How do you deal with Dhuum?

upugaxa

upugaxa

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jul 2010

What are the things you should know when you are going to face Dhuum?

fires element

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Jun 2007

none

Mo/

spam dhuum's rest until the bar is about 3/4 full then use the damage skill on him. probably also helpful to make sure someone is killing his skeletons so you don't get mobbed by them and remember to keep at least one of the reapers alive or you fail.

and don't take his health to zero cause it will glitch and you fail

Chthon

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Apr 2007

Remember you have weird win conditions here. All you have to do is not wipe and not let all the reapers die and the reapers will eventually win the battle for you. Anything you do beyond that simply goes towards speeding up your victory.

Focus on the skellies. They attack reapers, and dead reapers = fail. (Dhuum doesn't seem to attack reapers directly, and his AoE damages them, but not enough to kill them.)

It's much safer to keep your team alive and just let the reapers worry about the rest bar. If you want to speed things up, have a few carefully-selected party members suicide so they can cast Rest.

It doesn't matter whether you fill the rest bar or deal damage first. You need to do both to win. (Unless you suck so badly that he heals himself back above the hp threshhold...) For that matter, a decent team can reduce his health to zero in HM in ~3 minutes, so most of the battle is just waiting out the rest bar in any case.

The poster above me is wrong about taking his health to zero. That bug was fixed LONG ago. I've taken his hp to zero many times without incident.

People in spirit form should never use Encase. Encased skellies regenerate hp (while you can't damage them) and then eventually break free and leave you with a bigger pile of skellies than when you started.

If he's giving you significant trouble, try bringing Earthbind. It makes it possible to KD him, which greatly reduces his damage output and ability to spawn skellies. Mix with a couple copies of GDW to keep him knocklocked.

People who you absolutely want to keep alive should bring dp-removal consumables in case he tries to touch them out before someone else ends up in spirit form. (Once you have someone in spirit form, that person can counteract Touch as long as people pay attention and call their dp when they get touched.)

upugaxa

upugaxa

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jul 2010

Thank you for the information you passed so far, i would like a little more detail if possible for instance:

In a a balanced team with for example: tank, spirit spammer, elemental nuke, curses necromancer, ranger or Mesmer, heal monk and prot monk and usually a support char. How do you spread the tasks when fighting Dhuum?
Who has to remain alive and who goes into spirit form, how do you maximize chances to stay alive as tanking, as far as i have experienced is not possible; who removes DP; who uses Rest; who deals with ads; what are the best positions to be in for each member of the team?

Chthon

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Apr 2007

Quote:
Originally Posted by upugaxa View Post
Thank you for the information you passed so far, i would like a little more detail if possible for instance:

In a a balanced team with for example: tank, spirit spammer, elemental nuke, curses necromancer, ranger or Mesmer, heal monk and prot monk and usually a support char. How do you spread the tasks when fighting Dhuum?
Who has to remain alive and who goes into spirit form, how do you maximize chances to stay alive as tanking, as far as i have experienced is not possible; who removes DP; who uses Rest; who deals with ads; what are the best positions to be in for each member of the team?

Generally, whoever contributes the least to the goals of (1) not dying, (2) killing skellies, and (3) damaging Dhuum is a good candidate for spirit form. How many spirit form people your team can handle depends on how effective the people remaining are at those 3 tasks. If you want to play it safe, don't deliberately spirit form anyone.

People who are in spirit form are all identical, so there's no real division of roles. Everyone should spam Rest, and fill Rest's recycle time with DP removal and healing. Once the rest bar is full, spam damage and fill the recycle time with DP removal and healing. Never Encase.

To specifically address your team:

"Tank" should not exist. Frontliners should deal damage (and spam SY!). He should kill skellies when they're out, and otherwise focus on Dhuum. If someone sticks a GDW on him and someone brings Earthbind, he can keep Dhuum on the ground pretty well.

Spirit Spammer should keep spirits between the skellies and whichever reaper they seem most interested in. SHould also bring earthbind.

Elementalist "nuker" is a pretty inferior build. Focus on skellies, then Dhuum. Or this would be a good candidate for becoming a spirit.

Necro should focus on skellies, then Dhuum. If it's got a decent build, this should be a strong skellie killer. However, given the fact that your team already has a "tank" and an ele "nuker," I've got some doubts. If the necro isn't tearing apart skellies faster than anyone except the warrior, he may be a candidate for spirit form.

Ranger is a good candidate for spirit form. So are most mesmers, though mesmer builds vary so much it's hard to say.

Monks should keep people alive. However, I must point out that UW is one area (among many) where the ER ele strongly outperforms the monk.

upugaxa

upugaxa

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jul 2010

Wow Chthon thank you very much.