Hi,

We managed to kill Master and Blaster some days ago using a Shadow DD and a Guardian-Vanguard-Combo as Tanks.

Using a Shadow DD gave us some interessting options to handle overpowered ion cutter. If you are interessted in a "zero-movement" strategy to kill Master&Blaster this might be an option for you:

Thank you, very interesting how you guys positioned yourselves, it looked much cleaner and easier than other strategies.

 

Were you the Shadow? How do you like running Infiltration for this fight? I find that having to alter when I cloak to save it for the cutter plus having to stack in front of Blaster in the burn phase makes it a chore. Doable for sure, but Serenity doesn't have those problems.

You are absolutely right, Serenity would be the much better option in this fight.

I main a gunslinger and grapped my shadow for this fight only. Since I am familiar with the infiltration rotation, but not with the serenity rotation and our raid dps meet the requirements, I choose this one .

Interesting strat. And the end was hilarious

 

Thing is, once you swap one tank for a shadow you're screwed for the first phase... Although it would make phase 2 easier

Edited October 16, 2015 by Torvai

Thank you, very interesting how you guys positioned yourselves, it looked much cleaner and easier than other strategies.

 

Were you the Shadow? How do you like running Infiltration for this fight? I find that having to alter when I cloak to save it for the cutter plus having to stack in front of Blaster in the burn phase makes it a chore. Doable for sure, but Serenity doesn't have those problems.

 

My guess would have been that the explosive probes can get pretty nasty, especially if it bugs out and puts 4 on you. No surviving that without heavy armor or AoE damage reduction.

Interesting strat. And the end was hilarious

 

Thing is, once you swap one tank for a shadow you're screwed for the first phase... Although it would make phase 2 easier

 

Actually with a vanguard/shadow combo you can do the first phase fairly easily. The shadow just has to cheese two of the knock backs. 1 by steathing out as he is casting and it breaks the cast. The other you let yourself get knocked into yellow and spam your phase walk back and you wont take any damage.

 

Then they can cheese two of the ion cutters too! Resilience and stealthing out again.

 

It's how we do it, and it turns out to be pretty handy.

Actually with a vanguard/shadow combo you can do the first phase fairly easily. The shadow just has to cheese two of the knock backs.

 

If dps is good you should only need to cheese one knockback with the shadow using phase walk, assuming the vanguard takes the second knockback after the initial pull and you alternate from that point. You can also cheese with any tank combo by having a sage pull the tank during the knockback animation, which cancels it the same as stealthing out, but it's a bit more tricky on the timing. I'm betting a Jugg tank could also break the knockback with intercede, but I haven't tried that (though that FL technique in the video seemed good enough).

 

Anyway, by saving your stealth in phase one, if you spec into Fade (or whatever it's called on pub side) you can be guaranteed the ability to stealth the first and third ion cutters, and shroud the second and fourth -- until your shroud runs out on #4, then you'll die if you take more stacks...but if a group is geting a 4th cutter with the flying V, the dps is slow and should be addressed if planning to kill Cora/Rug.

Edited October 16, 2015 by KaiserTNT

Thank you for your comments. I think there is plenty of room to improve.

Your ideas regarding the shadow tank are really usefull for further tries.

Haven't tried this yet, but it could be possible that the guardian solo tanks blaster all the way till the last phase if specced into battlefield command, so leap is ready for every knockback.

We normally did it with PT+sin tanks, facing boss towards the entrance as opposed to pt cheesing tacts and having 2 dps and a healer in static spots behind the boss. 2 remaining dps and a healer are floaters. 1st phase involved some movement, so we did call out "entrance" or "exit" as a direction for floaters to move. With new people in pug i had to callout if the floater behind the boss needs to move or not. Also, we did turn boss by taunts only, no tanks swapping positions involved.

 

After this, if you have a sorc dps/heal or sin dps it becomes fairly simplistic. I eat spinning wheel with shroud just to be on safe side, then 0-2 stacks stealth out depending on my connection at that day, then sorc (typically healer) intercepting the second beam for me (2nd spinning wheel i eat with all dcds available including adrenal but that's not really needed, just safer), then rain of pain, 1 more shroud + stealthout and it's gone.

 

There is a different approach suggesting tank should kite and use shroud on 2nd beam instead after 10 stacks. That makes tanking completely soloable but much harder for pugging from my experience. Using phasewalk to hind behind the sorc is the safest way i've seen so far, basically you can carry 3-4 somewhat capable people who don't know the fight at all if you have a premade of 2 tanks, sorc heal and a good rdps floater on the back.

Well, as well as said people can follow positioning they are told to use and don't kill everyone with mines in transitions ;-)