Scar Temple: Tips for Scelos
Went into Scelos fight tonight on Grandmaster 1 after previously only having done Scar Temple on hard. To start with, Scelos was an exercise in frustration. “Oh for Fart’s Sake,” or perhaps something, um, similar, was heard over our Discord on more than one occasion.
The core problem was that we were over-cocky bastids at this point. Even Legendary Contracts on GM1 were starting to give us that feeling of super-human power again. Take that attitude into Scelos’ lair though, and he ain’t having a bar of it.
In case you’ve not yet seen or done this fight full-stop; the basic mechanics of it are that Scelos has fused himself into the form of a very large Escari shell, with all the fun and games that entails. Waves of devastating missiles and withering machine gun fire being the specials of the day.
Add to this though that every so often three giant shield generators around the room will power up and render Scelos invulnerable. Each generator must be taken down before Scelos can be damaged again, but also during this phase additional Scar support units will spawn in, with increasing intensity each time this phase is activated. Note that even while shielded, Scelos would love nothing more than to ruin your day with an unasked for Missile-enema.
Queue the tips — aka: The things we did wrong on the first two attempts that we corrected for the third.
- Be mindful of where the fans are — they will hurt you if you’re taking their blades to the backside. They also activate with very little warning. Fan activation appears to be boss HP based rather than time alone, but it isn’t directly related to passing from one ‘pip’ of Scelos’ health into the next. Nonetheless, crossing that threshold is when we started to be extra alert for the fans starting, and making sure the cover we were currently using wasn’t right in front of one.
- The scar waves with the activation of the fans are finite — kill them. Don’t feel pressured into doing the fans quickly in order to reduce Scar spawns. They do stop on their own without taking the fans down and should be dealt with accordingly. The first fan phase or two is not that scary, but if you ignore them they will hang around until dealt with, on top of the less friendly waves that come later.1
- Moving in a group (or at least pairs) from cover to cover is good during the shielded phase. Pack mentality for handling the scars is the way to go. Focus fire the threats (Hunters, Scouts) then take out the little guys. If Scars spawn right into your cover, fly low and fast to another clear cover. You can barrel role (or shield) your way through this cleanly most of the time. Move around the room in a circle, clearing fans as you go and is safe. If there are Scars up in another part of the room, have someone not focus the shield to keep watch on what’s happening on the ground rather than in the air on the generator beams.
- Opposite is true for the damage phase — spread out for this. Assuming you’ve cleared the Scar reinforcements out before downing the final fan beam, you can and should safely spread to different sets of cover around the room. Scelos’ turret tracks very quickly but still must aim to fire. The current target of Scelos’ ire would ideally notify rest of the team that it is (briefly) safe for them peek and poke with prejudice. Bonus points if you can get that poke on ol’ Scelos’ bad knee (a common weakpoint for Escari).
And that’s basically it. Scelos hits hard and fast, but isn’t as unfair as first impressions may seem. An example: His missile waves do incredible damage and have a force component meaning you can be knocked about if hit. But they do have a fair travel-time component, and there is always time to react between the first salvo and the second salvo, even if the first pummels you.
Taking that first salvo isn’t too bad, but the second as well? Definitely no bueno.
And that should be about that. This level of co-ordination is likely going to be difficult with PUGs to start with while people learn what is required of them. If you’re playing in this scenario I think the best you can do is to attach to one of the group while in the fan phase, keeping the Scar population around them to a minimum, and keep working on the Scar if for some reason your group leaves them up into the next boss damage phase.
You really don’t want to have to be dealing with your cover spots from the boss becoming increasingly dangerous with Scar swarming around as well.
Otherwise, keen to hear how people are finding this encounter on the higher difficulties. I went from making grumpy faces at it to having a newfound respect for the mechanics after managed to shift out of the mindset that current gearing has allowed for in other content.
BioWare told us that Strongholds would be the pinnacle of challenge for the launch game content — and it seems they meant it!
