Imperial Sanctum (mission)

Mission Objectives

 * Destroy Shiro

Note: Mhenlo is not required to survive; he can be killed and have the mission continue to completion.

Walkthrough
The mission is very straightforward. Proceed to the small island up ahead and destroy Shiro.

Make sure all your human party members speak to Kuunavang to pick up their celestial skills from her before proceeding. If any party member gets to the end of the bridge, it will trigger the cutscene which will close off the way back to Kuunavang.


 * Note: If your party includes henchmen, do not skip this cutscene before you see the gate close behind the party! If you do, some of the henchmen may be caught outside the gate, unable to contribute to the fight.

Shiro possesses many powerful skills, but the three that will most tip the scales to his favor are Echoing Banishment, Meditation of the Reaper and Impossible Odds.


 * Echoing Banishment: Shiro will send off a party member into the Mists and he/she will be replaced by one of Shiro's bound spirits. The spirit will always be of the same profession as the banished player, and will use a fixed skillset. It is best to destroy the bound spirit as soon as it spawns. This will return the banished player immediately and recharge all skills. The player who was banished can run back to the fight through a round dark passage that ends with a glowing portal.


 * Meditation of the Reaper: Shiro absorbs up to 500 damage dealt to him. After this damage has been absorbed, the skill ends and he steals 20 health from each party member for every second the skill was active. if Meditation of the Reaper is active for over 20 seconds, he will kill the entire party. It is imperative that this skill be ended quickly.


 * Impossible Odds: For 10 seconds Shiro does massive amounts of damage to all foes in the area every time he hits. Note that this is also a skill like Meditation of the Reaper and cannot be removed. Shiro will use this skill when near death to deal huge amounts of damage allowing him to quickly dispose of the entire party in a couple of strikes. It is imperative that everyone scatter to avoid the AoE damage from this skill. A good way to counter this skill is to use stances to block the attacks. The Ranger's celestial skill, Celestial Stance, is very useful in this regard. Note that blinding Shiro while he is using this skill will NOT work, as Impossible Odds transfers all conditions from Shiro.

Other skills Shiro may use include Battle Scars and Riposting Shadows.

Tips

 * Echo chain Celestial Skills. This is especially effective with Celestial Storm.
 * Togo's corpse is exploitable, so Animate Flesh Golem will provide extra help. Alternatively, you can toss in a Well of Suffering.
 * Anti-Warrior tactics, such as Clumsiness, Faintheartedness, Empathy, Spiteful Spirit, Blinding, Ward Against Melee, Aegis, and Spoil Victor, work very well against Shiro.
 * The Elementalist celestial skill Celestial Storm can quickly end the skill Meditation of the Reaper by reaching its damage absorption limit.
 * The party should designate a few members to apply constant damage and conditions to Shiro to prevent the fight from dragging on.
 * Rangers who rely on pets should replace Charm Animal with the celestial skill. The pet will remain despite having the skill replaced.
 * All players can body block Shiro, while Warriors use the skill Storm of Swords. This skill benefits from any creature blocking Shiro, including allied spirits, pets, and minions. This tactic is quite effective for getting the master's reward, as it usually kills Shiro in under 2 minutes. Bringing two Warriors is advisable in case one is banished.
 * Skills such as Diversion and Blackout will not disable Shiro's skills, and Shiro cannot be knocked down. Energy and adrenaline denial are also ineffective, as none of Shiro's skills cost adrenaline, and only Riposting Shadows has an energy cost.
 * Shiro will often banish players and constructs will appear in their place. Kill the constructs and recharge your skills, by doing this, Shiro can be killed very quickly.
 * Using a combination of Star Strike and Storm of Swords can bring Shiro down with ease.
 * Grenth's Balance can do an extremely high amount of damage to Shiro, especially at the start of the fight. It can also be used to end Meditation of the Reaper extremely quickly.
 * When playing with heroes/henchmen, put down the flag marker, lest they try to follow players banished by Shiro and then stand around uselessly.
 * Equipping two of your party with Wailing Weapon and high Channeling will mean one attacker can constantly interrupt Shiro's attacks. This will both make it easy to damage him and mitigate his own carnage.
 * A Necromancer with Awaken the blood and Spoil Victor can Completely wreck shiro when he activates battle scars.

Henchmen/heroes strategy
You can beat Shiro in under 2 minutes with henchies, provided you utilize the glitches in this mission. This strategy is also presuming you have access to heroes. First, the 2 quirks in the mission's behaviour you need to know:

[EDIT: For some reason Zhed was banished in our party when we fought this weekend. Maybe some1 can verify this? A glitch? Or an update?]
 * 1) Heroes do not get banished with Echoing Banishment.
 * 1) Heroes do not get celestial skills while henchies do.

Naturally, monks will make bosses inherently more powerful, and Shiro seems to prefer banishing monks first. Since Mhenlo is with your group already (he cannot be banished either) you should only need one more NPC monk. You should use either Tahlkora or Dunkoro.

Since the Necromancer's Celestial Skill is less effective than Spiteful Spirit, Spoil Victor, Empathy and Insidious Parasite it would probably be a good idea to go with Master of Whispers and Olias and load them up with these spells (SS on one and SV on the other.)

An ideal henchie selection should be based on 3 things:


 * 1) Are the skills effective against Shiro?
 * 2) Can you ignore the bound spirit that replaces them?
 * 3) Can you finish the battle without them (since henchies do not come back from Echoing Banishment unless you kill their spirit.)

Keeping that in mind; you might want to try Lukas, Devona, Seaguard Hala and Erys Vasburg. Now the selection might differ a little depending on your profession. The main reasons for choosing these henchies are:


 * Erys carries Empathy while Hala carries Conjure Phantasm. Additionally, their Celestial Skills speed up casting times and recharge, much more useful than the Ranger or Necromancer Celestial Skills (remember, you're going for speed, not endurance). Finally, their bound spirits are pretty harmless (although Diversion is a pain in the neck) since they neither damage you or heal Shiro. As long as you're aware of it, you can wait it out.


 * Devona and Lukas both have the awesome Warrior Celestial Skill and the AoE damage goes a long way (they do a fair job of body blocking too). The Warrior bound spirits are pretty harmless as well.

With that setup, all you really need to do is make sure Spoil Victor, Spiteful Spirit, Empathy and Insidious Parasite are always up.

Be sure to keep some spike skills with you (i.e. Blood, Fire, Air) in order to deal with Meditation of the Reaper.

It is next to impossible to beat Shiro when there are Monk spirits around, implying that Monk henchmen are out of the question.

Warrior strategy
If you are a warrior, a simple plan is to try to obtain another warrior player, 2 Warrior henchies and a few healers. If all goes well you should be able to kill Shiro fairly quickly.
 * Plan:


 * As you enter the fight, Shiro will use Echoing Banishment. If he binds anything other than a warrior, kill the bound spirit to recharge the Celestial Skills.
 * Use your Celestial Skills to kill the bound spirit.


 * When the spirit is dead, attack Shiro. Warriors should wait until Shiro enters the Meditation of the Reaper to use their Celestial Skills.
 * When he does have all warriors use Storm of Swords.
 * When you're done Shiro should be almost dead.

Note: By far the easiest way to take Shiro down is to bring at least 1 Hammer warrior. When Shiro uses his Meditation, get a warrior to knock him down. This breaks his meditation and forces him to continue attacking. If coupled with a Ranger/Mesmer echoing the ranger Celestial stance and using Throw Dirt, and a Necromancer using Spiteful Spirit, Shiro dies very quickly. 3 Monk Hero/Hench is more than enough to heal the Warriors.

Elementalist strategy
This strategy allows any party with an ele in it to take shiro down quickly for the masters. Simply take Arcane Echo, Echo and the Celestial Skill - Celestial Storm. Once Shiro has banished one of the players (hopefully not the Ele), cast Arcane Echo, Echo, Celestial Storm, Echo, Celestial Storm, Celestial Storm on shiro. Then kill the shiroken construct and cast the three recharged storms on shiro. Taking Gale to knock him down in the storm is also advisable.

Follow-up

 * Upon completion of this mission, players will be taken to the Divine Path area to celebrate their victory as well as get access to special items and crafters. See the area article for details.

NPCs

 * 10 Oracle of Time
 * 30 Kuunavang
 * 20 Brother Mhenlo

Monsters

 * 24 Spirit of The Mists
 * 31 Shiro Tagachi
 * 20 Bound Warrior
 * 20 Bound Ranger
 * 20 Bound Monk
 * 20 Bound Necromancer
 * 20 Bound Mesmer
 * 20 Bound Elementalist
 * 20 Bound Assassin
 * 20 Bound Ritualist