Dylancholy Posted March 26, 2012 Share Posted March 26, 2012 (edited) Mainly hard mode Soa. I see that the whirlwind will in 1.2 drop players on the outer ring. Thanks for that About a month ago, a dev acknowledged the issue where in Soa's final phase, sometimes if a tank were put in a mind trap, Soa would reset. I'm assuming this is a complicated issue. Any updates? It hit my guild today, which is why I bring it up. If there's nothing that can really be told to the community, whatever, I get it. The platform glitches are another concern of mine. When the operation isn't reset after a Soa wipe, sometimes pieces of the platforms will be missing. Additionally, on one occasion during a platforming phase, a platform collapsed well before it was supposed to (it had just appeared and there were others above it). Any word on that? Though the next things aren't bugs, I wanted to bring it up also. Some people have also been unhappy with Soa's targeting. On several occasions in my guild's runs alone, Soa has put one or both of his ball lightnings on our healers, then immediately followed it up with a whirlwind or mind trap, causing an automatic, guaranteed wipe. Additionally, (though it can typically be circumvented with two tanks), in Soa's final phase, occasionally he will mind trap the tank and change aggro, missing a pillar. This is a bit more minor, but given the fact that he can reset when this happens, it is still an annoyance. Are there any plans to change the way, frequency, or order Soa targets people? My guild feels like all these things add an element of chance that the fight is wholly dependent on. I totally understand if this is ignored or you simply don't have all the answers. I just thought I would vocalize my guild's concerns Thank you for all your hard work. Edited March 26, 2012 by Dylancholy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverBlink Posted March 26, 2012 Share Posted March 26, 2012 Ooo my personal favorite is when his buff doesn't properly come off after you kill the devices during the dropping between platforms. We tend to get that one a lot. Kill 7 of the things and he still has 3 stacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thoffs Posted March 26, 2012 Share Posted March 26, 2012 Ooo my personal favorite is when his buff doesn't properly come off after you kill the devices during the dropping between platforms. We tend to get that one a lot. Kill 7 of the things and he still has 3 stacks. We were attempting SOA on hardmode last night, and wiped a few times (resetting the instance each time before the next attempt) and progressing further into fight as we got better at dealing with the two lightning balls but then the following mechanic stopped our progress. In phase 2, he started doing an AOE attack in addition to his regular attack (this was not our first night at trying hardmode SOA, and this was the first time we saw this). What triggers this? Somebody in the raid said this was a nightmare mode mechanic. We tried resetting the instance, switching leaders, etc, but he kept doing this. BTW, we always kill all of the pylon devices during transition between phases. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunabis Posted March 26, 2012 Share Posted March 26, 2012 The AOE comes when you dont destroy the pillars in order when jumping down the platfors. If someone goes ahead and destroys one before the previous is when he does that aoe. Or at least that is what our guild discoverd it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thoffs Posted March 26, 2012 Share Posted March 26, 2012 The AOE comes when you dont destroy the pillars in order when jumping down the platfors. If someone goes ahead and destroys one before the previous is when he does that aoe. Or at least that is what our guild discoverd it. Ooops....thanks for the information. I am a healer and have not been the one responsible for destroying these -- will pass on the information and try it tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quisjaa Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 Ooo my personal favorite is when his buff doesn't properly come off after you kill the devices during the dropping between platforms. We tend to get that one a lot. Kill 7 of the things and he still has 3 stacks. after many weeks of being frustrated by this bug i did a little digging in the forums & some analysis of our platform phase, I've found out what causes the shield stacks to not fall off It appears that the devices(the things you destroy to drop his stacks) are set as a chain, from the 1st platform down the corresponding side, so if you drop to the 1st platform & kill that one(activating say the left chain) then some of your ranged shoot the opposite one(the first platform down across the gap) it triggers the other (right)chain, meaning any devices you kill on your way down(the left chain) no longer function. that's why most see it stop @ 3, it drops off from the top 2 devices & then is "locked out". Easiest way to fix it is to not shoot any devices on platforms you're not jumping to. solved the issue for us for a whole night of attempts. Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merraith Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 Mainly hard mode Soa. I see that the whirlwind will in 1.2 drop players on the outer ring. Thanks for that I thought it was enough of a nerf when you stopped having to worry about mind trap timing at the transition. Boggles the mind that people actually need an easy mode solution for simply not pushing the transition with someone in the air. Though the next things aren't bugs, I wanted to bring it up also. Some people have also been unhappy with Soa's targeting. On several occasions in my guild's runs alone, Soa has put one or both of his ball lightnings on our healers, then immediately followed it up with a whirlwind or mind trap, causing an automatic, guaranteed wipe. It shouldn't be a guaranteed wipe. Need to have better plans in place to deal with healers in the air or in a mind trap. It's not the targeting causing the wipe, it's the lack of awareness and a plan to deal with these situations. Are there any plans to change the way, frequency, or order Soa targets people? They already did change the frequency with which mind trap or whirlwind could target each player in the raid when people complained about how it was originally. It was much tougher to deal with back then than it is now and proper planning is easier with the current version. My guild feels like all these things add an element of chance that the fight is wholly dependent on. Given how much they have reduced the pure randomness of the targeting already on this fight, and even tell you now who lightning balls are targeting (wasn't originally like this), any further nerfs to this fight would make it far too trivial. Really the only challenge is how you deal with the chance of healers being out of commission for parts of the fight. One of which (mind traps) you have direct control over how long they are out of the fight for. I know this fight is frustrating for a lot of newer raiding guilds, but good awareness/communication is all that is needed for almost any situation in this fight. There are various bugs, but many guilds don't even end up dealing with them because it's pretty simple to not have them ever come about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylancholy Posted March 27, 2012 Author Share Posted March 27, 2012 What you're saying is noted, but we are not a brand new raiding guild. We were just going back and forth recently about how these difficulties still have not been fixed. We've rarely had a problem with the whirlwind issue, but it's still nice to see it go. Often, Soa will use a lightning ball and then immediately follow it up with a whirlwind. When this happens to a healer, it guarantees one healer dead, which is extremely problematic. It's survivable usually if a combat rez is up, but when he does this multiple times per fight, it's a wipe. Then on the final phase, often Soa decides to reset. The fact of the matter is that having an element of chance that the raid is entirely dependent on is a huge flaw. Eliminating this isn't trivializing the encounter, it's making it more playable. I don't think it's fair that a raid can lose the encounter because Soa bugs and resets. I also don't think it's fair if we're expected to just circumnavigate these bugs and deal with them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khayleth Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 (edited) I don't think it's fair that a raid can lose the encounter because Soa bugs and resets. I also don't think it's fair if we're expected to just circumnavigate these bugs and deal with them. You are correct, until the bugs are fixed I'd rather just see them nerf the fight and call it a day. Example 1: On the bottom level if he puts a pillar over the cracked ground, the shield will not break. For some reason the shield does not break if Soa is hovering over the cracked part of the ground, he gets the graphic of being hit but stays immune. Until it's fixed I'd rather just see the shield removed entirely or change the pillar points so that he'll never put it over the uneven ground, just have the pillar always hit the same spot in the center or something. Example 2: If the boss resets, put the raid back to the top level outside the room automatically rather than make people have to exit and re-enter. More of a quality of life change. Example 3: Due to the platform bug, just cut the number of platforms in half and remove the power generators etc. Any or all of those are fine until they fix this fight. If anything I'd rather just see it trivialized and nerfed to the ground so we can forget about it and move on to a new tier of content for 1.2 Edited March 27, 2012 by Khayleth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolakToma Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 I want a ETA on when they plan on taking mind trap out of the dang ecounter, its just STUPID, he is not a hard fight hes all luck based and we have no luck, he always gets a healer in the mind trap and the other healer either in the air or eating a light ball and we whipe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pangscar Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 (edited) Honestly I would rather them just look forward to the new content and write off EV as their first try. The OPs have gotten better from one to the next. Personally when 1.2 hits I plan on never stepping foot in EV ever again. Edited March 27, 2012 by Pangscar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merraith Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 (edited) What you're saying is noted, but we are not a brand new raiding guild. We were just going back and forth recently about how these difficulties still have not been fixed. We've rarely had a problem with the whirlwind issue, but it's still nice to see it go. Often, Soa will use a lightning ball and then immediately follow it up with a whirlwind. When this happens to a healer, it guarantees one healer dead, which is extremely problematic. It's survivable usually if a combat rez is up, but when he does this multiple times per fight, it's a wipe. Then on the final phase, often Soa decides to reset. The fact of the matter is that having an element of chance that the raid is entirely dependent on is a huge flaw. Eliminating this isn't trivializing the encounter, it's making it more playable. I don't think it's fair that a raid can lose the encounter because Soa bugs and resets. I also don't think it's fair if we're expected to just circumnavigate these bugs and deal with them. The whirlwind after a taking a lightning ball explosion is probably the toughest part of the fight to deal with. There are ways to limit the chance of it happening, medpacs/hots right after exploding a ball help the most we've found. While I'm not sure if he does his whirlwind exactly on a timer, if he doesn't it's a pretty regular timing that once you've done the fight a few times you get the feel for...so a raid that is paying attention can do what they can to either break their balls soon as they can to get topped off/hot'ed/use a medpac before a possible whirlwind. It does happen with the worst timing occasionally, but it's pretty rare to see it happen more than once a fight (usually doesn't kill anyone on our runs) and combat rezz is there for a reason. When the chance is the only real mechanics/difficulty of the fight, removing any difficulty of having to deal with it will trivialize the fight. Apologies to those just getting to him on Hard Mode now, but the fight is pretty trivialized compared to how it was before they put limits on how many times each person could be targeted by mind trap/whirlwind, nerfed mind trap health/number of lightning ball spawns in certain phases, and put in the Giant Red Letters to let the raid know which people are being targeted by a lightning ball. Another nerf was when they made a mind trap break immediately upon hitting the 30% transition. This used to not be the case, and your dps had to be very smart and timely about pushing Soa to the transition at a safe time in between the next mind trap/whirlwind timers. Needing a relief from whirlwind now with the mind trap trivialization is just silly really. As far as some of the other issues, I think we've seen Soa reset during phase 3 a total of 1 time in over 3 months. We only run 1 tank, have never had issues. He also seems to be able to position Soa properly even when a pylon is hovering over cracked ground to still get each one to break his shield with no issues. Maybe knowing the cracked ground causes issues, others can copy what he does in trying to keep him as close as possible to the pylon coming down without being on the area that causes it to bug out. I understand the frustration, but it is possible to run EV week after week and deal with zero bugs just killing it like we have been everything normal. Edited March 27, 2012 by Merraith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADTRr Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 Honestly I would rather them just look forward to the new content and write off EV as their first try. The OPs have gotten better from one to the next. Personally when 1.2 hits I plan on never stepping foot in EV ever again. Yeah you have a point KP is markedly better than EV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylancholy Posted March 27, 2012 Author Share Posted March 27, 2012 When the chance is the only real mechanics/difficulty of the fight, removing any difficulty of having to deal with it will trivialize the fight. Survival shouldn't be dependent on chance at all, because that isn't difficulty or skill related. It just means the fight can decide to wipe you, regardless of how well you're doing. And not all bugs can be worked around, like when a platform decides to break right after it spawns. The element of chance is really just due to the various bugs, and learning to fight around those bugs isn't part of the intended design, so you can't really say it will make the fight worse, or nerf it. It'll make it work as intended. Which, although, is a big step down for people used to working around all the bugs. I'm not sure what you mean by chance being the only real mechanics. The platforms, pillars, water pools, power sources, lightning balls, mind traps, and whirlwinds are all mechanics. It's a mechanics heavy fight. I've never encountered the bug with Soa's shield not going down because he's on the cracks. I think Soa has reset in the times I've been in my guild's ops at least three times. Three I can remember. I read online that it happens when a tank exits a mind trap, but I can't verify. I don't think mind traps should be taken out, especially in the last phase. That would mean dps would be sitting around a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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