Whether you are brand new to the instance, or are trying to form a group to silver, there is some important information to help shave essential minutes off your run, that I want everyone to be made aware of. For sake of simplicity, I am going to talk first about bosses, then mini bosses, trash, route tips, and finally strategy.
As a preface. I want to talk a bit about interrupts. For this instance, you can save 5-10 minutes off your run if you are good about your stun rotation. It is CRITICAL to stay on top of your stuns. Trash mobs in this instance like to shoot all sorts of different directions. I recommend having 3 stun groups. In the group I have cleared with one DPS will carry 3 stuns, tank will carry 3 stuns, and the remaining three players will make up the third stunning group. Obviously this can be managed however you want, but 3 stun groups should be a priority. I will also be referencing the instance clear that I recorded on Twitch a little while ago. http://www.twitch.tv/lancers3/c/4827205
Chime Lady (6:00 - 8:35)
This is the first boss of the instance, and likely the biggest RNG boss in the instance. Luckily, it's pretty easy reset if you find yourself wiping on this boss. There are two phases to her. The first phase is basically a tank and spank. EVERYONE should interrupt the only cast that she has during this phase, which should only happen once before pushing her into the second phase. In the second phase, she will jump to the rock wall (her original positioning) and become immune to damage. During this phase, the chimes positioned around the encounter will start to explode, and there will also be moving red abilities that MUST be avoided. If you get hit by them, you will start to stack a debuff. Whoever has the highest stack of debuffs will have aggro on the boss, so it's important that the tank maintain the highest stacks, while DPS do their best to keep their stacks low. On her VOCAL QUE, the second phase will be over. At this time, everyone needs to be in position to interrupt her next cast for purple damage. From here, its rinse and repeat. You will go through phase one and two no less than 3 times and should target being under 4 times, as the debuffs will start to add up and cause way too much damage output.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- There isn't too much to this boss, as long as you can stay alive during phase two. Through experience, the easiest place to position yourself is in the top right corner (rock wall in front, originating path to your left, see video for visual). For whatever reason, this seems to have the least amount of overlap between telegraphs.
- Don't be afraid to run through the circle chime telegraphs to avoid the moving telegraphs. The telegraph timing before damage on the circle chimes is very slow. If you run through them, chances are you won't actually get hit.
- You can actually damage the boss while she is transitioning from phase 1 to phase 2. While the damage is only for a short period of time, you can knock off 8-15% of her life with the increased damage.
Overlod Skash (18:00 - 21:10)
There are three distinct phases for this boss. The first phase is purely a tank and spank. He will summon adds, that can largely be avoided and AoE'ed down. There is one cast that can be interrupted, which I call the "puzzle". This should be interrupted every time you can. The second phase, he will place a circle telegraph around you and then shoot another telegraph at you. Upon contact with this telegraph, adds will spawn on you. Again, these can be largely ignored. The trickiness of this phase is there is a huge corkscrew type circle around you and the boss, that if you make contact with it, will essentially 1 shot you. The problem is if you get too close to one of your team mates, you will get shot out from the group. Think of this like bumper cars. The third phase, he will spawn eyes which are purely there to life steal from you. If you don't get out of their cast you will die pretty quickly. Again, it's basically rinse and repeat after phase three. You will go through each phase a minimum of two times.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- The boss's puzzle cast requires 3 interrupts (displaying two interrupt armor). My recommendation would be to have one person responsible for this cast EVERY time, as it is rather infrequent. It will occur once before transitioning to the second phase, once before transitioning to the third phase, and once after the eye phase. I would also recommend having a back up in case things get tricky. The ability doesn't do a great deal of damage, so it's okay to eat it. But the purple damage is too critical to miss.
- The eye phase has a pretty long timer before despawning. You will still have them up as you are fighting through the next phases. To combat this, we divide the room into four points. One to the north, one to the west, one to the south, one to the east. After the circle phase is complete, we start moving the boss to one of the points until he drops the eyes. Upon dropping the eyes, we immediately run back to the middle. We typically rotate counter clockwise, although it doesn't really matter as long as you give yourself enough room to operate outside of the eyes.
- The bumper car phase is the hardest part of this instance. In order to deal with the damage effectively, we have everyone form a small circle around the boss in an attempt to only get one of the telegraph adds to hit you. If you take more than one, it is basically a one shot. After eating the add telegraph, we bunch closer to help the healer. At this point, it would be helpful to pop any defensive cool downs that you may have.
Ondu (30:30 - 33:20)
There are two phases for this boss, with phase two having multiple possibilities. In phase one, it is a tank and spank (noticing a trend?
). The two abilities you want to watch out for are his trident type attacks, which can and should be interrupted, and his clover telegraph that puts DoTs on people if you walk through it. During phase two, he can do a number of things. First of which, he will walk to the back of the room and root 4 of the 5 people. The one person not rooted, must go towards the entrance and run over the fly telegraphs. You are given a speed buff and damage mitigation during the phase so you don't have to worry about much. Just don't let the flies get to the group, or you will cause a wipe. The people rooted are still free to damage. The second alternative, is his "enrage" he is basically fixated on the tank and will one shot him if he reaches him. If you need to lengthen the gap between him and the tank, you can stun him and he will be rooted for a short period of time. The third alternative, is his heal. He will do the heal TWICE as well as a trident cast in between them. The heal MUST be interrupted, otherwise its a stupid crazy heal, like a third of his health or something. The last alternative is he will basically become immune to damage and cast his clover all over the place. The key to this phase to staying alive. Don't worry about damaging. You will go through the phases 3 to 4 times.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- The boss's trident cast requires 3 interrupts (displaying two interrupt armor). My recommendation would be to have one person responsible for this cast EVERY time, as it is rather infrequent. It will occur once before phase two, and once basically immediately after phase two. If he does it any more frequently, I would NOT throw any more interrupts at it, as it is critical to have interrupts for other parts of the fight. It's easy to dodge out of.
- I would also assign two groups the responsibility of interrupting the heal. Each taking 3 interrupts. The fight is largely percentage based, so it's possible to skip the second heal if you burn quick enough.
Fire Lady (43:30 - 47:30)
This is easily the hardest boss in the instance, in my opinion. There are three phases. The first of which is basically a tank and spank. Periodically she will cast a telegraph around three people. The telegraph applies a DoT and then will also launch a fire circle on the ground once the DoT is over. You must not stand in this. She will also tether someone and chase them with a fire cast. The first cast hurts a lot so do you best to avoid it. The second phase is basically a puzzle. She will cast fire rays from the top wall with one small opening that you must run through. You cannot dodge roll through the rays, they will kill you. You can, however blink, transport, etc. You will go through both phases twice before making it to phase three. Phase three is basically a combination of phase one and two, with a couple of differences. The first of which is she will no longer tether someone, but will still shoot her fire cast. Secondly, her fire rays will now come from any part of the room, not just the top wall. There is a VOCAL QUE that you can use to start looking for where the ray is coming from.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- I would highly recommend taking a CC break for this fight, if you have one. In phase one, if you are tethered, your CC break will prematurely end her fire cast and break you from the tether.
- I would also drop all CC's for survivability and movement abilities.
- The third phase is likely the biggest gear check in the instance. You need to burn her down as quickly as possible, to avoid placing too many fire circles on the ground as well as pay attention to where the rays are coming from. In the 5-10 times I have cleared SSM, I don't think I have seen a clean run through this phase.
- My biggest recommendation is not to panic or let the phases speed up on you. Be methodological in your approach and take your time. Survivability is definitely valued over damage output. Except in the the third phase when all hell breaks loose.
Selene (55:30 - 1:01:30)
Selene has a variation of three phases. The first phase is a tank and spank with not much to worry about. There is one ability that must be avoided. She casts a ray in the direction that she is facing. She will randomly select a direction, so if you are in the way of that direction, IMMEDIATELY dodge roll behind her. This is a one shot, see my epic fail from this in the video. In the second phase, she will turn off the lights and put a few light circles out in the room. You must find the light circle and stand in it. If you are in the dark, you will take ticking damage. She will periodically pull people in to her, if you are pulled just run back into the light. The damage isn't overwhelming, but make sure to get back in the light as soon as possible. It is not your healer's responsibility to keep you alive during the phase. In the third phase, she will turn back on the lights and blind you. She will also target a random individual and shoot a ray at them which starts to come at you right after leaving the blind. This comes rather quickly, so be prepared. In order to get through the third phase, you must kill the 4 adds that she spawns. They don't do damage, with the exception of the AoE circle if you are standing too close to them when they spawn. If you get hit by their AoE followed by the ray, you will be dead, so it's important to keep your head on a swivel. The tricky part with these adds is that they despawn after a few seconds. The only way to keep them spawned is to stun them. After you kill the 4th add you will revert back to phase one. You will go through both phases twice before the third phase. After killing the 4th add a second time, she will cast one light circle and the rest of the room will become a big red telegraph. Once the telegraph is done, she will also spawn an add. Allow the tank to pick up both the boss and the add and continue to DPS Selene. During the 1st (second time through) and 3rd phase, she may also spawn adds with big circle telegraphs, just dodge them and you will be okay. You can avoid this if you burn quickly enough.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- Absolutely stun the first ray cast in the first phase. She has 4 interrupt armor, so I recommend everyone stunning to ensure that she does in fact get to purple damage. I would then ignore every other ray cast and dodge through it until you get to phase three. After she spawns her add, she will do one last ray. Either dodge or attempt to stun. At this point, the fight gets extremely hectic. So if the stun doesn't go through, don't get caught off guard, just dodge.
- Keep calm during the blinding phase. We like to all stack near the lake (refer to the video) so that we can guarantee where her ray is coming from. Before stunning, dodge roll to safety first!
As a preface. I want to talk a bit about interrupts. For this instance, you can save 5-10 minutes off your run if you are good about your stun rotation. It is CRITICAL to stay on top of your stuns. Trash mobs in this instance like to shoot all sorts of different directions. I recommend having 3 stun groups. In the group I have cleared with one DPS will carry 3 stuns, tank will carry 3 stuns, and the remaining three players will make up the third stunning group. Obviously this can be managed however you want, but 3 stun groups should be a priority. I will also be referencing the instance clear that I recorded on Twitch a little while ago. http://www.twitch.tv/lancers3/c/4827205
Chime Lady (6:00 - 8:35)
This is the first boss of the instance, and likely the biggest RNG boss in the instance. Luckily, it's pretty easy reset if you find yourself wiping on this boss. There are two phases to her. The first phase is basically a tank and spank. EVERYONE should interrupt the only cast that she has during this phase, which should only happen once before pushing her into the second phase. In the second phase, she will jump to the rock wall (her original positioning) and become immune to damage. During this phase, the chimes positioned around the encounter will start to explode, and there will also be moving red abilities that MUST be avoided. If you get hit by them, you will start to stack a debuff. Whoever has the highest stack of debuffs will have aggro on the boss, so it's important that the tank maintain the highest stacks, while DPS do their best to keep their stacks low. On her VOCAL QUE, the second phase will be over. At this time, everyone needs to be in position to interrupt her next cast for purple damage. From here, its rinse and repeat. You will go through phase one and two no less than 3 times and should target being under 4 times, as the debuffs will start to add up and cause way too much damage output.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- There isn't too much to this boss, as long as you can stay alive during phase two. Through experience, the easiest place to position yourself is in the top right corner (rock wall in front, originating path to your left, see video for visual). For whatever reason, this seems to have the least amount of overlap between telegraphs.
- Don't be afraid to run through the circle chime telegraphs to avoid the moving telegraphs. The telegraph timing before damage on the circle chimes is very slow. If you run through them, chances are you won't actually get hit.
- You can actually damage the boss while she is transitioning from phase 1 to phase 2. While the damage is only for a short period of time, you can knock off 8-15% of her life with the increased damage.
Overlod Skash (18:00 - 21:10)
There are three distinct phases for this boss. The first phase is purely a tank and spank. He will summon adds, that can largely be avoided and AoE'ed down. There is one cast that can be interrupted, which I call the "puzzle". This should be interrupted every time you can. The second phase, he will place a circle telegraph around you and then shoot another telegraph at you. Upon contact with this telegraph, adds will spawn on you. Again, these can be largely ignored. The trickiness of this phase is there is a huge corkscrew type circle around you and the boss, that if you make contact with it, will essentially 1 shot you. The problem is if you get too close to one of your team mates, you will get shot out from the group. Think of this like bumper cars. The third phase, he will spawn eyes which are purely there to life steal from you. If you don't get out of their cast you will die pretty quickly. Again, it's basically rinse and repeat after phase three. You will go through each phase a minimum of two times.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- The boss's puzzle cast requires 3 interrupts (displaying two interrupt armor). My recommendation would be to have one person responsible for this cast EVERY time, as it is rather infrequent. It will occur once before transitioning to the second phase, once before transitioning to the third phase, and once after the eye phase. I would also recommend having a back up in case things get tricky. The ability doesn't do a great deal of damage, so it's okay to eat it. But the purple damage is too critical to miss.
- The eye phase has a pretty long timer before despawning. You will still have them up as you are fighting through the next phases. To combat this, we divide the room into four points. One to the north, one to the west, one to the south, one to the east. After the circle phase is complete, we start moving the boss to one of the points until he drops the eyes. Upon dropping the eyes, we immediately run back to the middle. We typically rotate counter clockwise, although it doesn't really matter as long as you give yourself enough room to operate outside of the eyes.
- The bumper car phase is the hardest part of this instance. In order to deal with the damage effectively, we have everyone form a small circle around the boss in an attempt to only get one of the telegraph adds to hit you. If you take more than one, it is basically a one shot. After eating the add telegraph, we bunch closer to help the healer. At this point, it would be helpful to pop any defensive cool downs that you may have.
Ondu (30:30 - 33:20)
There are two phases for this boss, with phase two having multiple possibilities. In phase one, it is a tank and spank (noticing a trend?
). The two abilities you want to watch out for are his trident type attacks, which can and should be interrupted, and his clover telegraph that puts DoTs on people if you walk through it. During phase two, he can do a number of things. First of which, he will walk to the back of the room and root 4 of the 5 people. The one person not rooted, must go towards the entrance and run over the fly telegraphs. You are given a speed buff and damage mitigation during the phase so you don't have to worry about much. Just don't let the flies get to the group, or you will cause a wipe. The people rooted are still free to damage. The second alternative, is his "enrage" he is basically fixated on the tank and will one shot him if he reaches him. If you need to lengthen the gap between him and the tank, you can stun him and he will be rooted for a short period of time. The third alternative, is his heal. He will do the heal TWICE as well as a trident cast in between them. The heal MUST be interrupted, otherwise its a stupid crazy heal, like a third of his health or something. The last alternative is he will basically become immune to damage and cast his clover all over the place. The key to this phase to staying alive. Don't worry about damaging. You will go through the phases 3 to 4 times.My Tips and Recommendations:
- The boss's trident cast requires 3 interrupts (displaying two interrupt armor). My recommendation would be to have one person responsible for this cast EVERY time, as it is rather infrequent. It will occur once before phase two, and once basically immediately after phase two. If he does it any more frequently, I would NOT throw any more interrupts at it, as it is critical to have interrupts for other parts of the fight. It's easy to dodge out of.
- I would also assign two groups the responsibility of interrupting the heal. Each taking 3 interrupts. The fight is largely percentage based, so it's possible to skip the second heal if you burn quick enough.
Fire Lady (43:30 - 47:30)
This is easily the hardest boss in the instance, in my opinion. There are three phases. The first of which is basically a tank and spank. Periodically she will cast a telegraph around three people. The telegraph applies a DoT and then will also launch a fire circle on the ground once the DoT is over. You must not stand in this. She will also tether someone and chase them with a fire cast. The first cast hurts a lot so do you best to avoid it. The second phase is basically a puzzle. She will cast fire rays from the top wall with one small opening that you must run through. You cannot dodge roll through the rays, they will kill you. You can, however blink, transport, etc. You will go through both phases twice before making it to phase three. Phase three is basically a combination of phase one and two, with a couple of differences. The first of which is she will no longer tether someone, but will still shoot her fire cast. Secondly, her fire rays will now come from any part of the room, not just the top wall. There is a VOCAL QUE that you can use to start looking for where the ray is coming from.
My Tips and Recommendations:
- I would highly recommend taking a CC break for this fight, if you have one. In phase one, if you are tethered, your CC break will prematurely end her fire cast and break you from the tether.
- I would also drop all CC's for survivability and movement abilities.
- The third phase is likely the biggest gear check in the instance. You need to burn her down as quickly as possible, to avoid placing too many fire circles on the ground as well as pay attention to where the rays are coming from. In the 5-10 times I have cleared SSM, I don't think I have seen a clean run through this phase.
- My biggest recommendation is not to panic or let the phases speed up on you. Be methodological in your approach and take your time. Survivability is definitely valued over damage output. Except in the the third phase when all hell breaks loose.
Selene (55:30 - 1:01:30)
Selene has a variation of three phases. The first phase is a tank and spank with not much to worry about. There is one ability that must be avoided. She casts a ray in the direction that she is facing. She will randomly select a direction, so if you are in the way of that direction, IMMEDIATELY dodge roll behind her. This is a one shot, see my epic fail from this in the video.
In the second phase, she will turn off the lights and put a few light circles out in the room. You must find the light circle and stand in it. If you are in the dark, you will take ticking damage. She will periodically pull people in to her, if you are pulled just run back into the light. The damage isn't overwhelming, but make sure to get back in the light as soon as possible. It is not your healer's responsibility to keep you alive during the phase. In the third phase, she will turn back on the lights and blind you. She will also target a random individual and shoot a ray at them which starts to come at you right after leaving the blind. This comes rather quickly, so be prepared. In order to get through the third phase, you must kill the 4 adds that she spawns. They don't do damage, with the exception of the AoE circle if you are standing too close to them when they spawn. If you get hit by their AoE followed by the ray, you will be dead, so it's important to keep your head on a swivel. The tricky part with these adds is that they despawn after a few seconds. The only way to keep them spawned is to stun them. After you kill the 4th add you will revert back to phase one. You will go through both phases twice before the third phase. After killing the 4th add a second time, she will cast one light circle and the rest of the room will become a big red telegraph. Once the telegraph is done, she will also spawn an add. Allow the tank to pick up both the boss and the add and continue to DPS Selene. During the 1st (second time through) and 3rd phase, she may also spawn adds with big circle telegraphs, just dodge them and you will be okay. You can avoid this if you burn quickly enough.My Tips and Recommendations:
- Absolutely stun the first ray cast in the first phase. She has 4 interrupt armor, so I recommend everyone stunning to ensure that she does in fact get to purple damage. I would then ignore every other ray cast and dodge through it until you get to phase three. After she spawns her add, she will do one last ray. Either dodge or attempt to stun. At this point, the fight gets extremely hectic. So if the stun doesn't go through, don't get caught off guard, just dodge.
- Keep calm during the blinding phase. We like to all stack near the lake (refer to the video) so that we can guarantee where her ray is coming from. Before stunning, dodge roll to safety first!