>>2) What about to actually fight the guardians?
>>
>Same. Would it really have dramatically shortened the time
>given the spells were causing the critical damage?

Sorry, there I was getting at: how were you fighting the Watcher? E.g. spamming double spin kick the whole time, or?

>So the takeaway is.. bite the bullet and use DR preps, and
>balance out defense/offense?

That might be some of it, yeah. And really, I'm not totally sure spear/claws would've worked better than sword/claws for something like the Watcher -- that'd be one of those things where you'd probably have to try it both ways and see.

Some other ideas...

1) For any mob that's going to take you a while to kill, retarding its natural healing is probably worth your time. Since it's going to be a long fight, your crippling skills in general may be a little helpful.


2) Similarly, anything that helps you heal faster is probably worth your time. The Orb of the Twilight Lords was a good idea there. Maybe edges that help you heal faster are worth your time. Maybe a couple healing pills/potions are all you need to tip a hard raid to being done in one go. For some characters, leaving to hit a town healer may not be the worst idea, even if you have to kill the outer twice. (Yes, that's not doing it in one pass, but we're talking more generally, right?)


3) Keeping with 2) to some degree but going a step farther: You may want to wear some different gear for raids. Maybe a character like that can really use something like a pair of hammer pendants that they only bring out for things like raids. Maybe you keep around a piece or two of heavy -save armor to swap in for raids if you're not normally wearing a lot (and I might not as an assassinatey assassin) or otherwise get your saves up to eat into some of the direct damage spells a bit. Maybe in some cases you keep around a piece of gear that gives you a particular resistance that's handy for a raid you need to do a lot. (Note: I'm not suggesting anyone do all of these things and have a whole separate set of gear for cabal raiding. Theoretically you should have some sense of where the greatest gain for the least effort/burden can be found for your character -- if not, experiment!)