Jedi Consular who has actually leveled?

[Reymundo]

His ability that one-shots Qyzen and then you has a LONG activation time. Like 5-10 seconds. You have to use Mind Snap to stop it before it activates or else you go bye bye.

[HibashiraSakai]

I'm Seer spec using Qyzen as tank.

 

Sidone was rough. After the first round, I was on heal the entire fight. Almost ate it a couple times.

 

Vivicar was actually pretty simple. I was able to do a normal elite rotation. Other than the ship mob bugs, that event was fairly simple.

 

Stark was hard even when he was -1 level. I had to switch back to Qyzen. Still failed 3 times. In the end, I had to burn all the cooldowns, with Qyzen dead, and only won by a sliver (one more hit I would have been dead type sliver). The key really is to learn what to interrupt.

 

Wait till you get to the last fight of Act 3 (name withheld to protect the innocent). After dying 6 times, I was going to call in a group. But I finally figured out what I was dying from and learn to counter it.

 

@OP, there really is a fair bit of learning even in PvE. brute force are for JK and SW. We need to use our brains.

Edited January 16, 2012 by HibashiraSakai

[Reymundo]

They're actually fixing a bug I ran into, whereby every time you lowered a forcefield on the ship, about 12-15 enemies would spawn instantly and swarm you. It meant death. I'm fairly good at juggling groups, but 12-15 enemies? I died. I basically resigned myself to dying every time I lowered a force field, since after the enemies spawned and swarmed, they'd revert to their intended groupings (2-4 enemies per group, spaced far enough apart to take a group at a time).

 

Nothing to do with the Vivicar fight itself, I believe.

 

Anywho, I understand that the casual player isn't going to use interrupts as a first thought (I remember when I was very casual, I just wanted to spam my damage buttons all day because it was easy and I understood what they did). Understanding interrupts, however, is very necessary for the following planets (Balmorra and the Project Storm) and the game is trying to teach you to use them, since it's obviously a mechanic that is important going forward.

 

Kiting is fine if you'd prefer to do it - however, it's really easier to learn how to hit/click one or two more button(s). Mind Snap is your fried So is Force Stun. Place it somewhere on your bar where it'll be easy for you to remember and practice with it!

 

Yes! This bug angered me so much! It's the only time so far where my equipment came close to breaking. I saw this little yellow chest piece above my character portrait and thought, "Hmm. What do you suppose that is?" When I moused over it, it said half my equipment was below 20%! Biggest. Repair bill. Ever.

[Mavnas]

Tonight, he 1 shotted my Companion within 5 seconds, then 1 shotted me within 10 seconds.

 

I think that one ability exists to remind you that you have an interrupt.

[Nastar]

I had a Consular Shadow that couldnt beat Sidonie Garen on Alderon. Game ends for that character.

 

I leveled a Consular Sage(even more powerful), beat Sidonie in first fight. Finished up all quest on Alderon.

 

Only 1 quest in queue.

 

Vivicar. I am level 32, he is level 34 Gold and has a Specil that 1 shots, both me and my companion.

 

Wth?

 

You had troubles with both of them? Oh boy, you're in for a treat!

[pakchooieunf]

This game puts a heavy emphasis on interrupting enemy casts, there's no way around that. I've found from about 1-30 you can get by with offensive button mashing, but not so much after that.

 

I learned this the hard way, but I think a lot of the struggle comes from the UI limitations.

 

In a nutshell, a lot of players can easily find themselves being overwhelmed by information overload - too many individual things to keep track of and monitor, without a decent UI that makes this kind of gameplay feasible for people who are not hyper-reactive.

 

Physiologically, most people have trouble keeping track of more than 4 items, give or take. This isn't stupidity, it's just a basic limitation. Now consider:

 

• Basic attack chain
  
• Keeping de-buffs/dots up
  
• Reacting to ability procs
  
• Interrupting enemy spell casts
  
• Staying out of fire/monitoring environment
  
• Monitoring cooldowns
  

 

Nevermind having 36+ abilities, many of which are very situational, to keep track of.

 

These are just the requirements for a basic fight, and right off the bat it is pushing the average limits of human attentiveness. Of course the developers want an element of stress, but where this game failed was in the UI. Other games have accommodated this type of gameplay with customizable UI and alerts. They also have basic macro functions to ease the burden of having so many abilities.

 

We don't even get the luxury of grouping important information on the screen. Enemy portrait is on one side, my portrait is on the other, companion is somewhere else, buttons and cool downs span across the entire screen and up the sides, buffs and debuffs are only indicated by tiny icons that run across the entire screen. If you look at your quick bar for a second to monitor your cool downs or look at your buffs to check for a proc, you can easily fail to notice that the enemy is casting, and not react in time. Is it any wonder that at least some people are being frustrated? Until we get a proper UI for this type of gameplay, I can totally understand how people miss things like their interrupt windows.

 

Also, someone pointed out the number of interrupts available to a Shadow, but failed to mention that Force Wave has a lengthy animation, making it unsuitable for interrupting many casts, and Force Pull is only available to 1 build.

[Alikain]

I had a Consular Shadow that couldnt beat Sidonie Garen on Alderon. Game ends for that character.

 

I leveled a Consular Sage(even more powerful), beat Sidonie in first fight. Finished up all quest on Alderon.

 

Only 1 quest in queue.

 

Vivicar. I am level 32, he is level 34 Gold and has a Specil that 1 shots, both me and my companion.

 

Wth?

 

OP people can't help you if you say you are a sage. you need to tell them your spec and sage is not your spec. are you are seer sage or tele sage or balance sage or what. and second what companion have you got with you. without giving these infor people can't help in anyway.

[Eagle_Tarquinas]

Tonight, he 1 shotted my Companion within 5 seconds, then 1 shotted me within 10 seconds.

 

You.... you do realize one shot means to kill in a single hit right? Meaning a oneshot takes between 0 and 1 second. I think what you meant to say was the he simply DPSd you to 0 in 10 seconds, and your companion in 5 seconds.

[H_Fab]

There are fights later down the road that you are probably going to smash your monitor in if you don't take the advice being offered. Attis Station will require all your crowd control abilities and Stark is, well, Stark is Stark, lol.

 

 

 

Level 48 shadow tank here, and let me recount this: the later levels get MUCH harder. If Vivicar is making you want to quit the game, good luck past 40.

 

Also, in response to ranging an ability being an exploit: if Bioware doesn't want players kiting Vivicar around and winning that way, they'll make his abilities zone-wide and not an AoE. Simple as that.

[Zunzun]

One of the hardest fights I had while leveling. The other one being against that Sith at the end of the storyline on Coruscant. But sonce there is quite a number of level 50 shadows, I guess most people didn't have to reroll sage.

[Korialstrazs]

I'm level 44 with no problematic fights at all, no deaths, no restealths...I see way too many threads like this.

[Keta]

This game puts a heavy emphasis on interrupting enemy casts, there's no way around that. I've found from about 1-30 you can get by with offensive button mashing, but not so much after that.

 

I learned this the hard way, but I think a lot of the struggle comes from the UI limitations.

 

In a nutshell, a lot of players can easily find themselves being overwhelmed by information overload - too many individual things to keep track of and monitor, without a decent UI that makes this kind of gameplay feasible for people who are not hyper-reactive.

 

Physiologically, most people have trouble keeping track of more than 4 items, give or take. This isn't stupidity, it's just a basic limitation. Now consider:

 

• Basic attack chain
  
• Keeping de-buffs/dots up
  
• Reacting to ability procs
  
• Interrupting enemy spell casts
  
• Staying out of fire/monitoring environment
  
• Monitoring cooldowns
  

 

Nevermind having 36+ abilities, many of which are very situational, to keep track of.

 

These are just the requirements for a basic fight, and right off the bat it is pushing the average limits of human attentiveness. Of course the developers want an element of stress, but where this game failed was in the UI. Other games have accommodated this type of gameplay with customizable UI and alerts. They also have basic macro functions to ease the burden of having so many abilities.

 

We don't even get the luxury of grouping important information on the screen. Enemy portrait is on one side, my portrait is on the other, companion is somewhere else, buttons and cool downs span across the entire screen and up the sides, buffs and debuffs are only indicated by tiny icons that run across the entire screen. If you look at your quick bar for a second to monitor your cool downs or look at your buffs to check for a proc, you can easily fail to notice that the enemy is casting, and not react in time. Is it any wonder that at least some people are being frustrated? Until we get a proper UI for this type of gameplay, I can totally understand how people miss things like their interrupt windows.

 

Also, someone pointed out the number of interrupts available to a Shadow, but failed to mention that Force Wave has a lengthy animation, making it unsuitable for interrupting many casts, and Force Pull is only available to 1 build.

 

This. That's probably the most intelligent comment in his entire thread. As a balance tree shadow, vivica was the first of several annoying fights. Yes, you have to use your interuppts and you need to try and time them. And yes he can resist them. If he does you're going to be doing the fight over again. Use mind snap, keep your dots up and keep out of his Los sight as much as possible. It may take you a bit of time, but you'll get through it. If it annoys you too much walk away and play something else for a day or three then come back. That's just what I did tonight after getting spanked by the final npc boss in the consular series on Belsavis. Its not worth getting angry or annoyed with. You don't have a LT of interupts at your disposal but they will work.

[Zitori]

Vivicar is a joke. I play a sage, and I was expecting someone stronger, so I was disappointed.

 

Vivicar has only one ability, just interrupt him and you are done. Get Tharan and Holiday will do the interrupts for you. Meanwhile you have your own interrupt as well, save it in between Holliday's interrupt if you need.

 

If you want a real challenge, take on Tassandra. She is the optional mini-boss in the Vivicar quest. Very satisfying, and took me 10 minutes. You need to be good in force management

and interrupts to take her on.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Zitori

[Maronot]

Lord Vivicar was clearly created without thinking about casual gamers, who just want to see the story (to bad, the second acts is much better than the first one, I would even say the first is the worst on all the classes in the game). On the other hand maybe I should be happy if many Consular players stop there, so it feels not like everyone and their aunt is playing that class.

 

You are wrong. All MMO games are made for casuals, for they (we) are the majority of players, therefore we are the majority of the company's incomes.

Don't (try to) be so elitist. If you want to impress somebody else get a Nobel prize.

 

I play at most three hours in a row and not every day, so I consider myself a casual.

Instead of watching TV I rather play SWTOR.

Said that, I am shadow tank and had not any problems with Vivicar.

It is a longer fight that is all.

 

 

I did it at lvl 34 because I don't rush through the class quests, I always do all the quests in every planet.

Maybe your main problem is that your lvl is still too low.

Moreover, you should use some hp potions and willpower stims.

 

Salut

Edited January 17, 2012 by Maronot

[Maronot]

Use Theran Cedrax, turn off all skills other than instant heals and Holiday. He will interrupt everything without you even thinking about it.

 

Nice tip, indeed.

+10

 

But, sometimes, I do not know why, his dps abilities automatically switch on.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Maronot

[Kyomih]

Nice tip, indeed.

+10

 

But, sometimes, I do not know why, his dps abilities automatically switch on.

 

If you zone, use your speeder or anything else that makes your companion vanish and reappear the skills will be reset. It's a really annoying companion bug.

[Maronot]

If you zone, use your speeder or anything else that makes your companion vanish and reappear the skills will be reset. It's a really annoying companion bug.

 

I know that.

I meant to say that sometimes after switching off his dps abilities, they got switched on in the middle of the pull.

Actually I have checked it out by watching them while I am dealing with a pull.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Maronot

[Skyjune]

I had a Consular Shadow that couldnt beat Sidonie Garen on Alderon. Game ends for that character.

 

I leveled a Consular Sage(even more powerful), beat Sidonie in first fight. Finished up all quest on Alderon.

 

Only 1 quest in queue.

 

Vivicar. I am level 32, he is level 34 Gold and has a Specil that 1 shots, both me and my companion.

 

Wth?

 

I think in the room for this fight is 5 Freeze containers. Use force speed to draw him to a container then freeze him. Unload your dmg then force speed to the next container. By the time you get done with the 5th container he will be almost dead.

 

On another note* I think some mobs are bugged and doing an exsessive amount of dmg from specials. (I am Tank spec).

On vos I encountered this on the Heroic 4 The first trial (Boss)...The Cyber creature cave solo mission, and an area mission.

 

In all three cases Boss fight in heroic, 1 silver beast in cave, 2 silver mobs on area mission...They would fire there special and I would g from 14k to 7k HP in one shot. Then fire another special with in 5 secs to kill me.

 

In the case of the boss on heroic 4, even with full group and a good healer that bug was bleeding me like crazy and the group died 3 times, one member left.

 

We then tried a 4th time I took out Tharan for extra healing. The sentil got one shotted by his aoe. I then began to "Kite" him around the room only using instant cast dmg like Project, Breach, Slow time etc. When the mob caught up with me or stuned me I would force speed away. I used my taunts and kept him on me, and between the healer, my companion and I we where able to take him down...(Granted it took like 7 min).

 

I know the easy answer is to say "Learn to interupt" and I agree with them...but I know how to interupt and use them alot Mind snap, Spinning kick, Force stun...It seems like this is beyond that and bug related.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Skyjune

[Aaramis]

2 quick comments:

 

1 : it's not just the Consular class boss fight that's hard - almost all classes struggle a little. Check out the Knight forums and you'll see they struggle with their guy too. It's *meant* to be a very difficult challenge.

 

2 : on *any* boss fight, interrupts become your #1 priority. DPS will happen in between (or via your companion), but the way most bosses seem programmed is to have very lethal attacks which you MUST interrupt / stun / whatever. If you don't play it that way, they tend to be very difficult fights - perhaps impossible.

[allexj]

Im tank spec and i used thearans ALSO IM LVL 50 Edited January 17, 2012 by allexj

[Slivers]

This game puts a heavy emphasis on interrupting enemy casts, there's no way around that. I've found from about 1-30 you can get by with offensive button mashing, but not so much after that.

 

I learned this the hard way, but I think a lot of the struggle comes from the UI limitations.

 

In a nutshell, a lot of players can easily find themselves being overwhelmed by information overload - too many individual things to keep track of and monitor, without a decent UI that makes this kind of gameplay feasible for people who are not hyper-reactive.

 

Physiologically, most people have trouble keeping track of more than 4 items, give or take. This isn't stupidity, it's just a basic limitation. Now consider:

 

• Basic attack chain
  
• Keeping de-buffs/dots up
  
• Reacting to ability procs
  
• Interrupting enemy spell casts
  
• Staying out of fire/monitoring environment
  
• Monitoring cooldowns
  

 

Nevermind having 36+ abilities, many of which are very situational, to keep track of.

 

These are just the requirements for a basic fight, and right off the bat it is pushing the average limits of d

We don't even get the luxury of grouping important information on the screen. Enemy portrait is on one side, my portrait is on the other, companion is somewhere else, buttons and cool downs span across the entire screen and up the sides, buffs and debuffs are only indicated by tiny icons that run across the entire screen. If you look at your quick bar for a second to monitor your cool downs or look at your buffs to check for a proc, you can easily fail to notice that the enemy is casting, and not react in time. Is it any wonder that at least some people are being frustrated? Until we get a proper UI for this type of gameplay, I can totally understand how people miss things like their interrupt windows.

 

Also, someone pointed out the number of interrupts available to a Shadow, but failed to mention that Force Wave has a lengthy animation, making it unsuitable for interrupting many casts, and Force Pull is only available to 1 build.

 

As another poster said:

THIS. Probably one of the best worded posts on the entire SWTOR forums.

 

The "interrupt" mechanic is an important one in this game and most MMOs/RPGs. Although I may change my opinion post-event, I currently view this, as well as other similar classes' quest fights, as a necessary learning curve for second-half/end-game grouping. Likely the design intention was to have no one successfully complete the encounter without, at least, minimal interrupt understanding and execution; either themselves, a companion's, or a friend's.

 

I'm not a casual gamer. I'm not a hard-core gamer. I'm a Dad who used to be a hard-core gamer; starting with MMOs back in the Meridian 59/UO/EQ days. Regardless of design "intent", SWTOR's UI is woefully inadequate in enabling this learning curve and significantly sub-standard by today's gaming definition by its inability to both scale UI and move frames. It is not as bad as the old EQ days when you "mediated" to an open spell-book w/o being able to see the world praying Tovax or Holly Windstalker didn't show up, but bad none-the-less ... but I digress.

 

Example: I play on a large LCD monitor in high native resolution. The NPC cast bar is less than an inch long, about an 1/8 inch thick, and stuffed above the "0" "-" and "=" hotkeys. Yes, the same hotkeys I use the least and, therefore, where I tend to never ever look in the first place.

 

Teenie Tiny NPC Cast Bar. Terrible Screen Location.

 

That's not just inconvenient but bad design regardless to whether you are ultra casual (leading to not being able to win critical battles) to or super-hardcore (not maximizing DPS for you and your companion/group).

 

1. Having a UI "Scale" slider is a priority need if Bioware wants me/others to continue playing/subscribing beyond the basic storylines.
   
2. Having movable frames is a priority need if Bioware wants me/others to continue playing/subscribing beyond the basic storylines.
   

 

 

Use Theran Cedrax, turn off all skills other than instant heals and Holiday. He will interrupt everything without you even thinking about it.

Vivicar has only one ability, just interrupt him and you are done. Get Tharan and Holiday will do the interrupts for you. Meanwhile you have your own interrupt as well, save it in between Holliday's interrupt if you need.

If you want a real challenge, take on Tassandra. She is the optional mini-boss in the Vivicar quest. Very satisfying, and took me 10 minutes. You need to be good in force management

and interrupts to take her on.

Thank you! When I get to the Vivicar battle, I know the Tharan tip will help me immensely! I'm happy they have challenging opportunities like Tassandra for people like you, but for myself, I'm happy it is optional as my two young boys present heroic challenges every day in MMRL

Edited January 17, 2012 by Slivers

[Bilirubin]

"The Summit: The difficulty of the encounter with Sidone has been reduced."

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=141695

 

 

Sidonie was a good, if somewhat tough, fight. Hardly impossible OP, even for a casual gamer like myself. I made the mistake of letting force storm hit ONCE partially, then either in a force stun or Holiday cast I hit a medpack and pulled up my pants and went back at it. Hate to see it nerfed because I'm pretty happy to have flashed that fight.

[oddmyth]

Teenie Tiny NPC Cast Bar. Terrible Screen Location.

 

That's not just inconvenient but bad design regardless to whether you are ultra casual (leading to not being able to win critical battles) to or super-hardcore (not maximizing DPS for you and your companion/group).

 

I agree with you, but you can also turn on enemy cast bars to appear above the mob itself. Far more useful.

 

I would love a system where I can easily monitor my procs. When raiding its nigh impossible to find the PA proc as a tank. You have so many buffs, HoTs etc. that its quite difficult to accurately see when PA is proccing.

[carnageftw]

i was standing right in front of him as shadow infilatrion spec in combat stance with tharan cedrax healing and it was no problem at lvl30..

 

but i have to say those quests can be a bit harsh for ppl that are new to mmos or similar games. like my girlfriend, she doesnt notice anything and gets nervous when her hp bar drops to low and i guess shes not the only one

[Keta]

Nice tip, indeed.

+10

 

But, sometimes, I do not know why, his dps abilities automatically switch on.

 

Personally I try not use him, even in his med mode he seems to be fond of only healing my character out of combat and not during. Go figure.