SWTOR: Toth and Zorn Guide
Recommended Group Composition
- 2x Tanks
- 2x Healers
- 4x DPS
Notable Mechanics
- If tanked close to each other, they gain a damage buff, so tank them on opposite sides of the room.
- Toth will leap to Zorn throughout the encounter.
- Tank on Zorn will get knocked back – be sure to have your back against the wall.
- Players near leap impact area or in front of Zorn will receive a “Fearful” debuff, which amplifies all incoming damage from Zorn as well as reduces damage done to Zorn.*
- Zorn will throw rocks at anyone within 25m range. Only the tank and possibly his healer should be getting hit by this, as ranged should be within 25m-30m range to avoid the damage.
- Zorn will periodically put “Mental Anguish” on everyone in melee range via his “Shriek” ability. This should be cleansed immediately.
- Zorn should be faced away from the raid, as he does cone damage with Force Scream.
- During this ability, constant AOE damage will occur.
- Also, red circles will appear on the ground that do a good amount of damage and knock you into the air.
Normal Strategy
- Tank the two away from each other, killing them at the same time. One enrages when the other dies, which stacks with the enrage timer enrage.
- Split into two groups (Tank, Healer, 2x DPS in each)
- DPS will always attack the same target – Keep any melee on Toth to avoid Zorn’s rock throw.
- The biggest hurdle for most groups is going to be DPS positioning to avoid the “Fearful” debuff from Zorn. To do this, only ranged DPS should be on Zorn, staying max range to avoid 15m AoE, and directly behind Zorn to ensure they avoid the “Fearful” cone.
- When Toth leaps to Zorn, AOE damage occurs. Tanks should swap aggro and bring it back to their side. Tanks/Healers will always be on the same side the whole encounter.
- After the first leap, there are two phases that alternate every leap for the duration of the encounter. Rinse, repeat:*
- Zorn throws rocks (25m range) – This can be easily avoided by the majority of the raid.
- Zorn screams, causing a raid-wide AoE and red circles to spawn on the ground – don’t stand in these and top everyone off. Keeping people topped off is the top priority, even for DPS with off-healing capabilities. Zorn should be faced away from the raid.
- Throughout the encounter just be aware of the following mechanics, handling accordingly:
- Zorn will apply a DoT – “Mental Anguish”. This hurts and should be cleansed immediately.
- If for some reason, a DPS is hit with the “Fearful” debuff, they should switch to DPS Toth until it falls off.
- Stacking up for AoE heals through the fight will make it much easier on the healers, allowing them to focus more on the tanks.
- AoE stomps throughout the encounter – avoid when possible. They only really hurt during the red circle scream phase.
Hard Mode Strategy
- When the “Mental Anguish” DoT is applied, a stacking “Weakness” debuff is also applied, causing the affected to do less damage. Again, these should be cleansed immediately.
- When Zorn begins throwing rocks, Toth enrages and turns yellow. At this point, a random player will be targeted with a yellow circle. That player should quickly run to Toth and stand on his butt. When the yellow circle turns purple, they should immediately get out and get back into position. This purple circle notes where Zorn will throw a giant boulder and when it hits Toth, it removes his enrage.
Nightmare Mode Strategy
- Coming Soon.
5-second Recap
- Two groups, one on each boss – Kill at the same time.
- Face bosses away from the raid, tank’s back angled against a wall.
- DPS always attack same boss.
- Tanks swap bosses after every leap.
- Cleanse debuffs immediately.
- DPS on Zorn stay max range, directly behind Zorn to avoid the “Fearful” debuff.
- [Hard Mode] Player with yellow circle under them should stand on Toth’s butt until it turns purple, then run out.
Items noted with * have still yet to be 100% confirmed as accurate.
Do you keep the tanks in the same location or the bosses in the same location?
@ jarganaut – We keep the tanks in the same location and have the tanks just swap bosses.
While doing our first attempts on this fight tonight. It seemed very easy on story mode for the tanks to just tab and taunt at the swap time. It made for a very easy time with the swapping of tanks. On one attempt we even let one tank keep Zorn thru 3 swaps. Now I would not suggest trying that on hard at all.
DOes the fearful buff really apply in a CONE in front of him? We are doing it over and over and it seems that its an AoE application to raid.
@ T – We believe the Fearful debuff to be both a frontal cone, as well as an AoE ~15m. So long as you are 25+ Meters (to avoid rock throw) and directly behind Zorn, you’re golden.
I’m guessing for the gear set-up on this fight on story mode it’s recommended all DPS have full Rakata set?
In normal mode, my guild beat Toth and Zorn without switching the tank’s targets or positions. We just held Toth and Zorn in place and killed them.
@ Mei – If you have any hope in downing Hard Mode or Nightmare Mode, I would highly suggest getting your practice in now with tank swaps. Taking the easy route now will absolutely hurt you later.
@ jpchivalry – I’d say you should be able to clear it so long as your group is in at least half Rakata. However, if you have some sub-par players, you’ll likely hit the enrage timer on most bosses.
Thanks for the write-up. Seems really detailed and well written. My guild is still gearing up from Soa but are trying to tackle this at the same time.
Nice and simple as always.
Just one question regarding composition: How would you be dealing with the swaps on hardmode if you had 2-3 Melee DPS in your raid?
Should they just stay with the tank and heal them through the rock throws and all the other AoE stuff?
@ Cerow – I’d highly recommend not running any more than 2 melee. With 2, just put them both on Toth – that way rocks won’t be an issue, nor will the Fearful debuff. With 3, you will probably have to have one eat the rocks and switch when he gets fearful. Easy solution: Run 2 or less melee DPS in 8man.
Some notes after running this on hard last night.
The yellow circle can target anyone in the raid including Zorn’s tank. Fortunately Zorn is rooted in place during this, so it can be run over to Toth. Just getting the edge inside of Toth’s hit box is enough to hit him. Don’t literally stand on his butt, as then the tank will also take the damage when Zorn throws his rock at this circle. We had 1 melee dps, and he decided that he took too much damage if he stayed in for the enraged portion of the fight, so every time Toth enraged, he ran out for the 25 meter range of rock throw. He would jump back to the boss once the enrage was down.
The Fearful debuff distance is from the point that Toth jumps to. As a trooper I was 29 meters from Zorn, and still picking up the Fearful debuff as Toth was leaping to the close side of Zorn. Also, I’m not sure that 15m is accurate on the range of Fearful.
I believe that you basically want to make the raid into a square formation. One tank and one boss at each of the top two corners, and two ranged groups at the bottom two corners with healers and dps. Each side of the square should be almost 30 meters so that you avoid the rock throws and fearful debuff’s.
Note that with tank swapping every leap, the same tank will always be picking up Toth on enrage.
We had players call out on vent when they needed to be cleansed as the debuff’s are difficult for the healers to see easily.
@ wesleycrushers – As for melee DPS, they should stay on Toth the entire encounter. Putting them on Zorn is just lost DPS and increased risk of hitting the enrage timer.
The fearful debuff is a short AoE, along with a cone. If you were getting hit with it, either you or the boss was not positioned correctly. As a ranged on Zorn, just make sure you are max range and his back is directly facing you. Angles are not your friend. Instead of a square, use a triangle – this way you can utilize AOE heals.
Also, keep in mind that for the debuff, most classes have a cleanse ability. If you can cleanse yourself or someone else – do it.
Last night, Fearful was a 60 second debuff that was uncleansable on hard. If Zorn does a 180 degree cone (which shouldn’t be called a cone then), it’s possible I was in that. Short of 180, I don’t believe I was in a space to be hit.
There were some pulls where the Gunslinger next to me was pulling aggro off the tank (stupid 5% buff to most of their dmg) and we were getting the fearful from that since the boss was in the wrong position at that point.
We had our melee on Toth, as I said, he ran out during Toth’s enrage portions. The melee was dying in a lot of the pulls before he decided to pull out for the enrage.
I think that we ran into two main problems last night. I don’t think that we had the two bosses far enough apart (they weren’t enraging one another, but I think that both of the tanks was getting hit by the rock throw), and I don’t think that the angle from Toth to Zorn to Ranged dps was 90 degrees. I think that we were at a sharper angle, which would cause Toth to be closer to ranged dps on a leap, giving me the fearful debuff even though I was far from Zorn.
I guess I could see the triangle working a little better, or the other option I have heard is to leave Toth’s group near the entrance area and have Zorn’s group run through him over by the trees.
Also when starting this pull our group all mounts up and as the tanks grab their starting boss, the rest of the party rides through Zorn. Everyone can stay out of Toth’s first ground pound (4.5k dmg to me, 25m range). Doing this you can avoid almost all damage if you are ranged on Toth.
In the Hard mode section you say that when Toth enrages he turns yellow. On my pc this wasn’t the color I was seeing. On my pc he was turning more of a flat black. Don’t know if this was changed in an update.
@ wesleycrushers – Toth’s enrage on HM has been yellow since the PTS. See the video to confirm. It’s probably one of your settings being too low to render it or something along those lines.
If you watch your video, you can only see the enrage around 2:50. At this point the yellow circle is beneath him, lighting him in yellow. If you look at the top of him, he is black. He is overall black without the light of the circle while enraged.
We have been having trouble with this boss on HM, so we took a parse of the fight on normal using MOX Live Raid meters. It looks like the bulk of the damage we are taking is from something called Smash. Everyone is taking damage from this, even our sniper at 35m who never took a Baradium Toss(Rock Throw) the whole fight. Here is the parse: http://memoriesofxendor.com/parser/RaidData.aspx
use this key: dc_jt_20501
Does anyone know what Smash is ?
Something else, it looks as though that I, as a tank, took less damage from Smash than anyone else. Maybe this is a ranged only effect that I avoided half of the fight by being in melee range of one of the bosses ?
@Killswitch
My guess is that smash is the channelled ability that they do when rock spires are forming underground (red circles, move your feet phase). Everyone is taking fairly significant constant damage from this (1k ticks very frequently) in addition to the damage if you don’t get out of your circles. Two things could be attributed to the tank taking less damage, maybe it can be avoided/shielded, or maybe you had a few people get hit with the rock spires from not moving out fast enough. In our raids, this seems to be the single largest damage cause, and the ticks are unavoidable damage.
One good way to tell would be to upload your combat log to torparse.com and look through the detail for how much damage at a time each of you are taking from smash. If you have a huge spike on someone that took damage, they probably didn’t get out of one of the circles. If you look at the tank, you could see if it missed or hits for low damage.
@Accomp Did you take another look at that enrage color on Toth yet?