How do you extinguish the Fire Elemental?

Question

The area boss of Metrica Province, the Fire Elemental, is ridiculously hard to even fight, much less kill. The boss itself bombards the area with AOE knockdown DOT effects that will generally take me out in one direct hit, while also firing off slow-moving, hard to see projectiles that, again, will take me out in one shot. In the meantime, the boss also spawns flying Embers that chip away at your health and get in your way when you try to dodge the first two attacks.

Because of all this, I find that I'm generally down within about 30 seconds of running into the chamber, which is frustrating because it takes about a minute to hike back from the nearest waypoint. Is there a good strategy for reliably staying alive long enough to actually do damage? Is there some particular direction in which I should be cajoling the people in the area? Should I focus my equipment in any particular way?

Answer 1

In my experience, trying to stay at range means you'll likely be ineffective and die soon enough. Getting in close, I managed to stay alive longer (though still eventually die) -- of course, there's pretty much no hope for a rez there. I'm not sure if this was simply because most people were at range and thus that's where he directed his fury or not, though.

I've run this event multiple times (glutton for punishment) and I haven't seen any better strategy than zerging and spawn rushing.

Edit in response to a comment: By at range, I meant the maximum distance for bow fire, so for me that was 1200m. That's where a great majority of people were dying, right past the bridge. By in close, I mean touching the mob practically.

Answer 2

Ran it last night as an engineer, after much trial and error we found the most effective course was to choose your moment, slam buffs on, beeline it straight for the tornado dodging AOE and to try and get around behind and whale on it with high damage attacks from there.

The tornado itself does no damage but it makes it tricky to see attacks coming your way. Don't bother with rez or repair - there's no point, if you get knocked down you're pretty much toast anyway.

Still took a good while though! Best of luck people.

Answer 3

I did this event a couple nights ago. I stayed at ~600-800 range and survived most of it. There are four dangerous actions to avoid at this range:

• Do not stand in the same place for long (2 seconds or so). If you do, the boss will open a fire under your feet and you will get hurt.

• Do not attempt to revive people, because that involves standing in the same place for more than 2 seconds.

• Do not stack on other people or move to the position they were just at. The boss may be opening a fire on their current or last position.

• Do not forget to look for incoming fire obstacles rotating in from the left side. The moving fire obstacles rotate around the boss counter-clockwise. So they'll always be coming from the left.

If you do not do those things, and you do use your healing ability on cooldown, you should be able to survive the encounter.

Answer 4

You can kill a fire elemental by standing in the center of it. It does not attack anything top of itself.