Question for Sniper and Nightmare TFB

[Devilk]

Okay so I looked around a bit and didn't really find an answer, might have just missed it. My question is about the sniper talent Siege Bunker(60% AoE reduction with entrench up), my group is trying progression through nightmare TFB and we're having a bit of trouble getting everyone topped off health wise after the second lightning phase on the dread guards. Does this 60% AoE reduction with entrench reduce that damage by 60% or is that not considered AoE?Thanks for any answers. Edited August 18, 2013 by Devilk

[Mythurin]

How come you are not rolling? We are doing 16man Progression through it and I roll each time at the 75-80% cast mark from Heirad. Miss each time. I don't think its an AOE in the traditional sense. I suppose it could be mainly because if you are closer than 5m to any Raid member they take 15-20K. Take a look at your Logs on the next run through.

 

A couple of things the 3 Snipers in the Raid do during that phase.

 

As soon as Heirad begins to cast, one of us runs up to her and drops Ballistic Shield. This helps on the HP rebound and general defense of the Raid after her cast.

 

Because her cast has a slow on it, I wait to use Counterstrike (Countermeasures) (Full Leth) to remove the slow.

 

We all have predesignated roll spots or pathways to stay away from Raid members. Because even if your roll mitigates the cast any Raid member within 5m will still get hit.

 

The Sniper that drops the Shield rolls toward the back wall door behind the 3 Dread Masters. Usually left or right archways.

 

-J:cool:

Edited August 18, 2013 by Mythurin

[Synavix]

Although I never actually looked at a parse to tell for sure, I believe Entrench with the 60% cooldown reduction *does* work, as I remember using it pretty often on HM.

 

However, the above post is correct that you are better off timing your Covered Escape, which allows you to negate all the damage entirely. I often come out of Lightning Field with over 85% health and consistently take the least amount of incoming damage along with our other sniper. My group has both of our Sniper's use Covered Escape to roll to the same spot (freeing up the rest of the room for everyone else to use), and if used correctly neither of us take any damage even though we technically overlap. Even if one of us messes up the timing, you only take the normal amount of damage that one person would take. Counterstrike is not really necessary unless you're going very far and half to run part way first (you're probably losing too much DPS if you are), since our roll removes all slows already and is not constricted like the Operative version.

 

We use a similar strategy for avoiding Doom on the fight. Since the circle limit for the fight caps out at 12 circles, it's far safer to have 12 green circles up than 12 red circles. Not having to suck any up for Doom is a pretty huge part of my group's strategy, and also helps avoid some extra healing. I did a longer explanation of how we do the fight on the Operation's forum, if you are interested. It focuses more on phase 2 and 3, however. I've actually used this strategy to make a progression kill on the fight with some DPS pulling under 2k sustained, so it's (in my opinion) probably one of the best routes to take.

 

The exact timing for Covered Escape that I tell other people is to aim for an activation time of .7s to 1.2s left on Heirad's Lightning Field cast, with the upper end of that being the safer timeframe to shoot for because of server lag. You can probably even roll a bit sooner and still be okay; the timing for Lightning Field is actually much easier than it sounds, and the only time I have ever messed it up is if I'm GCD locked from trying to get in a last ability. The timing for Doom is a little less forgiving, but if you mouse over the debuff timer you want to aim for just after it ticks from 2 seconds to 1 seconds (probably around 1.2s to 1.5s). Out of hundreds of Doom rolls, I have probably only messed this up 2 or 3 times as long as I was paying attention, so it's not *too* difficult, but does require you to really watch near the end. Try to aim your roll either into a wall or towards the middle, and not through a green circle. One of my messups was me trying to roll through a green circle at the same time (to clear it from the middle), and I think it caused my roll resist to bug out.

 

 

On a slightly unrelated note in regards to the 60% damage reduction on Entrench in TfB: it helps a lot from the random damage going out on Operator IX. It helps a TON if you get targeted by Kephess's phase 2 jump. It also lets you eat TfB tentacle slams in phase 2 like they're nothing, even on Nightmare difficulty.

 

I hope this helps.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Synavix

[Devilk]

Hey thank you for the responses! I had no idea I could roll to avoid most if not all the damage from the field. I'm actually a new raider and still learning my class.

[diadox]

On a slightly unrelated note in regards to the 60% damage reduction on Entrench in TfB: it helps a lot from the random damage going out on Operator IX. It helps a TON if you get targeted by Kephess's phase 2 jump. It also lets you eat TfB tentacle slams in phase 2 like they're nothing, even on Nightmare difficulty.

 

Very good stuff. I'd also like to add that the aoe reduction also works on Void Disturbances in the TFB encounter (the orb thingies you can pick up for damage on the tentacle/adds as well as on yourself). Hunker Down / Entrench coupled with Ballistic Dampers lets me eat up to 4 stacks of the debuff with only the last tick dealing even remotely significant damage to me. A 5th stack will kill you with 0 damage so no amount of damage reduction will help with that, but 4 is still a lot of damage done. Kind of playing with the idea of trying to roll the last tick, but that'd require quite a lot of practice and timing seeing as there is nothing counting to when it's going to tick next as far as I know.

Edited August 19, 2013 by diadox

[Synavix]

Very good stuff. I'd also like to add that the aoe reduction also works on Void Disturbances in the TFB encounter (the orb thingies you can pick up for damage on the tentacle/adds as well as on yourself). Hunker Down / Entrench coupled with Ballistic Dampers lets me eat up to 4 stacks of the debuff with only the last tick dealing even remotely significant damage to me. A 5th stack will kill you with 0 damage so no amount of damage reduction will help with that, but 4 is still a lot of damage done. Kind of playing with the idea of trying to roll the last tick, but that'd require quite a lot of practice and timing seeing as there is nothing counting to when it's going to tick next as far as I know.

 

Oh neat, that one I did not know. We had always let our Marauders play with those, but it opens up some fun possibilities with knowing that. Rolling the 5th tick would be pretty interesting, as I'm pretty sure it will oneshot the tentacle with 0 damage as well. Perhaps it would be possible to put all 4 DPS on one tentacle and bring it down really low, then have a Sniper oneshot the second tentacle as soon as they can and finish each phase as soon as the first add set spawns almost regardless of your group DPS. Hm....

[paowee]

Above people are correct!

 

Entrench.

1) Use for Kephess jump

2) Tank a tentacle in TFB phase 2 slam

3) Op IX aoe damage

4) DG Council lightning surge (make sure you don't kill your non-entrenched teammate tho)

 

Covered Escape

1) Use to dodge Kephess' jump

 

Evasion

1) I think it can cleanse WH debuff on ya in the off chance your healers aren't able to cleanse you asap.

2) Try it for DG Council's WITHER. Not sure if it will work for Doom or the red and green puddle debuff. NEED TESTING. I've only personally used it to remove Mass Explosive Probe (NiM SV Ops chief).

Edited August 19, 2013 by paowee

[diadox]

 

Evasion

Try it for DG Council's WITHER. Not sure if it will work for Doom or the red and green puddle debuff. NEED TESTING. I've only personally used it to remove Mass Explosive Probe (NiM SV Ops chief).

 

If I'm not mistaken, the only thing that can be cleansed in the DG fight is the dot cast by the add in the third phase (which obviously shouldn't go through in the first place ). Could be wrong though.

 

Also on the TFB it can cleanse the Void Disturbance, so between Entrench aoe reduction and Evasion you're pretty self-sufficient when it comes to them spheres.

Edited August 19, 2013 by diadox

[namesaretough]

2) Try it for DG Council's WITHER. Not sure if it will work for Doom or the red and green puddle debuff. NEED TESTING. I've only personally used it to remove Mass Explosive Probe (NiM SV Ops chief).

 

It doesn't work on those. Sorc/sage barriers are the only thing I know that get rid of those dots. You can roll to resist doom or a tick from the puddles, though.

Edited August 19, 2013 by namesaretough

[Synavix]

Evasion works 100% of the time on the Writhing Horror fight now. I pretty much use it exclusively instead of waiting for a healer cleanse. You just have to be careful not to pop it at the same time or immediately after rolling or you risk dropping it from your starting point, instead of your ending point. There was a period of time right after 2.0 that this did not work reliably, but it's since been fixed.

 

It does not work on any normal mechanic on Dread Guard, at least not for me so far. If you're unfortunate enough to let Mass Affliction go through it will work on that, since it's essentially the same one cast during the trash leading up to the boss.

 

I had never tried to roll evade the Kephess jump, though. I guess I'd be worried about someone moving in the way It's a great thing to keep in mind if Entrench is on cooldown or you're a different spec though. Good to know!

 

You can also Covered Escape through the Launch wave on Titan-6 (as well as the Chained Manifestation adds on Styrak, for what little use that is), Evasion cleanse the burn DoT that most of the city minibosses do, and Evasion cleanse corrosive grenades on the Cartel Warlords fight.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Synavix

[greg_biochem]

You can also Covered Escape through the Launch wave on Titan-6

 

That's just for HM, right? I didn't think you could resist it in NiM.

[Synavix]

Not sure, I had only ever used it while fooling around to freak people out on SM and HM.

[chuixupu]

Great thread, I was not aware of a lot of these things.

[KeyboardNinja]

That's just for HM, right? I didn't think you could resist it in NiM.

 

You can't resist it in NiM (we did some testing with A'jantis's Guarded and Haka's roll). It insta-kills you for 0 damage. It also does not work reliably in Hard Mode. The timing is really easy to get right due to the animation (you just roll through the wave), but we couldn't seem to get the immunity to work.

Edited August 19, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[theJediMaste]

One thing I do on kephess is when i get the red circle,just before he lands i hit covered escape and resist that. Idk if anyone else has tried that but i do know it does work.

[Synavix]

You can't resist it in NiM (we did some testing with A'jantis's Guarded and Haka's roll). It insta-kills you for 0 damage. It also does not work reliably in Hard Mode. The timing is really easy to get right due to the animation (you just roll through the wave), but we couldn't seem to get the immunity to work.

 

I've actually had really good success with it on HM. Out of maybe 30-40 Launch waves since i found this out I've only died once, and that was the same wave that another sniper in the group died (he also successfully resisted every other launch wave on 2 or 3 pulls). I guessed it had to do with server lag or some other outside factor, possibly a bug with the actual positioning of the launch wave graphic. More testing would obviously be needed to be sure, and either way it's not really "worth it" since any DPS gain you can get from it is extremely minimal.

 

On a similar note (I think I mentioned this already in my first reply), I've read Doom rolling is not entirely reliable too, although I've had a high enough success rate to say that it *is* reliable, and the few fails I've had are simply my own fault. However, I have failed both times I've tried to roll through a green circle at the same time as resisting Doom, so perhaps that has some significance. Possibly receiving or taking damage from another source at the same time "overlaps" during the process and causes it to register late. Again, would probably take more testing than is really worth it.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Synavix

[Devilk]

Some really good information in here! Keep the tips coming haha.

[paowee]

One thing I do on kephess is when i get the red circle,just before he lands i hit covered escape and resist that. Idk if anyone else has tried that but i do know it does work.

 

Yep i do it all the time

[paowee]

Doom rolling. Hover over the debuff, when it reaches 0, hit covered escape. it should resist the damage.

 

For Kephess, once you see the red reticle on you. Recite:

 

1 bunch of burger

2 bunch of burger

3 bunch of burger

~Hit roll.

 

That should time your roll at the exact moment to resist the jump damage. Can't remember if he lands on your start or end point though. I'll try it again this week (i actually look forward to getting jumped by him just so i can roll out of it. Pretty funny watching our whole raid look at you and then boom, not take any damage at all).

Edited August 19, 2013 by paowee

[OneArmed]

Thanks for the info on doom. I didn't know it was possible to roll resist that, especially on NM TFB. Sounds like you don't want to do it unless you have to though, and have a good cpu/connection. Like if there aren't enough green spots to use.

 

I usually save my evasion for the TFB kephess red reticle jump so I do not roll to a teammate by accident, evasion lasts a little longer so my timing does not have to be just right; and save my roll just to maneuver on that stage. Anyone else do the same?

 

Also, on TFB council ciphas, can we evade or roll out of his jump/strangle? I noticed that he targets us before he actually jumps, has anyone tried to dodge it somehow before the stun?

[Mythurin]

For the Withering Horror Phase HM or NiM:

 

Since our Raid rolls with 3 Snipers the first Sniper grabs the pheromone''s and sits on the Flowers. We dedicate 2 Orbital's and 2 Death From Above's on the Foul Offspring. The other 2 Snipers rotate out on the next Jealous Male mechanic.

 

Usually ranged DPS concentrate on the Jealous Male for this portion of the fight. Then swap back to the Withering Horror for the burn and execute portion.

 

-J:cool:

Edited August 20, 2013 by Mythurin

[KeyboardNinja]

I usually save my evasion for the TFB kephess red reticle jump so I do not roll to a teammate by accident, evasion lasts a little longer so my timing does not have to be just right; and save my roll just to maneuver on that stage. Anyone else do the same?

 

Evasion doesn't work. It's a tech attack. Roll and Shield Probe are the only things which will help you (well, that and the raid shield).

 

Also, on TFB council ciphas, can we evade or roll out of his jump/strangle? I noticed that he targets us before he actually jumps, has anyone tried to dodge it somehow before the stun?

 

You can roll out of strangle, but your timing has to be impeccable. My guild's gunslingers have done it a few times just to experiment, but they usually just wait for the interrupt. We generally interrupt the channel a few milliseconds after it starts, so there's really no advantage to rolling. If it were a consistent trick that worked every time, we would do it to avoid the damage from the first tick, but as our healers cannot rely on it, there's really no value.

[Jack_Shadowshade]

 

 

1) I think it can cleanse WH debuff on ya in the off chance your healers aren't able to cleanse you asap.

 

 

Can confirm the above, has worked for me before.