The Secret World Defeat Gatekeeper as AR/BM DPS Guide

The Secret World Defeat Gatekeeper as AR/BM DPS Guide by PorpoiseInc

So I spent a while reading guides to the Gatekeeper, and realized that basically all of them suggest you spec into Elementalism. Ridiculous, I thought. Unfortunately, the only purges are in Elementalism and Shotguns, and the Shotgun purges are unreliable for the fight in question (plus I didn’t really want to spec into Shotguns, either.) After 4 hours of smashing my face against a wall, I am here to tell you that it is entirely possible to beat Gatekeeper with only a few points into Elementalism, while keeping your Assault Rifle and Blood Magic focus equipped.

Here’s my build:

Trigger Happy (your builder, isn’t instant but has an excellent damage return)
Where It Hurts (your AR consumer, and critical to the build because it applies Hindered)
Blood Spike (one of the best BM single-target finishers, applies Afflicted if you time it right, which is also critical)
Red Mist (the highest-damage AR nuke, and your Elite)
Incendiary Grenade (used at any time that you have an opening for a string of damaging non-builder/consumer abilities)
Contaminate (used for the same reason as IG)
Lock & Load (useful pretty much only when you desperately need the extra clutch damage, and you do here. If you don’t like this ability or have trouble timing it, Do or Die from the miscellaneous tree works well here too)

Dark Potency (you’ll be applying Afflicted a lot with Blood Spike)
Explosives Expert (very good passive for the extra pure damage)
Lethality (good for the flat 10% damage increase)
Third Degree (good general passive for penetration builds)
Doom (same as Third Degree)
Lucky Bullet (this is great for helping to kite in the third phase, or if you are extremely focused can be used instead of Where It Hurts to trigger the Hinder effect that this build requires)
Dial Down (THIS IS THE ABILITY THAT WILL LET YOU BEAT THIS FIGHT. It requires only 59 points put into Elementalism to use, which is a couple hours of questing or grinding when you are high enough to be challenging Gatekeeper anyway. This will get you through the second phase if you use it right.)

For Gatekeeper I had 2500 AR (basically all QL10 Elite blues with one PVP purple) and I used Advanced Stimulant – Attack and one QL9 flat Healing energy drink. You may not need these things if you are really good, but they help.

Phase 1– Approach the totem on the left. As you hit it, get ready to use your Stimulant (if you have one) and back up until Gatekeeper is targetable. Drop your Red Mist, Incendiary Grenade, Contaminate, and one Blood Spike while he sets out his initial circles. Begin your standard rotation (5 Trigger Happy’s, 3 Blood Spikes, 1 Where It Hurts) and continue to do so. Use Lock & Load whenever it works well for you, use RM/IG/Contaminate on cooldown, and stay on your toes.

The trick to beating the DPS check on this guy is to constantly stay facing him while you back up and strafe through the circles he drops. It may take some practice to back up while cycling your rotation and still avoid the circles, but after a while you can pull it off without breaking LoS. Some people suggest moving around just the inner circle, but I had a lot more success moving in and out of it. I.E., as the fight starts you move in, then move to the right, then back up, then move to the right, then come in, move to the right, etc. Be ready for the second phase, as what you do here is important.

As a side note for figuring out why you keep dying, there are 5 ways to die here (and you can find out by checking your combat log.) If your combat log says “Too slow!” then you failed the DPS check. If it says something about fire, you stepped in a circle. If it says his normal attack hit you for some ridiculous amount (around 993k for me) then the second phase started and you didn’t notice. If you fell off the side, well… that should be obvious. And my personal favorite is when your combat log says nothing, and you didn’t fall off the side or step in fire or miss a purge. That means the game is screwing with you, and somewhere a Funcom employee gets his wings/a raise.

Phase 2– After you get through a little more than a third of Gatekeeper’s health, he will briefly raise his hands in the air (they become black as well) and he will gain a glowing red aura. From the start of the animation you have 5 seconds to pull off a purge in your effectively purgeless build. The way we pull this off is to keep Where It Hurts off cooldown as you come close to the 2/3 health mark (I think it may be more like 60%) and then hit either Blood Spike or Incendiary Grenade, followed by an immediate Where It Hurts. This is extremely tricky to pull off and may take some practice, because Where It Hurts has a 12 second cooldown, not to mention the total cast timers between the two abilites you use to trigger the Hinder effect (which in turn procs the passive purge from Dial Down) totals 2-2.5 seconds, and with Global Cooldowns and reaction time added in you’re looking at a little less than two seconds’ room for error to pull off the purge. This is why the Lucky Bullet and Third Degree passives are on the passive bar; if all else fails and you don’t think you have time to pull off 2 seconds of casting, just throw a Hail Mary and hit WiH alone. You may already have an active Affliction debuff from Third Degree/Blood Spike/Trigger Happy or an active proc ready from Lucky Bullet (and it will feel like an extremely lucky bullet.)

Once you get past the initial purge on phase 2, the rest is pretty easy. Gatekeeper will drop significantly less fire circles around you, and his purgeable effect is cast once every 15 seconds (3 seconds longer than the cooldown on Where It Hurts, so keep it off CD.) You may be worried that a purge didn’t go through if Gatekeeper resists your Hinder effect, but even if he resists it will still proc your passive purge, so don’t freak out if it appears not to go off. Also, don’t worry about dying to a lack of DPS here; the DPS check is only in phase 1.

Phase 3– Gatekeeper enters Phase 3 at about 1/3 of his health. This is probably the easiest phase, but still can be tough to beat. You may notice your health in the red or close to it coming into this phase (unless you have managed to beat the DPS check without triggering Blood Offering or you have on some HP gear) so it’s a good time to pop an energy drink. I suggest a direct heal or an HoT over Barrier or Leech, because this phase is going to consist of a lot of running for your life instead of a lot of burning the boss.

Gatekeeper will dispel the fire circles and begin casting a filth beam toward a random spot on the platform. Get as far away from it as you can, and use his casting time as an opportunity to DPS. Once he finishes the cast, an add will begin to run toward you. Don’t get near it. It can’t be killed, and if it gets within 5 meters or so it will instantly kill you. There are two ways you can handle this: you can use your normal rotation on it to proc a Hinder in order to slow it so you can get some DPS in on the boss, or you can just run the hell away. Personally I found the “run the hell away” option much easier and less complicated, so it is that one I will describe in detail.

Run the hell away.

Just kidding. Well, somewhat. What you are going to want to do is run around the very outside of the platform. If you see a flash of the add getting close to you, dodge roll in the direction you’re running to add some distance. You can attempt to get in some DPS here, but basically everything on your bar will slow you down, and the last thing you want to happen is for the add to get anywhere near you. After about 15 seconds the add will despawn (make sure you have your sound on so you can hear the sound effect without turning to look) and when it does, spam out as much DPS on the boss as you possibly can. You have about a 5-7 second window before another add is up. When the next add is up, begin the “running the hell away” strategy anew. Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead.

Phase 4– Post in all capital letters in general chat about what a badass you are. Make sure everyone knows about your godlike gaming prowess, and send me a message ingame (my main toon is named Filthbane) to thank me for getting you through the hardest fight in the game.

Good luck, and happy hunting.