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SWTOR Hard Mode / Nightmare Mode Video Boss Fight Guides


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- Project Update (October 2016) -

 

Introduction:

 

For those who may not know me my name is Hayete and i'm one of the Theorycrafters for the Sentinel/Marauder community as well as the current guide writer for 4.0 Combat/Carnage specs. I lead an end-game progression team known as Phalanx Squad within TAW on The Shadowlands server. At the onset of 4.0 I restructured the team towards a new objective, creating detailed video guides for all 50 boss fights in the game on both Hard and Nightmare Modes. I've wanted to do this for the SWTOR community for a while now and with the changes made in 4.0 to many operations as well as older ones finding their way back into the fold the opportunity could not be ignored. Our hope is that these guides will be helpful and informative to those looking to progress on these fights for the first time, returning after an extended period of time, or to guilds looking to push informational aids out to their members. As with all my guides and forum posts please feel free to comment with your feedback and questions. As always I aim to keep my guides and posts informative and progressive. Feel free to open up dialogue with your fellow gamers and offer advice and opinions as that is the only way we learn. With that said please no trolling, negative comments, etc. Doing so will be reported and we already deal with enough of those anyway. Lets keep this a positive post for those who enjoy the challenge of progression and are looking to progress in our favorite pastime. Thank you and enjoy!

 

Methodology:

 

Each guide created will have a certain format afforded to it. The following is the general formula used in each guide.

 

- Introduction

- DPS Analysis

- Mechanics Breakdown

- Encounter Strategy

- Conclusion

- Kill Video

 

The current plan is to release these guides using the following Operations schedule

EC HM / NiM > TFB HM / NiM > SnV HM > DF HM > DP HM > Rav HM > ToS HM > EV HM > KP HM > SnV NiM > DF NiM > DP NiM >

 

A few of the EV HM guides have already been released during which time we received a lot of feedback asking for harder content so we've changed the schedule to include EV and KP last.

 

Hard Mode videos will be more indepth and longer than their Nightmare counterparts. The Nightmare videos will only reflect changes from Hard Mode to Nightmare, a DPS analysis, and Nightmare kill video. All information regarding foundational mechanics and stratagies will be directed back to the Hard Mode videos for reference.

 

 

Disclaimer:

 

These guides are made purely as an attempt to help others looking to progress. These guides do not claim to contain all strategies or the best strategies for each encounter, only our personal opinions and experience therein. There is no set time table currently as to the frequency or volume in which these guides will be released. Since we have a small team working on this project, all of whom have many real life commitments, we push these out as quickly as we can while ensuring to maintain a high quality and accuracy on the information contained within.

 

 

 

*** Operation Names highlighted currently contain video guide content

 

Eternity Vault HM

 

  1. Annihilation Droid:

  2. Gharj:

  3. Ancient Pylons:

  4. Infernal Council:
  5. Soa:

 

 

Karagga's Palace HM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Explosive Conflict HM

 

  1. Zorn & Toth:

  2. Firebrand & Stormcaller:

  3. Colonel Vorgath:

  4. Kephess:

 

 

Explosive Conflict NiM

 

  1. Zorn & Toth:

  2. Firebrand & Stormcaller:

  3. Colonel Vorgath:

  4. Kephess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfz53ZHa03c

 

 

Terror From Beyond HM

 

 

 

Terror From Beyond NiM

 

 

 

Scum and Villainy HM

 

 

 

Scum and Villainy NiM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Dread Fortress HM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Dread Fortress NiM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Dread Palace HM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Dread Palace NiM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Ravagers HM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Temple of Sacrifice HM

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Instanced Boss Encounters

 

Coming Soon

 

 

Event Boss Encounters

 

Coming Soon

 

Edited by Bahadori
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Love the videos! There's been a lack of these voiced-over guides for SWTOR's operations. You are easy to understand, the video quality is superb, and the advice is sound.

 

My only critique is that the intro runs a bit too long at 30 seconds. I found myself skipping that segment to get to the video proper. That's a minor critique, however.

 

I believe what you're doing will bring value to the raiding community, and encourage you to submit these videos to popular SWTOR fan sites so that they get the maximum amount of exposure.

 

Again, great work!

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Love the videos! There's been a lack of these voiced-over guides for SWTOR's operations. You are easy to understand, the video quality is superb, and the advice is sound.

 

My only critique is that the intro runs a bit too long at 30 seconds. I found myself skipping that segment to get to the video proper. That's a minor critique, however.

 

I believe what you're doing will bring value to the raiding community, and encourage you to submit these videos to popular SWTOR fan sites so that they get the maximum amount of exposure.

 

Again, great work!

 

Thanks for that mate. The intro i'll look into shortening. We've had some feedback to that end prior lol if you look at the Annihilation Droid intro compared to Vorgath you'll see we shortened it a good bit. We wanted there to be a tiny bit of an RP element to the intro, if anything just for the fun of it. I'll definitely look into editing it down to a shorter more manageable intro. Thank you for your support and feedback.

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  • 2 weeks later...

mfw i click on all spoilers and just find ”Coming Soon”, just remove all you have yet to complete for now, orange text clue is nice but kinda weird if only 2 out of 16 are with info.

 

Overall, it’s some cool stuff and I think I remember reading about this on reddit quite a while ago, nice to see that the project is starting to take form. My only critique relates somewhat to what Crossward says, the videos are way to long and although they do cover quite a bit of information, it’s not efficiently delivered to the viewer. The initial parts with intro, strategy and tactical explanations are good but far to extended, the later parts with how to apply the knowledge from the previous explanation however are great. As your guides are only looking at hardmode and nightmare, I think that you should spend less time explaining mechanics from storymode and similar basic concepts, it drags out the video way to much.

 

A small note, I have yet to watch all of your current videos, but I turned the speed to 2.0 and apart from the funny way your voice sounds, it's still easy to understand and follow your explanations, maybe talk a bit quicker to cover more in shorter time? Additionally, don't forget the sweet spot for rDPS/Healer on Kephess, it's great for HM but vital for nightmare :)

Edited by RikuvonDrake
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mfw i click on all spoilers and just find ”Coming Soon”, just remove all you have yet to complete for now, orange text clue is nice but kinda weird if only 2 out of 16 are with info.

 

Overall, it’s some cool stuff and I think I remember reading about this on reddit quite a while ago, nice to see that the project is starting to take form. My only critique relates somewhat to what Crossward says, the videos are way to long and although they do cover quite a bit of information, it’s not efficiently delivered to the viewer. The initial parts with intro, strategy and tactical explanations are good but far to extended, the later parts with how to apply the knowledge from the previous explanation however are great. As your guides are only looking at hardmode and nightmare, I think that you should spend less time explaining mechanics from storymode and similar basic concepts, it drags out the video way to much.

 

A small note, I have yet to watch all of your current videos, but I turned the speed to 2.0 and apart from the funny way your voice sounds, it's still easy to understand and follow your explanations, maybe talk a bit quicker to cover more in shorter time? Additionally, don't forget the sweet spot for rDPS/Healer on Kephess, it's great for HM but vital for nightmare :)

 

Thanks for the feedback mate! I believe what Crossward was referring to was the lengthy intro not the video itself. With that the intro for the Kephess video was brought down from 38 sec to 13 sec so I feel that was a reasonable response to the feedback received not only from Crossward but others as well. The Kephess video itself from start to finish is about 14 minutes long. The kill video (about 8 to 9 minutes) at the end of the video is what overbloats the run time. The mechanics explanation and strategy information is contained in about 14 minutes which i feel is reasonable for the amount of detail it contains.

 

As to the video guides themselves there is a method to the madness so to speak. With the state of Operations in 4.0 Story Mode ops no longer represent an environment conducive of laying the ground work for foundation mechanics. Several Story Mode Operations have had mechanics pulled from them or restructured damage profiles that no longer punish players for mistakes made. For these reasons as well as the bolster inherent to the Story Mode Operations many players experience with detailed mechanics and strategies in these Operations amounts to "Don't stand in stupid and don't die."

 

With the feedback I received prior to this project there was a huge desire for detailed information pertaining to mechanics, how to handle them, and minimum DPS requirements from the greater SWTOR community through email, the forums, my website, etc. Because of the state of Story Mode Operations I felt it was better to detail the Hard Mode Operations and explain differences between Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode than to do it from Story Mode and up. Honestly, it just came down to community demand and the workforce we have behind the project. The Hard Mode videos will be more indepth and longer than their Nightmare counterparts. The Nightmare videos will only reflect changes from Hard Mode to Nightmare, a DPS analysis, and Nightmare kill video. All information regarding foundational mechanics and stratagies will be directed back to the Hard Mode videos for reference.

 

My apologies for the lengthy response. I dont think i mentioned the big picture setup between the Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode videos at the time this post was created.

Edited by Bahadori
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Good job Hayete. I watched you guys kill Kephess last night I believe. Also having looked at your combat/carnage guides on Dulfy and how greatly informative they are i'm sure these guides will be just as helpful to new players that want to go beyond the storymode operations and above highlighted hardmodes. I wish you good luck and I hope this encourages players to try harder content because it is a lot of fun even though there hasn't been any new content in about a year and a half.
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benmas, we will be heading into TfB to do the guides for that. Under the methodology tab you can see our current plan for guides. As far as the weeklies go we don't need the gear from them, so we stick to the schedule for the most part. The guides can take several weeks to do , so that is another reason we don't do them as the weekly each week. I'm sure Hayete can touch up on it more if need be, but yea thanks for the support guys.
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since ravagers is the priority are you going to be making guides for the bosses that you clear if you do it?

 

As Smoke pointed out above the plan is to release the guides in the order they were released in game with the rest of EV and KP being done at the end. With that said i'm always more than happy to impart any information or knowledge your way in regards to specific boss fights/strategies if you need them. If that is the case feel free to email me at your leisure, my email is in my signature.

 

Good job Hayete. I watched you guys kill Kephess last night I believe. Also having looked at your combat/carnage guides on Dulfy and how greatly informative they are i'm sure these guides will be just as helpful to new players that want to go beyond the storymode operations and above highlighted hardmodes. I wish you good luck and I hope this encourages players to try harder content because it is a lot of fun even though there hasn't been any new content in about a year and a half.

 

Thanks for the support mate :) Everyone in Phalanx is really excited to be doing this project and to see/read the feedback from the community so please keep it coming. I know it definitely motivates them to keep putting up with my frequent "/stuck lets start again" requests :D

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a few things

 

your droid kill order puts you directly in saturation fire

the baradium bomb goes to whoever gets the killing blow, not a random member

and that's where i stopped watching

 

You're absolutely right. LOL the bomber was an oversight on my part when recording the audio for the guide. In fact when we were capturing footage I had everyone stop attacking it so i could kill it, gain the bomb, and run it in which is footage I ended up using in the final edit :)

 

As for the Droid kill order saturation fire was never an issue and if you're paying attention can easily be avoided by careful positioning. So i'm not sure what exactly you mean by directly in saturation fire.

 

Appreciate the feedback though mate.

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Thanks for the feedback mate! I believe what Crossward was referring to was the lengthy intro not the video itself. With that the intro for the Kephess video was brought down from 38 sec to 13 sec so I feel that was a reasonable response to the feedback received not only from Crossward but others as well. The Kephess video itself from start to finish is about 14 minutes long. The kill video (about 8 to 9 minutes) at the end of the video is what overbloats the run time. The mechanics explanation and strategy information is contained in about 14 minutes which i feel is reasonable for the amount of detail it contains.

 

As to the video guides themselves there is a method to the madness so to speak. With the state of Operations in 4.0 Story Mode ops no longer represent an environment conducive of laying the ground work for foundation mechanics. Several Story Mode Operations have had mechanics pulled from them or restructured damage profiles that no longer punish players for mistakes made. For these reasons as well as the bolster inherent to the Story Mode Operations many players experience with detailed mechanics and strategies in these Operations amounts to "Don't stand in stupid and don't die."

 

With the feedback I received prior to this project there was a huge desire for detailed information pertaining to mechanics, how to handle them, and minimum DPS requirements from the greater SWTOR community through email, the forums, my website, etc. Because of the state of Story Mode Operations I felt it was better to detail the Hard Mode Operations and explain differences between Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode than to do it from Story Mode and up. Honestly, it just came down to community demand and the workforce we have behind the project. The Hard Mode videos will be more indepth and longer than their Nightmare counterparts. The Nightmare videos will only reflect changes from Hard Mode to Nightmare, a DPS analysis, and Nightmare kill video. All information regarding foundational mechanics and stratagies will be directed back to the Hard Mode videos for reference.

 

My apologies for the lengthy response. I dont think i mentioned the big picture setup between the Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode videos at the time this post was created.

 

Overall, I can understand your idea although I disagree with having SM mechanics explained in a HM video, but it does reach a wider audience and as you say SM Operations don't really serve as a learning stage anymore. In regards to the video length, I understand you seeing the video as three segments and if considered individually they do make perfect sense. I am looking forward to the Nightmare mode explanations then and i think that is what i will prefer in terms of video structure, less focus on previous mode mechanics and more focus on how to handle the chosen difficulty level.

 

It's all good, I appropriate you taking the time to respond and in detail explain your reasoning.

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a few things

 

your droid kill order puts you directly in saturation fire

the baradium bomb goes to whoever gets the killing blow, not a random member

and that's where i stopped watching

 

Hey Tangzor,

 

I'm one of the healers in this project, and I'd like to hear any other strategy you may have for that first part. As always, our suggested strategies are just suggestions and ways to go about mechanics that work well for us. Why we have our kill order on the droids in the fashion we do have it is it enables us to maximize our dps on the droids while also never missing an interrupt (outside of the insanely frustrating "hey my stupid interrupt missed thanks BW).

 

What makes me curious about your statement is that as the droids are positioned one of those droids will be hit with saturation fire. For example: when you pull those droids the first position of saturation fire is directly on top of droid 1 by the bunker. Because it will take 2 more rotations to hit the dps dead on, we think smashing that middle droid ends up maximizing the time on target whereas if we were to do what I've seen many groups do and dog pile onto that bunker add they may lose out on dps time by moving for that first shot of saturation or even second..

 

The players and roles we have at the corner droids by effect become place holders who are in charge of interrupting first and foremost with damage on droid as a secondary objective. With that in mind they are allowed plenty of time and freedom to avoid saturation fire if it's on top of their position while the dps either kill the middle or swap over to their droids. At the very least (and probably at a very rocky understanding level) that's how I break down the rationale behind our strategy.

 

Theoretically if you're group has the dps to push each droid individually and stay ahead of the saturation fire pattern it could be definitely doable to avoid that all together, but my suspicion is that you'll be missing interrupts, and consequently putting unnecessary stress on your healers (even if it's basically white noise to your healers they still have to push more than they should or may need to).

 

As I heal this fight, I tend to see and feel the droid damage is far greater than the saturation fire which I don't really ever notice. So we stress to the group to hit their interrupts first and foremost. There are also spots close to the walker where if saturation fire is dialing in on the position you may be at, you can enter that little safe zone (typically right next to the legs).

 

Anyway that's my reasoning for having the kill order as it is within our video. As we always stress these strats are what works best for us, but if there's an equally viable solution to always hitting the interrupts while making that saturation fire even less of a potential concern I'm absolutely interested in hearing it. Every strategy can be questioned and improved in some way.

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if you want to minimize the damage you take, start on middle (looking at Walker) with all four DPS, then DPS goes for left and finally right, if you have decent DPS you will have killed the droids before it's that areas turn for saturation fire. Additionally, you want to place your range DPS and healer standing in the sweet spot for the majority of the fight, moving around as much as your rDPS and healers does isn't effective nor serving any purpose. Edited by RikuvonDrake
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^ Also, jug and pt tanks can get all the interrupts by alternating their charge and their regular interrupt per cast, and much like the sorc pull, a pt tank can tanspose whoever has the bomb to get them out of damage when they go up on the walker.
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Nightmare Zorn & Toth Added

 

Note: Audio editing and rendering process has been upgraded. Audio should be much clearer than prior videos as far as background noise and misc. background sounds.

Edited by Bahadori
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As a newish player that has not done much in the way of OP's these videos are very helpful.

 

Only watched a few so far but love the little tips such as force camo preventing knock down on Annihilation Droid little tips on like when to optimal usage of Cloak of pain (for reflect dps) and saber reflect or other similar abilites is great.

 

While it must be quite a bit of work to make these i hope you keep doing them.

Edited by TheEvilDarkNight
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As a newish player that has not done much in the way of OP's these videos are very helpful.

 

Only watched a few so far but love the little tips such as force camo preventing knock down on Annihilation Droid little tips on like when to optimal usage of Cloak of pain (for reflect dps) and saber reflect or other similar abilites is great.

 

While it must be quite a bit of work to make these i hope you keep doing them.

 

Thanks man it is always great to hear people enjoy our guides :)

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Nightmare Colonel Vorgath added.

 

The reduced intro time is just perfect. I also appreciate the NiM guides exclusively covering the new mechanics instead of rehashing the old mechanics. Once again, you are easy to understand and very clear.

 

The only critique I would give calls back to the SC&FB fight where you bring in another person to explain the healing responsibility. I personally do not feel that this is necessary or desirable, as the video benefits from its uniform presentation. The second speaker's lack of a quality microphone hindered the video as a whole. I understand wanting to get the healer's perspective for this fight, and so it may be better to have her write the script for that section. If the desire is to get more people in your raid team involved in the project, then disregard this feedback.

 

In my opinion, these videos are still a step or two ahead of WoW's Fatboss guides. They have multiple people narrating too, but waste much of the video going onto tangents and making jokes. You all stay on point and I appreciate that.

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