Note to self: FRAPS next run on this boss... In lieu of a video, here's a nice wall-o-text.

I've seen a lot of complaints on the forums about this boss, specifically arguing that it is severely melee unfriendly. Some people have even gone so far as to claim that you *cannot* beat this boss if you stack only melee. While it is true that a pure-ranged group would have an easier time with this fight due to the higher DPS up-time, it doesn't make as much of a difference as you would think.

Here's what you need to do. First, look at the room and identify where you are going to place the lightning coils. I start in the left, near-side corner, then move counter-clockwise around the room. First to the door, then the right corner, then the near side of the right pocket, far side of the right pocket, right far corner, and so on. The general form of the fight is to pull the boss into the spot where you want the lightning to fall, stacking *everyone* all in the same place. The key to this fight is moving *together* and *immediately* when the lightning spawns.

When you engage the boss, you have a brief interval in which you can cheese a bit of extra DPS up-time. Have the tank pull the boss to the near *left* side of the center island, with the two melee DPS standing to the *left* of the droid. Note: it is very important that they be on the left side, not behind or to the right. If this positioning is flubbed, you will lose the ability to move after the right near-side corner. At this point, the healer should be standing at max range, as near as possible to the left near-side corner (the first position to which you would normally drag the boss). Note that if you have one melee and one ranged DPS, the ranged DPS should stand with the healer.

Engage the boss with this positioning. The tank should interrupt the "Incinerate" channel (more on this shortly). Plasma Arc is the responsibility of the two DPS, but it's a lower priority than movement. Lightning will be dropped on a random group member who does *not* have agro (i.e. healer or DPS). If you're lucky, it will be the healer. He will simply reposition to the next movement location (e.g. in front of the door) and proceed as per normal. If you're unlucky, it will be one of the melee DPS. When (not if) this happens, immediately drag the boss off of the central island to the next available movement location (i.e. where the healer is standing). From this point forward, you will move normally around the room, changing to the next location *as soon as* the lightning appears.

The hardest part of this fight comes down to interrupting Incinerate and having enough DPS to beat the soft enrage. Incinerate *needs* to be interrupted instantly. If it channels for even a single tick, the damage is very high to all group members. Two ticks will likely mean a wipe, or at least a very angry healer. Three ticks is guaranteed death. The tank's priority is to interrupt Incinerate. This priority superceeds even the "don't stand in the lightning" imperative. This is definitely easiest if you have a shadow/assassin tank, since they can interrupt from range. Guardian/Juggernaut tanks should use Force Leap/Charge as the interrupt and immediately side-step out of the lightning (if relevant). Note that this means your tank will need to always be within LoS of the boss, and *probably* within 10 meters. This can be a pain to heal, particularly with the lava.

DPS up time on this fight is very difficult to maintain, particularly for some of the "plant and cast" DPS specs. Honestly, I think sharpshooter gunslingers probably have the hardest time with this fight, since the boss is always out of LoS and never giving them time to cast their really big attacks. DoT based classes (especially watchman sentinels and balance shadows) seem to have the easiest time with this fight. Keep the DPS as high as possible. After about 1.5 turns around the room, you will have reached the soft enrage. When this happens, lightning coils will start appearing faster than they can be avoided. They will also expand much more quickly, almost immediately filling the room. You can survive this phase for about 5-10 seconds with defensive cooldowns. Just burn for all you're worth and hope your DPS is enough.

Following this strategy, we routinely one-shot this boss, regardless of group composition. It's challenging, to be sure, but hardly impossible. The penalty to melee is not as severe as most people think, due to the requirement that *all* DPS and healer remain stacked perfectly together. The easiest time I ever had on this boss was with two watchman sentinels. The hardest time was with a gunnery commando and a sharpshooter gunslinger. Trust me, melee is just fine.

As an Assassin tank on this fight I find it much easier to just have everyone behind the boss and mostly in melee range (or close to the previous GTAOE). For 100% easy mode equip 2-piece pvp (dps) set bonus.

With that 2pc bonus, you can safely interrupt every single incinerate yourself while kiting him around the room.

I generally start by pulling him to the console (that starts the encounter) corner, and going clockwise from there. ~3 AOE's per doorway side, and 1-2 in the center where adds spawn.

Good write up, I did this with my guildies and a PuG a while back (when 1.2 first came out) using an all melee group (2x marauders, jugg tank, sorc healer). At the time, it was very rough but definitely doable.

As already being said, focus on interrupting Incinerate is the key. However, one thing that we did not know at the time (and now we know) is that you can cleanse the burning debuff from Incinerate off the tank, pretty much making this mechanic fairly trivial. As a healer, I have the droid as the focus target and then whenever I see him casting Incinerate, I target the tank and cleanse him as soon I see the channel is finished or interrupted. This will usually prevent the tank take any damage from Incinerate. You still need to move away from the energy coils etc but at least it should be stress free when it comes to Incinerate.

Here is the video of back then when we first killed it. Pretty rough fight at the time but show you that it can be done

However, one thing that we did not know at the time (and now we know) is that you can cleanse the burning debuff from Incinerate off the tank, pretty much making this mechanic fairly trivial.

Unfortunately, unless everyone except the tank is standing *behind* the droid, more than one person is going to get Incinerate when it is missed. You can generally keep this sort of positioning for some of the fight, but there's too much movement and too much repositioning to hold that *all* the time. Maybe a better tank than myself could do it, but my hands are generally very full in that fight.

On the cleanse note, I do take advantage of that fact myself by popping my 45s tech defensive cooldown (which also cleanses). That's not a short enough cooldown to use on every Incinerate, but it's a good emergency ability that allows the healer to cleanse themselves rather than me.