Lihuvim, Principal Architect Strategy Guide for Sepulcher of the First Ones

Last updated on Feb 28, 2022 at 14:16 by Zaxachi 1 comment

Lihuvim, Principal Architect, is the 6th of the 11 encounter bosses of the Sepulcher of the First Ones raid in Patch 9.2 of Shadowlands.

On this page, you can find both a written and video guide for this encounter, along with links to Lihuvim's encounter journal for the various difficulties.

1.

Ready Check Pull Video

2.

Strategy Guide: Quick Version

In the Boss Phase:

  • When several players get circles under their feet, they need to move the side of the raid and stay somewhat close together. Then they need to quickly move away from the motes that the circles drop (Unstable Mote Icon Unstable Mote).
  • If you get marked with an arrow and bigger circle, run next to some of the motes to despawn them when the mark expires (Deconstructing Blast Icon Deconstructing Blast).
  • Position yourself so that the knockback from the boss does not send you into any existing motes (Cosmic Shift Icon Cosmic Shift).
  • Tanks face the boss away from the raid and taunt swap after every cast in the Resonance Icon Resonance combo.

In the Add Phase:

  • Quickly kill one of the adds before they can finish spawning. Prioritize killing the Acquisitions Automa first. The rest of the adds are much easier to deal with.
  • Acquisitions adds fixate someone, and they explode and knock back when they die. Guardian adds do a lot of pulsing raid damage. Degeneration adds spawn in groups and channel damage into random players. And on Heroic, Defense adds reduce enemy damage taken.
  • Make sure to stand in the circle around the unspawned add you are killing to receive a huge damage taken reduction (Protoform Disalignment Icon Protoform Disalignment).
3.

Strategy Guide: Full Guide

Lihuvim has two alternating phases. During the boss phase, you fight the boss alone with some pretty simple mechanics. And in the add phase, you try to kill adds before they can spawn, and have to deal with the ones you do not finish off. The hard part of the fight is when you still have adds active when Lihuvim comes back and starts the boss phase again. We recommend using Bloodlust Icon Bloodlust/Heroism Icon Heroism on pull, because the more boss damage you do, the less potential add phases you have to deal with.

3.1.

Boss Phase

  • Start by pulling the boss toward an edge of the room. Have the tanks face the boss away from the raid while everyone else groups together behind the boss.
  • The boss occasionally puts little circles under several players' feet that explode after a couple seconds, spawning little floating orbs where the explosions happened (Unstable Mote Icon Unstable Motes). These players need to move off to the side of the raid group and drop these orbs, or motes, close to each other. The motes turn into a permanent yellow pool on the ground if anyone runs into them, so move away from them quickly after they spawn and stay away from them.
  • If you get marked with a yellow arrow and bigger circle around you, move next to some of the existing motes so that your circle overlaps with as many of them as possible without running into any. When this mark expires, it despawns any motes within the circle, while also doing a ton of damage to you (Deconstructing Blast Icon Deconstructing Blast). The tanks also need to taunt swap when this goes on one of them.
  • Make sure not to position yourself between the boss and nearby motes, because the boss regularly casts a pushback on the entire raid, and you do not want to get pushed into any motes (Cosmic Shift Icon Cosmic Shift).
  • Tanks stand apart and taunt swap for the first two casts in the Resonance Icon Resonance frontal combo. The first cast (Kinetic Resonance Icon Kinetic Resonance) does Physical damage and increases your Cosmic damage taken. The second cast (Sundering Resonance Icon Sundering Resonance) does Cosmic damage and increases your Physical damage taken. And the third cast is the same as the first. You basically just do not want to get hit twice in a row, and you do not want to tank the boss with the Physical damage taken debuff.
  • When the boss reaches 100 Energy, he becomes immune and starts the add phase.
3.2.

Add Phase

  • The boss starts trying to activate adds in the four corners of the room. You have only a few seconds to kill one of the adds before it spawns. You can see which adds will spawn in which corner during the boss phase, so try to plan out which add you are going to kill during the pull and make your way over to the right corner before the phase actually starts.
  • There are three adds on Normal, four on Heroic, and they can spawn in seemingly any combination.
    • Prioritize killing the Acquisitions Automa before it spawns, because it is the most annoying and potentially dangerous of the adds. It fixates a random player and explodes when it dies, knocking anyone within 40 yards of it back extremely far (Detonation Icon Detonation).
    • Then, on Heroic, prioritize killing the Defense Matrix Automa, because it puts a damage taken reduction on all enemies while it is alive (Ephemeral Barrier Icon Ephemeral Barrier).
    • Then prioritize killing the Guardian Automa, because it does pulsing damage to the entire raid by spawning untargetable sentry orbs (Sentry Fire Icon Sentry Fire).
    • And lowest priority is the Degeneration Automa that spawns in groups. These channel damage into random players, but they do not have much health and can be crowd-controlled with most abilities (Degenerate Icon Degenerate).
  • Make sure to stand in the circle around the unspawned add that you are killing to get a massive damage taken reduction from the massive pulsing damage in this phase (Protoform Radiance Icon Protoform Radiance).
  • If you do not kill an add before it spawns, it spawns with full health, so killing one is a lot better than doing half damage to two.
  • Try to finish off any spawned adds quickly before Lihuvim comes back and starts the boss phase again. This is where the fight can get really hectic, trying to finish off leftover adds while the boss starts doing his regular mechanics again.
4.

Encounter Journal

We have encounter journal pages for each of the four difficulties, which you can access by clicking the links below.

5.

Changelog

  • 28 Feb. 2022: Guide updated with advice from Ready Check Pull
  • 05 Jan. 2022: Guide added.
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