Feedback on Zorn and Toth HM (Post-3/29 Changes)

[gramz]

Toth and Zorn

• Several changes have been made to Toth and Zorn to improve the encounter.
  
• The visual effects for Toth's berserk phase have been improved.
  
• The cooldown of Toth's Area of Effect Smash ability has been increased after he leaps to Zorn.
  
• Zorn's Embolden buff now more clearly indicates who is affected.
  
• Players now receive the correct Codex entries upon defeating Toth and Zorn.
  
• Knockbacks have been removed from Toth and Zorn's Area of Effect abilities.
  
• The radius of the ground target for the Rock Spire attack has been increased.
  
• The visual effects for the Fearful debuff have been improved.
  
• The enrage timer has been increased in Story Mode.
  
• Zorn now chases players if there are none in range of his rock toss.
  

 

So we got to spend some more quality time on these two tonight, and wanted to give you guys some feedback on the changes made.

 

I'll work my way up from the bottom.

 

• Zorn now chases players if there are none in range of his rock toss.
  

 

With the reduced damage to the rocks, this change is perfectly fine. Our strategy of out ranging his rocks felt like we were cheesing it and felt cheap.

 

• The enrage timer has been increased in Story Mode.
  

 

This was probably needed, haven't had a chance to test it, but we were cutting it really close in full rakata gear.

 

• The visual effects for the Fearful debuff have been improved.
  

 

Not really noticeable, but I think it looks a little LESS like the Combat Res debuff, which is good. If you are talking about Zorns animation, it is much more noticeable.

 

• The radius of the ground target for the Rock Spire attack has been increased.
  

 

This currently seems bugged. Most attempts the spike would come out first, then the reticule would appear, and then the damage would go out. Since the damage still occurs second this isnt the most game breaking, but its annoying to say the least.

 

• Knockbacks have been removed from Toth and Zorn's Area of Effect abilities.
  

A HUGE nerf, I would hope that this mechanic makes its way back for Nightmare, as it is a very nightmareish mechanic!

 

• The cooldown of Toth's Area of Effect Smash ability has been increased after he leaps to Zorn.
  

 

This is very helpful for making the tank swaps and positioning of the bosses, especially with the above change (removal of KB's).

 

• The visual effects for Toth's berserk phase have been improved.
  

While the new graphic is very nice, berserk itself would appear to be bugged (either in tooltip, or implementation). The tooltip states that Toth is immune to all damage, deals increased damage, and a baradium toss would remove the effect. Which is awesome, it all works out well for the fight. However, Toth is not immune to damage with the buff. We were able to keep pumping damage into him, and removing the buff triggered the next phase.

 

• Several changes have been made to Toth and Zorn to improve the encounter.
  

 

Overall the encounter is MUCH better than it was last week. The mechanics are implemented more effectively, and are able to be figured out without blind luck.

 

A potential bug is the reticule placed by Zorn during his rock phase. It would be placed on a person, that person brings it under Toth, and the rock gets thrown at Toth, and all is well. Except... sometimes it would follow the person, then as Zorn started his Baradium Heave cast, the reticule would disappear and reappear on (as we observed) the person furthest away from Toth, making it difficult to remove the buff unless we all stacked under Toth. However the buff doesnt seem to be working as intended so this wasnt much of an issue for our group.

 

We have not managed to defeat the encounter yet, however we are only 100-150k off, which can easily be overcome with some practice, and look forward to the rest of the encounters in the Operation.

Edited March 30, 2012 by gramz

[Kihra]

Yeah we tried this tonight and observed the same bugs. The yellow circle would appear underneath one person and then mysteriously move to a random ranged target when it was time to turn purple.

 

Some other changes I noticed:

 

They balanced the health of the two bosses. Instead of 700k and 800k they now both have about 750k.

 

They also reduced the Fearful multiplier to only be double damage.

 

I suspect they no longer intend for Toth to be immune during Berserk, and that they just need to update the tooltip. The Berserk was definitely causing him to deal double damage, so it gets very tough to heal if you don't take it off with the baradium.

 

The buggy yellow/purple mechanic basically leads to some lost DPS so it's difficult to evaluate the enrage tuning level until that is fixed.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Kihra

[Talorra]

Covered well by both your posts, just throwing in my support for the AoE knockbacks to return in Nightmare. I stood next to Toth and cranked out damage last night. Had the spires worked properly it would have been a simple fight for melee, with very little movement and tons of uptime.

 

Also very funny to see the strat we tried a few times last week (hitting Toth with the big circle) actually work now

[Calimwulf]

Covered well by both your posts, just throwing in my support for the AoE knockbacks to return in Nightmare.

Shouldn't Hard get the knockbacks as well?

[pure_laced]

Shouldn't Hard get the knockbacks as well?

 

Not unless they tune it down some. All guilds are hitting the enrage in full Rakata gear currently, and if story mode only drops Rakata, you wouldn't be able to get anywhere close due to the lost dps time from all the knockbacks.

 

To confirm, the really only buggy part of the encounter is the Baradium reticule will randomly switch to someone else farthest out when it reaches it's "drop" stage. We tried to duplicate it and watch closely when it happens to see if we missed a mechanic, but we couldn't see one that was blatant.

 

All in all, it still is a really fun fight that requires perfect execution. One mistake resulting in a death is non-recoverable for a kill as you will be too far behind to down it IMHO.

[Tormentist]

are you doing 8 or 16?

[gramz]

are you doing 8 or 16?

 

this was from 8man

[gramz]

Covered well by both your posts, just throwing in my support for the AoE knockbacks to return in Nightmare. I stood next to Toth and cranked out damage last night. Had the spires worked properly it would have been a simple fight for melee, with very little movement and tons of uptime.

 

Also very funny to see the strat we tried a few times last week (hitting Toth with the big circle) actually work now

 

we spent an hour hitting random things with the rock, it was fun. Glad to see we were on the right track.

[Talorra]

are you doing 8 or 16?

 

We did 8 as well.

[Nurglet]

copy>paste + up thread

 

Bad news everyone,

 

after 29/03 patch we went back to PTR, because we thought that all bugs got fixed and we finally will repeat our kill of 1st Boss HM(Zorn and Toth) and will go further to progress on 2nd boss HM.

 

BUT:mad:,

 

We discovered that causal link of animations of *Rock-throwing* phase is totally broken.

 

How it is INTENDED to be:

 

Red mark appears on the ground, few seconds after rock hits that place.

 

 

How it is in CURRENT SITUATION:

 

Rock phase begins.

 

Suddenly some players receive damage and got knockbacked into the air by rock. And ONLY AFTER it appears the Red mark on the earth - of course it is useless if rock alreadt hit that spot.

 

So again in short words( if you are not willing to read all the text):

 

Red marks on the earth appearing too late,rock hit players, they receive damage, and only AFTER that red mark finally appears on the ground.

 

Tested in 8 ppl HM.

 

Hoping that DEV's will read it and fix before it goes for LIVE.

 

Best Regards.

[Twickers]

Just comin in to say very, VERY happy to see these changes, also glad to see the knock backs removed because honestly, getting ping ponged around everywhere was rather annoying, oh DO put them in nightmare mode, maybe even hard mode, but if they get put in hard mode, the enrage timer still needs to be lenient due to how people lose DPS time while getting knocked around.

 

All in all, minus that bug that happened last night, this fight sounds well tuned now and doable with pugs, actually looking forward to trying it now.

[Nurglet]

offtop

 

I have a feeling that people here discuss everything except Raid content - let me count, around 20 men all-in-all who responds in this kind of threads,

[Kihra]

offtop

 

I have a feeling that people here discuss everything except Raid content - let me count, around 20 men all-in-all who responds in this kind of threads,

 

PTS just got patched yesterday, so only people who got in there and saw the bugs on HM last night can really comment.

 

We had the same issues with the red circles appearing after the spikes popped up. At that point we just gave up. If what gramz says is true, though, it sounds like you can work around it.

[Nurglet]

We also gave up till next fix - too tired for that bugged encounter. I hope they wont release this patch at April 3 as I heard> all that tree-killers, adds spawning in textures, invisible electric spires, kephess evading for some reasons etc etc.... We reported everything but are not even able to check if they fix it.. Edited March 30, 2012 by Nurglet

[pure_laced]

We also gave up till next fix - too tired for that bugged encounter. I hope they wont release this patch at April 3 as I heard> all that tree-killers, adds spawning in textures, invisible electric spires, kephess evading for some reasons etc etc.... We reported everything but are not even able to check if they fix it..

 

The encounter as it stands now isn't that bugged. 2 of notice from what we can tell:

 

- Random farthest person getting the Reticule at last minute when someone already had it on Toth

- Spikes before reticule showing.

 

The first one is unavoidable, either it happens or it doesn't. The second can be worked around by having competent raiders move immediately when they see spikes. The problem lies within your raid team, if they don't move out immediately, they will die. Healing can be a little hectic during this phase for sure, but it is doable.

[Kihra]

The encounter as it stands now isn't that bugged. 2 of notice from what we can tell:

 

- Random farthest person getting the Reticule at last minute when someone already had it on Toth

- Spikes before reticule showing.

 

The first one is unavoidable, either it happens or it doesn't. The second can be worked around by having competent raiders move immediately when they see spikes. The problem lies within your raid team, if they don't move out immediately, they will die. Healing can be a little hectic during this phase for sure, but it is doable.

 

Yeah, we made the flawed assumption that the red circles were bugged enough that we couldn't work around it, so we just stopped our pulls. I wish I'd read this thread, because we probably would have kept going if we'd known the spikes weren't actually hitting and that the animation was just bugged.

 

The concern with the yellow/purple bug is that the only way to work around it really is for your raiders to group up on Toth. It costs DPS to make everyone move like that, and so it makes the enrage more challenging to hit than it should be.

 

Did you guys notice when the enrage timer pops? Is it still the same (around 4:20-4:30) or did they lengthen it on Hard Mode too?

Edited March 30, 2012 by Kihra

[pure_laced]

The enrage timer is the same as it was, and honestly I think the timer is fine. Maybe just a slight adjustment to be a little forgiving, say a 2-3% swing in time? Currently requires perfect execution, no mistakes, and higher dps than the normal from our experience.

 

We haven't tried 16 man yet unfortunately which is a shame due to unforseen circumstances, so I can only comment on the 8 man version.

[Kihra]

The enrage timer is the same as it was, and honestly I think the timer is fine. Maybe just a slight adjustment to be a little forgiving, say a 2-3% swing in time?

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Yeah, I tend to agree that the enrage timer is going to be fine, especially with the removal of the knockbacks. We'll try to get back in there this weekend now that we know you can work around the red circles issue.

[JesseSky]

Guys, thanks for the feedback. Some wires got crossed on the ground target attack, but we've got a fix coming soon, along with some additional hardening on the berserk mechanic. I'd also like to send a shout-out to all the guilds who have been streaming their attempts on PTS, as it gives us a lot of great data for fixes and future mechanics.

 

[Iandayen]

I agree with almost everything.

 

One part you did get wrong though - and you might not have noticed it.

 

While the new graphic is very nice, berserk itself would appear to be bugged (either in tooltip, or implementation). The tooltip states that Toth is immune to all damage, deals increased damage, and a baradium toss would remove the effect. Which is awesome, it all works out well for the fight. However, Toth is not immune to damage with the buff. We were able to keep pumping damage into him, and removing the buff triggered the next phase.

 

Removing the debuff on him does not trigger the next phase.

 

We spent a couple hours on 16 man hard mode last night and we learned every mechanic in this fight is percentage based.

 

These percentages are for either boss - even if one is at 100% if the other hits these percentages this is what will happen.

 

 

90% - Toth jump - tank swap

 

80% - toth enrage - baradium toss - toth is supposed to be immune but isn't currently (bugged)

 

70% - Toth jump - tank swap

 

60% - ground spike reticules (currently bugged backwards - spike shows up instead of reticule, then reticule shows up and does damage - able tow ork around - but annoying as stated in the OP)

 

50% - toth jump - tank swap

 

40% - toth enrage (same as 80%)

 

30% - toth jump - tank swap

 

20% - ground spikes

 

10% - toth jump - tank swap

 

0% - other boss enrages.

 

Confirmed 100% 4:15 enrage timer.

 

3 million total health in 16 man.

 

A couple things we also noticed.

 

twice we tried to burn thoth down from 30% to dead while zorn was at around 35%

 

Both times when toth got 25% life away from zorns life they would enrage - this was around 3:45 into the fight - so it is either a bug or a mechanic that keeps you from burning one of them to 2% and then killing the other off - good idea.

 

If the person who has the yellow reticule during enrage dies or vanishes the reticule will appear on someone else - and most times you won't see it until it has already turned purple - which is too late.

[Kihra]

80% - toth enrage - baradium toss - toth is supposed to be immune but isn't currently (bugged)

 

I could be wrong about this, but I'm fairly certain they don't intend for Toth to be immune during the Berserk any longer, and that they just haven't updated the tooltip. It's bad enough that he's dealing double damage while Berserk. That's enough of a downside to force you to remove it or likely wipe.

 

Another clue that they probably intended to drop the immunity is that they rebalanced the bosses so that they have equal health. Before this patch Zorn had more health than Toth, and I believe that was because they expected you to DPS Zorn while Toth was immune.

 

Now the two bosses have equal health, so I think they no longer expect for Toth to be immune to DPS during Berserk.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Kihra

[Iandayen]

I don't remember toth ever being immune - we never had to hit him with a baradium rock before the patch on our hard mode attempts.

 

But then again I was never on toth, i'm ranged so I am on zorn 100%.

[Kihra]

I don't remember toth ever being immune - we never had to hit him with a baradium rock before the patch on our hard mode attempts.

 

But then again I was never on toth, i'm ranged so I am on zorn 100%.

 

Yeah, he was never immune really.... but the health rebalancing makes me think they now realize that and plan to just drop it as a mechanic. This is pure speculation of course.

[arnoldlol]

Both the "bugs" talked about can be worked around. Stack on toth for yellow reticule and move when you get spikes (~1200 dmg on 8 hard). If the reticule moves right before it turns purple, everyones at toth = problem solved. If you move when spikes spawn on you, you have time to get out before they knock you up.

 

I'm also glad they finally did something with the boulder throw.

[Iandayen]

Both the "bugs" talked about can be worked around. Stack on toth for yellow reticule and move when you get spikes (~1200 dmg on 8 hard). If the reticule moves right before it turns purple, everyones at toth = problem solved. If you move when spikes spawn on you, you have time to get out before they knock you up.

 

I'm also glad they finally did something with the boulder throw.

 

Try healing 8k damage a tick on 16 people during toths enrage on 16 man hard mode.

 

And the spikes on 16 man hard do roughly 8k damage if you get hit by them.

 

Also - if you are stacking on toth during his enrage - nobody is on zorn - that's reducing your DPS time on him and you are pushing toth to the tank swap phase too fast also - which ends up with both your tanks having fearful.

 

Bad workarounds are bad - and strats for 8 man do not work on 16 and won't work once the encounter gets fixed so no need to even try them.