Welcome to our ESO Veteran Maw of Lorkhaj Guide, a lengthy, in-depth look into the basic mechanics of Veteran difficulty.
Table of Contents
This will be a lengthy, in-depth look into the basic mechanics of Vet Maw and some of the things you can do to combat them. As well as some quick tips that could help you out in your Maw endeavors!
Perhaps some of the readers here have not had much interest in Veteran Maw of Lorkhaj… maybe some people have been intimidated by what they have heard about it… maybe some just need a reason to do it. That’s what this section of the article is for! Apart from the fun of working hard at something and overcoming a challenge and a journey with your peers, completing Veteran Maw of Lorkhaj offers best in slot gears that are both useful in PvP and PvE likeAlkoshwhich debuffs both resistance types and adds a Damage over Time (DoT) to the target when synergized,Moondancerwhich is a spell damage godsend for all you who like to see that spell damage skyrocket, andTwilight Remedywhich is one of the few true healer/support sets available… You also get this fancy costume 😉 And if it intrigues you and your friends, a chance to dominate the leaderboard!
Group Play
First and foremost I wanted to go over the importance of group play and teamwork. In any 12-man trial the absolute best way to handle anything is as a team and to support each other through your journey through such mystical places. As a result I will give you an idea of some of the things you may do in whatever role you play to be the best teammate you can be!
And that’s it! If you have ever heard the phrase “teamwork makes the dream work,” that is certainly the case here and will promote a fun and effective raid environment for you and your team to dominate your journeys!
Initial Trash
First off we will start with the trash (or non essential enemies) because that is what you will be walking into first, no bosses just yet… only a few (who am I kidding?) khajiits to deal with.
SUN EATER MECHANICS (CASTER)
SHADOWGUARD MECHANICS (SWORD AND SHIELD)
DREADSTALKER MECHANICS (ARCHER)
Now that I have gone over the mechanics of each individual mob I will go over how the CSH raid group currently handles this. After the Cursed Khajiits are clearedm we head toward the spawn of the Sun Eater and drop our ultimates on him getting him down as quickly as possible. Whilst we are doing that our tank is stacking the other two mobs for us to attack when we are done with the Sun Eater… Once dead we go over to the rest of the mobs (stacked up and ready to kill) and start DPSing them both down, making sure to block the Shadow Slash and avoid the Ruthless Salvo (Archer bleed). After that we head through the door located to the northwest and continue on. Once you’ve headed through that doorway more Cursed Khajiits will spawn and you can completely ignore them heading to the spawn location of the Sun Eater, which will be an archway located to the north. Use your ultimates on the Sun Eater and get him down as soon as possible. While you are doing this your tank will be stacking up the Dreadstalkers and the Shadowguard for your raid to AoE when done with the Sun Eater. After that, you will be introduced to another pull with all the same mobs plus a new Two-Hander wielding khajiit called a Savage.
He isn’t particularly hard to deal with but he does have some mechanics you need to manage. His most dangerous mechanic is his armor shatter he will do an animation where he slams his two hander on the ground and will bring your armor to 0. This attack has an AoE radius and will need to be removed from the group to avoid taking obscene amounts of damage. The other potentially dangerous thing he does is a frontal cleave all you really need to worry about with this is that the tank that is managing him isn’t facing him toward your group and causing them to take more damage than needed.
The way CSH handles this pull is to, like always, first focus down the Sun Eater, while doing that Tanks will be stacking mobs for the group (all of them even the two hander) and positioning them in a way that will cause the least amount of raid wide damage so we can AoE them down and get them gone as quickly as possible… After that we move up the stairs and onto the first boss.
Zhaj’hassa The Forgotten
Aka The Forgotten Kagit
Now you’ve made it to the first boss of Maw a giant two handed wielding khajiit which we will go over the mechanics below:
Now I will go over the flow of the fight and how I do it with CSH:
We come into the room and get ready by the pad we like to start at, place down our Trap Beast and other precast skills for the best amount of burst we can get. Once the boss spawns the tank immediately taunts him and positions him around all our DPS and we basically burn him. He will do curse and he will send out pillars periodically try not to get stunned by them, make sure you aren’t overlapping curses and continue to DPS. Aat 80% he will spawn panthers, chain them into the center and CC them so the die to your AOE’s. Shortly thereafter, the panthers spawn we start entering the shield phase, if we have a Nova from a DPS we use it if not we make due without. Once we are through shield phase it is likely he will do his shatter mechanic so we anticipate that and then follow the mechanics of it as needed to prevent death. After returning from that the boss will be somewhere around 60% and we can start dealing with the next panther phase. Panthers spawn, we chain and CC them, whilst also dealing with curses and shatters throughout the whole fight. Eventually we get to 40% and deal with another set of panthers… making sure to kill them before the impending shield phase at 31%. Shield phase comes and we burn through mitigating if we have the ultimate to (Nova/Veil) making due if not, and continuing to burn boss to the next and final phase. Finally, we get 5 panthers at 20% so we burn to 20, chain in and CC the panthers, whilst killing the boss dealing with curses and shatters as we need to until he is eventually dead.
There are many ways to position yourself on this boss so you can do it however you like this is just the way we have been doing it up til this point.
Ogre Trash
After the first boss you will continue up a ladder and into your first pull after the first boss. Which will consist of a Ogre Shaman and a bunch of basic Ogre Brute adds. The important one,The Ogre Shamanhas 2.8 million health and is by far the most dangerous thing in this trash pack. His mechanic that he does is a channeled heal that he casts that also does damage! When he throws his fist up in the air he starts casting a heal on any ogre mob in about a 28 meter range of him. The interesting thing about this heal is it also damages you if you are in the radius of the effect. So there are two ways you’re able to deal with this trash depending on your DPS you can either run in together and AoE all the ogres down so that the healing/damaging ability the Shaman does doesn’t wipe your group, or you can pull the shaman away and have a tank take the Brutes and have your raid group burn down the Shaman and then focus the adds.
After the Ogre pull, you will have another standard Khajiit pull. Priority focus the Sun Eater down while your tanks are stacking up the trash. Once the Sun Eater is dead move to the stacked mobs and AoE them down making sure to manage to avoid and mitigate all the mechanics the mobs do (Shadow Slash, Armor Shatter, Archer AoE).
Once you’ve killed all the Khajiits, you will come up on a pull that will consist of a few Ogre Brute, an Ogre Shaman, and a new mob a Flesh Renderer.
The Flesh Renderer is highly dangerous because he does a large radius AoE knock-back that puts a bleed on you and snares you whilst he is screaming. In order to stop him from screaming simply interrupt him. The thing about the Ogres is that their mechanics are on the same timer so at the same time the Shaman starts his channel the Renderer will do his scream. In combination, not handled properly, can be a highly dangerous situation.
There are a few ways to deal with this trash pack that you will ultimately have to decide on. I would have to say the least dangerous way for most will be to have one tank take everything but the Ogre Shaman, have the other tank take the Shaman and then take it away from the Flesh Renderer and other mobs and burn it down and then AOE all the other mobs down.
The other way you can do this is by have someone who can perma interrupt the Flesh Renderer and to stack and AoE them down. Basically you go in, you have your tank aggro Shaman and bash interrupt him into the pillar they will be next to while making sure to kill the Ogre Brutes with your AoE so that the Shaman heal doesn’t do excruciating amount of damage to your raid and then AOE down the Shaman and Renderer while he is being perma interrupted (bashing over and over). It is dangerous because if your tank runs out of stamina the Renderer will do his knockback while your raid is right next to him and he will be enraged so it is extremely important in this method to make sure to constantly keep him interrupted.
After this pullm you have another standard Khajiit pack, focus the Sun Eater by the brazier at the left of the base of the hill by the pillar. Tanks should be stacking mobs while this is happening. After Sun Eater is dead kill the rest of the trash, and move onto the second loot event we like to call the Gauntlet.
The Gauntlet
This is going to be the second loot event (chest) in Vet Maw, luckily it doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen mechanically already within the trial so we have that to our advantage. The important thing to remember about this is we know how to deal with the individual mobs its just kill order that we need to decide upon.
As you are approaching this event you will be heading down a hill to an open area, immediately take a left off the hill and to the left there will be a cave (Pictured). Shortly after you enter the cave two Ogre Brutes will spawn with an Ogre Shaman.
Kill those Ogres and have your other tank taunt the Flesh Renderer that spawns near the big golden gate and take him to the next priority spawn point. Kill the Flesh Render and then shortly after kill the Sun Eater which should spawn on top of you. When the Sun Eater is dead urgent priority adds are down and you just need to stack and AoE the rest. However you do need to hurry as this Gauntlet is on a timer so if you don’t kill the adds in the wave you are in the next wave may spawn while you are still dealing with the adds from the prior wave. After the second wave there will be two Renderer’s and an Ogre Shaman, pull the shaman away, get him down and then kill the Renderer’s (ideally near the next Sun Eater Spawn). Once you’ve killed the Renderer’s a Sun Eater will spawn… Have one of your tanks taunt the shaman and put him near the Renderer to simultaneously get the Sun Eater and the Shaman down but priority focusing the Sun Eater. Once both are down move to where the tank has stacked up the rest of the mobs in the wave, AoE them down and prepare for the final wave of adds. Once those adds are down go to the base of the hill next to the torch and kill the Sun Eater there, behind you there will be another so make sure to kill that after and then AoE down the final adds in the gauntlet.
Skinrai & Vashai
AKA The Twins
Arguably the most mechanically intensive fight in the Trial, Vashai & Skinrai the Khajiit twins.
The theme of this fight is polarity sort of a yin and yang type fight mechanically, where everything you need to do is opposite in color otherwise you won’t do damage, you may blow up your friends and plenty of other fun activities. So the first and most important mechanic is…
So those are all of the main mechanics but the really important thing about this fight is that you execute on them near flawlessly. To avoid redundancy I am only going to go over the first full rotation that CSH does. Everything else is pretty much the same going through the fight you just need to execute on it.
Walk-through– We start everyone on the dark boss except the second tank. Engage Vashai and burst him down as much as possible. It’s questionable to use ultimates here, personally I don’t but a Aggressive War Horn to start is good nonetheless. After a few seconds, the boss will start channel the initial color assignment, you will need to learn the timing on this otherwise you will end up wiping your group time and time again to an imbalance in the mechanics scales. In order to prevent the wipe you need five of your raid in close proximity to each boss plus each tank on a separate boss. The candles in the center of the room have nothing to do with the color assignment. After you have colors assigned the tanks will need to switch boss aggro (they should taunt the other boss before color assignment happens so he gets there quicker) because the six in close proximity of the Light boss will be assigned the light color and therefore cannot DPS the light boss so they will need the tank to get the dark boss so they can DPS effectively. Shortly after the tanks have swapped bosses adds will spawn, chain the dark adds as close as you can to the dark boss and AoE them down, at the same time the light boss tank should be taunting the light adds so they will aggro on him and can be AoE’d down as well (of course when there is only one add spawning at a time don’t worry so much about AoE’ing him just single target cleave him so you get the boss down faster).
A little while after the adds have spawned the color swap mechanic will happen, don’t panic, just follow theimage heretraffic paths I will include below and ensure you are not running into anyone of the opposite color. Once you’ve all made it to the appropriate sides you need to switch to, without blowing anyone up I hope. Continue DPSing the boss until he does his “Split” mechanic and then adjust as needed to survive the mechanic (by either staying on the side you are on and continuing to DPS your boss or swapping to the other side follow the correct clockwise path). Once you are on the appropriate side continue DPSing the boss while he is stunned. After the scream noise everyone in the raid will be unassigned and if needed you can swap people around but I would advise against this (the reason you would want to swap is if a side didn’t have chains… If you do swap you need to make sure there are 6 and 6 on each side of the room in close proximity to the boss like in the beginning otherwise your raid will be assigned colors you don’t want them to be assigned and potentially wipe your group). While the color are being assigned when the bosses are channeling the tanks will taunt the opposite boss of the side they are on position him in the starting position and continue on throughout the fight going through cycles with increasingly more adds… the adds spawn like so… 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, and 4 until you kill the bosses so you will get 2 single add spawns 2 double, 2 triple, and then you will get 4 adds for as long as the fight continues on.
Panthers + Second Gauntlet
After defeating the second boss you will head up a ladder and continue on through the trial. Heading through a golden gate you will see two massive panthers.
Mechanically they function in the same way the archer panthers do where they will mark someone and then hunt them down until they die or they decide to change target. It’s a good idea for everyone to have a source of major expedition such asspeed potionor dodge rolling with a bow for the Hasty Retreat passive, so that when you engage them and they start chasing you you can outrun your death. Engage the panthers focusing one down whilst the two people who get marked kite them. You can use the ramps as a safe way to LOS them so they slow down a bit, just be careful not to get stuck on the ghost that will spawn up there. Once you’ve dealt with the hulking panthers there will be two events you can engage, I would recommend starting on the left side as it is probably the harder one and if you wipe you will have to do less over (if your raid wipes everything resets even the giant panthers). Once someone pulls the left chain the Khajiit mobs will spawn and you will need to deal with them how you would any Khajiit pull, tank everything away and then stack it (excluding the Sun Eater) and focus down the Sun Eater immediately. Once Sun Eater is done AoE the rest down. The next two spawns (three for each lever) will have two Sun Eaters pick one to focus down first then focus down the other and AoE everything else down. Once you’ve gotten through the left lever you’ll need to complete the right event to continue on through the trial, luckily this is the easier of the two and shouldn’t give you much trouble just follow kill priority and AoE everything else down.
This hallway has got to be one of the most annoying things in the trial, and it should have its own loot event!
It is just like any trash pull but with a bit more flavor in the mix. In this hallway there are added Cursed Monks otherwise known as Kamikaze Cats who will run up to you and explode on you when in close proximity for insane amounts of damage. In order to alleviate this it is a good idea for the stamina DPS to runRazor Caltrops. Ideally you want about two Caltrops to cover most of the area but three isn’t going to hurt either, especially when they can get negated. If you look up on the left and right sides of the ceiling you can see the there will be sections illuminating that will determine where these Kamikaze Cats spawn from.. So that can also help you deal with them as well. Other than that it’s going to be business as usual with the add killing focus the Sun Eaters first then AOE down any remaining leftover trash. I will include maps of the spawn to make it easier to deal with.
AKA Lord Warden Rehash
After all that you have finally reached the final boss. At first he can be very challenging but once you understand everything he is one of the easier bosses in the Trial. And probably the most fun out of all the bosses.
Walkthrough– Start the tank on the northernmost pad and have the tank aggro, start DPSing the boss and make sure you are not on the middle pad when he stomps it, otherwise you will die, he will then pull to the pad the tank is on. He may or may not do a gun, just deal with that if it happens. Eventually he will stomp the pad make sure you aren’t on it otherwise you’ll get one shot, and move to the next pad (clockwise rotation). Now you are at pad 2 and pad 2 just so happens to be a hulk pad, so have your off-tank grab the hulk and position him in a spot where you’re able to cleave that boss and focus the hulk down making sure to bash the boss and hulks interruptible mechanics. Once the hulk is down (or you have left the pad with the hulk) you need to send 2 people into the back room to do back room while your raid continues to take down the boss whilst avoiding any meteors, knock-backs, and times bomb happening in this phase. Eventually you will continue to next pad, you may or may not have your back team with you depending on how fast they were. A hulk will spawn from center, just handle it in the same way you have before. Damage will be lower on this hulk if you had a slow back room so you may need to have the main tank aggro the hulk before the off-tank gets his armor shatter. By now you should have transitioned to the next pad with either a dead hulk or dying hulk. Your backroom team should leave just as or a little bit after the boss has transitioned to the next pad, making sure to have cleansed their curse before reentering the backroom. Rakkat in a group with most of their debuffs will be at 45-55% about the time your back room is finishing. Once again the boss will transition to the next pad (hulk pad), kill the hulk while cleaving the boss. If the boss is at or under 35% when he leaves this pad your raid should be able to burn the boss into execute before you get wiped by not doing backroom so hit him like you mean it! There will also be a new mechanic introduced on pad 7 we call big orbs (or just orbs for short) remember how to deal with them and continue burning boss into execute (he goes into center at 13% unless he is casting a mechanic). Once boss is in center you will need to drop mitigation on him and continue to burn him until death! There will be little orbs (on the small pads) you need to collect that give him resistances so you should assign one DPS each for pads 1-4 have one of your tanks take pad 5 and assign 2 more DPS to pad 6 and 7… once you get take an orb you will be cursed so it is important to have some sort of ability to sustain your hp, be it a shield, heal, or defensive ability. A little tip too for execute… you can take the orb before it even shows up you just need to learn to time it properly this way the boss gets virtually no up time on his additional resistance and will die faster.
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