Shambler advice needed

[fogandsteel]

How do you go about Shambler hunting? I summoned him and got party wiped. My team was not strong: it had an antiquarian in it, and the initial shuffling weakened it even further. I knew I was taking a major risk with such a week party (even though my team was at full health and low on stress), but at the same time you don't get a chance to get an Ancestor trinket very often. The curio that summons him is quite rare from my experience.

[No One]

I take my regular teams into shambler altars when they happen to show up and I'm not in a boss fight that's offering a vital trinket.

The shambler is utterly outclassed by level 2s with level 3 abilities and skills. The shambler is pretty nervous about level 3s and 4s with level 4 abilities and skills. The shambler has the advantage against level 5s and 6s...not that this stops me, it just means there's some risk.

In future I think I'll try to farm more shamblers by doing all my apprentice runs in pitch black.

[Gilmoy]

Shambler isn't intrinsically hard. He does almost 0 damage, himself.
But his Sycophants get exponential buffing from uncapped(?) self-buffs after every hit.

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A. Shambler always shuffles you. It's scripted.
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A0. Have, and pause in hallway to click and activate, move-and-act skills.
Everybody wants to be able to move-and-attack, or move-and-act, or have Forward/Back 2 or 3. If your party is strong here, you're (more likely to be) ready. If you're weak here, judge that you are simply Not Ready Yet.

A1. In hallway, pre-shuffle yourself into reverse order. Laugh as he unshuffles you.
He's utterly predictable this way. You can exploit that.

A-1. It goes without saying that all 4 heroes must hit #c. (#c suffices vs. a 2-wide.)
If your party can't hit #c, the rest of the dungeon probably already kills you

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B. Shambler has low damage. Beware his DoTs and party-stress.
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He's nil threat to kill you by melee damage. He can stack bleed + blight.
Expect to take 50-120 stress per hero. That's the price of a Shambler kill.
Either do him last and pay in hamlet, or do him first and use rest of dungeon to stress-heal.

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C. Sycophants self-buff after every hit. This is exponential, and that will kill you.
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They have very high SPD. They don't miss you.
And their self-buff is huge, +50% DMG per buff.

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D. Shambler is a sack of HP. Sycophants have low HP of 8-16, but not easily one-shotted.
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Killing Shambler isn't hard: just focus fire on him. But it's a race.
He summons 2 Sycophants. If you ignore them for 3 rounds, they have gone exponential.
As you kill the Sycophants, Shambler summons more for free, always keeping 2 in play.

Ergo, your game plan is simply:
D1. Focus fire on Shambler, mop up Sycophants later
You can usually kill Shambler on round 4-6.
~~ or ~~
D2. Kill Sycophants ASAP to "debuff" them, hit Shambler with any free attacks
This is viable with good AoE attacks, like Highwayman's Grapeshot Blast and Shieldbreaker's Impale.

Any decent party should already have projection to #c, move-and-act, and some sustain off Death's Door. Ergo, any fully-upgraded L2 or L4 party should handle L1/L3 Shambler as-is. An L0/L1 party with incomplete preparation might be below the viable threshold, and then you exercise judgment and duck the fight.

Don't plan to build a specific anti-Shambler party. You can never anticipate him, so you must build for the rest of the dungeon. But good in dungeon = good vs. Shambler, so it dovetails anyways.

[Myr]

It can be annoying to not find Shambler altars when you have groups you know can handle it, but if you do come across Shambler altars in less suitable groups you can always leave the altar until you have finished the quest, then if you need to retreat from the fight you can leave the dungeon right away. Sometimes though you do find a Shambler altar you just have to accept you can't do with an especially unsuitable team and hope to find more later.

[Skinny Pete]

I never go Shambler hunting, and if I get the curio, I finish whatever the mission objectives are, and then if I'm in decent shape and don't have a party that's particularly weak to shuffling, I'll go for it. This way, I can just immediately retreat and leave if the fight is getting even slightly dodgy.

Move skills are good, riposte skills that move (HWM's Duelist's Advance) are pure love, and AoEs, to take out the tentacles and whittle away at the Shambler at the same time, are also good.

Lepers are pure ass. This is unfortunate, as the Hew skill would be pretty awesome at taking down both tentacles every round, but if he gets shuffled he is as useful as a styrofoam gasoline can.

[fogandsteel]

Thank you for all the advice. I realized that heroes with no upgrades should just leave the Shambler's Altar alone. Be patient and take a chance if you have a strong team.

[fogandsteel]

As a "joke", you can say that it's actually the other way around and the Shambler is hunting you. =)

[fogandsteel]

I also need advice on the Thing from the Stars. What kind of teams are strong/weak for this encounter. What minimum upgrade levels do heroes need?

[No One]

You want either a fast DOT or GR or SBR for armour piercing. You want a strong healer to deal with vorpal crits, a very strong stunner if you can swing it, and someone who can do enough damage every turn to destroy the crystal, e.g. noxious blast.

[unkn0wnx]

I saw a Shambler shrine in apprentice dungeon. I summoned him and killed him in two rounds before he can summon the little rascals. i stunned him on second attempt and marked him. And then lucky crits finished him.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by fogandsteel:

I also need advice on the Thing from the Stars. What kind of teams are strong/weak for this encounter. What minimum upgrade levels do heroes need?

You want to lay down DOTs that stick. It's slightly more resistant to Blight than Bleed (80/73 at Champion), so the main blighter I'd use is PD with Blasphemous Vial. Up front I like HWM/HEL/FLA or anyone who can lay down sick bleeds and you want them fast. With the Thing having two actions, you want stacked bleeds/blights hitting on both of them (the summon/stress bomb auto-action it starts every round with doesn't count).

Once PROT kicks in, anything that ignores it, like GR's Pick to the Face, is a great solution, as is continuing to lay down DOTs. The main thing I don't like about GR in this fight is she is a glass cannon and can fairly easily be critted to DD in one Vorpal Strike.

If you're opting not to have a strong healer, you should save your camp for right after this fight as you'll probably need some stress/healing.

Also beware of Sky Taint. This is a genuinely nasty disease. In addition to being the one blighter worth using in this fight, PD can cure that disease in camp, which is well worth doing especially if you encounter it early.

[Raindream]

Tonight I was handling a veteran dungeon pretty well with ANQ-CRU-GR-HM and we found a Shambler altar. I felt good about the team (CRU being the main healer) and what we could see ahead in the dungeon, so we went in.

I'm thankful we made it out alive. I could smell that old, familiar scent of brilliant luck again because Gruney the GR hit death's door repeatedly. And because I rarely want to give luck an easy way out, we carried on to three more dungeon fights before calling it quits. We were so loaded, and the CRU is my current favorite so I didn't want to lose him. Boisleveque, I think, is his name.

I'm never touching that altar again.

[RopeDrink]

CRU is a fine main healer provided you can get some of his nice class-trinkets. Very flexible (position and role), and I've always enjoyed using him with GR's because they compliment each others style (mobility, backline lunge/lancing, or just covering her with really delayed heals so she doesn't start the next round with an immediate DD check if, say, an unlucky hit+dot got through to her).

Vestal is obviously the best healer, but she's capable of healing after that type of damage has been applied, leaving GR to the mercy of RNG.

GR would still be one of my favourite heroes in the Roster if Red Hook hadn't revamped her Shadow Fade. Rather than stealth, it used to stun a frontline target while pushing her back, so she'd often kill/maim a priority as an opener and then contribute to stalling in the next round (unless you wanted to throw a Dagger). Now it's just a method of cheesing various targets that don't have AoE's, which you can do better by just stunning.