Getting Through It: Vale Guardian

Author: Bozofriendly

Ten players, built around stacking Necromancers for easy boons, huge crowd control, and barrier that makes mechanics trivial.

Healers — 2x Heal Quickness Troubadour both provide Quickness to their subgroup. One of them is the tank, geared with ~1800 toughness so Vale Guardian fixates to them.

Alacrity — 2x Celestial Alacrity Scourge One per subgroup, covering Alacrity for everyone and adding more barrier and survivability to the comp via extra healing and barrier.

DPS — 2x Condition Scourge + 4x Power Ritualist. The condi Scourges bring a little extra barrier and are needed for the Red Guardian. The Power Ritualists bring the bulk of the strike damage. Since we are stacking Necromancers, Flesh Golem will be the primary CC skills used. 

Why this comp: Troubadour's massive healing output, and CC skills "Signet of the Moa" combined with the ability to have their 2nd weapon sets free for utility means the tank troubadour can bring a shield if needed while the other can bring focus for pull the seeker orbs. The Cele Scourges will provide big barrier which will make all of the big damage skills much easier and running Staff means the 2 scourges can act as a 3rd healer if needed. The Ritualists and Scourge DPS also have a lot of survivability on their own as well meaning players can focus on learning the mechanics and not worrying about wiping as much. The

Before Vale Guardian, you clear three Guardians — Red, Blue, and Green. Each guardian teaches a single mechanic that Vale Guardian will later use throughout the fight. Treat the pre-event as your free practice room.

Red has very high toughness, so it can only be damaged by conditions which is why your condi Scourges matter. It summons two large red orbs called Seekers that drain anyone standing in their radius.

How to handle it: a Troubadour runs Focus as their offhand. Use Temporal Curtain's flip skill, Into the Void, to pull the Seekers away from the group.

Blue carries a buff called Blue Pylon Power. While it's up, the boss can't be damaged. One of your Necromancers strips it with Spear skill 5, Extirpate, opening Blue up to damage.

Blue also spawns Distributed Magic "Greens": a large green AoE that typically needs 4 players standing in it before it resolves. The strategy we are going to use is to ignore greens. 

When a green is about to pop (around 3 seconds out), your supports prep their burst:

• Troubadours (healers): pre-place your Rifle 3 on the stack. As the green detonates, hit the Rifle 3 flip, your heal skill, and your f3 -> f4. That burst is what stops anyone from going down.
• Scourges (alac & condi): hit Shroud f3 to drop barrier on the whole group. Barrier isn't counted toward the green's percentage damage, so the green eats the barrier first and leaves everyone's real health bar mostly intact. This is the biggest reason greens feel like nothing in this comp.

Green spawns Unstable Magic Spike "Blues": markers that appear under players every 10 seconds, detonate after 3, deal damage, and teleport you across the arena.

How to handle it: either dodge out of your Blue (making sure you don't dodge into someone else's), or just side-step to avoid the teleport. One note for Necromancers , don't rely on the yellow on-screen border for this; Shroud doesn't always show it. The audio cue is the reliable tell, so play with sound on.

The fight takes place on a circular platform with 3 zones with a pylon at each zone Red, Blue, and Green. The edge between the Red and Blue pylons is your main stacking edge.

Vale Guardian fights in three phases, with a split phase between each. During the splits, the three pre-event Guardians reappear and the squad divides up to kill them. Assign these in advance:

• Red: the 2 condition Scourges
• Green: 1 healer, attack the Green Guardian and pull to the group
• Blue: everyone else

Stack on the far east edge, between the Red and Blue pylons. One player starts the fight by hitting Vale Guardian, who then walks to the tank (highest toughness).

The first mechanic up is Blues, so dodge, side-step, or block. Especially the tank, since you don't want Vale Guardian wandering across the map. Seekers and a Green follow, so your Troubadour uses the Focus pull to drag the Seekers away. Stacking on the edge helps here: the Seekers expire over time, and the travel distance plus the pull is usually enough to make sure they never reach the group.

Keep damaging until 66%, then move to your assigned pylons

Each player gets an attunement matching the pylon color they're sent to. The red AoE around each Guardian pulses damage to anyone whose attunement doesn't match it. Because a healer is on Green (and pulling the Green Guardian to their group), the plan is simply to out-heal that pulse. Once all three Guardians each 1%, CC their break bar "healers use their CC, everyone will try to save their Flesh Golems so use Greatsword 5 on Ritualist but you want the group to also save their big CC for the next phase. But once the CC bar is broken the Guardians will die, once all 3 are dead, Vale Guardian is attackable again.

Return to the same east-edge spot. Everything from Phase 1 repeats, plus two new mechanics:

• Breakbar (CC): shortly after Vale Guardian becomes vulnerable, it spawns a breakbar and starts a massive AoE attack. CC it down as fast as possible, this often lines up with a green detonating, so it's a window of intense healing pressure. Be ready by having the scourges apply barrier.
• Unstable Pylon: one pylon's sector of the arena starts pulsing damage. Stand on the line between the Blue and Red pylons; when either sector lights up, step to the opposite side to stay safe.

Keep damaging until 33%.

Same as before, as the last split phase. Kill the three Guardians with the same assignments. Note that when they die this time, the squad does not return to the same spot (See Phase 3).

The tank positions Vale Guardian between the Red and Green pylons. All the Phase 2 mechanics return, with one escalation: two pylon sectors light up at once, so the single-line strat no longer works.

Instead, position Vale Guardian between Red and Green. Another breakbar and green will appear like in phase 2, once broken move Vale Guardian in a clockwise rotation around the arena, always staying in the one sector that isn't lit. Keep rotating, and stand in greens if it's convenient and continue to do damage until Vale Guardian is defeated.

• Greens detonating and people go down? Scourges are not applying barrier at the right time "too early or too late", Healers are not timing their healing properly. Stand in green when it’s easy to do so. 
• Boss wandering off? The tank is eating Blues/Seekers and being teleported. Tank stays put and side-steps,blocks,dodge left or right, or distort.
• Dying to the breakbar AoE? You're not breaking it fast enough, or your team is not coordinating your CC and no one has their big skills off cooldown.
• Random downs in the pulses? Someone's standing in a lit pylon sector.

Take it slow, treat the pre-event as practice, and let the comp carry the rough edges. Good luck, Commanders.