Hey there everyone, I noticed earlier, both in-game and around the subreddit and forums, that a lot of the more casual players here still have got NO idea what the heck is going on during the Nahut fight. There's really only one in-depth guide out there, and for some people who don't care so much for reading walls of text, I figured I will dumb it down to the basics!

[Edit] Writing this has shown me that I enjoy writing guides, and hopefully I am not so bad at it. Either way, I have started a website with the intent of making current guides for the new operations bosses, and possibly the older ones as well utilizing any new strats that have come out. Overall, it is a work-in-progress, but I would appreciate you giving it a visit! ventguides.com

PHASE 1

This can be solo tanked, as long as the tank understands the AOE debuff and the layout of the room. If the tank waits for the debuff to drop, while standing away from the group, they can quickly move out of the AOE dropped and off to the side and out of the middle area. The biggest and most important aspect to this whole first portion is keeping the AOE out of the way of the group.

In the middle of the room is a candle. Picking it up starts the fight. Whoever has the candle has three temporary abilities. In essence, they are Reveal, Pass, Drop. This is the effect of the abilities in order from left to right. While not necessary, it is easiest just to use the candle. Have the tank pick it up to start the fight, wait until Nahut drops down and releases his shield. Once this happens, use the Reveal and pass it to another player. Once he is cloaked in shadow again, the next player should use the candle. Puff, puff, pass. Use it, and share it. That way Nahut is always visible to all players in the raid.

The DPS should be standing in the middle of the room with Nahut, while the tanks stand opposite each other outside the inner circle, avoiding the flames popping up through the vents. There are items on the ground that will stun you in place, called pins and nails. Do NOT step in these, especially when you have aggro because Nahut will destroy you very quickly. If it happens, have a Sorc pull you out of the stun. When they pop up, they should be knocked out of the way with a knockback to avoid causing problems for the raid.

The person who holds Nahut's attention will have a blue debuff placed on them frequently. Moving with this debuff hurts, and at the end of the debuff a large AEO puddle will drop on the ground. The key to this is to drop the AOEs along the outside of the circle to make sure not to lose DPS and keep the raid from turning into a cluster. Now I will insert some bad art of mine.

https://imgur.com/a/MHIg3

While not perfectly to scale, you can get the general idea of how to drop the AOEs.

PHASE TWO

At the beginning of this, Nahut will disappear and there will be Power Couplings off to the northwest side of the room. The DPS need to run there and begin damaging these down. They dont disappear when you finish them, so pay attention to this. The person with the candle will likely hold aggro, and Nahut will shoot off a rail shot type beam at whoever has aggro. The off tank should get the candle and tank the rail shots first, while the main tank goes and wrangles up the adds by the Power Couplings. The rail shots add a stacking debuff that increase the damage of the rail shots, so at four stacks have the main tank grab the candle and go make sure they have aggro. Do not stand in front of or behind anyone while being targeted with the rail shot, or it is going to be a bad day for them too.

NOTE: During this phase and the last phase, there will occasionally be a giant pull into the center of the room. Avoid getting pulled all the way in, and try to get caught on the pillars.

PHASE THREE

At this phase the main tank will need to bring Nahut to the outer area of the room and face him away from the rest of the group. He will throw out the blue AOE debuff again, however it is easy to solo tank this and just step out of the puddle as they drop.

Rail turrets will pop up, and the DPS need to get on these ASAP and get them down.

A good method for this is to have two DPS, ideally with range and/or self-heals, move around the perimeter of the room in opposite directions, killing rail turrets (to 40%), while everybody else stays on the boss. DPS on the boss, along with the fake tank, should kill any turrets that spawn close to the boss, but otherwise focus Nahut and continue to candle him. That way, the burn phase is significantly shorter and there aren't as many opportunities for inattentive players to fall off of bridges. {credit to Euphrosyne for this strategy for the DPS on this phase}

At 40% they throw up a shield and you can move to the next rail turret. Once all the turrets are down, the safe space to stand in on the outer edges of the room will progressively get smaller and smaller, essentially the DPS/enrage check. Every so often he will cause electricity to cover the ground, requiring you to move further counter clockwise around the edge of the circle. Be careful when crossing the many bridge bosses. At this point, it is just a burn and avoid area damage until he's dead.

Alternatively, you can be a ******* and do the first phase how I did my first time killing the boss. Running around dropping AOEs everywhere making the DPS keep up. It was... fun.

Anyway, if anyone noticed anything I said wrong, or maybe missed out please point it out! I HOPE I achieved my goal in simplifying the mechanics into a "Nahut for Dummies" sense.

Good! I have some comments.

The DPS should be standing in the middle of the room with Nahut, while the tanks stand opposite each other outside the inner circle, avoiding the flames popping up through the vents.

Positioning is correct, but solo tanking the fight is significantly more efficient. Same with Tyth.

At the beginning of this, Nahut will disappear and there will be Power Couplings off to the side of the room.

Yes. To be specific, the power couplings spawn on the northwest side of the room.

The person with the candle will likely hold aggro, and Nahut will shoot off a rail shot type beam at whoever has aggro. The off tank should get the candle and tank the rail shots first, while the main tank goes and wrangles up the adds by the Power Couplings. The rail shots add a stacking debuff that increase the damage of the rail shots, so at four stacks have the main tank grab the candle and go make sure they have aggro. Do not stand in front of or behind anyone while being targeted with the rail shot, or it is going to be a bad day for them too.

I'm pretty sure the person with the candle always has aggro. However, again, solo tanking this is more efficient. Have the tank hold the candle at the start, and round up the adds, then move away from the couplings while the DPS finish them off. The rail shot will also damage the adds, allowing the dps to focus the power couplings.

Rail turrets will pop up, and the DPS need to get on these ASAP and get them down. At 40% they throw up a shield and you can move to the next rail turret.

A good method for this is to have two DPS, ideally with range and/or self-heals, move around the perimeter of the room in opposite directions, killing rail turrets (to 40%), while everybody else stays on the boss. DPS on the boss, along with the fake tank, should kill any turrets that spawn close to the boss, but otherwise focus Nahut and continue to candle him. That way, the burn phase is significantly shorter and there aren't as many opportunities for inattentive players to fall off of bridges.

Don't know how well it translates into action, so to speak, since I've yet to be part of a group doing him in game, but based on what I've seen from the videos of it being done, most of it sounds pretty clear. Biggest things that maybe could stand to be more clear: what does the candle do after it's initially passed around? I've seen people say "you don't need the candle in SM" but I'm not clear on why. Does it just hold his aggro, or what? And is there a range limit to passing it? Also, I've noticed on the various videos that the Pins and Nails all have health bars...I assume that killing them is just an alternative way to de-stun someone (and thus having a Sage who can pull is just more efficient), but that otherwise, they're best off ignored?

Either way, nice to see someone helping!

PS - One more question: Phases are at HP level triggers, I assume? Probably 70/30, since that's the usual? Or something else?

Positioning is correct, but solo tanking the fight is significantly more efficient. Same with Tyth.

Yeah, I solo tanked this several times my group ran through this. And while I personally did find it easy enough to solo tank, I had a few people suggest the strategy I posted for the two tank method. But I will add in an alternative method for tanking to the main post!

Yes. To be specific, the power couplings spawn on the northwest side of the room.

Adding to main post! I did not know off the top of my head which side it is, thank you!

I'm pretty sure the person with the candle always has aggro. However, again, solo tanking this is more efficient. Have the tank hold the candle at the start, and round up the adds, then move away from the couplings while the DPS finish them off. The rail shot will also damage the adds, allowing the dps to focus the power couplings.

The only reason I put in the should is because for some reason, the last time I ran through this, even though I had the candle and I was the closest one to Nahut, he was targeting a healer and just about killed them. So from then on I paid a little closer attention to this particular part.

A good method for this is to have two DPS, ideally with range and/or self-heals, move around the perimeter of the room in opposite directions, killing rail turrets (to 40%), while everybody else stays on the boss. DPS on the boss, along with the fake tank, should kill any turrets that spawn close to the boss, but otherwise focus Nahut and continue to candle him. That way, the burn phase is significantly shorter and there aren't as many opportunities for inattentive players to fall off of bridges.

I will add in this snippet and credit you for it.

Also, I've noticed on the various videos that the Pins and Nails all have health bars...I assume that killing them is just an alternative way to de-stun someone (and thus having a Sage who can pull is just more efficient), but that otherwise, they're best off ignored?

Actually, they can and should be knocked back as soon as they've all been spawned. That gives the tank more room to move around. Don't waste DPS on them.

In addition, the two shields that Nahut puts up during the first phase, when he appears to be absorbing damage, should still be damaged. As I understand it, and I could be wrong, the shield functions similarly to Revan's on the third floor of the last boss fight in ToS, and the damage is meaningful. On a related note, a good place to pop raid buffs is at the end of the second shield phase. During most other phases of the fight, you may not have maximum DPS on the boss due to movement and mechanics, but when Nahut is in the center of the room everybody can easily whack him.

PS - One more question: Phases are at HP level triggers, I assume? Probably 70/30, since that's the usual? Or something else?

That sounds about right from what I have experienced, but I cannot say 100% for certain.

Unscripted, and im no guide writer, but i did an explanation/walk-through from our kill videos to explain how my guild does the fight.

Its long af.... srry....

I did an even longer one for A&E too....

not sure if ill do one for Scyva yet... maybe when i can find the time/be bothered to...

That sounds about right from what I have experienced, but I cannot say 100% for certain.

First phase ends at 68ish%. Second phase is not associated with an HP trigger, but with the turret mechanic. Once a turret is reduced to 40%, it becomes invulnerable to further damage, but at the next singularity pulse it will fall into the center of the map and be destroyed. (They can also be pushed or knocked back. This is a Bad Idea, because it interferes with getting the turret to fall into the singularity. Do not do it.) After a certain number of these (sorry, not sure - not usually counting, but I think it's six), the singularity destroys the boss's cloak and begins the burn phase.

In practice, the boss will usually have about 40% health when turrets start to spawn, and 20-30% when the last turret falls into the singularity. The latter number changes a lot depending on how good your DPS are.

If you're by the power couplings, you can tell when the room pull is happening by a white light moving past you and closing in on the center. You also need to get the power couplings down fast as the ring they are on is slowly filled up lightning. The other healer and I were killed that way as we were hiding behind the pillar with the tank who was trying to gather the adds. His ability covered the ground up so I didn't see the lightning until it was too late. XD

As for the fire on the grating, you can see where it is by red circles and if the red circle pops up on one without fire it is about to have fire. I had to keep pulling a dps out of it and the goo cause he just wouldn't stop standing directly on top of the boss instead of behind him.

Hey there everyone, I noticed earlier, both in-game and around the subreddit and forums, that a lot of the more casual players here still have got NO idea what the heck is going on during the Nahut fight. There's really only one in-depth guide out there, and for some people who don't care so much for reading walls of text, I figured I will dumb it down to the basics!

I'm sure most people don't know what to do for Nahut because they can't get past Aivela and Esne. I've only beaten Aivela and Esne twice and both of those times were with guild groups. PUGs just can't finish them.

I'm sure most people don't know what to do for Nahut because they can't get past Aivela and Esne. I've only beaten Aivela and Esne twice and both of those times were with guild groups. PUGs just can't finish them.

I think I've cleared the full op 3 times with PUGs since the update. The third time was probably exemplar of a PUG since the others had advertised for players with Nahut clears, but this time about half the raid had never cleared Nahut before. It probably took 6 pulls but everyone wanted to see the new boss and stuck around. We even had a rather less than ideal composition of 4 commandos, 2 guardians, 1 slinger, and 1 shadow (me tanking).

Apparently the main issue after getting mechanics down was falling off.

I'm sure most people don't know what to do for Nahut because they can't get past Aivela and Esne. I've only beaten Aivela and Esne twice and both of those times were with guild groups. PUGs just can't finish them.

Yes, that is quite possible

I think I've cleared the full op 3 times with PUGs since the update. The third time was probably exemplar of a PUG since the others had advertised for players with Nahut clears, but this time about half the raid had never cleared Nahut before. It probably took 6 pulls but everyone wanted to see the new boss and stuck around. We even had a rather less than ideal composition of 4 commandos, 2 guardians, 1 slinger, and 1 shadow (me tanking).

 

Apparently the main issue after getting mechanics down was falling off.

It is definitely advisable to move slowly, as there's no real reason to freak out as long as you're moving at all. The damage from the lightning is very easy to heal through as long as you don't stay for too long. Typically when my group runs it, the DPS are moving faster than the tank, and the tank will just steadily progress around the platform. If falling is a serious problem for any group, I'd strongly recommend taking your time and keeping the DPS moving. You're not likely to enrage so if there's a DPS loss when DPS stop and carefully cross the bridges because they're having a hard time not falling off, it's fine. Overall, the only way you could potentially wipe is really just the beginning with the blue AOE's and the pins & nails, assuming you're unfamiliar with them.