Maja the Dark Savant on Brutal. Please share your tactics.

[Adalon]

This boss is the bottleneck for further progress, since it is she who opens the Tier 2 research table. Thus, it is impossible to dress even better in order to crush her by force.

I tried different combinations of spells and skills, but all I could do was just bring it to 50%.

If someone has already killed her on brutal difficulty, please share your tactics.

[Suzaku]

Stay at long range, and don't use summons. She quickly kicked my butt in several attempts when my usual plan of "throw unlimited skeletons at it" wasn't working. Turns out she would just use them to spawn her ink pals and flood the arena with more targets than I could deal with.

Changing my setup to chaos volley, spectral wolf, chaos barrage, and using a bow was far more effective. All of her attacks are easy to simply sidestep when fighting at a distance, including her ink blobs not spawning if they miss you. At that point, it's a 1v1 for the majority of the fight.

[Akulvo]

She's the easiest boss imo. Heres my setup:

Greatsword, Cyclone, Any Counter / Shield, Chaos Barrage

Tactics:
Stay close to her, about as close as you can get and spam LMB on her. Use E to dodge her attacks if your dash or counter/shield is on cooldown, otherwise just pretend E doesn't exist. Use Q just about whenever you get the window or if you need to gap close.

Book Shot - She will flash with paper particles around her briefly before throwing out line of books in front of her, this is your queue to bring up your shield to block the attack. Blood Rite is more than good enough, you'll counter the attack and deal some damage since you're right next to her.

Shadow Shot - This one is more subtle but she'll flash a shadowy particle in her hand before throwing out a single shadow bolt at you. If it hits, she'll summon a minion. Just use your dash or counter to avoid it. If it does hit, its not the end of the world. Spam LMB on it first instead of her so that you can burst it down and prevent it from healing her. Even if it does start to go to her to heal her, you can kill it fast enough with LMB spam well before it even gets close. If you're worried, just hit it with a Q.

Minion Warm - Just focus on the minions, same with the minions spawned in via Shadow Shot. You kill them in 4-5 hits with your greatsword so it goes fast enough.

Ambient Books - These are the 3 different books that fly around passively regardless of what she does, each one has a set path that htey follow and they NEVER deviate from it so remember those paths. Position yourself out of their lines and you will never need to worry about them. Just be mindful of their flight path and be mindful of where not to stand then you're set. Your greatsword has more than enough reach to hit her or the minions even if you're dancing on the edge of ambient book's range.

Rinse and repeat and you got the boss down. Be aggressive and hit her hard.

If you're wondering how I get cyclone, I get it from Meredith in the iron mines when she dies to Kriig. Just let them fight and you get it easy peasy. Spam it out whenever its off cooldown to boost your DPS.

[Adalon]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Stay at long range, and don't use summons.

Oh. And I just used a knight and skeletons.
And also as an ult of poisonous spiders.
Now it’s clear where there are 100500 ink minions in the arena. Lol.
To be honest, I didn’t know that she reproduces them by killing my minions. I thought she called them just because of the timing.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by Adalon:

Now it’s clear where there are 100500 ink minions in the arena. Lol.
To be honest, I didn’t know that she reproduces them by killing my minions. I thought she called them just because of the timing.

She doesn't reproduce by killing minions. One of her attacks is that she throws a blob of ink. If that ink blob hits a player or summon, it will spawn an add. If you use minions, they won't avoid it, so she reliably keeps spawning adds throughout the fight.

[torqueblue]

Greatsword
Brute blood 70 or better
Basic dash, blood rage and blood rite.
Counter the ink blob shot and dash when need. Blood rage asap use the greatsword to hop over some attacks and stay close.

[Adalon]

I did it !!!

At first, after several attempts, I brought her to the point where she begins to summon minions without any loss of HP at all. But then chaos began again and I got confused. But then I concentrated, did not pay attention to the ink minions, except for the one who was going to heal the boss, and focused all my attention on continuing to damage her and avoid her attacks.

Thanks to Suzaku for the tip regarding the spawn mechanics for the ink minions.

The only difference for me was that I first ran to the center and knocked her out to the edge from there. In the center it is more convenient to dodge her attacks, and at the same time three flying books are not annoying at all. At the same time, a large distance is reduced.

[Suzaku]

Grats! Glad to hear it!

[burner19]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Stay at long range, and don't use summons. She quickly kicked my butt in several attempts when my usual plan of "throw unlimited skeletons at it" wasn't working. Turns out she would just use them to spawn her ink pals and flood the arena with more targets than I could deal with.

Changing my setup to chaos volley, spectral wolf, chaos barrage, and using a bow was far more effective. All of her attacks are easy to simply sidestep when fighting at a distance, including her ink blobs not spawning if they miss you. At that point, it's a 1v1 for the majority of the fight.

Dosent work at all. Get her to 1/4 and than she start spamming summons like crazy without ink missiles. Kinda hard to fight with 15 summons chasing you. Also killing them is pointless becaus as soon as you try to deal with them she summons more. Good tactic but to only 1/4 hp. I lose 0 hp than she vanishes in to ink pool and start summoning. Almost impossible to kill. To many summons to handle and outheals any damage.

[Noah Wan]

i usually am ranged in brutal but for this boss i went with the following setup

-greatsword: just cleave down all adds while also hitting her, hard focus add that she starts to pull towards her to heal.
-spectral lance: it pierces and also acts as a second dodge.

Basically just stand in her face dpsing her with greatsword, which will cleave down any nearby adds. Whenever she starts casting anything just walk thru her to other side so it completely misses. Hard swap to the add she is casting pull/heal on. GL

[burner19]

Originally posted by Noah Wan:

i usually am ranged in brutal but for this boss i went with the following setup

-greatsword: just cleave down all adds while also hitting her, hard focus add that she starts to pull towards her to heal.
-spectral lance: it pierces and also acts as a second dodge.

Basically just stand in her face dpsing her with greatsword, which will cleave down any nearby adds. Whenever she starts casting anything just walk thru her to other side so it completely misses. Hard swap to the add she is casting pull/heal on. GL

What gear level ? Because what you describe ends in 3 seconds with death. 3 hits and you dont deal even 1/3 of hp to summons with great sword and its super slow even with buffs so if you say you cleaved it with great sword than you didnt soloed it on brutal 100%. If there is a spot o farm better weapons than please share. Tried all armor sets combinations with rings and damage is not there without gear level. I have read the comments here and either im missing something or people didnt played brutal at all here because most of advices here beside your first part are not meant for brutal.

[burner19]

I Solo

Originally posted by SKAPPELTON:

Brutal on my PvE server, I prefer scythe and double barrier, great sword works to. This is 6 players and was fun. Not sure why people say she's difficult I didn't think so.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2142680459?t=1h14m22s

[burner19]

Watched all videos solo stating its brutal but on all the summons have short hp bars in my game those summons have 3 times bigger hp bars and dont get 1 shoted. Did they changed something or are they lying in those videos. Brutals is highly overtuned for solo, boss should scale to player count. I need to see yet true solo brutal on maja. Cant find even one video on you tube with solo.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by burner19:

Watched all videos solo stating its brutal but on all the summons have short hp bars in my game those summons have 3 times bigger hp bars and dont get 1 shoted. Did they changed something or are they lying in those videos. Brutals is highly overtuned for solo, boss should scale to player count. I need to see yet true solo brutal on maja. Cant find even one video on you tube with solo.

/shrug. Don't know what to tell you. The mass summon only called a couple in my fight, and I just finished her off before the adds became an issue.

And bosses are scaled for solo play. They scale up with more players.

[Yorlong]

I did this boss in solo. I think the easiest way is by using the longsword. It does huge damages and with it's second ability that makes you jump, you can dodge all her spells. If you have a parry spell and your dodge, you can easily counter all her spells during her first phase (above 50% hp). The biggest issue for me was to deal with her when she starts spawning ten creeps at the same time. With the spider ultimate and the longsword you can kill them quickly and burst the boss so it should be really low life after that. You can then run on her and hit until she dies. I killed her after a few tries it is really simple, just need to dodge her spells but you have a lot of tools for that.

[burner19]

Originally posted by Yorlong:

I did this boss in solo. I think the easiest way is by using the longsword. It does huge damages and with it's second ability that makes you jump, you can dodge all her spells. If you have a parry spell and your dodge, you can easily counter all her spells during her first phase (above 50% hp). The biggest issue for me was to deal with her when she starts spawning ten creeps at the same time. With the spider ultimate and the longsword you can kill them quickly and burst the boss so it should be really low life after that. You can then run on her and hit until she dies. I killed her after a few tries it is really simple, just need to dodge her spells but you have a lot of tools for that.

On brutal you just simply dont have damage becaue you are blocked from better items. Tried bursting her with ultimate, and every weapon i had no go just to little damage and she outheals you. Maybe they changed something in 1.0 but the things you say are impossible. If there is a place to have better weapon drops than yes it would be doable