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VSHM notes/tips
TWTERA just released VSHM today, and I've cleared it once on my Lancer after 6 hours of wiping (rip). IMO, this dungeon really requires your party to know your stuff, else you won't even get past the 1st boss Darkan, even with full +15 Behemoth gear. Therefore I'm making this thread to list some things I've noticed while clearing (and wiping) VSHM, so that you guys can be better prepared when tackling it on NATERA once it's released.
(I assume that anyone using these notes will be well-versed in VSNM, so I will not be explaining most of the mechanics.)
1st boss Darkan:
1) Getting swept into the fire by Darkan's swipes means you probably can't be ressed for the rest of the fight, unless you happen to get swept into an area where the pylon close to it is still lvl 1, or your party manages to push Darkan to his 50% phase so that the 4 of them can destroy a lvl 2 pylon with the multi-target fire ring.
2) Based on point 1, you should save your iframe for when you need to dodge Darkan's swipes, even if he has targeted you with one of his triple eviscerates + swipes. The eviscerates might kill you, but you'll at least die somewhere which isn't part of the fire donut aoe so your healers can ress, which is better than dodging the eviscerate and then getting swept into the fire where your healers can't even ress you.
3) As a tank, try not to use skills with have a relatively long animation lock unless you know for sure that Darkan won't use the pushback cone-shaped aoe (i.e. he's doing eviscerates/triples or any other combo that you should know by now after doing VSNM). It is doubly important when Darkan is enraged, since his pushback will have a very short windup animation compared to un-enraged. Example of such skills include Lancer's Wallop, Brawler's Ground Pound etc. This is due to point 1 again, where if you mistime your skill, you won't be able to evade cancel it and might get pushed into the fire (then rip your party).
4) Darkan's triple eviscerates + swipes now target random players instead of just the tank for the 2nd and 3rd hit, so try your best to turn Darkan to face the tank when he targets you (aka you have a purple aggro ring around you during the first eviscerate). This not only helps your party react better, but you could also get reduced damage taken from the eviscerate if your tank is a Lancer. HOWEVER, if there's not enough time to get to your tank's position, just stay directly behind the boss. Making any last minute adjustments will just screw your party over since they won't be able to anticipate in time where Darkan will swipe next.
5) You should stay ~ 8-10m away from Darkan when he initiates his in-out/out-in mechanic. It is the distance where you'll be able to walk away from the 1 shot aoes.
6) If you're targeted by the fire ring and have no other gap-closing abilities off cd other than your iframes, just use your iframes to get to a pylon. Saving your evades just so you can get out of the fire ring, but not having the fire ring land near a pylon will kill everyone instead of just you.
7) Past 50%, Darkan will swipe a second time in the opposite direction of the first swipe after triples. An easy way for me to distinguish this from eviscerates is that the second swipe only occurs if Darkan doesn't have any monologue while preparing the first swipe.
8) When past 50%, you can choose to weaken the other pylons if Darkan does excess fire ring mechanics. Just make sure you know that you won't destroy the pylons with the excess fire rings. This is NOT recommended for parties that already have problems with normal mechanics.
9) If your party has indeed failed to destroy a pylon and Darkan has already begun his "I'll burn you to ashes" mechanic, do not attempt to escape from the aoe by running into the fire; you'll likely not survive it, and to make things worse, deem yourself un-ress-able afterwards. Just take the aoe and die and hope that your priest has Grace or if you're running with mystics, Vow, to continue the fight.
10) Best formation that has worked for me so far is to stand in this manner: Pylon - Tank - Healer(s) + Dps. This ensures that the healer(s) & dps do not get swiped into the fire, BUT the tank has to be very good at dodging in-out/out-in aoes and the pushback. That said, even if the tank gets swept into the fire, there are still 4 players in the fight to drag the fight long enough until the pylon is destroyed to be able to ress the tank. This is better than standing in other formations where all members have equal chance to get swept into the fire.
11) This should be basic knowledge, but a reminder for healers: always keep an eye on what Darkan is doing even if you need to ress someone. Your lives should take priority over others, cuz if you die, there's no one to ress you. Don't just attempt to ress someone blindly and then get killed in the process. Similarly, try to bait-ress Darkan before ressing someone so that he does his "target the healer with aoe" mechanic away from the person you're trying to ress.
2nd boss Dakuryon:
1) For tanks/melee dps, try not to get too dps-happy when Dakuryon does his pizza mechanic. Unlike VSNM where his pizza mechanic will finish up before he raises his glaive and moves forward slightly, in VSHM he tends to move forward before the pizza mechanic finishes up, so you could get killed trying to get that extra bit of dps on him.
2) Bring potions if you can. Dakuryon's cage mechanic requires you to take up to 4 hits from the telegraphed attacks when past 40%, and if you happen to need to take 4 hits, taking all 4 hits could kill you if you don't have enough hp. As a reference, I died to the 4th hit even with 127k hp.
3) If you notice that there are already 4 purple orbs floating around the room, then try to have at least 1 iframe available at all times, since these orbs will explode as and when Dakuryon feels like detonating them.
4) Spawned mobs are really annoying when they transform in VSHM and are much harder to kill. Combined with purple orbs floating around, you could get blindsided during the cage mechanic and die. Please do your best to clear them out (yes healers need to help out too).
5) Since Dakuryon likes to target random players with attacks, there is a way to figure out if he's going to do the double hilt slam (which adds a debuff to the closest player after it). Have your tank attack him slightly to the side after Dakuryon turns around to target random players. If he turns to face the tank again (ever so slightly) without doing anything, then he's going to do the double hilt slam. (Edit: This only works for purple aggro attacks.)
6) If your tank is dead and you as a dps/healer have aggro, always be prepared to iframe while running away from Dakuryon. This is because he likes to do the almost-instant-stab followed by "Dream Slash" when he catches up to someone. The stab will probably instakill you since even when blocking as a tank, you'll get up to 60k bleeds depending on your gear and Dakuryon's power stacks.
3rd boss Lakan:
1) This is one of the boss fights in this game where it really requires the holy trinity to work well with minimal mistakes to be able to clear. It has a DPS check, so your dps/tank cannot keep dying, but your healers also have to stay alive to heal/cleanse/regress/sleep for all of Lakan's special mechanics. One too many fatal mistakes from any one of the trinity will result in a wipe, be it instantly or a few minutes later, no matter how good the other party members are. This is why it's important to know VSNM very well before attempting VSHM.
2) If someone dies, the tank has to try his best to position Lakan such that whoever needs to be ressed is at Lakan's direct left or right side, so that whoever is ressing will not get hit by his normal combos which include back-swipes. This is important, since the longer someone remains dead, the less likely you'll be able to kill Lakan in time before he wipes your party (i.e. his soul meter reaching 100).
3) For tanks who do not have +15 gear, you will not be able to tank the spinning slash during "Begone". Therefore, you need to learn the timing to iframe that spinning slash after the first slash. This can only be learnt from experience.
4) Don't panic during "Begone". The speed of that mechanic is surprisingly fast in VSHM compared to VSNM, but if your ping isn't THAT high, there will be enough time for you to make sense of the color and decide whether to dodge inwards or outwards.
5) For melee dps, whenever Lakan does his normal attack combo that ends up with a back-swipe then frontal stab, DO NOT immediately gap-close/backstab after the back-swipe. Lakan's .hit box (if you're wondering why there's a period in front of "hit", it's due to the dumb profanity filter) is glitchy af so you might get hit from his frontal stab and die even when you appear to be behind him.
6) After Lakan exits from his soul world, he needs to be slept in order to prevent him from wiping the party. This sleep is actually very powerful, since if someone is dead, your healer can use the time when he is slept to ress. Do note though, that ANY interaction with Lakan will end the sleep effect prematurely, even if you use a non-attacking skill like Provoke, so if you see someone dead, hold your horses and let your healer ress in peace before re-engaging.
7) For healers, please try not to die whenever Lakan exits from his soul world. He will wipe the party if no sleep debuff is applied to him no matter what else you do. Worst case scenario, use something that can keep track of the fight duration. Make sure that every 3mins you save your iframe to escape from the aoe when Lakan exits soul world. This in turn requires you to know how to position yourself such that you won't get hit by normal combo attacks. Also, always remind yourself to sleep Lakan when he is in the soul world so that you do not forget when he exits soul world.
Last but not least, remember not to get to cocky after clearing it the first time. Before you get the "skilled" tag, you'll have a HP boon whenever you're in the dungeon. I didn't have this benefit since you don't get the buff without "Elite" on TW servers, but that's beside the point. Always remember this. Once that HP boon is gone, you might find that you start dying to stuff that didn't normally kill you before. So always stay alert, don't get complacent, and good hunting.
Well, that's all I can think of for now. Be sure to comment below if you have more tips to offer, or notice that I've made a mistake somewhere. Thanks for reading.
Fun fact: My party was so bad that I had to solo the last 7% of Darkan so that we wouldn't have to redo the entire boss fight for the Nth time. Got my adrenaline running good tho kek. Could even say that I got an adrenaline rush. (Yea I'm so punny I know)
Edit: Added some extra tips. Rearranged some tips so that they're not all over the place.
Edit 2: Added 1-2 more tips and reworded some stuff.
(I assume that anyone using these notes will be well-versed in VSNM, so I will not be explaining most of the mechanics.)
1st boss Darkan:
1) Getting swept into the fire by Darkan's swipes means you probably can't be ressed for the rest of the fight, unless you happen to get swept into an area where the pylon close to it is still lvl 1, or your party manages to push Darkan to his 50% phase so that the 4 of them can destroy a lvl 2 pylon with the multi-target fire ring.
2) Based on point 1, you should save your iframe for when you need to dodge Darkan's swipes, even if he has targeted you with one of his triple eviscerates + swipes. The eviscerates might kill you, but you'll at least die somewhere which isn't part of the fire donut aoe so your healers can ress, which is better than dodging the eviscerate and then getting swept into the fire where your healers can't even ress you.
3) As a tank, try not to use skills with have a relatively long animation lock unless you know for sure that Darkan won't use the pushback cone-shaped aoe (i.e. he's doing eviscerates/triples or any other combo that you should know by now after doing VSNM). It is doubly important when Darkan is enraged, since his pushback will have a very short windup animation compared to un-enraged. Example of such skills include Lancer's Wallop, Brawler's Ground Pound etc. This is due to point 1 again, where if you mistime your skill, you won't be able to evade cancel it and might get pushed into the fire (then rip your party).
4) Darkan's triple eviscerates + swipes now target random players instead of just the tank for the 2nd and 3rd hit, so try your best to turn Darkan to face the tank when he targets you (aka you have a purple aggro ring around you during the first eviscerate). This not only helps your party react better, but you could also get reduced damage taken from the eviscerate if your tank is a Lancer. HOWEVER, if there's not enough time to get to your tank's position, just stay directly behind the boss. Making any last minute adjustments will just screw your party over since they won't be able to anticipate in time where Darkan will swipe next.
5) You should stay ~ 8-10m away from Darkan when he initiates his in-out/out-in mechanic. It is the distance where you'll be able to walk away from the 1 shot aoes.
6) If you're targeted by the fire ring and have no other gap-closing abilities off cd other than your iframes, just use your iframes to get to a pylon. Saving your evades just so you can get out of the fire ring, but not having the fire ring land near a pylon will kill everyone instead of just you.
7) Past 50%, Darkan will swipe a second time in the opposite direction of the first swipe after triples. An easy way for me to distinguish this from eviscerates is that the second swipe only occurs if Darkan doesn't have any monologue while preparing the first swipe.
8) When past 50%, you can choose to weaken the other pylons if Darkan does excess fire ring mechanics. Just make sure you know that you won't destroy the pylons with the excess fire rings. This is NOT recommended for parties that already have problems with normal mechanics.
9) If your party has indeed failed to destroy a pylon and Darkan has already begun his "I'll burn you to ashes" mechanic, do not attempt to escape from the aoe by running into the fire; you'll likely not survive it, and to make things worse, deem yourself un-ress-able afterwards. Just take the aoe and die and hope that your priest has Grace or if you're running with mystics, Vow, to continue the fight.
10) Best formation that has worked for me so far is to stand in this manner: Pylon - Tank - Healer(s) + Dps. This ensures that the healer(s) & dps do not get swiped into the fire, BUT the tank has to be very good at dodging in-out/out-in aoes and the pushback. That said, even if the tank gets swept into the fire, there are still 4 players in the fight to drag the fight long enough until the pylon is destroyed to be able to ress the tank. This is better than standing in other formations where all members have equal chance to get swept into the fire.
11) This should be basic knowledge, but a reminder for healers: always keep an eye on what Darkan is doing even if you need to ress someone. Your lives should take priority over others, cuz if you die, there's no one to ress you. Don't just attempt to ress someone blindly and then get killed in the process. Similarly, try to bait-ress Darkan before ressing someone so that he does his "target the healer with aoe" mechanic away from the person you're trying to ress.
2nd boss Dakuryon:
1) For tanks/melee dps, try not to get too dps-happy when Dakuryon does his pizza mechanic. Unlike VSNM where his pizza mechanic will finish up before he raises his glaive and moves forward slightly, in VSHM he tends to move forward before the pizza mechanic finishes up, so you could get killed trying to get that extra bit of dps on him.
2) Bring potions if you can. Dakuryon's cage mechanic requires you to take up to 4 hits from the telegraphed attacks when past 40%, and if you happen to need to take 4 hits, taking all 4 hits could kill you if you don't have enough hp. As a reference, I died to the 4th hit even with 127k hp.
3) If you notice that there are already 4 purple orbs floating around the room, then try to have at least 1 iframe available at all times, since these orbs will explode as and when Dakuryon feels like detonating them.
4) Spawned mobs are really annoying when they transform in VSHM and are much harder to kill. Combined with purple orbs floating around, you could get blindsided during the cage mechanic and die. Please do your best to clear them out (yes healers need to help out too).
5) Since Dakuryon likes to target random players with attacks, there is a way to figure out if he's going to do the double hilt slam (which adds a debuff to the closest player after it). Have your tank attack him slightly to the side after Dakuryon turns around to target random players. If he turns to face the tank again (ever so slightly) without doing anything, then he's going to do the double hilt slam. (Edit: This only works for purple aggro attacks.)
6) If your tank is dead and you as a dps/healer have aggro, always be prepared to iframe while running away from Dakuryon. This is because he likes to do the almost-instant-stab followed by "Dream Slash" when he catches up to someone. The stab will probably instakill you since even when blocking as a tank, you'll get up to 60k bleeds depending on your gear and Dakuryon's power stacks.
3rd boss Lakan:
1) This is one of the boss fights in this game where it really requires the holy trinity to work well with minimal mistakes to be able to clear. It has a DPS check, so your dps/tank cannot keep dying, but your healers also have to stay alive to heal/cleanse/regress/sleep for all of Lakan's special mechanics. One too many fatal mistakes from any one of the trinity will result in a wipe, be it instantly or a few minutes later, no matter how good the other party members are. This is why it's important to know VSNM very well before attempting VSHM.
2) If someone dies, the tank has to try his best to position Lakan such that whoever needs to be ressed is at Lakan's direct left or right side, so that whoever is ressing will not get hit by his normal combos which include back-swipes. This is important, since the longer someone remains dead, the less likely you'll be able to kill Lakan in time before he wipes your party (i.e. his soul meter reaching 100).
3) For tanks who do not have +15 gear, you will not be able to tank the spinning slash during "Begone". Therefore, you need to learn the timing to iframe that spinning slash after the first slash. This can only be learnt from experience.
4) Don't panic during "Begone". The speed of that mechanic is surprisingly fast in VSHM compared to VSNM, but if your ping isn't THAT high, there will be enough time for you to make sense of the color and decide whether to dodge inwards or outwards.
5) For melee dps, whenever Lakan does his normal attack combo that ends up with a back-swipe then frontal stab, DO NOT immediately gap-close/backstab after the back-swipe. Lakan's .hit box (if you're wondering why there's a period in front of "hit", it's due to the dumb profanity filter) is glitchy af so you might get hit from his frontal stab and die even when you appear to be behind him.
6) After Lakan exits from his soul world, he needs to be slept in order to prevent him from wiping the party. This sleep is actually very powerful, since if someone is dead, your healer can use the time when he is slept to ress. Do note though, that ANY interaction with Lakan will end the sleep effect prematurely, even if you use a non-attacking skill like Provoke, so if you see someone dead, hold your horses and let your healer ress in peace before re-engaging.
7) For healers, please try not to die whenever Lakan exits from his soul world. He will wipe the party if no sleep debuff is applied to him no matter what else you do. Worst case scenario, use something that can keep track of the fight duration. Make sure that every 3mins you save your iframe to escape from the aoe when Lakan exits soul world. This in turn requires you to know how to position yourself such that you won't get hit by normal combo attacks. Also, always remind yourself to sleep Lakan when he is in the soul world so that you do not forget when he exits soul world.
Last but not least, remember not to get to cocky after clearing it the first time. Before you get the "skilled" tag, you'll have a HP boon whenever you're in the dungeon. I didn't have this benefit since you don't get the buff without "Elite" on TW servers, but that's beside the point. Always remember this. Once that HP boon is gone, you might find that you start dying to stuff that didn't normally kill you before. So always stay alert, don't get complacent, and good hunting.
Well, that's all I can think of for now. Be sure to comment below if you have more tips to offer, or notice that I've made a mistake somewhere. Thanks for reading.
Fun fact: My party was so bad that I had to solo the last 7% of Darkan so that we wouldn't have to redo the entire boss fight for the Nth time. Got my adrenaline running good tho kek. Could even say that I got an adrenaline rush. (Yea I'm so punny I know)
Edit: Added some extra tips. Rearranged some tips so that they're not all over the place.
Edit 2: Added 1-2 more tips and reworded some stuff.
6
Comments
Like every new patch ppl over exaggerate.
Also NA will gear carry like always since many have at least 1 -2 vm9 gear pieces already if not fkn badges
I am going to re-read this several times to make sure I fully adsorb the info here - some of it I think I 'instinctively' guessed but it extremely helpful to have it codified like this so I can see where I can improve in my vsnm runs to practice for vshm.
If you come up with any other tips please do share them!
Well I'm only here to impart my knowledge. Whether you choose to use it or not is up to you when the dungeon is released.
I really hope this collection can be useful to you. If possible, you can give a review once the dungeon is released on NA.
and grats on that 7% solo burn. didn't happen to get it on video, did'ja?
Sadly I wasn't streaming since I knew it was gonna be a long run with many wipes, so there's no video of it. It took about 5-6 minutes though LOL (I don't have vm gear other than ambush armor +12).
However, it is rather easy to do as Lancer as long as you dodge the 1 shot mechanics and block almost everything else, since Darkan no longer has anymore special mechanics once below 20% hp I believe.
Not sure what's the point of posting a link to Yosha's guide, but I'll assume that you think that my post is just a reworded Yosha's guide. It's not. I've even stated that this post was made to help players who are already well versed in VSNM (i.e. either already read Yosha's guide, or done VSNM enough times).
That guide mostly explains the mechanics of VS in detail, but not what problems you might face while attempting it for the first time. This thread of mine is made to complement Yosha's guide so that you guys can be better prepared for when the dungeon is actually released.
btw nice tips.
This happens in NM too. See, when you Backstab lakan as a warrior when he does that, you're placed like 5-6m behind him, which is wrong considering the skill even puts you inside mobs most of the times. I say this because his hitbox when he does the skill is a bit off, so if i were to jump to his "back", after the backswipe, you end up actually taking the frontal hit because he's not where it seems he is.
Stay at 9m away when darkan flies up then walk in or out is not fast enough for even 1m distance. You just get rubberbanded and killed. NO mercy.
Please note NA server is still lag af.
I hope DPS and healer can use full relentless to facetank this dumbass mechanism and dodge everything else. And tank is the lancer that have both iron will and kaia's shield active.
Give my kind regards to BHS for this more ping dependent design since RMHM ever.
Edit: Just watched an archer on EU with full relentless crystals with 170k hp survive 1 of the in-out/out-in mechanic with Kaia, so you can indeed do it. However, you'll die to Darkan's normal attacks/eviscerates with such a setup, so I would not recommend it regardless.
2nd Edit: My bad, didn't realise that the archer didn't have relentless crystals but instead it was the newbie HP boon. Regardless, I won't advocate facetanking the in-out/out-in mechanic. Sure, you can abuse the HP boon for your first 5 clears, but after that, you're gonna have problems adjusting to the need to actually dodge the aoes. Old habits die hard, so make a good old habit instead of a bad one.
I would also really appreciate some feedback so that I can make a better collection in future.