Hopefully, John can restart his history engine. After all, Johnny Chinese has yet to reach its end. Thankfully, John doesn't have to namedrop politicians at least for the next part. Don't thank John for this, go thank the ex-boss of the U.S before the bossed became the boss.
In other news, Koutetsujou no Kabaneri might have given John some inspiration. Unlike Monica Baey versus NUS, this one may be for real. That is, a maybe.
If this goes ahead, it means there's a need to tweak things.
What this post is all about
In a past post, John mentioned something about fighting Arcturia. But there's a problem. While John didn't recall Arylos having the need to move and fire (seriously, it's like Rapid Shot all the way), fighting the same person with a Sentinel barbarian ended up the other way. Literally. This was further confirmed by a fellow guild alliance member where said member mentioned that he/she couldn't win the fight with a Soulbinder warlock.
The reason behind this annoyance was due to two factors:
1. Arcturia could conjure black holes on the ground at an insanely high rate.
2. She could also conjure black briars from the ground to drain your AP gauge 100%.
Factor 2 meant slowing down the dps momentum since you'd either need a daily power to deal large bursts of damage or keeping you alive. Factor 1 was the reason why it's very easy to lose the fight. The black hole wasn't intended as a dps move, but rather as a foolproof strategy to break up the dps momentum so that she could dictate the dps race instead of you.
This resulted in a weird situation where melee and healing classes were effectively screwed. For healers, the dps wouldn't be high enough since fighting Arcturia has been all about dealing more damage than her at a faster rate. As for melee classes, the butterfly cloud would just pull off an insanely high level of damage over time. This also meant the melee dps momentum would break as well. To summarise why Arcturia seemed to be unplayable unless you go in with a party, her gameplay mechanic hinged on high dps and the ability to reverse the flow of damage dealing via disruption attacks.
Which now comes to why Arylos could pull off a victory despite the obvious. There are only two possibilities.
1. The devs reviewed the difficulty level. In fact, they've been doing this since mod 7 and we're already at mod 16.
2. Either nothing much or nothing was changed. In short, there's a way to prevent her from pulling off her WMD (i.e. Weapons of Mass Disruption).
The reason behind this annoyance was due to two factors:
1. Arcturia could conjure black holes on the ground at an insanely high rate.
2. She could also conjure black briars from the ground to drain your AP gauge 100%.
Factor 2 meant slowing down the dps momentum since you'd either need a daily power to deal large bursts of damage or keeping you alive. Factor 1 was the reason why it's very easy to lose the fight. The black hole wasn't intended as a dps move, but rather as a foolproof strategy to break up the dps momentum so that she could dictate the dps race instead of you.
This resulted in a weird situation where melee and healing classes were effectively screwed. For healers, the dps wouldn't be high enough since fighting Arcturia has been all about dealing more damage than her at a faster rate. As for melee classes, the butterfly cloud would just pull off an insanely high level of damage over time. This also meant the melee dps momentum would break as well. To summarise why Arcturia seemed to be unplayable unless you go in with a party, her gameplay mechanic hinged on high dps and the ability to reverse the flow of damage dealing via disruption attacks.
Which now comes to why Arylos could pull off a victory despite the obvious. There are only two possibilities.
1. The devs reviewed the difficulty level. In fact, they've been doing this since mod 7 and we're already at mod 16.
2. Either nothing much or nothing was changed. In short, there's a way to prevent her from pulling off her WMD (i.e. Weapons of Mass Disruption).
More than one way to do it?
The most straightforward way to complete the Arcturia boss quest would be getting one to two players to form a party. In fact, that's how John managed to seal the coup. More specifically, it's Sentinel+Warlock (Hellbringer?)+Arbiter cleric.
The reason why a three-member party should be good enough despite the difficulty level in any private instance being scaled according to the party size is very simple: Combat advantage and Arcturia's abysmal defence. In fact, John originally intended a tank+ranged dps two-member party since he's not thinking about whether a third alliance member would volunteer to help. Suffice to say, the first few tries while going solo didn't work out at all. Let alone not working out fine. This resulted in doing a lfg involving one warlock and an Arbiter cleric.
Because John has to work tomorrow, John is gonna make this short. Hopefully, that is.
Because John has to work tomorrow, John is gonna make this short. Hopefully, that is.
Not exactly foolproof (?)
Disclaimer: This plan may or may not work. Whatever you'll see here would be a case of theory based on personal observation. If you don't feel like testing it. you can just put up a lfg request. In fact, that's what guild alliances are there for.
Fighting Arcturia is effectively a case of coming up with the correct strategy. Unless you can come up with an effective damage dealing strategy, any moment of tactical brilliance will be nothing more than a moot. Since it's impossible to break her dps momentum, the only way is to break her disruption game. Which of course is something easier said than done.
But before that, it's highly advisable to summon a ranged dps companion. If your companion is either melee based or healing based, chances are you're screwed. Especially the former. John tried that. It didn't work at all. If possible. summon a level 25 Batiri Runt. For a green rank dps companion, that son of a batiri does have a very good dps game against bosses since Chief Killer could be unlocked without upgrading it to blue. If for some reason you don't have one, summon any green rank dps companion so long it's a ranged dps type. Wayward Wizard would be a good budget choice since you only need at most 50K astral diamonds to upgrade. Since Siege of Neverwinter event is now on, you can also choose to do five daily event quests in the siege warzone to get a Neverember Guard Archer. And besides, that one is auto-bind unless you get her via the event box costing 7 medals each.
The funny thing about using a ranged dps companion is this: There's actually a decent chance of Arcturia being kited away from the butterfly cloud. At least this would be the case for that son of a batiri. But it's very likely that any ranged dps companion could pull it off since it'd be terribly stupid to see your plan falling apart just because you don't have that one in a million companion. This isn't a joke. John actually tested it accidentally since the Cambion companion was doing effectively nothing due to being inside the butterfly cloud.
Once you get the companion part working, then you have to reconfigure your move set. Feats be damned, just go for effective single-target high damage output. There are two ways to do it. The most straightforward way would be putting her under the dps pressure cooker. Moves like Magic Missile and Rapid Shot are examples of dps pressure cooker bread-and-butter. But since not every class can thrive on a rapid-fire strategy, an alternative would be going for high one-shot damage, after which you just use a single-target at-will to take her down. A good example of that would be Brazen Slash where it's fast to come out and highly damaging for an at-will. In fact, John wouldn't be surprised if any fighter build can pull it off in any fight since there are now plenty of AoE options available. One-shot damage game is particularly important for any tanking build here since the high damage options available are severely limited. In fact, using Come And Get It would be the dumbest thing any Sentinel could do in this fight. And John was actually dumb enough to do that and equally dumb enough to realise a few days later that this was nothing less than a stupid strategy. So what if his Sentinel got the Extended Unstoppable feat? That didn't stop Arcturia.
Below are recommendations for those who want to experiment on their light bulbs like an Edison. Note that John is only going to put 1 daily, 1 encounter, 1 at-will, and two class features as examples here:
Sentinel: Crescendo (highest damage daily power), Primal Fury (no cooldown so long you got enough Rage), Sentinel's Slash (use Sure Strike if under Unstoppable), Steady Rage and Threatening Presence (for aggro pulling)
Justicar: Divine Judgement (highest damage daily power with fast startup animation), Bane (even better if you got Baneful Strikes feat), any at-will power apart from Radiant Strike post-Sacred Weapon, Binding Oath+Aura of Vengeance (for maximum damage reflect)
Vanguard: Blade Rampart (since the butterfly cloud auto-damages anybody within range), Anvil of Doom (magnitude 680), Brazen Strike (insanely high damage for a fast hitting at-will), Combat Superiority (higher Constitution=more AP generated+Blade Rampart)
Soulbinder: Brood of Hadar (insanely high damage escalation), Harrowstorm (continual damage so long the soul sparks keep coming), Essence Defiler (refer to Harrowstorm), Prince of Hell (because you most likely need that 2.5K armour penetration)
Devout: Guardian of Faith (only if you got Persistent Guardian Feat), Exaltation+Geas (20% damage bonus+damage reduction debuff+Blessed Armaments feat), Sacred Flame (because it's the only useful damage at-will for Devouts), Pilgrim's Light (contingency tactic since your companion would most likely get knocked out a few times), Towering Light feat (if you want to take risks by reducing the frequency of healing to the minimum. Not recommended unless you got Exaltation)
Oathkeeper: Either Divine Judgement or Sanctuary (depends on whether you're a risk taker since this one is a healadin), Banishment>Sacred Weapon>Divine Fulmination (endless damage spam), Guarded Prayers (in case you need to pop a healing potion for whatever reason).
P.S: Ending this now. Yes, John knows it's abrupt. But seriously, he doesn't blog for a living because he's just another otter albeit being a sea otter instead of a river otter.
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