Wiping on Racor HM....no idea why.

[Dee-Jay]

I've been running raids with a semi-casual but capable group of players of the past weeks, making constant progress through normal and HM raids.

 

Normal modes are pretty sweet cruising and not much of a challenge.

 

Eternity Vault HM doesn't pose much of a challenge either and we even do some of the bosses on Nightmare (Pylon and Council, might try the others too next ID).

 

For two IDs now we've been trying to get out foot into Karaggas Palace HM. So far to no avail.

 

Even in the best tries with everyone alive until the end the Rancor enrages at about 15% HP.

 

And honestly, I'm running out of ideas about what to do. We've tried various different strats but none will gain uns anywhere near the requires ~15% in order to beat the Enrage timer. Even our "chaos" strategy where people have >90% DPS uptime only gets us down to 15%.

 

Our current setup is as follows:

 

1 Scoundrel - Concealment spec

1 Guardian - Focus spec (he's tried both Vigilance and Focus and considers Focus superior).

1 Vanguard - tank spec

2 Sages - heal spec

2 Sages - Telekinesis spec (3/31/7 both)

1 Commando - Gunnery spec

 

Gear level is about Columni on average, with some boasting a few Rakata pieces and others still left with one or the other green slot, mostly with critical enhancements though.

 

 

So gear should really be more than sufficient to kill the boss.

 

And yet here we are stuck at a roadblock with no idea how to progress. So we started debating if our spec compilation might be the issue. It seems odd however since even Council NM seems to die without issue.

 

Anyway....enough bla...bla since I really don't know what else to say.

 

It's a frustrating realization that you don't have a realistic chance of killing a boss and not knowing why.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Dee-Jay

[Wishy]

Honestly, it's likely a gear issue. If you're not wiping, and you're

 

a) Not spending a lot of time running around evading

b) Not wiping

 

Then it's simply a gear dps issue. Try taking his swipes and healing through them. One week we were wiping 30-60%. The next week after 2 more HM EV runs, we starting killing him without a problem.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Wishy

[Dee-Jay]

Honestly, it's likely a gear issue. If you're not wiping, and you're

 

a) Not spending a lot of time running around evading

b) Not wiping

 

Then it's simply a gear dps issue. Try taking his swipes and healing through them. One week we were wiping 30-60%. The next week after 2 more HM EV runs, we starting killing him without a problem.

 

We do tank his hits.

[Sirranter]

Well are you wiping to enrage with all 8 of your raid members alive? I'm sorry but you didnt really give enough detail to the actual mechanics of the fight you are experiencing trouble with and how your raid is handling them or if members of your raid are dieing or not.

 

A major thing i do for my group is I(the MT jug) kill the 2 adds at 50% by myself and keep the dps on the rancor, the only time we get close to an enrage timer is if someone in my raid is just being a jack *** and dies to one of the mechanics like back handed into the pit or getting multiple players hit by the swipe

[Demarcc]

Dont kill the adds.

 

Have a tank grab them and pull them to the edge ... sage run over and knock them into the acid. This will prob save you a ton of DPS time. Never waste time killing the adds ... pull and punt. Win.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Demarcc

[Kaelano]

This is why the game needs parse. When people see the data they'll be able to help friends work a better rotation or pep talk those with less contribution. It's incredibly frustrating when 6 people are giving it "their all" and 2 guys are stoned playing one-handed and don't truly give a crap.

 

IMO on that fight tho, low dps comes from people being too hyper running around and not giving themselves the chance to plant themselves for channel casts, because they're afraid of the swipes. That experience with the encounter to recognize the "queues" on when it's safe to "not run around like a chicken with your head cut off" come with exposure and time.

[Dee-Jay]

Dont kill the adds.

 

Have a tank grab them and pull them to the edge ... sage run over and knock them into the acid. This will prob save you a ton of DPS time. Never waste time killing the adds ... pull and punt. Win.

 

We don't kill the adds and try to CC them. Knocking them off the ledge causes the boss to reset.

[Demarcc]

We don't kill the adds and try to CC them. Knocking them off the ledge causes the boss to reset.

 

Funny its never caused a reset for us. Never did in hard. Never did in Nightmare. Never did on our speed runs. Odd that.

 

The first 4 mobs that are in the room when you first enter will evade bug if you punt them in. The two adds that come during the fight have never bugged out for us, they just die and we chuckle /shrug.

[Maoxx]

We don't kill the adds and try to CC them. Knocking them off the ledge causes the boss to reset.

 

Hell I remember trying to do it on one of the adds, and the damn thing just jumped right back up O.o Which is where my guild started saying "Manka Cats don't give a @#$!"

[Raque]

We spread about the room and don't move when the boss focuses on us. Only one person should get swiped at a time which is easy to heal through. Just be far enough in that you will not get knocked off the edge. Having the range not kite should up their DPS considerably and actually make healing easier overall.

 

Make sure the food adds die instantly and ignore the big dogs and just off-tank them.

[Wishy]

cats can be punted

dont punt food.

[PhoenixMatrix]

I'm amazed you can do Soa hard mode, but have trouble with this guy. I feel there's a 1:10 difficulty difference between the two, with the rancor being easier.

 

Anyhow, the enrage is a little tight and its what you have to worry about.

 

First, since the rancor can only be threat tanked (and he seems to switch target randomly anyway...it feels like he just lowers threat a bit, as someone threat tanking him can often catch him back, you have two options.

 

Option A) If you're having trouble with people staying in position, have an amazingly well geared tank do as much damage as possible, with adrenals, relic clickies, etc. You can't really keep him on the tank at all time, but its feasable to keep him on one person often enough that the rest of your party can focus on optimal rotations more often than just running around.

 

Option B (recommended): Have the tanks just not tank at all. Go in damage stance (whatever it is for those particular tanks), use DPS gear. Hell, if all else fails (we never needed it, but...), respec in DPS (and respec back to tank for the later fights. You only need one tank anyway for the entire raid). Gear in this game makes way more difference than it should IMO, but it does the trick. With DPS gears on the tanks, and healers attacking whenever they can, you should be able to smoke him.

 

You have to smash the cats as quickly as possible. You can try knocking them down, but often they just come back. If your party has a lot of CC, and doesn't rely much on AOE (sorry balance shadows/madness assassins!), you can CC them and ignore them. Otherwise, make damn sure to kill them one at a time. Don't have your party running randomly like morons.

 

After that, even in fully damage gears, you can kite him around quite nicely for about 10% without too much issues if people are on the balls dodging his swipes and using stuff like Resilience during his knock back. Not too different from Soa when he enrages.

 

All that put together makes it a far easier fight than trying to do it conventionally.

 

As a point of reference, our parties are generally half friends and half pugs, with our core members being in columi with a few rekata pieces (mainly the healers/tanks, and the tanks use their damage gears, which is not rekata), and the rest being like you said: mainly columi with the occasional green piece.

 

The first (few) times we did it, he would enrage at 35(!!!) percent. After a few attempts the same night we were able to down him. So its definitely about tactics, not gears in your case. If you don't have mostly ranged damage dealers (we rarely have ranged dps unfortunately), definately get the tanks to go DPS mode/gear on him. That makes all the difference.

Edited March 6, 2012 by PhoenixMatrix

[MelliMelon]

Good suggestions guys. My HM raids have run into similar problems and it's rare to see constructive and polite comments on these forums...

[Roxinius]

We don't kill the adds and try to CC them. Knocking them off the ledge causes the boss to reset.

 

you are wrong the cats that come out at 50% do not reset the boss the have no interaction with the boss like the palace guards do so knocking them off is bad the cats is fine we knock both off and have no issues

[Paydroid]

When I've seen the cats knocked off, they have bugged out (i.e., appeared back on the platform), but they did not reset the rancor.

 

My guild had a little trouble with this guy at first, basically it comes down to:

1) Not losing anyone to the knockback or to his big swipes (as has been said, it's not that hard to heal through them you just want to avoid getting several people hit)

2) Not bothering to kill the cats, just have your tank keep them on him, usually they end up dying from AoE

 

If you're doing those two things and still hitting the rage timer, it basically means you're either not geared enough, or your DPS are not playing very well.

[Roxinius]

When I've seen the cats knocked off, they have bugged out (i.e., appeared back on the platform), but they did not reset the rancor.

 

My guild had a little trouble with this guy at first, basically it comes down to:

1) Not losing anyone to the knockback or to his big swipes (as has been said, it's not that hard to heal through them you just want to avoid getting several people hit)

2) Not bothering to kill the cats, just have your tank keep them on him, usually they end up dying from AoE

 

If you're doing those two things and still hitting the rage timer, it basically means you're either not geared enough, or your DPS are not playing very well.

 

we've gotten it down to get them both knocked off cause we have both tanks in dps gear

[Demarcc]

As I said before, all we do is have a tank taunt them to an edge and boom knockback.

 

Sure sometimes they will pop back up, just knock them off again. They hit the acid and die. If you knock them off and they fly over the other side and not into the acid they tend to reset up top.

 

As I've said before, I've NEVER seen the cats reset the boss, ever. We've do all modes (Normal-hard-nightmare) and never see it. Not to say its never happened, I was'ent there for every kill on every server, but I'm sure it would be a rare thing.

 

I think the person arguing the point was thinking of the first 4 cats that are in the room when you first get there. If you knock them off, yes they can evade bug and reset, so we just kill them as normal. The cats that spawn at 50% tho? Boom ! Knockback!

[Kayoss]

Hi folks, I just want to throw my 2 credits of confusion in on this one as well.

 

Last lockout, we had no problems with this boss at all. Heck, we had no problems with the entire raid. Our raid makeup last week consisted of a guardian and shadow tank, 2 knight dps (1 guardian 1 sentinel), a Telekinetic Sage and a Gunslinger. Healers were a Sage and Scoundrel.

 

If anything, we were less organized in our kill of him last week than the wipefest we've endured this week.

 

This week we swapped the shadow tank for another guardian, and initially went at him with 3 melee dps, a Vig and 2 shadows of varying specs. Healers stayed the same, Sage and Scoundrel. When it was clear that 3 melee dps is less than ideal from a movement perspective, we traded a shadow for gunslinger. Essentially the same group from the week before.

 

We have always swapped to the cats and burnt them down, because we've seen that knocking them off causes the boss to reset. Is there a specific spot the cats can or need to be knocked off to avoid that?

 

We are amenable to trying the cc strat, as it sounds like it can net the best dps time on the boss. Though I do have to stop and wonder if ignoring the cats entirely will give us 20% of 1.65 million in damage, we can take the cats down fairly quickly.

 

Our raid has a fair share of Rakata gear, I myself having 2 and others having up to 3. One thing thats working against me personally is that I have the worst luck in the world and am still stuck with an orange lvl 50 moddable saber, but it has 56 and 58 mods in it from HM Gharj.

 

We too are getting to around 20% before he enrages, and its made me wonder if they stealth buffed him or if the boss is bugged somehow (wouldnt surprise me). Maybe he has more hp than he should? It wouldnt be the first time that has happened in this particular operation.

 

We too call out who is being targeted and eat his swipes while everyone else moves away. We are fairly practiced at this can execute it very well. I think, in terms of dealing with what the boss does, we have that part down.

[Soluss]

I've been running raids with a semi-casual but capable group of players of the past weeks, making constant progress through normal and HM raids.

 

Normal modes are pretty sweet cruising and not much of a challenge.

 

Eternity Vault HM doesn't pose much of a challenge either and we even do some of the bosses on Nightmare (Pylon and Council, might try the others too next ID).

 

For two IDs now we've been trying to get out foot into Karaggas Palace HM. So far to no avail.

 

Even in the best tries with everyone alive until the end the Rancor enrages at about 15% HP.

 

And honestly, I'm running out of ideas about what to do. We've tried various different strats but none will gain uns anywhere near the requires ~15% in order to beat the Enrage timer. Even our "chaos" strategy where people have >90% DPS uptime only gets us down to 15%.

 

Our current setup is as follows:

 

1 Scoundrel - Concealment spec

1 Guardian - Focus spec (he's tried both Vigilance and Focus and considers Focus superior).

1 Vanguard - tank spec

2 Sages - heal spec

2 Sages - Telekinesis spec (3/31/7 both)

1 Commando - Gunnery spec

 

Gear level is about Columni on average, with some boasting a few Rakata pieces and others still left with one or the other green slot, mostly with critical enhancements though.

 

 

So gear should really be more than sufficient to kill the boss.

 

And yet here we are stuck at a roadblock with no idea how to progress. So we started debating if our spec compilation might be the issue. It seems odd however since even Council NM seems to die without issue.

 

Anyway....enough bla...bla since I really don't know what else to say.

 

It's a frustrating realization that you don't have a realistic chance of killing a boss and not knowing why.

 

Are you killing the adds that come at 50% or just mezzing them and keeping on the boss? If your killing them then keep them mezzed and kill them after the boss is dead. This will easily get you that extra 15%.

[Firehammer]

When I've seen the cats knocked off, they have bugged out (i.e., appeared back on the platform), but they did not reset the rancor.

 

I have seen the boss reset multiple times at 50%, so if its not the cats doing it then I don't know what would.

[CRuby]

It's the Red adds that can reset the boss. I've knocked one once into acid and the boss reset after.

[Ruthia]

I can confirm its the Red Adds resetting the boss if you knock them in. Just make sure you kill the Red add using DPS and knock everything else in and he wont reset!

[ryuukhang]

Your damage dealers are not meeting the requirement if you have >90% uptime on Bonethrasher and are hitting enrage at 15%. Replace your Guardian dps with a Sentinel (either Watchman or Combat) and you'll easily kill him without enrage. Sentinel does much more dps than Guardian and has the added bonus of giving your other dps a +15% damage buff (twice before he enrages if you use one right at the start and another when the cooldown is gone).

[flycly]

Idk if you've downed it yet or not but my guild does the following:

 

 

Range dps/healers do a compass position, having sages be on the North and South (This is looking at mini-map) So that they can use the 1minute cc's on the kitties.

 

Also, always and always try to keep him in the middle. When someone is targeted, EVERYONE ELSE who is melee/in range should move behind him in order to maintain the cleave damage.

 

Next, down those piggies as fast as possible.

 

Finally: Keep a good distance away from the edge of the ring as he can punt you guys a good distance off into the acid stuff.

 

Just a side note, you don't have to take this little bit of advice, but try using something other than 4 sages. Like have another knight that is sentinel spec so he/she can pop inspiration (It increases damage for a set amount of time). Furthermore, if you haven't already been using relics, use them every time they're off CD.

 

With some practice on the positioning I'm quite positive you guys will be able to bring that SOB down :DDD

-Porthios (Harbringer)

[Dracosz]

I've been running raids with a semi-casual but capable group of players of the past weeks, making constant progress through normal and HM raids.

 

Normal modes are pretty sweet cruising and not much of a challenge.

 

Eternity Vault HM doesn't pose much of a challenge either and we even do some of the bosses on Nightmare (Pylon and Council, might try the others too next ID).

 

For two IDs now we've been trying to get out foot into Karaggas Palace HM. So far to no avail.

 

Even in the best tries with everyone alive until the end the Rancor enrages at about 15% HP.

 

And honestly, I'm running out of ideas about what to do. We've tried various different strats but none will gain uns anywhere near the requires ~15% in order to beat the Enrage timer. Even our "chaos" strategy where people have >90% DPS uptime only gets us down to 15%.

 

Our current setup is as follows:

 

1 Scoundrel - Concealment spec

1 Guardian - Focus spec (he's tried both Vigilance and Focus and considers Focus superior).

1 Vanguard - tank spec

2 Sages - heal spec

2 Sages - Telekinesis spec (3/31/7 both)

1 Commando - Gunnery spec

 

Gear level is about Columni on average, with some boasting a few Rakata pieces and others still left with one or the other green slot, mostly with critical enhancements though.

 

 

So gear should really be more than sufficient to kill the boss.

 

And yet here we are stuck at a roadblock with no idea how to progress. So we started debating if our spec compilation might be the issue. It seems odd however since even Council NM seems to die without issue.

 

Anyway....enough bla...bla since I really don't know what else to say.

 

It's a frustrating realization that you don't have a realistic chance of killing a boss and not knowing why.

 

Vigilance is better for PvE dps than Focus, by far unless it's a burst encounter (IE Soa on nightmare)