8 Man Operation Boss Guide - Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace (Normal Mode)

Surreal Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:59 pm

I have added the boss fight strategies for 8 man operations.
I take no credit for this in-depth info, however it's very reliable.

This will be the normal mode thread, i am also adding a Hard Mode thread soon.

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDES!, even if you know the strats inside and out from past operations you have ran, it's good to refresh yourself. It's vital for new players to read these and VERY helpful to your overall success and to your operations leader.

We can discuss finer details over voice chat, and tweak the strategies to fit us of course, but having the base knowledge of these fights is a good start for everyone.

So here is the operations boss guides that i found helpful and explains these normal mode fights in good detail.

Just posting it to help operations run smoothly for everyone.

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Eternity Vault is the first Operation, located on the Ziost Shadow Mission Decks North-east corner.

It contains 5 Boss events, and a limited amount of trash ::

1) Annihilation Droid XRR-3 (Difficulty :: 6)

Once you climb the hill, you will find two turrets to either side. They can be CC'd (and it is recommended you start by doing so). Then during this fight, packs of 8 adds will spawn from time to time which must be tanked/killed to prevent them from wiping out the healers, etc.

Through this you can focus on killing one turret and then the other. The turrets can hit pretty hard and fast, so it's recommended that you use a tank on them if possible.

XRR-3 has a few abilities ::

1) Auto-Attack :: Single-target attack on the highest threat
2) Stomp :: A Melee (10 meter?) AoE which will hit everyone in its range (I'm not sure if Melee can max-range the hitbox to avoid this)
3) Rocket Launcher :: A random player (or players) are targeted by his missile launchers, which you cannot avoid. You will see a target under your feet. It is believed if you move you can avoid it hitting other nearby players.
4) Rocket Storm :: (This generally doesn't start until 50%) Everyone gets targeted by small red circles at their feet. You move out of the circles to avoid getting hit.
5) Missile Barrage :: This is the biggest issue to deal with. All players will get hit repeatedly by missiles. The current plan is to use the big pillars to get out of LoS and heal up while he is in this mode. There's no clear indicator as to when it is finished.. so let the TANKS be the one to figure it out.

Note :: Generally when the boss is down to 15-20% and he starts to Missile Barrage, the tactic is to stay in there and burn him down through it as he does have an enrage timer. Save your cooldowns, stims, shields and other tricks for that point.
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After that you will have to clear trash to Gharj. This consists of packs of Droids that seem big and scary, but really the biggest threat they pose is knocking you off of the ledges (so position yourself well).

Also, there are packs of a bunch of little strong creatures that don't hit hard, but when all 8 of them are on a non-tank, they can be dangerous.

Finally, there's these little lava dogs. The first pack has 6, but then it's just packs of 4. No real dangers here.
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2) Gharj (Difficulty :: 8 )

Gharj is a big beast. You fight him on an island in the middle of the lava, he'll stomp on that island to sink it - but as he starts that, a path of rocks leads to a new island. Follow the path, kite him along until he dies. Now that said he's got just a few tricks ::

1) Smash :: Gharj's normal attack on the highest threat.
2) Swipe :: Randomly targets a member of the group and delivers an AE to everyone near it. Small burst of damage and a knockback - usually into the lava. Hop your way back to the island to minimize the impact of the lava.
3) Pounce :: Gharj will announce the attack in advance. Melee should move out of range to avoid taking the damage from it (5-6000) to make things easier on the healers - then move right back in after he jumps.

In addition to all of this are packs of relatively weak mobs (8?) that spawn from time to time. The second tank should pick them up so they can quickly be AE'd down and you can return focus to Gharj.

The challenge of this fight is that it's hectic. You're focusing on the Pounce, the adds, moving to the right island - and through all of it there's the potential for a lot of avoidable damage against an enrage timer.

IMPORTANT :: If you die, or it's a wipe on Gharj, it's very important that you not release until everyone has died and the boss has reset. If you fail to do this the Operation can get glitched and you will not be able to zone back in until you break the group up, pass ownership off to some other person - and even then you will need to clear trash again..
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After Gharj, you clear the trash to the pylons. There's packs of creatures here with some elites and strongs, there's some patrols to deal with. The trash here is pretty simple, but you need to clear enough so that you can split up into two groups for the pylons (one to the north, one to the south).

I suggest you have 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 DPS in each group that go to each pylon. The fight begins based on proximity it seems (not activating the consoles). So make sure that you coordinate it properly to avoid one side having to fight a lot longer than the other.
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3) Ancient Pylons (Difficulty :: 6)

So the real fight here is just spamming the buttons on the consoles until the right symbol shows up in the lock. Usually it's 3-5 clicks - just be sure to keep clicking the same console (left or right) to unlock them. Messages will broadcast to the ops group and you'll automatically begin working on the next one as you get the right symbols lined up.

Through this process (I do not believe the clicking of the consoles is connected to the spawning of mobs directly - it may be time based), packs of mobs will spawn and you will need to kill them ::

1) Humanoid Waves :: 3 Normal strength creatures arrive. They're not too threatening.
2) Acklay Waves :: This can be 1 or 2 of the creatures. We got beat up pretty good by the 2-pack, so I would suggest using CC if you get 2 of them - I'm not sure what they hit with or how it happened, but our healer went down quick. Obviously, this part of the guide will need more help.

Otherwise, keep spinning the consoles (probably best having the healer on it) until you're through the phase.
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4) Infernal Council (Difficulty :: 3)

If the pylons weren't easy enough, welcome to the real loot pinata of the Operation. There are multiple different types of mobs, but the basic idea is this :: every player fights a creature 1-on-1. No one can heal or help another player. So you kill your target and then stand on the spot until they are all dead and the chest turns green (we've completed this and somehow the chest didn't unlock, but the second time we stood on those spots and it worked).

I can't remember the names of the Mobs - but they have different amounts of health - and you should stack people on them based on their potential DPS.

70 or 78k health :: DPS characters.
50k health :: tanks
28k health :: healers

There is an enrage timer on them - but normally the only players who find themselves facing it are the tanks - and it didn't seem overly threatening to them when their targets were enraged. Not really sure what to make of this, but it seemed really, REALLY simple.
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5) The Infernal One :: Soa (Difficulty :: 9)

Finally there's a boss that puts up a challenge. It's really about the choreography here more than anything and there's five phases.

Phase One :: (The Speech)

So the first phase is a pretty simple DPS phase. Get him down to 75%. There some damage spikes to random targets. Soa will target the various pylons and they will ooze with some sort of Greenish stuff. Don't stand in it.

MOST IMPORTANT - when he reaches around 75% he will put a shield up and begin a speech. You MUST get to the outer ring as quickly as possible as the inner two rings will collapse to the ground.

OUR EXPERIENCE - has been that if everyone goes to the WEST (where you enter the room from) it works well to get everyone together and as far as finding a path down to the middle floor.

Phase Two :: (The First Descent)

So now that you're standing on the Outer Ring - you need to jump down to other platforms before Soa smashes the one you are standing on. Generally the first jump is a pretty big fall to the "second" ring.. and then from there you get a series of small hops - sometimes to the counter-clockwise direction (if you started from the West) and sometimes you have to go "back" to the Outer-ring. I don't think there's any real good way of explaining this - but you'll make sense of it as you experience it.

MOST IMPORTANT - make sure that you guys recognize that you will need to heal up at some point - so getting the whole group to stop and heal up after getting "ahead" of the falling platforms before continuing.

Also while you're dropping down you will notice targetable pylons. Kill them. We're not sure why we have to, but we do it anyways.

Once you reach the floor, Soa will continue to destroy the platforms and then phase three begins ::

Phase Three :: (Mid-level Battle 75% -> 30%)

Okay, so here's the first "hectic" part of the battle. In addition to just DPSing down SOA there's other elements to deal with ::

1) Ball Lightning :: Soa will activate one of the pylons around the perimeter and it will charge up and launch a ball of lightning that will target a player and slowly chase them. It will shock people it passes by for about 600 - but I believe if it reaches its target it explodes for 4000-6000 and may hit nearby players as well. If you can recognize one as chasing you - try to steer it clear of everyone.
2) Mind Trap :: Soa will create a Mind Trap on the ground and it will grab a player and take them inside. The Mind Trap must be destroyed to release them (~25k health). Inside the Mind Trap players will see a 5k HP Rakata. While it is alive, they take periodic damage. With it dead, they get a periodic heal. The real trick here is to kill the traps fast enough that there aren't too many people locked away in them.
3) "Grab and Fling" :: I don't know what the ability is actually called, but Soa targets a random player and flings them across the room and off of walls a few times before smashing them on the ground. It's not a lot of damage, but the real threats here are two-fold. A) That both healers could be taken out of the fight between this and Mind Trap and B) If Phase Four is engaged while someone is flying (bad luck) .. they're going to end up a pancake on the bottom floor =)

All said and done, this is pretty easy. Just DPS Soa down to 30% and he will shield up again and just like the first time, you must race to the outer ring as quickly as possible as the middle two rings will drop out again.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
1) Players stuck in a mind trap when this phase ends will end up on the ground floor just fine. They are stuck in the mind trap for 90 seconds - which is about the amount of time it takes for Phase Four anyways. Don't worry about them
2) Players stuck in the "Grab and Fling" are toast. Try to find out where they land and prep to rez them for Phase Five if possible.

Phase Four :: (The Final Descent)

This is a rinse and repeat of Phase Two.

Phase Five :: (Use the Pylons!!!)

Okay - so this phase is very similar to Phase 3.

Differences ::

1) Soa has a shield on him. You can deal no damage to him normally.
2) TWO Ball Lightnings are often out at the same time
3) Soa has an enrage timer that's pretty aggressive.

Removing the Shield :: The key mechanic in all this insanity is getting his shield removed. From time to time, large yellow/black spinning pylons will appear overhead. You need to kite him underneath them so they crash down on him, temporarily removing his shield.

Failure to execute the Pylons means you are running into the enrage timer. When his shield is gone, everyone needs to focus on doing as much of a DPS burn on him as possible.

So what is everyone's roles?

1) While Soa is Shielded
-- Avoid Lightning, and not dragging it into the tank/healers
-- Break Mind Traps
-- Keep yourself alive and ready to burn Soa

2) While Soa's shield is down
-- KILL Soa
-- Watch his Shield timer (you'll want to be on mind traps ASAP)

No one should be under or near the pylons when they fall in the final phase, they hit for about 10k.

When getting flung around the room, most often you won't take any damage while being tossed, but as soon as you land you lose around half your health. Something to keep in mind for healing. If you have the 400 level epic health stim from Biochem, you'll want to use it for this.

Again, the real challenges here are the Mind Traps taking players out of commission (along with the Grab & Fling) - the real key to victory is keeping everyone ready for burning down Soa when the shield is down.

It's a frustrating fight, there's frustrating elements to it - but that's a good thing as this is the final fight of Eternity Vault and it does a pretty good job of living up to expectations.

Good Luck!

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Karagga's Palace is the second operation, located on the Ziost Shadow Mission Decks South-west corner.

It contains 5 Boss events, and some painful trash ::

When you first zone-in, there's a few packs of trash to clear. Use your CC, avoid chaining into other mobs and this should go pretty smoothly - letting you go into the palace and engaging the first boss.

1) Bonethrasher (Difficulty :: 5)

Once you get into Karagga's Palace, Karagga yells at you and then kicks you down into the pit - a big round area lined with poisonous water. A gate will open across the room unleashing "Bonethrasher" a BIG rancor.

Bonethrasher has no real threat table. He'll randomly chase after a person who must be smart enough to run away and not get stomped into the dirt (which is actually a pretty cool animation). The whole time Bonethrasher will be swiping and trying to knock people off of the edge of the platform. Be smart, avoid his swipe and knockbacks. Kite him when you're supposed to.

The other challenge are the adds that spawn throughout the event. Once in a while a Gammorean Guard will appear on the edge of the platform, highlighted by a big red pillar of light. Kill him before Bonethrasher can eat him (otherwise Bonethrasher gets a big buff for a little while).

The other adds are a pair of Cats that jump in. Nothing overly threatening, just kill them while avoiding Bonethrasher.

All said and done, this is a pretty easy encounter, but it does require people paying a bit of attention to what's going on.

So his abilities?

1) Smash :: knocks the player he's chasing down into the dirt for some pretty decent damage
2) Swipe :: hits players on his side as he's chasing down his target
3) Knock-up :: bounces everyone into the air (or perhaps it's a range) for about 25% of their health
4) Knock-back :: punts people - potentailly into the icky water.

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After that you will have to clear trash to Jarg/Sorno - but to be honest, I'm not sure I remember the trash all that well - and if it was before or after them. I'll update this guide accordingly.

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2) Jarg & Sorno (Difficulty :: 8 )

Jarg & Sorno are a pair of Bounty Hunters out to burn and blow you up. The KEY mechanic to this fight is that as soon as one of them is killed, the other gets a huge frenzy buff (not to mention an enrage mechanic as well) - so you'll want to kill them close to each other.

Jarg relies on his flamethrower and I believe - and that's the biggest concern about him. He spins around blowing flame on everyone (it's a melee killer). So it's best having ranged dps on him as much as possible.

Sorno I believe can grapple players, freeze them in Carbonite and heal. I believe the Carbonite is shot on the person normally tanking him, so be prepared to kite and/or heal through whoever gains temporary agro when this happens.

There's a random phase when Sorno jumps up on the platform and fires missiles at people randomly. It puts a big target on the ground, don't stand in it.

As they get closer to dying try to watch and keep their health close together so they both die quickly. The only other element is I believe Sorno has a HEAL - which you will want to interrupt each and every time to make them easier to kill.

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After Jarg & Sorno you get some annoying trash packs outside. You have humanoids controlling beasts. So far we've found that killing the humanoids quickly makes the beasts easier to deal with - so use CC accordingly.

You will also need to clear to the three big AA guns in the field to get them to blast down part of the palace and open the gate to the third boss.

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3) Foreman Crusher the Slavedriver (Difficulty :: 7)

The main mechanic here is Crusher's "Frenzy" ability. Crusher goes Frenzied for like 15 seconds or so. He'll hit real hard but move real slow. If the tank kites him properly, there's little damage taken and basically you can rinse/repeat the kiting back and forth to handle this fine.

The other elements of the fight are that packs of adds (Guards) spawn which must be dealt with (15k HP or so) and that Crusher will pick up big rocks and throw them at people (try to avoid them). Also be mindful of your threat as the tank will be spending time kiting instead of DPSing.. so any threat-dropping abilities should be used as a precaution.

Other than that.. the enrage timer is your only real concern here =)

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After Crusher you have the worst trash packs ever. There's 2-3 humanoids which work to heal the droids, and then there's 2 droids - one of which summons 4 "Murder Droids" (Elites that hit really, REALLY hard) and the other which seems ignorable. This trash is ultimately about the murder droids - and since only 4 of them ever spawn.. come up with some system of prioritizing them as they arrive - and then burn down the humanoids, the ignorable bot and then finally the alarm droid that calls the murder droids last.

It's frustrating trash to say the least.. sorry.

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4) G4-BC Heavy Fabricator (Difficulty :: 7)

The key mechanic to this fight is manpulating the 3 consoles which control a small "Towers of Hanoi" style puzzle that unlocks a firing mechanism. You want to have the boss positioned under the station which is going to fire in order to melt his armor (a debuff) that grants a massive boost do DPS.

What this means is that at least 2 players must stay out of the bulk of the fight and work on adjusting the pieces of the puzzle to get the system ready to fire the debuff on the boss.

To make things a little more complicated, two types of robots are introduced into the fight ::

1) Proximity Mine Droids
-- These spawn generally after the first debuff wears off and in a set pattern across the map (mostly in the way of the terminals). These have about 15k HP and will do some pretty harsh damage and dots to players who get caught in them. Generally the people who are controlling the consoles need to be able to kill these quickly to resume console operations.

2) Stun Droids
-- These spawn down by the boss and will continue to zap/cc random players (it can be bad when it's the tank or the off-tank). They should be killed as they spawn provided the boss's debuff isn't active (don't waste the burn time, etc)

In addition to those droids, the Boss does a few things ::

1) Grapple :: a long-range grapple hook will attempt to pull ranged players into his grasp. People working the consoles should be VERY careful not to cheat too close and try to DPS as the time lost running back is bad.
2) Rocket :: A random player will be debuffed with a target/incoming warning and a few seconds later will be hit by a blade for 3-5k and I believe it has a DoT on it as well. Unavoidable.
3) Tank Debuff :: The boss slowly stacks a debuff on the active tank. This requires a taunt to prevent the stack from being too severe - the OT tanks for a while as the stack resets - and then they swap back.

So throughout this all it requires good coordination from the Console folks to the Tanks to make sure that the boss is heading to the right firing spot, and that there is a bit of a warning before firing the trigger to make sure the boss gets hit.

The enrage timer makes it difficult to fail to get the debuff up often - so the faster the consoles go - the more often the fire hits the boss - the better the event goes for all involved.

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You will encounter a few more of those nasty Droid combos until you reach the Courtyard heading to Karagga's area. When you get there, it actually gets a bit worse as many of the pulls are 4-target pulls ::

1 Turret (which seems to just about insta-gib tanks) and must be burned down as fast as possible
1 Non-CCable humanoid who hits pretty darn hard
2 CCable humanoids that can be problematic if broken

Handle those packs cleanly and it's on to Karagga!

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5) Karagga the Unyielding (Difficulty :: 9)

Fire on the ground
Exploding Mouse Droids
Anchor & Pulse DOT
Tunneling
Enrage Timer

Trust me when I say that Karagga is a very rhythmic fight. As long as the fight mechanics are dealt with as they appear, the boss is relatively straightforward. Karagga uses most of his abilities in a semi-predictable pattern - so take a note of what he does during this battle.

First and Foremost is his "Oil Patches" which he sets on fire. As Karagga is tanked, he will occasionally spew oil on the ground and set it on fire. This fire is pretty large and stays for the duration of the fight. The tank needs to move in a manner that allows him to drop the fire predictably and try to minimize the "path" of the fire to leave as much of the floor available for players. You will notice as the fight goes on, the Fire itself is a bit of a soft-enrage timer.

The fire should be avoided by everyone. It hits for about a 1500-2000 point tick and if it doesn't kill you, the healers will.

In addition to that, Karagga has several other abilities ::

1) "DRILLING" :: Karagga will channel "Dilling" during which time random players are targeted by unavoidable underground drills. This ability has a 24 second CD, and hits for about 4k on Heavy armor.
2) Missile Barrage :: Occasionally Karagga will also use a barrage of missiles. I believe you can out-range this event
3) "Magnetic Sticky Debuff" :: Karagga will target a player (sometimes this gets 2 players) and hit them with a white beam. They will be rooted and then begin to have a swirling black/purple cloud around them which will pulse damage to anyone in it. To make this even trickier - other players will be "pulled" to this person meaning they have to run out of the cloud quickly to avoid taking damage. After the debuff is over, the player who was rooted gets blasted for about 3-4k damage. If two people are rooted together, that's 6-8k damage to both of them. Be prepared!
4) Exploding Mouse Droids :: Karagga will begun to unleash 8 Mouse droids (they don't come out at once, but they do all come out quickly). They only have about 4-5k HP each. These generally need to be AE'd down as quickly as possible before they can find a target and explode for around 4k to everyone in the area.
5) Exhaust :: After Karagga drops the burning oil patch, he follows with his Exhaust attack which sprays fire in an AoE cone behind him. Melee should watch for the tank to move out of a fire patch as their cue to move to the sides.

The biggest problem with this fight is how easy it is to just get tunnel-vision and screw up. Because the fight is so rhythmic, it can rock you into a trance and without realizing it suddenly you're standing in fire (especially if you're melee).

This fight is also extremely healing intensive. The most intensive fight so far. The healers will not have the energy to keep you topped off, accept that fact right now. You need to do everything you can to help. Use your personal CDs, Medpacs, and just stay out of fire.

Good Luck!

Jiken Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:33 am

For the KP 3rd Boss Foreman Crusher:

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In those videos above he seems not to be slow at all, and it suggests that Tank and off-Tank rotate and taunt him when he goes Frenzy, when their Defense CD is on CD.

This video below shows how to solve the puzzle in KP 4th boss.

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8 Man Operation Boss Guide - Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace (Normal Mode)

8 Man Operation Boss Guide - Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace (Normal Mode)

Re: 8 Man Operation Boss Guide - Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace (Normal Mode)