So we've been attempting to down 8 man HM Kephess. We can one shot every boss in the instance except this guy. We have an admittedly Consular heavy group, consisting of usually 2 Shadow tanks, 1 Sage healer, 1 Sage DPS, 1 Scoundrel healer, 1 Commando DPS, 1 Shadow DPS, and a Gunslinger. So, we're encountering a few things I thought I'd ask you guys about, perhaps you're having the same issues.

For starters, when the shielded adds spawn, it seems as though we take too much time on them (and with 3 melee, the AoE isn't exactly happening ) as the next group spawns fairly quickly. On Story Mode, once we down the first group, we're literally waiting 10 seconds for the next ones to spawn in. DPS problem do you think?

Secondly, after the Pulsar Droids are downed and the boss comes out, we have one tank pick him up and move him away from the group. He casts that 3 second DoT on the tank periodically and we haven't been switching once that comes up, not sure if we should be. The healers can usually heal over it but the tanks are still getting hit for around 10k even with defensive CD's up.

We don't really have any problems until we actually begin to DPS Kephess. We can kill the adds/Pulsar Droids/Battlewalker very easily, DPS is not lacking. But the tanking really seems to be an issue. I am one of the tanks and it gets very....grueling constantly taking such large hits. We're getting hit for anywhere from 5-20k damage. We swap after "Gift of the Masters", then do the usual swap while he's casting "Breath of the Masters" as you should. But the tanks are still tanking monstrous amounts of damage.

So, to be clear, I'm not certain that this should be happening or perhaps we're not swapping at the correct times. Also, this could just come down to a composition problem. We're all in either full Rakata gear or half Campaign gear, so I doubt it's a gear check situation, but again, anything is a possibility.

Any help you guys could offer would be greatly appreciated!

There are a handful of bugs in almost every phase of the fight, some are easy to spot, while others are little more of a ninja. i would suggest you look through these forums and the CS ones and see if any of the bugs might be causing the additional damage to the tanks.

My guild is also having issues on him, and we have wiped to a few bugs and the handful of times we got into the final phase and had the tanks rolling and dropping their circles, we did see crazy 20+k spirts which on their own aren't so bad, but when followed by 12k back to back hits, we have had issues. We heal with two sorcs. In all honesty if the fight was a lot less buggy and we could just practice healing and tanking more, I am sure we could kill this guy with little issue now. We have been on him for two nights, so about 8 hours, and the bug wipes followed by the long run back def makes the fight less fun. Beyond that, the fight is actually the first one I find real fun to heal.

So yeah not much advise other then check your logs for any odd hits, like abilities hitting the tank when he doesn't have agro, which is one we have seen, and just oddly huge near 1 shotting abilities when they shouldn't hit that hard.

There are a handful of bugs in almost every phase of the fight, some are easy to spot, while others are little more of a ninja. i would suggest you look through these forums and the CS ones and see if any of the bugs might be causing the additional damage to the tanks.

My guild is also having issues on him, and we have wiped to a few bugs and the handful of times we got into the final phase and had the tanks rolling and dropping their circles, we did see crazy 20+k spirts which on their own aren't so bad, but when followed by 12k back to back hits, we have had issues. We heal with two sorcs. In all honesty if the fight was a lot less buggy and we could just practice healing and tanking more, I am sure we could kill this guy with little issue now. We have been on him for two nights, so about 8 hours, and the bug wipes followed by the long run back def makes the fight less fun. Beyond that, the fight is actually the first one I find real fun to heal.

So yeah not much advise other then check your logs for any odd hits, like abilities hitting the tank when he doesn't have agro, which is one we have seen, and just oddly huge near 1 shotting abilities when they shouldn't hit that hard.

Fight mechanics =/= bugs.

They fixed the bugs that were in the encounter: gift of the masters, pulsar droid health.

On topic: in the purple shield phase, it is a hardmode mechanic that the time between waves is nearly halved. There is a strat that allows you to take your time with the waves even with 0 AOE. I'll leave you to figure that one out.

Hint: the shield has a finite size no?

Make sure you know what kephess' abilities.

Pre 60%: A dot that can be healed through.

A jump that deals damage upon landing and increasing his next swing by 100%

Post 60%: breath of the masters: taunt time

Savage arcing slash: frontal cone knockback, applies damage vulnerability debuff

Otherwise if that's not your issue, it's just the fact that he just hits plain hard. (I'm a healer I have to heal this damage) just tell your healers to go all out.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

P.S @#fraeblood really interested in whatever bugs you say you're finding. Because i can account each of your "bugs" to a flaw in your strat. Care to show me a vid?

We had the bug where his AOE at 60% was killing us no matter how far we ran, that happened 3 or 4 times last night. Beyond that, We were having some lag issues and taunts not going off when people said they taunted. Now the taunt thing could them lying or what, but that isn't as much a bug but just input lag. The AOE thing was annoying, was funny cause it wouldn't kill everyone, we would all be stacked, and then bam 2/3 or so would just drop dead from near full HP.

We also had a bug during the second phase and adds well beyond the shield would reflect the damage and kill people, but that only happened once or twice.

Beyond that bug I would agree the rest of the fight is just a matter of the fight being a step up. the majority of the fight is not even that hard to heal once people do things right. The final stage we could only get into twice, so we are still learning how the damage goes out as healers. twice out of like 15 tries, so I don't mind that level of progression. Was hopping the rest would have been harder to be honest, we more or less one shot the 3rd fight and the 2nd we did in a handful of wipes. The first we had some issue when he was bugged and that reflex debuff would hit people, so the added movement having them swap bosses had us hitting the enrage a few times.

But back the the last boss.. the few bugs and the long run back make the fight take longer to master then it would for sure. but I would say that the OP has issues prob more with just practicing the mechanics more and tightening up the DPS and Strat.

And yea the issues on the final phase is def us just not seeing it as much as we would have liked our first couple nights in there. Def think we need to tighten up our gameplay more then anything.

We had the bug where his AOE at 60% was killing us no matter how far we ran, that happened 3 or 4 times last night. Beyond that, We were having some lag issues and taunts not going off when people said they taunted. Now the taunt thing could them lying or what, but that isn't as much a bug but just input lag. The AOE thing was annoying, was funny cause it wouldn't kill everyone, we would all be stacked, and then bam 2/3 or so would just drop dead from near full HP.

They fixed the AOE range bug in last week's patch. For about a week or so, his purple AOE was larger than the actual radius shown so you couldn't run out. This has been resolved but only lasted about a week.

If you are trying to stack (not recommended), then Kephess is probably turning around and cleaving your party. Have everyone take a few steps back after being pulled in and you shouldn't have this problem anymore. Again, I'd simply recommend running out.

If you're worried about beating his engrage timer, you can throw light dps on Kaphess during the last Bomber Phase - after the bomber is down and while the party member is running to the walker/waiting for the fall animation. If you've done good hard burns on the previous two fall phases the walker should be below 20% health anyway. This isn't required but it is something you can try.

Thanx again for the advise

We got him last night

Everyone did a great job. Killed him almost before the 3rd round of tanks dropping their circles, killer dps.

Tanks just did a small adjustment in their taunting and we did it. Now one tank did die and the other kited him as we finished him off, but a kill is a kill

Extraction FTW lol

Yanked him once he got the debuff and that boy ran across the area as we pwned him.