During a wipe on Dread Masters HM last night, my group decided to push Calphayus so that people who hadn't seen Dark Empowerment could experience the joy. Of course it was an auto-wipe, but we noticed something different: a portal appeared up to Calphayus's throne and the focusing crystals became attackable. They have 50k HP a piece, which means that two competent DPS would be able to kill them before the cast completes.

This raises an interesting question: if we kill those crystals, what happens? In the best case, I would imagine it kills Calphayus, which removes him from the soft enrage entirely and makes the fourth phase easier. At the very least, it might just CC him (like what happens when you DPS him down during his individual fight) and reduces the damage in the third phase.

Has anyone tried this? I would imagine it would work in SM just as well as it would in HM, so it shouldn't be hard to experiment.

An interesting observation. Can I ask why you guys didn't try it out on your next attempt?

It was getting late, the World Series was on and we wanted to just kill the boss and go home. :-) We did talk about it briefly though, and the idea was voted down.

We tried this during our HM raid today, but only once. Here's what I gathered:

- When the four bosses come down from their thrones again at 50%, have all DPS focus Calphayus down below 30%.

- Make sure that the tank kites Calphayus toward the throne so that the DPs are close to the throne when it opens.

- When Calphayus starts his cast, the Focusing Crystal become - like you say - attackable. However, they are immune when attacking from the center platform, so even your rDPS need to go through the portal before they can attack it.

- If you attack the crystals, they will move toward you like normal melee mobs. Make sure that your DPS are standing right next to the crystal so that the crystals won't have to move. In our try, a player who had the highest threat was standing on the throne, and then the crystals would reset to 100% HP because they could not reach the player there.

Unfortunately, half of our DPS died before they got to the throne, so we were not able to kill the crystals in time, and then the motivation to try it again was lost.

We may try doing that in story mode again sometime, not sure. The Crystals have 100k HP in total, and you have only 20 seconds to kill them, of which at least five will probably be lost by going through the portal.

However, if anyone else wants to try this, I would also look forward to what will happen.

We gave it a try in SM.

- 3rd phase, pushed Calphayus to 30%. He starts casting Dark Empowerment.

- All DPS to the throne, DPS'd the left one first, then the right one, all the while they were stacked on the crystal to avoid 'Evade'. Unfortunately, the DPS kiting Raptus didn't make it, and all the DPS but 1 got hit and died from the conal.

- The crystals disappeared, but the Calphayus tank keeps taking crystals to the face. The healers and tanks died shortly after. We're not sure what we died from, but the healers think it was Tyrans' rogue Thundering Blasts that killed them.

After that, the one remaining DPS went back to the main platform by clicking on Calphayus' crystal (this DPS was also the one that took Tyrans' (which explains why Tyrans' was all over the place since she has the 'Ignored' debuff). This DPS became invulnerable, tanking all 4, even completely ignored a Deathmark. However, she got hit by the knockback and fell off the side and died. She didn't have any special debuff except for the debuff from Tyrans' and Calpahyus' crystals.

That's all we gathered, it was late so we called it after that.

BUMP BUMP

Very interesting find indeed.

Well we trolled last night as well and we had the longest first phase ever. 10 mins of bosses going to their thrones and coming back without getting to Brontes. It was hilarious!

You know they do recover (with a timer) and have to be on thrones all at the same time, do you?

Last night we had my group try this in SM 8-man. We sent all of the dps (except the one tanking Raptus) up the bouncy pad that spawns to kill the crystals while the healers, tanks, and raptus-tank all continued as normal. We fudged our first attempt because of the evade bug, but by focus firing from on top of the platform, we managed to kill both of them before the cast finished. Calphayus just stopped casting and went back to normal (now below 30%). I feel that if this method could be perfected, all of the bosses could be brought down close to 15% before pushing the soft-enrage.

The major caveat that we found was that the bouncy pad does not go away once the channel has been canceled, so the only way for our DPS to get back down on the floor was to click the crystal. This of course meant that Calphayus was running wild switching between the tank who originally picked him up and the three DPS who was now locked to. The damage wasn't a problem in SM, but I have no idea how hard hitting he would be in HM. I also have no idea whether his damage is reduced after this or whether he still hits as hard as he always does. I intend to try this again next week (our first attempt was noticeably sloppy, we pushed the soft enrage with half the bosses in the mid 30s).

Unless we can figure out a way to make this less sloppy and dangerous, it probably isn't worth the effort in hard mode. I do think however, that this will be necessary in Nightmare mode, as the healing check for HM is fairly serious as is.

Last night we had my group try this in SM 8-man. We sent all of the dps (except the one tanking Raptus) up the bouncy pad that spawns to kill the crystals while the healers, tanks, and raptus-tank all continued as normal. We fudged our first attempt because of the evade bug, but by focus firing from on top of the platform, we managed to kill both of them before the cast finished. Calphayus just stopped casting and went back to normal (now below 30%). I feel that if this method could be perfected, all of the bosses could be brought down close to 15% before pushing the soft-enrage.

 

The major caveat that we found was that the bouncy pad does not go away once the channel has been canceled, so the only way for our DPS to get back down on the floor was to click the crystal. This of course meant that Calphayus was running wild switching between the tank who originally picked him up and the three DPS who was now locked to. The damage wasn't a problem in SM, but I have no idea how hard hitting he would be in HM. I also have no idea whether his damage is reduced after this or whether he still hits as hard as he always does. I intend to try this again next week (our first attempt was noticeably sloppy, we pushed the soft enrage with half the bosses in the mid 30s).

 

Unless we can figure out a way to make this less sloppy and dangerous, it probably isn't worth the effort in hard mode. I do think however, that this will be necessary in Nightmare mode, as the healing check for HM is fairly serious as is.

I have something to say on the damage done by Calphayus in phase 3. Last night I was pugging the fight on my marauder (Anni spec) , tanks decided to take Bestia and Raptus, I was tasked with taking the cyrstal from his throne and keep away from the raid. I can tell you that even as a dps I did not have a problem with him, popped cloak of pain and forgot about him. However, I am not sure how much his damage will scale in HM, but I really do suggest giving him to mDPS in phase 3.

Anyway we tried this method of burning Calphayus first two days ago, and I do share your opinion in this being something to rely on in NiM mode.

Edit:

These are my damage numbers from Calphayus from the whole fight (so Phase 1, 3, and 4)

#number of hits | name of attack | avg damage per hit

69 | Melee attacks | 957 (I think this is phase 3 part)

42 | Power of the masters | 857 (I think this is phase 4 part)

5 | Crystal projection | 5742 (Phase 1 and 3 ??)

I have something to say on the damage done by Calphayus in phase 3. Last night I was pugging the fight on my marauder (Anni spec) , tanks decided to take Bestia and Raptus, I was tasked with taking the cyrstal from his throne and keep away from the raid. I can tell you that even as a dps I did not have a problem with him, popped cloak of pain and forgot about him. However, I am not sure how much his damage will scale in HM, but I really do suggest giving him to mDPS in phase 3.

Anyway we tried this method of burning Calphayus first two days ago, and I do share your opinion in this being something to rely on in NiM mode.

 

Edit:

These are my damage numbers from Calphayus from the whole fight (so Phase 1, 3, and 4)

 

#number of hits | name of attack | avg damage per hit

69 | Melee attacks | 957 (I think this is phase 3 part)

42 | Power of the masters | 857 (I think this is phase 4 part)

5 | Crystal projection | 5742 (Phase 1 and 3 ??)

Calphayus hits like a truck in HM if you aren't a Tank. We tried having a mDPS on him and I think they were taking somewhere between 2100-2400 DPS to the face. Which pretty much requires an almost-full time healer, something that can't be afforded in HM. I do agree that the crystal mechanic will be present in NiM mode though. Has anyone pushed Calphayus down below 15% AFTER doing the crystals? Can Calphayus even trigger the soft enrage?

Calphayus hits like a truck in HM if you aren't a Tank. We tried having a mDPS on him and I think they were taking somewhere between 2100-2400 DPS to the face. Which pretty much requires an almost-full time healer, something that can't be afforded in HM. I do agree that the crystal mechanic will be present in NiM mode though. Has anyone pushed Calphayus down below 15% AFTER doing the crystals? Can Calphayus even trigger the soft enrage?

We are going for this method of burning him first to soft enrage tomorrow night, I will have some updates on this.

Edit: this is interesting thing I saw on another thread.

P1/P3 Calyphus Tank: When you have him down to your hold percentage, just run in a circle. He does not have a gap closer and will stop to drop his circle. You can avoid most of his damage even without a run buff.

So in essence you could avoid his damage by actively kiting him instead of tanking him.

I was finally able to successfully try this in 8-man SM. I can confirm that when you destroy the crystals before his cast finishes, you will be able to damage him below 30%. However, if he reaches 15%, the four bosses will still all jump into the center, so you can not kill him without activating the final phase.

As was mentioned in this thread, you cannot easily leave the throne again once you got up there for the crystals. If you try to normally jump off the throne, you will be teleported back to the throne. However:

- Slingers and Scoundrels can use their roll to roll back onto the main platform.

- Guardians can leap to a friendly player on the main platform.

- Shadows may be able to phase walk back as well, but we didn't have any Shadows so we could not try this.

- All other players will have to click the crystal above the throne.

I wonder if this is a half-finished mechanic. It seems to me that once the crystals die, you should just be teleported back down. I'd really like to see this be a requirement in Nightmare Mode, either forced by causing the soft enrage with four bosses to be unhealable (unlikely to be a successful way to "force" the mechanic), or by simply causing Calphayus to cast Dark Empowerment if he is above 30% when the soft enrage starts.

I think it might be an "option", either do the fight as a healing check by triggering the soft enrage at a higher HP % or as a dps check by triggering the soft enrage at a lower HP%, and not being able to teleport right back after killing the crystal is the "penatly for it" as it forces the players to take damage from Cal.