Chapter seven was fairly uneventful. There were several fights that would have had the potential to be challenging, but none of them actually turned out to be. In fact, the only time I remember dying is when the Exalted sicced his minions on me, and that's because the previous cut scene has you transition straight into combat with a significant number of mobs and I didn't manage to get the situation under control quickly enough to not have them kill me. When I actually had the chance to initiate combat on my own terms it went just fine.
Chapter eight had another walker that was a bit annoying (I'm really starting to dislike walkers of all kinds on my Sage) but the real surprise came in the form of Captain Lazna Delothrea, an unassuming Knight of Zakuul with some weak Skytrooper adds. I did remember her being a bit tricky on veteran mode, but on master she was an absolute killer, pouncing on you from quite a distance, just to follow this up with a stun and vicious stab that would reduce you to about a quarter of your health in one go.
I initially tried to go for my usual quick burn strategy, but since I seemed to be unable to take more than about a third of her health off before she came after me, I decided that I'd probably be better off trying to outlast her in my healing spec. I did a lot of fiddling then: getting Koth's meagre influence level of five up into the twenties at least, and trying to get HK-55 to make himself useful in some manner. Unfortunately I learned that the latter's contribution to the fight is worse than useless: he's immune to damage but also doesn't do any, though his useless shots are still capable of breaking crowd control somehow. I tried kiting around a container on the right, towards the platform at the back, around the structure on the left, but nothing worked as the Captain's ability to close any gaps quickly was just too powerful.
After more than a dozen wipes or so I finally grew sufficiently tired to google for advice and found this one video of someone successfully doing the fight - by going for a quick burn and using various legacy abilities from his heroic moment to chain more stuns than usual. Reminded me a lot of a video that an anonymous commenter linked in response to my post about KotET chapter six, in which I had stated that I couldn't see anyone killing the Rancor in the pit on a melee class. In said video a similar tactic to chain stuns was used to do just that.
The only thing that had me sceptical was that the video maker had been playing an Assassin - a class that is not short on defensive cooldowns, unlike my Sage. Still, I gave it a try... and what do you know, it worked, though it was close. Made me feel rather sheepish for having wasted so much time on all those drawn-out kiting attempts that didn't really go anywhere.
The final Arcann fight of the chapter was comparatively easy, though I decided to record and upload it to YouTube anyway, since the only other video of it I could find didn't show how you can use the power conduits around the area to stun him and take down his absorption shield.
Chapter nine doesn't actually have a master mode of course, but I still wanted to mention it just to repeat my annoyance about how it still has icons for veteran and master mode in the chapter interface that can't be filled. Just make it like the HK bonus chapter already and take them out.
I'm working through MM chapters now on a sorc/sin character and had a similar "wait, what?" moment when I hit Captain Lazna. Considering the rest of the chapter didn't cause me much trouble, I was surprised by what a killer she was. o.o
ReplyDeleteLegacy chain stunning her probably still works if your timing is right, but I ended up just swapping to tank for this one to reduce risk. Not particularly speedy, true, but rather less stressful.