Inzi
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"A "group finder" feature will be introduced in the 1.3 game update. Single server only to focus on community." This was in the guild summit.
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This is phase 2 only. In phase 3 they can spawn anywhere around the outer edge of the room. For that reason in phase 3 you should try to keep your raid fairly centralized. These setups are true for all 3 difficulties in both raid sizes.
Note: In phase 3 the ball timer seems to be longer than it is in phase 2. They changed that in the set of soa nerfs a while back.
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Here's something to consider:
Sometimes people have bad/off days. You're just more derpy than usual. Everybody has them. Maybe that's the problem and not something else.
As for crit, my %'s are the same as they've always been. Maybe the difference in your numbers is because of having or not having the Agent buff of 5%? Combine that with the Inquisitor buff of 5% main stat which will provide you a little more crit, and you're looking at a pretty big fluctuation. Then add whether you were stimmed or not, that's a little more crit from main stat... I'd expect that's more likely to be your issue than some stealth crit change.
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My experience is that they always spawn spawn on the East side, I tank Soa in the middle of the room with Soa facing West so I(facing East) can see the Ball Lightnings.
When you drop down from the platform "stairs" going into Phase 2, the balls spawn on the opposite side of the room from you. (You will always come down on the WEST side and the balls spawn on the EAST--granted in a giant wedge of east)
My tanks have faced him north, south, east, west, whatever. They always spawn East(ish). The reason the boss is facing different directions is the tank is maneuvering to avoid balls. The reason for a little confusion might be one of a few options:
1) Cardinal directions are hard and you don't drop at north or south. Some people may drop and assume that "straight across" is north. Some people may mix up East & West (I'm pretty sure I've told people they spawn on the west side before because I'm dum.)
2) They spawn in about a 130 degree arc between North and South. Some people may have rng that means they spawn more northward more often than not and therefore think they spawn "Northish"
Either way, my rule of thumb is: Stay a little NW or SW of the boss. This will give you time to separate balls if they're near each other as well as avoid them going through the middle of the room.
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Here's how to live through the Rail Shots on Jarg and Sorno
Basic strat: take both to about 45% as other people have said. THEN BURN JARG. The reason you burn Jarg and NOT Sorno is because of the debuffs they get when one of them dies.
Sorno's debuff causes him to deal more and more damage the longer he lives. Obviously this is painful, but if he's the only one alive, the only person taking dmg is the tank so you cycle tanks and cooldowns.
Jarg's debuff causes him to deal more and more damage the longer he lives... AND TAKE LESS DAMAGE THE LONGER HE LIVES. This is why you get rid of him first.
The railshot mechanic will ONLY work when both of them are alive. That's because one of them "marks" targets and then then other shoots them. (Hence your turn my turn.) So the way to survive this is to preemptively pop defensive cooldowns right after they start "time for plan c? plan c? how about plan D..... your turn my turn." i.e.: USE A SNIPER BUBBLE AND GET EVERYBODY UNDER THERE. 1 sniper bubble will work for each rail shot phase if you time it properly and it WILL save people from being one shot.
The other key is to dispell the burning dot. It looks like a yellow grenade. It will be harmful to people with low health.
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Hardmode Flashpoint lockouts will be removed in 1.2.
1.2 is supposed to come in April.
Until April, the lockouts mean you can run each hardmode flashpoint once per day. The lockouts reset when dailies reset.
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Sure when the healer lands and the other is broken free, there is a ton of damage to be healed up for but that's the exact moment cooldowns are made for. I've never really noticed an issue with getting everyone at least at 50% by the time the next air toss occurs and setting priory immediately to who gets the orbs next.
/agree
To add to this real quick, something I've found that helps in this exact scenario is to call out exactly who I'm going to heal. That way both healers are more effective at topping the raid off.
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I see what you're trying to do there, but your "solutions" for Situations 1 & 2 don't really cover it. There is nothing you can do in either of those cases.
and.. since when did bug fixes = nerfs? Even still, being successful at raid content in this game is less a matter of skill/gear and more a matter of luck and beating bugs.
It's your choice whether to take advice or not. But my suggestions are coming from the perspective of somebody who has been doing this boss 2-3 times per week for 2 1/2 months. The healing really isn't as intense as the OP made it out to be and if your raid cannot survive when one or both healers is incapacitated, you have larger problems than "rng."
As for "bug fixes", the fight was directly nerfed. Balls were nerfed to do less damage. Mind traps were nerfed to have less health. The number of balls spawning was nerfed in phase 3. The whirlwind & mindtrap rng was nerfed so that you wouldn't have the healer out of an entire phase. LITERALLY one night I didn't see but 20 seconds of phase 2 on multiple attempts. This is not a bug fix. This is manipulating the mechanic to make it easier for groups to down it. In addition, the raid warning announcement of who is being targetted by balls was implemented. This is a HUGE nerf as this was one of the most difficult parts of the fight initially.
Being successful in raids right now does not take a lot of gear or skill, I agree. But it has nothing to do with rng. Name one single fight that is rng-centric. Sure there are attempts that are more difficult than others because of luck, but that doesn't prevent you from downing the boss. The number of ACTUAL bugs in the endgame right now is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than these forums would let on.
TL;DR: Stop blaming your lack of progress on rng or bugs. There ARE bugs and there ARE some attempts that are more complicated because of luck, but you can overcome them with organization, communication, and a tiny bit of skill. Come to these forums for suggestions and help, but if you're too stubborn to listen, don't blame the game for your own failings.
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Scenario 1 Solution:
1) He shouldn't be dropping to 5% in the first place, healers should be able to help mitigate some of the dmg (merc or sorcs can). He can pop a cooldown before busting the orb.
2) You cannot heal a person once they are in the whirlwind, this is true. But hots WILL heal them. Therefore, you should have any hots you CAN have on a ball target on them BEFORE they pop the ball--i.e. as soon as their name appears.
Scenario 2 Solution:
1) Any time a healer is incapacitated, it should be communicated to the raid. This means that the ball poppers should be relying more on personal cooldowns than healer preventing dmg.
2) When BOTH healers are incapacitated, they should clearly communicate that there are NO HEALS. The tank should use cooldowns appropriately. Ball poppers should use medpacs and personal cooldowns. In addition, this would be the key for the dps mercs, ops, or sorcs to help cover heals.
3) As soon as one of the healers is available again, they should call that they are healing AND they should call when they feel that you are out of the "danger zone."
As an aside: when I killed this before all of the nerfs to it... I was the only full specced healer in the raid. The only time anybody else healed was when I was out of the game because of a whirlwind or mindtrap. It is completely possible to survive this fight with the healers out of commission simultaneously. I promise.
Scenario 3 Solution:
The situation is never that dire. If both healers are targeted by orbs, that means nobody but 2 healers plus the tank are taking damage. This is the time to communicate to the tank that he's going to have light heals on him. Hit your personal cooldowns (or shield yourself if you're a sorc without a personal cooldown) and take care of it. You have plenty of time to be smart here and not cause a wipe. Something that might help prevent your scenario is assigning one healer to north side and one healer to south side. That way the ball for the other healer will never head toward them.
Scenario 4 Solution:
This is the perfect opportunity for a tank to use a cooldown. The tank isn't taking a ridiculous amount of dmg unless he's doing the wrong thing. He should be able to blow a cooldown and be fine.
Scenario 5 Solution:
The timers are not so close together that you have "milliseconds" to handle the orb. There's generally 5 seconds in between the two timers. If the whirlwind DOES drop you right on the orb, it sucks and you should use a battlerez, but responding quickly to your orbs will prevent it.
Bah, this is a great encounter thats completely spoiled by situations that for the most part are completely out of your control.Hopefully you can see from my explanations for each scenario that they ARE in your control for the most part. A lot of your problems seem to be centered around heals. The healing on this fight really isn't intense. In phase 2 there should be at maximum 4 people to heal at any given time: 1 tank, 2 ball poppers, 1 whirlwind target.
Healer 1 can be the "tank healer" that means their primary responsibility is the tank. That doesn't mean that they don't heal the other people, it means that when the tank dips, the tank should come before the ball popper. Healer 2 can be the "raid healer." (sorcs are very good at this job for this fight) This means they are responsible for reading the raid warning and pre-healing the ball poppers. Bubble & Resurgence for each as a sorc, a shield to reduce dmg from a bounty hunter. Healer 1 CAN AND SHOULD help with this. If they cast 1 instant heal on 2 targets, that's 3 seconds off of the tank and the tank is NOT TAKING THAT MUCH DAMAGE.
Anyway, this is all pretty straight forward. You can do it. Step one is taking responsibility for how your raid handles the mechanics of the fight and addressing the problems you encounter.
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Compared some drop tendencies from a guild on the same server:
My guild got tons of Inquisitor drops with all 5 of our Inquisitors in full Rakata in about a month, month and a half...
Other guild got their first Inquisitor chest pieces last week (2 months of clearing on nightmare 16 to get them).
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My guild got very few warrior drops...
Other guild had Khem Val's in mostly Rakata sets.
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My guild got level 25 armorings...
Other guild didn't believe me when I said they exist and drop in raids.
It's all just luck. Eventually you get the gear and everybody's happy. For the people saying that it's "not fair" because your comp isn't very diverse so nobody can use the tokens that DO drop... Maybe you should consider a more diverse group?
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If you go read the Soa threads that are all over this forum, you'll understand why 3 difficulties are needed:
--Casuals think normal Soa is too hard.
--Middle-of-the-road guilds think Hard Soa is too hard.
--More Hardcore players think that all the current fights are a joke and want a real challenge in raiding.
In order to make ALL of these groups happy, there have to be adjustments. You simply can't achieve the goal of making raiding accessible by most people with 2 difficulty settings. With 2 settings, the "middle-of-the-road" guilds will be upset that they can't access the higher tier OR the hardcore populace will be upset that there's no challenge in the game. There's no middle ground there.
And, as somebody said above, the bugs aren't because there are 3 difficulties. Bugs happen, imo, because you can't copy level 50 characters or make premade 50s on the PTR. If you could, more people would go test and we'd have fewer bugs.
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A lot of servers have progression threads to track what kind of progress different guilds on the server are making. It would be great if we could have some way to have them stickied so that they're easy to find and use. I would flag my own post to try to get it stickied, but the page it takes you to says it's only for reporting bad behavior.
Is there a good way to get these threads stickied? As an example:
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On Hard and Nightmare he will continue to follow his target when you move. Instead of standing still and doing the swipe directly in front of him, he will do the swipe where it would be WHEN HE STARTS THE ANIMATION. The trick is, he can swap targets DURING the animation. This is where the confusion/bug is coming from.
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Another random bug that I saw last weekend....3 ball phases in a row, someone elses ball came straight for the group and when we split up to move, the ball came right for me and I was able to pop it. I knew it wasn't mine so I was watching for this to happen again, and I moved away from the group to DPS. Sure enough during the next 2 ball phases, a random person's ball came specifically for me even though my name wasn't listed. This didn't really cause a problem but was definitely a bug. It was a one time thing.
The swapping of targets can happen under two circumstances:
1) The person the ball was destined for died.
2) The person the ball was destined for vanished.
In both of those cases, the ball chooses a new target and it is NOT announced. Is it possible that either of these happened with your stray balls?
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1) Be on NOT the East side of the map. The balls will spawn on the East. When they do, look at the raid warning. Is your name there? If yes, proceed to step 2.
Are you sure of this??? cause I am pretty sure i have seen them spawn at multiple locations on the map.
In phase 2 they only spawn between NE and SE. They never spawn on the west side of the room. You are safe on the whole western half of the room. In phase 3, they spawn at all directions, so the safest spot to be is in the middle. If you get targetted in p3, you should move out of the center to the edge where there aren't balls.
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Care to explain why some people are taking 20k dmg in NM then? We have no problem with Soa NM, but when people say if you're taking more than 1 tick you're doing it wrong is just stupid. Like I said, the few rare occasions I take only 1 tick of dmg when I take the ball and stop in the middle. This happens about 1 out of every 5-10 balls. Running through the ball is always two ticks dealing 20k dmg which I have to heal through.
Nice pro tips there, I'm sure all the healers who are doing NM didn't know to use those.
The dozen of other Soa bugs must be because we're doing it wrong as well right?
There's a thread burried in here somewhere with a list of "bugs." I responded with how to deal with each of them in that thread. Here's the deal. There is a BUG where every once in a while you will take double damage as if the ball exploded twice on you. This happened to me ONCE since the game released. Nobody in my 16 man nightmare run EVERY WEEK has the problem you're describing and haven't in the past 2 months. Therefore, it stands to reason, that we're doing something differently than you are.
Here is how to pop balls. Forgive me if the steps seem obvious, but clearly you're having problems:
1) Be on NOT the East side of the map. The balls will spawn on the East. When they do, look at the raid warning. Is your name there? If yes, proceed to step 2.
2) Go to the outer ring of the platform to the north or south. This will prevent the ball from traveling through melee. Balls through melee is bad. By this time, you should hopefully be able to tell which of the 2 balls is yours. If you can, go to step 4. If you can't, go to step 3.
3) Move away from the other ball target in such a way as you're not kiting the ball over a "bad area"--mind trap or melee range. Move until you are 100% sure the ball is yours. If you're unsure, TARGET it, press Alt+T. If you are now targeting yourself, it is safe to move to step 4.
4) If you are a healer, do all you can to prevent dmg and/or immediately heal dmg. This includes but is not limited to hots, shields, cooldowns, adrenals, having a medpac button ready, etc. If you are a dps, make sure your healers have prepped you. If they haven't, call out for it. Once you are prepared, proceed to step 5.
NOTE: Throughout steps 1-4 you should never be closer than 15m away from the ball.
5) Run straight at the ball and through it. Note that it should be near the edge of the platform, away from other players, and nowhere near a "bad area."
6) Heal up.
At MAXIMUM, you will take 17k dmg from this on nightmare~12k explosion + 5k tick. This is why a shield from a sage/sorc and/or a personal cooldown helps considerably. If you are dying because of these two hits, you are not preparing yourself as explained in step 4.
I understand that most guilds working on this don't need things broken down so much for them and that this is all fairly straightforward. I also understand that being told you're "doing it wrong" can cause some people to feel butthurt. But really, it IS that simple and if you are dying, it's likely not the bug that happens maybe 1% of the time.
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That's kind of what I was hoping NOT to get. I'm glad you don't have trouble with it, but we are having trouble. Tips are welcome.
If it helps, my main is a sorc. My alt I just started healing with is an operative. The roles that are easy as a sorc but more difficult as an operative in EV are:
1) Annihilation droid aoe phase. If you choose to let people stay in, sorc puddle + bubbles are crazy throughput here. As an operative because of the cooldown on the aoe & the fact that it doesn't hit as many targets, this is a good chance to burn all of your resources triaging the people not getting healed up by the aoe of the sorc/sage. Overall, though, if you're having trouble, use a sniper raid shield or stay out.
2) Soa has a couple aspects that make sorcs/sages shine.
a) the transition phases--sorc puddles can just heal everybody up really easily
b) because sorcs have PREVENTATIVE healing (read bubble + 10% armor buff with their hot), they are really good bubble popping healers. As a sorc, I bubble & hot the people who have balls and then heal them up. The other healer (in this case the operative or YOU, should focus more on the tank so the sorc CAN focus on ball healers).
Overall, if you have 1 op + 1 sorc, you should be fine, your roles and strengths are just a little different. The way I see it when I heal with my op... is I'm healing to my strengths so that sorcs can heal to theirs.
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As a healer, I value the Matrix Cube because it is predictable sustained bonus. If I were dpsing, I'd go with a click.
I understand this thread is probably about dpsing, but I figured I'd share that tiny bit--a lot of times the clickies as a healer result in overhealing, not better efficiency or throughput, so the extra stats on the matrix cube just end up working out more favorably imo.
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Try NM mode and see if you'll say the same thing. Sure double or even triple tick in HM isn't much 10-15k hp, but when it's 20k hp for two ticks in NM it's not so easy is it. And yes it almost always happens no matter what you do.
My guess is you're still running normal and maybe HM where the dmg is easy to heal through even with the double tick.
I take 1 tick of dmg. On Nightmare. ONE time about a month and a half ago, just after KP was released, I took a double explosion from a ball and died. I have been doing a nightmare & normal Soa every week for over two months now. If you are having problems, you're probably doing something wrong.
Sorcs are a little squishy and don't have a dmg reduction cooldown like some other squishy classes have. What I recommend and what I do is:
1) Bubble any squishies who are going to take a ball.
2) Put a resurgence (sorc/sage hot) on any squishies. What this does is add 10% armor = less dmg taken.
No real need to be rude here. Especially when you're wrong.
Edit: Going back to the OP's post, it seems like they were stacking and eating the ball explosion based on the healing tactics described. i.e. "90% of the raid's health" Moving away from that strat is going to be the first step toward success here. If I was wrong in my understanding, then utilizing cooldowns and having good raid awareness will help tremendously.
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Did you swap out raid members?
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The scenario you described can be solved a simpler way:
1) The whirlwinded person will always land in melee, so don't kite balls through melee range of the boss. This is doubly good because then you won't have needless ball damage on melee/tank.
2) If people have a ball on them, they shouldn't be standing at a mind trap, even to dps it, they should be handling the ball so as not to blow up the mind trapped person. Consider having ranged handle mind traps to prevent this problem altogether.
I understand that you are frustrated with the execution of the fight, but neither of the mechanics you've listed are rng. Accidents and bugs DO happen, but these two situations arise because of poor handling of mechanics, nothing else.
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Ummmm based on the way you worded a few things...
1) If you're getting the massive aoe after a transition, you're not doing the transition properly. You should only get that if you mess up.
2) Are you stacking to eat the balls??????????
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Let's making raiding challenging.
Your task, if you choose to accept it is...
ಠ_ಠ
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Hmmm... we could maybe attempt this if any of us knew how to write "Wish you were here" in Chinese :\
Is 2 tanks for normal 8-man Ops really that terrible?
in Flashpoints, Operations, and Heroic Missions
Posted
As somebody above suggested:
Have an assassin or jugg in DPS SPEC with a tank set and stance ready to swap over. This will be enough of an "extra tank" for all the encounters that need 2, but will mitigate the dps loss by having an extra tank in the group. This will also keep your healers happy because when a 2nd tank is useful, they're not going to be trying to heal a dps.