KotFE Chapters 10 & 11 Master Mode

I expected these to be really tough based on what I remembered from veteran mode (and recalling a guildie wiping endlessly on chapter ten one night), but things weren't nearly as bad as I thought - it was almost a breeze!

Ironically, the fight that challenged me the most was the one where I least expected it, and that was the one against the junction guardians Faedral and Zaamsk. I noted on veteran mode that it "must be rough without a long-duration crowd control" but that it seemed okay as long as you did have one, and I figured that master mode would be the same. In reality... it was and it wasn't. I can hardly begin to imagine how you would beat these two without crowd control (actually, I found a video of a Juggernaut doing it successfully here after I wrote this), but even with my Sage having Force Lift available it was still the fight that caused me the most deaths in these two chapters. Even after I started the encounter by immediately taking Faedral out of the picture, Zaamsk's attacks on their own still hit nightmarishly hard. You just could not get hit by one of his red circles, or take an entire Full Auto to the face, as either would be instant death, not to mention that there were adds as well. This is the one fight I really would have wanted to record for this post but unfortunately I messed up so I didn't get a usable recording. I didn't want to replay the entire chapter just for the purposes of getting a video, so you'll have to make do with a verbal description.

Basically the way I finally beat Zaamsk was by interrupting / dodging out of as many of his attacks as I could and kiting him towards the entrance at the same time. Whenever he did that jump into the air that ends with him unavoidably landing on your head, I used what meagre damage reduction cooldowns I had. (I specced into the utilities to gain DR from both my instant self-heal and my aggro drop fairly early into this playthrough.) I was almost surprised when I got him down, though of course by that point I was all out of tricks and died to Faedral as soon as he came out of CC.

Conveniently, this is where I discovered that if you manage to kill one of them, he stays dead and at least on the next attempt you only have to deal with one enemy, which helps a lot, though it still didn't prevent me from dying to Faedral alone even more often than I had to Zaamsk. I seemed like I just couldn't take any of his attacks at all. So I remembered Captain Lazna Delothrea and went for the "heroic moment full burn while chaining stuns" strategy again, and that worked on the first try.

The Knights of Zakuul in the Overwatch were as annoying as I remembered from veteran mode, but as dps I found it much easier to kill them with a bit of kiting, and some I just "skipped", which is to say I made a run for the exit as far as I could, died, and then respawned without having to bother with them at all.

Tayvor Slen was easier than I expected and I got him down on the first try, though it was a close call at the end. This fight was the only one I actually recorded out of these two chapters, so here you go:



In chapter eleven I mainly remembered the droid boss near the end being an issue, but he was once again surprisingly easy as dps compared to the healing role I had chosen for veteran mode, as Aric just had to stand there and heal while I ran around and quickly controlled / picked off any adds.

The hardest mob in chapter eleven (in my opinion) was actually one of the random Knights guarding the back of the building, as he would go in and out of stealth and had some weird special attack called something like Stealth Strike, which hit like a truck, had huge range, and - despite of the name - didn't actually require him to be in stealth. I did eventually get him down by once again relying on kiting as much as I could.

Five chapters to go!