Temple of Febe

2 months ago, last modified 2 months ago

Required: Crowd Control
Recommended: Condition cleanses, movement speed reduction (such as , , and )

This Strike Mission always takes place at Daytime.

Cerus is a unique boss, in that any given squad has quite a bit more agency over how the fight plays out than the usual encounter. This is due to the group’s ability to select which of his Embodiments of Sin are dispatched and which are kept around during each split phase; any of them kept alive will power up their specific attack during the boss phases. Certain Embodiments (and their associated empowered mechanics) are much more pernicious than the rest of the pack, however, so groups will generally focus down the same four in every pull of the encounter.

As there is no enrage timer, there are no hard build mandates of any kind in this encounter besides a need to break Cerus’s relatively large defiance bar at the end of each phase, so bring your favorite build! Just keep in mind that the boss has a whopping 53 million health pool on top of each of his Embodiments having just under 2 million each, so you and your squadmates will want to use an optimized squad composition in order to expeditiously clear the fight.

Boss Attacks

Cerus has no auto-attack or any other type of ‘filler’ in his attack sequence. This means he will only—with his defiance bar and final phase as exceptions—attack the squad by activating his sin-themed mechanics, of which there are six.

All of these mechanics play a unique animation for Cerus, have a unique visual telegraph, and will usually play one of up to three associated voice lines. Furthermore, the pattern and timings of the mechanics in each phase are completely consistent for each and every pull of the encounter:

Phases 1 and 2:

Regret Despair Envy Malice Gluttony Rage

Phase 3:

Regret Envy Gluttony Rage Malice Despair

Each split phase will invariably enhance at least one of these six mechanics, which causes each attack to (along with other miscellaneous buffs) increase in size, amount, or both.

Failing most of these mechanics will grant Cerus stacks of the Empowered buff, which increases his damage by 5% per stack for the rest of the fight; having an extreme abundance of these stacks toward the end of the encounter is essentially the only way to fail the fight as the heal pressure on the group will consequently be incredibly high in his final phase.

Crushing Regret

Known as: Greens

Cerus will quickly wave his arms upwards a few times, calling forth a large green circle on a random player in the squad.

At detonation, five players must be in the circle or it will explode for a spike of squad-wide unavoidable damage, Expose all players, and grant the boss five stacks of Empowered.

Upon a successful resolution of the mechanic, players in the circle will still receive moderate damage.

Players should avoid using too many forced movement skills when the Green is on the field; it can sometimes be hard to tell who exactly it spawned on, and if the player chosen is teleporting all over the arena, resolving this mechanic becomes much more difficult!

When powered up, Cerus and his Embodiment will spawn three (smaller) green circles instead of a single circle.

To compensate for this, only three players are required in each as opposed to five for the large variant. Furthermore, a player can count for multiple circles, meaning a minimum of three players only are needed to resolve the mechanic; keep in mind, however, that the damage from all Greens a player is within will still be applied as expected on resolution.

This mechanic, unlike the others, has no associated voice lines, so be on the lookout for Cerus’s hand flapping and the brightly colored Green circle instead.

Wail of Despair

Known as: Reds, Spreads

Cerus will stand up ramrod straight and spawn a red orb of concentrated despair above every player in the squad.

After five seconds, these orbs will drop, dealing moderate damage in a small radius around each player. These orbs also leave behind behind a lingering pool that continues to deal damage and applies to any player who remains inside.

These pools will despawn after being active for 60 seconds.

Unlike ‘actual’ forced spread mechanics in other encounters, the initial orb drop can be evaded, meaning it’s possible for multiple players to stack during this attack if they’re confident in their dodge timing.

In general, though, most players will simply spread out while back stepping away from the boss to avoid any complications. At low amounts of Empowered on the boss, as long as players are not stacked with their Red, players can simply tank the damage from the orb drop as they start moving back to Cerus.

Do not drop any Reds on top the boss under any circumstance, as it makes circling around Cerus while he’s casting Envy much more precarious.

Even performing a very late Dodge backwards for the express purpose of leaving space between a Red and the boss is much better than the alternative!

When powered up, the radius of both the initial orb drop and the pool left behind by this mechanic are doubled; in turn, this quadruples the area each part of the attack covers. This—in addition to the increased area denial to the squad—necessitates a better timed Dodge in order to escape the pool before the first tick of the lingering damage field activates.

Upon casting Wail of Despair, Cerus can say one of the following voice lines:

“You will suffocate.”

“(groans)”

This voice line is split up into two parts; the orb drop (timing-wise) corresponds vaguely with the second groan.

Furthermore, the orbs above players’ heads play a whooshing sound, which gets louder just as they’re about to drop:

Envious Gaze

Known as: Wall, Beam, Envy

Cerus will turn to face a random member of the squad, spawning an arrow telegraph in their direction. He will then spawn a massive wall along the arrow that will perform a full rotation counterclockwise.

The Wall extends to the edge of the arena, and deals moderate damage and corrupts three boons per tick.

While the Wall rotates, Cerus will separately spawn a small circle under himself whose damaging area of effect corresponds with his hitbox indicator.

Before a player is targeted, the squad should be near the boss and stacked tightly to make it easy for every player to get out of the Wall’s path. When dealing with a single Wall (the unempowered mechanic), players should strafe past the clockwise side of the arrow, then rotate in lockstep with the Wall around the boss for a few seconds in order to remain safe for its entire duration.

If at any point one is caught on the wrong side of the Wall, the best solution for this mechanic is to Dodge (or in the worst case, walk quickly) through the center of the boss’s hitbox to get to the ‘correct’ side while avoiding the Wall itself and its nasty boon corrupt.

The Wall’s hitbox, in almost all aspects, is consistent but quite janky:

Its damage and boon corrupt are two separate ‘attacks’.

The boon corrupt cannot be mitigated via standard means, but the damage can.

Its hitbox becomes wider as the player’s position approaches its tip (at the edge of the arena).

Its hitbox does not extend into the center of the boss.

Keep in mind that the (mitigable) damage from the circle under Cerus is active even if the Wall itself doesn’t hit there. This circle does not corrupt boons.

When powered up, Cerus and his Embodiment will spawn a second arrow telegraph a half-rotation away from the one directed at a player. Alongside the original Wall (whose movement is unchanged), this new arrow corresponds with a second Wall which moves at twice the speed of the original, albeit still counterclockwise.

Once the faster Wall ‘catches up’ with the original, they will merge, leaving only the slower wall to finish a half-rotation before the mechanic concludes.

In addition to the above, both Walls now cause Cerus to steal boons (except for and ) on top of corrupting them.

This is by far the most challenging upgraded mechanic to handle, but there are two solutions (analogous to the ones listed above) for players to avoid getting their boons stolen and taking unnecessary damage:

As the second wall will sweep over the area that was deemed ‘safe’ for the single wall variation, players will instead want to move quickly past the counterclockwise side of the player-directed arrow, and continue rotating around the boss until they’re past the slower wall’s starting point.
- This solution will, visually, look like the squad is getting ‘chased’ by the slower wall.
If caught between the two Walls for any reason (as in the above clip), immediately Dodge through the boss’s hitbox to get out of the fast Wall’s sector of influence.

Upon casting Envious Gaze, Cerus can say one of the following voice lines:

“Run… Run…”

“Do not look away.”

Malicious Intent

Known as: Malice, Adds

Cerus will slam the ground with all of his limbs, burdening a random player with a demonic tether and a 5-second timer above their head.

Once the timer concludes, a Malicious Shadow will spawn at the targeted player’s current position, dealing moderate damage. This Malice will then begin slowly walking toward the boss.

Upon reaching Cerus, the Malice will perform a death animation, after which Cerus will gain five stacks of Empowered and a small amount of .

Although hard crowd control, , , and notably are ineffectual on the Malices, any other soft crowd control effects will work to impede their movement to the boss. is particularly helpful if used as the Malice gets close to the boss, as it makes it possible for the squad to cleave down both Cerus and the add.

As a single player with the mechanic, simply dodging backwards from the boss and letting the Malice spawn a little ways away is often enough to get it immobilized and dealt with.

PUG and less-organized groups tend to ignore this mechanic overall as the penalty for letting a Malice or two reach Cerus is not too great, but if a commander directs the squad to move out with them, follow their call!

Anomalously, when placed at certain positions on the platform, Malices will start walking diagonally at first, but eventually they will right their course and begin pathing toward the boss as usual.

When powered up, three players will be targeted by Malicious Intent, leading to Cerus being Empowered fifteen times over if not dealt with properly. They can be dispatched in the same manner as the normal variant of this mechanic.

Upon casting Malicious Intent, Cerus can say one of the following voice lines:

“I hunger for power…”

“To me, return…”

Malicious Intent also has two audio cues separate from Cerus’s lines.

The generic mechanic blip noise will play for a targeted player:

An odd, pulsating sound will play and get progressively louder as the timer fills up:

Lastly, a targeted player’s screen will display the text “Cerus is drawing out your malice.” and will be dominated by a off-white border.

Insatiable Hunger

Known as: Gluttony, Orbs, Collection

Cerus will prop himself up on his demonic appendages, ravenously eating from both his hands. This act spawns many demonic orbs on the edge of the platform, which will travel in a straight line to the boss.

The small orbs (which can be destroyed or reflected) grant a small amount of if they reach Cerus. The three large orbs, which will only disappear upon contact with a player, will grant Cerus a larger amount of and one stack of Empowered each.

Upon intercepting a large orb, players will gain a stack of Insatiable for thirty seconds, which deals 350 damage per second for each stack.

All players in the squad should rotate around the boss to collect all three large orbs; they will spawn with a staggered, random timing, so good camera movement is recommended to avoid having one slip through the cracks.

If available, moves such as Corrosive Poison Cloud and Feedback can be placed on the boss just as the small orbs are about to reach him; this will mitigate their application and consequently increase the squad’s DPS by a non-negligible amount.

When powered up, Cerus will spawn five large orbs instead of just three. Furthermore, collecting a large orb will now apply a three-minute stack of Insatiable. The strategy for collecting large orbs shouldn’t change much, but one player should not collect more than two or three orbs to avoid an extreme amount of unmitigable ticking damage.

Upon casting Insatiable Hunger, Cerus can say one of the following voice lines:

“I feed…”

The actual voiced line is “I… I feed…”.

“Come to me…”

“(laughs)”

Cry of Rage

Cerus will cry out and begin restlessly drumming his appendages, spawning a large expanding AoE indicator at his feet.

After about 5 seconds, this AoE will explode, dealing massive damage and Exposing any players caught inside.

This attack can be dodged or mitigated with Invulnerability.

The easiest way to deal with Rage is to simply Dodge as the indicator is about to become filled, but if dealing with high ping (which can make dodging via the visual cue difficult) or if already far from the boss, staying outside of its area of effect will work as well.

When powered up, the Rage AoE becomes larger and undodgeable. Without a source of , the squad should prepare for this attack in advance (keeping in mind its place in the boss’s pattern is fixed) and start moving out early.

Upon casting Cry of Rage, Cerus can say one of the following voice lines:

“Back!”

“(screams)”

Petrify

Known as: defiance bar, break bar

Upon reaching his health barriers at 80%, 50%, and 10% HP remaining, Cerus will gain a defiance bar and slowly channel Petrify. If allowed to fully cast, the entire squad will be frozen in place for eight seconds, take high damage, and the boss will heal 20% of his maximum HP back (this heal is affected by Poison). This, in effect, forces the squad to redo most of a given phase again.

Successfully breaking Cerus’s defiance bar will move players on to the next phase of the encounter.

Although not shown in the user interface, Cerus will also continually apply Petrify while tethered to the squad. Petrify is a hidden intensity-stacking effect that reduces players’ movement speed, outgoing strike and condition damage, and skill speed by 10% per stack. Each stack lasts seven seconds.

The only way to mitigate this incredibly debilitating effect is to break his defiance bar as quickly as possible: upon breaking it, two stacks of Petrify will be immediately removed and the rest will time out during the following phase.

Split Phases

During the split phases, the boss is broken up into his six Embodiments: each corresponds with exactly one of the sin-based mechanics outlined above. In order to bring Cerus back into the fray, exactly two of these adds must be defeated during each split while all six activate their mechanics at will.

For each split, the game randomly Empowers one of the two sets of Embodiments, which are distinguished by their cardinal direction:

The eastern set of adds, when viewed from the center of the platform, consists of the Embodiments of Rage, Regret, and Envy.
The western set of adds, when viewed from the center of the platform, consists of the Embodiments of Malice, Gluttony, and Despair.

Whichever set was not Empowered during the first split will be chosen the second time around.

Defeating an empowered Embodiment (one of the three larger ones) will prevent that mechanic from being empowered when Cerus comes back; inversely, keeping an empowered add alive will empower that mechanic during the subsequent boss phase(s).

It is possible (although not at all advisable!) to dispatch the non-empowered adds, but on Normal Mode, this simply lowers the amount of empowered adds available to be killed in that split phase. To be more precise, killing two small Embodiments will boot the squad back out to the boss phase with all three empowered adds alive, meaning all three of their associated mechanics will be empowered for Cerus as well!

Not all of Cerus’s mechanics are created equal, and so the two mechanics in either set that have been deemed the least impactful by the community are the ones that are kept alive—Regret and Gluttony. This is because their potential for failure is low and the amount of Empowered stacks they do add on a partial failure are generally less than the other mechanics. For the mechanics that don’t add any stacks, the amount of forced movement, area denial, and headache that is added by powering them up makes them extremely undesirable, especially compared to the relative ease by which Regret and Gluttony’s empowered versions are resolved.

For both sets of empowered Embodiments, given that one is looking at them from the center of the platform, they are handled identically: kill the Embodiment on the right (Envy or Despair) first, then kill the one on the left (Rage or Malice), leaving the one in the center (Regret or Gluttony) alive. This strategy aims to kill the most troublesome adds in each set before they are able to spawn their mechanics and cause trouble for the squad.

Players should keep their camera facing the center of the arena while attacking the Embodiments, as any of the six can activate their mechanics at any time (without any voice lines to help determine which is active). A fast reaction here can be the difference between dodging out of the way of a Wall on the other side of the arena or getting half your boons corrupted and generally having an awful time. As during the boss phases, players should drop any Reds away from any of the Embodiments, and if targeted by Malicious Intent, players simply need to make sure they’re not near the Embodiment of Malice when the Malice gets dropped.

Enraged Smash (Final Phase)

Once Cerus’s defiance bar is broken at 10% HP remaining, he will immediately transition into his desperation move—Enraged Smash.

He will smash the ground with his appendages every 3 seconds, spawning a platform-wide expulsion of demonic energy soon after. Once he starts smashing, he will not stop until either he dies or the squad does.

This attack can be mitigated by blocking, dodging, or using .

The deadliness of Enraged Smash is entirely dependent on the boss’s Empowered stack count at the time of the phase transition: don’t let your squadmates get too lazy with dealing with Cerus’s mechanics properly in the earlier phases!

At low stacks, it deals a completely negligible amount of damage and can be mitigated with some or incidental healing from the entire squad; at higher stacks (30 and above), it becomes a real threat that requires extra effort from the squad’s dedicated healers to manage.