Legend
- Green boxes are pet stasis safespots. Dotted green boxes indicate the upcoming safespot
- Blue circles are drive-by safespots. Dotted blue circles indicate upcoming safespots
- Solid blue arrows indicate an incoming drive-by. Dotted blue arrows highlight shotgun paths of interest
- Blue Xs indicate the nearest drive-by shotgun origins
Preparation
Before anything else, you should first be familiar with the visual cues that happen before celestial phase begins so that you have time to get yourself in position. The first cue is Oryx’s armor turning a warm white color as he runs to the center:
If you can catch this early you will have loads of time to pick your starting side. If not, the second cue is the entire room turning darker and that will still give you three seconds to situate yourself, although it will be very close if you want to run across the room. Lastly, if you are already in place for the phase to begin, check that you have 6/6 HP pots in case something goes wrong. Next comes the fun part!
Survival
The basic idea is to start on any of the outer carpets, which is where the pet stasis safespots always begin, and slowly rotate counter-clockwise with them until ending at the next carpet. Starting left is ideal because you only take 3 full drive-bys while starting on any other side will give you 4. There is a little more dodging to be done between drive-bys and pet stases when Oryx is not near your corner, but there are so few bullets that it should be no trouble.
DPS
After the pet stases and drive-bys are done, Oryx will stand center and shoot a few shotguns which are easy to dodge if you stay back a bit. Then his armor breaks and he stops shooting completely until he turns silver again, so you are completely safe to go in for the EP damage as you watch for that change. The only things that could damage you are the lasers or messenger weakens; no trouble to dodge for someone who just survived celestial!
Note that the drive-by safespots change depending on which side you start from, but they are extremely consistent. I recorded 4 celestials starting from left and the only variable was where the lasers hit, which are not a problem since you won’t take much other damage. There are more blue safespots but I just picked the ones that were a nice size while also overlapping a green safespot. Finally, I’ll leave this video containing rotations from each point so that you can practice the timings mentally. They are just in the order I did them so check the description for the starting point you want to see. (FYI these are by no means ideal dodging patterns, just the footage I got before figuring this out)
I will probably update this later with a graphic for each starting point. Let me know if you guys have any other tips for exalted O3, and happy pew-pewing!