Talk:Duncan the Black/Archive 2

Ridiculous place

This is an absolutely ridiculous place. I've tried for 2 weeks to get help on beating Duncan in NM and not a single player has helped. The other offerings I have seen are players running HM for large sums of money. I can't even make it to Duncan let alone have a chance to kill him. I read the above and how it is supposed to be easy to do this but where are these players? I can't find a single player to help or show me. This place is so unbalanced that it's not even fun. It's like the Bison solo thing....everyone says to spirit spam it....well, what if you aren't a spirit spammer?? What about the other classes?? What if you don't have the secret builds for these things/areas, as only those builds work. What isn't the game balanced where you can use other classes or builds? Why have so many skills if you only use a few of them over and over. I feel bad for new players as they have no chance and a lot quit.

You'll find lots more folks doing Duncan, including in NM, when he's the Zaishen Bounty quest (about once every 66 days). Just keep an eye on the Zaishen Quest calendar. Kirbett 02:49, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Did him h/h hm with balanced party. Only used an armor at half of the dungeon... if you dont suck, you will make it..?82.73.136.207 02:14, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

That said, any class can spirit spam. Even warriors and paragons. Equipping a staff with energy helps, but isn't neccessary. Build on my userpage. - Ander01 15:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Consume Soul

would Consume Soul work on the spirits? if so, you can use it + Infuse Health for some power heal AltCtrlTheLEET 18:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You already asked this on the Consume Soul page, and I just answered it. Be patient. And yes, it does work, though I'm not sure about the efficiency of your idea. --Kyoshi (Talk) 18:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Another strategy

We tried everything we could think of to beat Duncan. (And all those ideas listed here). We thought we'd have to do it with players and tried to recruit. Eventually we came up with this and FINALLY beat him:

Primary Fire Elem to nuke us (using Savannah Heat) thru the cave / Secondary Assassin to help move the spirits with swap. Also used Smooth Criminal to disable Duncan's spirit rift 9 out of 10 tries.

Primary Elem used his energy attributes to provide for Secondary Ritualist that dropped healing and resurrecting sprints. His elite was signet of spirits which was used against restless dead, summits, and other sprints, not Duncan.

Two hero monks to heal and protect (major elite was Light of Deliverance that heals all the party without being too close.)

Hero Warrior with secondary Assassin to move spirits and keep Duncan occupied with knives that bothered with 20 points of damage but got only 40 points in return with Duncan's Defense which the monks easily healed. Her elite was defy pain.

Hero Ranger with frozen soil to keep the stone summits from resurrecting. Also elite broad arrow skill that kept dazing Duncan.

Finally two Nacros with nothing but life stealing skills, especially elite Spoil Victor.

It was slow going to move each spirit...and slower still to get Duncan down to nothing. Between my two nacros stealing at minimum 140 points, Duncan must have had thousands for my nacros hit him with life stealing spells about 100 times between them!

Again, give yourself lots of time, this is tedious and you must be patient; you can't imagine how many times I wanted to just nuke him and get it over with. So hard to stand there casting smooth criminal over and over. It wasn't much fun for the others to all play supporting roles (heal, resurrect, daze, bother) while the only ones that could do real damage without triggering the massive point damage of Duncan's Defense was the nacros with their slow drain of life skills.

Lrn2Sign plx. four tildes (these thingies ~ ) DemonicFahrir 10:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

All those nacros always gets me in the mood for Mexican food. --Manassas 11:06, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Gotta watch that Mexican food, it'll give you the sprints. XD 98.193.237.4 22:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Simple Tactic H/H Hard Mode

I was going through this on HM using H/H.

I was running the following:

Positioning

Me: Mo/Me: RoJ Nuker - Heroes: Spiritway - Hench: Healer, Protection, Fighter, Guardian,

Basically I looked up the strategies you guys posted about Swap etc. Seeing as I had none of these skills with me I tried something different:

Going the long way round onto Duncan's platform (not the stairs) I flagged my heroes in a corner just on the edge of the aggro bubble of the group of spirits in-front of Duncan.

From there I moved myself forward so I was to the right of these spirits and just within cast range of Duncan, I then proceeded to Echo RoJ onto Duncan while putting the odd pain inverter and Ebon Vanguard Assassin on him.

Meanwhile, my two Warrior henchmen auto-move forward to dispatch the group of spirits I'm standing next to, but they are flagged far enough away to not interfere with me and Duncan. The same applies for the spirits summoned by the Spiritway heroes.

After about 10mins Duncan was dead without any issues what-so-ever. I was the only one doing damage to Duncan and I was the only one taking Damage from Duncan.

See the image to the right for the radar positioning. --Lyenyo 20:53, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Soul Twisting makes this so much easier

Boon of Creation, Soul Twisting, Displacement, Shelter, Union, Armor of Unfeeling, Summon Spirits, Optional. Since disenchantment spirits make monks' lives hard and mirror of disenchantment is on stone summit mobs. --Life Infusion «T» 04:28, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Anyone still having trouble with this? Take ST rit with the build up there. Take Swap yourself and take BHA ranger and a frustration mesmer. He cant get off a single spell and take Devona to to knock him down alot.--83.82.62.210 19:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh. My. God. After several dozen times trying to take down Duncan NM with my warrior and 7 heroes, this worked! On my warrior I used Brawling Headbutt to knock him down when the heroes didn't interrupt Spirit Rift right away, and used Swap to get the spirits out of the way (nothing works if you don't do this). On my one of my Rit heroes, I used Boon of Creation, Soul Twisting, Displacement, Shelter, Union, Armor of Unfeeling, Dissonance and Restoration (Summon Spirits is for players only). Note that this is an extremely defensive build that doesn't need microing, which is exactly what you need for Duncan. I brought up the old BHA build (it's archived on pvx, just search for "BHA" and used that on a ranger. The other 5 heroes were from the 7 Hero Player Support build (I dropped the minion master for the BHA ranger and modified the SoGM Smite Razah Rit to the ST build. Now I'll see if this works in Hard Mode. --50.46.145.167 03:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to work - can't get past the mobs. Also codes on pvx wiki are invalid.

Another section of whining about Duncan

Mostly my problem with Duncan is how it's pretty much impossible to beat him unless you have somebody bring Swap which then makes him much easier (still a bitch though) and it's not very hard to do but it takes SO DAMN LONG to swap the spirits. As it stands, the only thing that all of those spirits accomplish is being a huge time sink so that you can even stand a chance of beating Duncan and if you try destroying them THERE'S NO BENEFIT because they'll just respawn and be on your ass again in seconds. If there was some sort of benefit for destroying the spirits (something similar to Zoldark the Unholy and his Animate Undead with the health sac) then this fight might be actually fun and somewhat balanced.

Also, if you're trying to beat him with just heroes there's no way to spread them out enough to avoid getting raped by Spirit Rift (and they will get raped brutally) because HURR DURR THERE AREN'T ENOUGH FLAGS ON YOUR COMPASS TO MOVE ALL YOUR HEROES INDIVIDUALLY. I realize now after looking at this page that I should've brought something to inflict Dazed to stop him from anally ravaging my entire party, but still, if there's any reason to ADD MORE HERO FLAGS this is definitely one of them and I might've actually managed to beat him if it wasn't for that. These complaints all involve normal mode too and I'm sure he's MUCH worse on hard. Pjwned 03:34, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I managed to beat him with just heroes (on normal) so the fight is definitely doable even by yourself if you just daze him constantly, but my point still stands about the spirits being an annoying waste of time and NOT FUN IN THE LEAST to deal with. Pjwned 04:17, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Read if you're having problems with Duncan's Spirit Rift

Like the title says, if Duncan keeps annihilating your party with Spirit Rift and his other annoying nukes then believe it or not but draining his energy is actually really effective. Normally energy draining doesn't do shit against foes in PvE because they just keep casting anyways but it almost completely shuts down all of Duncan's casting. My personal favorite for this is Chaos Storm since it drains 2 energy per second at ≥12 domination magic and does awesome armor ignoring damage to boot, and with Duncan just sitting there most of the time (after a certain point he does run out of the chaos storm aoe but I think that's only when his energy is completely gone) it's pretty damn good against him. I had 2 mesmer heroes using this and he died FAST, much faster than any times before too.Pjwned 05:43, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know why you're making such a fuss about Duncan. At least in hard mode, he's nothing compared to the mobs you have to wade through to get to him; he just has tons of health and a bunch of annoying spirits to slow proceedings down. Here's how you can kill him with almost any team build, once you've swapped his spirits away.

• Bring a rit with Soul Twisting and Shelter.
• Flag your group about 2 aggro circles away from him.
• Flag your top 3 heroes up front, making sure they all have ranged attacks, and then release their flags.
• Attack him. Micro Shelter if necessary to ensure it's always up.

This will slowly but surely wear him down with no risk to your team. The bulk of your team is outside attack range, so Spirit Rift will only hit 3-4 targets at most which Shelter will negate, and you don't get overwhelmed by triggering Duncan's Defense. Your healers should easily be able to keep up, and he doesn't heal so you'll kill him eventually. Bring any other skills you deem necessary to get past the earlier mobs and/or speed up his demise. -- Hong 06:18, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I thought I was pretty clear that I was specifically talking about Duncan and his nukes and offering some advice on how to deal with it for whoever has any trouble with that part. I also don't see why you feel the need to go HURRR UR STRATEGY IS DUMB USE MINE INSTEAD BECAUSE I R SMART. Pjwned 06:25, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm just saying that Duncan isn't as big a problem as you're making him out to be. Nor did I say your strategy was dumb; I simply provided an alternative. However, it seems that you don't want to have an actual discussion. That's fine, but you may find that there are better avenues for unidirectional monologues. -- Hong 06:44, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm saying that he's enough of a problem by himself to warrant having an actual strategy against him (aside from swapping away his spirits) instead of just trying to brute force him to death without any thought (which will likely get you killed) and I was posting a strategy that I found to work pretty well. I don't see how it's necessary to say "USE THIS STRATEGY INSTEAD" and post something completely different right under mine without any real reason why and especially not when it's already posted in another section up above that's very clearly visible. Pjwned 07:31, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

And I don't know why you guys are going on like this, you both have great strategies, they both work and they both will probably help players which have trouble killing Duncan. --The Holy Dragons 09:38, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally I don't see anyone reason why one wouldn't micro a Terratank hero to kill him. --BriarThe Spider 09:47, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I guess I just can't see why people would prefer to make things much more complicated than they need to be (this goes for the ST/Shelter strategy above as well) rather than just using 1 non-elite skill (ideally with more than 1 person but still) that does good damage and drains his energy which results in him barely using any spells at all. I should mention (in case it's not obvious) that I'm not saying that all you need to do is drain his energy and you win, but it helps a great deal. Pjwned 17:38, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Odd behaviour with DoT AoE and Duncan's Defense

We did a guild run into Slavers last night in HM, we had broadhead arrow to perma-daze, constant -10 degen through bleeding and disease, a couple of warriors to keep him interrupted (because of daze) and kd'd, a bonder, a rit healer, SoS and a damage over time fire ele. I think Duncan managed to get about 5 attacks off and, though nobody was timing, he couldn't have been alive for more than a minute and a half. The ele was laying down savannah heat, bed of coals, firestorm, lava font, teinei's heat etc so he was getting huge damage done to him, but the ele was only taking tiny amounts of damage from Duncan's Defense. None of the bonds we were using should have reduced it by that much. Anyone have any ideas how this works? - Bramblefeet 12:14, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Someone on the talk page for the skill said that Searing Flames doesn't bounce back, and posited that it may have something to do with it being conditional damage. Some of the ele skills you mentioned are PBAoE (non-targeted), which might also be treated differently, and none of them really cause "huge damage", just lots of little packets over time (along with burning, which doesn't trigger Duncan's Defense). Could also depend on what skills the "rit healer" was using. Lots of rit skills and spirits can limit damage. -- FreedomBound 13:44, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, Savannah Heat does cause huge damage on the last packets and the ele certainly wasn't getting 200+ damage done to them, more like 10. Nothing on the Rit either (actually I think it was a Nec/Rit) that would account for it. I guess it's just one of those mysterious Anet things. But yeah, super effective way of taking him down fast. :D - Bramblefeet 15:17, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Probably only bouncing back the initial damage, then. Which almost kind of makes sense, because only the initial damage is targeted? Who knows. I'd hate to ask and then have them "fix" it. -- FreedomBound 15:26, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Similarly, I had 2 heroes using Chaos Storm on him (which I mentioned above in another section) and it actually deals quite a lot of damage if the target sits in it the whole time, which is what Duncan tends to do. Anyways, through all the damage from chaos storm I didn't see my mesmer heroes' health dropping at all really (or at least not as much as you'd expect otherwise), so I'm pretty sure a valid conclusion would be that DoTAoE spells aren't reflected by Duncan's Defense, which makes it a great method to kill him pretty fast. Go go Sandstorm, Savannah Heat, Ray of Judgment, etc. Pjwned 15:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Spirits + Spiritleech Aura, solo Duncan strategy

Kinda surprised nobody posted this here yet. This works best on a Ritualist or Assassin, but you can do it on any profession if you take more then 1 human or bring heroes with the required skills. It also works on Hard Mode. Bring SoS/Vampirism/Bloodsong, Spiritleech Aura, Swap and a long/flatbow. Get to Duncan, swap the spirits away, get close enough to attack him with your bow, summon your spirits and use Spiritleech Aura. The spirits will attack Duncan, who will not move, attack or cast spells because you are outside his range. Screenshot: http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/3497/dunc.png Waar Kijk Je Naar 12:25, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Nightmare weapon would also work pretty well with a strategy like this. Pjwned 15:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Used this strategy to kil duncan in NM . since i was a necro/sin i used my razah to do this tactic

he only use SoS, bloodsong and spiritleech aura so it took longer. all his other skills disabled . Give Razah a longbow and afk for a couple of mins and he will kill him :) its so nice to have a hero solo duncan with only 3 skills --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 99.8.6.222 (talk).

This is not added by the creator of this thread. i just dont have an account. lol.

has anyone noticed the FIVE, i repeat that, FIVE, necro heroes he's using? necro primarys? stillwith8people?

so cant be that a friend mapped out cuz it would be 7. he has 5 necro heroes, with only 3attainable in the game. anyone wanna shed some light on this? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 114.76.70.21 (talk).

Mercenary Heroes. --ஸ Kyoshi 00:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Might be that one would consider that the ideas to get down are given, but... What builds did you use for them heroes? :) Neko-Mirn 23:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

This strategy works wonderfully. Accomplished with Xandra (Signet of Spirits, Bloodsong, Spiritleech Aura, Nightmare Weapon) equipped with longbow and just set her to auto-attack Duncan. Thanks to the longbow, she'll actually stop outside of Duncan's aggro circle and start attacking / using skills automatically. Then its just a matter of waiting. I personally threw a Life Transfer and Life Siphon on him periodically to speed things up (interestingly, doing this did not aggro Duncan either and he continued to just sit there).

Step 1	Step 2

--Dracx 20:06, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I ran something similar in hard mode with my regular spiritway heroes using spiritleech aura on the SoS resto hybrid, and painful bond. Killed him in less than a minute. (Lol dissonance pwns every cast.. also powerblock might be nice.) File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.jpg Chieftain Alex 01:18, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Update: RoJ damage is bounced back to the caster, as is CS damage. If this was a way round the Duncan's Damage, it's been nerfed.30/08/12

Surprise pull

We were all ready to do the spirit swap thing when some of our minions or a pet aggroed Duncan while we were killing the restless dead on the platform. We backed up and Duncan followed us stage left where we hacked away at him with impunity without being bothered by the spirits and just having our healers look after us with Healing Seed. Hadn't seen that before. Cut out all that messing around with Swap. - Robdalf 03:02, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

You didn't take a screenshot or anything? I have seen Duncan run around a couple times but I haven't seen or heard of anything like that before. Pjwned 15:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I've had it happen - he follows targets with low health. --File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 15:56, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Protective Spirit + Vigorous Spirit strategy

My friends and I have used this method to kill Duncan, can be done with heroes:

• Clear area, Swap spirits away
• Have melee/offensive spell casters die a few times to lower max health
• Healers/support casters stay in range of attackers but out of range of Duncan, buff/heal as needed
• Maintain Prot Spirit + Vigorous Spirit on attackers
• Attackers spam attacks/spells on Duncan

69.181.125.170 07:08, 24 December 2011 (UTC)