That Was Fast

When I mentioned in my last post that I was working on the Sprint Champion achievement, I didn't expect to already have it a couple of days later. With my very relaxed speed of giving it one shot per night in order not to burn myself out, I figured I was going to be at it for at least a few weeks... but nope, it took all of five days. I was so pleased with myself that I did a little jig around the living room after the achievement popped up, much to Mr. Commando's horror.

I initially tried to beat the timer on my Sage, with whom I had done KotFE on master mode, and it did go reasonably well actually. However, then I tried on my Guardian and it just felt that little bit better. While I missed the advantage of being able to continuously dps from range, my Guardian is slightly better geared and I'm a little better at doing damage on her as well. She then made it on her second run. It must have been really close as well, because I manually started a stopwatch a few seconds before engaging the first encounter, and when I looked at it after getting the achievement pop-up, it was just over 15 minutes, so it really must have been down to the wire. So good news, everyone: If I can make it, and that quickly too, it can't be that hard anymore, as I'm pretty bad at doing damage. Just ask any of my fellow raiders.

To brush up on strategy, I watched this video by Aeyix (whose videos also helped me with some master mode chapter fights) and this guide by Crump3txxix (what a name). While they were both recorded back when the level cap was 65 so aren't necessary representative of what works now, they do give some very helpful pointers on how to speed things up.

As recommended by Aeyix and backed up by personal experience, I went with a melee companion on all of my attempts. On my Guardian I figured I would take Arcann along because she's in a romance with him, and was very dismayed to find that he was only at influence level 3! Clearly romance is dead. Fortunately bribery is alive and well however, so a few hundred companion gifts later he was ready to be my wingman.

Going in with the recommended double dps setup was pretty amazing. As someone who usually mains healers, I'm used to things dying slowly, so it was quite a treat to watch the first five bosses fall over so quickly that they basically had no time to do any mechanics.

Now, the Breaktown Brawler was still tough. Looking at Aeyix's video I have no idea how he managed to live through that fight with no heals. I gave it one try as double dps and I was literally dead in seconds. Seconds! The damage from the boss's regular melee hits was just that insane. So I quickly resigned myself to losing some time on this fight by setting Arcann to heals. Then I just followed the tactic as described by Crumpet (not typing out his name with all the weirdness in full every time) and things went okay, even if it did make the fight quite long and time-consuming.

The next two fights I could do with a double dps setup again - though you'll get knocked around a bit both times, the damage is manageable. On the Doom Droid I kept hearing that it was important to down her before she went into that temporary immunity phase as it causes you to lose a lot of time, and I was very pleased when I actually managed this!

Now the final fight, Zotar, is an interesting one. In his case I could kind of see how you might be able to do it without a healing companion, but I honestly felt that I wasn't good enough for that, so I figured I'd see if I'd be able to scrape by in time with Arcann set to healing again. On the run when I did get the achievement it went remarkably fast anyway, even with Arcann contributing limited damage. I did manage to prevent one probe summon with a stun (before watching Aeyix' video I didn't even know that was possible), though the second one got through, but there weren't any others after that. I actually smiled to myself when the walker had just enough time to start firing his laser on my second run at him, as one quick Saber Reflect was enough to put him out of action for good. The final burn on Zotar still feels nerve-racking every time, but I handled it well enough and then the achievement popped up.

So that's one item off the Onslaught bucket list already; lots more still to go!