Summit Beastmaster in Iron Horse Mine

I noticed a lot of groups were having issues beating the Summit Beastmaster mission that happens in Iron Horse Mine. The Summit Beastmaster is a level 28 mob and the way our group beat him (Avg person was level 11) was to pull the dwarf from another quest around the bend over and engage him with a full group + the dwarf. We initially tried without the dwarf and couldn't get him down because he heals so much. What happened is we wound up killing the other mobs around him and then had to disengage the Beastmaster (he is leashed so if you run away far enough he will stop chasing you). Then we decided to do the other quest with the Dwarf around the corner and accidentally agro'd the Beastmaster on the way back. This was a good thing because we waxed him pretty easily with the extra NPC fighting. So my suggestion would be to engage the Beastmaster and the surrounding mobs first and kill off the other mobs around him, disengage and then go get the dwarf NPC and engage him again.

I'm so glad someone posted about this. I've been having trouble fighting him, but I hadn't looked up any suggestions yet. I was just going to wait until I had some faster interrupting skills (or more people with interrupting skills) to try to prevent him from healing. I tried to lead him around the corner in the hopes that some guards and things would start wailing on him and that enough bodies would be able to take him down, but like you said, he stops chasing you after a certain point.

Wheres this quest? he may have a skill i need if hes glowing

I had trouble with him at first until I equipped an interupt (in my case distracting shot), and just used that everytime he was about to heal. Took a while, but there was never any doubt that he would go down.

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Skipped it, came back at lvl 20 and whipped him.

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If you have rust or ignorance this is a bit easier. I actually took him down with a knockdown combo. Knockdown, Bleed, Gash, repeat. It took about 20 minutes at level 13 but I did it.

If you have interupts, it's really easy. He's a pushover except for healing signet. It's his "boys" that always wiped me out (at first).

I had a lot of trouble with this one to start off with. I am an E/R. It was amusing how even with me standing next to him using Firestorm, Lavafont and Phoenix, and with the help of five henchmen and a pet, I couldn't put a dent into him at all. On my first try I must have stood there for about five minutes making no progress.

I came back with a bow and Distracting Shot, which made it extremely easy. Get a ranger with that and you're set.

yeah, i lost at first due to his massive damage, but i came back with a couple of my monk friends and distracting shot and just interrupted healing signet whenever he tried to use it. i think arenanet should up the reward for that mission, it deserves more than 350 exp

I had a 4 person party and one henchman (Little Thom). By attacking him non-stop and casting Fire Storm when he's about to heal we beat this guy.


After 20 minutes.

This was my favorite quest so far, and even tho the exp reward is low, I think it teaches GW players that you need to equip skills for the situation and how important interrupts are. I've had distracting shot on my skillbar ever since, and I find that even interrupting spells you wouldn't normally worry about makes life much easier.

Self-healing is what separates the bosses from the peons in this game. Distracting arrow has permanent spot on my PvE skill bar. I bring along savage arrow and choking gas sometimes, just to be sure.

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Just bring a mesmer. I did this quest with a party of level 9 chars. I used distraction (available in Yak's bend) to disable his healing signet. Super easy.

How exactly did you interrupt his healing? i have a warrior that can knock things down, but i dont think i could stop his healing, because your timing must be very good i guess.

Use distraction. For 6 seconds the next skill used takes 30 more seconds to recharge. So your timing doesnt have to be that great. It's pretty spammable, too -- you can disable his annoying stomp skill with it also.

The quest is assigned by Artemis the Ranger.
You get 3 ranger skills if you complete it but I can't tell which right now, not even sure if anybody posted them (I only read a few posts).
You actually don't need to bring along the dwarf.
The key to beat the guy is to interrupt his healing signet, which is tremendoulsy easy, since it takes two seconds to activate.
I am a ranger so i used distracting shot on this one. any ranger that got this far must already have this skill available. Also, a short bow it the perfect weapon to acomplish this, because of the small time between two consecutive shots, which makes timing easier.
This is how it goes: after taking out the supporter summits (I think they are 4), head for the beasmaster. The healer MUST stay out of range, otherwise he will be detected, the beasmaster engages on him, and the whole party goes next if the healer dies...
As soon as you see the icon of the signet of healing beneath the monster's HP bar, select distracting shot. You'll interrupt the healing and he'll be unable to use it for the next 20 seconds. The giant stomp skill is a major annoyance but is very, very easy to interrupt as well because it takes a LOT of time to activate.
Then you only need to be patient as his health will decrease steadilly if you manage to interrupt the healing. A necro and a mesmer will be usefull, inflicting bleeding, cripple, poison and other Damage ovet Time spells.

After getting these hints from a friend, I (level 13 by that time) made this one with henches and it did pretty well. This turned out to be a very amusing quest and I learnt a bit more about interruption with it.
Fire spells are not effective agains this guy, he seems to have uber armor against fire. Use percing/melee/DoT instead.
If you can bring along a human healer it would be a lot better. Alesia is famous for being the worst healer of all times.

Hope it helps.

Cheers.
--Qin.

I beat him at 16 with 5 henchies with my R/E. Distracting Shot owned his Healing Signet, and just wore him down.

Also note that he uses Skull Crack (an elite warrior skill) - so any warriors who need/want it, you need to party up with a ranger who has the quest, otherwise I don't believe he spawns (tried it first without a ranger and never found him, with a ranger I found him in abuot 5 minutes...).

I think he only spawns once you are assigned the quest from Artemis.
Now, I'm not sure if you can recieve the quest even if you're not a ranger, but I believe so, just that you won't unlock the ranger skills rewarded here, only get the exp.
Anyway, I'm not sure about it...

From that quest on, I carry Distracting shot on my skill bar . Great learning experience I must say...
Cheers.
--Qin

If your not a ranger primary or secondary you do not get the quest.

I just did the quest with a ranger, the boss is lvl 14 and he never used skull crack once! I even trained him onto the henchmen healer and see if he would interrupt alesia's spells but nothing happened. After about 10 minutes i finally gave up...

Did they change the location of the spell?

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Yeah, they 'rebalanced' the guy to level 14. He drops so fast now, it brought tears to my eyes. I guess it's easier for people to fire off angry emails to ArenaNet than it is to do a little thinking about what they're doing wrong.

This 'challenge rebalancing' is quickly removing every interesting quest from the game; if this continues there will soon be fluffy bunnies to cuddle in the Crystal Desert, because goodness knows someone might get hurt by anything more dangerous.

Is there anywhere else to get skull crack?