GW Nightfall: Dzagonur Bastion (EN)

Deutsche Version: • GW Nightfall: Bastion ...
Playlist: • Guild Wars Mission Wal...
Exemplary walkthrough of the mission Dzagonur Bastion in hard mode; no commentary.
►General advice for this mission
Show your lightbringer title.
You fight a mix of kournan soldiers and margonite forces. As a physical fighter prepare against the kournan archer's whirlwind defense by bringing stance removal skills or asuran scan. For melee players it's advisable to either ignore kournan oppressors or bring a snare as they'll kite alot in this mission. Don't bring hard to replace enchantments as they'll probably get stripped by a kournan oppressor now and then; as they remove three enchantments at once cover enchantments won't be very helpful.
The most common tactic to beat this mission is to send all three parties of allies to the east. This allows for reasonable distances traversed between fights, taking full use out of the NPCs as they'll defend their bombard until the very end and giving them a chance to kill off foes by themselves in the first place. Don't panic when you see a troop of attackers charging from one of the middle bosses; between them and the middle bombard three vabbian guards fit the role of tanks as they're pretty hard to take down and with assistance by the bombard foes they keep busy will be pressured when you find time to deal with them.
Your task in this mission is to kill all four margonite generals. Therefore you can ignore most other foes unless there's so many of them (and your means to keep them from destroying bombards are so few) that you're forced to fight them or lose the bonus.
There's plenty of corpses in this mission and it's useful to bring both minion masters and ritualist spirits. Both of them help in taking down opponents and keeping them from destroying the bombards. After defeating one of the four margonite generals you can usually run straight to the next as minions and spirits will render any foes left busy or dead.
As traversing large distances in short time is a key in doing this mission effortlessly and successfully consider bringing multiple copies of "fall back!" or other party wide speed boosts. This also helps alot for achieving the master bonus reward.
►Bonus task
Defend the bastion's defenses. In order to get the master reward at least 5 of 6 defenses must be defended. So don't panic when you lose one of them - you can still beat the mission and get all rewards. A defense counts as lost when it's shown red on the mission map. A gray defense will still count as not destroyed and may be recaptured.
►Builds used in this walkthrough
Lightbringer rank in this video: 8
Player: OQASEZJTRFCFGF7VQF2FaF2k
Hero 1: OANDUsleSxMKgUBbh4BNfuEzDA
Hero 2: OAljUwGpZSxMKgUBbhVV+Y7Y1YA
Hero 3: OgljgwMpZOGjwB54b4N0h746NA
Hero 4: OgljgwMpZOGjwB54b4N0h746NA
Hero 5: OAhjQoGYIP3hh2koqKNncCvhJA
Hero 6: OACjEyiM5MXTMm3scyMreTuhJA
Hero 7: OAOjAyhDJPYTnp1Lce2smtEBAA
Feel free to leave a comment with feedback or questions!

[@shawn13011]

Thanks. i had to get help for this mission, so i skipped the cutscene out of courtesy. all caught up now thanks

[@CursedRat4u]

Since im lacking Norgu and Razah(on my way to finish Nightfall to grab them). Would this team composition still be viable ?

[@Krschkr]

Yes, especially in normal mode.

[@Boom3120]

interesting builds you got, seems to work fine even if you didn't give runes to your hero (judging from their hp and energy).
here's what my team look like right now with ~90% of your builds : prntscr.com/h3anzx
i don't have a second ritualist available right now so i took a monk instead.
it went well, just felt like i was lacking some heal so i removed one elementalist and replaced it with a healer.
would you recommend this team for general uses or only this mission in particular ?
do you think having full hp runes on heroes is the best?

[@Krschkr]

In fact my heroes were fully equipped with runes. I always prefer armor over increased health or energy. If you happen to be able reading german, read this; I wrote a little guide on equipping heroes:
www.wartower.de/forum/showthread.php?t=1167099#I.a
In case you don't understand it, here's a short summary: Armor reduces damage from the most common damage sources, that is most skills and auto attacks. It does not help against degeneration and armor ignoring damage. Degeneration is capped at 10 pips, which is 20 damage per second. Unless that's applied to your whole team you can neglect degeneration. Armor ignoring damage is somewhat rare on foes; Mesmers are a great source of it, but most mesmer foes aren't designed as damage dealers. Necromancers usually bring cold damage instead of their armor ignoring skills. The armor ignoring bonus damage from attack skills isn't too important as foes usually just auto attack and have buffs which make their auto attacks way more devastating than the bonus damage. Therefore, picking armor over health boosts, you reduce the amount of healing you need, so your healer will need to spend less energy (so you might run a monk or rit healer over a n/mo or n/rt as they're more effective, yet less efficient) or you can reduce the total amount of healing on your heroes. Think of a domination signet mesmer with 6 signets: He'll get +18 armor from his insignias which is 26.8% less damage. When that hero would usually get hit by inferno@17 fire magic that'd deal 149 damage, but the insignias will reduce it to 109 damage. That's 40 less damage, which is as much as a full survivor armor would grant. This means that even if you don't get healed at all armor boosts will be more likely to keep you alive than health boosts.
Alright, so we want to pick armor insignias - what else? Well, I usually equip my heroes with a single superior attribute rune on their damage attribute for accelerating the killing. In some rare cases I prefer two major runes, e.g. domination signet mesmers with 15 domination magic and 14 fast cast (exemplary template: OQBDAcMCP/g8spjrh83BTvhA). Except for elite areas you could say that vaporizing your enemy is just the better approach to staying alive. The more damage you can build up the more quickly, the less backline power your team needs. If you can bring some additional "side defense" such as armor boosts, spirits and minions as distraction, rupts or knockdowns, then your need of healing power will decrease even further. The build I used in this video is designed in this spirit: Great damage, as few backline as needed, but armor buffs, weakness, random rupts, minions, spirits and brutal damage to kill the foes off while they attack your bone fiends. I reckon one could use a team build like this in most missions and areas playing a physical melee build themselves, but I myself would probably add some more defense and of course at least one hard rezz... :D
That said, this team is designed to be really supportive for a physical melee player bringing multiple sources of cracked armor and "Find their weakness!", strength of honour, splinter weapon and dark fury. I'd have to test some builds in order to tell you what I'd change for a caster profession player, but at a first glance: Replace the channeling rit healer with a full rit, monk or n/rt healer or an e/mo prot (exemplary template: OgNDwcPPP0iaBJZmA10i1j7K). Despite running frenzy the higher base armor and standing in a good distance from your heroes reduces the amount of healing or prots needed when playing any physical. On the BiP replace dark fury with a spirit of life. Bring union over shadow song on your ST prot rit and of course a hard rezz over resurrection signet. Put the command utility skills on both necros and let your eles have some more energy management; fights will take a bit longer so they should have some more sustainability without relying on BiP all the time. As you play searing flames yourself, consider giving them Teinai's wind aswell.
The team might then look like this, although I have to warn you again, this is untested:
Player: OgljwkKsZSfe4C0NjV7Y+C4gNN
Hero 1: OghjEaIMzO0iwB54bkD9G6wkL
Hero 2: OgNDgMvtN0iwB54bkD9G6QdC
Hero 3: OAljYkFsZSxMKgUBbhVV4B7Y1Y
Hero 4: OAljYkFsZSxMKgUBbhVV+Y7Y1Y
Hero 5: OAhjYgEaIP3hhWVVaO5EeDzxJ
Hero 6: OgNDwcPPP0iaBJZmA10i1j7K
Hero 7: OAOjQygc4MYTnp17xFOhmtkLG
On your team: You're running a backline of 4 heroes. That's a lot. A lot a lot. As explained above I prefer to keep the backline small by bringing so much damage that I won't need much backline. Don't bring resurrection skills on healers as they'll let more people die while bringing someone back. Rather give them more skills to prevent deaths in the first place. Your prot monk's build is really energy intensive, you should rather run it on a n/mo with 14 soul reaping or an e/mo with ether renewal over shield of regeneration. Bring "Stand your ground!" on your secondary paragon heroes as the +24 armor mean 34% less damage received. Thunderclap is better than invoke lightning as you can still bring chain lightning (which is basically a 2 seconds casting time invoke lighting) and don't have to rely on shell shock for cracked armor. Cracked armor on the other hand is something you really want to have in your team as the bone fiends and your eles will love the -20 armor, as that means dealing 41% more damage. Thunderclap + chain lightning has a better damage over time, is less likely to overcast and brings cracked armor, weakness and random rupts. Really the superior skill choice in PvE. :)
P.S.: I run two superior and one major attribute rune on my paragon's mesmer heroes and in return let them have a +60 hp staff. That synergizes well with their 2 attribute builds as the staff gives 20% chance on half reload time on all spells no matter the attribute. And you don't really need a 40/40 set anymore anyway when your mesmer is buffed to 14 fast cast, right? :D As a result those heroes have 405 health. But as the paragon is a master of applying party wide protection while dealing damage, the mesmers have an enormeous damage burst, bring rupts for shutdown and the paragon prots synergize well with the ST prot the 405 health almost never result in a death on my team. Lucky me that I have a paragon and 5 mesmer heroes... ^-^

[@Boom3120]

thanks for all the informations :)

[@Krschkr]

You're welcome. Feel free to ask any question to builds and missions, I'll try to answer them adequately. :)

[@poggiesgw]

For your paragon team, what items do your heroes use?

[@Jonathan-Jones]

Is your Shield of the Lion dyed black in this video?

[@Krschkr]

I think so.