June 27th 2016 after a fantastic quest week, could the new update out this week put month in contention for best month of the year? Well, I suppose it depends on the player. For me, the updates were all way above average and Telos is no exception. Above average. Maybe even better.
Right away I had a few gripes with the way Jagex was going about releasing this boss. The mystery of learning to fight Telos was almost gone except for on hand experience with the actual fight. The rewards announced as the usual. Summing up that, it was not a whole not of mystery like Vorago on release. I want them to release bosses the way they did Vorago.

But without getting too far out of the way here, let’s talk the boss and kill methods as I am sure that is what people care about for this boss fight. I will do something different with this boss fight by leaving my review at the end and explaining it early on. So grab some popcorn, or if you are serious about this boss and learning to fight it, grab a pencil and paper. Let’s dive in.

Before diving into the gear, this boss requires at least one kill from each of the god wars two bosses go gain entry. I was not aware of this until a friend of mine was unable to access the fight so I think it’s worth mentioning here just in case.

Gear

I would highly recommend using higher level magic as your attack style as during the fight players will be moving around quite a lot. Magic seems like the best choice here because the two attack styles that Telos uses the most are melee and magic. This will help soak a lot of the mage damage while still being able to move around. I would recommend no lower than a ganodermic staff. I managed to get a kill with this staff and seasinger for armor. “But Bistro! Why not go all out DPS??” It’s because of the mechanics of the boss fight that I will get into later. But magic is the preferred method here. It won’t be the end of the world if you use a style you are more comfortable with but, magic has a leg up here even when I was using drygores and tetsu I found myself eating less food just due to being mobile. I would also recommend a shield so you can do a shield switch. If you don’t know what that move means I will explain.

By having a shield switch, when Telos uses the special attack “Gielinor give me strength” you can switch to the shield and use the ability resonance which can be found in the shield set of abilities. This will prevent the damage dealt completely from the attack so it saves food which is good in the long run.

But as for other abilities, For magic I would not recommend any ability that requires the player to stay in place until the last phase, I would almost recommend having the sunshine ability on an adjacent ability bar so it’s only used on the 4th phase. Otherwise, load up with thresholds. Asphyxiate is really good in this fight. For dual wielding melee I recommend using the same style but with melee, berserk can be dangerous so use it with caution. I am going to leave ranged out as I did not use this method. But the same basics will apply. Keep in mind that Telos can be stunned so combos are really useful in this fight as well. I recommend using abilities like combust for magic as telos will move to follow you and and that does double damage. Melee also has an ability like this.

What else? I would recommend bringing super restores, If you have dreadnips, they are pretty good here but a nerf may be on the way for those poor things again. I would also recommend high level food to meet your constitution requirements as well as either a solid melee based amulet or a surge necklace from Dungeoneering rewards for magic. If there are any other questions for gear, don’t be afraid to comment and ask below. Let’s move onto the phases.

Phase one, infinite adrenaline. Remember when I said tanking gear is my gear of choice? Here is why. This boss fight for the first three phases involves beams of different colors. The one thing in common I will mention is that when Telos stands in them, he builds up a special bar what when at max can deal massive damage, especially when enraged. It’s good practice to stand in the way of telos in any event to keep this from rising and reaping the benefits of them. The first one charges adrenaline and that is why having a good amount of thresholds early on is going to benefit the player as keeping the bar at 50 percent is almost certain when standing in this beam. Beating the boss down here and the second phase will begin.

Before I go into the second phase though I want to bring up the special attacks that Telos brings to the table. The first one is is the one mentioned from earlier “Gielinor give me strength”, just switch to the shield and use resonance. This will prevent the damage. I didn’t mention this before, but they type of shield doesn’t really batter, it just needs to be a shield, so a bronze square would be good enough.

“Hold still” is the second ability. He will jump up and try to land on the player. Use freedom and move out of the way as soon as he says this and everything will be a-okay. I did not manage to get anticipation to fire off at the right times so I am not sure if using that will still negate the stun when he says the attack, but I would put money down that it works.

The third special is when you need to deal 3000 damage to him. During this time Telos is healing so using a threshold is a good idea, such as asphyxiate.

There are more specials but those are the recurring ones.

Phase two. Here there will be a black beam, this will lower the amount of damage the player deals and the amount you take. Standing in here is just as much of a good idea as the one before it.

Phase three is where berserk is more dangerous, keep health above 7000, the beam is red here and it allows double damage but also causes double damage to the player. I would recommend using thresholds and saving abilities like dragonbreath for the minions that spawn. Now this phase is a little different as the bar is for the super attack mentioned before is based on the minions. I would say keeping one alive at all times is a good medium but the goal is to make sure that the bar does not go all the way to either side but stays in the middle. It’s almost like killing the spirits in the QBD boss fight where it’s time sensitive. Keeping too many alive can cause extra damage as well so make sure the one that stays alive is always a new minion.

If the player has made it to phase four, congrats! This part of the fight is pretty simple. It’s all about staying in the protective shield around the three symbols that float in the air. Knock down Telos and then he will get to a point where he starts changing his one hit special attack. It goes without saying make sure auto retaliate is off. This killed me the first time. While he changes, kill the minions and stay in the portal to avoid the giant green orb. Repeat the process two more times while being mindful of Telos’s other special attacks. Once the third symbol has protected you against the third insta-kill it’s an all out race to DPS Telos to the ground.

If you managed to beat him, congrats again! That’s the basics for the fight.

Rewards. Now rewards work differently here, a scroll wheel comes up and spins through the possible rewards. The player can take what it lands on or risk it for a chance for a better reward plus what the player already made and do the boss again, but he will be enraged and the boss gets progressively harder the more times the player goes before running away with the loot. I love this mechanic and I would like to see it for bosses in the future. The enrage meter is also a scroll so bad luck can happen and the enrage percentage can skyrocket between kills or only go up a few percent.

But that the guide. I love this boss, he was really fun to play, I have not yet worked my way up the enraged meter so I am sure the drops get pretty good, but even one shot kills seem to have decent loot.

Jagex did a great job on this boss, I do wish they left more to the imagination before release as I would have found it more fun discovering what kills me than just knowing it. If you managed to get Telos kills sound off your number below, or tell me what you think of the boss. I would love to know. But that’s so much for taking the time to read this article and I hope it helps you for your attempts at the boss. Until next time, happy gaming.