Master Mode Caduceus Rise: Boss tactics

High Thane Thergen
Faultwalker Alraj
Hookmaster Palos
Coalgut
Ashcaller Zael
Zughtak
Rodiafel
Captain Black Spit
Cinderstorm
Headhunter Kulir and Disciple Varash
Caduceus



High Thane Thergen

• Wild Cudgel – is always cast twice in quick succession. These casts must be interrupted – Typically the first is interrupted by the tank and the second by a dps. If you don’t have a second interrupt available, having aoe heal support is probably a good idea
• Ground AoE – as usual, Don’t Stand in the Fire
• Adds – Throughout the fight he will spawn little earth elementals, which will need to be picked up by the tank. They don’t hit that hard but you do get a lot of them so assigning one player to AoE them down while the rest focuses on the boss helps a lot

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Faultwalker Alraj

• The damage done is mostly magic, so having your guild Planar Protection buff up helps (similarly any other resistance buffs you might have available)
• Damage on the tank is not what will wipe you on this fight, it’s group damage, so if you have a tank/support spec of any kind use it (pally/warlord, rs/bard, and er healy things for a cleric I suppose)
• An offhealer or support can be quite useful as the healer being on the move while the boss starts to cast Wicked Eruption (see below) can be quite deadly
• Colored circles – much like in expert mode, colored circles will appear on the floor (red, blue, green). If you stand in a specific color (NEVER stand on the line between two or three colors) it will REDUCE the stacks of the color you stand in, and INCREASE the stacks of every other color. Unlike expert mode, the colored circles aren’t fixed on the ground but will switch places (ooh pretty disco lights) so standing in one place is your better option here as it will allow you to keep dpsing /healing instead of running around like a chicken without a head
• Little purple circle – cast on a random player (not the tank): get out of this asap. Because of this ability try to spread out so it never hits two players at the same time. As far as we could see this isn’t ever targeted on the melee
• “Alraj targets the tainted blood/will/spirits” – This ability is actually a good thing, as it will clear stacks of a certain color of you (blood=red, and I think spirits are blue and will green though don’t quote me on that :p). I believe he also damages you for an amount dependent on how many stacks of that colour you had
• “Wicked eruption” – This is the real killer on this fight, if you can survive it you will be fine. He will do three casts in quick succession, doing damage depending on how many stacks of each of the colors you have. This is where you want to save all your aoe heals/cooldowns for since if you don’t get a heal in between the first and third cast somewhere, likely at least one person in the party will die.

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Hookmaster Palos
Is not much different from the expert mode

• “Bonds blood with…” is the real killer here. STOP all dps the second you see him starting to cast it, or see your party members die because of your own dps. If you really have problems with this, he usually does the first bonds blood somewhat after the second trashing stomp, and then usually a bit after every next trashing stomp – so you could just stop all dps after the trashing stomps and wait until after the next bonds blood to pick it up again. This will draw out the fight quite a bit though.
• If as a ranged player you get pulled in, run away again.
• As a tank (because of the pulling ability) face him away from the group, so players who get pulled in don’t risk getting cleaved
• He also has the trashing stomp aoe ability and a daze on a random player, which you will just have to deal with. If your tank cannot survive through the healer being dazed, you want offheals here.

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Coalgut

The easy way (if you have enough dps and a well-enough geared tank)

• Have no healers and zerg him down (you will still need to move out of the fire he does @ a random player o/c, so try to spread out if you can)
• If you do reach the explosion phase theres a couple of things you need to be aware of:
  • Right before the explosion, he will cast “Burning Lungs” on a random player. That player will die no matter what happens (sacrificial lamb ftw!) but he/she will need to run away from the rest of the group or they will explode as well
  • After the explosion, your tank can mount up and try and kite him around that way to give you a bit more time to kill Coalgut

The hard (aka proper) way: (requires one healer, no support here as it’s the dps that counts)

• Phase one (before the explosion)
  • Move out of Fire AoE
  • One player should be assigned to crystal duty – aka get three (or more) of the shiny blue crystals that spawn down to 10% or lower. Take care NOT to accidentally kill these crystals as you will need them later on
  • Everyone else should focus on the boss
• Transition:
  • Coalgut will cast “Burning Lungs” on one player. At this point everyone but the tank needs to group up (if you try to group up with the tank Coalgut will join the party too which is non-ideal as you’ll have the massive AoE straight after). As soon as everyone is grouped up, you need to cleanse the debuff – the damage will be divided among the group thus making it survivable. If you do not cleanse the debuff the player with the debuff (and everyone around him) will die when it runs out. If you cleanse the debuff if you’re not grouped up it will kill the player who has it.
  • Shortly after Coalgut will cast a massive AoE which players need to run out of
• Phase two (after the explosion)
  • Coalgut enrages and will now one- or twoshot your tank if he gets in range
  • To avoid this, you must slow down coalgut (this is where the crystals come into play)
  • Your tank should position himself so there is a crystal between him/her and the boss at all times. As soon as the boss enters the blue circle, you must kill the crystal of that circle asap – if you execute this correctly, this will slow the boss. If you kill the crystal BEFORE the boss enters the circle, you will have wasted it as it wont do anything. If you kill the crystal either too slow or too quick it will likely reach your tank and kill it, thus wiping you. Ideally you have one person dedicated to the kill-the-crystal job and the rest of the dps stays focused on the boss
  • You will likely need 3 crystals to slow him during this phase (not sure how much this got effected by the nerf, two might be sufficient now but better safe than sorry ey)
  • Eventually he’ll unenrage and you start again at phase one

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Ashcaller Zael

• Is quite similar to expert mode, except the fact that he will do more damage on the tank in his one-mob phase, as the buff he gains stacks up over time here.
• Planar protection and any other fire resistances you can get are quite useful here, especially for the tank.
• Melee is what makes this fight a real bitch, so if it’s at all possible, have everyone go ranged for this fight.
• One healer should be enough, mainly tank focused as long as you follow tactics – if you have melee this can get quite tricky though
• Positioning: Everyone but the tank should group up together, as far away from the boss if you possibly can
• Throughout the fight he will cast spells on random targets (as well as hitting the tank). This leaves a fire debuff, which must be cleansed asap.
• Lava droplets: is cast periodically and will spawn a bunch of smaller versions of himself in a big circle all around him. These adds aggro onto whoever’s closest to them (hence the no melee). As soon as you see the boss casting it, the tank should run towards the caster group, making sure he/she is the closest to all of the droplets. Kill of the droplets, starting with the ones closest to the ranged group and then the ones further away (your tank should back up as you kill droplets so the ranged can move up safely behind him to target all the ones behind him (remember the droplets don’t actually “die” – they just turn a gray-green color after which they can be ignored)
• Once you killed off all the droplets, he will do “Lava reconstitution”, absorbing them all and returning to phase one
• (We didn’t see this in master, but I presume the expert mode mechanic remains that if you don’t kill the droplets soon enough, he will absorb them anyway and self-heal for any that remained)
• Tips and tricks
  • If you have a chloro healer, be aware that damage on coalgut is drastically reduced in the droplets phase and the lava droplets die pretty damn quick. For this reason we marked up two droplets for the chloro to target and everyone else had to stay clear off
  • If you do have to have melee, your tank will need to run around the circle with the melee – tank should always be on the inside of the circle and melee on the outside. The tank should be as close to the droplets as possible while the melee should try and stand as far away from them as they can while still being able to hit them

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Zughtak

• One healer should be enough, if your players are quick on the ball killing the trogs so the water elementals don’t die and the troggs don’t buff the boss. Mainly tank healing though some AoE damage from dying water spirits will be unavoidable
• Starts out the fight with a buff called “Thick Hide”, reducing the damage taken from players
• Water spirits will spawn throughout the fight. Unlike in expert mode, several water spirits can (and will) be up at the same time. If you go into the blue circle near the water elementals, you get 3 new abilities. The one’s that really important here is the first one, with the axe symbol. If you target Zughtak and cast this, it will remove his buff, thus allowing you to actually do some damage on him. You need at least two players making sure this buff is always removed. One player can’t do it by him/herself as the cooldown on the ability is too long (I believe the debuff is removed for 40 secs and the cd is 1min about).
  The other two abilities you can use while in the circle respectively make you immune to Stomp (the ability he casts on “grinds you under his feet”) and kill a trog but they all three share a cd so we mainly ignore the other two
• Trogs will spawn throughout the fight and go for the water elementals. If they manage to kill the water elemental, then AoE damage will be done to the entire group. Also, if the trogs that kill a water elemental then reach Zughtak, it will buff his damage done. For this reason we opted to kill the trogs as and when they spawned (trogs>boss), though I imagine if you have good enough heals you might be able to just heal through it
• Periodically emotes “Zughtak prepares to grind you under his feet!” at which point everyone (including the tank) needs to move away from his or take quite a bit of damage and be knocked back (if you’re not careful with this, you can get knocked off the cliff and instantly die)

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Rodiafel

• This is not a dps race, and we’ve found two healers on this fight quite beneficial because of the damage in the underground phases
• Phase one (above ground)
  • On the pull, group up, as otherwise you risk Rodiafel charging at a random group member and the tank being too far away to taunt/grab him therefore effectively killing one of your party members in the first few seconds of the pull, which is obviously non-ideal
  • Spread out as much as you can, because of:
    Chomp: targets a random player and puts an AoE on the ground – As always, don’t stand in the fire!
  • Molten spray: Frontal cone cast on the tank, so don’t stand behind the tank!
  • Lava Torrent: Must be interrupted by the tank – If you don’t it’ll put a nasty dot on two players which must be cleansed asap
• Transition
  • At 75%, 50%, and 25% he will cast “unstable temperature” and go underground. Make sure you are spread out throughout the room at the point of transition (yes, that goes for you too, melee, players, I don’t care about your lack of deeps!)
• Phase two (underground)
  • He will put yellow circles around all the players – make sure not to overlap the circles! If you’re familiar with the fight on expert, the circles in master mode are about twice as big, so you really do need to use the entire room to spread out in – four corners and tank in the middle worked quite well for us
  • He will burrow around the square you fight him in and put little red aoe circles in his path which you have to avoid/get out of. Please be aware the circles are actually bigger than they appear on the screen, so don’t stand right near the edge of one!
  • If you can survive these phases, you’re pretty much in the clear

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Captain Black Spit

• One healer should be enough – Depending on how quick your group is on moving out of the fire and repositioning this can be mainly tank focused though some party damage is unavoidable
• Puts up a ground AoE that you must avoid
• Summons adds that must be picked up by the tank and killed. If you leave up the adds too long (I think it is when he summons the next add indicated by “Drink up me hearties”) the add will start pulsing a red aoe, and explode a few seconds after this, effectively killing everyone standing in the circle (survivable by a tank)
• Bile breath: Is a frontal cone AoE that will quickly kill anyone standing in it – move out of it
• Blink: Unlike in normal mode, he will also blink onto a random target. In and by itself this doesn’t matter much as he keeps aggro on the tank, but all players need to be aware of his positioning, as he can and will cast Bile Breath right after blinking. As far as we can tell, the bile breath cone is still targeted at the tank, so you must make sure you are never in a straight line between the boss and the tank (or anywhere near the straight line for that matter)
• “Bottom’s up, Ascended” – This will basically incapacitate your tank for a couple of seconds. If an add spawns in this time and you have a squishy healer, this can be quite dangerous so it can be a good idea for a plate/chain wearer to nuke them so they get aggro instead

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Cinderstorm

• One healer (tank focused) is plenty as long as your party follows the tactics
• Planar protection and fire resistance (especially on the tank) can help on this fight
• Lasers (3 lasers fanning out from him): do damage and will slow you if you stand in them
• Cinderstorm: AoE fire ability. You need to Line of Sight the boss AND each other. This means that the tank will need to stay inside the circular room, and each of the dps and the healers will need to pick a window/door to hide in. There CANNOT be more than one person in each window or door or they will kill each other. The person at the door must also hide on the RIGHT side of the door, not the left, or they might have line of sight with one of the people in the windows.
• At 25% (?) a circle of lasers will appear around the room and close in on you. At this point everyone needs to move into the room since these lasers will one-shot anyone they hit. If you get a bad timing of this appearing alongside cinderstorm it will most likely wipe you so be careful when you make the transition
• For anyone standing in the corridor do NOT move backwards into the corridor – stay near the door at all times. If you stray too far back in the corridor you will get oneshotted by some fun invisible lasers

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Headhunter Kulir and Disciple Varash

• One healer is sufficient, mainly AoE damage
• Kill Disciple Varash first and then Kulir. Once you kill one of the two mobs, they will reappear as a ghost and continue to do damage – maybe you can avoid this by killing them simultaneously but we don’t really bother with this as they don’t seem to do more damage in their ghost form. Be careful not to stand right next to them in their ghost form though.
• Varash
  • has a buff that can be dispelled and that gives him a chance to blink whenever he’s hit – if you have any melee dispelling this buff can be quite useful
  • puts a red AoE on the ground – avoid it
• Kulir
  • Magma Tempest (indicated by a fire aoe around him) will put a stacking buff on him that will increase his damage output – this must be interrupted asap
  • “Player”’s blood will stain the leaves: massive damage on this player inc so healers beware

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Caduceus

• One healer should be enough if people follow tactics – Healing is AoE focussed and favours a cleric healer (as they have an AoE dispel)
• Positioning: Everyone should stack up behind the boss and regroup again asap (usually on the healer) when he tosses you around
• Planar protection and any other earth resistance you can put up are quite useful here
• Magma Blast: will put a dot on 3 random players – this must be dispelled asap on anyone but the tank
• “The earth rumbles”: some spikes appear but they can easily be healed through so keep standing where you are
• Tectonic Disturbance:
  • If someone is not stacked up he will start jumping around and do massive damage (more if you stand further apart)
  • He will then jump away and toss you around – group up again asap
  • Healers save your big heals and cd’s for these phases
  • He will then spawn little earth elementals, a big earth elemental, and whisps
  • The little earth elementals explode on death, so do NOT AoE them down – assign one person to kill the little earth elementals one by one (ideally melee) while the others kill off the whisps and then focus on the big earth elemental. Much like in normal CR, you can choose to ignore the whisps and just focus on the big earth elemental but it does make healing all the much easier
  • Once all the earth elementals are down, return to stack up on and dps the boss

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