Dulfy Reborn

A guide to Gorseval the Multifarious, the second raid boss in Spirit Vale.

General Information

Gearing and Preparation

Unlike Vale Guardian, Gorseval is a pretty big DPS check so you will definitely want to have full ascended if possible. On this fight it is possible to have sub 1% wipes so having every bit of DPS will definitely help.

Party Composition

Disclaimer: I want to preface this section by saying that there is no universal optimal composition. This is simply what worked for us and may be different for you. Do not read this at face value and think this is the meta or other classes are incapable of doing it.

Here is the exact composition we used in the kill video and our reasoning. It is what works for us. You will need to adjust your group’s composition and builds based on what works for you. Don’t follow this composition blindly.

• 1 Chronomancer Tank – You just need to swap some of the berserker gear with some knight stuff for the extra toughness. You will still use the standard Leadership runes for the boon duration. We used a Chronomancer tank here because Chronomancer brings a lot to the table with its incredible utility and flexibility. It can fulfill multiple support roles here to act as a tank and also giving quickness and alacrity to the party. This way you don’t lose out the DPS by having a tank and Chronomancer in the raid as Chronomancer plays more of a support role than pure DPS. Alternatively, any standard tank will work.
• 1 Druid Healer -  You will want to use Monk runes and Zealot armor/weapons if possible. For trinkets you can use Berserker usually or Cleric if you need the extra healing power but beware of the increased toughness from using Cleric which can screw with aggro since aggro is based on toughness. Alternatively a Tempest Auramancer healer could wok well here as well.
• 2 Condition Berserkers – We used Warriors here because both Gorseval and the walls around him have a large hitbox. Condition builds are extremely good as you can still burn Gorseval during the updraft phase for some extra DPS and some of the adds here are have strippable buffs that make them immune to physical damage. Additionally, Warriors have lots of immobilize and cripple options for the Souls split. Alternatively Condition Reapers would also work well here instead of Berserkers.
• 1 PSEA Berserker – Standard Warrior for Might sharing and Banners.
• 2 Tempests – Staff Tempests are extremely good for orb clearing at range and DPS in general.
• 3 Heralds – We used 3 Herald here for both power DPS and buffs from Glint. You can use any power DPS here but Heralds are good for boon sharing/might stacking so you want at least 1-2 in a raid.

Consumables

• Utility Primer and Metabolic Primer if you can afford them. They cost 150 gems each.
• Delicious Rice Ball and Furious Tuning Crystal for healer.
• Fried Golden Dumpling (or Chocolate Omnomberry Cream) and Bountiful Sharpening Stone for Chronomancer.
• Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup or Seaweed Salad and Bountiful Sharpening Stone for Herald.
• Fried Golden Dumpling and Bountiful or Potent Superior Sharpening Stone for PSEA Warrior.
• Rare Veggie Pizza and Toxic Focusing Crystal for condition damage dealers.
• Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup and Potent Superior Sharpening Stone for general power DPS.

Pre-fight Assignment

You need to figure out pre-fight who is taking care of which Charged Soul. You need 3 players who can hold down 3 of the Charged Souls with cripple/chill and immobilize while rest of the raid form a zerg team that kill each of the Charged Souls one by one. Additionally, you need to figure out which Tempest is clearing the orbs and which one is acting as a backup.

Mastery Requirement

You must have Updraft Usage mastery for this fight. Additionally, defeating the Vale Guardian will unlock the Rift Traveler mastery which you also need for a quicker access to this boss for repairs. If you don’t have this Rift Traveler mastery, you will need to relog to character select, enter the raid to repair and then die to get the checkpoint prompt which can be a bit of a hassle.

Raid Mechanics

Gorseval has 21.6 millon HP and an enrage timer of 7 minutes. There are 3 general phases.

Videos

Druid PoV

Phase 1

Phase 1 starts from the beginning of the fight until the first invul phase at 66%. Do not attack Gorseval until everyone has landed on the platform as the updraft that carries you to the fight area disappears as soon as you attack him. This pattern in this phase is basically Swipe/Smash –> Ground Pound –> Spirits –> World Eater –> Swipe/Smash –> Ground Pound –> (Spirits) –> Invul/Charged Souls.

Updraft Usage

Updraft here is a bit tricky to use. To get maximum height, you must not press or hold down your W key while inside the updraft or you won’t gain enough height to reach the platform. Press W to get inside the updraft and once you are inside, take your finger off the W key and gain height before pressing W key again.

There are only four updrafts for this fight, not counting the initial one that carry you to the fight platform which will disappear as soon as the fight starts. There will be phases in the fight where you need to use updrafts to get away from the fight platform and these specific updrafts will disappear once your team has used them. You must minimize your updraft usage as you have a limited number of them and using them is a DPS loss that will get you in trouble with the tight enrage timer. The four updrafts are located in the 4 corners of the platform, and we usually label them using the cardinal directions (NW, NE, SW, SE).

Swipe and Smash

Gorseval has two basic attacks, a swipe and a smash. The basic pattern for them is swipe-smash-swipe-swipe-smash. He will usually open up with a swipe but sometime with a smash as well. Tank need to turn Gorseval to avoid him from cleaving the raid. The smash is the one you need to watch out for as Gorseval will raise one of his arms in the air and then plunge it into the ground. If you do not dodge it or have Aegis to block it you will be knocked down and lose a few seconds of DPS.

Ground Pound

Ground Pound is a special attack Gorseval will perform that require crowd control skills to break his bar. He will do this attack typically twice in this phase. Right before he starts this attack, he will run back to the center and gain a breakbar. The center of the room will be safe for the first two patterns while rest of the area is filled with a black goo except a ring at the outer edge. If you stand inside this black goo when it explodes, you will be dealt massive damage and receive 25 stacks of vulnerability. If you are downed while inside this black goo, you will die when it explodes so it is important to rez downed players ASAP. If you do not breakbar this fast enough, the entire room will be filled with this black goo and it is essentially a raid wipe.

Typically you want to remove this breakbar as fast as you can as the boss gains permanent retaliation (713 damage per hit) while this breakbar is active that will do some serious damage to classes like Tempests (Rebound here may help). Some burst healing might be needed here so druids should have their Celestial Avatar form ready. In organized groups we sometime delay the second Ground Pound breakbar so we push him into the next phase and avoid spirit spawns but this may not be necessary if you have good DPS. Revenants should be doing majority of the breakbar here and Tempests can drop Icebows here for Revenants to use since switching to staff is generally a DPS loss. Engineers can also remove most of the breakbar by using Slick Shoes (you will need superspeed and run in circles with Slice Shoes inside the boss’s small red reticle if you want to remove the breakbar quickly).

Spirits

Four spirit adds spawns usually right after the Ground Pound. They can be either Enraged Spirit or Angered Spirit. Angry Spirits will try to cripple you while Enraged Spirits have a strippable boon that makes them immune to physical damage and will try kick people around. It is very important to get the spirits under control as they can gang up on the Tempests or kick players constantly (even off the platform if the Spectral Wall is down). For the first set of spirit adds, we typically group them up and pull them next to the boss for cleaving. Mesmer Focus #4 or Revenant Axe 5 can be used to group them together.

If you push Gorseval into the invul stage fast enough (i.e. 66%), you can avoid the second set of spirits spawns. This is why we sometime delay the breakbar phase on the second Ground Pound so we have more time to DPS and push the boss over. If any of the spirits remain alive on the platform during the World Eater attack, Gorseval will consume them and gain a stacking damage buff of 10% per spirit. If the spirits are badly managed you may see 4-5 stacks of this buff on Gorseval and at this point the fight can get pretty difficult due to the damage increase.

World Eater/Spectral Wall

World Eater is a special roomwide attack by Gorseval that will kill anyone left standing in the platform once he finishes channeling the attack. The entire fight platform lits up and an inner circle expands from the middle and reaches the outer edge. There will be a massive explosion a few seconds later and anyone on the platform is instantly killed.

To counter this attack you will need to drag Gorseval to a Spectral Wall next to one of the four updrafts so you can cleave/AoE Gorseval and the Spectral Wall at the same time without wasting DPS on the wall alone. We always use the NE updraft first and go clockwise for the next updraft but this obviously varies depending on your team/tank.The Spectral Wall has a huge hitbox so if you position yourself correctly you will be able to hit both at the same time. Tempest Meteor Shower/Lava Font will hit both and melee can cleave in a direction perpendicular to the boss and the wall. Once the wall is broken, DPS Groseval until the inner ring of World Eater almost reaches the outer and then jump off to glide on the updraft. Do not jump off early as doing so is a DPS loss. Healers need to make sure that everyone is topped off while gliding as players can get attack.

Glider malfunction is one of the common deaths on Gorseval. To prevent this there are a couple tricks. You need to disable autoattack as the aftercast from abilities can cause your glider to not deploy correctly. You want to hold down your spacebar after you do the leap so you deploy your glider immediately. If you see your glider not deploy, release your spacebar and attempt to deploy again. Once your team has used an updraft for this phase, it will disappear for the reminder of the fight.

Charged Souls

The Charged Souls phase happens exactly at 66%. Four Charged Souls will spawn in the four corners of the room roughly in the same locations as the updrafts. They will attempt to run to Gorseval and if they reach Gorseval, who is now invul, Gorseval will come back to life and cast World Eater, which is essentially a wipe. The Charged Souls also pulse AoE weakness around them so you should always max melee them if possible.

Some raid teams do this differently but we uses a setup where we have three players immobilizing/cripple three of the Charged Souls while rest of the zerg start at the remaining one (usually NW) and go around clockwise to kill them. If you have three Warriors here they can keep the Charged Souls crippled and immobilized by using the Sword F1 skill and cancel to keep the Charged Souls immobilized. Only Cripple/Immobilize/Chill works here and other crowd controls such as a knockback/daze etc do not work. Sylvari racial skill Grasping Vines has a pretty long root that works well here as well and can be used twice by a Sylvari mesmer with Mimic.

Phase 2

Phase 2 occurs from 66% to 33%. Phase 1 mechanics still remain unchanged but there is also a new mechanic being added.

Spectral Darkness

Spectral Darkness are these orbs that spawn randomly throughout the room during the entire phase. They are harmless initially but they will expand out to an AoE if not killed quickly. Anyone that touches this AoE will get a 10 stack debuff that reduces their outgoing damage and increases their incoming damage by 10%. This debuff also ticks for 2k per tick. To remove this debuff you must run to the golden droplets that spawn after you kill an orb. Each golden droplet will remove 5 stacks of this debuff. You only want the ranged to clear these orbs as melee clearing them risks having them stand inside the AoE and eating the debuff.

Staff Tempests really shine at orb clearing duty so if you are using Tempests one should have the main orb clearing duty while the others act as backup. A single Lava Font with some autoattack will kill an orb. You want to clear as little orbs as possible to maintain DPS uptime on Gorseval. You only need to clear orbs that are in the path to the next Spectral Wall for the next World Breaker and orbs that are in the way of the Charged Souls.

The next Charged Souls that occurs at 33% will be a little interesting due to the orb placement so it is important to clear these orbs as soon as possible or otherwise you will have trouble with the Charged Souls getting to Gorseval too fast.

Phase 3

Phase 3 is the last 33% and has all the mechanics with Phase 1 and 2 along with new and modified mechanics.

Ghostly Traps (Eggs)

Ghostly Traps are orange circles that appear under every player’s feed on a semi regular basis (every 20-25 seconds) past 33%. You will see the message Ghostly Traps materialize at your feet. These orange circles will appear seconds later usually after a Smash. It is very important that you do not get egged here by the Ghostly Traps. You have time to dodge out or strafe out (back peddle is usually too slow). If you fail to do so, you will get enclosed in eggs and will need to spam the special action button (- button by default) or have other players break you out. If you dodge into an orange circle (even if you are mid-dodge), you will still get encased and blocks/evade does not work.

Getting encased in eggs is a huge raidwide DPS loss and it is super important to not get encased. We usually spread out right before the Ghostly traps to avoid clustering together and dodging into each other’s traps. Gale Song trait in Tempest apparently works in breaking out of the egg but you shouldn’t rely on it. Sometimes the eggs get bugged and you are unable to do anything even if you get out of your egg. If this happens you will need to destroy the egg shell.

Ground Pound Pattern Change

Beware that the pattern for Ground Pound changes past 33%. You won’t see this change with the first Ground Pound past 33% but the subsequent ones will have this new pattern. The middle area is no longer safe for the first two pattern change so you will need to stay away from the middle and then dodge into the middle on the third pattern change. The first three patterns are shown below in sequence.

Updraft Usage and final DPS burn

We only use 3 updrafts in this fight. One in each phase. If you are lacking DPS, you might be able to get the 4th updraft off but we usually just go all out DPS on the 2nd World Breaker in phase 3 and hope for the best. If you use the 4th updraft you may run into an issue with the enrage where Gorseval gains 200% more damage but it is a decision your team may have to make on the spot. Also beware that the longer you prolong phase 3, the more issues you can run into with Ghostly traps or other things killing someone.

Acknowledments

Special thanks to Lyralei, Meg, Haru, DanBran, Chu, Arrow, RX, Ather, Jenna, Twana, David, Vega, Diviner, Enko, “Buy Riceballs” Daze and rest of [LOD] for their assistance with the raid and guide creation