The tentacles should be avoided while learning, they telegraph their attacks by big circles on the ground. Once you learn the mechanics though, you can start dancing in and out of them and damage the enemies.

Tho'at prime can be pulled out of them so while they're up you just focus on them and the blobs, once they're down, kill the atronach.

Mechanically speaking, if both Tho'at Prime and the Atronach are up you're potentially dealing with 2 eye beams as prime's sword eye beam is still in play and when the giant tentacle seppuku's an eye beam comes from them too. It's in your best interest while learning to take down Tho'at prime first, once they're down, it's just the Atronach and it's just a matter of avoiding tentacles and eye beams and the occasional blob kill. It's just a matter of watching the ground and getting away from any tentacles until you have enough practice to move into them in between their attacks.

I'll counter this with going that tanky is unecessary, it is extremely effective 3.4.1 onward, but while learning it's absolutely dreadful as a learning experience, without good Visions/Verses enemies become a slog even in Act 2. Up until Arc 4 you can get away with just putting point into health and slapping a damage shield onto your bar via a skill or gear set or both. I regularly do Arc 4 solo runs on "pure" DPS with the only shift being switching one of my sets for Hexos for the damage shield so I can be lazy and not spam one.

If you're trying to push deep, go tanky but be ready to possibly be mind-numbingly bored halfway through if you get bad visions, but if you're just trying to get to Arc 3/4, DPS with survivability is a viable build.

One more piece of advice for WHEN, not IF, you beat Arc 2 as a DK, slot Purge for Arc 3. Arc 3 is when it starts and Arc 4 is when it REALLY hurts, but Bleeds and other Dots start hurting after Arc 2 and Arc 4 onward can be run killers without purge.

I see people I run with hiding from the tentacles and not going near the atronach because of them but if you're timing is right you can be in the red zone of their attacks and take no damage with a well placed dodge roll, big and small tentacles alike. I recommend binding dodge roll to your mouse if it has an extra button, no one should be stopping their movement to double tap directional arrows in combat.

Personally I think the biggest threat in every Tho'at fight is the slimes. They will murder you from great distance if you let them channel their very difficult to see attack at you. You should always be wary of where they're at and stunning them or killing them before they can do their things, because Malkhest is not enough.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Pay attention to Master Malkhest. If he's fighting the boss, there's nothing you need to care about but doing damage to the boss. If he's fighting a blob, interrupt and kill it. The blobs have a channel attack that put a lot of damage pressure on you, which makes it easier for you to die to other stuff. So they're the priority. If he's fighting a tentacle, toss down some AOE in case a blob is hiding under there but otherwise let him cook. He will handle the tentacle for you and you can just focus on Tho'at

he is frankly for all intents and purposes useless in that fight, he does 0 dmg and the only useful thing he can do is interrupt a single blob

he keeps at most 1 blob occupied and will bash it, but he wont even do that if hes slapping a tentacle (even more useless)

ive never seen him pull boss aggro either (he will look like hes attacking tho'at or something if no blobs are up, but again he is useless does 0 dmg and doesnt even hold aggro)