Tips for Giant Monsters + Eidolon

kamokami

Tips for Giant Monsters+Eidolon: what to know before you fight Cosmics

This is a list of tips and strategies gathered from various players and broken out by role for each of the Cosmic fights.

Who these tips are for:
Players who are new to Cosmics and want to ensure that their participation will be helpful
Players who are experienced with Cosmics, but want to try out a new role that they have not played before
Players who want to participate in unlocking+beating Eidolon
Players who want to organize and lead Eidolon runs

CONTENTS
1. EIDOLON: video of fight, unlocking info, boss positioning map, callout binds to provide directions, tips for various roles
2. TELEIOSAURUS: positioning map for mom and baby, DPS check info+video, tips for various roles
3. QWYJIBO: boss positioning map, CCer rotation diagram, tips for various roles
4. KIGATILIK: CCer rotation, CCer builds, tips for various roles



EIDOLON TIPS
WATCH THE VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OplVcB9V5AI

the most critical parts of this fight:
- saving Active Offenses and Ultimates to easily kill the green Enervating Crystals
- Stunning & destroying red Shadow Crystals
- Distributing DPS evenly among green Enervating Crystals.
- use this chained target bind to quickly target the Crystals and Portals: (thanks @aiqa for the tip)
/bind F1 "target "Shadow Portal" $$ target "Shadow Crystal" $$ target "Enervating Crystal""

But first we need to unlock Eidolon by completing the Open Missions:

UNLOCKING EIDOLON
The three Open Missions are:
1. Oubliette
2. Portal Guardian (PG)
3. Slug

Eidolon unlocks when all 3 of those are have been completed and are on cooldown. Their success cooldown is 5 minutes.

It is **vital** to coordinate in order to not waste time. 3 minutes of coordination can easily save 30 minutes of wasted time recovering from wipes or bad pulls.

TLDR: kill Oub and Slug at the same time. Kill PG last.

Before you start:
1. Make sure you have all the required roles at each Open Mission
Required Roles: Main Tank, Offtank, Healer
- do not start until you have the above at Oubliette, Portal Guardian, and Slug
- the people in each of these roles should call out to let everyone know that they are at the right location and are ready to go
- DPS can go anywhere
2. Make sure that there are *less than 10 people* at each Open Mission
- everyone should be in Team Up
- check the Team Up to make sure there are less than 10 people there
3. You actually only need 5 people to finish each mission in time
- keep the group size under 10 at all times. When you finish a mission, don't rush to the other ones unless you are DPS ***and*** they want help.

Oubliette
- min reqs: 1 Main Tank, 1 Healer, 1 Offtank (everyone will be here at the start anyways)

- most critical part of this fight: Oubliette can heal herself. A lot. She will *always* extend her hand before attempting to heal. So block when you see her do it. Block when she lunges at or near you. Block if you get rooted. Err on the side of blocking too much because her heal undoes a lot of progress.

Portal Guardian
- min reqs: 1 Main Tank, 1 Healer, 1 Offtank (know who this is before starting anything!)

- most critical part of this fight: PG will do a big wireframe attack that knocks everyone back and then summon a green crystal that has to be destroyed asap or it explodes and kills people + heals PG. This is a preview of what's to come in the final fight vs Eidolon.

Slug
- min reqs: 1 Main Tank, 1 Healer, 1 Offtank (know who this is before starting anything!)

- most critical part of this fight: Main Tank and Healer staying alive. Slug hits hard, and more importantly, fast. Get all the extra mobs off into a corner and block a lot so that the Healer can focus on the Main Tank.



EIDOLON OF DESTRUCTION
- min reqs: 1 Tank, 3-4 Healers, lots of DPS, 1 CCer, damage buffing Support Role Auras: AoAC, AoPM, AoED

- most critical parts of this fight:

* the DPS killing green Enervating Crystals and yellow Shadow Portals that the boss summons. Kill the Enervating Crystals, or they'll explode like Kiga Tombs. Kill Shadow Portals, or they summon mobs that hit hard and screw up the fight. Enervating Crystals have 270k HP and are up for 10 seconds....so if you have 5 DPSers attacking each crystal then they each need to do 54k damage in 10 seconds.

* Stunning and killing red Shadow Crystals. It's vital that the DPS, Tank, and Healers all follow the CCer during this time to provide auras and heals. Shadow Crystals have 300k HP and need to be kept CCed for 30 seconds and killed to prevent Eido from healing.

* Healers keeping everyone alive while the red Shadow Crystals are CCed. They emit an escalating unblockable DoT that deals % of HP as damage. So AoE heals are vital here. The DPS need to stay alive so that they can kill the green Enervating Crystals that get summoned.

* DPS killing yellow Shadow Portals so that they don't summon very annoying Portal Guardians. Shadow Portals have 351k HP.


General Notes:
- if you get rezzed after dying, turn on your travel power 1st. Before your form or anything else.
- if you are not the designated CCer, do not use control powers like stuns or paralyzes on the Shadow Crystals.
- make sure you debuff the Enervating Crystals.

(thanks @pantagruel01 for the updated tips)

Main Tank: Position Eidolon where either E is on the map. Pull him to this location after you've built up lots of threat...usually by 2/3rds HP. The green circles are possible spawn points for Enervating Crystals, Shadow Crystals, and Shadow Portals:



Callouts to Provide Directions During the Fight
a) /bind numpad4 yell "Geysers coming. Spread out!"
b) /bind numpad5 yell "Good Green spawn. Kill them all!"
c) /bind numpad6 yell "Bad Green spawn. Kill 2 then Block!"
- the 3 binds above are the most important ones....especially spamming the geyser warning makes a big difference -
d) /bind numpad7 yell "PORTALS!"
e) /bind numpad8 say "ATTACK THIS RED"
- the bind above is in local chat and should be said by the person leading the DPS towards the correct Red to attack as they run towards it -
f) /bind numpad9 yell "back to Eido!"
- the bind above should be used to let the DPS know when to stop attacking Reds and get back to Eido -
g) /bind f9 yell "Kill ALL Reds"
h) /bind f10 yell "Kill 2 Reds closest to each other. Leave last 1 alone. Move with the group. If you are by yourself, you are doing it wrong"
i) /bind f11 yell "Kill 1 Red closest to Eido. Leave other 2 alone. Move with the group. If you are by yourself, you are doing it wrong"
j) /bind f12 yell "Do NOT attack Reds. Focus on Eido"
- depending on which tactic is being employed, direct the group with one of the 4 binds above right as Eido is spawning the Reds -

For another video of an Eido run click here: VIDEO LINK
(thanks @monaahiru for the recording and tips)

kamokami

TELEIOSAURUS TIPS

the most critical part of this fight:
- the tanks staying alive and having enough Spike Damage to overcome the Mom's healing
- everything typically falls apart once the Baby shows up because it ends up killing off the DPS which allows Dinomom to heal. Push through this until the Baby is in position.

Setup:
You need 1 Tank to claim the Baby and the Healers to be aware of who it is. Once this is done you are ready to start.

The damage threshold to overcome the Dino's heal scales up with the number of players in the fight.

A nice image with the details of the fight that you link out in Zone chat for new people:
IMAGE LINK

Tanks:
- the mom needs 3 tanks on her to maximize success
- get rank 3 block
- the only real threat to you is the spike attack…missing this is too costly so err on the side of blocking too early and too often
- Mom Tanks: keep her facing the same direction throughout the fight
- Baby Tanks: when you are pulling the Baby get your hits in and then move back so that you don't get vaporized when the Mom does her signature breath attack.




Healers:
- the only people worth keeping alive are the tanks. No one else’s death is nearly as consequential
- easily target the tanks using these binds: (they allow you to always target whoever the dinos are going after)
/bind f8 assist "Teleiosaurus”
/bind f7 assist "Teleiosaurus Hatchling”
- get a rank 3 block so that you can afford some mistakes
- don't die, block early and often
- have at least 1 100ft heal. If everything you've got is 50ft you will severely limit who and in what situations you can be relied upon.
- have a self rez. It makes you much more reliable

DPS:
- you are the key to this fight
- save your Active Offenses for when the mom tries to heal
- as of right now (6/19/16) we think that the damage threshold to prevent her from healing is roughly 10,000 damage per player during the ~5 seconds when she tries to activate the heal (thanks to @lezard21 for doing the work to figure it out. See his post here for the details: LINK)

Some awesome damage spikes:
- - Unleashed Rage
- - Haymaker
- - Massacre
- - Dragon's Claws
- - Rimefire
- - Strafing Run
- - Force Cascade
- - Shoulder Launcher
- - Chest Beam
- - Tiger's Bite
- - Annihilate
- - Particle Smash
- - TK Lance
- - Defile
- - Icicle Spear
- - Ebon Ruin
- - Ricochet Throw
- - Fireball
- - Skewer
- - Reaper's Embrace
- - Ego Blade Annihilation
- - Ego Blade Breach
- - Typhoon
- - Mind Break

Video of Dinomom's Healing Activation: VIDEO LINK HERE
(thanks to @qawsada for the video)

The Dinomom tries to heal every 40-45 seconds. (thanks to @lezard21 and @qawsada for figuring this out!)

Due to how long her breath attack takes, it's usually followed by her trying to heal. So the super easy way to anticipate the heal is just to watch for the breath attack. You'll get it right 80% of the time.

General Notes:

- when the baby dino spawns it always does so in a way where it and the mom both face each other with the tanks in between
- keep the baby close to the mom or the mom gets a Frenzy buff and kills everyone
- the only truly threatening attack is the spike detonation. No matter who you are and what your role is, as soon as you see the green wireframe, hit block

kamokami

QWYJIBO TIPS

the most critical part of this fight:
- hearts, hearts, hearts. Stun them, mezz them....if you are the CCer. If you're anyone else, then avoid hitting them
/bind 8 target "Courage”
/bind 9 target "Fortitude”
/bind 0 target "Tenacity”

Setup:
You just need 1-3 Tanks to split damage and 2 healers to heal them. And you need 1-2 people with very strong stuns and mezzes (as of now, Ego Sleep r3 works well). The rest can all be DPS.




A nice image with the details of the fight that you link out in Zone chat for new people:
IMAGE LINK

Tanks:
- hold aggro and face him in the same direction
- a lava patch appears wherever his fire breath attack is aimed at. This patch dishes out massive damage and ignores damage resistance including blocking. Be sure to avoid it!

Healers:
- keep the tanks alive.
/bind f6 assist "Qwyjibo”
- DPS needs your help and you have the time to help them out
- favor AoE heals if there are 2-3 healers present. Otherwise focus single-target heals on each of the tanks.

CCer:
- keep your hp up and stay away from other players so you don't get fireballed
- block in between CCing just in case
- keep an eye on Ape so that you can quickly tell if he's healing and a heart has been hit
- quickly sleep 1 heart and paralyze the other 2 hearts then go around and sleep the hearts you paralyzed
- the fastest method to do the above is by aiming the [Psionic Accelerator] device at Ape so that it hits 2 hearts at the same time:

(thanks @carrionbaggage for the diagram+tips)


General Notes:
- Ape throws fireballs at players who are low on hp. Stay away from players who don't have full health
- as of right now (6/19/16) the Hearts heal Qwyjibo at about 1% every 3 seconds

kamokami

KIGATILIK TIPS

the most critical part of this fight:
- keep the dogs off the altar and destroy the frozen tombs


Tanks
- have a rank 3 block
- have a spike heal
- if you are tanking Kiga, stand at maximum melee range away from him
- have a CCer....see builds in signature
- if you don't have aggro stand to the side of Kiga to give the healers a break. Unlike the other cosmics, he does not split damage between Tanks on his regular attacks


Healers
- keep the Kiga tank alive
- have AoE heals for the DPS

DPS
- destroy the frozen tombs
- use this bind to easily target frozen tombs especially when someone yells “Held”
/bind f5 target "Frozen Tomb”
- stand a little bit behind Kiga. Not directly under his loincloth. Otherwise his breath hits you and you die and he heals up.
- don't die. Heal yourself and be smart about blocking. Healers healing DPS is a luxury, not a right.

General Notes
During phase 1: DPS should only attack the one dog that the Tank pulled far away from the other dogs.
During phase 2: when Kiga is awake, DPS should not attack or even target the dogs at all.
- all 4 dogs have to die once for Kiga to wake up and start taking damage.
- avoid using pets and pseudo-pets like Ball Lightning or Firesnake during phase 1 or they could easily wake the dogs

Dog Team
1 Healer - has a spike heal. Is there just in case something goes wrong but most of the time should not be needed and can go heal others.
1 Crowd Controller - has a strong AoE stun and a minimum 40 sec duration Sleep or a minimum 60 sec duration Paralyze hold
1 Pull Tank - is a regular Tank, usually also the Main Tank, with an interrupt power such as Backhand Chop. They should know the timing of the dog's howls so they can interrupt them correctly. If they do not have an interrupt or do not know the timing yet, then someone else can interrupt for them.

Phase 1: Starting Rotation
1. Pull the dogs.
2. Stun and sleep the dogs dogs.
3. When dogs are asleep and at zero stacks hold resistance, the Pull Tank pulls one dog. It's important to (a) pull the dog out of range of the control tank's area, and (b) interrupt any howls the dog attempts. Dog howl wakes other dogs, in a radius much larger than the buff radius.
4. Control Controller will need to prevent the other dogs from wandering off and joining the fight; thus, you should never let them wake up. When sleep is about to expire, re-stun them, sleep them again. This method significantly reduces the duration of your sleep, but means they can't wander.
5. Burn down the free dog, continuing to interrupt any attempt at howls.
6. Pull a second dog. Defeat as above. You can deal with all four dogs this way.
(thanks to @pantagruel01 for the effort to figure this out + the detailed writeup!)

Phase 1 (alternative method): Intentional Zerg
This method is great if you have 2-4 healers and a tough Main Tank. It's less fragile than CCing phase 1 if you have the required roles covered.
1. Main Tank pulls all the dogs onto themselves. DPS stays back. All Healers focus the Main Tank.
2. Main Tank quickly applies PBAoE secondary challenge on all dogs
3. Main Tank quickly taps their main damage power on each dog to apply Primary Challenge on them
4. Stuns/Interrupts howls if they can.
5. Once the Dogs reach 5-6 Howl stacks the Main Tank has to keep blocking....if they let go of block to attack they will die right away. So it's important for the Main Tank to build up lots of threat before the dogs get to 5 howl stacks.
6. Once the dogs are at 4-6 Howl stacks the DPS all pile on the same dog in order to share debuffs.....pick the dog with the lowest HP and kill them fast. Repeat this until all dogs are dead.

* * *
Crowd Control Builds: BUILD LINK HERE

kamokami

MISC TIPS
- join TheEndGame channel. Type in: /channel_join "TheEndGame"
- remember to Team Up
- use the Teleport to Rencen device + the Cosmic contact in front of the PH to get to each open mission faster
- be nice and thank the Tanks, Healers, and CCers for showing up.....we need them to complete these fights


MORE WAYS TO IMPROVE AT THE FIGHTS:
High DPS builds: LINK

Parse your builds: LINK

riverocean

Omg.. thank you for the healing binds. Targeting tanks is a hot mess on a good day. This will really help.

morigosa

Tip for melee on Qwyjibo: When you get repelled by the ape's AoE, count to three before you lunge back in - this will make him put the fire patch at range. If you lunge back in immediately you'll drop a fire patch right next to him, and if enough people do that you end up having to choose between standing in the fire or backing off and not attacking at all.

Tip for tanks on Qwyjibo: When he spawns hearts, note where they are and then turn the ape so he isn't pointing at any of them; if you don't do this, he'll breath fire and put a high-damage fire patch over the one that spawns directly ahead of him, thus locking melee out of being able to help DPS that heart.

Tip for DPS on Kigatilik: Don't spread out all over his platform. The closer to Kigatilik you are, the easier it is for other players to kill your frost tomb. Especially don't park yourself on one of the spike platforms or otherwise out of reach; if travel suppression is active, that's an easy way to ensure that your frost tomb won't get killed if Kigatilik throws one at you.

Tip for tanks on Kigatilik: If you see a dog attacking someone that's in tank role, and there's just the one dog on them... go find something else to attack. If there are multiple dogs on one tank, pick one, hit the assist button to target the tank, hit the assist button again to find out which dog that tank is targeting - and then pick a different dog to attack.

kamokami

morigosa said:

Tip for DPS on Kigatilik: Don't spread out all over his platform. The closer to Kigatilik you are, the easier it is for other players to kill your frost tomb. Especially don't park yourself on one of the spike platforms or otherwise out of reach; if travel suppression is active, that's an easy way to ensure that your frost tomb won't get killed if Kigatilik throws one at you.

This is a really great tip. When playing my own DPS vs Kigatilik, I stand very very close to him and the frost tombs on me get destroyed pretty much instantly.

kamokami

riverocean said:

Omg.. thank you for the healing binds. Targeting tanks is a hot mess on a good day. This will really help.

For sure. If you have any other tips that you've discovered regarding tank targeting please add them in. That makes me think of one possible way to resolve the issue with Team Up groups.

One way to easily target tanks would be to have them join one Team Up group together. Then Support can use the Team Up dropdown to click target whoever has lower hp, etc.

kamokami

For the Kigatilik fight, some people call out when a given dog has 5 stacks so that a designated stunner can come and interrupt their next Howl.

Actually, if you're tanking the dogs and have a stun you might be able to solo them.

kamokami

if you are new to fighting Kiga please see the image below:



(the dog tanks go off the screen)

qawsada

From Behemoth King.

kamokami

this is good stuff......we should post em up for qwy....for the spots where the hearts regularly show up

lezard21

The thing with Qwyji is that the hearts do not have a "fixed" spawn point.

As a general rule:
One always spawns a bit to the side in front of him, but directly in range of Fire Breath.
Another spawns behind him exactly opposite to the first heart.
The third one is the weird one, in that sometimes it will spawn either behind or slightly in front of him, in between the two other hearts forming a rectangle triangle, and sometimes it will spawn directly next to Qwyjibo at melee range.

Now, as Qwyjibo needs to be rotated so that the DPS can get the heart in front of him, the terrain will **** up the position of the hearts, even on flat terrain.

qawsada

Here is a rough image of the Ape.

pantagruel01

When tanking or healing for the dogs, it's useful to know how the howl buff works. The basic way it works is:
20s duration,15s cooldown, roughly 1s charge time, 1s activation time (might be more like 1.5/1.5)

The important thing to understand is this: the blue bubble indicates the start of charging. If you land a CC power during the charging, the howl is interrupted and the dog will attempt to howl again when it comes out of CC. This is usually slow enough that it will lose its current stacks. If you land a CC power during activation , the howl is interrupted and goes on cooldown. Often the dog will let out a howl animation (but not generate any stacks).

This is ideal, and what you should work on learning to do, because it means the duration of your hold does not matter, nor does it matter if it gets broken instantly by damage. This is tough to do with a charge hold, but is fairly easy with ego sleep or a stun. It does mean you should pause a moment after you see the blue bubble.

If you only have a charged paralyze, it's tougher; you should typically start charging when the buff indicator is at around 2/3.

kamokami

pantagruel01 said:

When tanking or healing for the dogs, it's useful to know how the howl buff works. The basic way it works is:
20s duration,15s cooldown, roughly 1s charge time, 1s activation time (might be more like 1.5/1.5)

The important thing to understand is this: the blue bubble indicates the start of charging. If you land a CC power during the charging, the howl is interrupted and the dog will attempt to howl again when it comes out of CC. This is usually slow enough that it will lose its current stacks. If you land a CC power during activation , the howl is interrupted and goes on cooldown. Often the dog will let out a howl animation (but not generate any stacks).

This is ideal, and what you should work on learning to do, because it means the duration of your hold does not matter, nor does it matter if it gets broken instantly by damage. This is tough to do with a charge hold, but is fairly easy with ego sleep or a stun. It does mean you should pause a moment after you see the blue bubble.

If you only have a charged paralyze, it's tougher; you should typically start charging when the buff indicator is at around 2/3.

It's awesome to get this much detail around the hold mechanics. And yeah stuns are the best. I hit my Thunderclap button as soon as the blue circle stops expanding and that works every time.

kamokami

Just for reference, everyone running Cosmics should have the following keybinds:

Kiga
/bind f1 target "Frost Tomb”
/bind f2 yell "Held"

I have other binds in the OP but the above ones are really all you need. You can use other any keyboard key in the bind. I'm just using the "F" keys as an example.

healer binds:
/bind f4 assist "Teleiosaurus”
/bind f5 assist "Teleiosaurus Hatchling”
/bind f6 assist "Qwyjibo”
/bind f7 assist "Kigatilik"

celizic

Making things Easier

Kigatilik

Oftentimes when Kigatilik goes to heck it's either someone missing the frost tombs, (and we already got enough discussion about those). Or a tank/healer pair is falling over and then their pup is running off and maiming everyone else down below, which makes the other dog healer/tanks dead, and results in doggies rushing the altar and causing all sorts of mischief.

I notice sometimes you get a weak tank (below 10Khp) paired up with a healer who lacks AoPM or AoRP and is using arcane vitality as their only heal. Now Arcane vitality isn't horrid (great for keeping a group of tanks healthy like in teliosaur and qwyjibo!), and the other support auras can be awesome. But when you're trying to keep as single tank upright that can and will get one-shotted by dog bites, that is just mischief waiting to happen. I was watching this the other day, same tank pair kept dying. I had a character built to dual-role so I switched roles to an AoRP aura stood near that tank and helped with mezzes and things stabilized. Whoever is organizing ought to make sure that any low hp dog tanks get the strongest healer available, preferably one with a potent single target heal and bonus points if the healer is packing an aura that makes the tank less likely to get one shotted. Likewise, if you got one of those 20khp unbreakable walls of a tank that barely needs any support, you're wasting a good healer talent if you got your best healer on them while that 9Kkhp tank is getting splattered left and right.

Of course making sure one CC is in each pairing is the devil.

tl;dr: Best single target healer on worst tank, worst single target healer on best tank.

If you...

• ...can stun, paralyze, disable, sleep and feel like helping: Let the main DPS crowd rush up on the altar. Watch the four dogs. The howl buff icon looks like a stylized red explosion on a blue background. Look at the stacks, if any hound has more then 3 watch'em like a hawk. When the buff reaches around the last quarter of the duration indicator the dog will howl. If you interrupt them around them, they'll take long enough to refresh the buff that they'll lose the stack. SO long as you keep the stacks low you're good. So, at this point you should just take it upon yourself to interrupt on any hounds building up stacks. If no hounds are generating stacks because all 4 healer-tank pairs on the dog-kennel are doing their job then go up with the rest of the DPS and do what you do best.
  
• ...think you are more healing then the top level needs right now: Hesitate before running up to assist the upper level. Watch the dog tank hps. If any tank is unstable buff and support them, else, get to the top level and do what you do best.
  
• ...are not part of the main Kiga tank assignment but can take a pounding: Watch the dog situation before going up. If any tanks die just lunge right in and steal their dog. If the healer is smart they'll keep you upright. When the tank comes back let them have the dog if they are a better tank. You might turn into a chew toy, but it's better then the next dog-pair's healer getting one shotted.
  

The short of it: Make sure the dog situation is stable before rushing up to the higher levels.

Teliosaur

Granted this one tends to go smooth as of late.

If Teliosaur falls apart it tends to fall apart when baby shows up. Oftentimes the healer doesn't get to the tank assigned to baby in time. Baby tank falls over and baby bites as baby pleases. If you are one of the tanks on the main dinosaur but not the primary agro target watch the baby like a hawk when it spawns. Watch the baby tank as they grab agro and position. If the baby tank falls over, and there's over 3 tanks on the main dinosaur, disengage, get to the baby, and swat it with yoru best agro snagging move. Get its attention and drag it into position, parking it alongside mommy. When the proper baby tank shows up, let them establish dominance and agro, wait a few moments to make sure it just wasn't a CC snag and have it fall back on you in a few moments. Once you're sure the baby tank has the agro clean get back to mommy. Be extra-careful about disengaging mommy. If multiple tanks run off get back to mother so the main tank doesn't become a snack.

Teliosaur needs the most damage when she's trying to heal. If you are support with a CC and those awesome specializations that debuff damage resistance when you try to CC you should totally use use those moves now. The main tanks aren't going to be taking damage while mommy heals. The main tanks already have her targeted, all you need to do is hit your control button and give the rest of the team a damage boost. If you manage to cut her resistance by 10% and there's 20 DPSers wailing on her you have effectively done 2 DPSers worth of damage on a single move in that short span of time.

Qwyjibo

You all know about those hearts. I already went on about how damage resistance debuffs are the awesomest thing ever. If you see a heart and smack it wit ha control one of two things will happen: The heart doesn't get attacked and it is in a controlled state that isn't healing monkey. The heart gets attack which breaks control but all those attacks get a nice boost on damage because you just punched a hole in resistances.

kamokami

Updated the original post for the new mechanics

kamokami

It's worth noting that there have been hints of the expectation that Cosmics should be doable with roughly 20 players total. We have done that with Qwy and the Dino but not with Kigatilik.

It could be worthwhile to try and think about what kind of setup would make a 20-person Kigatilik doable. This could make that fight a lot more approachable and take a lot less time to set up.....which is currently the most annoying part of it.

pantagruel01

kamokami said:

It could be worthwhile to try and think about what kind of setup would make a 20-person Kigatilik doable.

The only reason 20-person Kigatilik is a problem is because the number of tanks and healers required is higher, and usually a group of 20 doesn't have enough. You can do the dino fairly comfortably with 4 tanks and 3 healers, the ape with 3 and 2; kiga is rough with fewer than 6/6.

kamokami

pantagruel01 said:

kamokami said:

It could be worthwhile to try and think about what kind of setup would make a 20-person Kigatilik doable.

The only reason 20-person Kigatilik is a problem is because the number of tanks and healers required is higher, and usually a group of 20 doesn't have enough. You can do the dino fairly comfortably with 4 tanks and 3 healers, the ape with 3 and 2; kiga is rough with fewer than 6/6.

Maybe not if mezzers are there?

akaara1

Do all stuns work on the frost hounds? I have sonic arrow which stuns them.

kamokami

akaara1 said:

Do all stuns work on the frost hounds? I have sonic arrow which stuns them.

Yup they all work

kamokami

DPS Tips:
The latest set of challenges revolve around hitting DPS thresholds to overcome heals for the Dino and Qwyjibo. These thresholds scale up with the number of players in the fight. So what's important is not to have more DPS players join, but for each DPS player there to actually deal more damage.

If you're thinking this requires some specialized builds - it doesn't. You only need to do lots of damage at specific times.

Pay attention to when the heals trigger and save up *both* your Active Offenses and your Active Defenses for those triggers so that you can spike up your damage output.

Heal Triggers:
The Mom Dino does her "Boom" with a green outline around the tell. And there is no yellow X or bubble under/around her.

The Hearts show up after Qwyjibo does his big yellow bubble attack that knocks everyone back.

Do This When You See the Heal Triggers:
Activate your Active Offenses to spike up your damage output. Activate your Active Defenses so that you won't have to block for this short period of time.

Blast away....give it everything you've got. Devices, your hardest hitting attacks, everything.

Other things that make this easier:
- Aura of Ebon Destruction
- Spike damage devices....like the Neuroelectric Pulse Generator
- Damage resistance debuffs....although those have limited utility in Cosmic fights
- Aura of Primal Majesty

Finally, all DPS really really need to join Team Up to get benefits from the Auras.

kamokami

Ways to reduce your threat if you are DPS:
- have lots of DEX (although this may be countered by your increase in crit chance)

- have Imbue with the advantage (same point from above applies)

- use Radiant Sigils which will reduce your threat and also the threat of everyone in the DPS cluster (take the adv to keep their cd low) .....actually healers could take these too

- periodically wipe out your threat with Evasive Maneuvers + advantage.

(there is also another threat wipe that I'm leaving out of this post because most people will mess up and use it on the tanks)

- let the Cosmic kill you so that you wipe out your threat.

- if you still draw a Cosmic's aggro, turn them away from the DPS cluster right away by moving close to where the tanks are

spinnytop

kamokami said:

- use Radiant Sigils which will reduce your threat and also the threat of everyone in the DPS cluster (take the adv to keep their cd low) .....actually healers could take these too

Don't these tend to get splattered pretty easily?

kamokami

spinnytop said:

kamokami said:

- use Radiant Sigils which will reduce your threat and also the threat of everyone in the DPS cluster (take the adv to keep their cd low) .....actually healers could take these too

Don't these tend to get splattered pretty easily?

Yes, but that's why you take the adv so it brings their cd down to ~9 secs. They're only completely useless vs Qwy. But very handy vs Tele and Kiga

kamokami

Updated the post with details on tanking all 4 of Kigas dogs, stunning the Monkey hearts, and the initial shot made by @lezard21 at figuring out the DPS threshold for Dino's heal.

Regarding Dog Tanking, there's likely an alternative method where the dog healer could be the one to mez them after the initial stun by the tank. Wonder if that would be a good thing to try as well.

kamokami

pantagruel01 said:

The important thing to understand is this: the blue bubble indicates the start of charging.

And when they turn red that indicates the start of the activation.

jaazaniah1

Just curious then if ebon sigils can be useful against any of the cosmics?

kamokami said:

spinnytop said:

kamokami said:

- use Radiant Sigils which will reduce your threat and also the threat of everyone in the DPS cluster (take the adv to keep their cd low) .....actually healers could take these too

Don't these tend to get splattered pretty easily?

Yes, but that's why you take the adv so it brings their cd down to ~9 secs. They're only completely useless vs Qwy. But very handy vs Tele and Kiga

pwestolemyname

Great tips! I'm going to bookmark and have it ready to share every time I do a Cosmic. Should be stickied!

baelogventure

Would it be too crass for me to say "git gud" as a tip?

kamokami

pwestolemyname said:

Great tips! I'm going to bookmark and have it ready to share every time I do a Cosmic. Should be stickied!

Thanks!

jaazaniah1 said:

Just curious then if ebon sigils can be useful against any of the cosmics?

They are great. The difficulty there is that you have to get pretty close to the Cosmics to make them effective. This can be dangerous unless you're more of a tough healer.

pantagruel01

jaazaniah1 said:

Just curious then if ebon sigils can be useful against any of the cosmics?

They'll get oneshotted by every big AoE, but if you take the advantage you should be able to resummon them as fast as they die.

qawsada

i.imgur.com/qMVqcJT.mp4
Just dropping this off here just so everyone know the regen tell of Dinomom. If that isn't enough, then I will tell you:
1. BOOM icon next to Dinomon's Health Bar
2. NO DOME AOE TELL when the said BOOM Icon is presented
3. She does the one-two stomp to the ground
4. She radiated green rads on the ground
5. She does a Roar
6. The Atom Icon, which by now IS when the DPS check start.

pantagruel01

Some comments about the single tank build, now that I've done it:

Build Requirements

• Has a 100' range pull. It might be possible with less range but will be dramatically harder.
  
• Can survive being attacked by Kigatilik and 4 dogs for long enough to get them in position, I think on average I was taking two hits from Kigatilik and all dogs for a total of 140k damage or so. Active defenses are your friend here.
  
• Has a means of applying a long duration hold to four dogs at once.
  
• Has a means of surviving long enough to apply said hold. The easiest method is a fast AoE stun, though other defensive abilities would likely work.
  
• Has a means of applying threat to held dogs. Details will depend on which hold you use.
  
• It will help if you have a means of maintaining Manipulator stacks without breaking a hold
  

Method if Kigatilik is awake

1. Everyone but you has to move back.
   
2. Move up to range of nearest dog.
   
3. Activate any mobile defenses you plan to use.
   
4. Pull the nearest dog. Everything will start attacking you.
   
5. Block and move out of Kigatilik's range. You are likely to get rooted at least once.
   
6. Wait for dogs to clump up enough so your hold will get all four of them.
   
7. Stun the dogs, or apply some other survival trick.
   
8. Hold the dogs.
   
9. Repeat until Kigatilik is defeated. This takes some practice, but it's all practice you can do solo.
   

Method if Kigatilik is asleep

So far, we haven't been successful at doing this cleanly, because dog howls wake up all other dogs. My suspicion is that you should have the control tank pull all dogs as above, but avoid applying heavy threat, and then a second tank should break the dogs out one at a time, using fast stuns or interrupts to prevent it from howling successfully. Once all four dogs are killed, everyone retreats and lets the dogs reset, at which point you're at the scenario above.

kamokami

pantagruel01 said:

Some comments about the single tank build, now that I've done it:

WOOT!!!

pantagruel01 said:

Has a means of applying threat to held dogs. Details will depend on which hold you use.

The options I've thought about have been
- Ego Sprites with Challenging Strikes
- melee energy builder that you activate outside of melee range and rotate among the dogs
- Circle of Primal Dominion...to enhance threat from the AoE stun
- an AoE stun that has Challenging Strikes and a CD, which will apply extra threat to account for the CD....I use Thunderclap.

pantagruel01 said:

Pull the nearest dog. Everything will start attacking you.
Block and move out of Kigatilik's range. You are likely to get rooted at least once.

I'll add that in pulling them it's good to have your travel active when you fire off the 100' power. This way you can activate it and jump back at the same time to get more distance from Kigatilik before the dogs disable travel and root you.

pantagruel01 said:

Method if Kigatilik is asleep

So far, we haven't been successful at doing this cleanly, because dog howls wake up all other dogs. My suspicion is that you should have the control tank pull all dogs as above, but avoid applying heavy threat, and then a second tank should break the dogs out one at a time, using fast stuns or interrupts to prevent it from howling successfully. Once all four dogs are killed, everyone retreats and lets the dogs reset, at which point you're at the scenario above.

We've come close when the one dog is pulled right around the time when all the other dogs would wake up anyway. It would probably work if another tank had Crippling Challenge and just taunted the one dog out of the group. But yeah we have not done this piece well yet.

Another approach might be:
Control Tank pulls dogs. While they are walking over to the Control Tank, someone else roots or stuns one of the dogs and the Kigatilik Tank runs over to grab its aggro. Once that 1st dog is killed then there are just 3 left. 1 of them is aggroed next and now there are just 2 dogs biting the Control Tank, which is a lot more manageable even if they do wake up.

kamokami

qawsada said:

i.imgur.com/qMVqcJT.mp4
Just dropping this off here just so everyone know the regen tell of Dinomom. If that isn't enough, then I will tell you:
1. BOOM icon next to Dinomon's Health Bar
2. NO DOME AOE TELL when the said BOOM Icon is presented
3. She does the one-two stomp to the ground
4. She radiated green rads on the ground
5. She does a Roar
6. The Atom Icon, which by now IS when the DPS check start.

This is awesome! Adding the video to the guide.

spinnytop

This is the build I've used to successfully solo-tank the dogs:

http://powerhouse.nullware.com/powerhouse.html?v=13&n=&d=1637HNYOPVWM3n3F000F10aF40KFB009D03F703FA00FI05FH03EM057B03DM00QG00F60000wm2u3h0rWq

NOTES:

- Ego Storm is disposable, I don't actually use it while dog tanking.
- The character I used this with has 1 piece of Heroic, 1 piece of Mercenary, and 1 piece of Justice ( utility ), and TA secondaries, so amazing gear is not required.
- This is a very 'safe' build - if you do it right, the dogs are never not held, and there is never any danger of you suddenly dropping dead. However, if you screw up then the dogs will likely be hold immune and you'll have to survive quite a while before you can hold them again. So, it's safe so long as you focus, keep track of things, and don't panic.
- You can go to Kiga and practice keeping the dogs CC'd without needing anyone else there, to figure out if your current hold durations are enough.
- Don't use the Team Up button during Kiga Runs - you don't want someone's Aura of Ebon Destruction getting on you, cause it will cause you to hit the dogs with the crit effect, breaking sleep, and causing everyone to have a bad time.

- Process is simple:
1. Activate Masterful Dodge, and Bionic Shielding
2. Pull dogs with Ego Blast
3. Back up until out of Kiga range.
4. Wait until dogs surround you, or are nice and clustered.
5. TK Maelstrom
6. Apply Ego Sleep
7. Apply 2x Ego Sprites
8. Spam Ego Placate to build Manipulator stacks
9. When Ego Sleep duration is lower than 10 seconds, apply Mental Storm
10. When Mental Storm duration is lower than 10 seconds, apply Ego Sleep
11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 until fight ends. Use Ego Placate to renew Manipulator stacks, apply Ego Sprites after Ego Sleep.

roughbearmattach

If you do solo dog tank, not in Team Up, using all CC, can you score enough points to earn the reward?
I would guess you try to rack up the points while the hounds are initially beaten.

jaazaniah1

I know one time I saw that person had the highest score of all.

lezard21

roughbearmattach said:

If you do solo dog tank, not in Team Up, using all CC, can you score enough points to earn the reward?
I would guess you try to rack up the points while the hounds are initially beaten.

Ego sprites. You will be hitting 4 dogs repeatedly with this for a long while. You will probably be among top 10.

avianos

Remember that you can use the commad /camdist 100 (or a different value than 100, but i find it the best)
It will help you have a better zoom-out camera, keep an eye on Dinos' AoEs, Qwy's Lava pits and Kiga's Frost Tombs

Suprisly you didnt mention it Vixy, i learned this command from one of your old posts for the Mega Destroit Invansion, and the command is still pretty darn useful for Cosmics​​

spinnytop

roughbearmattach said:

If you do solo dog tank, not in Team Up, using all CC, can you score enough points to earn the reward?
I would guess you try to rack up the points while the hounds are initially beaten.

You'll get plenty of points thanks to ego sprites - my build even has mental storm dot damage on top of that. It will add up nicely since you can keep both stacks up pretty much the entire fight. I don't do very much during the "kill the dogs" phase... that's CC tank's privelage

roughbearmattach

Oh, right--forgot about that.
Mental Storm would be my route, but Ego Sprites for CS definitely.
Coolsville

pantagruel01

spinnytop said:

- The character I used this with has 1 piece of Heroic, 1 piece of Mercenary, and 1 piece of Justice ( utility ), and TA secondaries, so amazing gear is not required.

The character I do it with has two Heroic, one Legion (not sure why), and Armadillo secondaries, and could probably be done with less; the primaries were on the character when I dusted it off to turn into a CC tank.

My build is very similar, it's something like this (slightly from memory here so a few advantage points might be off). Conviction and a block replacer give you a bit more leeway on the initial pull, though the drawback is only having one hold (though that means the dogs only have to be clustered in a 15' radius instead of a 10' radius); in order to make this work with only sleep you have to start charging sleep when the previous sleep is at about 1s remaining. You could also just delay until dogs free themselves, TK maelstrom, sleep; that's simpler timing-wise but requires you to hold more often because of resistance stacks.

kamokami

spinnytop said:

This is the build I've used to successfully solo-tank the dogs:

http://powerhouse.nullware.com/powerhouse.html?v=13&n=&d=1637HNYOPVWM3n3F000F10aF40KFB009D03F703FA00FI05FH03EM057B03DM00QG00F60000wm2u3h0rWq

NOTES:

- Ego Storm is disposable, I don't actually use it while dog tanking.
- The character I used this with has 1 piece of Heroic, 1 piece of Mercenary, and 1 piece of Justice ( utility ), and TA secondaries, so amazing gear is not required.
- This is a very 'safe' build - if you do it right, the dogs are never not held, and there is never any danger of you suddenly dropping dead. However, if you screw up then the dogs will likely be hold immune and you'll have to survive quite a while before you can hold them again. So, it's safe so long as you focus, keep track of things, and don't panic.
- You can go to Kiga and practice keeping the dogs CC'd without needing anyone else there, to figure out if your current hold durations are enough.
- Don't use the Team Up button during Kiga Runs - you don't want someone's Aura of Ebon Destruction getting on you, cause it will cause you to hit the dogs with the crit effect, breaking sleep, and causing everyone to have a bad time.

- Process is simple:
1. Activate Masterful Dodge, and Bionic Shielding
2. Pull dogs with Ego Blast
3. Back up until out of Kiga range.
4. Wait until dogs surround you, or are nice and clustered.
5. TK Maelstrom
6. Apply Ego Sleep
7. Apply 2x Ego Sprites
8. Spam Ego Placate to build Manipulator stacks
9. When Ego Sleep duration is lower than 10 seconds, apply Mental Storm
10. When Mental Storm duration is lower than 10 seconds, apply Ego Sleep
11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 until fight ends. Use Ego Placate to renew Manipulator stacks, apply Ego Sprites after Ego Sleep.

Great...adding a link to this build. My build and Panta's build in the guide as well.

roughbearmattach

I've been trying to practice, but I killed by the dogs while trying to activate my first hold. My health and defenses likely aren't high enough: 8000 health, 70% defense.

kamokami

roughbearmattach said:

I've been trying to practice, but I killed by the dogs while trying to activate my first hold. My health and defenses likely aren't high enough: 8000 health, 70% defense.

4 dogs will kill you no matter how high your hp / def can get to. So you need to stun them quickly before applying a charged hold. Do this when they howl.

Unlike @pantagruel01 and @spinnytop I am using absolute top end gear (r9s + full justice + Onslaught + a Cosmic Secondary with Cold damage resist).....and still get killed in the same amount of time as they do. It ultimately really makes no difference at all when it comes to surviving the dogs.

For my own build, which I've posted in the link below, I use Thunderclap to briefly stun the dogs before applying a fully charged hold.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1205723/control-tank-builds

I pull them away while holding down a rank 3 block and waiting for them to surround me. They will howl when they reach me so I try to make it so that all 4 of them will reach me at the same time. When they do, they all howl at the same time and that's the opening I use to activate my AoE stun. Then follow it up with a charged AoE hold.

So if they all get to you at the same time then they won't be hitting you because they'll be howling. When done right, your HP and defense don't end up mattering as far as the dogs go.

They do matter for mitigating the snowstorm damage later on, but you can start solving that problem once you solve this one.