Jump to content

HEROIC 4 [The Alchemy of Evil] is SOLOABLE


Recommended Posts

It's a heroic mission from GSI quest (it's a seeker droid mission), the mission title says HEROIC 4, but I just found out that it's actually soloable with using Operative/Scoundrel classes using TANK as a companion. Well, I've used operative on this one, and I think (in my opinion) it can only be soloed using this class. I will explain why in a sec.

 

This mission is pretty nice since it will allowed you to dig rare BoL (Bound to Legacy) gears; Dreadseed gears/Starforager gears.

 

I will highlights few important things to get this done on this heroic. For full guide details you can go check dulfy site; http://dulfy.net/2013/03/26/swtor-macrobinocular-and-seeker-droid-missions-guide/

 

I didn't record my solo gameplay, but some other dude who inspired me did. This is the link to his vid:

 

This heroic has 3 phases.

 

1. Phase 1: Survive the Onslaught

Operative has a huge advantage over other classes on this one thanks to roll ability that will save a lot of your running time grabbing cells. At the beginning, you need to make turret generator as your first priority before those dread creeps start to hurting shields. If I remember correctly I was able to lighted up the turret generator to 50%-62.5% before the creeps started to turned one of the shield to yellow.

 

When they finally got one of your shield to yellow, you have to make shield protection to become your first priority. (Don't worry, you will be able to make up for your turret later).

 

One thing to note for this phase: if you carry a cell and you got attacked or attacking a mob, you will got insta death. And there will be one mob during the phase, make sure to kill it first or if you carrying a cell, command your tank companion to attack it first (to prevent it from attacking you, thus killing u instantly).

 

Just make sure no dread creeps gets inside by keep protecting your shields, and make up for the turret generator to 100%, and you will be good.

 

In my case, I didn't make it, and died from powercell blow. BUT I tried to revive on the spot, heals to the full, use stealth, put sleep dart to the creep that stands nearest the generator, and I was able to fill the generator. This is why using operative is really good because you can be sneaky at the quest objective.

 

2. Phase 2: Corrupted Sithspawn Experiment

On this phase, there are 2 important things you need to watch. First, after you kill all 4 tentacles, you need to stand above the Arcanum Bio-Containment Canister (or stand near it, and make sure your tank following you at that time). If that Caniseter has a Dreadseed Corruption growth on the top of it, you need to click it first to remove it before you can stand on it. This will helps you to stun the boss when it lands on you, and make you able to do him some damage.

 

The 2nd thing is make sure you ONLY use your Escape ability when the boss start to use its tentacle to heal himself, and interrupt it. This occurs after the stun period (10-12 secs) after it lands on you after you killed 4 creep tentacles.

 

Make sure your tank keep aggroing the boss, and you heal your tank so both of you can still survive the ordeal. This is one of the reason why only operative/scoundrel is the only one who can solo this heroic. Second reason would be the "Escape Plan" utility that grants 1:30 cooldown on Escape ability, which is really important on this phase to prevent miniboss from heal itself.

 

Sorcerer might be able to do this since sorc has Force Barrier and Unbreakable Will as break skill mechanics

 

This is the hardest phase in my opinion

 

3. Phase 3: Lord Tagriss

Lord Tagriss phase is the easiest. At 75% hp, he will start to broke crystal, and become immune from damage. You need to click on the crystal he broke and you will automatically channel a seeker droid into it. Wait until it finished, and run to the seed of rage on the forging table and click the seed to cancel Lord Tagriss's immunity effect. At this rate, there will be 2 tentacles near the seed of rage table. Make sure your tank kills or distract it, because those tentacles can bash you out from the table and prevents you from planting the crystals.

 

At around 50% hp, he will do the same thing again, but at this time he will begins to channel some red effects on the water to harm you. I didn't know what kind of harm effects it will do to us, just stay out from water and keep standing on platform when the red effects appears.

 

It's pretty simple fight, at 25% HP, he will instantly die after a few seconds, and voila! You've done it!

 

Important notes:

- You always HAVE to heal yourself and your tank companion, it's really imperative to keep both of your health above 50%

- Switching aggro on enemies for your tank companion needs to be done on contingency basis, depends on the situation)

- Make sure you have Resuscitation Probe ability ready, just in case when your companion dies.

- It's a mandatory to take "Escape Plan" heroic utility during phase 2, because you need the 30 seconds lowerance cooldown on your Escape ability for interrupting the miniboss tentacle heals.

 

Good luck and Good Hunting ;)

Edited by jeveuxjeje
Link to comment
Share on other sites

LIES!

 

Did it on marauder with Treek (iirc, think some extra heals were handy anyway), had some problems with power cells encounter, died there several times until I stopped completely cheesing it and repaired some shields. Was the toughest encounter overall.

 

Second one was just a bit annoying but not hard, anni heals alone were basically enough to outheal most of his damage on me (treek died at some point near 50% boss hp can't remember why), and boss healing was on par with my damage on him if i didn't have a stunbreak. When i did, however, he dropped by ~20% each time, so wasn't that long in either case. Maybe i died once to this boss, can't recall exactly, but I honestly don't remember it as something challenging. Power cells carrying was much much worse when i tried just to kill all the adds :D Around 20 lvl 55 mobs running around and trying to kill me... Ouch. :cool:

 

Not sure if i died on last boss or not, but he was fairly simplistic as well.

 

Moral of the story? Bring just any class with reasonable offheals and/or tanky-ish, i think juggs should be perfectly capable of soloing it, maybe sorcs, dunno about tanks/healers with geared companions (can't really bother gearing any of mine, they mostly run in their basic gear + SoR companion legacy MH). Not sure how would sniper immunity on entrench work, but in either case likely many, if not all, classes are capable of soloing it.

 

Sorry for spoiling the moment :p

 

It's still a great fun to run this in solo, i highly recommend it to anyone who didn't try it yet & is somewhat geared for the challenge :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is one of the reason why only operative/scoundrel is the only one who can solo this heroic.

 

Second reason would be the "Escape Plan" utility that grants 1:30 cooldown on Escape ability, which is really important on this phase to prevent miniboss from heal itself.

 

the other off healing classes can do it this way too, sorc technically has an easier job than an operative. since they can stun break with panic bubble.

Edited by Faardor
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
Did they patch this mission lately? I can beat the force fields, but every time I try the sithspawn he just does the channel heal back to back to back until 60%. My guardian has the talent to drop cc break to 1:30, but that doesn't help when he does it 2-3 times between tentacles.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did they patch this mission lately? I can beat the force fields, but every time I try the sithspawn he just does the channel heal back to back to back until 60%. My guardian has the talent to drop cc break to 1:30, but that doesn't help when he does it 2-3 times between tentacles.

 

Nope. You just killing tentacles too fast.

By waiting before killing final tentacle enough for your stun breaker to go off CD, you can always interrupt.

He does stun+healing channel right after recovering from barrel debuff, then he almost instantly jump up again (because his jump up went off CD while you waited as well). But, It means you need to be healer or use healing companion, as his squishes during tentacle phases do hurt a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Alright, so I just completed this chain as a 65 Madness Sorc. Holy ****, this was annoying as hell.

 

For the most part, follow the guide above as said. But, if you are a Madness Sorc, save yourself some frustration. Phase 1, the survive the corrupted swarm, keep the companion as a tank. Also, note any hots/dots will result in instant death. I had a shield that healed me that killed me and I was super pissed.

 

For the other 2 phases, your madness sorc heals themselves and does enough DPS you can keep your companion as a healer. Having them as a tank makes your life much harder.

 

That is all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...
Ok I am lost, I cant even GET to the entrance because there is a solid wall of ice in my way. Anyone got a map to show where to go over/around or through it?
Did you try Dulfy?

On the map you can see a small "opening" in the circular area at the old Jedi temple area on Ilum. This is where you need to go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the explosive barrels would consistently burst when the Sithspawn lands on them, it would be a piece of cake but they don't unfortunately. You have to be so precise where you stand for him to land on the barrel.

 

All it takes is one failed barrel explosion to mess up the entire boss fight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Since this thread was bumped recently, I finally got around to completing it (only took what, 4 years?).

 

Sithspawn was the major roadblock for me when soloing as a Combat Sent, as it meant I needed a healer companion, and my stunbreaker is on a long cooldown.

 

Note that the method listed above of just not killing the tentacles does not work at this time, he comes down regardless of if you've cleared them all or not, that may have changed since the earlier post was made.

 

However, what I did find is that if you leave the room when the tentacles are there and the Sithspawn is not, the fight will not reset, so you can hang out and wait for your cooldowns to all finish (if you leave the room with the Sithspawn there, everything will reset, however). Put companion on passive as you leave so they follow, and then back to normal as you go back.

 

This does cause some odd things--when you jump back in, the Sithspawn will often jump down to a random point in the room not targeting anyone, and then jump right back up, and your companion will often hang out in the doorway of the room. Not sure if it's because the companion was in the door or if I got lucky, but it consistently targeted me for coming down when the companion was in the door, which made getting him to barrels easier (as getting a companion to stand on a barrel is very difficult).

 

The Sithspawn still does sometimes heal twice in a given cycle, and I couldn't stop the second one, but it ultimately wasn't able to out-heal the DPS I was able to do the rest of the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now do it with a Rage Jugg. My First 12 attempts was with a Tank Jugg. I tried with my Mara and My Assassin and Sorc, i have tried with Jedi Guard and even my Smugg and that 1 wasnt even close that was the saddest attempt yet.. I give up. Just give us back our full health or a 2nd companion. Simple Then i and others can finally play content they never got to see for reason of lack of grouping or interest or just finding enough people to group.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...
Phase 2 as of now 1/21/22 is bugged the boss will clip through and not activate the canisters that are up against other objects. So frustrating glad to see I am doing everything right but hate to see that this game has just too many bugs but the biggest focus for devs is a new update that is going to double the amount of bugs and problems not even work right
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
Yup. Just spent an hour. He doesn't consistently break the barrels. Bugged? Makes the fight really tough to finish. I get him down to 35% and he goes right back above 50 with my cooldowns being what they are and whatnot. Ill try the leaving the room strat. I hadn't heard that one yet. It's just a nutty boss fight. Way WAY too tough for something that came out 8 years ago. 50 comp. I have 324 gear(not that it matters). Just nerf it already for those that need it done already(I wanted to get it done for that galactic seasons quest where you needed to find 3 artifacts but oh well. Next week!).
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
On 5/6/2022 at 10:03 PM, DarthJimilingus said:

Yup. Just spent an hour. He doesn't consistently break the barrels. Bugged? Makes the fight really tough to finish. I get him down to 35% and he goes right back above 50 with my cooldowns being what they are and whatnot. Ill try the leaving the room strat. I hadn't heard that one yet. It's just a nutty boss fight. Way WAY too tough for something that came out 8 years ago. 50 comp. I have 324 gear(not that it matters). Just nerf it already for those that need it done already(I wanted to get it done for that galactic seasons quest where you needed to find 3 artifacts but oh well. Next week!).

this one is kicking my butt too.  He can use the tentacle heal twice in 1 round now; this makes it literally impossible because you break doesn't cool down fast enough.  also he'll drop when all 4 tentacles are still up; meaning that trick of leaving the room doesn't actually work. 

Very frustrating.  there should be no Heroic4 content anymore.  stupid.   

Edit; they almost certainly updated this so it is unbeatable solo.  Not only when he gets below 30% health he basically can do the tentacle heal as many times as he wants (sometimes 3 or more times back to back within 1 minute).  I also found he does not go below 40k health or so.  For example I had on heroic moment, played every angle of hiding just outside the room so the unleash would cool down and got him down to about 40k and he just stops taking damage.  

Why in the hell would they update it to make it unbeatable solo when it is content so old that no one really plays it all that much.  There is no reason for this to not be just a regular heroic 2 mission; same with microbinoculars; no reason other than laziness.  

Edit:  So I finally beat it after about 4 attempts of having to start over after getting him down to about 30% health. It was sort of luck.  So I did a combination of the tricks above, like going just outside the main door when the tentacles are up so your unleash cools down.  But the caveat is you CANNOT go too far out.  Just outside the door and around the corner.  If you go too far out the spawn will try to chase you and then reset when he gets through the door.  After he gets to 30% health you MUST have unleash and heroic moment cooled down, you need both.  here is where the luck came in; I was doing both these tricks until the last 2 times he finally exploded the barrels.  I do no know why I was able to get the barrels to explode the last 2 times, I don't think I was doing anything different.  But when he is less than 30% health he takes almost no damage unless he hits the barrels.  God, that was a nightmare.  

Edited by mcguireptr
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...