Lost island HM, lol seriously Bioware?

[pureeffinmetal]

Lost Island is extremely hard with a group who only has Columi gear, near impossible with Tionese gear... The thing here is that the Columi drops from each boss suggests the Developers intended this Flashpoint for people in Tionese gear yet its difficulty is to high for that....

 

I've healed LI HM with my trooper in Tionese gear/level 50 epic mod gear. The tank was in Columi/tionese.

 

We cleared it in under an hour with two average DPS. (Average meaning 4 kolto tanks and 10 stacks of the phase 2 debuff).

Edited June 19, 2012 by pureeffinmetal

[Shinaa]

This always bothered me about flashpoints and is one of the reasons our guild doesn't do them for quite a while now.

We are all for challenging content, but it HAS to be rewarding or it's just a waste of time.

If the flashpoint is indeed balanced around only the last boss drop, then please add something that makes sense to the other bosses, like daily commendations (which would be cool since I hate grinding dailys, doing flashpoints would be much better) that we can actually use for something, not total crap gear that you already have to have to complete the instance in the first place.

[TheRealCandyMan]

This always bothered me about flashpoints and is one of the reasons our guild doesn't do them for quite a while now.

We are all for challenging content, but it HAS to be rewarding or it's just a waste of time.

If the flashpoint is indeed balanced around only the last boss drop, then please add something that makes sense to the other bosses, like daily commendations (which would be cool since I hate grinding dailys, doing flashpoints would be much better) that we can actually use for something, not total crap gear that you already have to have to complete the instance in the first place.

 

How is LI any different then the current tier 1 raids for fresh 50's? A fresh 50 with blues and greens will have some difficulty doing all the FPs but that's the point. Along the way they get geared out in Tionese very fast which makes the Tier 1 FP's even easier. After you complete a tier 1 FP you then are rewarded 1 Columi piece if you win the roll.

 

Columi dropping in LI from all the bosses is the same thing as Tionese dropping in tier 1 FPs.

Edited June 19, 2012 by TheRealCandyMan

[WillHolmes]

Must all be smoking some serious drugs cause we 1 shot this each week and did it this week with 2 fresh 50's (1 dps and our tank maybe 14k and 19k health respectively)

 

Fights not hard you just have problems moving out of circles and predicting where lava shall come up.

 

If this fight is done correctly those health bars shall barely move downwards, i as a healer was able to spend half the fight attacking rather then spamming heals from poor damage dodging

 

(did anyone do this on the test server ? new loot tables to may be interesting to see whats changed)

Edited June 19, 2012 by WillHolmes

[Larry_Dallas]

This is where you are incorrect. These flashpoints are designed for based on what the last boss drops. Tier 1 flash points drop Columi, tier 2 flashpoints (LI) drop rakata.

 

Nope. To pick one of the "tougher" tier 1 FPs: directive 7 drops tionese-level and one columi piece. That FP is also a series of skill checks, but can be done in sub-tionese without autowiping from an enrage, even the big droid boss. You can walk into that and clear it in a situation where every player can benefit from every drop. I know that because I did it.

 

Walk into Lost Island without full T2 gear or equivalent on the DPS (or mostly T2 and an active stim) and you wipe on Savrak's enrage, which can't be outskilled. Sav-rak's got two mechanics, but he's not a skill-check. He's a straight up do-you-have-better-stats-than-the-drops-provide check.

[NasherUK]

This flashpoint just prooves that you can have the best gear in the game, but if your skill and team work is lacking you can't just face roll it. I've done this with a slightly under-geared group, so there is certainly no balance issue.

 

This isn't the hard mode you just hit 50 and jump in to. You need some experience as it's harder than most of the Ops at the moment. It is a real test of how well you are performing. More flashpoints should be at this level of difficulty I think.

Edited June 19, 2012 by NasherUK

[CitizenFry]

Walk into Lost Island without full T2 gear or equivalent on the DPS (or mostly T2 and an active stim) and you wipe on Savrak's enrage, which can't be outskilled. Sav-rak's got two mechanics, but he's not a skill-check. He's a straight up do-you-have-better-stats-than-the-drops-provide check.

 

I didn't know Sav-rak even HAD an enrage, and I have cleared HM Lost Island with some pretty bad DPS in my group (like the gunslinger who wouldn't go into cover because he "needed to be ready to move around")

Edited June 19, 2012 by CitizenFry

[TheRealCandyMan]

Nope. To pick one of the "tougher" tier 1 FPs: directive 7 drops tionese-level and one columi piece. That FP is also a series of skill checks, but can be done in sub-tionese without autowiping from an enrage, even the big droid boss. You can walk into that and clear it in a situation where every player can benefit from every drop. I know that because I did it.

 

Walk into Lost Island without full T2 gear or equivalent on the DPS (or mostly T2 and an active stim) and you wipe on Savrak's enrage, which can't be outskilled. Sav-rak's got two mechanics, but he's not a skill-check. He's a straight up do-you-have-better-stats-than-the-drops-provide check.

 

You don't need to be in full columi or better to do LI HM...

[jrlindsey]

Also, Lost Island HM is a part of the weekly quest for Black hole comms. So with that said it does drop better gear than Columi and 1 Rakata. Also Dr. Lorrick drops a vanity pet.

 

I would also like to point out that we one shot this FP every week for the weekly and we have one shot all bosses with all melee all ranged and a mix of the 2. I will admit that when we first started it was very difficult but once you figure out what you are doing its a cake walk.

Edited June 19, 2012 by jrlindsey
More info

[zappuslol]

I did it with full rakata with my guildies and it took about 30-45 min. Only wipe was at first boss coz they prqnked me for not doing it before.

If it took you 3 hours you either need to reconcider your tactics or try another, less challenging game. Tetris for example, or tick tak toe.

[Hatefrenzy]

This HM is all about the strats, and every strat is about Positioning. Get them down, and it is a great deal easier.

 

I rolled through here with a group of friends on our alts. Most of us were in roughly Tionese gear, with a couple of pieces of Columi spread around (except for our sniper who has some rakata, and our Sin tank who had some pieces of recruit). Having done this place quite a few times on our mains, and knowing the strats like the backs of our hands, we managed to get through the entire place without wiping once.

 

You really need to know the right strats for this place, and make sure that everyone in your group has a head on their shoulders. Stand in the wrong place? Dead. Don't interupt Incinerate? Dead. Don't move on the bonus boss? Dead. Stand in front of the bomb throwing on the last boss? Dead. Don't move fast enough on the poison bombs? Dead.

 

It is fairly unforgiving, but it CAN be done in tionese, and I for one enjoy the challenge and the sense of accomplishment I, and my group feel, when we down the place.

[Talarchy]

I really hate to say this, but it sounds like personal failure. If you are as well geared as you claim, then you're on a similar playing field as we are. We just breezed through this flashpoint on hard mode with a commando (BH to you) healer and he never had any problems whatsoever. We also one shot the last boss, having never done it on hard mode before. It's not very hard to stay out of circles on the ground, honestly. Lost Island is a great flashpoint, imho. And seeing as this patch was the "tier 2" patch, it makes sense for it to be more difficult. The rewards (rakata for a flashpoint?) reflect that.

 

You really hate to say it ? sounds like you were dying to...

[Larry_Dallas]

I didn't know Sav-rak even HAD an enrage, and I have cleared HM Lost Island with some pretty bad DPS in my group (like the gunslinger who wouldn't go into cover because he "needed to be ready to move around")

 

I would say this tells me nothing about how good or not your DPS were (more importantly, what gear they were in) considering gunslingers who feel the need to "be ready to move around" tend to roll dirty fighting, which, more or less, indulges that playstyle.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Larry_Dallas

[VulcanLogic]

 

Walk into Lost Island without full T2 gear or equivalent on the DPS (or mostly T2 and an active stim) and you wipe on Savrak's enrage, which can't be outskilled. Sav-rak's got two mechanics, but he's not a skill-check. He's a straight up do-you-have-better-stats-than-the-drops-provide check.

 

Odd, because we waltzed in there last week on my fresh 50 merc (only level 50 gear were the two aim barrels I bought, rest was 45-49 blue mod gear and accessories), and we rolled it without wiping. I had ACT running, was doing only 600-700 DPS. Pretty sure the other DPS, a marauder, wasn't doing any DPS when Savrak was up on the pipes. Rest of crew were in full Rakata, so the only thing that would have killed us was enrage. Didn't happen.

[Crumpetxxix]

I think the OP is doing something wrong if his group is in full rakata and it took him 3-4 hours.. me and my guildys walked into this, we timed bcuz we were running it close to our the time we run our ops at, and cleared the entire thing in 29 mins, which included a wipe on the 2nd boss cuz iTunes popped up on our healer during a smash and he went flying off the side. No we are not wearing full campaign gear, most of us are full rakata with a couple black hole pieces, and no we are also not some sponsered gamers who are payed to play.

[Larry_Dallas]

Odd, because we waltzed in there last week on my fresh 50 merc (only level 50 gear were the two aim barrels I bought, rest was 45-49 blue mod gear and accessories), and we rolled it without wiping. I had ACT running, was doing only 600-700 DPS. Pretty sure the other DPS, a marauder, wasn't doing any DPS when Savrak was up on the pipes. Rest of crew were in full Rakata, so the only thing that would have killed us was enrage. Didn't happen.

 

Your tank was in full rakata and the other dps was the highest/second-highest DPS class (presumably also in full rakata) and you're wondering why you, alone, could be in 50 gear without hitting enrage on Savrak without being full columi? Simple. The other two dragged your *** across the finish line. The marauder, alone, would nearly be doubling your output.

 

So yeah, if everyone else is overgeared for the gear check, one person can be grossly undergeared.

[Pplwithnolives]

Here is my pro-tip of the day. There is a weekly called "Rakghoul Conflicts", maybe you've heard of it. In order to complete this weekly you must complete LI HM and KuS HM. It really isn't that challenging, all you need is a Ranged DPS, Melee DPS or another Ranged, Healer, and a tank. The gear drops? Maybe start gearing out your companions or gear for an off-spec. The weekly makes you do this so you can get 8 BH comms. If it's challenging, you must've had no idea what you were doing. You think a HM FP is gonna drop the best gear in the game? No, for that you gotta do something actually challenging like EC HM.

[NoxiousAlby]

I've read all the posts and find it humourous that people say

"How easy it is"

"I've run it as a fresh 50 in blues & oranges"

"I've pugged it and we didnt even wipe"

"We did it in Tionese gear"

And have come to the conclusion that players are either so full of crap and only big noting themselves or they are either experienced dedicated raiders. HM LI is a 4 man mini raid, and for the "average" players it will be impossible to complete. As a result many players with miss out on 8 Black hole badges every week. So instead of obtaining a Black Hole upgrade every 4 weeks they will only obtain one every 11 weeks if they do the Black Hole weekly (Heroic 4 man).

 

For non raiders who wont have Rakata this will stifle gear progression and remove people incentive to continue playing. If this is the future of SWTOR I predict a further decrease in their already diminishing subscription rates.

[Kitzinger]

im sorry what? you just need a coordinated group, i (a rakata/columi/BH tank) and a group of fresh 50s ran it with LITTLE issue. Vent/Mumble/Skype/TS is your friend

A group of fresh 50's cannot run LI (hm) with little issue. I would like a screen shot of your proof showing all of the 50's health figuring that a group of fresh 50's won't be above 14k health. I know a lot of geared 50's and all of them have had problems in their first run through it.

The difficulty for this Instance ramps up considerably when you add a Melee DPS to the group. I know some Tanks who won't take Melee DPS. There is also some bugs with this FP that make it a sure wipe.

First bug is an invisible incinerate on the first cast. You can see the fire come out but it is uninterrupted. When I see this I run to the side and yell, "Cleanse!" into my Vent. Seeing as no Speech Communication came with the game one shouldn't have to have Vent to clear the content. This isn't the case with Invisible Incinerates.

Second bug is repeating IncInerates. Not Plasma then Incinerate then Plasma but Incinerate, Incinerate, Incinerate, Incinerate. All you can do is wipe.

Aggro bug... Droid fixates on healer and will only run to you when you hit you taunt then immediately runs back on healer. Wipe... start again.

Bubble drop on Tank and keeps dropping bubble dropping on Tank. Actually had an easier time clearing the droid knowing where he was going to drop the bubbles ahead of time. Still it's a bug as the bubble shouldn't drop on the Tank as long as he holds aggro.

But you know a bunch of fresh 50's can clear this FP on HM without any problems...

The gear to content for HM LI isn't correct. The fact that the scale of difficulty is substantially harder when adding a melee compared to running all Range is also not fair. Then you add in the pure luck factor of hoping you won't get a bug just makes LI (hm) stupid.

As a Rakata / Black Hole Geared Tank I won't take anyone through this FP that doesn't have anything but full Columi. This is because everybody must be able to pull their weight in this Instance. Tight rage timers means that the DPS must pull their weight. Hard hitting bosses (especially the pillar one) means that Healers have to be on it. As for the Tank he has to be perfect with his interrupts or Incinerate goes off.

I've learned to take new 50's with some Tiwonese through LI (sm) to give them a feel. Allow the players to get a feel for it. For (hm) it's mostly Columi / Tiwonese as a minimum. If Rage timers are not being met though they understand full well that they are getting kicked.

I'm one of the few tanks who will take melee as most have stopped trying. Why take a melee dps that ratchets up the difficulty to almost the breaking point when you can just take range and be on easy mode?

The OP is correct... The encounter isn't worth doing for the equipment it produces. Bioware say's they are going to correct it. As it stands the only thing harder than HM LI is HM EC...

[Aurojiin]

First bug is an invisible incinerate on the first cast. You can see the fire come out but it is uninterrupted. When I see this I run to the side and yell, "Cleanse!" into my Vent. Seeing as no Speech Communication came with the game one shouldn't have to have Vent to clear the content. This isn't the case with Invisible Incinerates.

Just a small note - despite how terrible ops frames are in this game, I still have no issues spotting Incinerate and cleansing it if needed. You shouldn't have to tell your healer. Unless the debuff isn't showing up on the raid frame, which would be another bug on top.

[Shinaa]

Are you sure they are going to correct it? Last time they corrected a flashpoint boss, was nerfing the loot so he was not worth doing at all (Kaon Bot, he was easily the hardest flashpoint boss, but dropt columni, they fixed it and gave him tionese lol).

All those people saying it can be easily done in the appropriate gear are either lying or just full of themself. It would be a mix of tionese and columni for most part with maybe 1-2 rakata pieces for the WHOLE group, not one member of the group. The healer would struggle alot, the tank would take even more damage.

We did the flashpoint in the first two weeks before any of us had big upgrades from Denova in full Rakata and our healer already struggled a bit, and don't say she was bad, we cleared nightmare on a weekly basis in 1-2 hours and had Denova Hard clear in like 3-4 days of trying (4 hours each). So we do know what were doing but it just was not worth doing it, after doing the weekly for LI twice, we already saw that.

The biggest insult of the drops are the tionese crystals ... I mean really, WHAT are we supposed to do with those completely useless crystals? I have already 600 or so of them and never really had to buy tionese anyway.

 

To the black hole comms: Yes you can get a few from the weekly, but guess what, doing two flashpoints for 8 comms is so not worth it, at first I thougt you had to do ONE of the two, that would have made a little sense and would have encourged lesser geared players to do Kaon, but both ... that takes easily 2 hours, not worth it.

Edited June 21, 2012 by Shinaa

[Craxim]

While I absolutely love the fact that they are adding actual challenging content now, I do completely agree that the loot should reflect that. It makes no sense to drop Columi in there when it requires at least full Columi to run it.

 

This is not true, my first Lost Island run I was in full recruit pvp gear, with a full recruit pvp gear healer. What made up for this was having 2 Rakata DPS, but still, not everybody needs full Columni, hence, people who clear it can still use loot from it.

 

 

To the black hole comms: Yes you can get a few from the weekly, but guess what, doing two flashpoints for 8 comms is so not worth it, at first I thougt you had to do ONE of the two, that would have made a little sense and would have encourged lesser geared players to do Kaon, but both ... that takes easily 2 hours, not worth it.

 

Seeing as Exotech schematics are going to be buyable with BH comms in 1.3, I say a very easy 2 flashpoints for 8 comms is very fair.

Edited June 21, 2012 by Craxim

[Nolenthar]

I think the most important to say about Lost Island HM is that it's the only instance among all Hard modes instances which is somehow designed to offer a challenge to a more "competitive" crowd. All the other hard modes are easy to complete, without even worrying too much about the mechanics which can just be ignored for most of them.

 

Proof is most Hard modes are being 2-manned by the most competitive crowds, which is a clue it's really not hard for a 4-man. So just as the other more challenging place in this game (EC HM), it shouldn't be nerfed before more competitive contents come live. It's also great to have a progression curve, and to have players improving their own gameplay.

Edited June 22, 2012 by Nolenthar

[Ilintar]

Well, the "fresh 50" stuff I keep hearing here is probably nothing more than a boast, since those "fresh 50" are mostly fresh 50 alts that enjoy a number of crafted items the second they get to 50, plus a guild that will gear them up in Rakata/Columi in sometimes as little as 2 days. Doing Lost Island HM in Tionese stuff or non-endgame fresh 50 stuff is just impossible due to the plain out DPS / healing checks in Project Sav-Rak, period. I have yet to see a reliable report of a single group doing this in Tionese, without any single member of the team being geared better.

 

Yesterday, I just ran LI for fun on my gunslinger alt with two pug groups and I must say it's a really enjoyable experience. For a couple of reasons:

 

1) you learn to coordinate with a random group of people, which also requires that you really know the tactics for the fight, as opposed to being carried over by guildies who learned all the details

2) there are some simple yet effective skill checks for some of the classes, for example, the Lorrick battle is almost impossible to do without the healer being aware of the cleansing mechanic, which I found out the hard way after wiping a few times with such a healer there

3) doing the instance in a suboptimal group is really, really good for sorting out your rotation and optimizing DPS output / energy management while on the move. I compared two runs of LI, one in which the group was overgeared and another in which the group was maybe even a bit undergeared (other DPS wasn't even in full columi, healer as well, I was mostly columi but with a rakata mainhand and battlemaster offhand, so we were pretty much at the brink). In the "power group" runs for LR-5, my DPS output was around 800. In the "weak group" runs, my DPS output got progressively stronger and in the run in which we actually downed LR-5, my DPS was 1050. Conclusion? You can get as much as 30% DPS more if your gear doesn't permit you to enter "lazy mode" and this ability to optimize rotations gets really useful in ops later on.

[MaliksKid]

The only boss in the entire FP i felt slightly cheated on drops was the droid at the start (and the mini bosses, not even tionese crystals), but that is made up for by how easy it is to beat Doctor Lorrick at the end. Seriously, the droid is the only challenge in LI HM. Project Sav-Rek is easy, so is Transgenic Sample Eleven, and the DPS race at the end against Lorrick is very easy, its almost harder to beat those medics than it is to beat him.