Toth & Zorn HM still overtuned.

[Typeslice]

 

PROBLEMS

-Project takes so long to deal damage it hits after Toth & Zorn Jump and so our Tank gets 1 shot. - plan for the leaps. They are based off %, so your players should hold off on casting certain abilities when they know the leap is incoming. Easily avoidable, and signs of a bad player if they keep making the same mistake.

-No gear step up. We can not improve our gear to aid us in the fight. It is the first boss. - you have access to black hole gear, which is more than enough.

-The boss has no hard to mechanics, it is simply lazy stack it with heaps of damage to make it hard. - see your first point.

- It favors a raid with as little to no melee as possible COME ON! that is just stupid, i am so angry right now, being forced to change our entire raid makeup recruit new players and force friends out of our operation because we can't progress. - we've done it all melee, and at most have 1 ranged per raid.

.

 

comments in red

[Iceman_sith]

comments in red

 

Even if you have done it as four melee, doesn't mean it still doesn't favor ranged, and so a raid with all ranged would find it easier, I will add we have two sage healers, which i think is the biggest factor in the kill.

[Iceman_sith]

I just edited my previous post, however, I can agree with you somewhat in terms of the tanks being more healer friendly. On the other hand, the mechanics of HM tanks are a lot harder than they look. We also thought we would down the tanks in a couple of tries once we got past Z&T HM, but ended up not getting our first kill until about our 6-7th night.

 

I am very happy with the mechanics being harder I have experienced competent players in my ops group and even if there was several one shot style mechanics I could trust them to get it right.

 

I am all for hard mechanics, I am not for bosses that just pound your raid hard and have large health pools. They are boring and I think mmorpgs have moved beyond this.

[AesirUesugi]

We just started trying this boss, only between a handful to a dozen tries so far so not too worried. Took us a few goes to figure out the mechanics and now we're managing to survive up to the soft enrage without any problems. Now its a case of the DPS figuring out how to dodge mechanics and anticipate leaps and such while providing a maximum of DPS. Seems absolutely fine for us so far. Doesn't seem that much harder than any other new fight was.

[Typeslice]

Even if you have done it as four melee, doesn't mean it still doesn't favor ranged, and so a raid with all ranged would find it easier, I will add we have two sage healers, which i think is the biggest factor in the kill.

 

Both our main healers are sages as well. Are you eating a lot of unnecessary damage other than the leaps: ground spikes, toth mini-rages, etc?

[Szander]

I am very happy with the mechanics being harder I have experienced competent players in my ops group and even if there was several one shot style mechanics I could trust them to get it right.

 

I am all for hard mechanics, I am not for bosses that just pound your raid hard and have large health pools. They are boring and I think mmorpgs have moved beyond this.

 

Except that the fight have 3 new factors/mechanics on HM. It's not just more dmg and HP as I'm sure you already know. Our guild have taken them down with a Sorc+Operative and a 2x Sorc healer setup. Again, as I wrote in my other post. I agree with you that making the fight so melee unfriendly is stupid and I whole heartedly agree. But it still doesn't make it impossible. And I still have a hard time understanding why you guys haven't killed it yet since you claim you are a competend team.

[Iceman_sith]

Both our main healers are sages as well. Are you eating a lot of unnecessary damage other than the leaps: ground spikes, toth mini-rages, etc?

 

Sure we are at times, For example our best attempt I ranged dps took a spike, didn't kill him but cost us mana. It may or may not have cost us the kill.

 

But even if tomorrow we walk in and kill this boss, I would stand firmly by my thoughts on the boss being over tuned.

[Szander]

Sure we are at times, For example our best attempt I ranged dps took a spike, didn't kill him but cost us mana. It may or may not have cost us the kill.

 

But even if tomorrow we walk in and kill this boss, I would stand firmly by my thoughts on the boss being over tuned.

 

It isn't, it's just not very melee friendly.

EDIT: Though you are entitled to your opinion.

Edited June 11, 2012 by Szander

[_Zorth_]

I'm sorry but you and your raid members are certainly far from "experienced raiders" if you can't clear Toth & Zorn HM while in a mix of Black Hole & Rakata gear.

[Kihra]

PROBLEMS

-Project takes so long to deal damage it hits after Toth & Zorn Jump and so our Tank gets 1 shot.

 

The leaps happen at fixed percentages, i.e., when the lower health of the two bosses falls below 90%, 70%, 50%, 30%, and 10%. I play a Shadow tank, and I have never had to think about when to Project. You might want to check logs and figure out if Project is really the issue. I'm highly skeptical that it is causing your tank to die.

 

Make sure your Shadow tank knows to use Resilience to cleanse the Mental Anguish and Weakened debuffs from himself. A Shadow tank can instantly cleanse those debuffs the minute they go out. This will also render you immune to reflected Fearful damage.

 

-No gear step up. We can not improve our gear to aid us in the fight. It is the first boss.

 

Toth and Zorn is not much of a gear check as far as the enrage timer. Concentrate on surviving over everything else. If you keep the raid alive, then you will kill them in time.

 

- It favors a raid with as little to no melee as possible COME ON! that is just stupid, i am so angry right now, being forced to change our entire raid makeup recruit new players and force friends out of our operation because we can't progress.

 

Toth and Zorn can be done with all melee. You just need to think strategically regarding how to move your DPS around. Know when Zorn is safe to hit. Know when Toth should be avoided. For example, when Toth is berserk, you can move all your DPS to Zorn. All he is doing is throwing rocks, and so he hits like a kitten. He can't Shriek and apply debuffs while he's throwing rocks. Everyone can get out during the Baradium Heave and avoid the Shriek that follows.

 

Similarly while Zorn is casting Sonic Paralysis and Toth is ground shattering, Zorn can't Shriek, so he's safe to hit as long as that channel is still going.

 

This is a fight that can be done many different ways, and you need to figure out what works for you. Don't pretend there is no strategy involved. You can absolutely trivialize this fight if you have a thorough understanding of how both bosses work. You just need to tailor your approach to your Operation's composition.

 

Also, regarding tank 1-shots, I don't know how your DPS is, but if you're ever pushing a phase too fast, the previous tank can still have Fearful when picking up Zorn again. You have to use a cooldown then or use a 3-tank rotation to avoid this.

 

Do I believe this boss is overtuned? Not really. In terms of difficulty, I think Firebrand and Stormcaller are actually harder than Toth and Zorn. Overall I'd say the instance has the following difficulty order on 16-man HM:

 

Kephess > Firebrand and Stormcaller > Toth and Zorn > Vorgath

[snwmnx]

Its not over-tuned, you are simply failing the coordination check.

 

Look, you push them through the phases by static HP hits at every 10%.

 

100% - Encounter begins.

90% - Jump

80% - Throw phase

70% - Jump

60% - Ground AoE Phase

Repeat.

 

-Project takes so long to deal damage it hits after Toth & Zorn Jump and so our Tank gets 1 shot.

If they are jumping in the middle of the Throw Phase, it is because you pushed them too hard with your DPS. Throttle your DPS and hold at 1% - 3% before the next push. When Zorn begins to cast the actual throw, then crank the pain back out again. It is a coordination check, man.

 

-No gear step up. We can not improve our gear to aid us in the fight. It is the first boss.

You don't need a gear step up - you aren't failing the gear check. You are surpassing the DPS check, just failing the coordination check.

 

-The boss has no hard to mechanics, it is simply lazy stack it with heaps of damage to make it hard.

They DO have mechanics. Pushing them at the proper times throughout the phases is the mechanic of the fight.

 

- It favors a raid with as little to no melee as possible COME ON! that is just stupid, i am so angry right now, being forced to change our entire raid makeup recruit new players and force friends out of our operation because we can't progress.

It absolutely does not favor a ranged raid. It, like most others, favors a mixed composition raid. Keep ranged on Zorn to avoid fearful and put melee on Toth. We have had HM EC on farm for quite some time and run with 2+ Marauders, one DPS Jugg, and an Assassin DPS all the time with other melee rotating in sometimes.

[dudeyoumadbro]

That's because one automatically enrages as soon as the other one dies...

No they both enraged, trust me I think we know the difference between a soft enrage and a timer enrage

[Berezo]

Its not over-tuned, you are simply failing the coordination check.

 

Look, you push them through the phases by static HP hits at every 10%.

 

100% - Encounter begins.

90% - Jump

80% - Throw phase

70% - Jump

60% - Ground AoE Phase

Repeat.

 

 

If they are jumping in the middle of the Throw Phase, it is because you pushed them too hard with your DPS. Throttle your DPS and hold at 1% - 3% before the next push. When Zorn begins to cast the actual throw, then crank the pain back out again. It is a coordination check, man..

 

or just heal through it like the rest of us.

[snwmnx]

Except that he said they were trying this and their tank was one shot.

 

Obviously, this is not and has not been working for them. I was trying to give an alternate.

[Mavery]

This fight is not overtuned, even if you're heavy on melee.

 

Now what do I consider heavy on melee? 2. If you bring 3 or MORE melee, well, that's not exactly smart.

 

Now the damage is not too much, even with a lot of melee. I wouldn't reccomend 3 but you can do it this way as well. You just need to know the fight better. You can predict when jumps happen (so no one but the tank should ever take damage from the jump). In addition, assuming you have kept the two drouks even, every single DPS should hop on Toth after the second rock spike phase. When you kill him this quickly it cuts down on the AOE damage significantly. The enrage is no problem either. Just have the tanks ping pong Zorn with taunts.

 

@OP: I'm a Shadow tank and never run into this problem with project. Ever. If this keeps happening, know when the jumps happen (they are very predictable) and work your rotation so you stop using project just before a jump. Problem solved. This becomes a non-issue with 1.3 as well.

 

This fight is not over tuned. At all. If melee are taking too much damage, that means melee are misexecuting at some level.

[Kihra]

A sample strat that works with all melee DPS:

 

(1) Start with your DPS split between Toth and Zorn. Have the DPS on Zorn switch to Toth before the first leap happens to avoid Fearful. Toth will be at 90% and Zorn will be at ~93% when this leap happens.

 

(2) Continue with all your DPS on Toth. Push him to 80%. Toth goes Berserk.

 

(3) Have all your DPS switch to Zorn. DPS him all the way until the Baradium Heave. You will catch him up to Toth by the time the Heave happens.

 

(4) As the Heave is casting, have all your DPS go back to Toth. Zorn Shrieks and applies debuffs right after the Heave. Push Toth to 70% and the next leap will happen.

 

(5) Split your DPS again between Toth and Zorn. Push to 60%. Toth starts casting Ground Shatter and Zorn roots and casts Sonic Paralysis.

 

(6) Continue with split DPS until Zorn is nearing the end of his Sonic Paralysis cast. He will Shriek and apply debuffs after that cast. Have all your DPS switch to Toth as that cast is ending to avoid getting hit by the debuffs. If your DPS is high and you push to 50% before the cast ends, melee should also get out before 50% is hit.

 

Repeat steps (2)-(6). At sub 10% have everyone burn Toth first.

 

This is the most conservative example of how you can kill the bosses with all melee and avoid all double damage Smashes, all Fearfuls and all Mental Anguish/Weakened debuffs.

 

There are plenty of ways to take these bosses down. People who think this encounter is "anti-melee" DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE FIGHT.

[TheRealCandyMan]

...

-No gear step up. We can not improve our gear to aid us in the fight. It is the first boss.

 

This isn't true. You can become fully Campaign equivalent without ever downing a boss in HM EC through black hole gear.

[alifaraaz]

You say you've yet to run into enrage, have 2 melee and have mixed black hole gear.

 

I wonder, are you sure you're not pushing dps too much?

 

We're 3/4 HM and ironically we spent 2 hours on T&Z last week and then went on to kill Tanks within 20min before end of the raid.

 

The reason in the end was cause we were pushing too much dps. Not just for the Beserk phase but also for the red circles phase.

Due to dps getting better at playing and better gear we were hitting the switches before Fearful had worn off the tank, causing massive damage to the tank, even if he just taunted and didn't attack back.

 

Now we call it out when fearful is about to wear off and plan our jumps accordingly, and the fight is pretty easy. That and having our tanks positioning being perfect.

I would say most of the success of this fight is down to tanks positioning and ability to switch quickly. The second is dps throttle and ofc healers being able to keep everyone up (as long as they dont make mistakes such as getting hit by red circles).

 

Tbh 2 sages is probably not letting you down, we often run all types of setups and find 2 sorcs or 1 sorc 1 op to be best.

[Kihra]

The reason in the end was cause we were pushing too much dps. Not just for the Beserk phase but also for the red circles phase.

Due to dps getting better at playing and better gear we were hitting the switches before Fearful had worn off the tank, causing massive damage to the tank, even if he just taunted and didn't attack back.

 

Yeah, once your DPS gets high enough it can affect the strat. There are three places where stopping DPS might be necessary. On 16-man at least, two of these DPS stops can be avoided.

 

(1) You don't want to push Zorn/Toth below 70% / 30% before the Baradium Heave has gone out. You can avoid having to stop DPS here by having all DPS switch to Toth at the 90% / 50% leaps and burn him down to 80% / 40%. Then all DPS switch to Zorn once Toth Berserks and DPS him all the way down to nearly 70% / 30%. The Baradium Heave happens and all DPS switch back to Toth and push him to 70% / 30% and enter the next phase. Then go back to split DPS.

 

(2) If you push a phase too quickly, a tank can still have Fearful when the next leap goes out. On 16-man, we use three tanks now to compensate for this problem. The tanks just cycle through a rotation of Zorn -> melee DPS -> Toth -> Zorn -> melee DPS -> Toth, etc. This ensures that the tank picking up Zorn never has Fearful and results in an overall DPS gain despite using an extra tank.

 

(3) At 10%, you need to stop DPS to give the tanks time to re-separate Toth and Zorn following the leap and to give healers a chance to top off the raid before the intense sub-5% damage goes out. If you push too quickly to 5% following the leap you can end up with Toth and Zorn rooted right next to one another, and/or your raid may still be low from the previous Ground Shatter phase. Just stop DPS at 10% and wait until the raid is ready for the final burn!

[Olostur]

-Project takes so long to deal damage it hits after Toth & Zorn Jump and so our Tank gets 1 shot.

The jumps happen at specific health points. Pay attention, figure it out, and you can avoid skills like this for the few seconds preceding a jump. There is no random element here, just a side effect of you not fully understanding the fight. I do this with a shadow tank every week and he has yet to 1-shot himself (though one time he did go answer a pizza delivery while tanking Toth....)

 

-No gear step up. We can not improve our gear to aid us in the fight. It is the first boss.

As has been elsewhere mentioned, you can get Black-Hole gear quite quickly even without doing hard mode EC. If you aren't, that is your decision, not the game's.

 

-The boss has no hard to mechanics, it is simply lazy stack it with heaps of damage to make it hard.

Most of your complaints are coming from a lack of understanding of the mechanics. See above and below for details. You cannot on the one hand complain that the fight isn't about mechanics, but on the other hand complain when those mechanics cause you to wipe.

 

- It favors a raid with as little to no melee as possible COME ON! that is just stupid, i am so angry right now, being forced to change our entire raid makeup recruit new players and force friends out of our operation because we can't progress.

I have done this fight with THREE (yes 3) melee DPS (8-man, so 1 on Zorn at any given time). If you understand how the jumps, the debuffs and the DoT work, it is completely doable. Is it more complicated? Yes, because there's a DPS swap as well as a tank swap, but frankly it comes with the territory of playing a melee class. Learn the fight better, teach your melee to pay attention and use their skills, and you *can* do it.

 

I WANT a response to this post, I have posted support, twitter and made several posts on these forums. I can't get any information no one cares. At this point, there is nothing we can do.

There is most certainly something you can do. Rather than complain about a fight that is farmed by a huge number of raid teams, spend some time learning (or asking constructively) about the mechanics.

[pure_laced]

There is an alternative that I am surprised no one mentioned. If they did, I must have missed it in the multitude of posts about this. I won't go into too many details about the encounter because several people have already illustrated the mechanics to you.

 

With that said, a viable strat in both 8 and 16 that requires a little coordination is to just switch the bosses. Keep them far enough apart that fearful only applies to one group at a time and you can split your melee up. We have done this on both 8/16 HM with only 1 ranged dps on 8, and 2 on 16.

 

Learn the mechanics, learn how to overcome them, and this boss is super easy. When you get Campaign gear it is more difficult than it is in full Rakata. You look at that statement and think "huh?" It is true. We have to call stop dps and sit twiddling our thumbs to prevent pushing phases early, and the enrage timer is tuned to those pushes pretty tightly.

[Aurojiin]

We have to call stop dps and sit twiddling our thumbs to prevent pushing phases early, and the enrage timer is tuned to those pushes pretty tightly.

The use of back-to-back (to-back-to-back) 10% phase changes was pretty shortsighted. They should have been time based (i.e. at every 10% of the enrage timer), and if you come back with enough gear to blow through the fight without triggering them all, who cares?

[xenofire]

Z&T is completely undertuned, even for hardmode.It was previously tuned fine on the PTS when it was originally released, and a few guilds managed to kill it even in that form.

 

Now it's completely a joke. How are people struggling with it? They nerfed it so incredibly hard that even though only 4 people in our guild did the fight on the PTS, we one shot it in 16 man the first night it was out, 12 people never seeing the fight before.

 

There are no composition restrictions. The fight is so versatile that if you have ENTIRELY melee dps it's still doable, you just need to change your strat slightly.

Edited June 12, 2012 by xenofire

[Iceman_sith]

You say you've yet to run into enrage, have 2 melee and have mixed black hole gear.

 

I wonder, are you sure you're not pushing dps too much?

 

We're 3/4 HM and ironically we spent 2 hours on T&Z last week and then went on to kill Tanks within 20min before end of the raid.

 

The reason in the end was cause we were pushing too much dps. Not just for the Beserk phase but also for the red circles phase.

Due to dps getting better at playing and better gear we were hitting the switches before Fearful had worn off the tank, causing massive damage to the tank, even if he just taunted and didn't attack back.

 

Now we call it out when fearful is about to wear off and plan our jumps accordingly, and the fight is pretty easy. That and having our tanks positioning being perfect.

I would say most of the success of this fight is down to tanks positioning and ability to switch quickly. The second is dps throttle and ofc healers being able to keep everyone up (as long as they dont make mistakes such as getting hit by red circles).

 

Tbh 2 sages is probably not letting you down, we often run all types of setups and find 2 sorcs or 1 sorc 1 op to be best.

 

This is what I have been thinking, I think we are being punished for high dps. It is like warlord Kephas the other day we actually killed the robot so quick we had 3 phases all happening at once.

 

You shouldn't really get punished for that.

[Iceman_sith]

I seriously think we are suffering because our dps is so high, that our healers can not keep up.

 

Thanks for your feedback. I still believe this fight is overturned, perhaps if they phase changes were based on time, you would not be punished for high dps.