Soa Hard Mode RNG Frustrations

[Mordalus]

After battling the ancient pylon bugs and rolling through the infernal council loot pinata, we come to soa. ah soa. it seems to me that this boss is only downable with a very specific group makeup (ranged dps and two sages) or pure dumb luck. i personally can't stand encounters that replace difficulty with luck. the randomness of the phase two lightning balls is just not fun. almost every attempt we end up with both healers out of the fight (either targeted by lightning balls, mind trapped, or cycloned). sometimes both tanks are out of the fight. the difficulty of this fight is weighted way too much towards RNG and less towards skill and organization. hopefully this fight gets a major tuneup in 1.2.

[Sarcasmx]

I agree completely, the fight is extremely luck based. Have to say the most annoying one for myself is the lightning balls hitting for double the amount they are supposed to. We did find a good work around though. We had one of our tanks who has a dps set go dps, and we use 3 healers. Due to the fact that we were running into lightning ball then straight into the air, or one healer in the air one in trap and we get too far behind. Our dps is pretty good so phase 3 isn't a huge problem and with an extra healer we can go at least 2-3 pillars past his enrage. Still we run into bugs consistently that cause us to wipe and make it incredibly tough to down him on a consistent basis. Really would like it to be fixed soon so we can get our chest pieces.

[Hojdar]

I must say that during the countless tries on that boss, never have both healers or tanks been capacitated at the same time, it sounds like your trap dps is too low.

 

Having people getting thrown into the air the second they pop their ball on the other hand, that its the rng gods pissing on you.

[Cryblood]

Try mindtrap droping, dragging the tank into the pillar dropping and than a lightning ball tick getting insta killed with the corpse spawning in the mindtrap so no easy battlerez.

 

Love this fight.

[Greuceanu]

i love when you have 4,5 platform missing, or when the ball turn invizible , or when the ball do imense damage due to server / client syncronisation.

 

BTW why do you use 2 tanks? we use 1 tank all the time . Only at heavy fabricator we use a Guardian DPS for the stakable debuff.

[Mordalus]

Try mindtrap droping, dragging the tank into the pillar dropping and than a lightning ball tick getting insta killed with the corpse spawning in the mindtrap so no easy battlerez.

 

Love this fight.

 

wow. i thought one of our healers getting cycloned and getting dropped on a ball was bad. i hate rng based fights. its the lazy developer's way to make the encounter difficult. by all means make the encounter difficult. i'm all for it. and i don't mean increasing HPs and decreasing the enrage timer. just tune down the rng elements and add some additional, well thought out and interesting mechanics.

 

it's not as if we are not executing. we've got the choreography down and we have the gear. we are doing everything right but just continue to wipe because of bad luck. i'm ok with endless wipes from lack of execution, gear, etc. those things can be improved. i'm not ok with endless wipes because of bad luck. how the hell do you improve your luck?

 

this is just another example of lack of forethought along with ilum. i never thought i would miss wow raiding lol. those fights seemed well thought out and fun for the most part with little rng element to them. it's too bad i don't like kung fu pandas.

[Jinxblog]

We down HM Soa using 1 tank and 3 healers. If one lf the healers gets unlucky and gets spun right after popping a bubble, the other 2 can handle phase 3 just fine. Plus, the extra heals helps keep the raid alive longer if Soa enrages due to a DPS being dead

[Drakkenstrike]

I agree, SOA HM is a RNG hassle...however, it is perfectly doable.

 

My guild had a lot of growing pains on this Boss as we beat our heads against the wall complaining about everything that could go wrong in the fight....and because of that we died dozens of times until the lights went on and we simply "Got it". Once we understood the mechanics and the individual responsibilities and accountability of each player in the Raid and how to handle the encounter, our issues were increasingly diminished and we now have minimal to very few issues at all with him.

 

I 100% agree with the overall sentiment that he can be treacherous, and there are definitely bugs that need addressed in this encounter, but overall none of them are game-breaking b/c we religiously kill him now week after week.

[Zasekis]

I've been doing Soa on NM for the last 3 weeks... every week one bug, or as our group likes to call them "undocumented feature", gets replaced with another. Lets see if I can list all the RNG/bug elements we get

 

1. Missing floor panels

2. invisible balls

3. Raid indicator only listing 1 name for incoming ball instead of 2 names

4. Cyclone dropping half health player directly on to unexploded ball

5. Player who just exploded a ball being tossed in to a cylcone, and dying because you cant heal them.

6. 1 Healer in mind trap, 1 in cyclone.

7. Main threat holder being tossed in mind trap, then soa attacking someone who is currently being targeted by a ball

8. Ball does double damage = insta kill

9. obolisk is over soa and fails to break his shield

10. phase 3, soa mind traps tank and despawns or does not move towards obolisk as it is about to fall

11. obolisk kills random player who is no where close to landing zone.

12. being dragged in to a mind trap, directly through a ball and being killed by the ball as you enter the trap

13. Battle rez not working when you die to a ball, or cyclone.... or fall damage.... or basically anything.

 

Did I miss anything?

[monstertron]

As many people on these and other forums said: keep in my mind two things

 

- this is not a dps fight, it is a control fight (even in enrage)

- after a couple of tries you should now all of the random bads that can happen so prepare for it

 

We did struggle with this fight on HM, but downed him with difficulties a couple of times (basically 5 or 6 wipes each time). Then I suggested trying it on NiM to start training it for the timed run. I heard from my own guild - "it is a too random fight... We need two sorcerors to do that... or we need a marauder for the buff... or a mercenary healer... or three healers..." and even more, can´t remember those actually. So I began to read a lot.

 

On all the forums people that took him down on timed run brought out just two things as are above - control + preparation. We had a really big argument over it in the guild, that in our current class list (Jug tank, Sorc + Op heal, Tech + Tech + Merc + Sorc + Assa dps) we cannot do it since we need at least 2nd sorc heal, mara dps, or .... Then since I am main tank and in heavy armor and also stubborn like old lady without her coffee I managed to convince them we can do that. Guess what...

 

First try was a total disaster. But with each try we adjusted our tactic and prepared for all the "random bs". In the end it went pretty well.

 

Things we had to adjust

 

- 1st phase and jumping is a piece of cake so no tips there

- it is a control fight not a dps run, so your dps has to also heal from time to time (heal in trap, in air, with ball on his/her butt...) - took two kicks in the balls for us to get our sorc dps to heal in phase two

- some heavy armor class has to be ready to taunt the boss in case the tank is in trap and the healers nad the dps has to be ready to heal (we just say tank trapped and the healers automaticly focuses our dps tech and the dps also pops a couple of heals)

- kite the lightning orbs from the raid as fast as possible and we do it in sort of big curve (you go around it keeping a 10m distance and when you hit the end of the platform you run throu it - so noone falling from the air gets in the blast)

- in phase 3 the tank does not have to take the damage and knockback from the falling pillar if he/she is positioned right - takes a training though

 

with this we pretty much avoided all the tricky "random" situations. Dont say you have to do it same way we did it but just keep in mind that if you know ahead that this "random" thing can happen you can also prepare a scenario for it.

 

The missing platforms are currently the only issues that concern me right now

 

TLDR - in case you know sh !t can be coming you can also have your wiping paper ready to use

Edited March 8, 2012 by monstertron

[Drakkenstrike]

1. Missing floor panels (Yep...this is a Bug, but fixable by resetting...Bioware needs to fix)

2. invisible balls (Bug....easily fixed by turning on Nameplates...we use it fine)

3. Raid indicator only listing 1 name for incoming ball instead of 2 names (Never seen this before, can be overcome by looking at your "Other Chat" in Comment Window and Calling out over Vent/Teamspeak)

4. Cyclone dropping half health player directly on to unexploded ball (Not a bug...You guys can't kite Balls through the Center....learn to deal with it)

5. Player who just exploded a ball being tossed in to a cylcone, and dying because you cant heal them. (It happens...not a bug, just have to deal with it. Your Raids group needs to use Medpacks and learn to pop them immediately when busting Lightning)

6. 1 Healer in mind trap, 1 in cyclone. (Not a bug, DPS needs to learn to immediately switch to Mindtraps at all times, Tank has to keep aggro)

7. Main threat holder being tossed in mind trap, then soa attacking someone who is currently being targeted by a ball (Not a Bug....it happens, again going to have to learn to deal with it)

8. Ball does double damage = insta kill (Never happened in our group....on HM, you need to run THROUGH them and not to their center...otherwise they double tick for DMG)

9. obolisk is over soa and fails to break his shield (Bug. I've seen this before, however, I have also seen people "Think" they have them under the pylon at their angle but do not)

10. phase 3, soa mind traps tank and despawns or does not move towards obolisk as it is about to fall (Never seen this since the patch....are you running with 2 Tanks? Is the 2nd Tank aggroing when the primary Tank is Mind Trapped?)

11. obolisk kills random player who is no where close to landing zone. (The Pylons have a large radius, don't go near them unless you are a Tank)

12. being dragged in to a mind trap, directly through a ball and being killed by the ball as you enter the trap (Never ever ever seen this before.....not once)

13. Battle rez not working when you die to a ball, or cyclone.... or fall damage.... or basically anything. (Bug - Battle Ress is weird in this encounter.....Bioware needs to fix)

 

 

Like I said, my group/guild has done this numerous times now, but we have trained ourselves to do the things we must as players. This is a HARD BOSS....the hardest in the game by far, and dumbing it down isn't the answer. RNG is exactly that....RNG.....dealing with it makes you better, your Raid group better and your Guild better. I would say "My group is just lucky because we are the same 8 everytime we do EV HM", but we are not, we've taken half a dozen or more other players with us, and completed it by teaching players how to do the fight properly.

 

Not trying to be a negative person here, but countless guilds have done SOA HM with winning results as well.

[Crittlesticks]

I have to agree, my guild is dropping HM SOA pretty consistently now, normally without a wipe. We just had to learn to deal with the RNG.

 

Tips:

- Medpacs are your friends, make sure every player has them, no excuses.

- Three healers really helps

- Running the Lightning balls to the OUTSIDE of the circles and not through the center.

- The first toss happens right after the first pair of lightning balls, and then after every second pair of lightning balls. So prepare for it, make sure everyone is topped off.

- We run 2 operative healers and a sage, when we get to the bottom of phase 2, both our operatives vanish, and the tank has guard on the sage the whole time. No guarantee this actually helps with the tank not getting mind trapped off the get go, but no reason not to. We also have all of our DPS hold off on the boss and wait to kill the first mind trap, giving the tank plenty of time to build threat.

- Make sure that mind traps are ALWAYS priority number one.

- When the obelisk drops onto Soa, EVERYONE even healers normally DPS at this point. We have the people being chased by the lightning balls kite them around the outside and then pop them after his shield comes back up.

[Rejectoo]

I've been doing Soa on NM for the last 3 weeks... every week one bug, or as our group likes to call them "undocumented feature", gets replaced with another. Lets see if I can list all the RNG/bug elements we get

 

1. Missing floor panels

2. invisible balls

3. Raid indicator only listing 1 name for incoming ball instead of 2 names

4. Cyclone dropping half health player directly on to unexploded ball

5. Player who just exploded a ball being tossed in to a cylcone, and dying because you cant heal them.

6. 1 Healer in mind trap, 1 in cyclone.

7. Main threat holder being tossed in mind trap, then soa attacking someone who is currently being targeted by a ball

8. Ball does double damage = insta kill

9. obolisk is over soa and fails to break his shield

10. phase 3, soa mind traps tank and despawns or does not move towards obolisk as it is about to fall

11. obolisk kills random player who is no where close to landing zone.

12. being dragged in to a mind trap, directly through a ball and being killed by the ball as you enter the trap

13. Battle rez not working when you die to a ball, or cyclone.... or fall damage.... or basically anything.

 

Did I miss anything?

 

 

Yes the "Fix" Reset for tank in Mind Trap is back now after they fixed it the first time and added the feature of dropping aggro randomly to fix that feature and reintroduce the reset.

[Merraith]

Two posts at top of page 2 have it pretty much right. There isn't nearly as much RNG in this fight as people make it out to be. A lot of the "bugs" reported are completely avoidable (others we've just never even experienced). We were killing this fight on Hard before there was even a text warning about who the balls were going to, and before there was limits on how many times cyclone/mind traps could target raid members. Mind traps even have less health I believe than they used to.

 

Don't go straight to the RNG excuse if you wipe a few times. Come up with a plan to deal with situations that can happen. A lot of it is just practical stuff. Don't kite balls through the middle (bad for any number of reasons, especially someone landing from a cyclone), shield/top off people who need to eat a lightning ball. Obviously dps needs to break mind traps fast as possible, especially if it's a healer or the tank in them.

 

Don't know what to tell people who have issues with missing floor pieces or boss resetting. We just haven't had those issues in so long. Don't wipe during the transition (easiest part of the fight really), reset the zone to be safe if needed.

[Mordalus]

thanks for the tips guys. going to try some of the ideas. one problem is that we don't have 3 healers so we'll have to deal with that.

[Hansuki]

As many people on these and other forums said: keep in my mind two things

 

- this is not a dps fight, it is a control fight (even in enrage)

- after a couple of tries you should now all of the random bads that can happen so prepare for it

 

I dont care about HM Soa, easy fight is easy with 2 geared sorcs.

 

Im asking this poster, who seems to be among the few on NiM, and the rest of you who HAVE DOWNED him on nightmare - What exactly was your group composition?

 

Cause right now, our only crutch is our sniper in the med armor. He explodes, even in full rakata/BM gear. We cant figure it out; unless he stim dances for the extra HP before the ball, it seems that everytime he gets double ticked or else, just explodes. My assumption is that if we replace him with a merc in heavy armor, we could do it - but then we lose an important 35m ranged dps class AND crit buff.

 

Rest of the group is Jugg tank, 4 sorcs (2 heals, two dps with 35m talent), mara and an assassin DPS. Plus the sniper. We've gone with one DPS merc replacing one of the DPS sorcs as well. The trouble is that the sorcs seems to take the balls in light armor just fine, but everytime it seems like the sniper is taking twice the dmg. We suspected that the sorcs are using force speed to pop balls without taking that extra tick, and the other classes are just beefier/have mitigation CDs.

 

What do other snipers do to eat those balls safely? Does cover/group shield help?

[Karlonta]

I've been doing Soa on NM for the last 3 weeks... every week one bug, or as our group likes to call them "undocumented feature", gets replaced with another. Lets see if I can list all the RNG/bug elements we get

 

1. Missing floor panels

2. invisible balls

3. Raid indicator only listing 1 name for incoming ball instead of 2 names

4. Cyclone dropping half health player directly on to unexploded ball

5. Player who just exploded a ball being tossed in to a cylcone, and dying because you cant heal them.

6. 1 Healer in mind trap, 1 in cyclone.

7. Main threat holder being tossed in mind trap, then soa attacking someone who is currently being targeted by a ball

8. Ball does double damage = insta kill

9. obolisk is over soa and fails to break his shield

10. phase 3, soa mind traps tank and despawns or does not move towards obolisk as it is about to fall

11. obolisk kills random player who is no where close to landing zone.

12. being dragged in to a mind trap, directly through a ball and being killed by the ball as you enter the trap

13. Battle rez not working when you die to a ball, or cyclone.... or fall damage.... or basically anything.

 

Did I miss anything?

 

Yeah, having a mind trap spawn under the pillar and then being dragged under it as the pillar hits = insta pwned

[Dagovee]

We have wiped on this guy at least 30 times in HM, we pretty much one shot it in normal. The group that we take are all Columi/Rakata geared. Have watched all the videos and pretty much tried everything said here except using 3 healers. We will try this soon as we are currently locked at Soa.

[kainsec]

I do hate the randomness of this fight my particularly favorite thing he does is a lighting ball targets someone, then he tosses that person before they get to their ball, so the ball moves right to the center of the room where the tank and mdps are, and to top this fun off you land right on the ball before you can be healed and die. Honestly if they would make it so ppl who have active lightning balls can't be thrown or that being thrown when you hit the ground your immune to the balls for a couple of seconds this fight would be a whole lot easier.

 

I don't mind a degree of random in a boss battle. However, there is a limit to that given that half the fight is fighting bugs, a quarter of the fight is fighting bad RNG, and the last quarter is executing the plan.

Edited March 8, 2012 by kainsec

[FiggsSWTOR]

First, I'd have to say that NiM 8-man versus NiM 16-man is a very different conversation.

 

16m is (IMHO) way easier than 8man. (My opinion is 8man NiM Soa is the hardest fight in the game)

 

With 8man, it can sometimes be a 4-v-Soa fight which gets ugly quick if it happens wrong.

 

1 in a trap, 2 handling their balls, and 1 in the cyclone...depending on the class/role of those who are out of the fight, it can spell disaster if not handled really, REALLY well.

 

As for the above poster asking about the Med armor "weak link" in his group, I'm a Gunslinger and have no problems surviving nearly all Soa encounters.

 

Medpacks, defensive cooldowns, skill tree specs/buffs - you've got to use it all smartly.

 

For the lightning:

* Pay attention to the name calling and red text - as soon as you see your name, move to the outside ring to keep it from crossing the raid.

* I find my ball, haul *** to the ball as quickly as i can - use target of target and minimap to confirm it's yours - use voice chat to coordinate with the other ball handlers

* As i near the ball I hit my dmg absorbing defensive cooldown, and at the very last second I enter cover, giving me those other damage absorbers.

 

If you pause too far from the ball you will take a double tap - 1 "zap" of lightning and 1 for the explosion. This is usually death for me, so I've learned to NOT do it

 

Also, on NiM16 balls are hitting me (without using defensive cooldowns or other reducers) for just over 8k. Any medium armor wearer should be able to have double this HP with appropriate gear so eating the ball full face on isn't even a problem. You must make sure he's running THROUGH the ball and not pausing to get double tapped.

 

Honestly, the only damage a gunslinger (sniper?) should take the entire fight is primarily ball lightning. The tiny DoT on you means nothing overall. Cyclone = half your life which is why you have to make sure you are topped off always (medpacks, aoe heals). If you get dropped (half health) from the cyclone into a ball, that's not the fault of your medium armor - that's the fault of whoever owned that ball and brought it through the middle of the raid.

 

Other tips (some were mentioned):

 

Nameplates on Enemy NPCs so you can see the balls (etc).

 

"Target of Target" helps you find which ball is yours so you can avoid sucking your ball through the middle of the raid.

 

Zoom the mini map all the way out and then time/look for/call the waves of balls and traps - you can see the red dots on your mini map before they actually spawn or aggro. Gives you a couple seconds to prep.

 

Finished NiM 16 last night in 1.5hrs for the title so it's clearly doable.

[FiggsSWTOR]

I dont care about HM Soa, easy fight is easy with 2 geared sorcs.

 

Im asking this poster, who seems to be among the few on NiM, and the rest of you who HAVE DOWNED him on nightmare - What exactly was your group composition?

 

 

 

What do other snipers do to eat those balls safely? Does cover/group shield help?

 

A

(16man NiM)

2 tanks (we only use 2nd one if primary gets trapped or cycloned)

2 AoE heals

2 direct heals

crapton of DPS, fair mix of melee and range

 

B

See my above post about eating balls

Also, cover can help, especially if skill-tree-spec'd for the extra damage absorbers, but this CANNOT be used too far from the ball, or else you will be double tapped - i suspect this is what is happening more often than you realize

I've only used group shield in 2 circumstances:

---1: people dragging their balls across the middle of the raid and imminent double explosion expected (it helped but we wiped anyway - people *have* to learn how to handle their balls)

---2: enrage timer, most of us dead, mad scramble to try and finish him off (4% when hell broke loose - we finished him and won, but I doubt my shield was the deciding factor)

For our shield to really help, we have to be in harm's way. We should never (rarely) be in harm's way in this fight.

 

C

If you're guild doesn't care about checking off all the boxes for progression (60/60 bosses), and if you're not quite ready to form 16man NiM raids in-guild, maybe reach out to another guild and run a joint raid in the 16man version. I still believe 8man NiM Soa is the hardest fight right now.

[Merraith]

I dont care about HM Soa, easy fight is easy with 2 geared sorcs.

 

Im asking this poster, who seems to be among the few on NiM, and the rest of you who HAVE DOWNED him on nightmare - What exactly was your group composition?

 

Cause right now, our only crutch is our sniper in the med armor. He explodes, even in full rakata/BM gear. We cant figure it out; unless he stim dances for the extra HP before the ball, it seems that everytime he gets double ticked or else, just explodes. My assumption is that if we replace him with a merc in heavy armor, we could do it - but then we lose an important 35m ranged dps class AND crit buff.

 

Rest of the group is Jugg tank, 4 sorcs (2 heals, two dps with 35m talent), mara and an assassin DPS. Plus the sniper. We've gone with one DPS merc replacing one of the DPS sorcs as well. The trouble is that the sorcs seems to take the balls in light armor just fine, but everytime it seems like the sniper is taking twice the dmg. We suspected that the sorcs are using force speed to pop balls without taking that extra tick, and the other classes are just beefier/have mitigation CDs.

 

What do other snipers do to eat those balls safely? Does cover/group shield help?

 

We have run 1 Assassin tank, 2 snipers, a marauder, a merc, and 3 sorc (1 dps, 2 healing). I (Sniper) have not had any issues with double shocks killing me. Our other sniper has had it happen to him, and our sorcs definitely have been one shot from full health + shield to dead by it. Personally I go ahead and throw up shield probe each time I can, and go into cover right as I'm running into it to get any help I can from Ballistic Dampers. For whatever reason I haven't died to a double tick, but I've seen any of our sorcs and the other sniper all die to it before (although the sorcs seem to have the most issues with it, at least in our experience).

 

Really couldn't tell you why I haven't had issues with it while others have. I've definitely been hit harder exploding some balls than others, but never been one shot when topped off with a shield like others in our raid have. For reference I'm in full Rakata and with buffs I'm a hair under 19k health. The other sniper has comparable health, and the sorcs aren't too far behind either (pretty much full Rakata on everyone).

Edited March 8, 2012 by Merraith

[Rejectoo]

I think my funnest time was last week. I got lighting ball on me. 1 healer tossed and one in Mind trap. I was at like 8k health and ran into lightning ball before the healer that just got out of trap could heal me. You should have heard him on vent (Raid Leader too)

 

Loved it classic.

 

Shadow Tank and Resilience for the win.

 

I seem to have a pretty easy time tanking Soa has a Shadow. Even when we are unlucky and have both healers out of it. I can pop my cool downs and my Medpack and Adrenal and truck on till the healer can get free.

 

But ya there is a lot of luck in this fight. I mean the only thing you can not fight is the random number generator and the bugs it seems.

 

Has for the double shock the only time I see that is when the balls are stacked and someone runs into soon before separating them. Not really a double shock just 1 bursting his own and the other hitting cause to close.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Rejectoo

[Grassetblag]

Im asking this poster, who seems to be among the few on NiM, and the rest of you who HAVE DOWNED him on nightmare - What exactly was your group composition?

 

Cause right now, our only crutch is our sniper in the med armor. He explodes, even in full rakata/BM gear. We cant figure it out; unless he stim dances for the extra HP before the ball, it seems that everytime he gets double ticked or else, just explodes...

 

Rest of the group is Jugg tank, 4 sorcs (2 heals, two dps with 35m talent), mara and an assassin DPS. Plus the sniper. We've gone with one DPS merc replacing one of the DPS sorcs as well. The trouble is that the sorcs seems to take the balls in light armor just fine, but everytime it seems like the sniper is taking twice the dmg. We suspected that the sorcs are using force speed to pop balls without taking that extra tick, and the other classes are just beefier/have mitigation CDs.

 

What do other snipers do to eat those balls safely? Does cover/group shield help?

 

Jugg tank, 2sorc heals, 2 merc, marauder, assasin, sniper.

 

Shield is good if pillars bug out btw phases because pillars are killed in wrong order and end up with aoe blasts.

 

Our kill night three major bugs were present:

1. Ball double tick - popping a ball would result in an aoe tick after its explosion. Meaning most would take approx 15k damage per ball. Work around - healers on top of game, smart use of defensive cooldowns by all

2. Soa would always toss The top name from The ball targets precsding The toss. Sniper died usually, used The brez.

3. Bubble no pop P3. When we got The "perfect" 4 bubbles he died.

 

If people are dying to balls, it just means your group needs more attempts. Eventually you will get to The point where you are clearing to p3 consistently and just waiting for The right RNG with bubble bugs.

[DarthBloodloss]

We have been doing Soa for a long time. Have seen all the bugs out there. Last nite we saw a new one to add to the list.

 

After transitioning from phase 2 to phase 3, the raid party stepped down onto the final ground level. Soa was hovering in the air about 20m up, with his shield on.

 

We remained in combat but Soa never descended. We stood there for about 2 or 3 minutes and tried to shoot him but we "couldnt see target" even though he was 20m away (up).