The Soul of the Creator (Savage)

The Soul of the Creator (Savage), commonly called A12S, is the last of four Savage difficulty raids that were added in patch 3.4: Soul Surrender. It can be unlocked by completing the quest Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Retells Your Story by the Wandering Minstrel in Mor Dhona.

The minimum ilvl to enter this fight is i255, but can be ignored when queuing with a full party.

Phase 1: Alexander Prime (100%-79%)

Alexander Prime's Abilities:

• Divine Spear: Magic based cleave dealing significant damage.
• Punishing Heat: Magic based tank-buster dealing massive damage.
• Blazing Scourge: Magic based attack targeting two players hitting them a total of three times for major damage; one followed by a short pause, and then the next two in quick succession.
• Incinerating Heat: Magic based attack targeting a healer with a large arrow over their head. Must be soaked with other party members. A minimum of 4 people is required to survive the damage.
• Mega Holy: Magic based attack dealing massive raidwide damage
• Gravitational Anomaly: See below.
• Sacrament: Attack dealing heavy magical damage in a plus sign shape stemming from Alexander's cardinal directions. Inflicts Damage down and Healing down on hit if you manage to survive.
• Radiant Sacrament: Attack dealing heavy magical damage to anyone standing outside Alexander's hitbox. Inflicts Damage down and Healing down on hit if you manage to survive.

Pull Alexander Prime and face him away from the party, as he will shortly attack with Divine Spear, cleaving in front of him. He will follow this by channeling Punishing Heat, and then follow up with another Divine Spear. This is fairly heavy damage on the tank, so you may want to use an invuln skill like Holmgang, Hallowed Ground, or Living Dead so your healers can get off their openers before worrying about damage. Alexander will then follow up with Blazing Scourge, targeting two DPS. During this attack, Alexander will also start channeling Incinerating Heat, which should be shared between all members of the raid not targeted by Blazing Scourge directly behind Alexander. This is then followed by 2 Mega Holies in succession, dealing significant amounts of damage to all players, having to be heavily mitigated.

Gravitational Anomaly:

Gravitational Anomaly will place many small dots in the arena in a set pattern, and underneath a few players. (Gravitational Anomaly will never place a dot under the player with aggro.) These dots will then quickly grow into a larger AoE, and then will deal lethal damage to any players standing on them, and inflict them with a Damage Down + Infermity. The following is a diagram showing all areas affected by gravitational anomaly:

The gravitational anomaly circles may rotate about the center of the arena, but they will always follow this pattern.

As shown in the diagram, as long as no circles are baited near the center, the center will always be safe. Your party may decide to bait Gravitational Anomaly away from the middle in order to trivialize this mechanic.

During Gravitational Anomaly, Alexander will also begin to channel either Sacrament or Radiant Sacrament. Sacrament is an attack that shoots out beams from Alexander's front, rear, and flanks, meaning you must dodge it by moving toward one of his corners. Radiant Sacrament is less obvious, and must be dodged by moving into Alexander's hitbox.

Sacrament Diagrams

Blue areas are where Alexander fires his areas, which you want to avoid.

Purple areas are where Radiant Sacrament will hit you, so the only safe spot is inside the boss's hitbox.

For this reason, I'd recommend pulling the boss at angle, such as where you can easily rotate to the middle and dodge the incoming Sacrament. It would somewhat look like this:

This allows for the party to circles away from the middle without losing any uptime/positionals. It also leaves the party in an optimal position to dodge the incoming Sacrament.

After Gravitational Anomaly + Sacrament/Radiant Sacrament is resolved, Alexander will cleave once more, and finish off with a Punishing Heat on the tank. Alexander can be pushed into his next phase at any time after his HP hits 79%, or when he finishes his rotation.

Phase 2: Adds Phase

Alexander's add phase consists of three phases, each containing different types of enemies.

Wave 1:

• Arrhidaeus's Lanners:  Fairly straightforward enemy, has no special abilities and will only perform physical auto-attacks on it's target.

A total of 8 Arrhidaeus's Lanners will spawn on the east and west sides of the arena, 4 spawning on each side. Have each tank grab one set of four and drag them toward a cardinal direction in the map, to make sure ground AoEs will still affect the next wave.  These only do physical auto-attacks, so simply burn them down as fast as you can.

Wave 2:

• The General's Wings: Ignores enmity table. Will only deal damage via Almost Holy, a magic-based attack dealing raidwide damage. After every successful Almost Holy, the enemy will buff itself with a stack of Magic Damage Up, doubling the amount of damage Almost Holy does.

Four General's Wings will each spawn at the cardinal directions of the map. Because each successive Almost Holy does double the damage, you want to burn them down one at a time as soon as possible. You can either focus them one at a time and moving along clockwise, or (if DPS is high enough) have two groups of four each burn down two different General's Wings.

Wave 3:

• The General's Might: Spawns at the West side of the arena, and must be tanked. Does physical auto attacks, as well as Smash, a tankbuster with no cast time dealing significant physical damage that must be mitigated. After every Smash, the Might will gain a stack of Physical Damage Up, making Smash deal significantly more damage.
• The General's Time: Spawns at the East side of the arena, and must be tanked. Deals physical auto-attack damage, as well as Half Gravity, a magic-based tankbuster dealing significant damage that must be tanked. After every Half Gravity, the enemy will gain a stack of Magic Damage Up, making Half Gravity deal significantly more damage.

I'd recommend having a Warrior tanking the General's Might because of their usage of Storm's Path, and a DRK/PLD tanking the General's Time. (In a DRK/PLD composition, You'd likely want the PLD tanking the Might and the DRK tanking the Time because of their aptitude mitigating respective damage types). Because of the very quick increase in damage dealt by Half Gravity, you want to burn down the General's Time first, ideally killing him before the fourth Half Gravity is cast. Afterwards, quickly burn down the General's Might before Alexander appears to cast his ultimate. This is a fairly lenient DPS check, but tanks are taking substantial damage making this more of a tank/healer check.

After both adds are defeated, or a set period of time has passed, a huge Alexander will appear in the north of the arena, and begin casting Divine Judgement. This ultimate deals massive magic-based damage to the entire raid, which must be mitigated by the use of a Tank Limit Break 3 at the very minimum, with more mitigation needed at lower gear levels. After this ultimate attack is resolved, Alexander will move into his next phase.

Phase 3: Temporal Stasis

Alexander will appear in the middle, facing south and begin by channeling Chronofoil. This will cause Alexander to grow wings, and the floor pattern to change. He will have the ability to use all previous moves in phase 1, plus a few more.

After Chronofoil is resolved, Alexander will mark all players with one of four debuffs, and begin channeling Temporal Stasis. Here are the following debuffs:

• House Arrest: Two players will be tethered together by a red and green tether, and will be targeted for Plaint of Surety. When Plaint of Surety is resolved, they must be together in one spot, or die.
• Restraining Order: Two players will be tethered together by a blue tether, and will be targeted for Plaint of Surety. When Plaint of Surety is resolved, they must be separated by a distance that is at least half the length of the arena, or die.
• Defamation: Players marked with this debuff will be targeted for Plaint of Obloquy, an attack that will affect them and all players in a very large AoE around them (Roughly the size of the whole arena if the target stands in the middle of the arena). This attack will deal significant magic-based damage and inflict all players affected with Magic Vulnerability Up.
• Shared Sentence: Players marked with this debuff will be targeted for Plaint of Solidarity, a small aoe dealing magic-based damage to its target and players in a small AoE around them. If the marked player is the only one hit by this attack, they will die. Also inflicts all players with Magic Vulnerability Up.

When Alexander finishes channeling Temporal Stasis, all members will be inflicted with Temporal Displacement, stopping all movement and pausing the duration of all buffs on players. Because time is effectively stopped, players must position to fulfill debuff requirements before Temporal Stasis finishes casting. Because of the Magic Vulnerability Up debuffs inflicted by Defamation and Shared Sentence, one player cannot be hit two of any, creating somewhat tight positioning. Alexander casts Temporal Stasis a total of 2 times throughout the fight, each Stasis giving set debuffs for set roles, leading to different strategies for each specific Temporal Stasis, listed below.

First Temporal Stasis

Tanks will only get Restraining Order or House Arrest. The main tank will always go to DA, The off tank will go to DA if they have House Arrest, or will go to B if they have Restraining Order.

Healers will only get Shared Sentence. Therefore, they will always go to DC, regardless of debuffs.

DPS: 3 DPS will get Defamation, and 1 DPS will get Shared Sentence. 3 of the DPS should have an assigned position {A, B, or C}, and one of the DPS should be a floater. The DPS with Shared Sentence should go to DC, standing with the healers.

Immediately following Temporal Stasis, Alexander will follow up with a Gravitational Anomaly + Sacrament/Radiant Sacrament combo, very similar to in phase 1. This will immediately be followed by a Mega Holy. Because of how spread out the party is, and damage done from Temporal Stasis hasn't been able to be healed yet, I'd recommend  mitigating the Mega Holy after Sacrament, and having your party quickly collapse to the middle after dodging and use oGCD heals to hit everyone (i.e. Indomitability, Swiftcast, Lightspeed). This is not as imperative when facing Radiant Sacrament, as your party will have already collapsed in the middle to avoid it.

Alexander will then begin inflicting heavy magic-based damage in the form of Divine Spear, into a Punishing Heat, followed up by another Divine Spear. Alexander will then begin to cast his second Temporal Stasis.

Second Temporal Stasis

Tanks will get either Defamation, House Arrest, or Restraining Order. The tank will go to B if they have Defamation or Restraining Order, or will go to DC if they have House Arrest.

Healers will only get get either Defamation, House Arrest, or Restraining Order. Healers will go to A if they have Defamation, or will go to DC if they have House Arrest or Restraining Order.

DPS: 2 DPS will get Shared Sentence, and the other 2 DPS will be connected via Restraining Order or House Arrest. Each of the two DPS with Shared Sentence will go to either DA or DC each. If inflicted with House Arrest, both DPS will go to DA.  If inflicted with Restraining Order, one tethered DPS will go to DA, while the other will go to DC.

The same rotation done after the first Temporal Stasis is repeated, except he will do the other type of Sacrament after Stasis resolves (i.e Sacrament if Radiant Sacrament was done after the first Temporal Stasis). When it is completed, Alexander moves into Timegates.

Phase 4: Timegates & Judgement Crystals

After Alexander teleports to the middle at the end of Phase 3, Alexander will begin channeling Timegate, summoning 4 portals in the Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest points in the Arena, and send four adds into them. The adds sent into the timegates will be slightly modified versions of the General's Wings, the General's Might, and the General's Time. Here are the main differences:

• The General's Wings will not gain Magic Damage Up after casting Almost Holy.
• The General's Might will not gain Physical Damage Up after using Smash, and Smash now has a cast time. Smash still does significant damage, likely not survivable by non-tank players.
• The General's Time will not gain Magic Damage Up after casting Half Gravity, and Half Gravity will only deal damage equal to 90% of the target's Maximum HP. Half Gravity also now affects all players in a short AoE around the target.

When a player steps into a timegate, the timegate will disappear and the player will be transported to an outside area where they will fight one of these adds. The add fought is determined by the position of the timegate the player walks into. When the add is defeated, players are able to jump to another player's area to assist them in killing their add.

Because there are only 4 timegates, you will have to split your party into two groups, one that goes into timegates to defeat the adds, and another which will remain outside to deal with Judgement Crystals. When selecting which healer will go into timegates, keep in mind that there will be significant mitigation needed for the outside group.

Inside Timegates

When Timegate is cast, a small bar appears on the duty list labeled Temporal Reconfiguration, which will slowly charge up as the adds sent into timegates stay alive. Note: This bar will charge faster if the adds are not engaged in battle with a player, so quickly attacking the adds as soon as possible will minimize extra charging of the bar. If the bar reaches 100, Alexander will wipe the raid, instantly dealing 99990 damage to all players.

There are 3 main strategies as to who to send into the timegates that I will outline below.

Strategy 1: Standard

Fairly straightforward strategy. Have two of your DPS (Preferably melee DPS) each go to the NE and NW timegates to fight the Wings. Have your Tank go to the SW to fight the Might, and your healer go to the SE to face the Time. When your DPS are finished with their Wings, have them jump over to the healer's gate and assist in defeating the time.

Strategy 2: Limit Breaking Time

I'd recommend this strategy for progression, or for increased healer DPS. Have your tank go to the SW to face the might, one of your DPS to go to the NW to face a Wing, and your healer go into the NE gate to face the second wing. Your other DPS (who must be able to use melee limit break) will go into the SE Gate, and LB the General's Time as soon as possible. If done correctly, the add will be destroyed in one hit and the Player will have received no damage. Have your melee then jump to assist the healer in defeating the second wing, who should be DPSing because of lack of damage. This strategy will result in more room for error in DPS in exchange for a somewhat tight timing for Limit Break.

Strategy 3: 3-man Timegate

This is a strategy for high geared, high skilled players because of a tight DPS check.  It works much like Strategy 2 listed above. Have your tank go to the SW gate to face the might, and your healer go to the NW to face one of the wings. Then have only one melee DPS go into the SE to quickly limit break the time and jump toward the empty area to defeat the wing. Because the second wing will not have been engaged, the Temporal Reconfiguration bar will have filled at a faster rate, making this a fairly tight DPS check. I'd only recommend this strategy for experienced farm groups or speedkills.

After all adds inside timegates are destroyed, players will be teleported outside, and appear in the main arena in the location where time gates originally spawned, depending on their position inside (i.e. if players are on the platform where the Might was fought, they will reappear where the SW timegate was located). When exiting timegates, players will also be granted a 5 second Invulnerability buff, so do not worry about reappearing into  a deadly mechanic.

Outside Timegates

Judgement Crystals do not have to be dropped in this exact order, as long as their final positions are as shown. A player will never be targeted to place a crystal twice in a row, but can be targeted twice in the same phase.

The party outside timegates will be facing Alexander Prime as he casts Judgement Crystal. When Judgement Crystal begins casting, it will mark one player with a red marker over their head. Shortly afterwards, Alexander will summon a Judgement Crystal on that player, dealing significant magic-based damage leaving behind a Judgement Crystal where the player was standing. The crystal will create a small AoE surrounding them which will inflict a heavy when standing inside them. Whenever Alexander enters the Crystal's AoE, the Crystal will begin to pulsate and shortly afterwards deal proximity based magic damage in the form of Tetrashatter. Because of the interaction between the crystals and Alexander, their positioning will be vital in determining Alexander's position for the next mechanic, Inception, where he will go invisible.

The positioning shown in the diagram to the right will be the most optimal to reach all of Alexander's possible locations. After the first crystal drop, which should be dropped at A, Alexander will target the outside healer with an Incinerating Heat, which must be soaked by all outside party members. Because of the small amount of members outside, Incinerating Heat will do significantly more damage to each member, and must be mitigated. After the second crystal drop, which should be dropped at B, Alexander will randomly cast either Sacrament, or Radiant Sacrament. Dodge these as you would in earlier phases. After the third drop, which should be dropped at C, Alexander will attack his target with Punishing Heat. After the fourth crystal drop, which should be dropped at Unmarked, Alexander will move into his next phase.

Note: An easy way to gauge where you should be dropping a crystal is by using the floor pattern. Each crystal should be in the middle nut between two red circles at the edges of the arena.

Phase 5: Inception

Alexander will become invisible and teleport into one of 8 possible locations as shown on the diagram on the right. He will then quickly reappear and instantly cast Sacrament, with virtually no time to react. This is where the previously positioned Judgement Crystals come into play. A pulsating Crystal will inform you that Alexander has entered its hitbox, thereby informing you of his location. The diagram on the left shows both possible locations for Alexander to be once you know which crystal Alexander is near. Knowing this, you can find spots that will always be safe. The spots i'd recommend are the red dots behind the other two crystals, as also shown in the second diagram below. These spots guarantee dodging Sacrament beams, and will minimize damage done by Tetrashatter.

After Sacrament resolves, Alexander Prime will immediately begin channeling a Radiant Sacrament, so all players must run into Alexander's hitbox. This may be a little tight, but know you can begin moving as soon as Alexander throws out his Sacrament beams. Afterwards, Have your main tank drag Alexander and position himself so that he is in the middle of the arena. Alexander will follow up with a Punishing Heat, quickly followed by a Divine Spear, dealing significant damage to the tank. Alexander will then begin channeling Gravitational Anomaly, which works identically to all other times it's seen in the fight. Therefore, the middle of the arena will once again be a safe spot. After baiting Gravitational Anomaly away from the center, have your party collapse into the center as a healer gets marked with Incinerating Heat. After damage is resolved, Alexander will once again cast Inception.

The main difference between first and second inception is the addition of the House Arrest & Restraining Order tethers, and Defamation + Shared Sentence markers. There is a certain pattern to these debuffs, once again:

• A random healer will always be inflicted with Shared Sentence.
• A random tank will always be inflicted with Defamation
• The remaining 6 players will be tethered to each other in pairs with either House Arrest or Restraining Order, chosen randomly.

Because of magic vulnerability up, Defamation and Shared Sentence must be in the opposite safe locations shown in the diagram above. Looking toward the pulsating crystal, the tank marked with Defamation will always go left, and the healer with Shared Sentence will always go right. Because Shared Sentence requires the presence of at least 2 players, have all players with House Arrest tethers also go right, with the Shared Sentence healer. Restraining Order tether partners will have to split up, one going right, and the other left. This can be decided on the fly via call-outs, or with a set priority system.

After this inception is over, Alexander Prime will repeat the rotation done after first rotation and move to the next phase when finished. Drag the boss to the middle of the arena right after the rotation is finished to prepare.

Phase 6: Voids of Repentance

Alexander will begin this phase by channeling Summon Alexander, which will summon a giant Alexander outside the arena. This large Alexander only has two abilites:

• Communion: Giant Alexander will target all 4 DPS with a red tether, dropping puddles where said DPS are standing until six puddles are dropped. Stepping into these puddles, or standing in them for too long while placing them will inflict the player with a very potent bleed, very likely leading to death.
• Holy Bleed: Raidwide AoE dealing very heavy magic-based damage. Because Giant Alexander is not targetable, Holy Bleed can only be mitigated with buffs directly cast on players.

Alexander himself will also gain three new abilities in this phase:

• Void of Repentance: Explained below.
• Holy Scourge: Magic-based tankbuster which can be shared by both tanks. It will mark the tank with a red prey marker over their head, and will hit a total of four times in succession. An alternative to soaking can be to simply use an invulnerability cooldown to get through it.
• Chastening Heat: Magic-based tankbuster which directly follows Holy Scourge. It deals significant damage, and inflicts Physical Vulnerability Up to its target. This attack cannot be soaked, so make sure the second tank is not hit.

Soon afterwards, Alexander will channel Void of Repentance, which will create two large purple pools across from each other on the arena. A player must be standing inside the puddle after a short amount of time, or the puddle will explode, dealing raidwide magic damage and applying Damage Down and Infirmity(?). Instead, the puddle will shrink, and the player inside will be inflicted with Magic Vulnerability Up, and Healing Potency Down. Because of this, your DPS and tanks will be responsible to soak the puddles. For each time the puddle shrinks, it will deal more damage to the player standing inside, which leads me to recommend to use your DPS to soak puddles first, and your Tanks to soak them last, preferably popping defensive CDs. During the first set of voids, Giant Alexander will not tether players with Communion, simplifying the phase significantly. The boss also does not cleave, so you can keep the boss in the middle, with the voids being to the front and back of Alexander.

Shortly before the third puddle soak, healers will be marked with Incinerating Heat. Because of the Magic Vulnerability Up inflicted by puddles only lasting 10 seconds, the players who first soaked puddles will be able to soak Incinerating Heat with the healers. After this, Giant Alexander will use Holy Bleed. This is a very intense healing check, so be very mindful of mitigation and topping the party off before damage resolves. Alexander will then follow up with a Holy Scourge + Chastening Heat combo. Because of the Physical Vulnerability inflicted by Chastening Heat, the offtank must provoke during the Chastening Heat cast. Be wary that Holy Scourge will change targets if provoked too early. Have this tank pull Alexander toward the wall, to the position of where a void previously had spawned. Every void set onward will spawn 90 degrees off the previous one. For this reason, dragging the boss where a void last spawned will position you perfectly for the next set.

The second Void of Repentance onwards is significantly more complex than the first. Giant Alexander will be tethering the four DPS with Communion. Alexander will also begin charging Sacrament, which will go off near when the 3rd communion puddle is laid. Because of the complexity of this phase, the movement is very strict for the DPS. Shown below is a diagram of roughly where the DPS should be placing puddles in order to successfully complete this mechanic.

Melee will soak the puddle as they are placing the third puddle, and ranged will soak the puddle shortly after they've placed the fourth puddle. Remember that melee will have to stack with healers afterwards for Chastening Heat, and tanks still have to soak the third puddle set. After the void puddles are finished, Alexander will repeat the previous rotation of Holy Bleed->Holy Scourge->Chastening Heat.

Alexander will repeat this void set until he dies, or after 13m45s since the start of the fight, in which he will cast another Divine Judgement that cannot be mitigated, serving as a hard enrage for the fight.

Loot

Chest 1:

Chest 2:

Completing the fight also awards an Alexandrian Manifesto – Page 4 straight to all players' inventories.

If you have any comments, thoughts, questions, or concerns, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below.