Temple of Sacrifice (ToS) is the ninth operation in SWTOR, which was added in game update 3.0 along with Ravagers. ToS has as its entire focus the lead up to confronting Revan as the team makes its way through the temple grounds.

Malaphar is the first battle and serves as a relatively easy introduction to the operation in both Story and Hard Mode. Sword Squadron represents a significant step up in difficulty with challenging positioning and coordination checks for players due to many AoE attacks and the timing of running grenades, as well as notable challenges for tanks and healers.

Underlurker raises the bar higher for DPS as the next boss and serves as the overall DPS check for the operation. Underlurker repeats a cycle of mechanics to kill adds, hide behind rocks to avoid death and balancing a (usually buggy) cross mechanic. Bugs with the game's positioning make this fight more difficult than intended in Hard Mode.

The Revanite Commanders represent a bit of a breather after Sword Squadron and Underlurker. Once an even more challenging fight, in 6.0 the Commanders are fairly easy so long as the team has a good strategy for managing adds in the burn phase (usually by having some DPS "tank" adds during burn phase).

Finally, the op concludes with Revan. Revan is exceptionally easy in Story Mode for most groups while being the most mechanic-intensive fight in the game even today in Hard Mode (with 2 more operations and 11 more boss fights introduced since Revan). The fight includes three floors each with separate mechanics. Story Mode players will mostly contend with spreading out to HK-47's grenade attacks on the first floor and successfully platforming up to the second floor. Hard Mode players will have many, many mechanics to learn.

Overall, ToS is a very fun op with interesting mechanics and coordination. The op is a bit on the easy side for Story Mode for groups with decent DPS, with the possible exception of Sword Squadron. In Hard Mode, most solid progression groups should be able to clear the first four bosses relatively quickly though Revan remains arguably the high water mark in terms of time required to clear due to how many mechanics need to be memorized and performed successfully.

IMPORTANT - The information below is summarized and intended to be an easy quick-reference guide for players who need a quick reminder heading into an operation. As time allows, I intend to add separate pages with detailed boss fight guides for each fight.

New to Operations? Check out this guide from Swtorista to learn the basics about how to join an operations group.

Malaphar is the first boss of the operation and provides a very easy warm up to introduce players to the operation. He is extremely easy in Story Mode and is quite easy in Hard Mode as well.

The primary mechanic involves the circle surrounding Malaphar. Any players inside it gain stacks of Savagery (red debuff) around once every 5 seconds or so. Each stack of Savagery increases your damage dealt by also increases the damage taken. Standing outside the circle grants stacks of Exhaustion that reduce outgoing damage.

A player can only have stacks of either Savagery or Exhaustion and too many stacks of Savagery can cause deaths due to the increase in incoming damage. DPS should step outside the circle when stacks get too high (around 5-10 depending on healers) until the red Savagery stacks change to a blue Exhaustion stack then re-enter the circle.

Healers are not affected by Exhaustion in Story Mode so should stand outside the circle to avoid taking extra damage from Savagery.

Malaphar follows the tank with aggro. If the tank gets too many stacks of Savagery, a tank swap is needed to let the tank get out of the circle to cleanse their stacks.

Malaphar does AoE damage via Hammer Smash approximately every 5 seconds. This AoE damage is very low at low stacks of Savagery and deals much higher damage as stacks reach 10+.

Adds spawn 30s into the fight and every 50s afterwards. Tanks can swap at this point to cleanse stacks if desired.

Malaphar targets a random player with Spear Toss periodically (usually after adds spawn). The player should move out of the red AoE and if possible kite the red AoE onto the adds to kill them.

Sword Squadron is a big step up in difficulty from Malaphar and to many groups will be the toughest boss in Temple of Sacrifice in Story Mode. It demands at least one highly skilled tank, DPS that can swap targets as directed while avoiding multiple AoE damage mechanics, one player to watch the clock and "run bombs" and among the higher healer check requirements in SWTOR in Story Mode.

The basic overview of the fight is that Unit 1 and Unit 2 must be killed within 30s of each other to avoid an enrage wipe. The main mechanic involved is Unit 1's Emergency Shielding, which causes Unit 1 to add a shield every 60s (starting 30s into the fight). The team can only break these shields with bombs that have to be manually run over to Unit 1. The team then has to coordinate running bombs and balancing DPS to kill both walkers nearly simultaneously while balancing other mechanics.

The DPS strategy for this fight depends on the strategy for running bombs to deal with Emergency Shielding on Unit 1 (see below). That said, the usual strategy is to keep DPS on Unit 1 until around 10-15% health, swap to Unit 2 and burn to 5-10%, then coordinate the timing to kill Unit 1 first (after dropping shields again) then kill Unit 2.

Unit 1 has Emergency Shielding that applies a shield 30s into the fight and every 60s thereafter. These shields can stack. The shields can only be removed with bombs located in the back right of the area (just right of the large shield door). There are 5 bombs available. A player must click on a bomb to pick it up and run under Unit 1 to apply the bomb and break the shield.

It is important to note that the shield timer is independent of when bombs are used. So if a bomb is used to break shields 50s after a shield is applied, the team will only get 10s of time to damage Unit 1 before another shield goes up.

Therefore the main strategy usually consists of the bomb runner timing it so they pick up a bomb early and run to Unit 1 a few seconds after each shield goes up. This provides the group nearly uninterrupted DPS time on Unit 1 until its health reaches 10-15% and the team swaps to Unit 2. If extra time is left before another bomb, the tank and 1 DPS player may burn Unit 1 lower to around 5% or so.

Unit 2 is untauntable. Therefore, it is important that the Unit 2 tank open the fight to establish initial aggro and that all DPS begin on Unit 1. If any DPS start on Unit 2 and pull aggro it is not possible for the Unit 2 tank to regain aggro with a taunt.

Unit 1 tanking. The tank should face Unit 1 to the left (away from the middle) as Unit 1 will use Mega Blast (conal attack). Unit 1 also targets the tank with Rapid Fire frequently, which places blue circles under the tank's feet that deal very high damage. The tank should watch for this and move constantly until the mechanic ends to avoid being killed by the blue circles.

Unit 2 tanking. As noted, Unit 2 is untauntable. The tanking is very straightforward and mostly involves dodging various colored circles. Unit 2 will periodically swap to target the Unit 1 tank, for which it helps greatly to call out so healers know the Unit 1 tank will need extra healing.

Move Huge Grenade away from group. Huge Grenade targets a random non-tank player every 30s. It places a huge white AoE on the player and explodes after around 6 seconds or so. The player who gets it should move to the front (against the shield door) or the back (into the open grass) so no one else takes damage. This damage can be cheesed relatively easily by various defensive abilities.

Step out of Red Circles. Ground Burst Missile puts red circles on the ground every 8-10s. These deal moderate AoE damage if not avoided and go out frequently. Dodging these is a key to keeping damage taken manageable for healers.

Other non-key mechanics to consider:

• • Targeting Droid: Spawns every 50s under Unit 1. It casts Laze Target on someone (usually Unit 1 tank) and applies Laze Target debuff forcing Unit 1 to attack that player. Kill immediately to avoid a non-tank getting targeted. If possible, tanks using an AoE taunt is helpful to ensure they get the debuff if anyone does.

  • Rolling Mines: Spawn every 45s in pairs, they appear as orange circles that move towards a random raid player and explode for damage. Tanks should taunt if possible.

  • Rain of Missiles: Teamwide AoE damage every 20s. Unavoidable.

Strategy

• • Use Starparse Combat Timers to watch timer for shields. The combat timers function is hugely helpful on this fight to know exactly when shields will go up. The bomb runner and op leader at a minimum should employ this functionality to know when to go to grab bombs.

  • Attack Unit 1 until it reaches 15% or sub-20% and a shield goes up. All DPS open up on Unit 1 and attempt to stay on Unit 1 as often as possible. The bomb runner should be pulling off around 15s or so before another shield to retrieve a bomb (time can vary depending on class/utility choices). If any major delays occur, DPS swap to Unit 2 only until the shield comes down. Once Unit 1 reaches 15% health all DPS should swap to Unit 2. If shield comes up at any time below 20% or so it is fine to swap early. Ideally, the team swaps DPS from Unit 1 to Unit 2 with time remaining until a shield goes up. If so, the tank and one DPS can continue damaging Unit 1 down to around 5%.

  • Attack Unit 2 until it reaches 15%. Unit 2 is an easy burn so priority is on managing incoming damage and avoiding standing in any bad circles. The main key is to ensure someone is watching the timer once Unit 2 gets below 30% (see below).

  • Time the kill with dropping shields on Unit 1. The team has 30s after either walker is killed to defeat the other. This is a fairly generous window so is not difficult as long as someone watches the timer. The only potential issue is if the team kills Unit 2, then runs a bomb to drop Unit 1's shields, then another shield goes up before Unit 1 is destroyed and leads to an enrage before another bomb can be run (assuming the team doesn't run out of bombs).

The ops leader needs to balance the time remaining until another shield with Unit 1's health. Depending on the time remaining, either (1) run a bomb early and kill Unit 1 first; or (2) kill Unit 2 and then run a bomb. If there is ANY doubt that killing Unit 2 will not allow enough time, simply pause DPS on Unit 2 and run a bomb to Unit 1 and kill it first.

Underlurker is a simpler fight in comparison to Sword Squadron as it is very predictable. However, it is often viewed by players as just as difficult or moreso than the walkers.

The overall mechanics for Underlurker involve a 50s cycle of mechanics that repeat up to 5 times prior to the enrage. Executing these mechanics depends greatly on having good DPS to kill the adds before needing to hide behind rocks. Teams with good-to-great DPS should find this fight quite easy in Story Mode, while teams with average-to-poor DPS may struggle greatly.

Mechanics to each Cycle

• • DPS Underlurker. The Underlurker itself is a very easy boss prior to all the other mechanics. It deals fairly low damage to the tank via its Hurl/Smash ability every few seconds, is easy to move around and has no special debuffs or big hitting attacks of any kind.

Underlurker Strategy - Maximize burn time on Underlurker and try to use big hitters cooldowns for these short phases.

• • x3 Lurkerlings. The 3 adds spawn in a fixed position along the wall stretching from near the entrance to near the exit. Each add has a jumping attack that deals AoE damage to the entire group and another melee AoE attack. They spawn 15s into the fight and every 50s thereafter. It is important to note that multiple sets of adds can spawn if not killed, making the AoE damage unhealable unless the adds are killed each wave.

Lurkerling Strategy - Pre-assign DPS to kill adds. Have some DPS start at the entrance and work clockwise and others start at the other end. It can also hugely help to have the tank position Underlurker on top of or next to adds so DoT spread and splash damage can help continue DPS'ing Underlurker. Teams with really good DPS can have one DPS stay on Underlurker during these phases.

• • Collapse. Collapse is a 9s channel ability of Underlurker that drops 5 rocks from the ceiling. These are denoted by red AoE circles. Standing in those circles will instantly kill any affected players.

Collapse Strategy - Dodge red circles. As soon as rocks start dropping, players should try to find a nearby rock and start moving towards it for next mechanic.

• • Rage Storm. Underlurker's 7s channel ability that deals very high AoE damage. Only way to avoid Rage Storm is to hide behind the rocks in the green box. Some classes with good AoE defensives can stand out in the Rage Storm without taking too much damage. After Rage Storm ends, the rocks are destroyed and everyone is knocked back and stunned for a second or two.

Rage Storm Strategy - The team needs to be behind a rock as soon as Collapse ends so they are sheltered for Rage Storm. Try to get behind the same rocks if possible so healers can efficiently AoE heal everyone. Any surviving adds should be killed by Ranged DPS during this phase.

• • Devastation. Underlurker will leap to a player then set up a blue cross graphic under his feet. Narrow ends of the cross extend in front and behind the Underlurker and wide ends extend on each side. The cross mechanic is intended to have players stand in each end of the cross to avoid taking damage, but it is also possible in 5.x and 6.x to have everyone stack in the middle and pass the mechanic. Failing the mechanic causes teamwide AoE damage.

Devastation Strategy - Everyone should run to 0.0m distance from Underlurker to pass the mechanic, otherwise doing as much DPS as possible. The team will have around 5s or so after Devastation ends before the cycle begins again with a new wave of adds.

Revanite Commanders are the fourth boss encounter in Temple of Sacrifice and involve three separate bosses in the fight. This encounter has changed greatly from its original launch in 3.0, where it was originally a very challenging fight even in Story Mode and exceptionally chaotic and challenging in Hard Mode. In 5.x and now 6.x boss health has been toned down to shorten the burn phase, which makes it a fun but very manageable fight where DPS is not typically an issue but coordination becomes very important.

The basic structure of the fight is that the team alternates between attacking each of the three bosses (Sano Thrica, Deron Cadoruso, and Lord Kurse) individually. The team has an opportunity to remove about a third of their health each time before they jump back out of the arena. Once each boss has been fought twice (and has around one third health remaining), the team must fight all three at once to end the fight.

Greatly complicating the encounter are the unending waves of adds that spawn from the three doors near each boss. Each door spawns a type of add unique to that boss, two of which have highly dangerous AoE/conal abilities. These adds also continue spawning through the fight, including the individual boss phases and especially the final burn phase.

One quick key note about the adds. They have a debuff that prevents normal interrupts from working to interrupt Conal and AoE attacks. Stuns and knockbacks are effective and should be used consistently to manage adds, as their regular attacks are not dangerous but the AoE / conal attacks can deal very high damage to a team that is grouped up together.

As such, this fight should feel fairly easy and then will feel much more chaotic and challenging at the end. Let's discuss each boss in turn and their adds, and then talk about strategy.

Sano Thrica & Outlaw Revanites

Sano begins from the RIGHT door as you enter the room. Sano has an Energy Reflection Field that reflects 25% of your damage if you are not inside the shield. Thus players need to be inside the shield, which is quite dangerous due to the spawning adds and their conal / AoE attacks.

Sano's main attacks consist of a ranged attack and a conal attack. He also will hit the target with aggro with Disrespectful Kick, which applies a threat debuff making it very difficult to hold aggro until it wears off.

The adds that spawn from Sano's door are Outlaw Revanites. Outlaws have a very dangerous conal called Saturation Fire that has a MUCH LONGER RANGE than its conal telegraph. These are by far the most dangerous adds.

Deron Cadoruso & Mandalorian Revanites

Deron begins from the CENTER door as you enter the room. Deron's primary ability are Tracer Missile and Guided Missile Volley. He spams Tracer Missile on everyone to apply a Heat Signature debuff to every affected player, then uses Guided Missile Volley to deal damage to everyone based on their number of stacks of Heat Signature. Heat Signature can and should be cleansed any time someone gets more than 1 stack.

Deron has a random aggro table and cannot be held by a tank outside the 6s taunt debuff duration. He also jumps around the room periodically (usually with weird rubber-banding that makes life miserable for melee DPS).

Mandalorians are less dangerous than Outlaws as their AoE Death From Above ability has a much more accurate graphic. That said, it still hurts and should be moved out of immediately.

Lord Kurse & Sith Revanites

Kurse begins from the LEFT door as you enter the room. Kurse only has one notable ability in Soaring Smash that has a large purple AoE that deals damage after a short cast (it is reflectable). Otherwise he is less notable/dangerous to the group than Deron (due to the Heat Signature debuff) or Sano (due to the shield making the team group up and vulnerable to add AoE / conal attacks).

Sith are the least dangerous adds because they exclusively deal single target damage. They should be killed outside of burn phase but can be largely ignored during burn phase.

Strategy

• 1. Downtime (~30s): All 3 bosses are out of the arena. Adds will spawn from all 3 doors. Team should DPS down adds and be on the lookout for AoE / conal telegraphs and move out of them asap. Around 10s before a Commander jumps down, he will say something and an ops announcement will indicate who is about to join the battle.

  2. Random Commander (~30s): One of Kurse / Deron / Sano will jump down and engage the team. Adds continue to spawn but should be ignored for the most part (an off-tank can pick them up if they become annoying). All DPS need to be on the boss. Once the Commander is pushed around a third of their health or around 30s, they will jump back up.

  3. Repeat #1 and #2 SIX times: After the team has fought a specific Commander twice and reduced them to around 35-36% health, they will not jump back down until the burn phase. So with two waves of each boss, this leads to SIX solo Commander phases and makes the sixth Commander phase predictable. Note that as soon as that boss is pushed to 35% or the timer expires, the group will immediately move into burn phase. If DPS permits try to assign one DPS in 8m (2 in 16m) to preemptively begin clearing adds before the burn phase.

  4. Burn phase: All 3 Commanders jump down and adds continue to spawn until all Commanders are killed. Burn phase is flexible but the most common strategy leaves Kurse for last and kills Sano and Deron first in either order. Sano is more annoying due to his reflect shield and his aggro drop on the tank holding him, while Deron deals more damage.

My preferred strategy depends on which boss is last going into burn phase. If it's Sano or Deron, I have the DPS keep on that boss and kill him first since they have no downtime to swap targets or reposition. The tanks split off to grab Kurse and Sano. If Deron is being killed first, I usually ask a melee DPS to taunt Sano until the aggro drop, then have the Sano tank hold Sano until its his turn.

I STRONGLY suggest having 1 DPS in 8m (2 in 16m) focus on killing adds full time. They can be exceptionally difficult if the team lets them gang up on healers, so having some DPS deal with them is very helpful. Once Sano is killed and a tank is freed up, the free tank can take over add duty while DPS burn the remaining bosses.

Overall, the key to success in the burn phase is getting the first boss down. Once that happens then the remaining burn is fairly easy as long as adds are under control via the tank AoE taunts and/or DPS picking them up.

Revan is the last boss of Temple of Sacrifice. He is fairly easy in Story Mode and for most groups should be the second easiest after Malaphar, especially for 8m groups. There are just a couple of key mechanics to follow, though the fight can feel overwhelming to explain or learn since it is fairly long.

The basic structure to the Revan encounter involves moving up three floors with unique mechanics on each floor. In a greatly simplified fashion, the overall structure is as follows:

• • Floor 1: Fight Revan to 64%, Fight HK-47 to 9%

  • Platforming up to Floor 2

  • Floor 2: Destroy 4 Machine Foci, Fight Revan to 28%

  • Teleport up to Floor 3 (free Revive for downed players)

  • Floor 3: Break Revan's shield, Fight Revan to 9%, Destroy Machine Core

Floor 1 - Revan

Revan is very straightforward on the first floor. He has a knockback called Impale that has a long narrow red conal. The tank needs to aim this conal towards the rock pillars around the room, causing the tank to be knocked into them instead of being knocked off the platform. Revan also has an AoE ability called Saber Overcharge so the tank should make sure to face Revan away from the group at all times. Revan also has an AoE attack called Heave that has no effect on strategy but deals damage.

Revan will periodically cast Force Wield, which summons the Blade of Alek and Blade of Revan. These blades follow two team members and deal AoE damage to anyone nearby. These blades should be kited to the edge of the platform and players can use knockbacks to knock them off the edge.

Floor 1 - HK-47

After Revan disappers around 64%, there will be a short pause then HK-47 will jump down.

HK-47 attacks primarily using Shiv, which deals a debuff called Perforated Vitals though this debuff can be ignored in Story Mode. It also has a powerful conal attack called Pseudorandom Violence that should be avoided.

HK's most dangerous ability is Handful of Grenades. This ability applies a ticking grenade to each player that explodes after 6s and deals AoE damage. The team must spread out to take the damage and avoid overlapping bombs. The grenade can be cleansed and dropped on the floor as a red circle, though do so with great care.

Finally, at 75% HK will deploy an Invulnerability Field. Players must stand inside the shield to damage HK. This makes the Handful of Grenades very dangerous due to the group proximity to each other.

Floor 2 Platforming

After HK-47 blows up at 9%, the platforming phase begins up to the second floor. Rocks will appear on either side of the platform that connect over to a small platform with a brazier then over to the stairs up to the next floor. These can be tricky for new players so take your time with each jump.

Once you reach the top of the stairs, there are a series of "rock stairs" up to the actual second floor. You must jump across to the second floor, do not try to run across. I always take an extra second or two to line up that last jump.

Floor 2 - Machine Focus

Once the team reaches the second floor, you must destroy four pillars each called Machine Focus. Each pillar has an AoE effect called Essence Shear that deals more damage over time, though the damage is low in Story Mode. All 4 must be destroyed for Revan to appear.

Floor 2 - Revan

Revan uses most of the same abilities as the first floor, with a few notable exceptions. He does not use the Impale knockback but instead will cast Force Aberration. Force Aberration summons several large purple circles that revolve around the circular platform and deal very high damage to anyone who stands in them. Floating lightsabers continue to spawn and must be knocked off the inner or outer ledges.

The strategy to this phase is to tank Revan around the room to avoid purple circles. Some tanks prefer to keep him moving, while others mostly tank him in place. I prefer to tank him in place on either side (i.e., where there is a small outcropping), as the Aberration pattern makes it fairly simple to move between the inner and outer edges of the platform to dodge purple circles with relatively little movement for DPS.

Floor 3 Teleport

When Revan reaches 28% health, he will disappear and begin the transition phase to the third floor. After around 15s or so, a portal will appear on the ground that will teleport players up to the third floor.

Any players who died prior to this point get a FREE REVIVAL. However, they will have low health and will take constant AoE damage until they run into the portal and teleport up. If several players will be revived at this point, a healer should stay behind to heal them up as they run to the portal.

Floor 3 - Revan

On the third floor, Revan is casting an ability called Resonance. The team must break the cast via DPS before it completes, which is a very easy task in Story Mode given the ability's 120s cast time.

After the shield breaks, Revan resumes essentially the same mechanics as the second floor. The only difference is that he summons Unstable Aberrations instead of Force Aberrations. The purple circles are similar but (1) they do not move; (2) they do not last as long; and (3) they expire in a sequence (this mechanic becomes extremely critical in Hard Mode but can be ignored in Story Mode as long as you do not stand in the purple circles).

Do not stand in purple, face Revan away from the group, knock any floating lightsabers off the edge, etc. Once Revan reaches 9%, he teleports away and the group enters the burn phase.

Floor 3 - Machine Core

The final burn phase involves destroying the Machine Core floating inside the giant energy beam in the middle of the platform.

The Machine Core has a buff called Charged Barrier that reflects any attacks outside of 5m range. This is denoted by a white circle extending around the inner area of the platform. Players must stand inside that circle to damage the Core.

Try to avoid leaping to the Core. Most actual leaping abilities will land you outside the Charged Barrier circle, while most teleport abilities have a fair chance of killing you.

The Machine Core applies a debuff called Essence Shear that reduces maximum HP by 1% per stack. The team takes minimal AoE damage periodically as well. The phase becomes a DPS race to kill the Core before the team's HP is reduced to a point where the AoE damage starts killing people.

Unstable Aberrations continue to be spawned in this phase but do not move. One or two may overlap into the Charged Barrier white circle, so anyone standing in one should reposition. Otherwise they can be ignored.