Introduction
In this written guide, accompanied by a video of the full run itself, Lucht goes over the strategies and methods used to beat Veteran Scalecaller Peak Hard Mode by yourself under the speed run time limit and without dying a single time. Keep in mind that this was written from the perspective of using a Magicka Dragonknight!
Lucht's DK Build
1x Slimecraw (Light)
5x Undaunted Unweaver (body)
5x Undaunted Infiltrator (frontbar/shoulders)
Swapped out Slimecraw for 1pc reinforced heavy armor for the gargoyle fight as a safety blanket for extra tankiness. This build can get up to about 57k DPS solo, in a practical situation about 48k though.
Heavy attack builds cap out for their damage at about 90k DPS, but since it is a flat stat increase, they are very good for lower spectrum of DPS where % increases don't do as much.
Frostpike Caverns Trash
There are 5 different trash pullls here, consisting of pestilent skeevers, wolves, imps and the elite Pestilent Ogres. 2 types of ogres: ranged and melee. Melee is very dangerous, but by standing still in front of them they are a lot more likely to play their mechanics which make them not attack you.
First is their ice spike channel ability. This is very easy to avoid and simply spawns an ice spike under the location where you were standing when he started. Blocking it will also save you from being knocked down if you are unable to move for some reason. Their channeled pestilence attacks are most dangerous, at 4 stacks of these melee attacks the dot he puts on you will be too strong to survive consistently, so I avoid any damage after that point.
Ranged ogre is very easy. it has 2 channel mechanics, a snowstorm and a pestilence beam shot type attack. Snowstorm is extremely dangerous to stay in since it will increase in damage rapidly, doubling every tick. ranged shot is long, but not very harmful. Dodge rolling it or staying out of its cone is the best strategy.
Strategy
First pull I ignore, taking them with me as late as possible so I can save time (the timer for the speedrun achievement will only start after engaging the first enemies) I will kill the ogre later, but it will keep cycling through its 2 snowstorm and shoot type mechanic, no matter my range, this way I can easily keep running through until there is a more efficient time to kill it. the adds that follow will die due to my heavy attack cleave (tri focus passive) so they are of no worry.
For the melee ogre, I initially place down my aoes in front of him, then attack so he will stack on my aoes. Almost immediately after engaging these ogre's they will channel their ice spike, this locks them in place so I can have full uptime on minor berserk (expert hunter) this is important to maximize my damage during this period. Immediately after finishing the ice spike, they will go into pestilence melee attack modes, which places a stacking DOT on you for each melee attack that hits you while they are in this mode.
The aoe itself is not dangerous, but more than 4 hits are. I avoid damage after that point but it usually does not come that far during add phases since they die quickly. After the 4th ogre, there are a lot of mobs so I place down standard of might to kill them with extra damage. This is also when I kill the first ogre that has been chasing me from the beginning. It is more efficient this way.
However, in this run specifically I forgot to swap to my 1st skill setup, so instead used magma armor which does significantly less damage but it still got the job done in a timely manner. This is a mistake but a minor one, since it did not cost me much time.
During this time another mechanic can come into play. Similar to the first boss, the ogres before them can also, once joined close enough together, exude a pestilence aura. This is very dangerous and can kill you extremely quickly so I need to be very careful to not stack the 1st ranged ogre too close to the 5th ogre I am killing first. Sometimes the ranged ogre will come too close and I have to adjust my positioning accordingly, this fortunately did not happen.
Rinaerus the Rancid & Orzun the Foul-Smelling
These two are the first boss encounters in the dungeon, their mechanics are similar to the adds I faced earlier, but are more dangerous. There are 2 mechanics at play during this fight, and both bosses need to be alive to avoid the mechanics that each one will play, this is why it is important to kill both of them within about 10 seconds of each other at most. First, Orzun (melee) is only a little bit more powerful than the ogre's beforehand, so surviving his melee attacks is not difficult, as long as my damage is kept up high, He will also on a cycle of about 20 seconds switch between normal melee attacks, and pestilent melee attacks.
These melee attacks, identically to the melee ogre's from before, will place a dot on me every hit. easy to survive until 4 stacks of it, any damage afterward could burst me down so I make sure to never let myself get higher than 4 stacks, and dodge roll away when he is too close. Rinaerus (ranged) will spend the whole fight in the middle, channeling snowstorms that spawn stunning ice aoes. Stepping in these will stun you but also protect you from damage while in it, but also place an increasing dot on you the longer you are in it, eventually killing you.
Snowstorms are the same as the ranged ogre adds, doubling in damage each tick. Do not stay in it for long. He will also have a ranged attack, but it does not do much damage, it can be mostly ignored. From time to time, randomly he will also spawn skeevers. This is very useful as they are not dangerous except for their pestilent aoe they leave behind which can kill you, but is easy to stay out of. Due to the fighters guild passive, each skeever gives me 1 ultimate charge.
Keeping these 2 apart is essential, when they are within a certain radius of each other they will start to create 2 pestilent aura rings around them, these do immense damage stacking up to a maximum of about 30-40k damage per tick, about 4 ticks each second. It ramps up quickly, after 2 seconds inside the aura even a tank will die near immediately.
Their main mechanics during this fight depend on each other to survive them. First, Orzun will, after each snowstorm start channeling his mechanic called ''Terrorizing Tremor'' this is a moving round aoe that will speed up quickly the longer it is active. it will do about 30k damage (not sure, will add numbers later, definitely kills me but I've seen tanks survive it) To avoid this mechanic is very easy, the snowstorm will spawn moving ice aoes, these protect you from any damage including Terrorizing Tremor.
Simply step in one of them, wait for the aoe to hit you and you will be automatically broken free. The second mechanic is much more lethal, Similar to the melee ogre adds from before, Orzun will start channeling an ice spike mechanic. This will spawn a large number of small ice spikes, and 2 large ice spikes which you need to run to immediately. He will also after all of the ice spikes are up, send one ice spike exactly to your location like the melee ogre adds would do.
This is very easy to avoid just like before. After the ice spikes are up, Rinaerus will start channeling an ice ball that does not hit for massive damage, but you cannot afford to get hit by them for more than 4 hits, it will freeze you and explode you for unsurvivable true damage no matter what (even magma shell can't protect you or psijic order ultimate). To avoid this, run toward one of the 2 larger ice spikes to hide from the snowball. During this the melee ogre is very dangerous especially if he is in his pestilence melee mode.
Strategy
To start out the fight, I immediately place my aoes on the center and run to the middle, stacking both the snowstorm and the pestilence aura. To survive, I use magma shell which limits my incoming damage to 3% of my max health, allowing pale order healing to easily out heal it. I do this because my build does nearly 100% cleave damage, making it so during my ultimate, I can damage both of them at the same time.
This is faster than using any other ultimate for my build, even standard of might, since I would have to attack a single target. I am tanking about 250k dps during this, so I need to immediately remove myself from their damage about 3 seconds before my ultimate ends. Orzun can follow me so I need to be especially careful to get out of the pestilence aura at least, since it is already at max dps. getting in and out of it will reset the damage back to needing to stack up. I die instantly once my ult ends if I remain inside for even a millisecond.
After this, Orzun will have likely started to channel his Terrorizing Tremor, which allows me to cleave for even longer since they are still stacked on top of eachother. I reapply my buffs and try to minimize the time spent inside the ice, so I can maximize my dps and actions per second. After this, simply circling around Rinaerus is the strategy. I also need to closely watch their health, I usually spend 2 of my damage rotations on each ogre, alternating between the 2 but it is largely dependent on what happens during the fight which one I damage.
If Orzun is in his pestilent melee attack mode, I will avoid damaging him, since the snare applied to me during heavy attacks allows him to catch up to me, allowing him to stack a lot of dot on me. During that I prefer to target rinaerus even if he is already lower health.
Once they start the other mechanic I place down my aoes on Rinaerus, I do this because it is inconsistent whether Orzun will be able to be damaged for the maximum amount, since if he heavy attacks, I need to roll dodge, which could possibly move him out of my unstable wall, orb and eruption casts, losing a lot of damage. I can still damage him though if I realize he is in a position where, if I roll dodge he will not move out of his initial position, but damaging Rinaerus is more consistent. If there are skeevers active during this ice spike stage, killing them will no longer spawn a pestilent aoe.
During the whole fight, the skeevers will also spawn. They can deal a lot of melee damage, so if Orzun is in pestilence melee mode I need to kill them immediately so they don't burst me down too hard in combination with Orzun's damage. The fight plays out largely the same, not really changing. The 2 mechanics will play out one by one so I know what is coming beforehand.
After my ult is charged again, I do not immediately use it. I wait until both ogre's are below 800-900k ish hp, then go back in the middle for cleaving. This way I can assure that their mechanics won't play again, making it harder for me to kill both of them in sync in a timely manner.
Last Ogre Pull
These are simply the last ogre's we'll see during the dungeon. 4 wolves and 2 ogres, they stack easily so the pestilent aura is a bit dangerous. I stack on the middle ogre first, because the melee ogre 90% of the time has a few seconds of downtime while getting up, so I don't need to worry about them stacking initially.
The ranged ogre will also send a ranged pestilent shot out in the direction of the other ogre if I decide to kill him first, which loses me damage since I have to roll dodge out of it. I try to maximize Expert Hunter minor berserk uptime again, nothing special here really. At the end I make my second minor mistake, got stuck on the rocks and stayed in the ice AOE too long, but it barely lost me time. looked a little bit dumb at most.
Deadly Gargoyle Elites
There are 7 imps, and 3 frozen gargoyles in this trash pool. We can ignore the imps since they do not do much damage, and will die automatically of cleave due to their relatively low health pool. The gargoyles however, are the most dangerous mob in the dungeon in my opinion.
Their melee attacks do a LOT of damage per second, since its 2 hits each hitting for about 6k damage, which they also deal very rapidly. The pace of these melee attacks is much faster than most mobs in the dungeon.
The dangerous part however, is their increasing bleed effect. after each 3rd melee attack, they will apply a deadly bleed effect to you. It is a non-purgeable 8 second bleed that increases damage significantly over time, going from about 2k damage per second to up to 14k on the last hit. This in combination with the gargoyles will kill you extraordinarily fast.
They will also channel an earthquake for about 3 seconds, this is an opportunity to reapply buffs and dots, because I will not get an opportunity to do that when the bleed + gargoyle are both actively damaging me. If I drop my damage I am dead, since I won't get enough healing from pale order damage to survive anymore.
Strategy
I switched up my gear here for the only time, switching my head from a 1pc Slimecraw to a 1pc reinforced heavy armor. This gives me a lot of mitigation, and I also swap out my staff for a sharpened one since I am dropping a lot of pen by switching to a heavy head. I need to very closely watch my resources, because I need to roll dodge and use a damage shield the last 2 seconds of the dot since it is too much damage to survive by simply tanking both and relying on pale order for healing.
Because of this, my net resource gain is negative, so eventually I will run out of resources. I use standard both to kill the second and half of the last gargoyle quicker and to restore my resources since I desperately need stamina during this fight. This fight is one of the hardest things to do solo in 1 try in the whole dungeon, so I need to concentrate very heavily on my rotation during this fight to minimize gargoyle alive time.
The imps are also tied to each gargoyle, so I don't damage any of the ones near the gargoyles I do not want to awaken. (for example, if I went into the middle, and damaged a far left imp and a far right imp, 2 gargoyles would wake up instead of one).
Doylemish Ironheart
This boss's mechanics are quite simple, the main enemy is petrification. There will be moving AOEs on the ground that, if stayed in for 2 seconds, will petrify you. Avoid at all costs. you can dodge roll through them though. The boss itself will also apply a bleed similar to the earlier gargoyles, but for some reason it is significantly weaker.
Last tick is still dangerous so make sure to not be in a vulnerable position during the last few seconds of the bleed. Every 20% starting from 90%, he will stamp on the ground to spawn 3 ice wraiths. They do low-moderate damage, kill them quickly but they are not a big issue at all. they automatically die to cleave anyway. They will stop spawning after the 30% spawn.
Every 20% starting from 80% a Stone Orb will come loose, and follow you around. When you come too close, it will tether a beam on you, same as the AOEs if the beam is attached for 2 seconds, you will petrify. Solo, this is instant death, since in a group, you would need to be broken free. (even in a group it will kill you if you are last alive, fun fact)
For each 20% orb stage, a new moving AOE will also be added up to a maximum of 4.
He will also from time to time start a similar earthquake to the earlier gargoyles. it will grow out of the position where you were in where he started. Very easy to avoid but don't use any AOE buff abilities on the place where he starts it since you won't be able to access them for about 3 seconds cause of the earthquake, since it will do enough damage to kill quickly.
Strategy
To start out, my goal for this fight is to maintain high DPS on the boss. there is not really anything to the orb mechanics. During the ice wraith spawning I make sure to reapply dots and also get behind Doylemish, since he will be stuck in his position allowing me to get more minor berserk uptime.
During the stone orb phases, place my eruption and razor caltrops while kiting the orb in a rectangular-ish pattern around the arena, then I place my wall in the direction I will kite the orb in. This way I can get maximum damage on it. It's a bit hard to execute cleanly but it works even if I fail a little bit.
I do this every time, until the last 2 orbs where I mostly ignore them, killing them through cleave on the boss. Due to bloodthirsty my damage will be more on the boss and therefore be more efficient to damage the boss and do more damage to the orb due to cleave essentially.
The last 20% I can just execute the boss since no more adds will spawn, in a lot of runs the last orb was still alive when I killed Doylemish, showing how low the priority on it is.
Post-Doylemish Add Pulls
These are kind of all over the place. There will be 9 harpy's, 7 skeevers, 3 leimenids, 1 giant, 1 infected cultist. The harpy's have 28k hp, which confusingly is 40k in normal difficulty SCP, probably a developer oversight but this allows me to essentially oneshot them. they are a non issue. Skeevers need to stay out of, so kill them in a place where they are not inconvenience to you killing more important adds (leimenid, giants)
Strategy
Run through fast. First pool simply place dots, get buffed from my sets and 1shot the harpies, then kill the cultist (he has the most hp, can cleave off him) Long walk between the next pool, giant and Leimeneid, 3 harpies. I place my Ult to kill the skeevers and Leimenid, giant will die quickly due to cleave,
I will get my ult back in time for the boss too so its a small time save, no reason not to do it but doesn't add much damage. I also extend the skeever lifetime so I can kill them at the last possible moment, to get my unweaver/infiltrator heavy attack damage buffs up for the next add pool, which is 4 harpies.
If I do it correctly I can 1 shot these in 1 heavy attack tick, but it's fast either way, no need to worry about these. 2 Leimenids and 1 giant pool, very easy, I place wall on the right Leimenid so the giant will walk into it and die to cleave, then parse on the Leimenid.
Switch to the second Leimenid fast and just kill it. They have a chance to spawn a poison water geyser, so be careful of this. Ward/major resolve needs to be up to consistently survive them but they are rare on the add pools.
Matriarch Aldis
Most people (including seemingly the devs) seem to skip this mechanic, but there is no real exploit for this boss in my opinion. The corner strat is simply so the adds are out of line of sight to damage everything but the tank. However, the geyser stun will still hit you so really it is a burn strat.
The actual mechanics for this boss is each 10% of the boss's health a Leimenid will spawn. It can spawn a geyser that will stun you for about 3 seconds. The boss has a few dangerous attacks, heavy attack, moving heavy attack (sometimes she will be locked in a direction for the heavy attack, but other times it will dynamically follow your position so you can't go behind her to dodge it) and shatter (15k dmg multi beam type attack)
The Leimenids have 1 dangerous attack where they send out a frozen small AOE that will root you if you're hit by it, avoid it but dodge roll if you're hit by it. After 10% the Leimenids will keep spawning every few seconds so killing her fast is very important. if you go too far away she'll jump at you but it does not do much damage and stuns you, block it to avoid most damage and the stun.
The water surrounding the arena will also do a LOT of damage, doubling each hit you're in it. There are some spots on land where it is still counted as water (where I start the fight there is one a little bit in front) so be careful of them.
Strategy
To start off, the boss will usually start with the normal melee attack, this stuns you and knocks you back, does not do much damage but I block it so it won't interrupt DPS. Each 10% I need to find the Leimenid as soon as possible and kill it. If it spawns a geyser it is very dangerous. When it does spawn one, I need to bunnyhop while making sure major resolve and ward are up.
If the boss uses the heavy attack or shatter close to you during the stun, death is nearly guaranteed. At about 30% I will start to prepare for execute. I can use standard to kill it faster than any geysers spawn beyond this point, so killing it faster is nice but still risky. If there's too many stun attacks I need to block or move away from it will lower my dps enough for me to die, but it's rare for this to happen.
Post-Matriarch Adds
For the first 3 pools, I simply run very far ahead to a rock formation where I will fully LOS the earlier ranged adds, I also need to make sure to kill the skeevers in a place where they won't interrupt my line-of-sight spot in the rocks. After this I simply spam AOEs to kill the adds while they're stacked. Usually a skeever will also come and die on my spot, but it doesn't matter because the ranged adds are already stacked by that point. Second major add pool, again I need to kill the skeevers away from my LOS spot, but this one is a lot more claustrophobic, and the adds don't always stack very well so one infected cult member was left over, which didn't decrease the time by much but it is annoying.
Last add pull has an elite add, Mortieu's Guard.
I also need to use dragon fire scale here because the pestilent geyser is very dangerous, it will hit 9 times, and for the 9th hit it will do triple damage.
Dragon fire scale will easily protect against this though, due to it's 50% damage reduction from projectiles. I use chains to pull in the adds to my DK standard, simply killing them with cleave on the guard. The guard heavy attack is very dangerous, does 35k damage and is very fast. I make sure to dodge it, and can't walk away from it since he'll follow me. After that, 7 or so skeevers, very easy to kill.
Plague Concoctor Nathien Mortieu
This boss has 10 million HP, very long fight. There are also poison geysers like before that will every so often spawn 9 poison projectiles, the last one will hit for triple damage. Can be roll dodged. Mortiue himself is not very dangerous other than his cone aoe arrow attack, which still does not do that much damage. The main danger is his mechanic which is Blistering Plague.
A little bit after the fight starts, he will crouch down to release a plague onto you. There are 3 different plague types he will put on you, they will however always be applied in the same rotation: First, the stamina plague.
This one will reduce your stamina recovery, kill the 2 imps immediately to have Jorvuld cure you. The cure for this one will increase both your damage, and stamina recovery. The second plague will reduce your healing taken. This one is not very dangerous but you still need to cure yourself as soon as possible. The stranglers are necessary for the cure, so immediately look for them and kill them to have Jorvuld cure you. This time, the cure will boost your damage, and ultimate generation (significantly) use your ult a little bit before this and you'll have it back before the cure effects even end. The last plague will reduce your Magicka Recovery. Kill the beetles for this one, to have Jorvuld cure you.
It will loop back to the imps after this. During Jorvuld picking up the ingredients phase, Mortieu will periodically channel a stun arrow. Interrupt so you get the cure faster. The cure will always spawn right in the middle, and will give you a global time for cure effects (like, if I stand in it immediately, it will give me 20 seconds of cure, but if you come into it 3 seconds after me, it will give you 17 seconds of cure effects) You don't need to stand in it afterward to have the cure effects active, and they persist for about 8 seconds after the cure AOE ends too.
After you're cured, he will also call in a guard. this guard is exactly the same as before in the add pools, kill it quickly since it will do a lot of damage, but it is squishy so fairly easy to kill. The plague Mortieu puts on you, will also increase in damage for each second it is active by about 80-100 damage per second. Eventually this will simply do enough damage to kill you since it'll do 5k dps after a minute.
The greatest danger is the fact that all 3 different plague effects will increase their potency over time at a similar rate to the damage.
Strategy
This is quite dangerous solo, first of all I need to have dragon fire scale slotted. it is pretty much necessary to survive during the plague stages since the adds + poison geysers + mortiue all do projectile type damage which is mitigated greatly by dragon fire scale. Second, I need to cure myself as SOON as possible. Jorvuld takes a while to pick things up so I need to account for at least 20 seconds of non cure time even after I kill the adds. After about 30 seconds of plague time, I need to make sure to have major resolve up at all times or I will likely die to bursts of the poison geyser, adds and simply plague dot.
for the first plague, stam recovery is not very dangerous. so I can take my time with this one however I still will kill it asap because of the damage increase from the cure. Second plague is more dangerous, healing received. After about 1 minute, my pale order healing is nearly halved so this one is pretty high priority to quickly kill the stranglers. luckily the stranglers seem to have an increased chance to spawn near the middle. The third one is severely dangerous for my class, which is Magicka Recovery.
While I am a heavy attack build, my sustain isn't exactly amazing, especially while trying to maximize damage because I also need to have dots up and shield + dragon fire scale. Magicka Recovery being reduced means the only form of recovery is my heavy attacks at this stage, so after about 40seconds i am pretty much nearing death's door since I won't be able to cast dragon fire scale anymore to protect myself.
I make sure to use DK standard, mainly for the increased damage mitigation (15%) during the add phase to fully focus on killing the 2 ingredients necessary for the cure as soon as possible without worrying about survival as much. One trick for this fight is to keep for example the beetles alive and have them be low health the moment the mag recovery plague starts, so you can immediately already have 1 ingredient. I am not very good at this fight since I only practiced it a few times (normally I use the door cheese since its significantly faster and easier) so I did not execute this strategy very cleanly if at all.
Zaan the Scalecaller Hard Mode
This fight is very fun, it is very positioning related and is not like most boss fights a stack and burn. Zaan herself will move around a lot, can't really control her much and staying near her is extremely dangerous due to her main attacks.
First: Zaan has 5 different attacks: Melee hit, which will put a dot on you which does about a static 5k DPS.
Second: Spellbreaker's Malice attack, which is her first heavy attack. It is counted as an AOE attack so you need to be very wary of dodge rolling through her to dodge, it is not possible since she'll just 180 on you as well. Treat this attack as a circle of death around her.
She can also move during it (VERY FAR IN SOME CASES) so be very careful with it. It is also a double hit attack, since first she will hit you with Spellbreaker, then with the mace, so having enough stamina for 1 block will still kill you. 3rd is her other heavy attack, Spellbreaker Explosion. it is basically a slowed down Dawnbreaker animation with a round AOE, very easy to avoid but you can also not roll dodge it since it is an AOE attack. 4th is her targeted fire breath attack, which will follow a person around the room for 6 fire spam AOE attacks.
For each hit of these, you will get a short effect on you, where for every next hit of the fire it will increase the damage. after 2 hits the next hit will be above 22k. be very careful to kite this correctly. 5th is her channeled beam. Zaan will, around every 40 seconds, channel a hard stun beam that will lock you for 6 seconds, doubling in damage for each tick you are in it.
The adds that spawn can be a little bit dangerous, the Leimenid has the same attack as the Leimenids from the 3rd boss, without the geyser attack this time. The Ice Atronach will channel an attack that spawns frozen small AOEs near you on the ground that snare you significantly, avoid these as much as possible since they usually coincide with Zaan's 4th attack, the fire spam, making it harder to kite sine you are significantly slower. The adds will both drop a mechanic that can stun you, a geyser and an ice AOE (same as the ogre adds/boss) These can be used to avoid the next mechanic.
Every 20% health stage of Zaan's health, she will turn immune, and she will summon a snowstorm. This snowstorm while also acting as a heavy dot will spawn 3 snow statues that you need to kill to stop the snowstorm. You have exactly 10s before the storm kills completely snares you and explodes you for 1 million damage (actually 999999 damage but I'm not sure if that's because of resistances or just cause they didn't want to make it 1 million for some reason)
After these snowstorms, you can use 4 different methods to avoid the triple pestilence beam attack that will encompass the entire arena. The shield, which is a synergy you can pick up and move around with to be immune to the pestilence. The ice/geyser will both stun you if you step in them, making you avoid the pestilence as well. The stone AOE is used as well in group play, however it will kill you if you are alone, even during the pestilence beam mechanic. The ice AOE specifically can be useful in other ways. When Zaan is channeling her hard-lock stun, you can fully stop it by stepping in the ice mechanic, you can also protect a teammate if the ice AOE you've stepped in intersects the path of the beam between your caught group mate. The other AOEs don't work this way.
After the last snowstorm at 20% health, she will now channel it every 40 seconds instead of each 20%. This can be hard to keep track of so always be ready to switch from zaan to the snow statues.
Strategy
To begin, my strategy will be to kill the adds first. Technically I don't need to kill them but their effects (snares and stuns) are too dangerous to consistently keep them alive and still clear, their affect on my DPS outweighs the increased damage I would have if I only focused Zaan so I make sure to kill at least the Leimenid quickly. In the start, due to Zaan being active together with the adds (this doesn't happen after the first snowstorm) it is very risky to hard stack all of them due to the dot Zaan puts on me. I instead opt to circle around, kiting Zaan and the Frost Atronach with me while doing great cleave damage off the Leimenid, since it is my priority anyway this works out well for surviving.
After that, I need to carefully choose where to put down my AOEs. Zaan will force me far away from her a lot due to her heavy attacks and the fire spam, so I need to make sure the place I put my AOEs down in, will be where Zaan stays for that period. I use the Psijic Order ultimate morph, precognition to avoid her stun-lock mechanic, so I cannot use any other ultimate, even at the end. After the first snowstorm, every 6.5 seconds a pestilence beam will shoot out in 1 of 3 possible locations.
It's best to be at all times aware that I need to stay near the borders separating the 3 so I can avoid getting caught. Especially the middle is extremely dangerous but I know my limits very well. I mainly move Zaan around in a sort of square during most of the fight, moving her from right to left, forward, forward to right again and so forth, this way I can keep my distance consistently, while also making her walk into my AOEs and staying safe from the pestilence beams.
I do this for most of the fight, I only change this up slightly when I can get Expert Hunter proc off when she does her Dawnbreaker type heavy attack. At about 30-20% I start to run out of Magicka very hard, so I slow my damage significantly to regain it in preparation for the storm. Especially at 21% health (27:02) she did a very strange heavy attack that I nearly thought ended the run, freaked me out a bit tbh, so I was playing it especially safe after this, slowing my damage down a lot in exchange for keeping resources high.
After the last snowstorm, I immediately place my AOEs on Spellbreakers' location so I can start executing Zaan. I ignore the adds during this last 40 second window because killing them is useless. by the time I kill them, they won't really play a part anyway since 10 seconds from then, a new snowstorm will have already started.
Conclusion
In summary: do damage + don't die!
I could improve this technically if I played this perfectly but the lowest I could probably get it is about a 26 minute flat finish, which I'm already pretty close to. My fastest ever HM fight is 5 minutes and 2 seconds, which is approaching the limit solo.
This run covered in the guide, the Hard Mode was 5 minutes 46 seconds, which is pretty good especially considering the fact that I ran out of Magicka at about 25% and pretty much dropped DPS all together for a few 10-20 seconds. I am very happy with this run.