Guide to defeating Magni the Bison

Magni the Bison
Magni the Bison is a level 24 warrior boss, with all that being a boss entails: a very long lifeline (you have to take about 1300 HP off him to win), double damage, +3 health regeneration, and half skill activation time. If you don't have any defensive skills but try to trade hits, you'll probably die within ten seconds. As such, any strategy to beat the tournament must start with a way to beat him. There are at least five basic approaches that can usually work:


 * Keep him blinded so he rarely hits you.
 * Keep him crippled and kill him from a distance.
 * Keep him weakened to limit damage and bring copious healing.
 * Bring myriad blocking skills to block most of his attacks.
 * Keep Protective Spirit on yourself to limit his damage.

Bison has two knockdown skills, so even some skills will be interrupted if he hits you. He also has a third skill which will knock you down if you block it, so blocking skills don't reduce his knockdowns by much. This means that relatively few builds can invariably beat him, though many can beat him most of the time, if you don't get knocked down to interrupt a cast at exactly the wrong time.

Further, Bison has Purge Signet, which will remove all hexes and conditions from him. He won't use it just to remove crippled or bleeding, but will use it as often as the cooldown allows to remove blindness, weakness, burning, dazed, or poison. As such, if you're relying on kiting him, it may be best to avoid using conditions other than crippled and bleeding, so that you don't push him to use purge signet to remove crippled.

As he is a warrior, if you use a martial weapon, switching to one that does elemental damage can make the battle go faster. This is rarely the difference between winning and losing, but can substantially shorten some long battles.

Assembling a build
As you must beat five other opponents in order to reach Bison, any build that can beat him but not preceding opponents is useless. The way to fill out your build after bringing skills that can beat Bison in particular is to add other skills in the remaining slots to make a well-rounded build.

Skills that affect multiple opponents or multiple allies tend to be less useful here, as there is usually only one opponent and only one ally (namely, you). Skills that incapacitate just one opponent can be highly useful, as that's usually everyone that you have to face.

The polar opposite of Bison's massive damage with no healing approach is the opponents who have little interest in killing you, but will spam self-heals to try for a stalemate. You'll have to bring skills to either cause a substantial damage spike of 200+ HP within several seconds, or else bring interrupts or some other way to stop their healing.

It is also vital that you bring self-healing skills. Many mobs cannot be finished off before they'll do enough damage to kill you if you can't heal yourself. For several opponents, it is necessary to wait until they are low on energy before you can do much damage, and you'll have to spend a lot of time healing before that.

Health degeneration hexes and conditions are useful, as unlike a lot of PvE combat where you put a 20 second condition on a mob and it dies 5 seconds later, you often get the full duration of health degeneration on the opponent--and if you don't, it usually means you won.

Opponents with interrupts can pretty reliably interrupt a skill they don't like with an activation time of 1 second or more if you don't have a way to prevent it. Skills with a 3/4 second activation time are only infrequently interrupted. Skills that activate faster than that are pretty safe to cast, and generally interrupted only by dumb luck when an opponent knocks you down without trying to interrupt anything in particular. If you need to get a longer cast off, doing so while your opponent is using a different skill can prevent him from using an interrupt at the same time.

A simple trick to increase your maximum health at least a little, is to activate your Norn Title. Even a rank of 1 will provide you with an additional 53 HP. 55-HP monks and similar builds should NOT activate this title, because it would probably screw those builds.

Example builds
Below are examples of builds for each profession which can take down Magni. None of them are guaranteed to have a 100% success rate so do consider what you bring in the optional slots.

Warrior
The core of this build revolves around:

With maxed Tactics and a solid investment into both Strength and Swordsmanship

The idea is to block most of Bison's attacks while hurting him as well. Since the ripostes are the skills that topple Magni, it leaves you plenty of room to tailor your bar.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * A healing skill, Healing Signet or Lion's Comfort should suffice.
 * A general multi-purpose elite, something like Ursan Blessing, Grenth's Balance or Auspicious Parry are all possible skills. This is because they all work against Magni but also against the other opponents (to varying degrees).
 * A interrupt. While not totally needed, if timed correctly can devastate Magni is used right.
 * Some attack skills. Final Thrust and Sun and Moon Slash are both respectable skills to take as they can help finish off the last part of Magni's life.

Ranger
The core of this build revolves around:

A solid split between Expertise and Wilderness Survival. Also try to reach the minimum level for your bow.

The approach here is to keep Bison perpetually crippled, so that you can avoid getting hit. If you avoid using poison, Bison won't use purge signet, which makes him easier to kite, though poison will finish him off faster.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * A healing skill, Troll Unguent should be more than suffice for any incidental damage you may suffer.
 * A blocking stance such as Lightning Reflexes. To provide some breathing room if you made a mistake.
 * A interrupt. While not totally needed, if timed correctly can devastate Magni is used right.

Monk
The core of this build revolves around:

13 Protection Prayers 11 Smiting Prayers 11 Divine Favor

Uses Protective Spirit to mitigate Magni's mighty blows while using Reversal of Fortune to heal and Reversal of Damage to kill.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * E-management. This skill bar is very energy heavy and thus you will often find yourself without a protective spirit up due to lack of energy. Something like Castigation Signet, some of the Mesmer skills in the Inspiration line should be able to help.
 * More smiting skills. Reversal of Damage will take a long time to kill anyone if it is solely relied on, skills like Bane Signet can help in taking down Magni.

Necromancer
The core of this build revolves around:

Max Curses

Relies on Insidious Parasite to let Magni slowly kill himself while he feebly mashes into you. Grenth's Balance is used to save yourself if the fight goes south (not just against Magni but everyone).

Suggested optional skills are:
 * More killing skills. While Insidious Parasite will work on a weapon-user, it's quite lackluster against some opponents before Magni. Desecrate Enchantments and Necrosis are both possible choices.
 * Parasitic Bond. Since Magni will use his purge signet of recharge, parasitic bond can provide a big heal and relieve some fire while you recast insidious parasite.
 * More protection. Sometimes weakening a opponent will not be enough and this some of the monk protection skills come into play. Protective Spirit is a good skill here.

Mesmer
The core of this build revolves around:

A solid investment into Domination and Inspiration.

This build revolves around keeping Magni blind while he slowly kills himself from Empathy. Ignorance prevents him from using his signets while Spirit of Failure helps manages energy.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * Healing. With a decent investment into Inspiration then Ether Feast becomes quite alluring.
 * More damage skills to help speed up killing. Necrosis is again a excellent choice here. Backfire on the other hand can help with other opponents that can't be beaten with Empathy.
 * A interrupt. While not totally needed, if timed correctly can devastate Magni is used right.

Elementalist
The core of this build revolves around:

Maxed Air Mastery

Basically you'll keep Magni blind at all times while slowly whittling down his life with Lightning Orb. The attunement and glyph are to help manage energy.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * Healing. Aura of Restoration or Glyph of Restoration should suffice.
 * More damage. Something like Lightning Javelin or Energy Blast will help take him down much faster.
 * Utility. A Enervating Charge thrown in there can give some more breathing room as well as making earlier opponents easier.

Assassin
The core of this build revolves around:

Solid investment into Shadow Arts, Dagger Mastery and Critical Strikes.

Basically revolves around keeping Magni blind for the whole fight while slowing tearing his huge frame down. Smoke Powder Defense to get him blind initially while Temple Strike is to blind him after he purges. Blinding Powder is a buffer in case you mess up.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * Healing. Shadow Refuge will cover this role quite nicely.
 * More damage to finish the fight quicker. If you have the combo down pat then add in some additional off-hand and dual attacks to help speed things up. Wild Strike and Death Blossom are both worthy additions.
 * A interrupt. While not totally needed, if timed correctly can devastate Magni is used right.

Ritualist
The core of this build revolves around:

Solid investment into Communing and Channeling with some into Spawning Power.

Revolves around setting up a bunch of spirits that all whittle down Magni, strength in numbers. Boon of Creation should be used straight up followed by Shadowsong to get Magni blind. After Anguish has been put up then chuck Painful Bond onto him and watch his life drop. This build can basically handle every other opponent in the tourney, which is why it doesn't have much room for modification.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * Direct damage. Doom is a good finisher once all your spirits are placed and can help get Magni over the finish line.
 * More spirits. Vampirism can do more damage and Disenchantment will aid against other opponents, both are examples of some of the spirits that you could take.

Dervish
The core of this build revolves around:

Solid split between Mysticism, Scythe Mastery and Earth Prayers.

As with many other builds, keep Magni blind while you slowly beat him up. A ebon scythe mod is vital to use Ebon Dust Aura. It's theoretically possible to take Magni down with that single skill but you'll be hard pressed to beat anyone else with it though.

Suggested optional skills are:
 * Healing, as always. Signet of Pious Light and Vital Boon together makes a solid self heal while also giving some energy back.
 * Damage skills. Zealous Sweep, Radiant Scythe etc etc are just some of the many types of skills you can bring to help take him down.
 * More defense. Your robes will not do much protection if Magni gets in that stray hit in. Armor of Sanctity and Conviction are both viable choices.

Paragon
14 Spear mastery 13 Motivation 4 Leadership

Start by charging barbed spear, then use it, followed by maiming spear to cripple Bison. You can then run around to kite him, periodically stopping to use barbed spear and maiming spear again. Use mending refrain if you get hit, but maiming spear lasts long enough that you should rarely get hit other than his initial flurry. Avoid using stunning strike or blazing spear, as these will lead him to use purge signet, and thus remove both bleeding and crippled. You can use disrupting throw for its 1/2 second activation time as a quick extra attack to charge barbed spear a little faster if needed.

I beat all the opponents I faced, though Razah is hard if it opens with wanderlust or shadowsong, before you can apply a condition and interrupt it. Among those I haven't fought, Danika and the Ghostly Hero look troublesome, the latter because immunity to bleeding really messes up this build.

Opponents not attempted: Kilroy, Danika, Ghostly Hero, Headmaster Vhang, Nika