Vet Depths of Malatar - King Narilmor Strategy; This guy needs serious rebalancing

BXR_Lonestar

So me and a few of my core group members have been working on trying to conquer Vet Depths of Malatar, and we've hit a serious wall with King Narilmor, the boss that splits up into multiple copies. We've tried every strategy out there from killing only two shades to trying to interrupt the shades while trying to track the boss to straight up burning the boss. I don't think that DPS is the overall issue because both of our DPS are hitting over 50K and we don't typically struggle with DPS tests. And we're usually very good with negotiating complex mechanics, so I'm not sure that is the issue either. However, our struggles have us thinking that this dungeon is either 1) bugged, or 2) hasn't been rebalanced since the champion point changes, making the encounter essentially impossible.

Part of our issue is that after struggling on our own to try to figure out a strategy, we've gone to outside sources, and we can't find any guides for players who have completed this boss on console and during the latest balancing patch. The other part of that is the guides that are out there are very inconsistent on how to handle the encounter. Some say heal Thoraya, and others say its not worth it. Some say kill the shades and others say that is a waste of time. Still others say interrupt the shades and other say ignore them and just find the boss. And again, we've since tried every one of these strategies to no avail. We've gotten him down to 40% just trying to DPS the crap out of him, but there is so much crap in there that can foul you up or OHK you that it seems like trying to straight burn him is an exercise in futility.

With that said, I'm open to suggestions on how to take this guy on, but in the meantime, I do think Zos needs to take a serious look at this encounter. I'm all for a challenge, but this isn't even a hardmode encounter or a final boss and it is just straight up ridiculous. Everyone I know who has tried the dungeon or even completed it in the past hates this dude, and for good reason. There is no built in mechanic that helps you identify the boss other than marking him with a debuff. The shades having the same exact abilities as the boss means it just amplifies the number of OHK mechanics you face in the encounter. Even if you don't get OHK'd, there is simply too much going on that can foul you up (ice mechanics that you can't break free from - and yes, we've tried everything, roll dodge, light attack (suggested from Hack the Minotaur), break free, even dropping ults). And you have to double interrupt the shades, but they can immediately start casting a new ability after you interrupt them, but they can't be interrupted the second time.

When you attack the shades, even with good DPS, that ends up being the only thing the DPS do is chase the shades, and there is no clear boss DPS phase.

Overall, we're just at wits end with this encounter, and I'm wondering if Zos needs to just take a look at this encounter in light of the balancing changes that have occurred in the last 6 months or so.

caesarvs

I have pug tanked here sometimes after the CP2.0.
Once copies spawns, I taunt all of them and run to a corner (any corner), then wait 2-3 secs, for the shades to reposition, after that I run to oposite corner (again, any of them), wait 2-3 secs again and I go back to "starting" corner. This way all the shades will stack, and even if the dps doesnt figure out which one is the real, the cleave damage should kill all of them, be the healer dealing with the npc mechanic or not (and if the group dps isnt low). Doing this, the dps can save their ults for when everything stacks.

MudcrabAttack

Tanks make this fight so much easier when the copies are stacked. My experience pugging as DPS with this fight varies between extremely easy to extremely awful depending on position or when the real one is revealed, or if they’re all scattered everywhere

Parrot1986

Assuming both DDs are doing 50k dps each then really the only strategy should be to use elemental susceptibility or ele drain on the real boss before he splits. When he comes up he still has it. DDs just focus the real boss, tank can stack the fake ones on to get cleave and you should be able to kill the boss before he splits again.

If it’s 50k dps combined then I’d still say the best bet is to do this and have to do another split.

Yes there’s aoe damage you need to deal with but less on this than on the orb boss and less than on the last boss HM so that shouldn’t be an issue tbh.

dinokstrunz

If your DPS are doing 50k dps each how on earth can't you do this lol? Rethink your strats bro.
Try to stack the clones up, have someone put ele drain on the correct target so the fight is completed quicker. This fight is much easier when things are neat and tidy thanks to good tanking.

Amerises

This is a tank and healz fight imo. Heal the npc and stack everything. Low DPS can make it take a little longer, but ultimately still gets done. I'd say this guy is much easier than final boss HM, as HM has so much AoE and one hitters, even if tank drags him to the side. Tank and healer will need to focus on damage shields if you're going for HM.

I understand you're not asking about last boss, but if you're struggling with that boss, you'll struggle pretty hard with last boss as well 🤷‍♂️

Andre_Noir

If a healer do his job on the encounter then you can even kill everything one by one tbh

GRXRG

I think your healer is not healing the NPC.
If you don't make the NPC die the fight will last literally 1 minute if you both have 50k dps.

tsaescishoeshiner

When he disappears and resummons shades, listen to his voice. The direction it comes from is where the real boss is, not the shades.

He disappears and resummons when the shades have taken enough damage, so people who stack-and-burn are depending on their high AoE damage to power through the mechanics, rather than be precise. For lower DPS groups, this just doesn't work.

Also, you have to heal Tharayya with ground-targeted AoE heals to prevent the king and shades from appearing with much higher damage shields.

It's a tricky boss because none of this stuff is obvious, it can literally go on forever, and a lot of the advice online is from very high DPS groups giving advice that doesn't work for other groups, or from groups who don't realize that Tharayya was being healed.

Mumbles_the_Tank

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Tanks make this fight so much easier when the copies are stacked. My experience pugging as DPS with this fight varies between extremely easy to extremely awful depending on position or when the real one is revealed, or if they’re all scattered everywhere

There’s no real need to even bother stacking them. Ele drain shows which copy is the real one - a half decent group should be able to just focus on the boss.

I’ve usually found it much easier to just maintain taunt and interrupts on the adds while dps burn than running off into corners and dragging AoEs all over the place. The healer can ignore whatever that silly mechanic is too and just keep shields and mit on the DDs while they do their thing.

So long as everyone is on the same page this seems to work fine whatever the damage in group may be.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Mumbles_the_Tank wrote: »

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Tanks make this fight so much easier when the copies are stacked. My experience pugging as DPS with this fight varies between extremely easy to extremely awful depending on position or when the real one is revealed, or if they’re all scattered everywhere

There’s no real need to even bother stacking them. Ele drain shows which copy is the real one - a half decent group should be able to just focus on the boss.

I’ve usually found it much easier to just maintain taunt and interrupts on the adds while dps burn than running off into corners and dragging AoEs all over the place. The healer can ignore whatever that silly mechanic is too and just keep shields and mit on the DDs while they do their thing.

So long as everyone is on the same page this seems to work fine whatever the damage in group may be.

That's the ticket, ele Drain will reveal all!

And if that doesnt work, STACK THE CLONES, and of course, Nuke.

universal_wrath

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

So me and a few of my core group members have been working on trying to conquer Vet Depths of Malatar, and we've hit a serious wall with King Narilmor, the boss that splits up into multiple copies. We've tried every strategy out there from killing only two shades to trying to interrupt the shades while trying to track the boss to straight up burning the boss. I don't think that DPS is the overall issue because both of our DPS are hitting over 50K and we don't typically struggle with DPS tests. And we're usually very good with negotiating complex mechanics, so I'm not sure that is the issue either. However, our struggles have us thinking that this dungeon is either 1) bugged, or 2) hasn't been rebalanced since the champion point changes, making the encounter essentially impossible.

Part of our issue is that after struggling on our own to try to figure out a strategy, we've gone to outside sources, and we can't find any guides for players who have completed this boss on console and during the latest balancing patch. The other part of that is the guides that are out there are very inconsistent on how to handle the encounter. Some say heal Thoraya, and others say its not worth it. Some say kill the shades and others say that is a waste of time. Still others say interrupt the shades and other say ignore them and just find the boss. And again, we've since tried every one of these strategies to no avail. We've gotten him down to 40% just trying to DPS the crap out of him, but there is so much crap in there that can foul you up or OHK you that it seems like trying to straight burn him is an exercise in futility.

With that said, I'm open to suggestions on how to take this guy on, but in the meantime, I do think Zos needs to take a serious look at this encounter. I'm all for a challenge, but this isn't even a hardmode encounter or a final boss and it is just straight up ridiculous. Everyone I know who has tried the dungeon or even completed it in the past hates this dude, and for good reason. There is no built in mechanic that helps you identify the boss other than marking him with a debuff. The shades having the same exact abilities as the boss means it just amplifies the number of OHK mechanics you face in the encounter. Even if you don't get OHK'd, there is simply too much going on that can foul you up (ice mechanics that you can't break free from - and yes, we've tried everything, roll dodge, light attack (suggested from Hack the Minotaur), break free, even dropping ults). And you have to double interrupt the shades, but they can immediately start casting a new ability after you interrupt them, but they can't be interrupted the second time.

When you attack the shades, even with good DPS, that ends up being the only thing the DPS do is chase the shades, and there is no clear boss DPS phase.

Overall, we're just at wits end with this encounter, and I'm wondering if Zos needs to just take a look at this encounter in light of the balancing changes that have occurred in the last 6 months or so.

I did this dungeon more times than I did fungul grotto I think with pug as a DD, tank, or healer . While this boss is annoying, it is an easy find if everyone is clear on what they do. You have multiple ways to do this fight and all of tgem depend on you tank:

1- tank taunt all copies and run to every corner to pull the bosses to middle of room. Copies hqve range attack of their LA is 15m I think, so if you taunt a copiy and run to other side, you leave the copy's range of fire and starts to move toward you. Qfter tank gather all of bosses in middle, DPs throw all of their AOE skills and attacking all copies. When one copy(real boss) is only alive, focus dmg on that copy until it split back again, rinse and repeat. This method you have a healer or 3 DDs no problem.

2- this method works best if anyone in group have access to elemental drain or other morph. At the begining of the fight or even before, cast ele drain on the boss and start attacking. When boss split to 4 copies, one of these copies will still have the ele drain effect on it, that is the real boss. Leave other copies and single focus the copy that has ele drain active. Make sure you keep applying ele drain to same target because if you loss it you mess up evething. During this fight, multiple copies with spawn and you will reciebe a lot of damage so having a healer is a great choice in here, although, you can still do it with out healer, but you must have a very good survivabilty(stam sorc, light armor shielding) and it is basicaly race against time. You have more than 12 copies if dps is slow and at that point , there is no way to win.

3- this method require healer. Tank must taunt all copies and DDs kill copies by stacking them or by euning to eqch corner and killing each copy alnoe and they run for next copy. Healer must keep Thoraya alive as each time she die, copies get damage shield(harder to kill) and players recieve multiple debuffs of fracture, defile ans maim( easy to kill).

For all 3 listed methods, it is helpfull if DDs have some sort of self heals, defense(evasion for example), or damage shields. There are no one shots in this fight unless your HP is 15k and you are vamp qnd hit by boss/copies dawnbreaker. Mateors hit hard, spread out and block them while casting self heals or damage shields. If you stack during meteors, you probably wipe. Each copy of boss specialze in a specific damage type: blue is ice( I usualy kill first, because sitting ducks are dead ducks), red is fire/meteors (second I kill), puple is lightning, white/yellow is debuffs of fracture and defile as well as excutes.

hcbigdogdoghc

No need for healer to keep the NPC alive, just purge when you get extreme/major maimed and defiled.

BXR_Lonestar

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

No need for healer to keep the NPC alive, just purge when you get extreme/major maimed and defiled.

I didn't realize you could purge it. I'll definitely try that next time we're in there.

BXR_Lonestar

universal_wrath wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

So me and a few of my core group members have been working on trying to conquer Vet Depths of Malatar, and we've hit a serious wall with King Narilmor, the boss that splits up into multiple copies. We've tried every strategy out there from killing only two shades to trying to interrupt the shades while trying to track the boss to straight up burning the boss. I don't think that DPS is the overall issue because both of our DPS are hitting over 50K and we don't typically struggle with DPS tests. And we're usually very good with negotiating complex mechanics, so I'm not sure that is the issue either. However, our struggles have us thinking that this dungeon is either 1) bugged, or 2) hasn't been rebalanced since the champion point changes, making the encounter essentially impossible.

Part of our issue is that after struggling on our own to try to figure out a strategy, we've gone to outside sources, and we can't find any guides for players who have completed this boss on console and during the latest balancing patch. The other part of that is the guides that are out there are very inconsistent on how to handle the encounter. Some say heal Thoraya, and others say its not worth it. Some say kill the shades and others say that is a waste of time. Still others say interrupt the shades and other say ignore them and just find the boss. And again, we've since tried every one of these strategies to no avail. We've gotten him down to 40% just trying to DPS the crap out of him, but there is so much crap in there that can foul you up or OHK you that it seems like trying to straight burn him is an exercise in futility.

With that said, I'm open to suggestions on how to take this guy on, but in the meantime, I do think Zos needs to take a serious look at this encounter. I'm all for a challenge, but this isn't even a hardmode encounter or a final boss and it is just straight up ridiculous. Everyone I know who has tried the dungeon or even completed it in the past hates this dude, and for good reason. There is no built in mechanic that helps you identify the boss other than marking him with a debuff. The shades having the same exact abilities as the boss means it just amplifies the number of OHK mechanics you face in the encounter. Even if you don't get OHK'd, there is simply too much going on that can foul you up (ice mechanics that you can't break free from - and yes, we've tried everything, roll dodge, light attack (suggested from Hack the Minotaur), break free, even dropping ults). And you have to double interrupt the shades, but they can immediately start casting a new ability after you interrupt them, but they can't be interrupted the second time.

When you attack the shades, even with good DPS, that ends up being the only thing the DPS do is chase the shades, and there is no clear boss DPS phase.

Overall, we're just at wits end with this encounter, and I'm wondering if Zos needs to just take a look at this encounter in light of the balancing changes that have occurred in the last 6 months or so.

I did this dungeon more times than I did fungul grotto I think with pug as a DD, tank, or healer . While this boss is annoying, it is an easy find if everyone is clear on what they do. You have multiple ways to do this fight and all of tgem depend on you tank:

1- tank taunt all copies and run to every corner to pull the bosses to middle of room. Copies hqve range attack of their LA is 15m I think, so if you taunt a copiy and run to other side, you leave the copy's range of fire and starts to move toward you. Qfter tank gather all of bosses in middle, DPs throw all of their AOE skills and attacking all copies. When one copy(real boss) is only alive, focus dmg on that copy until it split back again, rinse and repeat. This method you have a healer or 3 DDs no problem.

2- this method works best if anyone in group have access to elemental drain or other morph. At the begining of the fight or even before, cast ele drain on the boss and start attacking. When boss split to 4 copies, one of these copies will still have the ele drain effect on it, that is the real boss. Leave other copies and single focus the copy that has ele drain active. Make sure you keep applying ele drain to same target because if you loss it you mess up evething. During this fight, multiple copies with spawn and you will reciebe a lot of damage so having a healer is a great choice in here, although, you can still do it with out healer, but you must have a very good survivabilty(stam sorc, light armor shielding) and it is basicaly race against time. You have more than 12 copies if dps is slow and at that point , there is no way to win.

3- this method require healer. Tank must taunt all copies and DDs kill copies by stacking them or by euning to eqch corner and killing each copy alnoe and they run for next copy. Healer must keep Thoraya alive as each time she die, copies get damage shield(harder to kill) and players recieve multiple debuffs of fracture, defile ans maim( easy to kill).

For all 3 listed methods, it is helpfull if DDs have some sort of self heals, defense(evasion for example), or damage shields. There are no one shots in this fight unless your HP is 15k and you are vamp qnd hit by boss/copies dawnbreaker. Mateors hit hard, spread out and block them while casting self heals or damage shields. If you stack during meteors, you probably wipe. Each copy of boss specialze in a specific damage type: blue is ice( I usualy kill first, because sitting ducks are dead ducks), red is fire/meteors (second I kill), puple is lightning, white/yellow is debuffs of fracture and defile as well as excutes.

This is also helpful. We must have been getting one-shot due to all of the debuffs on us, as our best runs were when we went and tried to straight-up burn the boss. During those runs, we were all so focused on trying to locate the boss and DPS him that I didn't even think to look and see if we were receiving debuffs. Most of the guides I read didn't even mention anything about them applying a debuff, so that is very very helpful. It also explains why some of us are getting one-shot in spite of having 20K HP or more.

BXR_Lonestar

Mumbles_the_Tank wrote: »

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Tanks make this fight so much easier when the copies are stacked. My experience pugging as DPS with this fight varies between extremely easy to extremely awful depending on position or when the real one is revealed, or if they’re all scattered everywhere

There’s no real need to even bother stacking them. Ele drain shows which copy is the real one - a half decent group should be able to just focus on the boss.

I’ve usually found it much easier to just maintain taunt and interrupts on the adds while dps burn than running off into corners and dragging AoEs all over the place. The healer can ignore whatever that silly mechanic is too and just keep shields and mit on the DDs while they do their thing.

So long as everyone is on the same page this seems to work fine whatever the damage in group may be.

We tried doing interrupts, and perhaps this is a matter of needing to practice the fight more, but we didn't do very good when we went that route. What got us frustrated is that it seems that some of the clones, when interrupted, immediately go back into casting their special power again, and it seemed like you could not do another interrupt right away to stop them from casting again. Me (healer), and one Mag DD and the tank ran crushing shock (tank has Desto back bar), while the other DD used poison arrow for interrupts. It just seemed like we could interrupt the first wave of abilities, but because they go back to casting right away, we couldn't do anything about the second. One guide says you have to be able to bash them too, but we could never get close enough to bash before we got killed by one or more bad things happening.

That said, we were also unaware of the debuffs or the ability to purge them, so I will definitely be running purge next time we give it a try, and perhaps we will have better luck.

BXR_Lonestar

GRXRG wrote: »

I think your healer is not healing the NPC.
If you don't make the NPC die the fight will last literally 1 minute if you both have 50k dps.

I (the healer) did mainly ignore Thoraya for the most part, mainly because there are so many different guides that say healing her is a waste and not worth it.

I think that is part of our frustration to is that nobody seems to have a "definitive" guide on what to do with this fight, but I can see from some of these posts that there is also more going on in this fight than what we had accounted for (and than what guides tell you), so I'm definitely going to take all this advice into account next time we go in there.

The frustration is that we're usually pretty good players, and we're not overly reliant on guides to get through content. But when we sought help on this fight, everyone was all over the place and it made it difficult to know what to try. I feel like now, at least I can have several gameplans to try, and it sounds like it will just be about trying to figure out what works best for my group.

Calm_Fury

I love PUG tanking this dungeon and the strategy I use is simple:

As a tank, I have 4 corners: 1 to 4.

I go to 1, taunt the boss on the same wall but opposite side. Taunt boss on this side, then just go to 2 and 3 running along the wall.

After about 2 laps, they are all in the middle.

Not the perfect strategy, but if it works with PUGs that do 20k group DPS, might help you all. Just hold ultils until they are in the middle.

Ever since I started doing that, I never had a PUG group fail there, even if it takes a while.

MirandaSharp

Calm_Fury wrote: »

I love PUG tanking this dungeon and the strategy I use is simple:

As a tank, I have 4 corners: 1 to 4.

I go to 1, taunt the boss on the same wall but opposite side. Taunt boss on this side, then just go to 2 and 3 running along the wall.

After about 2 laps, they are all in the middle.

Not the perfect strategy, but if it works with PUGs that do 20k group DPS, might help you all. Just hold ultils until they are in the middle.

Ever since I started doing that, I never had a PUG group fail there, even if it takes a while.

I agree, I have the same experience. Literally ran with sub 20K group dps pugs and we got past this. Though they WILL fail the dps check on the shade on the last boss hm. Not enough damage is still not enough damage...

BXR_Lonestar

Calm_Fury wrote: »

I love PUG tanking this dungeon and the strategy I use is simple:

As a tank, I have 4 corners: 1 to 4.

I go to 1, taunt the boss on the same wall but opposite side. Taunt boss on this side, then just go to 2 and 3 running along the wall.

After about 2 laps, they are all in the middle.

Not the perfect strategy, but if it works with PUGs that do 20k group DPS, might help you all. Just hold ultils until they are in the middle.

Ever since I started doing that, I never had a PUG group fail there, even if it takes a while.

Just wanted to post a quick update for the people who offered advice and for others who may be struggling with the same encounter (King Narilmor in Vet Depths of Malatar). After taking a break to work on events, trials, and other vet dungeons, my group came back to this one last night, and we blasted the dungeon in less than an hour. We tried several of the strategies posted here on King Narilmor, but what ultimately worked for us was Calm_Fury's suggestion to have the tank work the square of the room which concentrated everyone in the middle. Not only could my dps guy and gal nuke the middle and do damage on the boss, but I was able to maintain positioning near Thoraya and keep her healed with AoE/HoT's, which I believe helped immensely. That the DPS were kind of hovering in the middle also made it easier to heal, rather than trying to heal a bunch of DPS running around in chaos.

Also, thanks to the person who pointed out that you can purge the debuffs. It could be my imagination, but I think it made a noticeable difference.

Lastly, the final boss was probably the easiest boss in the dungeon. Didn't try hardmode, as that was the first time we cleared on vet, but we really walked through the fight without any wipes or issues.