Beast Beneath the Mountain
The five altars are scattered all over the place, often guarded by groups of demons.
I've only done this one 2-3 times, and we usually take out Infernal, then fight the big dude later.
The demons, if they have a resistance to fire, will not be immune to fire damage, they will just take less. This will have no effect on the mez component of any dominator attack.
www.paragonwiki.com is a great source of information for this game.
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The altars should be anywhere in the mission. They are not clustered.
The AVs do have extra resistance to Energy, Fire and Cold, but it doesn't mean the damage you have will be useless. Even if it's slightly less damage, you'll still have the secondary effects of the Dom's powers, which could prove to be very useful.
Don't be scared. Just move in smart and try it. If things go bad, adjust your tactics and/or bring inspirations. One thing to be careful of though, is try to keep the beast away from the lava. IIRC, it can heal him. Pulling him into the hallway is a great help.
There are 10 arms leading out from the main lava chamber. You come into the mission in one of those arms. The altars appear at the end of 5 of those arms, randomly chosen.
Tips for stealthing the altars: Get the SG invisibility empowerment buff, it doesn't suppress upon clicking items. If you don't have that, ordinary double stealth (SuperSpeed + Shadowfall, e.g.) will make you completely invisible and allow you to click on the altars that don't have guards close to them. For the ones that do have guards close to them, you can sometimes fly/hover behind a cliff or stalactite/stalagmite and still click through camera angle manipulation. It's good to have the Combat Monitor for Stealth up to keep track of when you are and aren't stealthed. And if you can't click without being seen, then you want to have high enough defense to not get hit, or a control power, or expendable pets to allow you to click in peace. Having fly and a phase power (both purchasable redside) really help, too.
Also, do not let anyone stealth around who does not have the ability to click an altar with a spawn on top of it. They're not helping by clearing the fog of war off a map making it unknown which arms were cleared or not. All they do is run around clicking the ones they can and then announcing, "there's one here" for the others and running off leaving everyone guessing exactly where that was.
If you don't have the firepower to kill the AVs easily, then having the two AVs fight is a good idea. Once they start fighting, help Infernal and kill Bat'zul first. He's much harder to kill than Infernal simply because Infernal doesn't run all over the place. (Plus, if your having trouble with Infernal, you can get him in the lava, which damages him.)
If you are stuck with fighting Bat'zul, I've found that the arm of the map you come in is horrible for fighting Bat'zul because he too easily falls off and gets stuck in the canyons of that arm. Clear out the arm opposite the one you came in and pull Bat'zul that way. There is nothing for him to get stuck in there.
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Most of the information's already been listed, but clarifying - the altars aren't "anywhere" on the map, there is exactly one spawn point in the back of each of the arms leading off of the main chamber and so there will never be two altars close to each other or near the AVs. Which five of the paths have one of the altars is randomly determined, though.
When you click the last altar, there is a set of three ambushes triggered that heads towards the leader of the team. It's location-based and so can be avoided with stealth, and as is standard for most PvE ambushes if you don't defeat the first ambush the other two waves never show up.
Also, if you're going to defeat Infernal first, keep in mind that when he dies there are three waves of ambushes coming in - for that reason alone I tend to save him for last, because then I can just click out.
Which brings us to another point - Infernal and the Legacy Chain members in his group will attack any of the Bat'zul minions, Circle of Thorns, or Bat'zul himself that get within their aggro radius. As your team has nobody with a taunt, it's unlikely that you'll be fighting both at once if you focus your firepower on one at a time. This behavior can also be used to thin out the ambushes from clicking on altars and the Legacy Chain at the same time - let them run through Infernal's group and he'll slaughter them while they're on the way - but has the chance of scattering and causing Infernal to chain aggro by chasing one of them and get himself killed, causing the other set of ambushes to show up before you're ready.
My personal recommendation, if you can work it (and it sounds like your team should be able to) is to stealth the glowies with the leader being one of the people stealthing. That causes the ambush to head down one of the arms and out of the way.
Then you'll need to appear near the edge of the lava for Bat'zul to rise up out of it - if you remain stealthed the entire time he simply won't show up. I usually just pick off an isolated minion outside of his aggro range rather than detoggling Hide/Stealth/etc. that has a recharge longer than the time it's suppressed.
Then have someone pop a couple of purples to cap defense, launch a ranged attack into Bat'zul, and back up through Infernal's group - there's a range at which he'll summon imps that you need to get through quickly or else he'll block himself in with fire imps, so just don't stop moving until you break line of sight behind one of the stalagmites. He'll jump up, start through Infernal's group, and his first AoE will get their attention on him instead of you, hopefully with Infernal in melee range since if someone's in melee range neither will summon pets.
Once Infernal and Bat'zul are fighting, immobilize them and concentrate fire on Bat'zul. Once he's down, take out Infernal, who will already be weakened and anyone with Air Superiority slotted well can keep from attacking anyway (he has no knockback protection), then exit before the ambushes show up.
edit: the above method isn't the fastest, but is rather safe and effective - the fastest method involves splitting up the team and clicking glowies while killing Infernal, taking out Bat'zul immediately afterwards either in the lava or just at the edge.
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Thanks for all the information.
We only had 45 minutes left before people had to go when we entered the mission so we didn't quite finish it (we were down to 2 altars). We also wasted a lot of time getting a feel for the environment which was ... wow. Not what I pictured in my head.
We sent the stalkers in first but they had a hard time getting around all the lava since neither of them had hover or fly and jumping was... unreliable and resulted in a couple of unfortunate deaths.
We finally chucked it all and did a frontal on Infernal - who had spawned in the entrance tunnel. He wasn't a cupcake but we didn't have too much trouble once all his minions were dead and I had a good Hold on him. The information about using Air Superiority came in VERY handy.
Then we made the central area our home and sent stalkers into each tunnel... it just went too slow and we had to quit for the night. Not a lost cause though as we learned a lot. Looking forward to doing it again... I guess from scratch. Ah well. That many more exp points
One additional tip - I learned this one the hard way.
When all five alters are clicked, Bat'zul will spawn in the central lava pool... invisible. (You should be able to see the PToD, but not Bat'Zul itself.)
That Stealthed up team member is good for getting the glowies, but would need to drop stealth and get into Bat'Zul's Line of Sight before it would drop its Invis and attack.
Alternatively, have someone use an AoE that doesn't require a target in the general location of the PToD to convince Bat'Zul to wake up.
The first time I did this one, the team I was on was full of people who had never done it before... and we waited for half an hour before taking out infernal and started trying to get to the alters, to see if one of them hadn't actually triggered. Then, suddenly Bat'Zul was there, and wiped us out very easy.
We never could beat him - in retrospect, we weren't designed for actually fighting Bat'Zul ourselves. Even with all the temp pets we could call up against it, the horde of Fire Imps it called just kept overwhelming a team of single-target damage dealers...
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We never could beat him - in retrospect, we weren't designed for actually fighting Bat'Zul ourselves. Even with all the temp pets we could call up against it, the horde of Fire Imps it called just kept overwhelming a team of single-target damage dealers...
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Which is a little bit funny since the weakest of AoE attack instantly wipes out all the fire imps.
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We never could beat him - in retrospect, we weren't designed for actually fighting Bat'Zul ourselves. Even with all the temp pets we could call up against it, the horde of Fire Imps it called just kept overwhelming a team of single-target damage dealers...
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Which is a little bit funny since the weakest of AoE attack instantly wipes out all the fire imps.
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Yep! The imps themselves have 4hp at level 20 so they're easily cleared. So long as the person Bat'zul is targetting is in melee range, he won't summon any more. Imps really shouldn't be a problem, since you can always just quickly switch targets and use Brawl to clear them.
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Once Infernal and Bat'zul are fighting, immobilize them and concentrate fire on Bat'zul. Once he's down, take out Infernal, who will already be weakened and anyone with Air Superiority slotted well can keep from attacking anyway (he has no knockback protection), then exit before the ambushes show up.
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Point of note: Bat'zul is also very susceptible to knockdown attacks. It doesn't feel like it knocks him down every time, but still a major help.
We had no trouble whatsoever. Trying to lure him into the last altar tunnel turned out to be a bad idea since he couldn't seem to fit into it. Then we got scattered chasing him down. We should have just fought him on that little flat spot near the central lake.
I never even saw the fire imps but my wife said she took them out with a couple of side shots from her corruptor. As soon as I was able to immobilize the demon the stalkers got into position and boom... 50% hit points, then the corruptor's scourges started kicking in and my domination triggered and I kept him perma-held for the rest of the battle.
It was almost anti-climatic. I spent more time fretting and trying to strategize than the actual mission took.
Thanks for all the tips guys. It was a fun few nights diversion.
Our little villain group started up this Strike Force last night. We intend to finish it tonight.
We have a ninja mastermind, a fire dominator, a dark corruptor, and 2 stalkers. We've done really well in the first 3 missions and have a basic strategy to take advantage of our team... but the final fight with the 2 AV's is starting to scare me.
All of us are virgins to this SF. I don't mind spoilers and I've read the wiki strategy but have questions.
Where are the 5 altars? Scattered or all in one place? Are they close to Infernal? How reliable is it for Infernal and the demons to fight each other over us?
Basically I'm just looking for some tips. Most of the party wants to just take out Infernal first so we have no chance of having to fight both but I'm not sure we have the firepower to take out the demon alone without his help.
One last question... is the fire dominator going to be basically useless against the demon? Is it immune or highly resistant to fire?
Thanks for any help.