R-4 Hard Mode Kanoth

But I am still at Three!  Yes, this happens.  If you have been taunting on 3 this will happen less often.  This usually pops up if a tank 5 stacks during a fight.  Stacks bleed quickly, keep a close eye on your cotank and taunt immediately if they hit four, or when you destack.  Most of the time it is safe to taunt even if you are still at three.  The flow of the fight typically will allow your stacks to keep reducing, even if you are tanking him.  If he is channeling, he is not infesting you.  Trust the flow, taunt on 3.

In all phases of the fight, kanoth will "abduct" his current target.  It is very predictable in phase 2 onward, but can be hard to nail down when it will happen in the first phase.

"Pulling" the tank out with a sage rescue is my preferred method of dealing with this.  Having the sage pull the tank will drop threat on that tank, forcing kanoth back on the other tank.  This is game changing for phase 2.

Repel is a 3" channel, same as in story mode.  This channel throws kanoth's target away from him in.  It is more annoying than anything.  If the tank is going to "take the knock" I recommend swapping here to help keep kanoth in place.  Sometimes he does another channel right after repel and he will stay in place anyway.  More often than not, though, he will chase down the tank he just threw.  Guardians can run back and jump in (like in master/blaster) with the front-line veteran passive (at 64) to resist the knock backs entirely.

Seeds coming out is signified by a sound and this pink arrow pointing at the affected players.

The grids will light up with a white border on which tiles were affected.  Note that we have seen plenty of instances where the tanks were not in a dps tiles but still received the debuff.  We believe that being inside the white box will give the debuff and as the white box is larger than the tile itself there is some cross over.  The player Jafa here for example is in their own tile but gets hit by both his and the player's beside of him because he is standing in the overlap.  I recommend standing back a bit when seeds come out to prevent this.

Your healers will cry if they see this.  If it happens, it is a coaching moment.  Clean off the players with 2 stacks and keep healing.  Do not try to remove every debuff it ticks too fast.  Do not try to take cleanse the agony tactical to cleanse faster.  Overfocusing on cleaning this debuff will cause more problems.  Heal through it, lean on the commando's trauma probes to heal for its ticks of damage.  Remember to refresh trauma probes after each seed of echos to keep players healthy and ready for the next one.  Most class's defensive abilities allow them to handle the damage.  Cycle these to keep from stressing your healers.  The ballistic dampeners from the sniper class, for example, can be refreshed as the DoT is ticking on you, for example.  When your ballistic dampers run out, get out of cover and back in to get 3 more stacks.  Snipers thought they cannot self-cleanse can handle the damage through their massive defensive tool kit.  If your team is struggling with seeds, I would make sure each player knows what their defensives are and be sure they are cycling them and not burning all of them.  Defensive abilities should not be used by DPS outside of seeds of echoes.  Self-cleaning on a class that can (sage, for instance) can be helpful, but it is a dps loss.  I prefer to rely on trauma probes and an off the GCD self-heal or Defensive ability.  Cloud mind + Force Mend, for example.  In the end, you cannot be the stress of your healers.  An extra 15k hit of damage does no one any good if you are dead.

Not every tile needs to be cleaned.  Dps should not be focused on cleaning every single tile on the battlefield.  My rule of thumb is stick to my three.  Melee DPS should be supporting the tanks by keeping their tile clean and the tiles that could "infect" the tank or boss tiles from a directional growth channel.  Direction growth puts yellow arrows by nihrot indicating which way it is spreading.  The tiles behind the tanks (top left corner) or behind the boss's (4th in the top row from the left) can spread into the tank and boss tile when directional growth happens.  Your team never wants the tanks or the boss standing in nihrot.  Kanoth hits harder the longer he is in nihrot and gains a stacking damage reduction that can kill damage output.

Keeping the "Add burn" and "Taunt" Tiles clean will help the transition phase.  Ranged and healers should be very focused on these tiles and center should always stay clean (ALWAYS).

This is not a movement heavy fight.  If your team is scrambling all over the place, you are over doing it.  Outside of having to take a yellow growth line out of the group, everyone should be pretty fixed in place.  Keep burning the boss and keep the tank swaps and tile cleaning happening, and this is a pretty uneventful push to 72%.  Kanoth has a ton of HP (43 million something) which is the primary reason this fight is 10+ minutes.  Phase 1 is something like 2 and a half minutes long and is very uneventful if all goes as prescribed above.  Check out a clip from Captain Roman's (my cotank) stream of the fight.

This is the set-up for transition.  DPS and Healers need to follow kanoth to the center tile and keep dpsing him to get a head start on breaking his barrier.

Tank 1 heads to the center front tile near the door and AoE Taunts as soon as the adds come up.  I usually wait a second or two just to make sure they are active.  Here is where a Vanguard Tank struggles.  Their AoE Taunt will not pick up "Both" as it will only target one, missing the second.  A different strategy will be needed if both your tanks are vanguards.

Once both adds are on tank 1 (the taunt platform).  Tank 1 grenades them to break their barrier (a change from Story mode).  They begin building threat as they walk to either add burn tile (I prefer the right side, either works).  As soon as they are within range of Tank 2 they should AoE Taunt them and regrenade them after a GCD or Two.

DPS should be called to engage at this point (this whole process should take at most 4-5 GCDs).

Tank 1 should single taunt one of the monsters back off of tank 2 (triple taunting) and tank 2 should retaunt the one that is still on them.  This process of triple taunting will ensure that a dps does not pull a monster off of the tank.  The monsters do cleave, they must be pointed away from the group and ideally not at your cotank.  Tanks should grenade on cool down during the monster burn to keep their shields down and the nihrot off the floor.  When the monsters die, they will infect the tile under them and those adjacent to it.

After the monsters are dead, the team jumps back to the middle and breaks kanoth out of his barrier and phase 2 begins. (We raid buff as soon as the shield breaks)

We change our positioning for phase two, bringing the boss in one row.  We ignore (for the most part) the exterior row of tiles and focus only on keeping the inner 9 tiles clean (for the rest of the fight).  Growth lines cannot be taken through the center of the room.  They must be taken to the exterior tiles with haste.  I have watched many players run from the back of the room toward the front, putting a growth line right through the middle of the room.  Always go toward your closest exterior row.

It is extremely important to make sure that the tank and boss tiles stay clean.  Directional growth will come several times during phase 2 and has the potential to contaminate these tiles.  I recommend having your melee stay focused on cleaning not only their tiles, but the ones that can infect the tank/boss tiles.  Tanks should keep up with their discipline of cleaning growth seed and fortify ground.  The tanks 3 stack from their infested debuff RAPIDLY after the first yellow growth line goes out.  The first 10 or so seconds after that are critical to getting the boss positioned and keeping the floor clean.  A tank 5 stacking here will harden several of the inner 9 tiles and likely lead to a wipe.

There will be several tank swaps, keep strong watch up to his beckon channel and be sure not to miss that one.  The tank not on kanoth (currently destacking) will need to handle the add.  That tank will need to head to one of the add burn tiles and taunt the add as it spawns.  Be sure to head to the side it is spawning on.  You will see the water move as it pops up.  I like to set up in the center and flex over.  DO NOT HOLD THE ADD ANYWHERE BUT THE ADD BURN TILE.  Holding it in mid will result in nihrot everywhere.  Shortly after the beckon channel, Kanoth will abduct the other tank.  A sage should be ready to pull that tank.  This will drop that tank's threat and send him over to the other tank, who is holding the add.  Wait until your cotank 3 stacks, then pull kanoth back over to you and reposition him back into his tile.

The tank on the add should immediately grenade the add, build threat with 2-3 GCDs then call for DPS on the add.  Use your AoE taunt as soon as DPS begins to hold threat.  By this time, you will probably have kanoth on you.  Do not worry about what he is doing.  Call for DPS to regrenade the add after they have done about 3-4 GCDs worth of damage.  As soon as your grenade comes back off of cool down, use it again.  Have the dps regrenade +/- 6 seconds later if the add is still not dead.

Kanoth should be back on your cotank before the add dies.  You do not want kanoth anywhere near the add when it dies.  The faster the add dies, the easier this phase becomes.  You will be taking kanoth almost immediately after the add dying.  Ranged DPS and healers should help clean up the nihrot mess left behind from the add's death.

We are through the hardest part of the fight.  No more growth lines from here out, making the management of nihrot much less stressful.  The boss learns a new trick though, creeping growth.  Creeping growth will cover many tiles.  It is pretty simple to handle, though.

Everyone takes a tile.  Healers or ranged dps should double up and help take out the extra one.  Tanks continue to get growth seed and fortify ground tile cleaning.  The boss is moved one row down, with the tanks, and the fight resumes.

If the tank tile hardens, shift over the other side of the room, keeping the boss in the middle.  Hardened tiles happen and will add a bit more restriction to where your team can position, but should only be seen as an opportunity to saber reflect.

Adds will continue to come in.  Kanoth will continue to abduct and repel the tanks.  As soon as creeping growth is channeled, everyone should throw their grenades at their feet.  This will clean the tile under them.  Tanks may struggle with creeping growth as they may have their grenade on cool down from cleaning a growth or fortify.  It is critically important the tank tile does not harden from creeping growth.  You will likely get a second kanoth ghost transition around 38-25%.

Kanoth will channel supreme garden at 17%.  Everyone should move to and stack in the center tile (assuming it is not hardened).