Can we do something about how broken the champion bounty in The Desolation Mulkstalker is?

[Lord Erik.6903]

This champion is literally harder than every other bounty save for probably Rubedon, Trembing Earth. He's harder than world boss's, Strike Mission boss's, and many Raid boss's. I seldom see his health below 80%, and he's gotta be one of the most broken things I've seen in the game. You have to practically pray to an RNG god that he doesn't get phase shift, Laser, or Signaler. He's literally got more break bars than every other boss. It would be fine if he healed only once after a bar break, or if there was a bar break healing CD, but he spams it even when his HP is below the 20% mark on the second break bar.

[Handsel.2891]

Challenging, but perfectly doable if you save your CC skills for his breakbar, and so does everyone else in the fight.A tougher-than-usual enemy doesn't mean it's a broken one. Communicate, coordinate, conquer.

[DaFishBob.6518]

You think Muckstalker is broken? Wait until you try Diwaana, you have to pray to even hit the darn thing while it burrows for half the fight and blinds and blocks the other half. It's like trying to hit something from any other MMO due to actual RNG ranged blocking it has.

Muckstalker requires holding back CC skills so that it's ready every 20% HP. If coordinated group, you can damage it at just the right pace to have the CC skills available at each bar to minimize the effect.

[Eramonster.2718]

Let's not forget "Survivor". Fully negates attacks/cc. Tried to low-manned Mulkstalker long ago, but immediately turn down the plan after seeing the abilities.

[MarySueLlama.8136]

@"Lord Erik.6903" said:This champion is literally harder than every other bounty save for probably Rubedon, Trembing Earth. He's harder than world boss's, Strike Mission boss's, and many Raid boss's. I seldom see his health below 80%, and he's gotta be one of the most broken things I've seen in the game. You have to practically pray to an RNG god that he doesn't get phase shift, Laser, or Signaler. He's literally got more break bars than every other boss. It would be fine if he healed only once after a bar break, or if there was a bar break healing CD, but he spams it even when his HP is below the 20% mark on the second break bar.

my god, I had to fight him with Phase Shift AND Laser on at the same time today >.> Fought it again with easier ley buffs and it still failed. Feels like I'm never gonna get this bounty for the achievement- Anet, please either nerf this thing's spammy cc healing bar, or else reclassify it as a Legendary so that people know it's a doozy going into it, and it can hopefully attract a larger group of players to come fight it with "Legendary" in its name.

[casualkenny.9817]

Or make it so his regen skill every 20% has a cooldown/castchargelimit.

(as in the 80%mark regen has a CD of 1min, the 60% a separate 1min etc)

[Friday.7864]

Do it with 5 people who know what their CC skills are.CC when breakbar appears and you'll kill it easily.When a horde of pugs tries to kill it the amount of players just scales the CC bar, and with half the ppl brain afk attacking it there's no way to succeed.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

We call it the Immortal Lizard for a very good reason. Mucky is one of the few bosses in this game that do not work in brain-afk-mode.

Mucky is often picked by bounty-squads, as it is only champion difficulty and should be a fast kill. The more people you bring, others already mentioned, the more CC and HP regeneration scale up. We once managed to out-dps its HP regeneration, with almost the entire map in one location. Smaller groups have better success rate, but you need most people with CC ready. The common Open World situation with ~ 10 - 20 % people who contribute CC will turn into an absolute nightmare with Mucky.

NOTE: With No Quarter being live, we have got a new opportunity. The United Legions Waystation provides this Electromagical Pulse. It is a massive AoE CC skill with an insane range. Already tested it in a few older maps, works excellent. You only need one guy to have the final mastery-tier complete, to place such a Waystation in any map. The others are fine when they unlocked tier 1, which costs 1 Mastery Point. This offers a new opportunity of equipping a wide variety of classes with different builds, rotations, playstyles with a long-range powerful CC attack. It does not waste any of the skill slots, as it is accessed via the special action key. Short cast time, huge impact.

[Lexi.1398]

i do think its kinda amusing that every boss constantly called for nerf has been because of its cc bar. serpents ire (which i can say, was too strong a cc bar, but didnt need to be as weak as it was nerfed to lol), vinetooth prime (break bar once and every group is capable of kill), muckstalker...the only real exception is diwaana who is worse than muck with the same mechanic lol, and legendary leyline anom- but that gets its complaints in open world instead of forum.

I do think muckstalker has an issue, but it's not with it's breakbar strength itself, its that he kinda just spams his regen/breakbar mechanic constantly in low CC groups (meaning, you see more breakbars if you are worse at it- likely the mechanic has a cooldown which doesn't care about break end time, only break start time.) I think that mechanic either needs a cooldown, or reduce breakbar strength considerably but in turn have muck regen everytime the bar isn't recovering.

[Astralporing.1957]

@MikeG.6389 said:Challenging, but perfectly doable if you save your CC skills for his breakbar, and so does everyone else in the fight.He regens 2% of hp per second during breakbar phase, and the phase triggers every time he gets below each 20% hreshold (so, at 80%, 60%, 40% and 20%). Problem is, the ability has no cooldown, and can repeat. That means that if the bar is not broken before that ability pulses even once, he's usually back over the threshold, triggering the breakbar/heal phase again. Unless you can deal enough damage to offset that healing, but, due to scaling, that is usually next to impossible in larger squads. And, of course, if you fail breakbar, it's not unusual for him to go at least one breakbar threshold back.

If the once-broken thresholds could not repeat, or if there was a cooldown on them, it would have been okay, but as he is now, with large squads he is very hard to kill, and some defensive instabilities make that a practical impossibility (if you get those, you're better off just forgetting about it). In fact, the only times i have ever managed to kill him was in small groups of less than 10 people, where the scaling for both breakbar and hp regen vs damage is still manageable.

[Mourningstar.7309]

The unfortunate fact of the matter is some bounties' inherent mechanics, coupled with the random ley-line bonuses, can make some of these bosses a nightmare. Any enemy that blocks, evades, blinds, or rapidly teleports in combination with phase-shift in particular, can make an already unpleasant fight completely unbearable. I have walked away from these encounters a number of times when I can tell it's just not worth the hassle.

[Vision.7265]

I don't want to nerf him. I would like to maybe upgrade his status to be a Legendary Bounty. That would be much more fitting than as a bounty champ troll. LOL.