I was wondering if anyone could help me out here. We have spent quite some time trying to bring Kephess down with a geared group in Denova Story Mode. I am tanking the boss and taunt him after he lands from the gift of the masters cast. He still managed to whack our dps at times for 20k+ with Savage Arcing Slash. How is this avoided? He also hits me or the OT with it at times which will do 80-90% damage and kills the tank with his next melee hit. Should the taunt happen even earlier than when he lands from the "Gift" cast? And how does the OT stay up after taunting following the "Breath" cast? Any help would be appreciated, as I have not seen much of anything on forums or strategies about this specific attack that hits for nearly 30k sometimes. We have the taunting during the "Breath" phase down pretty well, yet the tanks still go down, even using cooldowns and having properly modded rakata gear. Very frustrating...

I was wondering if anyone could help me out here. We have spent quite some time trying to bring Kephess down with a geared group in Denova Story Mode. I am tanking the boss and taunt him after he lands from the gift of the masters cast. He still managed to whack our dps at times for 20k+ with Savage Arcing Slash. How is this avoided? He also hits me or the OT with it at times which will do 80-90% damage and kills the tank with his next melee hit. Should the taunt happen even earlier than when he lands from the "Gift" cast? And how does the OT stay up after taunting following the "Breath" cast? Any help would be appreciated, as I have not seen much of anything on forums or strategies about this specific attack that hits for nearly 30k sometimes. We have the taunting during the "Breath" phase down pretty well, yet the tanks still go down, even using cooldowns and having properly modded rakata gear. Very frustrating...

 

He'll use the slash even if he's running towards someone so if you taunt him make sure he won't run through the crowd. Also make it clear to the raid that he has this ability so they know to avoid being in front of him. That hit will one-shot people. The MT should also be the only one taking the slash hits. Sounds like there might be a tank gear issue here. He does hit pretty hard but 30k sounds like a lot of damage to be taking from that unless he's enraged or something.

I was wondering about that....the slash hitting as he runs through a crowd. Any idea what the radius is on that hit? Talking about it after the wipe with one of my dps, he seemed to think he was pretty far out and still got hit by it.

 

Gear on the tanks shouldn't be an issue. Like i said, we get hit for maybe 80-90%...not sure of exact number...didnt check the log. The 30k hits are to the dps/heals if they get hit. One hit was for over 70k on a dps, but I'm quite sure that was after enrage. They were generally getting hit in the 20k's.

 

Thanks for the input.

I heard it on good authority that your runs are filled with baddies anyway.

replace the healers, tanks and dps and you might have a shot.

I don't tank it, I dps it, but I know our tanks say they take 18k hits from it. What we do is have the tanks ping pong the boss constantly. They save their cooldowns until the second phase of fighting just him. They only tank him when cooldowns are up. The tanks try to stay at max distance from each other while staying in taunt range. They taunt, then run, if he charges them instantly they pop a cooldown, with the other tank taunting asap. One of the tanks usually dies here. We rez them asap and keep going. We tend to lose at least one other when he drops agro during this or we lose a tank again, but it's an all out burn phase. We've been able to gun him down each time. Actually trying to stand and tank him is a bad idea.

I'm assuming this is story mode. If I remember correctly savage arcing slash is the knockback, in which is cast on set intervals towards the main tank. This is a frontal cone with a HUGE range, so your entire raid must stand behind him. After he knocks back the tank, he will then begin to cast breath of the masters, this is when your off tank should swap.

 

So long story short, it's cast on set intervals which a huge range towards the main tank.

DeathKorps would recommend you stay clear of all disgusting PvE, do this and your problem should be solved.

I was wondering if anyone could help me out here. We have spent quite some time trying to bring Kephess down with a geared group in Denova Story Mode. I am tanking the boss and taunt him after he lands from the gift of the masters cast. He still managed to whack our dps at times for 20k+ with Savage Arcing Slash. How is this avoided? He also hits me or the OT with it at times which will do 80-90% damage and kills the tank with his next melee hit. Should the taunt happen even earlier than when he lands from the "Gift" cast? And how does the OT stay up after taunting following the "Breath" cast? Any help would be appreciated, as I have not seen much of anything on forums or strategies about this specific attack that hits for nearly 30k sometimes. We have the taunting during the "Breath" phase down pretty well, yet the tanks still go down, even using cooldowns and having properly modded rakata gear. Very frustrating...

 

Gift is the giant cicrle, you shouldn't be standing in it.

 

breath is easy, just kite.

 

Kephuss knocks back tank -> OT taunts. OT gets circles (usually) and kites boss + circles. MT pulls back aggro after debuff is gone.

I want to join War Machine.

I hear they get all the cat.

I want to join War Machine.

I hear they get all the cat.

 

Basically this.

I don't tank it, I dps it, but I know our tanks say they take 18k hits from it. What we do is have the tanks ping pong the boss constantly. They save their cooldowns until the second phase of fighting just him. They only tank him when cooldowns are up. The tanks try to stay at max distance from each other while staying in taunt range. They taunt, then run, if he charges them instantly they pop a cooldown, with the other tank taunting asap. One of the tanks usually dies here. We rez them asap and keep going. We tend to lose at least one other when he drops agro during this or we lose a tank again, but it's an all out burn phase. We've been able to gun him down each time. Actually trying to stand and tank him is a bad idea.

 

I've read similar strategies to this and like the idea, however we have another somewhat unique problem in the fact that we are typically running with 4 melee dps...and sometimes 4 bad marauders. We can move around some, but bouncing the boss back and forth between 30 meters will be a huge dps drain. Any good ideas around this?

I've read similar strategies to this and like the idea, however we have another somewhat unique problem in the fact that we are typically running with 4 melee dps...and sometimes 4 bad marauders. We can move around some, but bouncing the boss back and forth between 30 meters will be a huge dps drain. Any good ideas around this?

 

That can be difficult. Honestly I don't really think there's much of a choice. The melee are going to have to give chase. Tanks can't just stand there and tank that final phase. They're just going to have to ensure that they're not, at any point, in the frontal arc of the boss. You're in a better position because the marauders can leap to the boss than say operatives or assassins. Melee also have to deal with all the purple circles. I wish you luck man, but your best bet is to try to mix it up a little bit on the roster.

The first hit he does after coming down is pretty lethal, yes. One tank should stand near where he comes down and get aggro on him immediate. After he takes that initial 1 hit, the other tank taunts off of him, that way the damage is more spread out. Try to kite as much as possible, and keep his front side away from other people.

 

I can personally tank him without moving, but my gear is also much better now than it was when we first killed Kephess. We did have to kite him a lot and bounce aggro back and forth for our first few kills.

 

Tell your tanks to stack shield chance and absorption so that the hits that do land are mitigated as much as possible.