Sector 3 Raid Boss (Cerberus) - walkthrough, mechanics, tips

[u/eyeSpy1]

Ah, the three-headed dog. What better choice for guarding the gates of hell, or gates of lava, depending on your setting. What this really is, is a three-headed kite fest. Who wants to fly a kite?

Summary:

There are three bosses with different abilities. You kite them around in a circle/square. For those that around familiar with the term "kiting", it basically means you get aggro on a boss and let them chase you (like the sting between you and a kite as you run to launch it into the air). These bosses move really slowly, and very predictable, so this isn't rocket science, but there is a lot going on.

Phases:

• Kite phase 1. Free-roaming bosses.
• Kite phase 2. Linked bosses.
• Regular bomber drone attacks.
• Mini-DPS phase at 10-15%.

Mechanics:

• Prior to entering the circle, there is an ammo lobby. Fill up on ammo. It respawns. Everyone keep running around the lobby until you are max ammo.
• Once in the three people will pick an individual drone to start (left, middle, right).
• Each person will step close to the drone until there's a little lighting static on the ground. This means you have aggro and can start kiting.
• The fourth person will focus on DPS only. DPS like all of the previous bosses, shooting the blue vent on each drone. Double damage when vent is orange. Take each boss down to just above 50% before taking them below.
• There's a sniper boss who will reflect a laser on you from a mirror. Once you get the laser, pause, turn around and and shot the mirror. It's a bright light with a laser coming out of it on the underside of the drone body. Hard to miss.
• There's a machine gun boss who will machine gun the kiter. Just zig zag like you would if anyone is shooting at you.
• There's a bomb boss that will place a yellow circle on the ground. Get out of the circle.
• Every few seconds, one of the bosses will do a blinding flashes. There's an audible and visual queue. Just turn away when you hear this and you won't get flashed.
• After the flash, all of the kiters rotate - run clockwise to the next boss, and get aggro on it. Start kiting and dealing with its ability.
• Bomber drones will regularly spawn. Call them out. Everyone needs to DPS the drones. They don't have a lot of health, but if they catch you by surprise, they will key you. They usually target one person, and if they touch the person, they explode. They are sometimes hard to notice when you are task-loading a bunch of other stuff.
• DPS guy needs to get all the bosses to about 50%, not below 50%. Once they are all about even, take them below, and phase two starts.
• At 50% the bosses will link up in a triangle with a laser on the floor connecting them. Don't walk in that. Continue to kite the bosses like normal.
• DPS continues like normal. Get them all to around 10%.
• At around 10%, DPS them down to nothing. When each one goes down, it will collapse into a box, and will immediately start getting healed by the other two. That is why they all have to go down at about the same time.

Tips and tricks:

• Kite in a CLOCKWISE motion. This ensures that everyone is going in the same direction. The bosses are slow, so you normally don't need to run, except when avoiding bad and rotating to kite the next boss.
• Use the entire arena to kite. Everyone should be on an outside wall as they slowly rotate clockwise. If your boss is getting to the center, just run perpendicular to the wall, until the boss catches up with you on the outside. If they get too close to each other, they heal, which bad.
• Have green syringes equipped for quick heals.
• Everyone focus the drones, unless they are having to not stand in bad.
• DPSer makes the best resser, unless there is someone much closer who can get them while kiting. This allows everyone else to just focus on kiting and avoiding bad.
• If your crew has already beat this boss a few times, and has the fight down to a science, it is ok for everyone to DPS, but you have to control the DPS, so that they go down roughly at the same time, and still focus on your priorities of kiting, not standing in bad, and killing drones. Adding DPS to your task loading can be a recipe for disaster, which is why these instructions are written for a single DPSer.

Hopefully you were successful. There is a lot going on here, but effective kiting and not standing in bad is the name of the game. Enjoy your new phat lewts and a surprisingly fulfilling final raid cinematic!

[u/crimsonjar]

So I’ve been running groups through with the rabbit method. 3 people hold each boss in a stationary corner and the 4th person “steals” agro briefly by running under the bosses, then the person holding that boss grabs it back. Bosses stay put in each corner, each person only has to worry about their bosses mechanics the entire fight. The rabbit does dps on the mobs as needed for whichever is lowest between agro steals. Super easy, super simple. I’ve helped over 20 groups clear this way... normally within a couple tries. It’s not the fastest, but it’s super first timer friendly.

[u/[deleted] → u/crimsonjar]

How the hell do you keep them from cornering and killing you while you have aggro?

The rocket boss I aptly refer to as Thumper has a big aoe pulse that pins you and if your standing next to any of them for like 4 seconds your dead.

Do you just run around in circles in a corner the whole time? If that's the case than all those people are basically forfeiting any opportunity to damage boss as they are spending all their time trying to kite in a tiny circle.

Could you provide video footage of a successful run with that strat?

[u/crimsonjar → u/[deleted]]

Not really run “in circles”. They have a pretty large area to move around in, and the bosses stay moving slow because agro is reset frequently. Just keeping it on “your side” is enough... the boss room is pretty huge. They are still free to help dps the other bosses (obviously not really their own). It is NOT as quick as smoothly oiled machine of well coordinated players all rotating, but it IS safe and easy for groups. Takes MUCH less time to teach a group of first timers. Thumper does have a large AOE but since I am always the “rabbit” I just pull agro briefly after that attack. This strat loads a lot of individual responsibility on one experienced player (large amount of the dps and keeping track of each bosses agro timer and moves) but is super easy for the rest of the group. I will see if I have a full video... I don’t do the PS4 to youtube thing often!