User:Floodbars/Raids/Vale Guardian

This is my attempt to organize the info found for the first boss of the Spirit Vale page.

Vale Divisions

Prior to fighting the Vale Guardian, players will first encounter 3 colored vale guardian division minibosses. The order of the guardians varies with each run.

Punch

The guardian's auto-attack will cleave players in front of it for a small amount of damage.

Magic Aura

Every guardian has a passive, non-removable effect which pulses percent-based damage every 3 seconds in a 1500 radius. This damage is affected by Damage Reduction.

Bullet Storm

When fighting against the Vale Divisions, light blue balls roam the battlefield which do a relatively small amount of damage.

Breakbar

The defiance bar of each guardian appears when their health is depleted and must be broken with control effects to defeat each guardian.

Red Guardian

The Red Guardian has extremely high toughness, rendering damage other than condition damage ineffective to the point of dealing single-digit damage. Spawn Seeker (red orbs) The Red Guardian summons red orbs called Seekers which will slowly gravitate towards players (it can switch targets). Seekers will quickly pulse high damage to players in the vicinity of the red AoE ring. Seekers will spawn every 15 seconds. Seekers will despawn after 20 seconds. Seekers have high health which makes killing them infeasible when combined with the despawn timer. Seekers are susceptible to knockbacks and pulls as well as soft control effects such as chill or cripple.

Green Guardian

Unstable Magic Spike (blue portals) The Green Guardian periodically summons blue area of effect portals in close range. The portals disappear after 2 seconds and any players inside them will suffer damage and be teleported to a random location in the battlefield. Blue portals disappear after 2 seconds. Blue portals spawn 9 seconds after the previous set of portals disappears.

Blue Guardian

The Blue Guardian periodically gains the   Blue Pylon Power that makes it immune to damage. To remove this effect, the invulnerability buff must be stripped. Distributed Magic (green circle) The most notable skill of the Blue Guardian is a powerful lightning strike that covers the entire map. Prior to this attack, a green circle will appear nearby on the ground. Visually, a bright green circle shrinks from the edges of a darker green circle. Each player standing in the circle at the time the bright green circle disappears reduces damage taken by the entire squad, up to a maximum of 3 players. Green circles take 5 seconds to charge before the lightning strikes. Only players in the circle prior to the strike animation will count towards the damage reduction. Green circles spawn every 15 seconds (around 9 seconds after the previous circle disappears).

Vale Guardian

After defeating the Vale Divisions and moving forward, players will reach a circular battlefield with the Vale Guardian standing in the center.

Enraged

There is an enrage timer of 8 minutes, after which the Vale Guardian gains a buff that significantly increases its damage to 200%.

Toughness-Based Aggro

The Vale Guardian prioritizes the player with the highest toughness attribute of squad members still alive.

Health

The Vale Guardian has 22 million HP.

Battlefield

The battlefield is divided into three sections of equal size, wherein each third of the battlefield has a uniquely-colored pillar along the outside edge and a uniquely designed rune tile in the center. Once the battle begins, an impassable barrier surrounds the battlefield, making it impossible to leave or to rejoin mid-fight.

• Blazing Speed Mushrooms are placed at each pillar.

Phases

This fight has a total of five phases which alternate between dealing damage to the Vale Guardian and a split phase wherein you must defeat the vale divisions. At 66% and 33% of its health, the Vale Guardian enters the split phase and becomes invulnerable, walks towards the center of the battlefield, disappears and splits into 3 colored guardians which spawn near the pillars of their respective color. Upon defeating all 3 vale divisions, the Vale Guardian re-emerges from the center of the battlefield and can be damaged again.

Vale Guardian Phase

The Vale Guardian combines the mechanics of the three Vale Divisions, with some adjustments:

• The Red Guardian's Spawn Seeker
  • Seekers now spawn every 20 seconds.
  • Seekers spawn in the center of each third of the arena (for a total of 3) and give the Vale Guardian significant damage reduction if their AoE field overlaps it.
• The Green Guardian's Unstable Magic Spike
• The Blue Guardian's Distributed Magic
  • Green circles appear only in the third of the battlefield occupied by the Vale Guardian. However, they will not move with the Vale Guardian if it moves to another section after they spawn.
  • Vale Guardian requires 4 players instead of 3 standing in green circles for maximum damage reduction

The mechanics will become more complex with each successive phase as outlined in the progression given below..

Tactics:

Tank

The tank's purpose is to stay alive and as still as possible, moving only to avoid the blue portal attack to avoid being teleported away. The reason for this is because the strongest skill rotations for many classes require a certain positioning of the enemy (e.g., backstabs, AoE attacks). This also helps to coordinate healing, as healers know to keep the tank alive, and anyone else who may need healing knows to run to where the tank is to receive restoration.

• The tank must have the highest toughness of the squad to maintain aggro.
• The tank should stay next to a pillar where a speed boost mushroom is.
• The tank should not be expected to run to green circles; on the contrary, the tank should be trying to re-position the Vale Guardian away from the green circle if it appears nearby, as it eliminates the risk of blue portals overlapping the green circle and teleporting players before the circle completes its cycle.

Everyone else needs to be attacking the Vale Guardian (from the opposite side of the tank to avoid the cleave from Punch) while keeping watch of where Seeker orbs and the green circles are.

Designated Green Circle Team

It is common to assign ranged damage dealers to standing in green circles because players must also focus on dealing damage to the Vale Guardian due to the enrage timer. If a green circle appears, players should immediately run to it, taking advantage of the speed boost mushroom and any forms of swiftness they may have available. The Vale Guardian should be positioned in such a way as to avoid ambiguity as to where green circles will spawn. Failure to do so may result in a green circle spawning impossibly distant from the squad.

Seeker Control

Seeker balls tend to overlap the green circle, which can prove fatal. Remember to use control effects on Seekers to avoid damage while trying to stop the lightning strike. They should be kept away from both the Vale Guardian as well as the green circles to maximize chances for success.

Split Phase

When the Vale Guardian has its health reduced to approximately 66% or 33%, it will become invulnerable, stop attacking, and return to the center of the battlefield while the three pillars shoot electric bolts at it until it disappears. It then splits into the three colored guardians that spawn at the pylons of their color.

The battle mechanics of the colored guardians are much the same as before, but players will be attuned to the color of the pillar (  Pylon Attunement: Red,   Pylon Attunement: Green or   Pylon Attunement: Blue) to which they are closest once the guardian divisions appear; this attunement determines how much damage the player receives for each pulse of Magic Aura.

• Players in the same vicinity as their correspondingly-colored guardian (and no others) take a reduced 5%.
• Players in the same vicinity as one other off-color guardian takes 25% of their health per tick.

Tactics:

• One tactic is for the tank (and possibly one healer) to distract the Green Guardian. The condition damage team should be on the Red Guardian, and the boon removal characters and everyone else should be on the Blue Guardian. The Red and Blue Guardian teams must defeat their bosses as quickly as possible and then join the Green Guardian team to save the tank. Note that this will not allow the squad to get the sync-kill achievement.
• Another tactic, which can allow the sync-kill, would be to split the team as 3-3-4, with similar distribution (condition damage team on red, boon removal team on blue, direct damage team on green).

Progression of Mechanics

Phase One

The timer begins when a squad member either takes damage or deals damage to the Vale Guardian.

Phase Two (Split)

When the Vale Guardian has its health reduced to approximately 66%, it will enter the first split phase.

Phase Three

Once all 3 Vale Divisions are defeated, the Vale Guardian reappears with its previous life total and with an additional attack (Magic Storm) and an additional mechanic (Unstable Pylon).

Magic Storm

The Vale Guardian will stop moving and start channelling a skill that throws a large number of lightning orbs all over the battlefield. This skill can be interrupted by depleting the defiance bar that appears once it becomes active. The other mechanics (e.g., Unstable Pylon as discussed below, Distributed Magic) will still continue while the skill is channelled.

Unstable Pylon

Sections of the battlefield will begin glowing and dealing constant damage to players standing in them. During phase three, only one third lights up at a time and the section that lights up rotates clockwise every 20 seconds

Tactics:

It is suggested that the tank kites the Vale Guardian around the battlefield in such a way that the squad avoids the damaging sections of the battlefield.

Phase Four (Split)

The fourth phase starts when the Vale Guardian reaches 33% of its life total and is exactly the same as the Phase Two.

Phase 5

Once all 3 Vale Divisions are defeated, the Vale Guardian reappears with its previous life total (33%). In general, this final phase is very similar to Phase 3 but you'll see the following changes to mechanics:

• Unstable Pylon
  • An additional section of the battlefield will light up and deal damage, for a total of 2 thirds.
  • The damaging sections will continue to rotate clockwise with at a higher frequency of 15 seconds.
• The Red Guardian's Spawn Seeker
  • Extra Seekers will spawn in the center of the arena, for a total of 4 Seekers active at all times.
• The Green Guardian's Unstable Magic Spike
  • The blue fields will now spawn directly underneath all players in the squad, so players assigned to stand in green circles must be cautious as well.

Upon defeating the Vale Guardian, all players that have not yet received rewards (subject to the weekly reset) may do so regardless of downed state.