter, then strange should stay with the zerg to help with quickness/breaks and smash distorts.

2. how much breakbar does a headbutt do on Saul?

Very helpful, Kintari; thanks for reviewing the tape. I confess that I wasn't paying much attention to Saul's hp, given that we were losing to mechanics before it became an obvious issue.

I'm open to ideas about those issues. Bringing a lot more big cleave seems the obvious answer, with tempest an obvious candidate. I know that distorting smashes is part of the speed-clear approach. If we get two--or, better yet, three--tempests in the group, we could try to give that a shot, perhaps, particularly in the first 50%. I've been taking chaos, but I'm sure I can manage with dom instead.

Our experience with necro was pretty bad previously--giving up so much boss dps. But maybe that's worth revisiting? I'm very reluctant.

p.s. nextlevel investigating re: the aegis strips

If my sad math is right, power-based Chronos will now have access to about 13% boon duration from consumables, compared to 30% previously. There's going to be a lot more commander's gear in the mix or more builds with Chaos in them. And Minstrel-based builds are comparatively more appealing, given the way the new M. Oils will work. I think this reduces build diversity a bit. Playing without Conc. Sigil is not an option anymore, eh?

Condi builds seem like they're hit very hard, no? You can only get about 10% condi duration from consumables.

We adopted a dog this weekend--a fostered rescue from SC. She's around 6 months old, weighs about 24 lbs, and is either a Feist Terrier mix or some kind of tiny shepherd mix. Her name: Lentil.

Old beast, Ramona, and new beast, Lentil pictured here on the same hairy couch cushion.

Reviving this discussion for more Deimos CM planning. A couple of things I'd like to try, tweaking our current strats:

1. For the 50% green, let's have Strange move Deimos out of middle while the zerg is up above. Strange can bring Deimos back in when the dps group calls 60% on Saul. That will put two oils out near the edge of the platform while giving Strange enough time to get Deimos back near middle before the tears are drawn in. In fact, let's have Strange put Deimos right in the middle just there. No reason to keep middle clear. That does a few nice things:
   • we are very unlikely to have the real Saul spawn in a black when he splits. 
   • we'll have, generally, much more room to maneuver in the middle when it gets most stressful. 
   • putting Deimos in middle the moment we return means he'll never eat a tear.
2. Let's have the player chosen for the 25% green simply kite solo up above instead of taking the group. It's time we gave that a go, as it's an obviously superior play. We may have to scramble to get tears when we get ported after 10%, but that's easily accomplished.
3. I'd like to try putting the two condi rangers in my sub-group and invulning smashes until we get to 50%. That should save us a bit of time, especially early before we're moving around a lot. I can continue to invuln smashes later, but our movement probably means we should treat it as a safety net after 50%.
4. Let's continue to try to stay a bit closer to the oils. I know we had lots of dirty toes last time, but we simply can't sacrifice dps entirely by moving around so much. Having reviewed the logs, I noticed at least 3 of those toes were mine. I'll correct that, and Strange had a couple due to CSplits that are easily corrected.
   • So, in other words, Strange will be the only one to run far away the instant an oil spawns. He'll move Deimos out of it asap, drawing Deimos through the group. Everyone else will stand a step or two out of black and keep rotations going as Deimos moves out of the oil and through our group. 

Too much shame in those bags.

Count me in as a donor. Bone, Ser, Drago, and I (Fred too?) are all on Henge of Kohlrabi, which should not be the destination. I don't think any of us WvW in an organized way, right?

I'll gladly throw cash at that to get us over to a common server.

My mistake for looking at this at lunch time. My drab soup looks sad now.

1 hour ago, Bone said:

Several times we journeyed to the wrong part of the map thinking it safe. 'Twas not. And several times many people were down and doom appeared imminent. Yet we survived. We lost an orb at the mini game, neglected a bloodstone shard, and altogether skipped the final trip to the pillar's edge. We lived wheh we shouldn't have. But Xera probably owed us one.

"This is fucked"...silence...everybody's alive again...success.

I heard tell xera was a bit peculiar this week. What happened, besides Fred carrying?

When I come back, I really really want to try a 5 condi chrono comp on Matthias. It will be so silly.

Look at our log from earlier this month . Even mentally adding 6k to Kintari's # (assuming he doesn't have bad tornado rng), replacing three dps and 2 traditional chronos with 5 condi chronos would increase party dps by at least 10k, even without overall gains brought on by better quickness uptime. Add lots of utility (more condi cleanse with traited mantras; more alacrity from wells) and greater individual survivability for those 5 as well. It will be so fun.

All you need to make this build is condi mesmer gear (malice and earth sigils on the scepter and pistol) and a concentration sigil on viper shield.

Let's do that again!

Brilliant. Hopefully we can swing 2 of those. Regular chronos could probably get away with taking a mantra over recall well (won't be super effective in this fight, anyway).

Some ideas. Feedback welcome:

• I think Strange and I will have to be primary kiters for this, given the nature of chrono's support. Maybe we can have a druid be the third kiter.
• We'll definitely a druid with ranged kb for the mini-game phase. Chrono's will need to shatter through spears to position focus pulls. Maybe warriors can bring throw bolos to help with immob?
• It looks like nature spirit is a good idea. And one warrior banner might be worth taking too. Given the length of the fight, a warrior might be able to use them twice. 
• Should we be aiming to bring some frequent stability to cut down on the # of launches and pulls we face? Maybe one or more guard is a good idea.

Wow; didn't know that was an option. I wonder if portal would work after the patch.

It was helpful to see the zerg rotating around the middle (clockwise, it looked like) during the main fight with Deimos. In some ways, the positioning seems a lot easier in this mode, provided you can burn fast enough to let the kiter stay in the outermost ring. Now that they've removed aegis strip from the tear attacks, the Chrono job seems really easy. No reason to wait until the last moment to drop the aegis well even, just pop as soon as it seems everyone's settled in the same spot.

It also looks like the kiter's life will be easier if we can keep D closer to the middle to avoid causing the smash aoe to overlap with the kiter's path too much. In some ways, having everyone stand close to black would seem to be an advantage in slowing the rotation of the zerg around the platform. Does that seem right? Or would that make it harder to heal and protect Saul?