OK, EVERY SINGLE video I can find about taking him down, has a Marauder/Sentinel in the group. They pop their group damage buff twice in the fight, and still every video has shown them hitting the enrage timer.

 

Our steady raid group has no Marauder. Can this be done in 69-72 gear without that damage boost? (almost entire raid is only 1-3 armorings at 69 for set bonuses and rest all 72's)

 

Is it possible with this raid group makeup?

 

Tank - Powertech

Tank - Assassin

DPS - Sorc

DPS - Merc

DPS - Merc

DPS - Sniper

Heals - Sorc

Heals - Sorc

 

According to ToRparse, each DPS is putting out over 2100 dps, 3 of the 4 are over 2300. Yet we seem to keep hitting the enrage timer with A TON of health left on Styrak (~40% health). We're still learning so our tactics may be off too, but I have yet to see a video of him being killed without the extra damage buff from a Mara/Sent. We're all stimmed and using adrenals, popping relics and any class damage/armor penetration boosts when possible and even the heals are trying to help DPS.

 

We've only attempted this fight a hand full of times. Our best was hitting the enrage with Styrak at 40%. So we have a lot of ground to make up. Its just a little disheartening to see every single video using that extra DPS boost from the Mara/Sent and still hitting the enrage timer.

 

Anybody have any ideas?

 

Please dont just say, "you suck" or something stupid. Please be helpful or dont bother posting.

You need to be doing 2000~2100 BEFORE the second kell dragon spawns. The revived dragon takes an absurd amount of damage and skews your DPS.

I could go into a lot of the numbers but the short answer: yes, if your DPS are skilled enough.

You need to be doing 2000~2100 BEFORE the second kell dragon spawns. The revived dragon takes an absurd amount of damage and skews your DPS.

I could go into a lot of the numbers but the short answer: yes, if your DPS are skilled enough.

 

We havent made it to the second dragon. Skyrak enrages before we get to him. So our numbers are pre second dragon.

 

But thank you. That is what I was looking for. Just knowing that our group makeup can do it is good enough for me. We'll get it figured out then. Hopefully the next few attempts get us closer and closer. Thats how we did TFB HM and the previous bosses in S&V HM. Each new attempt would gain us ~10-20% lower boss health before we would wipe or hit enrage eventually succeeding.

The healers need to be DPSing as well by the way.

Yeah, we're gonna try that Monday (our next raid night). We talked a little more tactics and whatnot when one of our tanks computer crashed and he couldnt get back into game. We had all 4 DPS going to the ghosts (we call them ghosts) during the first kell dragon fight. We're gonna change that to only 2 and we're gonna have the healers dps styrak too.

hey, first thing y can go with any class and kill this ,but yes mara buff is nice. first time i killed it we had 2 of them. try not to be discouraged by this and the videos ,because they were made by guilds on their first kills probably so they didn't had even full 69 gear ,that why they needed this buff.

What can y do better. i assume your healers try to put dots at least

-1 dps only on ads when fist dragon comes,

-on boss ,just after big apparition , try to squeeze some dmg before he casts his ads, first cast will be very quick ,but others will come after some time,

-dps that are pared with tanks on little adds don't need to go to melee range so they can do more dmg ,

-boss losses all debufs y put on him when he goes invisible so if your dps (sorc and sniper )are dots speced they should try goin lightning ,marksmanship ,

-boss switches phase on 15% so before each cast of big apparition y need to get him 21,25% down, since if he cast the fifth apparition he enrages then,

If y still cant get him down your dps probably cant give the number y need for this fight,so y will be forced to grind some gear until they will be able to do it. Hope that helped y in some way.

Edited August 4, 2013 by inc_CichYBoB

Our guild was having the same issue, but we started trying things differently and have cleared it without enrage.

 

Main thing is you want to pop your big hits when Styrak himself is up. He's the one you have to burn to get the phases going.

 

Obviously for both dragons DPS them quickly. But adrenals, relics, and other things that continually come up and down off cooldown (hard hitting attacks, etc) need to be used on Styrak. I recommend after lightning manifestation since he is out for a longer period of time.

 

Mainly because if you don't get him to the final stage quick enough then you waste more time when he hides and summons lightning and chained. Each time he pulls those out, you're losing time on the boss. The fewer lightning/chained manifestations the better. Burn him hard when he is out. Burst then.

It's most definately recommended to not spec a dot class, since you need lots of quick dps on the little adds that spawn for instance, and the brief moment you can dps between chained manifestation and the spawning of adds. Our group also hasn't got a marauder, but we manage to get him down before the enrage. It's just a matter of getting to know the fight, getting to know the mechanics, and with time, you'll see that you can get him down

You can try to kill the apparitions at the same time so less dps is wasted.

Healers doing dps when they can.

Make sure your tanks do enough dps and if they can use a high dps rotation while sacrificing mitigation.

Make sure that Styrak does not run around too much although with 0 melee that's not an issue.

If the 72 gear is optimized accordingly then yeah it can be done with your group.

Sweet! Thank you guys very much! I will be copy/pasting your comments in our guild ops team forum. This has been VERY helpful!!

-boss losses all debufs y put on him when he goes invisible so if your dps (sorc and sniper )are dots speced they should try goin lightning ,marksmanship ,

 

This is probably the biggest help right here. Thank you very much for this. Both our sniper and DPS sorc, are dot spec. So basically our DPS never gets to ramp up as much as we want it to.

I really feel like they stealth nerfed the enrage timer on HM Styrak (and possibly TC HM) after 2.3

 

Before 2.2.3 we had hit enrage 3 weeks in a row and 2 weeks after 2.2.3 (we didn't raid one week) we downed him with no enrage whatsoever.

 

I can see an argument being made that we were simply unfamiliar with the mechanics for the first 3 weeks, but all my "timing metrics" show that our DPS hasn't really changed at all. We still get the second set of spines (and the dragon dies shortly afterwards) and Inspiration comes back up when Styrak himself has around 30-40% HP left. Not to mention that i know we were underperforming DPS wise since we had 2 GSs and 2 Sents.

 

And on a similar note, I ran with a different group on the Thursday just gone with 3 Commando's, 1 GS, I was personally underperforming massively (just under 2k dps) and we didn't even touch the enrage at all.

 

Other than that, don't lose heart, sometimes it's just a case of maximising uptime on the boss, rather than "doing more DPS".

On our first runs we had the same problem. We have 2 very good healers and they were over healing during the styrak phase after the first dragon. So what we did was, after we kill the first dragon, healer 'A" respecs to dps and dps's untill the final Styrak-goes-into-jesus-mode. He respecs during the final jesus mode, then heals during the 2nd dragon/final styrak phase. Super easy

My guild hasnt done Styrack for a few weeks since we have spent more time of late learning Nightmare mode mechanics on a couple of bosses but went back to SV HM this week to throw some gear at a new recruit and had 2 nights worth of wiping on Styrak. We feel this was probably due to the below change a few weeks ago.

 

Game Update 2.2.3 Patch Notes

7/23/2013

Scum and Villainy

 

During the encounter with Dread Master Styrak, healers who have obtained their 36-point Skill Tree ability (such as Salvation) are now far less likely to be pulled into Nightmare Manifestation and be forced to face their Companion Character.

 

We've killed the guy over 10 times at least, we know the mechanics well enough and even have both our healers dpsing and tanks with DPS stims and adrenals but we seemed to find for some reason we are now short on dps due to 3-4 of our dps going into nightmares on each pull instead of 2-3 NON dps going in, thus losing a large portion of our dps and continusly wiping due to the enrage even though our gear is substantially better since last time we even bothered trying the guy

 

I know its not a gear issue or low dps at all as everyone was doing over 2k, hell we used to kill him b4 doing LESS than 2k each and used to 2-3 shot it and we use the same tactic we used to use previously. Nothing has changed since last time we killed it apart from our better gear and the patch change a few weeks back.

 

Last 2 nights we were running with Jugg and Assassin tanks, 1 MM sniper, Lightning Sorc, Arsenal Merc and a Carnage Marauder + Sorc/Merc healers. We didnt take our new trialist for the fight as he wasnt geared enough lol

 

Am i imagining it but it seems like this change has added a certain amount of RNG to the fight?

A couple of guilds switch one of their tanks for a DPS (either by respeccing or swapping characters - if I am to swap I don't respec my shadow as shadow DPS is bad I just bring my slinger ALT). If your healers are good enough and your tank is good enough it's the easiest way to go. Second tank is nearly redundant in this fight. Tank with aggro almost never gets sucked into nightmare so that shouldn't be an issue. When I'm solo-tanking this I lose aggro for 5 sec's max. I'm always back on boss before thundering blast. I have solo tanked it on both my shadow and my guardian (guardian in SM, but still) and I believe vanguard can do it as well. Important thing is to save cooldowns for resurrected dragon and have the DPS nuke him like there was tomorrow, before debuff kills you. DPS requirement in 8-man is an order of magnitude higher then everything else in whole op.

When does the official enrage timer start on this fight? Does it start when Styrak appears after the first dragon death or does it start right after the 4 or 5 waves of adds?

This is how we do it. Tanking got a little messy as our friend from another guild hasn't tanked on his vanguard for a while. To sum up, apart, from bad spit placement from the rusty tank, we have the following :

 

 

1. 1 BIS 72 Sage healer keeping weaken mind and mindcrush on the boss at all times.

2. 1 BS 72 Commando keeping his Net and other damage on the boss.

3. We have 2 36 8 2 watchman sentinels BIS 72 with over 1500 force bonus damage. We both do in this fight 2.5-2.7k DPS. The stream I linked has my guildie entering top 50 in the world accoriding to Torparse. He is situated on 45 with over 2.7K dps. I was a bit short of the top 50 but not far from it. I had some lag with the stream on and some random targeting issues as the stream will show. Also Torparse meter bugged and I had to check if we were doing the damage needed. I used my second screen a few times to troubleshoot torparse during the fight lol.

4. 1 Commando DPS, BIS 72 doing over 2.5k as well.

5. 1 Gunslinger, shaprshooter spec, not yet BIS 72. He still has some 69s and misses implants, relics and earpiece. He is our lower DPS at the moment but does not have our gear. He still does 2.5k in this one.

6. 1 vanguard tank our regular and a guardian tank. This run had two vanguards as I mentioned with a friend.

 

 

 

Having two inspirations helps a ton as the fight is longer than 5 minutes. You have 4 inspirations during the whole fight and it will increase your chances to kill it without an enrage dramatically.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

One thing that no one has actually mentioned, the enrage timer only starts when Styrak himself drops down and you start fighting him. So don't be blowing massive offensive CD's on the dragon because you think you have to get him down in a timely fashion. Best off saving them all for Styrak himself. That's not to say just put a tank on the dragon while the rest of you have a cutesy tea party in the corner, but just take it a little bit easier and make sure you are all settled for Styrak.

a vid of my Imperial guild's first HM SNV Styrak kill. We did have a marauder and he did give us bloodthirst twice, but since we were in a mix of 63, 66, and 69 gear overall we probably had less damage potential than your group. I have also improved my rotation since this recording. I wasn't keeping up Corrosive Dart, and I whiffed TWO orbital strikes. Group composition was 1 Merc, 2 Snipers, and 1 Marauder for DPS, one sorc and one op for healers, and two non-Sins for tanks.

 

But if you're hitting enrage at 40% on Styrak then -everything- needs to be improved. Your transitions, your positioning, your awareness of the mechanics, your dps rotations, your timed burst, your gear. Others have given specific pointers on how to improve the timed burst, so please let us know if you have further questions about any of these items.

 

Since the boss spawns at 2:34 in my video and enrages at 8:28, that's an enrage timer of 5 minutes and 54 seconds.This was recorded within a few weeks of 2.0's release, so if there exists a video demonstrating a laxer enrage that would be cool to see.

Edited August 10, 2013 by MGNMTTRN

As has been mentioned, we also used the gimp tank strategy when we very first cleared this on HM with crap gear, or still occasionally do with alts or pugs if the DPS isn't there. We just have one tank respec to a hybrid tank/DPS and put on mostly DPS gear (leaving implants/ears/one tanking relic) and we're usually just fine. The gimp tank just needs a little bit more healing during both Kell Dragon phases (especially the second) and it's a little harder to tauntlock Styrack during the last burn phase without a tank dying (though they usually stay up long enough to get enough DPS on the boss that we can still clear).

 

Another thing that many groups overlook is when Styrack pops out for a few seconds in between the large apparition/box phase and the four small adds--your sniper should always be throwing out an explosive probe and everyone else one quick casted big hits, plus DOTing the boss up (he should still be taking DOT damage after he disappears again in a few seconds, as far as I know). Maximizing your DPS in this small window, plus obviously when the boss is out for longer periods, is important.

 

I forget how many phases you can have, but there is a set number by which, if you don't have Styrack down to 14-15% when he starts a new phase and summons the large apparition/box (the point when he summons the dragon), you've missed your window and he will enrage while the dragon is out, an assured wipe. That's the goal that you have to aim for.

 

Then just get your backs to the entrance and assuming he doesn't hit enrage until that point, you should be able to get him down, if barely.