This is the first Operation. It is for an 8 and 16 person group. There is no armor grind prior to this operation so you can walk in with the gear that you finish leveling in (this is assumed for the "easy" mode of the operation). There are three different difficulties for this operation, think normal, hard, and nightmare. Currently the lock out is one week and the normal is on a separate lockout from Hard/Nightmare.
There are five encounters total which include a fire boss and a puzzle encounter. Developers have described this operation as 'semi-linear' with some optional encounters and a point where the group must split up to advance (infernal council). Loot containers will be used for the normal mode with items (presumably better) dropping in the harder modes.
1st Boss until nightmare is a dps race, don't stand where he chooses to fire rockets at on the floor, and line of sight him when he fires rockets at everyone via line of sight by the 2 towers there. Ranged dps can stay out to the side and dps if a healer can heal them through it to beat the enrage.
2nd Boss is also quite simple on normal and hard. Tank him with his back to the rest of the group on the platform he starts on, and against the edge giving everyone a bit of room, as he knocks them back into the lava at random intervals. Throughout the fight he will make the platform you are on start to shake, and another platform will appear. Make you way over to that and set him up there and carry on as before. At about 50% and then about every 10% after that he will spawn a lot of adds onto the platform, group them up and speed dps them down, they don't have much hp. And that's this fight over and don't with pretty much, just a repeat of those abilities until dead.
3rd Boss is the puzzle boss. On normal you have to split half your operation up, and just press one of the buttons until the row of colours lines up, when your row and the row on the opposite have that row done, it will move on to the 2nd row and so on. When the 4th row is done, go get loots :) Adds will spawn at this time, we ran 1 tank in the operation group, so had the best healer and dps on the side without the tank to burst down the adds as they spawn. There are heroic adds towards the end, so the side without a tank may need to cc it quite a bit to ensure no deaths.
The 3rd Boss on hard and nightmare however, is a little different... You have to make sure you do it in the least amount of turns possible... Otherwise it will lock out and you will have to reset, reclear trash, and start again. The easiest way to work out which way to turn them, is that they should be coloured like this: Blue Green Red Purple White Yellow. White being the icon with a dot in the middle and a dot on each corner, blue being the icon with just the blue swirl in the middle. It should be between 9-10 moved to do the whole puzzle, just to give you a rough idea if your maths are working :) Also - on hard and nightmare mode, once someone uses the platform, they cant use it again for about 40 seconds, this is intended so everyone on that side has to use the buttons at some point, arrange this between your group.
The 4th Boss is similar on all modes, just difficulty increases the hp of each add. There's a mob for each person, 2 for the healers (1 each) with about 28k hp, 2 for the people playing the role of tanks (we had 1 tank and 1 Sith Jugg dps with some tanking gear as our offtank/helper to take these too) with about 38/40k hp, and the rest have about 78k for the dps. Take one each, make sure you are all in position, and get someone to use the console to start the fight. When you hit your target it will engage you, and you are left fighting that until its dead. Once your's dies, you can help others with 1 damaging hit, then you get a debuff stopping you from helping anyone for a certain amount of time, so if you need to help someone with their add, use your highest single target damaging attack (not dot!) to help. When all the adds are dead, its gg loot time :)
The 5th Boss has, effectively, 5 stages and is the most complex of the bosses in EV. I'll cover the phases here, the difference between normal and hard being his hp and the amount of damage he does, I'm yet to engage him in Nightmare mode so I cant comment on that.
Phase 1 :
Phase 1 is just setting up the basic mechanics. Make sure to let the tank pick him up in the middle, and start dpsing when he has aggro. The boss will spawn void zone like areas around 2 of the pylons on the floor, if you are in it get out, they hurt. He will spawn Ball Lightnings that will follow a random player around the room then explode when they get close to their target. The easiest way to deal with this is work out who its following, get them to kite it to somewhere empty in space and let it detonate there. It WILL detonate if it gets close to anyone, not just the target its following. He spawns these throughout the phases. When he hits 70%ish he will give himself an invulnerability shield, everyone must collapse back to the entrance edge of the room in a group.
Phase 2:
The centre of the room will fall away, leaving a little platform to jump down to. Make your way down the frequently falling platforms, killing the lightning generators on the way. You only need to kill 5 to remove the bosses damage buff, if you don't kill 5, he will do aoe burst damage for each one you missed (there are plenty on the way down to kill, and they have low hp). Stop on a few levels to heal the fall damage, and then keep making your way down to the middle level.
Phase 3:
Phase 3 is very similar to phase 1, except he doesn't summon the void zones any more, and he summons a few more lightning balls and introduces 2 new skills. He will target a random player in the room and cage them in a box which the rest of the group must dps down to release the player. Whilst in the "cage" the player will be in a room with another npc, just dps the npc until your group have dpsd down the cage holding you there. You will spawn back in the room once its down. The 2nd mechanic that gets added, is a random person will be picked up and thrown around the room for 6 seconds, during this time there's nothing anyone can do about it, and you just have to deal with it. Apart from that the phase is similar to phase 1, and when he hits 30% he will go invulnerable again. At this point you have to collapse to the edge again as phase 2 will happen again, as you make your way down to the bottom of the room. Note: make sure to stop dps on the boss if you have someone still encased or someone being thrown around the room! Make sure none of this is happening then push him to 30%, otherwise the people stuck will either be stuck forever, or the people being thrown around will fall to their deaths.
Phase 4:
Same as phase 2.
Phase 5:
When you get to the floor, Phase 5 will start. The boss will come down, but this time with his shield still on. The only way to get rid of it is for the tank to move him underneath the spinning structures that move out from the walls, as they will fall on him, making him vulnerable for 12 seconds. In this time, dps should break off whatever they are doing and dps the boss with everything they have. Note: Healers beware of the tank in this phase, as the falling structures do big spike damage to the tank, in excess of 10k+ sometimes! In this phase players will still be being encased in the cages, people will still be being thrown around and there will still be ball lightning going round, just all a lot quicker now. If you cant kill him in 3 structures falling on him he will enrage, giving you, if you co-ordinate it right, 1 maybe 2 max more dps phases on the boss before its game over. In this phase dps have to be on their game dpsing down the cages players are in, whilst still being quick enough to change to the boss when his shields down. Keeping players out of the cages is the key to having the dps to kill this boss :)
All in all this last fight is the most enjoyable of all the fights, and I hope these tutorials help :)
By:
Meta - The Swiftsure Server - Empire