Guild Wars 2 Mordrem Husk Copper Guide

Guild Wars 2 Mordrem Husk Copper Guide by Spyritdragon

Greetings, heroes and hero-ettes of the Silverwastes. I feel this could use a little bit of an explanation. I regularly take command during the breach, and i’ve found that a bit of explanation for the Husk boss is more or less in order, seeing how often it fails, and it’s often too much for me to type out completely in-game during the breach.

There is a strong and persistent belief going around the Silverwastes that during the Breach event, when fighting the Champion Mordrem Husk Copper (henceforth referred to simply as “Red”) under Red Rock Bastion, one should not use AoE attacks.

Red is traditionally one of the easiest to fail bosses during the Breach, and as a Silverwastes commander, it is consistently my biggest worry. Yet it doesn’t have to be so hard. I’ve seen this thing DPSed down 80% of it’s health in just 90 seconds. However, this requires precise tactics and proper knowledge of how to fight the boss.

The point i’m making here is – people still seem to insist that no AoE attacks should be used at Red. This myth comes from the belief that every small Offshoot killed near the boss heals it, and as such AoE should be avoided to avoid killing the offshoots. Point is, they don’t heal it – they apply 10 seconds of regeneration and fury when they die. As we all know, regeneration stacks duration, and this buff doesn’t even heal it too much. While i certainly wont deny that it is very much possible to kill it, it greatly reduces your DPS. If just two or three people use high-damage AoE’s, you’ll get the regeneration buff on the boss and the healing from the offshoots will be applied. And even with everyone using perfectly single-target attacks, your damage output will be reduced enormously, making it so that it’ll take most of the time you have availible to kill the thing, making it risky business. In short, it’s possible to do it single-target, but it is by far not worth the risk.

So how should you deal with it? Well, there are a few big points crucial to the bossfight.

1. Poison uptime I cannot stress this enough: keep a constant poison debuff on the boss. Even thought the offshoots have negligible regeneration, after a certain point poison bubbles spawn, and these definitely do heal it for fairly large, noticeable amounts. Poison reduces the healing from this by 33%, which is a godsend. On top, it’ll also work against the regeneration buff granted by any little offshoots you might end up killing near it. Especially in the later stages of the fight, make sure this boss is poisoned at all times, especially when poison bubbles are about to pop near it.

2. Add kiting The adds might not heal it for huge amounts, but they’re definitely pretty annoying, and the regeneration buff does add up. However, if you go for a ‘No AoE’ strategy, you’ll lose ridiculously much DPS, which makes the boss hard to even finish on time often, and is pretty much never worth it when you add up the numbers. The better strategy is to have 1-3 people running around, kiting the adds. They run around to random places sometimes, and it’s really easy to draw their aggro – just run near them, or hit them a small bit to attract their attention. Then run away from the boss, taking all the adds with you, and just keep running around DPSing the boss and drawing add aggro again when needed. This way, it is easy to prevent any adds from dying near the boss, and the ones that do will have their boons easily ripped away.

3. Poison bubbles These things do heal the boss for alot, and are a big nuisance. When they get near the boss, and pop either by being killed or by touching the boss, they heal it for a noticeable amount. How to deal with them? Well, for a first, the poison uptime i mentioned above is very important. Aside from that: During the first 80% of the fight, poison bubbles spawn around and move towards the -centre- of the room where they will pop. So, the trick here is to kite the boss away from that centre. Bring the boss anywhere else in the room, and the poison bubbles will pop harmlessly. It gets tricky at 20% – the bubbles spawn much faster, and they move towards the boss instead. Here, there’s two things you can do. One is to just keep DPSing the boss as much as possible (still kiting the adds away). With the added damage from using full AoE instead of single-target, and the reduced healing due to poison, you can fairly easily still keep reducing its health. Just keeping hammering away at it. The second is the more obvious one, and is to try to kill the bubbles before they get near the boss – this works, but if not enough people are working on it, it’s best to just turn your attention back to the boss and help hammer away at it.

4. Keep your placement in mind The little ridge there is a nice place to stand and ranged-DPS the husk, but keep your head in the game. If things go well, the husk will be kited away from the centre, and make sure you follow the husk so you can keep outputting max DPS. I dont know why, but some people just stay on that ridge even when the husk goes out of range of their abilities. Make sure you dont do that, and that you can keep outputting your full DPS. If it’s safe, you can move into melee range and use your (generally higher) melee damage to kill it – just make sure you’re not drawing any add aggro away from the kiters. But make sure you’re always in range with whatever DPS you’re using.

5. Boon rip This is a minor, but still significant, detail. If you’re playing a relevant class, take boon rip to this fight. Properly kited, few adds will die near the boss, but there are so many that it’s bound to happen sometime. And while the regen doesn’t heal it for huge amounts, less regen is always better, so if you can, rip the boons off of the boss when you see them.

Those are all the points i can think of right now – hopefully, i’ll compile a bit of a guide to the rest of the sore points for Breach and Vinewrath lateron. Please do comment and point me out on any mistakes i make – i’m open to improvement.

TL;DR – Adds only apply regen which doens’t heal much. Keep poison up at all times, kite the adds, rip it’s boons, use your full AoE DPS and make sure you’re in range for it.