Yesterday was the day when my healer, grouped with some friends, completed hardmode Esseles for the first time. It was a grueling experience, to say the least, mostly because we wiped around 25 times (half of which was on Vokk due to bad RNG and someone getting slapped with thrown lightsaber twice or not reacting quickly enough to lightning). However, here are my observations for the boss fights, I hope they help some people:

 

1) The first boss is all about positioning. We stayed at the very beginning of the area on the right, behind a protrusion of the wall. My healing aggro ensured that adds would come our way and dps quickly got rid of them. Since the boss hits pretty hard it's preferable that dps don't get too much damage on themselves. It's very difficult to keep the tank up and some overzealous dps on top of him.

 

2) Mandalorian boss - Ironfist. This fight is all about the healer and keeping everyone up. I think this fight was specifically designed to stress healers with all the aoe damage. However, we quickly noticed that running like headless chickens during the aoe stage didn't help and only made healing harder. So we bunched up during that part so I could heal with my aoe. Also, it's advisable that everyone stack up near the boss to prevent him from jumping around and spreading unnecessary damage on distant party members. He still sometimes turns and oneshots a party member for no reason but I'm hearing you can interrupt his attacks.

 

3) Robot bosses in the engine room - very easy, nothing special to do here. Just run away from the bonus boss as usual when he gets the aoe around him.

 

4) Vokk. Very hard if you're unlucky and someone gets their face melted with the lightsaber throw twice in a row or your client has some delay in rendering the aoe. Even if I moved immediately when the aoe spawned on me and I was 10 meters away when the lightning hit I would still get damaged. Those two issues kept wiping us all the time here. We finally went around the lightning issue by having me be constantly on the move and only stop to heal when the lightning appeared somewhere. This boss does little damage to the tank and his only move to look out for is the force choke which can be dispelled. The problem comes from the lightsaber throw which pretty much kills on the spot if someone gets it twice in a row. There is no time to heal the first damage before the second hit comes so there is a bit of luck involved in this fight. It would certainly help if people used their medpacks after getting hit by the lightsaber, just in case they are about to be hit again.

 

Still, even though we managed to complete the flashpoint, all bosses enraged on us so dps needs to be really tight with their buttons and dish out their best from the very beginning.

Ironfist is really bad done. The adds hit for insane damage.

Its totally unpredictable and just silly.

Sure ironfist can be beaten, but it takes alot of tries and costs alot of credits.

 

One time in there he kept killing a random player for no reason at all and it was not that killing shot!.

It's pretty stupid that Voxx can hit someone 2x with the double sabre, since even when full health that takes out most non tanks/non heavies.

 

A fight shouldn't come down to good RNG.

You're doing ironfist wrong slightly. The missiles have splash damage.

 

 

Stack and interrupt all headshots, split for missiles, stack back up. Push 50% in a stack phase so you don't have adds all over the place when they spawn.

 

I did this the first day I dung 50 on a sage healer in mostly quest greens.

 

*EDIT -- For Vokk, and this may sound insane but it worked for me, don't keep running, get a few yards out of the target and stop. It seems like for some reason if you keep running and are not using force speed it hits you, but if you move then stop it doesn't. Then again it could all just be luck with it glitching or not.

 

*EDIT 2 -- First boss (miniboss really, aka guy i turn sound off for the fight) has a cleave attack, you want mDPS behind him (and off his hitbox) for that fight. Generally we have him in the door facing into the hall, and with AoE tank abilities the adds rarely find their way into the pack. Saves a lot on healing when your other DPS aren't getting hit by the cleave.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Battyone

Yes, Battyone, thank you. On the following day I noticed that grouping up for the aoe phase on Ironfist kept wiping us and I had no way of outhealing the damage (I don't know why it had worked before). Having people spread around really makes healing the bombing much easier.