Now that I'm on the topic and remembering certain raids. There was this one funny/embarassing raid where Ktaar and an elite shadow went up against a solo Fortress healer at the Watcher. After, I don't know, 50 hours or more of fruitless head on fighting, I decided to just assassinate the healer and get him out of the way. And then the humiliation started... because Ktaar and the elite imperial shadow could not take down the Watcher before the healer unghosted and started healing it up again. At that point my free time had ended and I called off the raid. I expected a demotion at any time.

Clearly I need a PvM tutorial.

I'm not alone, though! There were plenty of times I watched a group of ragers (literally a group, and many of them competent players like Golhyr or Brinkmun) spend 50 hours or more taking down the Nexus inners.

>Beyond that... I've played a number of similarly built
>characters that didn't struggle with guardians as much as you
>seemed to, so I'm curious:
>
>1) What kind of strategy did you take in terms of how you
>were geared? What about weapons? For a felar assassin, I'd
>fight an awful lot of PKs with a one-handed sword, but I might
>well switch up to staff or spear to fight an inner unopposed,
>wanting that extra tanking over the backfist damage. Even
>though the tanking isn't exactly the problem, any damage you
>save is less damage bind wounds needs to keep fixing and more
>of the direct damage it can eat into. I'd have to try it both
>ways again to see if that still holds up.
>


Admittedly, I always used a one handed weapon and shield or just the one handed weapon. Never a staff/spear. For players, I figured the shield would work better for defense when laying on important maledicts. For mobs, the backfist damage like you said because I didn't see the melee damage as a factor. I guess there's a sliding scale of balancing offense and defense when fighting mobs.


>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?


>3) Would using some non-dispellable DR have been a workable
>option? For example, let's say dispellable protection is easy
>for you to get. Might it have been worth your time to use it
>and reapply it after each successful dispel?
>


Yeah, I could count on unlimited protection against the Fortress. It would be suicide for me to take on the Watcher without it. And I could count on stoneskin against the Archmage/Spirit - it would be frustrating to take them without it, especially after the Archmage softens.

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