Stroke My Wookie

Since I generally don’t write guides, feel free to drop feedback, advise, tips, corrects and so on in the comments below!

Introduction
Nahut on Story Mode is balanced for 234 gear with no augments, enrage is ~15 minutes, I have tried to make this guide as holistic as possible and describe many of the mechanics in far more detail than needed. That means that if you do as instructed below, you will have an easy and smooth time without deaths, however naturally several of the mechanics can be cheesed, ignored and avoided since it is, after all, story mode. That said I always try to promote players to become as good as they can and thus much of the tactics and strategy is based on Veteran Mode execution, to ensure that you, if you want to in the future, are ready and don’t have to adjust and learn too many new things when trying out this boss in veteran.



Main Mechanic: Candle

SM: No need to pass the candle, if you are within 5m of the boss, you will maintain vision of the boss, below, the mechanic is explained and how to strategize around it for Hardmode or if you wish to practise for Hardmode. For simplicity, the main tank can keep it for the majority of the fight as long as the tank stays around the centre of the room, allowing DPS to always be within 5m and thus have vision of the boss.

HM: As you enter the room, you will notice that in the middle, there is a yellow beam indicating a small highlighted yellow area. When a player clicks on this circle the boss fight will start and that person will get the “Candle”, the candle enables a temporary ability bar that looks like the picture above, below is an explanation of those three abilities, what they do and how they should be used.

1. Reveal (Ability name: Suppression Burst)
“Emits a stealth suppressing burst from the Candle. Disables the Candle's passive stealth detection for 12 seconds, but also suppresses stealth of all enemies within 12m for at least 12 seconds.”Initially, the boss is invisible for everyone apart from people standing within 5m of it and the person with the candle, the person with the candle can use the first ability on the boss. Using this ability will reveal the boss, making it visible for the rest of the group for 12 seconds, however after using this ability you are unable to use it for 60 seconds, that leads us to the second ability.
2. Pass the Candle
Since the “Reveal” goes on a one-minute cooldown after usage, the candle needs to be used by several people to ensure you can constantly see and DPS Nahut. The second ability does just that, assuming Player A uses the candle, he can then target Player B in the Ops frame and use the Pass ability to transfer the candle to Player B. This person can then use the candle to ensure that the boss remains visible, it’s recommended that there is a rotation of at least four players to ensure constant vision of the boss.Important note, you can pass “through” the boss on Storymode but for Veteran, the boss will “intercept” the pass and take the candle if he is standing in-between the person who passes the candle and that person target, thus it’s recommended to not include tanks in this rotation.
3. Drop the Candle
The third ability of the temporary ability bar drops the candle on the floor and any other player needs to run over the candle, or click it, to get it. I wouldn’t recommend using this ability at all if you need to pass the candle to someone else, use the passing ability.

Phase 1
Story mode: For SM, just ensure that the DPS are staying close to the boss, if they are within 5m they will maintain vision of the boss without the need of candle reveal.

Introduction of Candle Mechanic:
Phase One contains quite a few mechanics, first and the most important is the candle mechanic, the boss needs to be revealed throughout this phase by the DPS and Healers (at least four people rotating the candle is recommended). As you can see on the image below, the boss has four debuffs and one of them is ticking down, ( ), this debuff indicates how long it will be before the boss will go stealth again. Technically, you can wait until the last two-three seconds before this debuff runs out to reveal the boss with the candle but it’s advised to do it earlier to ensure the boss remains visible.
Boss + Stealth Debuff



Mass Distortion Fields (0.5 Cast)
It is recommended to use two tanks or at least one tank and one DWT, during phase one and phase three, the boss will do a quick cast called “Mass Distortion” that puts a debuff on the tank (see picture above), when this debuff expires after like 3-4 seconds, a big blue circle will be placed under the tank that deals damage to whoever is in it. The trick here is to note that you have the debuff/when the boss casts it, tank swap or at least reposition yourself to a bit outside of the middle, place the blue circle and then go back to the middle.

Please be aware that if you are not passing the candle, it’s important that you stick around the middle of the room to ensure DPS are always within 5m and don’t have to run further out on the platforms that deals damage to them.

Plasma Vent
Purple / Red areas that deal significant damage to whoever stands in them, generally recommended that all healers and DPS stay around the middle circle of the room where these do not appear, but tanks need to consider these depending on tanks movement.



Transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2
At 60%, the boss will move into phase 2, where the priority is no longer to DPS the boss and instead to move away from the middle of the room (as indicate on the picture above, the red area, basically everywhere but the outer edge, deals damage to player in it). Instead, the priority for the group is to kill the Power Couplings.



Power Couplings
There are two couplings at the outer edge of the room, all the group runs to this location and while melee DPS and Tanks can stand basically on top of them, it’s advice that healers and range DPS puts their back to the pillar as the boss will do an AoE pull. Important to note that these Power Couplings are the priority of the DPS over everything else, they also don’t “die”, as in when they hit 0% and 0 HP, they won’t die so it might be a bit confusing. The phase ends when the floor under you at this position will become electric, if both Power Couplings are at 0 HP, the phase will change, if not, you will take loads of damage.

Energized Slice
The boss will target a beam towards the person who has the candle during this phase, the beam deals not that much damage but places a debuff on the target which increases the damage it seconds from the next beam. The ideal way to handle this mechanic is to stand a bit outside of the group (for example between the tanks and the group) as the beam works like an AoE Cone similar to Lancers on Tyth and deals damage to everyone in its path. Assuming Person A has the candle, he will get hit with the beam, he then passes the candle to Person B and moves back to the group behind the pillar, Person B then moves out of the group to avoid hitting them with the beam, gets hit once and passes the Candle to Person C etc.

This mechanic doesn’t deal massive damage on SM, even after the person has been hit once, and even twice, a tank using cooldowns correctly could take quite a few hits before he dies.

Extermination Droids
These droids spawn during the phase with the Power Couplings and for a limited time after, they deal a bit of damage so are a priority for tanks to get aggro of but DPS should focus all their DPS on the power Couplings and only secondary focus on these droids.

If a tank has the candle, he can use the Energized Slice to deal heavy damage to the Droids, I think around 70-80% of their HP, in HM this is particularly helpful as DPS can focus on the Couplings.

Gravitic Shockwave (Pull)
Honestly this mechanic is nothing special, during this phase and the following phase, the boss will pull all members of the raid towards the middle of the room, if you are a rDPS or a Healer keeping your back against either of the big pillars around the room will just make you “bounce” off these and prevent you from going into the middle.



Phase 3
Following the death of the Power Couplings, the boss will enter phase 3 where he will walk towards the group who are on the outer ring, again the candle mechanic with the reveal and passes needs to be done to ensure vision of the boss during this phase. As indicated by the picture above, the tank will be facing the boss away from the group at the edges of the room while the raid members try to stand with their back against the pillar to ensure they don’t get pulled.



Rail Turret
During this phase, Rail Turrets will spawn, I would advise having all DPS assigned to hunting these on SM. On story mode, at 40% they get a shield around them and during the pull (illustrated below), they are pulled into the middle of the room and destroyed. On HM you need to stun them when the pull is about to happen for this effect to happen, you can kill them normally, but the intention behind the mechanic is to stun them as they reach 40% so they get pulled.

These turrets can enrage at which point their cast cannot be interrupted by going LoS and it deals heavy damage, thus handling them and getting them to 40% as soon as possible is the recommended way to deal with this phase. A new set of Rail Turrets spawns every 40-45s and the amount varies with each wave, initially, it’s 1-2 but in the 4th/5th wave it can be up to 3-4 that spawn at the same time.



Gravitic Shockwave
Here is an example of both the pull as well as a Rail Turret, as you can see these can be CC: ed and then they will also be pulled to the middle of the room, apparently this is only possible from 40% and below. That said, in SM you can just kill them without needing to either interrupt or CC, but again it’s good to get into the right habit if you intend to do Veteran at some point.


Burn Phase
During the burn phase, the boss will fill parts of the outer ring with lightning which deals damage to anyone that stands in it, the trick here is to continue to move the boss along the edges of the room, gradually filling the room with lightning. It’s advised that ranged DPS and Healers try to stay a bit ahead of the boss to avoid taking unnecessary damage. At some point during this phase, the boss will become totally visible without the usage of the candle, I am at the moment not sure when but it’s possible that this is dependant on time or amount of rail turrets killed.



Recap of the important mechanics of each role

Tanks
Always face the boss away from the raid, he does a lot of cleave, Mass Distortion is a bit complex but tries to use as much of the room as you can without standing in the circles, the plasma vents or mines too much. As the boss enters the second, third and burn phase, always face him towards the outside of the room and try to kite around the edges as much as possible, occasionally you will get pulled and place mass distortion puddles towards the middle, this is perfectly fine, DPS/Healers can run around them.

DPS
Apart from not standing in stupid, try to assist the healers with the candle mechanic and for damage in the second phase, priority is always Power Couplings while in the third, the priority is the Rail Turrets for those assigned to them. In the last phase, try to stay ahead of the boss so you get hit as little as possible by the lightning is on the platforms.

Heal
Just like for the DPS, remember to stay out of the way for the boss and remember to get a bit away from the group if you have the candle and the boss is doing the beam on you. For the last phase just stay a bit ahead of the group and ensure that the tank is healthy, keeping your back against the wall is really key as it prevents you from taking a significant deal of damage while at the same time not making you be out of range from your group.

Edit: Big thanks to Dkgray and Ryrjo who uploaded a video of the encounter and from which I stole most of the pictures. Here is the video of their 8man Veteran Kill if you are interested in checking it out!

To make it even easier to see when you should use the suppression burst ability, look at the expiring debuff of the previous "revealer" in the operation frame. People usually have them as bigger icons and this way healers don't need to constantly check NAHUTs buff bar.

Interesting timers: Pastebin link

Nice guide

ps how do I import the timers (or where to) in starparse?

C:\Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\StarParse\app\client\app\starparse-timers.xml

Thanks Andreasson, this is a really useful and comprehensive guide covering both sm and hm. You've provided us with a very helpful tool that all members can read/study in advance and it's great that we have someone willing to share their expertise and knowledge so everyone can learn or improve. Very much looking forward to trying this tonight and I feel fairly well prepared having read all your explanations of mechanics and suggested tactics!

Nice little tip there from Blinx too and some useful SP timers for those who want to set them up.



In terms of feedback, I'd say it's well-written, good level of detail without being overly long/boring. It's not patronising or dumbed down, but also doesn't complicate things and remains accessible to all skill levels. Great use of suggestions for both hm and useful classes for specific roles. Very helpful notes on positioning and use of mechanics and placement to deal with adds most easily. It's not one giant wall of text, nicely broken down in a sensible way that is clear yet comprehensive.

Having the pictures really helps too, especially for things like debuffs, and the clip of the cc and pull of the rail turret is handy for illustrating your point about taking advantage of mechanics to help deal with adds. Personally, I would have put the pictures after the relevant description (e.g. candle mechanic text then pic of debuffs), but that's my preference not necessarily "better". For first timers, it might be useful to have a zoomed out view of the whole room so people who haven't been in the fight yet have some sort of overview with pillars and whatnot, but that's just nitpicking and probably not very easy to get depending on the room layout and available camera angles.

Honestly, it's a great guide, nothing needs changing and we're lucky to have you write it for us! Any plans to send it to Dulfy or put it on reddit?

Dulfy would be happy to publish this piece of work.

Upvoted cos Riku is bae

Homovibes detected :D

And well done riku

Thought I would give SupaHsuB a shoutout and link his guide for Nahut Hardmode/Veteran, you can find the video here. More often he goes by the name "FreakyD", is Guildmaster and Tank of It's Lit, one of the best PvE guilds that are still around.

The video is quite long but if you have some time over or want to learn some things about Hardmode/Veteran, an, of course, you can skip some parts, but still, it could be a good tool to familiarize yourself with HM/Veteran mechanics.