Our guild has cleared EC on 8/16-man Storymode many times. Hardmode 8m is our next milestone, and we are stuck on Kephess. We believe we have the mechanics down (have watched countless HM videos/strat guides), our DPS is very solid, but we seem to encounter an unusually high amount of what we believe are bugs, over and over. We're frustrated, since we can now 1-shot all the bosses leading up to Kephess--but week after week we just can't kill him. Looking for guidance, reassurance, or both.

1.) We've seen the 2 polarity droids rail shot Ops members that are NOT the furthest away. Example: tank is 7-8 meters away, sniper is 3-5 meters away, and the sniper is getting rail shot instead of the tank.

2.) We've seen baradium bombers spawn during a walker burn phase. This seems to happen most often during the 3rd (last) walker burn phase, after Kephess is already on the ground. We'll be DPS'ing the walker and suddenly another bomber spawns.

3.) We've seen Kephess' "Arcing Slash" ability 1-shot a tank who was 20-30 yards away, dropping the purple circles, while another tank had aggro. I understand this is a known issue... since May.

4.) We've seen the player with the bomb icon run under the walker and get hit for 11k per tick, despite being sorc shielded and having the IA Shield Probe active. Other times, the same player will have bubble + probe and take almost NO damage under the walker.

5.) Last but not least, we've seen the walker charge up his cannons for the saturation fire, our group moves out of the zone he's aiming at, and then he'll immediately turn his head and fire in another direction (usually on us). It was my understanding that he is supposed to do the saturation fire on whatever zone he is facing when charging his lasers.

I really am looking for some help here, as we can't seem to down this guy. Every attempt is foiled by some sort of weird anomaly. The best we've ever done is had Kephess down to around 23% when one of our tanks (who did NOT have aggro and who was easily 20 meters away) died mysteriously to "Arcing Slash". Most of our other attempts end before that, due to the items stated above. Are we screwing something up? Or just having the worst RNG ever?

1.) We've seen the 2 polarity droids rail shot Ops members that are NOT the furthest away. Example: tank is 7-8 meters away, sniper is 3-5 meters away, and the sniper is getting rail shot instead of the tank.

That is normal, there is somehow a belief that the droid hit the farthest target, this is wrong, there are many evidence it is wrong. It just seems that droid just hit any random target that is not at melee range.

2.) We've seen baradium bombers spawn during a walker burn phase. This seems to happen most often during the 3rd (last) walker burn phase, after Kephess is already on the ground. We'll be DPS'ing the walker and suddenly another bomber spawns.

From 3rd bomber forward, the bomber just keep on spawning until the walker is down. If you fail to kill the 3rd bomber, the 4th appear right away, if you kill the 3rd but fail to kill the walker, a 4th bomber appear, then a 5th, then a 6th. The 4th bomber does not appear as soon as the 3rd has been killed, if it does, it a bug due to lag or bad script.

3.) We've seen Kephess' "Arcing Slash" ability 1-shot a tank who was 20-30 yards away, dropping the purple circles, while another tank had aggro. I understand this is a known issue... since May.

This can easily be avoided by having better timing on your tank taunt, kephess is not supposed to be kited, thus one shotting tank. You do it with 2 tanks right?

4.) We've seen the player with the bomb icon run under the walker and get hit for 11k per tick, despite being sorc shielded and having the IA Shield Probe active. Other times, the same player will have bubble + probe and take almost NO damage under the walker.

11k per tick is a bit much. Either this is a bug, or you don't have a complete view of what happenned. Do you record combat log? One possible explanation would be to have a damage from walker shot (randomly terget any raid member) + damage from being under the walker. This could be just bad luck but within game mechanic, once again, record and analyse combat log.

5.) Last but not least, we've seen the walker charge up his cannons for the saturation fire, our group moves out of the zone he's aiming at, and then he'll immediately turn his head and fire in another direction (usually on us). It was my understanding that he is supposed to do the saturation fire on whatever zone he is facing when charging his lasers.

Not really, we nerver look at the head to predict the zone that would be affected. I understand, ideally walker animation and actual zone being hit would be the same, but sometimes (as you noticed), it's not. To predict what zone will be hit next, we just know what zone has been hit last. He does always the same movement. (within a phase, he reset every phase somehow)

once you get the combat down (you don't according to what you say), you will know in advance where the walker hit, since he always does the same thing. I would even go as far as, you can determine if you are late, in advance or on timing, dps wise, with seeing where the walker hit zone is.

hope that help

That is normal, there is somehow a belief that the droid hit the farthest target, this is wrong, there are many evidence it is wrong. It just seems that droid just hit any random target that is not at melee range.

I've read many guides that say the droids rail shot the furthest away. Good to know this is not the case. But if I'm understanding you correctly, it WILL rail shot a random target not in melee range. If that's the case, shouldn't a tank always stand outside of melee range, so he soaks it, and then just have all dps (even ranged) + healers, stack on the droid?

From 3rd bomber forward, the bomber just keep on spawning until the walker is down. If you fail to kill the 3rd bomber, the 4th appear right away, if you kill the 3rd but fail to kill the walker, a 4th bomber appear, then a 5th, then a 6th. The 4th bomber does not appear as soon as the 3rd has been killed, if it does, it a bug due to lag or bad script.

Good to know. Maybe our DPS was just slow on the walker this week (last week we did not encounter this issue, which is why I thought it was bugged). In our case, we'd kill the 3rd bomber, player would run under the walker and do his little Luke Skywalker impersonation, and then while we were DPS'ing the walker, another bomber would spawn. If this happens, should we just have a sorc CC the bomber (he should explode on his own) while we finish burning down the walker?

This can easily be avoided by having better timing on your tank taunt, kephess is not supposed to be kited, thus one shotting tank. You do it with 2 tanks right?

Yep, 1 Jugg and 1 Assassin. We learned a few weeks back about not kiting Kephess during his sub-60% phase (we've been wiping on this fight for 3 weeks). If I understand correctly, Tank 1 has aggro until Kephess casts Breath of the Masters, at which point Tank 2 taunts Kephess and Tank 1 steps away to go drop 5 purple circles. Should Tank 1 taunt Kephess back immediately after the 5th circle drops? Or wait until Kephess is casting BotM on Tank 2?

11k per tick is a bit much. Either this is a bug, or you don't have a complete view of what happenned. Do you record combat log? One possible explanation would be to have a damage from walker shot (randomly terget any raid member) + damage from being under the walker. This could be just bad luck but within game mechanic, once again, record and analyse combat log.

Yes, this was data from the combat log. In one instance, it was a Marauder who popped his survival CD, and was shielded by a Sorc, and he was still taking MASSIVE damage while zip-lining up to the walker. We were having our sorc healer Extricate him to reduce damage. In the 2nd instance, it was a sniper who was sorc bubbled AND had Shield Probe active, and he died. Matter of fact, the only Ops members who didn't die there during our attempts tonight were a concealment Operative who was bubbled + Shield Probed, and our assassin tank. Altho now I am wondering if perhaps they were running under the droid before healers had time to react/cast. We'll have to work on this timing.

Not really, we nerver look at the head to predict the zone that would be affected. I understand, ideally walker animation and actual zone being hit would be the same, but sometimes (as you noticed), it's not. To predict what zone will be hit next, we just know what zone has been hit last. He does always the same movement. (within a phase, he reset every phase somehow)

I've read that on HM, the walker will do saturation fire on zones 1-5 per usual, but then it becomes random. I've watched videos and seen the walker charge his lasers and ALWAYS fires on wherever his head is pointing at that moment. It was only during our attempts tonight that he would suddenly move his head at the end of the laser charge, spraying saturation fire on a totally different zone.

Additional question: How does your guild handle the trandoshans? I've seen some videos where a dps will attack the warrior while a tank AOE-taunts the rest outside of the shield. Our group burns the warrior and then mows down the rest, but I think we're losing time here.

Thanks!

Only thing I think that is really preventable is number 5.

If you notice the walker does have two abilities the massive AOE and just firing a couple shots, he normally points where ever fires of his two bolts then flips his head back into the rotation of the 5 AOE areas.

You just have to really pay attention to where the last AOE went down and move to that area, we only seem to encounter it on our second group of warriors we always have to move back to the middle during that fight.

We do the same thing for warrior just burn the warrior down and kill the rest, if two dps get on it right away he tends to die almost right away, we dont really lose any time here, good news is the bomber wont appear until the last group is dead.

He has to taunt during breath of the master or your other tank will get one shoted no matter what.

Sometimes the extra bomber appears when your dps is a little slow on the one you killed and the game reads it as have not being defeated in time.

Yeah for the walker it basically takes 10% a tick the entire time the payer is under it, I have found their personal shield will mitigate a ton of that dmg, a sorc being bubbled should be having a problem.

For the rail shot we find most of the time it does hit the person furthest away. Only way I know to beat it is to make sure you leave the walker a wee bit early in that second phase to get inside the hitbox of the droid. Normally we have him to 8-10% by then anyways so it's not a big deal if you keep having issues pull away around 15-20% and just make it up.

Sounds like you have a pretty sound strat in place, head over to MMO mechanics I think they have a video of the tank perspective on Kephis. It should help with the breath of the masters timing. I have a few videos as well but all from melee dps perspective.

1.) We've seen the 2 polarity droids rail shot Ops members that are NOT the furthest away. Example: tank is 7-8 meters away, sniper is 3-5 meters away, and the sniper is getting rail shot instead of the tank.

He randomly shoots a person not hugging the droid, not the furthest. Everyone except your soaker should stand on top of him. There used to be a way where everyone in the raid could stack on the droid and there would be no rail shots at all but this was a bit unreliable to us; sometimes it worked sometimes he would railshot random ppl so we have since just done the everyone hug except soaker-strat.

3.) We've seen Kephess' "Arcing Slash" ability 1-shot a tank who was 20-30 yards away, dropping the purple circles, while another tank had aggro. I understand this is a known issue... since May.

Yeah his slash has huge aoe cone. Just never drop circles behind him.

4.) We've seen the player with the bomb icon run under the walker and get hit for 11k per tick, despite being sorc shielded and having the IA Shield Probe active. Other times, the same player will have bubble + probe and take almost NO damage under the walker.

Have also seen that happen. We basically have everyone that can heal spam heal whoever gets the bomb when running under the walker cause at that point what are you gonna dps anyway? But you gotta remind the dps cause they tend to forget about things not related to dpsing, or ours do at least

5.) Last but not least, we've seen the walker charge up his cannons for the saturation fire, our group moves out of the zone he's aiming at, and then he'll immediately turn his head and fire in another direction (usually on us). It was my understanding that he is supposed to do the saturation fire on whatever zone he is facing when charging his lasers.

We dont look at where he's facing at all. He follows a set pattern, like there are 3 places he can nuke and just rotates between those so just always stand at wherever he shot last time. It will never fire at the same spot twice in a row.

On the bomb delivery stage, we mitigate damage using force pull (rescue) as soon as the animation starts.

The player is yanked back to safety and it interrupts the animation, but the bomb is still delivered and the walker goes down to be attacked.

Thanks, everyone, for your strategies, tips, and videos. I think it was just a matter of our guild needing to make some small adjustments, because those little mistakes were adding up to big cumulative problems.

We are discussing these tips as a guild and will adjust as needed. Thanks again for your insights -- this fight was becoming a real sticky issue in our guild.

You are getting some useful information from people genuinely trying to help. But there are is some glaring misinformation in this thread. Rather than get into that, let me just help the top. I also replied to you in the video thread, but let us reiterate here.

1.) We've seen the 2 polarity droids rail shot Ops members that are NOT the furthest away. Example: tank is 7-8 meters away, sniper is 3-5 meters away, and the sniper is getting rail shot instead of the tank.

It's random. Your sniper has a 1/8 chance of getting hit. Make sure they have enough HP to survive the hit and it will not be a problem.

2.) We've seen baradium bombers spawn during a walker burn phase. This seems to happen most often during the 3rd (last) walker burn phase, after Kephess is already on the ground. We'll be DPS'ing the walker and suddenly another bomber spawns.

This will only happen on the 3+ bomber. The first two bombers if failed for whatever reason continue with their scripts w/o a walker burn phase. There is a sweet (or sour...) spot where your DPS is barely sufficient to kill the bomber, and while running the bomb to the walker from far away the game assumes you did not successfully kill the bomber and spawns another. You have to increase the speed at which you A) Kill the bomber B) Get the bomb underneath the walker.

3.) We've seen Kephess' "Arcing Slash" ability 1-shot a tank who was 20-30 yards away, dropping the purple circles, while another tank had aggro. I understand this is a known issue... since May.

This is not a bug. This is not an issue. This is not some mythically huge AOE zone held by Kephess. This is misunderstanding of mechanic that is frustrating.

In Hardmode, the tank dropping circles after a successful swap has a debuff. That debuff makes it such that ANY damage they take will one shot them. This will show up as "Arcing Slash". It is the same debuff that is the reason why if you are late on the taunt Kephess one shots that tank. Your tank dropping the circles is lingering too long inside the little puddles of doom. In story mode it's no big deal taking damage dropping them perfectly. In HM if you do not get out of the circle in the most urgent of manner the tank will take damage from the circle, and be summarily one shot. You could be dropping the circles beside T&Z's festering corpses and if you linger in the circle and are one shot it will show up as this.

Again, this is not a bug, this is a Hard Mode mechanic. Tell your tank to stop dragging his feet.

4.) We've seen the player with the bomb icon run under the walker and get hit for 11k per tick, despite being sorc shielded and having the IA Shield Probe active. Other times, the same player will have bubble + probe and take almost NO damage under the walker.

The damage is subject to all manner of mitigation. It hits my tank for less than a squishy. The damage is also AOE, so classes with minus AOE damage will take less as well.

5.) Last but not least, we've seen the walker charge up his cannons for the saturation fire, our group moves out of the zone he's aiming at, and then he'll immediately turn his head and fire in another direction (usually on us). It was my understanding that he is supposed to do the saturation fire on whatever zone he is facing when charging his lasers.

He will charge his lasers, then turn and fire. On top of that the pattern is the same every single time you do the fight. First he will fire to the right... and then he will fire to the middle... and then your bomber should spawn... It's honestly so repetitive I could give you a recitation from memory. If you require one PM me.

There is an exception to this rule. At times the Kephess fight will not properly reset after a wipe, and the pattern of his shooting will continue from where it left off rather than a proper reset.

Hopefully that helps you. None of the problems are RNG, and if you need further assistance PM me and I'll chat with you in vent if needed.

Additional question: How does your guild handle the trandoshans? I've seen some videos where a dps will attack the warrior while a tank AOE-taunts the rest outside of the shield. Our group burns the warrior and then mows down the rest, but I think we're losing time here.

 

Thanks!

What my guild does is burn down the warrior and do AOE to burn the rest. The one time we had 3 sentinel DPS it was close on the time; but our normal group of 1 gunslinger, 1 commando and 2 sentinels almost always burns though the entire group before the next one spawns.

About the railshot, as far as I've seen from our tries, the first railshot from the pulsar droids are one of the following:

1) They railshot a random ops member

2) They railshot whoever is furthest at the time they land.

No. 2 seems most correct now,but we need to test some more. What we usually do, is have everyone on the side with the pulsar droid that needs to be burned first, except a tank, who stands on the other side of the walker. This usually does the trick for us, but only tested twice, but both times its worked that way.

Again, no guarantees, but it seems like it at least.

2.) We've seen baradium bombers spawn during a walker burn phase. This seems to happen most often during the 3rd (last) walker burn phase, after Kephess is already on the ground. We'll be DPS'ing the walker and suddenly another bomber spawns.

As mentioned earlier by another poster, a 4th bomber can spawn when you are burning down the walker if your group barely made the timer for killing the 3rd bomber and took some time to move to the walker to start the burn phase. This is due to the script thinking that you have failed to kill the 3rd bomber.

2 suggested ways to handle it when it occurs are to either have a tank taunt the 4th bomber and keep him occupied until he explodes on his own, or just have either a sage/sorc or merc/commando CC the bomber and let him blow himself up when his timer is up.

5.) Last but not least, we've seen the walker charge up his cannons for the saturation fire, our group moves out of the zone he's aiming at, and then he'll immediately turn his head and fire in another direction (usually on us). It was my understanding that he is supposed to do the saturation fire on whatever zone he is facing when charging his lasers.

There's a fixed pattern for saturation fire throughout the fight.

From where you face when you zone in, there are 5 sectors in the field where saturation fire can occur. Assuming a semi-circle area in front of the walker, the sectors are:

A - directly to the right of the walker

B - midway between the right and front of the walker

C - directly in front of the walker

D - midway between the front and left of the walker

E - directly to the left of the walker

For phase 1 and 2, i.e. imperial siege droids and trandoshan adds, the walker will fire in this manner:

A > B > C > D > E > D > C > B, and it repeats the pattern again.

During the period of time when the 2 pulsar droids are on the field, the walker will only alternate between firing at A or E.

Once the pulsar droids are killed and Kephess jumps down onto the field, the walker reverts to the first firing pattern, i.e. going from A to E then back to A again.

Our guild has cleared EC on 8/16-man Storymode many times. Hardmode 8m is our next milestone, and we are stuck on Kephess. We believe we have the mechanics down (have watched countless HM videos/strat guides), our DPS is very solid, but we seem to encounter an unusually high amount of what we believe are bugs, over and over. We're frustrated, since we can now 1-shot all the bosses leading up to Kephess--but week after week we just can't kill him. Looking for guidance, reassurance, or both.

1.) We've seen the 2 polarity droids rail shot Ops members that are NOT the furthest away. Example: tank is 7-8 meters away, sniper is 3-5 meters away, and the sniper is getting rail shot instead of the tank.

As many have pointed out. No in melee range = can get hit by railshot. ALL stack on top of the droids even tanks.

 

2.) We've seen baradium bombers spawn during a walker burn phase. This seems to happen most often during the 3rd (last) walker burn phase, after Kephess is already on the ground. We'll be DPS'ing the walker and suddenly another bomber spawns.

True, this can happen. Just make sure you get the walker down. If you you really have to soak it, use the tank not tanking kephess taunt the bomber to prevent it from missile @ a healer or the kephess tank., and eat the boom.

 

3.) We've seen Kephess' "Arcing Slash" ability 1-shot a tank who was 20-30 yards away, dropping the purple circles, while another tank had aggro. I understand this is a known issue... since May.

Kephess do a AoE cone just before he is casting BAMF debuff.

The other tank will still have the debuff and cant take NO dmg at all on this slash.

SO Dont stand in circles. Watch AoE cone from kephess.

 

4.) We've seen the player with the bomb icon run under the walker and get hit for 11k per tick, despite being sorc shielded and having the IA Shield Probe active. Other times, the same player will have bubble + probe and take almost NO damage under the walker.

A tip, just when player is going up. Have a sorc pull him/her out to prevent them from being inside the camel belly for to long. It hurts in there.

 

5.) Last but not least, we've seen the walker charge up his cannons for the saturation fire, our group moves out of the zone he's aiming at, and then he'll immediately turn his head and fire in another direction (usually on us). It was my understanding that he is supposed to do the saturation fire on whatever zone he is facing when charging his lasers.

TIP: left back leg of the camle(warstrider) he can't see you. = No fire get's you there.

 

I really am looking for some help here, as we can't seem to down this guy. Every attempt is foiled by some sort of weird anomaly. The best we've ever done is had Kephess down to around 23% when one of our tanks (who did NOT have aggro and who was easily 20 meters away) died mysteriously to "Arcing Slash". Most of our other attempts end before that, due to the items stated above. Are we screwing something up? Or just having the worst RNG ever?

We have a video in HD of the fight here, with camel leg position, Stacking up on the droids, pulling ppl out from the camel and how you should TANK kephess.

It just takes one kill, then its farm-status. good luck! / Zacke @ Tomb or freedom nadd.

As mentioned earlier by another poster, a 4th bomber can spawn when you are burning down the walker if your group barely made the timer for killing the 3rd bomber and took some time to move to the walker to start the burn phase. This is due to the script thinking that you have failed to kill the 3rd bomber.

 

2 suggested ways to handle it when it occurs are to either have a tank taunt the 4th bomber and keep him occupied until he explodes on his own, or just have either a sage/sorc or merc/commando CC the bomber and let him blow himself up when his timer is up.

In the spirit of this developer fail game people post how to do work arounds for buggy raids. Kinda sad that this just goes on and on.