Kpul D`Vngur  

Maestro of Rancor

• Epic (x4)
• found in the Amphitheater of Rancor

Contents [hide]

Known Info Melee Abilities Healing Abilities Power Drain Abilities Non Melee Abilities Strategy Overview Heal Strategy Tank Strategy DPS Strategy Recovery Team Strategy Encounter Diagram The Stage Encounter Video Raid Groups Key Roles Conclusion

Known Info

Confirmed Information: The Maestro is a bard well, duh, perhaps the giant evil organ gives that away. The tuning fork must be active to stop Kpul from gaining immunity to a myriad of damage types. A tank change occurs every 36 seconds from the start of the fight. DPS is at range and must be mindful of Discordant Muse or die like dogs. Discordant Muse and Chains of Rancor must be cured fast and the fight requires a minimum of three tanks dancing The Macaranea while jousting Kpul's Aria.

Percentages below are roughly correct; they of course vary with every parse.

Melee Abilities

• Piercing 79%
• Focus 14%
• Crushing 7%

Healing Abilities

• Healing Tones 97%
• Singing Strike 3%

Power Drain Abilities

• Rancorous Aria 66%
• Tone of Rancor 11%
• Sonnet of Pain 23%

Non Melee Abilities

This guy has more special effects than Madonna's last album, most of which are inconsequential but the ones that really matter are listed below.

• Healer Curse
• The basic gist of this is, when a healer gets the curse it must be self cured or cured by another healer if cure curse is down, or you do damage to your group when you heal anyone.

• Chains of Rancor (36 second timer)
  
  Chains of Rancor
• 360 degree
• Dmg type - Crushing
• This is curable and very important to take care of because of the frequancy of it and Discordant Muse, tanks and rogues should carry cure trauma potions so they can cure themselves if they get stuck by Chains just when they need to joust Aria.

• Rancorous Aria (36 second timer)
• 360 degree 20 meter range
• Dmg type - Focus
• This effect should not be an issue for any other raid member other than healers and tanks who have to move into its 20 meter range. Everyone jousts this ability even the tanks. The Maestro will root himself and say, "Time to end this with one fatally melodious aria." At that point, everyone moves back outside 20m with the tanks watching the parser for Aria to hit so they can run back in. ACT can be used to set up a text trigger to give pleanty of warning for this to get everyone out. You can see the raid clearly jousting this effect in the video below.

• Discordant Muse (30 second timer)
  
  Discordant Muse
• 360 degree 0-9, 9-14, 14-75 range
• Dmg type - Magic
• This has to be cured as quickly as possible via potions or healers or the eventual result is instant death from Discordant Tone. This effect has a number of outcomes. It is proximity based damage and an 18575 pt magic resist debuff at any range, but the key fact to remember is do not attack if it is in your detrimental effects window.

• Discordant Tone (timer 4 to 6 seconds after Discordant Muse)
• 360 degree 75m range
• DMG Type - Magic
• This follows six seconds after Muse and is the cure check for Muse. This will kill you if you aren't cured of Muse by the time it hits. This is like Venril Sathir's Toxic Infusion/Fatalasis combo. When a raider is killed by Discordant Tone it will heal the Maestro for up to 5% for each player that dies.

• Sonnet of Pain
• Not a great deal to worry about with this one because like a few other effects this guy tosses out there, it never seems to do notable dmg and the best mitigation is to heal through it. The power drain is very small as well.

Strategy Overview

This strat at base is a very simple tank and joust with one or two crazy twists, one being that the tanks actually have to joust Rancorous Aria and occasionally then have to switch with the other tanks because Kpul will start ignoring them.

The pull starts with the first tank at the location marked in the diagram at "pull spot." Kpul will cast Chains of Rancor on the pull so it is recommended that all dps and non main tank healers start out a ways to avoid the first Chains aoe. Once the first tank is in place, DPS and non main tank healers will move to the area marked in yellow in the diagram below and wait for the first Discordant Muse to hit before they begin ranged DPS. It is important not to move past the 20 meter mark for most of the fight if you need to get in a bit closer do it fast and get back out beyond 20 meters. Also at this point all tanks should be in on the Maestro fighting for aggro. At 36 seconds and every 36 seconds after that a tank swap occurs. This can be timed by setting up a text trigger in ACT to key off of the words "Fighting you". All tanks should lay the hate on thick so one can immediately pick up aggro when Kpul starts ignoring his target

At some point during all this chaos Kpul will say, "Time to end this with one fatally melodious aria." This means that he intends to cast Aria and this can be caught by setting up a text trigger with ACT on the words "Time to end" The raid leader should call an warning for Aria, at which point Kpul will root him self to cast Rancorous Aria, IT IS IMPORTANT NO ONE CAN BE PAST THE 20 METER MARK AT THIS TIME (including the tanks who should be jousting out to avoid Aria.) Kpul on occasion, mostly due to over zealous DPS, will end up in the raid force, if this happens when Aria is called the entire raid must rally to the set of steps to the left and back a ways to avoid a complete raid wipe.

Kpul periodically casts Chains of Rancor and this should be cured with potions if possible.

Heal Strategy

Healing in this fight is interesting, as our Templar puts it, "It's like Whack a Mole." There is a lot of curing in this fight, it is the most important thing besides, you guessed it, healing. If a choice on cure order has to be made the tanks should cured first as they may be jousting the full 20 meters (compared to 2 meters for everyone else) for Aria and not have time to use a cure potion. The oddity about this fight for the healers is the healing curse. As mentioned before, the basic gist of this is when a healer gets the curse it must be self cured or cured by another healer. Its worth mentioning that you can still cure even though you cannot heal when cursed. When you do get cursed you have to interrupt any heals in progress or risk damaging your group. This is a heal through the mob fight.

Tank Strategy

This part is a bit tricky. Every 36 seconds from the start of the encounter Kpul will state "Fighting you is getting me nowhere, time to change things up!" and start ignoring the targeted tank (see the effect screen cap below, you can also see this in the video as a green aura around the tank he is ignoring.) A text triggered timer can be configured in to alert when the swap is eminent and this should be called 10 seconds prior to the effect, during this time the other tanks will step up hate gain just prior to the swap and prepare to pick up Kpul. Rinse and repeat this until Kpul is dead. It is important to note you can still build hate even when your being ignored so just cause your covered in green slime and smell does not mean you get to slack.

Beyond these functional instructions, the fight is all about curing Discordant Muse, Chains of Rancor, and the healer curse; paying attention to your detrimental window to avoid attacking while you have Muse on you and executing a very short 2 meter joust; aggro management meaning, tanks make the aggro and DPS is careful not to rip aggro, nothing new here, the only difference is there is not much room for cowboy antics and being obsessed with your parse in this fight. Nothing too complicated right =D.

DPS Strategy

Ranged DPS. Watch for Discordant Muse and clear target to stop DPS. Try not to move closer than the 20 meter mark especially when Aria is going to hit. Do not rip aggro, if you you must run Kpul back to the tanks or risk him rooting himself in the middle of the raid force when he begins to cast Aria. Stop DPS when Kpul roots himself to cast Rancorous Aria, because the tanks are jousting at this point and hold DPS until the tanks are back in place with Kpul aggro on them. Swipe is recommended for this fight.

Recovery Team Strategy

There is no recovering from messing up this strat....

Encounter Diagram

Maestro Encounter Diagram

The Stage

The Stage Illustration

Encounter Video

Click Here!

Raid Groups

Group Setups

Main Tank	Support Tank	Melee DPS	Caster DPS
Berserker	Shadow Knight	Guardian	Ranger
Dirge	Dirge	Dirge	Troubador
Coercer	Coercer	Illusionist	Illusionist
Warden	Assassin	Brigand	Swashbuckler
Defiler	Mystic	Bruiser	Warlock
Templar	Templar	Inquisitor	Inquisitor

NOTE: All strategies are written up with the group setups used to beat these encounters at the time and while the specific classes used are not required the general roles that they fill are.

Key Roles

The Forker: By the time you're reading this you should be aware of the tuning fork you get as a reward for a quest in Shard of Hate. This item is key to the success of the fight. Learning the timing of this and when to activate it is paramount to success. Every so often Kpul will say "Drop that accursed device" and this is when you need to click the fork. He also puts an arcane effect on anyone with the fork equiped when he says this. This arcane will not let you cast the fork. Its important that the Forker gets cured quickly and uses the Fork as soon as possible. By doing so you disable his ability to gain immunity to random damage types. If you fail, he can become immune to one random damage type for a period of time. These immunities stack up until you cannot hit him with enough dmg to take him down. The choice of class for The Forker is best filled by Troubadour or Coercer types, because they have spell use timing reductions that allow them to use the Tuning Fork more often.

Conclusion

This strat is no more complicated than Nexona or Venril. As with other very complicated strats everyone needs to pay attention to their roles and this will be a simple as dancing a jig on Kpul's head!

	ZAM credits Ghosts of the Jaggedpine & MMO-Strategist for the original information in this guide.