EC: Warlord Kephess (Story Mode)

[Petrus]

Stats:
Warstrider HP:
Kephess HP:

---

Boss Description:
Warlord Kephess is the final boss in the EC Operation. He sits inside a giant walker, and will drop out to fight you towards the end of the fight.

---

Fight Information:
When the fight starts there are three champion mobs called Imperial Siege Droid and a large robot boss called Warstrider Battlewalker. The robot can not be tanked, so the tanks should pick up the three champions and they should be burned down. Alternatively, since the Imperial Siege Droids cast an ability called Calibrating Shot it is ideal to have a DPS with an interrupt on the third Droid, allowing for all 3 to be interrupted. Players should interrupt this ability as it gives a stacking buff on the Droid that increases their damage done, accuracy, and reducing damage taken. As this is happening the Warstrider Battlewalker will fire at places on the ground, doing large amounts of damage. Players need to be heads up and see where it will fire, and move out of it. It should be noted, as of 1.2 going live, the area in which the Warstrider Battlewalker shoots his aoe is now a set pattern.

After the Imperial Siege Droids are dead a single mob will spawn called Baradium Bomber with a large explosion icon over his head. He should be burned down quickly so that he doesn't explode. When he is killed, a player gets that icon over their head. That player should get healed, shielded, and then run over to the Warstrider Battlewalker. That player will automatically start an animation that brings the boss to it's knees. All DPS should then focus on the boss. It's important for dps to blow all of their offensive cooldowns here, including Bloodthirst/Inspiration - players need to kill the walker within three attempts.

Players should be able to bring the boss at least to 70% - 60% in the first damage phase. After about 10 seconds the boss will stand back up, and summon more adds. This time it will be a group of about 6 strong mobs with a shield around them. Players should tank these adds right where the first group spawns. The Trandoshan Warrior is the mob that has the shield, and should be burned first. 3 groups of these adds will spawn, and they should be killed. NOTE: The Shield acts as a damage reflector. Think of it as Fearful from Toth/Zorn but in bubble form. If you hit any add that are inside the shield other than the Trandoshan Warrior, you risk killing yourself almost instantly. The first group should be dead before the second one spawns. As soon as the second (and 3rd) groups are up the OT should attack the warrior, keeping it in place while the other mobs run to the group because of heal aggro. The MT will pick them up here.

After the shielded enemies are all dead, another Baradium Bomber with the icon over his head will spawn, and players will need to repeat the previous steps of killing it and damaging the Warstrider Battlewalker. Once that is complete two new adds will spawn - champion Pulsar Power Droid. All players must stack inside of him. (Within the red hitbox circle under him.) If you do not, he will proceed to randomly railshot anybody, if 1 or more people are not stacked inside. While you are attacking one of them, the other will place a large purple circle under himself doing damage to anybody inside. After a few moments, an emote in red text will appear saying "The Pulsar Droids Are Reversing Their Circuits". This is the indication your raid needs to switch to the other droid. This cycle repeats until both are dead. NOTE: The railshot the droids are firing if someone isn't stacked inside of them hits for 10k+ and could hit anybody, even the stacked people.

Once they are down another Baradium Bomber will spawn, and shortly after Warlord Kephess will drop out of the Warstrider Battlewalker, whether or not it has been defeated. Players should continue to kill the Warstrider Battlwalker while they can, and then focus on Warlord Kephess. Periodically in Warlord Kephess's first phase, he will place large red circles on the ground, and then jump to the red circle doing massive damage. Players should avoid these at all costs. NOTE: As usual, the damage radius is about 150% the size of the reticule. At about 60% Warlord Kephess will pull everyone in and cast Gift of The Masters which is a massive purple aoe much like what the pulsar droids cast before. All raid members need to pop any speed boosts and immediately run to a designated spot. Have marauders/sentinels cast predation/transcendence.

After Kephess casts "Gift of the Masters" he will enter his final stage. Here he will cast purple circles under a tank, which must be placed on the ground away from the raid. Kephess will knock back the tank, and immediately after follow it up by casting "Breath of the Masters". The OT must taunt during this cast, and the MT will have a debuff that places purple circles under his feet. After 10 - 15 seconds of this, Kephess will once again cast a knockback on the tank, and the original tank must taunt back during the "Breath of the Masters" attack. Repeat this until the boss is dead.

---

Strategies:
Positioning in this fight is key in some phases.During the Trandoshan Warrior phases, position your raid where the first set of these adds spawn, to avoid the Warstrider Battlewalkers ground aoe. Positioning is also critical during the Pulsar Droid phase, if even one person isn't stacked, you risk a random member getting hit by the railshot. In the final phase, the tanks should be trying to place the purple circles around the outside along the walls, and the tank that's tanking the boss needs to position himself to get knocked into a wall, so he doesn't get knocked out range of the off tank or the healers.

---

Tips:
- Tip1 - You can stun the Bombardiers right before their buff expires that causes them to explode - this delays the explosion.

---

Videos:

---

[Squishei]

The boss seems to have multiple phases which seem to be triggered by a certain portion of the giant droid's (forgot name) health.

The droid will do one ability every half-minute of so until he is killed. The droid will look in a direction and then fire missiles in a cone and will deal damage to anyone standing there. He seems to have 5 "zones" ranging from west to east.

At the beginning of the fight there are 3 droids and the behemoth himself. The behemoth has a shield and cannot be damaged currently. The 3 droids should be single targeted down and will occasionally cast an ability (forgot name) which will buff himself with damage, I believe. After the droids have been defeated, a bomber will enter through one of 3 entrances, kinda north east, south east and south west. He will have a fire marker above his head and has a debuff that ticks down from 10-15 seconds and if he is not killed before the debuff completes he will blow up and damage the raid, if he is killed he will give a random raid member the fire marker and debuff (refreshed duration) who will then have to blow up the debuff underneath the shielded behemoth and remove the shield. The person with the bomb will take massive damage. Burn the behemoth until his shield is back up.

After the shield is back up, groups of 6 adds will spawn, one warrior and 5 others, the warrior holds up a protective purple shield and needs to be single targeted down. Once the shield drops, the other adds can be aoed down. A total of 3 add waves will spawn until the next bomb guy. Kill bomb guy, drop bomb under behemoth, dps behemoth.

I think the boss jumped down for us between these phases. One of the skills he does is when he jumps up in the air, puts a reticule at his landing put and smashs down for big damage. Otherwise he just has to be tanked to the side.

After the shield is back up, two power droids will spawn, one east and one west. The west one will activate a giant blue ground spot and will damage anyone standing inside. The two droids will periodically switch who has the ground spot so dps should kill the droid without a blue ground spot. After they are killed, another bomb guy and the same process.

At this point, the droid was dead and we brought the boss down to I think 20% in which case he entered the final phase where he would put down a ground spot every few seconds similar to karagga. Don't fill up the room and win!

Correct me on any mistakes, I seem to have forgotten a few things I think.

[Petrus]

(03-26-2012 12:16 PM)Squishei Wrote:  The boss seems to have multiple phases which seem to be triggered by a certain portion of the giant droid's (forgot name) health.

The droid will do one ability every half-minute of so until he is killed. The droid will look in a direction and then fire missiles in a cone and will deal damage to anyone standing there. He seems to have 5 "zones" ranging from west to east

From what we saw - and I'm not sure if this is a bug or not - you don't have to do anything to the big walker. After the 3rd bombardier guy comes out the boss just drops to the ground, and you can attack him. We got him down to 30% this way, however we only had 1 healer when he came out so we couldn't quite finish it that attempt. Anyway, it seems like the only reason to kill the walker is to reduce the damage taken, so it's definitely worth it, however it doesn't seem to determine anything that actually happens in the fight. We got the same adds, at the same time, when we both did and didn't attack the walker.

Also, did you all see anything with the Pulse droids? Those 15k hits were coming from them, but I'm not sure if that just has to be healed through, or if there is a mechanic that we're missing.

[Marek]

The Pulsar droids are like the prototype droids in False Emperor, but with harder hitting AoE. Just swap targets when you see the cast and raid warning and the raid shouldn't take much damage.

[Petrus]

(03-27-2012 01:06 AM)Marek Wrote:  The Pulsar droids are like the prototype droids in False Emperor, but with harder hitting AoE. Just swap targets when you see the cast and raid warning and the raid shouldn't take much damage.

Nah, there was something else. They were doing about 15k single target hits to us, and we were WELL away from the aoe.

From my logs:

[03/25/2012 20:41:03] [Pulsar Power Droid {2810295886020608}] [@Petrus] [Rail Shot {2844642739486720}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (14297 energy {836045448940874}) <14297>

Pretty sure that came from the one without the AoE that we were focusing down. Not sure how to avoid that other than keep people above 15k.

[Squishei]

(03-27-2012 01:27 AM)Petrus Wrote:  

(03-27-2012 01:06 AM)Marek Wrote:  The Pulsar droids are like the prototype droids in False Emperor, but with harder hitting AoE. Just swap targets when you see the cast and raid warning and the raid shouldn't take much damage.

Nah, there was something else. They were doing about 15k single target hits to us, and we were WELL away from the aoe.

From my logs:

[03/25/2012 20:41:03] [Pulsar Power Droid {2810295886020608}] [@Petrus] [Rail Shot {2844642739486720}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (14297 energy {836045448940874}) <14297>

Pretty sure that came from the one without the AoE that we were focusing down. Not sure how to avoid that other than keep people above 15k.

Well there was a random death or two during this phase, I guess that could explain it.

[Opacita]

Was there anything to be discovered about the rail shot? Did it have anything to do with who either add was aggro'd onto?

[Petrus]

(04-10-2012 06:43 PM)Opacita Wrote:  Was there anything to be discovered about the rail shot? Did it have anything to do with who either add was aggro'd onto?

No - Bioware fixed several bugs on this fight but this one still hits us from time to time. Really seems to be nothing to do but pray to the RNG gods and hope you don't get hit twice in a row - although we've spent the last week or so working on Hardmodes, so we've just recently got back to this fight again.

[Kirus]

From the 16man Storymode experience

The active Pulsar Droid seems to Rail Shot one Raid member at random (we got both healers and dps hits ) not sure on the time between shots.

Warlord Kephess got an immunity shield around 75% when the walker was up, we tried to ignore the walker when he dropped down.

When we blew up the Walker his shield vanished and he could be Dpsed down.


One annoyance we encountered was if someone was going with the bomb beneath the walker and he started shooting his Barrage that person would get hit during the whole grapple/bomb animation.

[caedmon]

After watching the video from troopercommando.com a bit more closely it looks like what happens in phase 4 (after he casts his big purple AOE) is this:

The spell Kephess casts is called Breath of the Masters and puts a debuff on his current target. This debuff makes them drop the 4 purple circles on the ground. After the cast he then changes target, probably to the second on threat.

The way I would handle it is with two tanks. When one tank gets breathed on, he runs away and the other tank taunts. This would mean that kephess gets moved around less and melee dont get screwed over because you're tanking Kephess in purple stuff and constantly moving him.

After dropping the 4 purple circles, the first tank runs back, waits for the next breath then taunts and tanks him while the other tank drops his circles.. and so on.

Whether you’d have enough DPS with two tanks is another thing. My guild did but we’re in mostly Rakata and we did it with two tanks ok. It would certainly be more controlled than a lot of the videos i've seen.