SWTOR: G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator Guide

Recommended Group Composition

  • 2x Tanks (second tank should dps until needed)
  • 2x Healers
  • 4x DPS (At least 2x Ranged)

Notable Mechanics

  • Boss has a buff that increases armor and reduces damage drastically until removed.
  • Armor buff is removed by solving the ignition node puzzle on the upper platform, which unlocks an igniter, used to remove the armor buff.
    • Right igniter removes both buffs and adds a debuff, making the boss take more damage.
    • Middle igniter removes one buff and kills all droids.
    • Left igniter removes both debuffs.
  • Two types of droids spawn throughout the fight, Proximity droids and Stun droids. Proximity droids blow up when near them, stun droids… stun.
  • Boss adds armor debuff to tank over the duration of the fight, which ultimately makes the tank very squishy.

Normal Strategy

Boss

  • Tank and spank – kill any droids in the immediate area of the belt. Feel free to leave the rest, as they have a fairly short range.
  • When the ignition controls are solved, a player on the upper platform will call out which igniter to pull the boss under. Once under it, everyone should get off the belt, including the tank, as the igniter will kill anyone under it when triggered.
  • After the ignition occurs, the armor debuff will fall off. Everyone should blow their offensive cooldowns and nuke the boss – Enjoy the high crit numbers you’ll see during this time.
  • The armor buff will continue to build up again – Rinse and repeat.

Ignition Controls

  • Two or three ranged DPS will be in charge of the ignition controls. The point of these controls is to solve the puzzle to light the igniter and remove the armor buff from the boss, allowing the raid to nuke him. You will do this pretty much the entire duration of the encounter, with the exception of DPS’ing while the armor buff is down.
  • To solve the puzzle, you must stack the green nodes on top of each other from 1 to 3, top to bottom. Once they are stacked as such, it will unlock the ignition control and you are able to light the igniter and blow up the boss once he’s in position and the melee and tank are out. Keep in mind, you can not light the same igniter twice in a row.
  • The controls work as follows:
    • Left node moves the highest block of that node to the middle queue block (very top) if the middle queue block is empty. Otherwise, it brings the middle queue block to the left node.
    • Right node moves the highest block of that node to the middle queue block if the middle queue block is empty. Otherwise, it brings the middle queue block to the right node.
    • Middle node pushes the highest block of the middle node up to the middle queue block if the middle queue block is empty. Otherwise, it pulls the middle queue block down to the middle node.
  • Chances are, you will have to solve the puzzle about 4-5 times to kill the boss. It’s very important you wait until the boss is in position and the melee and tank are out, before hitting the igniter control.
  • Once the boss is hit with the igniter, blow all your cooldowns and DPS your little heart away. Once the armor buff stacks back up to 2, move on to solving the next ignition puzzle at another ignitor node.
  • Be sure to clear the proximity droids on the upper platform sooner than later, as you do not want them to be in the way when you are trying to nuke the boss during burn phase, after ignition.

Hard Mode Strategy

  • In hard mode, you should only be triggering the left and right ignition nodes.
  • The right node removes all buffs from the boss and increases the amount of damage he takes. The left node just removes all buffs from the boss. When right node hits, everyone should burn the boss. When left node hits, everyone burn the boss, except the people doing the controls. They should be instantly moving to solve the right node again to maximize uptime of the damage intake buff on the boss.
  • After solving the first node, using this method for solving each following node:
    1. Bring the “1” to the node you are trying to solve.
    2. Bring the “2” to the middle node.
    3. Bring the “1” to the middle node.
    4. Bring the “3” to the node you are trying to solve.
    5. Bring the “1” to the node opposite the one you are trying to solve.
    6. Bring the “2” to the node you are trying to solve.
    7. Bring the “1” to the node you are trying to solve – Node complete.

Nightmare Mode Strategy

  • Same rotation, Right > left > repeat.

16-man Added Mechanics

  • Once a player triggers a node on the upper platform, they cannot trigger one again until someone else has triggered one (you gain a very long debuff that falls off once another node is triggered). This forces you to alternate who triggers the nodes and adds an increased need to coordinate.

Commando Tips

  • No specific tips for this encounter.

5-second Recap

  • Two or Three people solving ignition puzzle, stacking 1 to 3, top to bottom, then igniting the boss. Keep in mind, same ignition node can’t be triggered twice in a row.
  • Make sure you are out of melee range when ignition is blown, then blow offensive cooldowns and nuke the boss.
  • Kill any droids in the immediate area.
  • Rinse, repeat, win.

Accomp

Accomp is a Software Engineer by day, MMO enthusiast by night, full-time dad, and part-time content creator. He's been writing guides for MMOs for years and has a strong passion for user experience and helping other gamers improve. You can follow him on Twitter to keep up or join his Discord to hang out with his community.

10 Responses

  1. Harold says:

    Really nice guide! Quite hard when you don’t understand shit, but after some tries it went down..

    • Accomp says:

      Heh, yeah – it was a fun fight, especially having to figure it out without any knowledge about the encounter. What seems to work best for us, though, is to just have two people handling the nodes up top and alternating between left and right, stopping to burn when the right igniter hits. Glad you were able to get it done!

  2. Wesleycrushers says:

    If people have a hard time understanding the puzzle, the best explanation I’ve come up with is that if the puzzle is complete and you want to start moving it to the new node, move the top piece to where you want the puzzle to end up.

    That at least always seems to get people started in the right direction.

  3. Wesleycrushers says:

    You might want to add a section for differences in 16 man as well. For instance on this fight, if you triggered the node, you can’t click any station until someone else does first.

  4. Accomp says:

    I might add the added 16man mechanics. However, being part of an 8man guild and the re-focus of 8mans to be a bit more difficult in the coming operations, I probably won’t put too much more effort into the existing encounter guides. However, if people let me know what the added mechanics are, I will gladly go ahead and add them.

    For instance, I’ve just added the added Fabricator mechanics – Thanks! 🙂

  5. Des says:

    I noticed in the hard mode video, that you all cleared the top level of droids and that they didn’t respawn after that. We didn’t clear all the droids but after each burn phase they respawned. Is there a rhyme or reason to that, a way to keep them from respawning? Does it make a difference if you purposefully kill all the top droids first that makes them not respawn? Just trying to figure out if there is something we are missing.
    Thanks.

  6. Accomp says:

    @Des – That video was actually captured when the droids were spawning incorrectly. They are intended to spawn as you have been seeing, so there’s really no getting around that. However, if you utilize your knockback to make a path and only kill them when necessary, you should have no problems.

  7. NickyDan says:

    I agree with Wesleycrushers’ advice on the puzzle – just move the top piece to where you want the stack to end up~~

    Since the puzzle is classic Towers of Hanoi, what I also did was google up a Towers of Hanoi puzzle and practice on that for a few minutes. Afterwards, solving the puzzle really takes no thought at all, without ever even having to practice in game or memorize a rotation :>

    Sadly, I am not a class that is best suited for solving the puzzle, so my mad towers of hanoi skills go to waste haha ;__;

  8. Diaka says:

    An even easier method as to the controls:
    – Never move the mob (keep it on the right side)
    – When using the controls after blasting the mob, move all items from the right side and then place them back. Fire and repeat.

    Move the controls as follows: Fire. 1 from right to mid, 2 from right to left, 1 from mid to left, 3 from right to mid, 3 from mid to right, 1 from left to mid. 2 from left to right, 1 from mid to right. Fire

    You only need two people up there. Keep a healer type near the right control and a class preferably with speed to do the running between left and mid.

  9. Krindel says:

    Our approach is to leave all ranged dps plus a healer on the platforms overlooking the droid boss. Second healer and offtank do the puzzle, offtank kills the mines (with help from ranged) and gets healed.

    The main tank moves the boss around between left and right continuously. Healer on the platform can reach the tank and melee at both ends, so can the ranged dps. The second healer and the offtank don’t stop doing the puzzle, even at the burn phases.

    Basically this way we squeeze in more burn phases out of the encounter, and the loss of dps from the offtank is pretty much negligible anyway.

    Also, would like to note that you can stand on the yellow stripes of the belt without getting hit by lava / ice when the puzzle is ignited.

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