Hey all

I would like some advices please.

Our tanks keep getting one shotted on the last phase. We do taunt after Breath of the Master, but no matter what the tank who has aggro IS one shotted, takes up to 25K damage.

They are both shadow (alo nerf ?) and despite all tactic video we can watch, we don't see anything one shotting tanks. They take craploads of damage yes, like 13K damage, but not a one shot.

My bet is that we're missing something, but what ...

Doesn't help to not be a tank myself to have the feeling, but sure you can help.

Hey all

 

I would like some advices please.

 

Our tanks keep getting one shotted on the last phase. We do taunt after Breath of the Master, but no matter what the tank who has aggro IS one shotted, takes up to 25K damage.

A 1-shot means that the tank with the Touch of the Masters debuff got hit by "something." The two most common ways for a tank with Touch to die are:

(1) Standing in a purple circle. The tank with Touch likely has Breath too, and so has to keep running and not stand in any of the purple circles.

(2) When running back to pick up Kephess, make sure Kephess is not facing the tank with Touch. The knockback he does on the tank is a huge frontal cleave, and it will also hit the tank with Touch if Kephess is facing that direction. You need to flip Kephess to avoid this problem.

Sounds like your taunt is slow - need to taunt as soon as he knocks back - which I believe is while he is casting breath of the masters, not after.

edit: what kihra said is also very true -- it helps to keep a few things in mind while tanking:

1. face away from raid

2. do not be too close to the wall (you want to be able to get knocked back as far as possible so you have a head start on running away)

3. do not be angled towards a purple circle (landing on one will kill the tank)

Thanks for the answer. However the only debuff we seem to get is Breath of the Masters. The knockback actually happens, and our tanks taunt pretty much right away, but in that case the guardian who taunted just killed very fast (they got hit by a few strikes and then a very big stuff happens).

Does the tank have to retaunt after the offtank has taunted or something ?

we definitely are stuck here, everything is smooth but no matter what our tanks can survive this phase.

Our tanks are rakata/wh geared, and it's story mode, if that helps.

Does it mean we're missing a cleanse or something ? or our healers are not fast enough to bring them to full health ? or anything else ?

Thanks a lot for help.

Downed Kephess on HM for the first time last night. Ate a hit for exactly 100% of my max HP during our winning run, fortunately he was almost down and the group was able to finish. Combat log said the hit was Touch of the Masters. I think the problem was either me or the other tank did not taunt quick enough during one of the Breath of the Masters casts, but I am not sure entirely how those abilities all interact.

edit to add: For hard mode, I don't think you're supposed to have a Main Tank and Off-Tank for sub-60% phase of Kephess, I think you're supposed to be actually alternating two equal tanks, so while Tank A is dropping circles, Tank B is taking hits from Kephess, and vice versa. If one of your tanks is dropping all of the circles, I think that means you're going to get instagibbed in hard mode - you can get away with it in story mode, though.

Our tanks are rakata/wh geared, and it's story mode, if that helps.

i'm no expert at assassin tanks, but from my minimal understanding, they have a buff/debuff they stack during combat to keep themselves alive. if they just taunted, they may not have that defense up yet. if you are not mitigating AT LEAST 50% of kephess' dmg, it's very conceivable for him to 1 shot you, especially if you're low on HP.

if they do not have the time to build whatever stack they need when they taunt, they need to pop some other cooldown to compensate, as well as potentially have your healers pre-cast a heal in anticipation of a huge incoming hit.

i'm sitting at 27,500 HP, and kephess in storymode is still no joking matter when he is in that final phase. I can pretty much solo tank him by simply backing up in a circle, but the healers let me know it's not fun for them.

Thanks for the answer. However the only debuff we seem to get is Breath of the Masters. The knockback actually happens, and our tanks taunt pretty much right away, but in that case the guardian who taunted just killed very fast (they got hit by a few strikes and then a very big stuff happens).

Does the tank have to retaunt after the offtank has taunted or something ?

 

Our tanks are rakata/wh geared, and it's story mode, if that helps.

 

Does it mean we're missing a cleanse or something ? or our healers are not fast enough to bring them to full health ? or anything else ?

I think most of the posts have assumed you are working on Hard Mode. Touch is not in story mode Kephess, so you don't have to worry about that. If Tank A is pooping purple circles and it's Tank B that is dying, then it is likely that he's just not getting enough heals. Whether that's because of positioning or slow swap to the new tank or what, I have no way of telling you. Going into the final phase, it's a good idea for your healers to keep all of their hots/bubbles/etc on both tanks, even if the other tank isn't currently taking damage. This buys you some valuable time as you transition between tanks that you don't have to spend applying those things.

The cleave is still something to watch for, but in that case Tank A would be the one dying, not Tank B.

do you happen to know how much hp they have in that gear?

 

just ask, it seems they have between 23 and 24K HP there, and shadow is not good at spike damage

just ask, it seems they have between 23 and 24K HP there, and shadow is not good at spike damage

that's enough to eat the hits. I would ask them what cooldowns they are using when they taunt.

if their response is "what cooldowns", that may be your problem..

i'm sitting at 27,500 HP, and kephess in storymode is still no joking matter when he is in that final phase. I can pretty much solo tank him by simply backing up in a circle, but the healers let me know it's not fun for them.

I'm sitting at 24k, and storymode kephess is a joking matter, even in that final phase. For some reason my co-tank really really likes dropping all of the circles, so I usually end up tanking Kephess for the majority of the last phase. My shield and absorb are high enough (Vanguard) that I can just stand there and take it and not ever be in any real danger. Hard mode is another matter.

I'm sitting at 24k, and storymode kephess is a joking matter, even in that final phase. For some reason my co-tank really really likes dropping all of the circles, so I usually end up tanking Kephess for the majority of the last phase. My shield and absorb are high enough (Vanguard) that I can just stand there and take it and not ever be in any real danger. Hard mode is another matter.

you must have better healers than I. they're usually out of force by that point, and i'm popping cooldowns waiting for a heal.

I guess it's a matter of perception. I can sit there and tank kephess for 7-8 seconds without a single heal, but then it gets to be really nervous for everyone. if that makes it a joking matter, then sure..

you must have better healers than I. they're usually out of force by that point, and i'm popping cooldowns waiting for a heal.

To be blunt, if your healers are out of force during the final Kephess phases on hardmode, they're bad.

If they're out of force on story mode... well.

To be blunt, if your healers are out of force during the final Kephess phases on hardmode, they're bad.

 

If they're out of force on story mode... well.

possible. my guild is a casual one. some of us are ex-raiders who just don't wanna have a raid schedule, and others are your proverbial "keyboard turners". we don't discriminate..

so technically, If I get it right, if tanks die at that point with 23/24K HP it means my healers are slacking.

That's fair enough, thanks for info, I'll just stress those slackers out

So I'm dealing with the question

Has anyone tank Kephess with 2 shadows since the hammer nerf ? (Hum, Hum, shadow, are you above earth, yes ? then we're happy)

Our shadows run with barely 40% mitigation and the boss clearly do spike damages, nothing else, no one cares about the ***** damages he does otherwise, and beside those tanks are rakata/wh gear, they have way less damage mitigation than a guardian/jug in BM gear.

Is that the issue ?

Can you do Kephess with 2 shadows in 1.3 ?

so technically, If I get it right, if tanks die at that point with 23/24K HP it means my healers are slacking.

 

That's fair enough, thanks for info, I'll just stress those slackers out

yes and no. you really have to look at the death comment thing, and see how much the tank is getting hit for.

what SEEMS like a 1 shot, is often times, not.

if the "one shot" only did 14k dmg, that means he was sitting low already - that would indicate a healer problem, since kephess doesn't have a super ninja speedy attack.

if, on the other hand, the death comment shows the tank getting hit for 25k, that means he's not mitigating damage. have they checked their stats for appropriate defense? HP is actually a distant 3rd or 4th in terms of primary stat for a tank.

it doesn't matter which tank class you are, you should have at least 50% mitigation, and then as an assassin (shadow) tank, i think it's pretty standard to have 60%+ shield chance. they should at least be hitting those marks (again, i stress that I am not THAT fine-tuned to assassin tanking, those are just numbers I remember hearing about).

speaking as a powertech, i have a static (not-in-combat) defense stats as follows:

• Damage reduction: 53.78%
  
• Defense chance: 15.39%
  
• Shield Chance: 53.84%
  
• Shield absorb: 55.04% (this goes up to a static 63.04% in combat, and 90%+ when relic procs, which is up 30% of the time)
  
• Hit points: 27,494
  

i think for a shadow/assassin, their damage reduction should be about the same, defense about the same, shield should be a lot higher, absorb about the same, and hitpoints lower than what i've got.

Tanks need to rotate cooldowns the whole time they're tanking, and they cannot get hit by the bosses cleaves if they're not the one tanking because otherwise they'll get one shot by touch of the masters.

I recommend picking one spot as the spot you will always tank the boss in phase 3, having one spot you will always transition from, and having your tanks / raid be positioned like so...

tank a......................tank b

................BOSS.................

................RAID.................

That way tank a and tank b when they come back from their kiting the purple circles will never be hit by anything the other tank is supposed to be eating, and they can run off in their own direction to drop purple circles.

After months of doing this boss it's pretty much a one shot for us, and that's because of consistency. We know where every single purple puddle will be placed and what the timing of every single taunt will be.

We killed him for months now (actually every week since the 2nd week after 1.2) and there is a bug since 1-2 weeks with Kephess last phase, there was a thread about it here too. Basicly the first kick after gift will kill the tank somehow or another member of the group, after that, everything is working normal.

If your tanks get oneshot over and over (not just once with the bug) then they are probably doing something wrong, it's supposed to work like this:

Tank A gets kicked, takes breath, Tank B taunts after the cast and tanks boss while Tank A runs around dropping circles (and does not even once get hit by them!), right when the last circle spawns he will kick Tank B and Tank A must be in range to taunt after his breath, repeat until boss is dead.

Now with the bug the problem is that Tank A will not get breath, he will be dead and someone else, maybe Tank B (happened to us last week) will get breath and will have to drop them, run and tank the boss while Tank A is ressed and gets ready to taunt after the next breath, after that everything is back to normal.

Our shadows run with barely 40% mitigation and the boss clearly do spike damages, nothing else, no one cares about the ***** damages he does otherwise, and beside those tanks are rakata/wh gear, they have way less damage mitigation than a guardian/jug in BM gear.

Is that the issue ?

 

Can you do Kephess with 2 shadows in 1.3 ?

1. I think that's your problem
   
2. 2 properly geared shadows, yes. they didn't just flat out break shadow/assassin with the patch, nerf, yes, but they didn't destroy them

Don't think that is a problem, he obviosly means armor mitigation and that is not that low. As Guardian I have about 48% and those missing 8% are probably what their selfhealing is supposed to even out.

He also does not hit that hard, just very fast, if they see hits above 20k (hits that are tankhealth+1), even with only 40% armor mitigation, it's most likely the mechanic explained above, the boss never hits for 20k, even in enrage.

Thanks for all the answer. I would hope to get some feedback from Shadow or Sin, not that I think that they can't tank it (I'm among the crazy who still think Shadow does fine ) but to know if they noticed such mechanic.

I for sure got hit by a 74K vicious arcish strike or something like that, but it was a bad try with disconnect and such and we had the enrage timer, but with 200% damage increase it would still have hit me for 24K otherwise. I'm sure are not a tank however so probably 18K on a tank Still a lot

I will try out the tactics suggested, we tried the taunt "during the breath", after, and just right after the KB but no matter what the tank who had aggro on this vicious arcish strike got hit very hard.

I asked my tanks the combat logs so I can parse it and see what exactly happened. This fight sure will be fine in HM where we reach it

I asked my tanks the combat logs so I can parse it and see what exactly happened. This fight sure will be fine in HM where we reach it

before laying it all on the tank (even though it seems to be the problem from what you've indicated), make sure to take in the bigger picture.

the thing you absolutely must determine to a certainty is as follows:

1. did the tank get 1-shot (not "killed in 1.5 seconds", but truly, 1 shot)
   
2. if so, how much did he get hit for?
   
3. did the taunting tank start his tanking turn with full hp?

from those 3, you can start really dissecting the problem.

• a tank should be able to tank kephess for 5 seconds without a heal, if they started at full health. if they died very fast, it's a mechanics problem - this would show up in the form of the tank death log showing a very large single hit.
  
• if the tank died slowly (which doesn't sound like the case), it's likely a combination of healers being slow to the heal, or tanks not using their cooldowns.

one thing, kephess himself only melees. assassin / shadow tanks have 2 main defensive cooldowns. I don't remember the name, but one of them is for tech/force, and the other one for melee/ranged. The tech/force one is a more powerful defensive cooldown (reduces more damage), but does literally NOTHING against kephess. If your tanks are popping that thinking it's a "defensive cooldown", it's not. my guild has an assassin tank that would literally just crater whenever he tanked nightmare foreman crusher. come to find out, he was popping his tech/force cooldown on the bezerk... -_-

i'm also assuming the tanks are making sure all debuff (5% damage reduction) is on the boss? especially since they're the same class. are their kinetic wards fresh when they start tanking kephess?

anyways, there's no secret strat. you sound like you have the strat down. either your tanks are not popping cooldowns, or the healers are asleep at the wheel.

i still think 40% is awfully low for mitigation. i'm pretty sure i had 40% in tionese as a powertech?

before laying it all on the tank (even though it seems to be the problem from what you've indicated), make sure to take in the bigger picture.

 

the thing you absolutely must determine to a certainty is as follows:

1. did the tank get 1-shot (not "killed in 1.5 seconds", but truly, 1 shot)
   
2. if so, how much did he get hit for?
   
3. did the taunting tank start his tanking turn with full hp?

 

from those 3, you can start really dissecting the problem.

 

• [*]a tank should be able to tank kephess for 5 seconds without a heal, if they started at full health. if they died very fast, it's a mechanics problem - this would show up in the form of the tank death log showing a very large single hit.

That's why I asked them the logs, it was technically very hard to figure out for how much they got hit. I think the spike was around 15-18K and they probably were not full health when it happened.

I checked other threads and some people are talking about a dot, but I guess that's for HM right ? We didn't notice any debuff on tanks apart from Breath of the Master (which probably is the signal to taunt ?). What happens if the tank having this buff is still tanking Kephess ? what exactly is this buff ? a dot ? a defense reduction ?

one thing, kephess himself only melees. assassin / shadow tanks have 2 main defensive cooldowns. I don't remember the name, but one of them is for tech/force, and the other one for melee/ranged. The tech/force one is a more powerful defensive cooldown (reduces more damage), but does literally NOTHING against kephess. If your tanks are popping that thinking it's a "defensive cooldown", it's not. my guild has an assassin tank that would literally just crater whenever he tanked nightmare foreman crusher. come to find out, he was popping his tech/force cooldown on the bezerk... -_-

 

i'm also assuming the tanks are making sure all debuff (5% damage reduction) is on the boss? especially since they're the same class. are their kinetic wards fresh when they start tanking kephess?

 

anyways, there's no secret strat. you sound like you have the strat down. either your tanks are not popping cooldowns, or the healers are asleep at the wheel.

 

i still think 40% is awfully low for mitigation. i'm pretty sure i had 40% in tionese as a powertech?

Shadow have light armor and their armor is now only boosted by 115% rather than 150%, their spike damage survivability clearly got hammer by that nerf, no self healing will ever cope with spike damage. It doesn't seem that low for me, I don't think they can do any better. But again other experienced shadow may say they are missing out something.

I'll check the logs anyway, and see what's really happening. Tiring to not have a raid wide combat log but well, I guess the casuals were afraid we may have been able to help them doing better on their class.

you must have better healers than I. they're usually out of force by that point, and i'm popping cooldowns waiting for a heal.

 

I guess it's a matter of perception. I can sit there and tank kephess for 7-8 seconds without a single heal, but then it gets to be really nervous for everyone. if that makes it a joking matter, then sure..

Maybe my healers aren't out of resources because I stack DSA rather than endurance?

Of course the healers are still healing me when I'm solo-tanking Kephess in storymode, but it's never like OMG I AM ABOUT TO DIE like it is in hard mode.

BTW, here is the log from my guild's first victory over HM Kephess. On run #9, you can see me (Blayze) get obliterated by Touch of the Masters. Ouch. (Savage Arcing Slash and even Empowered Slash aren't that bad if you're a tank. If you're not a tank....welp.)

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/f15f63b5-a938-4ea9-a55e-caa93bf4519f/player/6#d=2,f=16,b=1

BTW, here is the log from my guild's first victory over HM Kephess. On run #9, you can see me (Blayze) get obliterated by Touch of the Masters. Ouch. (Savage Arcing Slash and even Empowered Slash aren't that bad if you're a tank. If you're not a tank....welp.)

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/f15f63b5-a938-4ea9-a55e-caa93bf4519f/player/6#d=2,f=16,b=1

So what your log implies is that if anything one shot them that's Touch of the Master. I'll study their log thanks.