As mentioned above. There is consistently 1 ability that kills me. The poison. As assassination the ONLY way to get the debuff off of you is cloak of shadows. If brann just happens to not care if you die or not that is an emergency ability. I have done 30 pulls and have died to that ability 26/30 times. A 2 minute cooldown is entirely too long to be able to mitigate it on my own. With how often Brann just chooses not to dispell or interrupt it just gets downright impossible. There is literally nothing I can do to avoid it. I can vanish but the dot is still there. If I cant self heal quickly enough it kills in 3 ticks. 611 IL 4-piece with 5M health. Each tick does 1.3M damage not including the melee he does hits for 1.9M. Most of the time If I dont dispell after the first tick he melees and I just die. I literally have a 1 second window to cloak before I die. This is just plain broken and relies on the RNG of Brann doing his damn job. I don’t have the time to gear another character to beat this guy either. Why make a challenging fight based on RNG and not actual skill or gear?
Maybe you should be attempting the fight sooner in the season rather than waiting until the last week.
Regardless, its not impossible on any rogur spec. Comb through your talent tree and look for things that may help you survive. Theres also guides out there and if you want an easier time, get a higher ilvl.
-Brann’s cleanse has a 1 min CD
-Vanishing while he casts Enfeebling Spittle should prevent the application (seems to work on Assassination and Sub, but haven’t tried Outlaw)
I agree the dot is the most hard thing in that fight, besides random melee crits from Zek’vir.
You have to time it right. Pick Brann as a Healer and use Idol of the Earthmother Curio because when you get the shield, you will become immune to that poison while the shield is up.
Time it with his dispel - vanish and cloak.
Start with Brann dispelling first - if he doesn’t, use vanish, then cloak, then vanish again.
In between he should dispell you as he has 1 min CD - but he has to be in close range to you and not too far away.
Vanish breaks the dot; It has a snare component.
Outlaw can use Killing Spree to break the dot in addition to vanish, and it tends to be a smidge more reliable since Vanish likes to reset the fight in P2 on ?? mode.
I did it several weeks ago just post Brann nerf and around 615-620 ilvl (which isn’t hard to obtain through delves, the time walking raid, the new ring which I didn’t have when completing this, etc) with a ton of life to spare. It’s not impossible, it’s just not a lot of fun.
So here’s a few things that I did that helped a ton through the fight.
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Vanish / Cloak the poison. Vanish does work but I can’t remember if you have to cast it before the cast goes off to avoid it, I would recommend using a focus macro on Zekky-boi to make sure when you’re hitting the egg you can still see what he’s doing
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Use tricks on Brann and let him die and tank as much damage as possible through the fight. Don’t apply it before your open as it would immediately break the fight, so open with ambush then go into your tricks.
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This is a burst fight. For every other class apparently you use your burst on the egg, don’t. You need Zek down as fast as possible and it’s very much a race as you’re fighting your cooldowns more or less.
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Be in full enchants, full consumables, full potions, except probs not needing aug runes. Use your sharpening stones, have both cavedweller’s delight & a health potion (they’re on separate cooldowns), flask, and buff food.
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It’s far less about Brann doing his job (because his stuff is equally on a timer) and more about your positioning and managing your own abilities.
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When Brann isn’t tanking Zek, keep him in the center as much as possible, because if you get an unlucky egg and a spike cone, you can shadow step behind him to avoid it, as long as he’s in the center.
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Don’t use cheat death, use Elusiveness. This will give you a blanket 20% less direct damage on a 45 second cooldown which will be invaluable for dealing with both the dot in bad situations and cheat death won’t keep you alive through the dot anyway.
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(edit:) Also use a build that gives you two charges of vanish, this will also be invaluable on this fight
Edit 2: Furthermore, I’m not sure if you’re struggling on the first tier or the second, but I’m assuming this is the harder of the two which is what I’m giving advice for ^-^;
I had a video posted a while back showing how I did this as Trickster Outlaw the same week they did the changes to make him actually viable to kill. And the video was the second kill I did.
Killing spree is a good line of advice, and the damage it does is really nice in helping kill the egg as well. However, I found using it for that damage was more valuable than root removal as there’s also a timing window with the first half second Vanish that you can use to avoid the reset. You just need to essentially hit any damaging ability immediately after Vanish goes off. It’s hard to feel out, but you can vanish weave solo content pretty easily once you’re comfortable it. Killing spree will also get you killed in P2 pretty quickly, as a bad lineup with spikes and the animation lock could mean death. Worst case, Cloak cleanses the KS stagger damage, but leaves you without the cleanse for the debuff.
My Brann was set as DPS to help out with burning eggs and interrupts, instead of cleanses. His cleanse is unreliable and could leave you hanging. His damage is also just really good, and cuts the fight time down pretty substantially. Plus, tossing tricks on him for some melee relief is a godsend.
Leech is a lot more helpful than people realize, especially for content like this. I was leeching a lot of his melee damage back during my kill. Add health pots/consumables to the list as well. There’s no reason anyone should go into the fight without every bonus they can handle.
Even with all that, it took me about 20-30 attempts before I could get the second kill. It should be much easier to do now, though. Item level is easy to get, and the ring buffs can be set up for self healing and damage.
It shouldn’t be that hard with everything they’ve tossed at people. A lot of it is just going to be a trial of persistence, waiting on a good lineup. It’s not a well designed fight. The RNG and inconsistency with his casts, especially in P2, makes it a war of attrition more than an actual challenge. You’re just waiting for egg spawns and ability casts, and Brann to some extent, to stop messing with you for one run.
I only have done it as sub, but I figure the challenges are similar.
I agree that the spittle is the hardest part.
Here’s my solution…
PvP trinket.
Seriously. No way I could have done it without that. I only needed it once, but I would have been dead without it.
I did it was dwarf so i had an extra dispel. I’m not sure i would have been able to do it without that - didn’t think of pvp trinket. Outlaw is probably easiest for the dispel because it can vanish way more often but it has more of a problem with burst damage for the egg.
Note be careful if tricksing brann or losing aggro after vanishing, brann can be dumb and constantly back up, and if he goes out of the room zekvir follows him and will reset. Very frustrating.