Apr 132012
by Ghoztt
There are an abundant number of excellent guides for the Eternity Vault so I felt it would be redundant to do another. Instead, I’ll offer some tips and tricks you can use to make things a little easier for you on your runs. These are very simple ideas you may find useful if you are having difficulty on certain fights. You may also find a ‘clever use of environment or mechanics’ usage here and there. 🙂
General Tips
- Zoom out! – Change your camera preferences to 100% max distance under the controls section so you can zoom way out and see more of the environment around you. Great for pvp too!
- Customize your raid frames – While you could do this to a limited degree before the 1.2 release, it was well hidden and not many people took advantage of it. You should adjust the height and width of your operation group health bar so they are easier to see. In addition, you can show the health with a number overlay which is great for healers.
- Extra combat rez – Classes who can take themselves out of combat by using stealth can resurrect a fallen team member if they don’t get back into combat. Keep in mind that this can’t be used in all fights so use it wisely.
Annihilation Droid XRR-3
- Engage the Turrets quicker (hard mode) – Instead of running straight in, run up the hill and hop over on the left ice ledge once you can reach it. From there, skirt the outer edge around the ice pillars until you’re lined up with the left (east) turret. Taking this path will allow you to get closer to the turrets before they activate. After the turrets are down it is also a great place to position your ops group before pulling the boss. You can get right behind the turret tower and the boss will not agro. This does not work in Story Mode.
- Extra time for DPS after enrage – If you are having trouble with the enrage timer or the final 8% missile barrage phase, then try running out to hide behind the turret. From there, the classes who have a ranged AOE ability can scoot out just far enough to put their targeting reticle on the ground next to the boss. The splash damage from the attack is enough to hit his large hit box and will give you all the time in the world to finish up that last bit of damage needed.
Gharj
- Trash before Gharj – You can save some time by blasting off the trash mobs from the edge. You can do this with the ‘core hounds’ that are in the lava area too. Just kite them out, pull them to the edge and blast them off. You will lose out on any legacy XP though. Sometimes the combat indicator will stay active, but will go away in time.
- Don’t get stomped – If Gharj is in your way and blocking the path to the next island then run through the lava. The damage taken from the lava is a slow ramp-up verses the spike damage from his stomp. Also, the lava debuff can be cleansed!
Ancient Pylons
- Trash before the pylons –You can skip over a bulk of the trash. Before you get to the first set of cats there is a ledge on your left that will be low enough to jump on. From there you can skirt around the edge of the map and hop over the lava area (don’t fall in!). You will end up next to the pylons with only a handful of cats to clear out.
- Interrupt force shield – The guardians that cast the force shield can be interrupted. Put good use to that interrupt button, especially in 1.2 when it will no longer consume your resource for all classes. If you are running on 8 man then these mobs are ‘weak’ level. Utilize attacks that stun weak level mobs to prevent them from casting force shield.
- One tank fight – You don’t need a secondary tank to do this fight on 8 man. Put 3 dps and a healer on one side who have stun abilities. The 3 normal mob spawns can be burned down quickly. When the strong insect appears you can chain stun and kill it easily. If you aren’t able to kill it quickly enough, then kite it until it is dead. Hopefully you have the puzzle finished before they start appearing in pairs.
- South side first – The hard/nightmare mode of this encounter is known to bug where you can no longer click on the consoles. If you let the south side solve their puzzle each tier first it is less likely to bug out. This should be fixed in 1.2 but then again it was also supposedly fixed in 1.15.
Infernal Council
- One can kill two – If you have a team member who is having trouble killing their opponent, then have one of your fastest dpsers kill it for them. If they DO NOT DO DAMAGE to their opponent, then someone else can take over after they finish with their first opponent. Just have the weaker dps take initial agro and use defensive cooldowns and/or heals to survive until the high dps finishes.
- Less DoTs! – Remember that if you help a teammate you should use your single strongest attack or heal. If you use a DoT or channeled ability only the first ‘tick’ will be at full strength and the rest will be affected by the debuff.
Soa
- Non-healers heal – During the stepping phases have your non-healers who have a heal button heal themselves. There is barely any other resource usage going on so why not make it easier on your healers on the way down?
- Charge! – During the stepping phases, those with a charge ability can avoid taking fall damage by charging the pylons on the way down. They must initiate the charge from the platform. If they initiate the charge while falling they will still take falling damage.
- 16 is better than 8 – Believe it or not, 16 man hard mode is actually easier to beat than 8 man. This is mainly due to the fact that you aren’t fighting the RNG as much. In 8 man, you can end up with a healer tossed in the air and one locked in mind trap while ball lightnings are out. That makes the encounter a little difficult. When you have 16 people there are more healers, dps and even a backup tank to pick up in case something goes wrong.
These are a few of the tips I’ve picked up along the way and I hope they help you. If you have any more tips or tricks please feel free to share. I would love to hear what else is out there. Stay tuned for more with the Karagga’s Palace encounter! By the time you read this the 1.2 patch will have been released so also stay tuned for information about the new operation Denova!
Ready check done? Pulling in 3… 2… 1…