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KeyboardNinja

KeyboardNinja

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Army of Light cleared both Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice in SM.

 

First time we've ever tried blind runs without reading any guides. It was a ton of fun doing it that way.

 

It's great, isn't it? I had never done it before I joined Aisthesis, and even then I didn't get a chance to do one until 2.4 (since I had done Scum and Villainy on the 2.0 PTS with Wrath). Very unforgettable experience.

 

Incidentally, did you get any loot from either of the final bosses? We had a group clear Ravagers last night and they actually got a chest piece, and Drop it Like it's Hoth has reported seeing the main hand drop once off of Revan (we have yet to see any loot on that boss).

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ML_DoubleTap

ML_DoubleTap

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It's great, isn't it? I had never done it before I joined Aisthesis, and even then I didn't get a chance to do one until 2.4 (since I had done Scum and Villainy on the 2.0 PTS with Wrath). Very unforgettable experience.

 

Incidentally, did you get any loot from either of the final bosses? We had a group clear Ravagers last night and they actually got a chest piece, and Drop it Like it's Hoth has reported seeing the main hand drop once off of Revan (we have yet to see any loot on that boss).

 

We got 3 unassembled pieces from the last boss in Ravagers if I remember right and nothing from Revan :(

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wadecounty

wadecounty

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ToS was a ton of fun imo, probably the most fun I've had for a first time story mode op so far.

 

That said, for those who finished it, question, did you think bosses 2 and 3 were a tad overtuned for story mode?

 

Specifically, the walkers boss was extremely punishing on tank swaps and the bomb mechanic was asking a lot for the average pug I think, and the underground creature boss seemed to have a somewhat tight DPS check (we ended up using 5 DPS for that one). I don't mind it personally, but this was a group that 7 of 8 were experienced nightmare raiders, I'm not sure how pugs are going to get past those bosses. EDIT: Although we were also considerably lightly geared (mish mash of 180/186 gear from last tier and random bits of 192 sprinkled in, I don't think most of us had new augments either) so that will make a big difference for pugs in a few weeks.

 

The first boss and the last 2 were pretty easy.

Edited by wadecounty
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KeyboardNinja

KeyboardNinja

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That said, for those who finished it, question, did you think bosses 2 and 3 were a tad overtuned for story mode?

 

There's no question in my mind that they're over-tuned for story mode. The walkers are going to absolutely murder pugs, and both of the bosses are pretty challenging to heal in 186s (and depressingly hard relative to bosses 4 and 5). I think it's notable that the walkers, while certainly hard in HM, are no where near the step up from SM that the other bosses are.

 

Even getting past the walkers, you're right that underlurker has a DPS check that is far far too tight. We have yet to 5 DPS the fight (mostly because we're trying to whip our DPS into shape), but we've also seen the enrage on almost every clear (we beat it by like, 4 seconds one time). We've also had to do some weird discipline-specific things with DPS allocations and tanking to beat the checks. Basically, nightmare-level intricacies with strategies and at least hard mode-level execution. No where near story mode.

 

I really don't think the average allies group is going to make much progress on these bosses. And while I absolutely love the challenge, I can't deny that they are pretty overtuned relative to the rest of the instance.

Edited by KeyboardNinja
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justinplainview

justinplainview

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There's no question in my mind that they're over-tuned for story mode. The walkers are going to absolutely murder pugs, and both of the bosses are pretty challenging to heal in 186s (and depressingly hard relative to bosses 4 and 5). I think it's notable that the walkers, while certainly hard in HM, are no where near the step up from SM that the other bosses are.

 

Even getting past the walkers, you're right that underlurker has a DPS check that is far far too tight. We have yet to 5 DPS the fight (mostly because we're trying to whip our DPS into shape), but we've also seen the enrage on almost every clear (we beat it by like, 4 seconds one time). We've also had to do some weird discipline-specific things with DPS allocations and tanking to beat the checks. Basically, nightmare-level intricacies with strategies and at least hard mode-level execution. No where near story mode.

 

I really don't think the average allies group is going to make much progress on these bosses. And while I absolutely love the challenge, I can't deny that they are pretty overtuned relative to the rest of the instance.

 

I'm not saying that the fights aren't harder than SM usually is....but Walkers HM only required like 3.8EHPS from each healer in our first clear, and SM requires even less. I'm not saying that means SM Walkers is a joke, because SM Walkers IS no joke, but honestly once you get used to the mechanics and you stay out of stupid, Walkers is not a hard fight. Almost every time I've seen SM walkers done on twitch or read posts about how it's too hard, I'm seeing and reading that they are taking way too much damage and they are straight up doing the fight incorrectly. I was reading posts where some guild had 2 healers doing 8kEHPS together and still wiped in SM because of the damage and it's like HEY THAT MEANS YOU ARE TAKING A TON OF DAMAGE YOU DON'T HAVE TO. This is the main difference between this SM and last: There are many mechanics that you actually have to perform on SM. Previously in SM you could legitimately just IGNORE mechanics. You can not do that on some bosses in this new tier.

 

As for Underlurker, I don't really think it's that difficult for SM, the only issue is that the DPS check for SM seems a bit high comparitively to what makes sense in the rest of the SM fights in this new tier. The fight in and of itself is not hard to heal or tank.

 

Again, none of this is telling people to L2Play or anything. This is just saying that once SM guilds actually have a real strat that WORKS and is EFFICIENT, these fights in question are not wildly overtuned. Underlurker is overtuned DPS requirement for a SM, but it's not overtuned outside of that. Walkers is not overtuned, the mechanics are just not very forgiving. The stupid that you shouldn't stand in hurts. A lot. Real bad. But the stupid you shouldn't stand in is painfully obvious to see and you are given more than 0 seconds to react to it. The tank swap has obvious points where it happens. Rapid fire is able to be kited and take pmuch no damage.

 

This SM is going to be known as a tier where you can't just cheese or ignore 90% of mechanics. If that's your metric for saying something is overtuned, then so be it.

 

Now, these HMs are waaaaaay harder than HMs of the past. That's readily apparent once you start pulling them.

 

EDIT: Also, Tam, IDK what you mean by "We've also had to do some weird discipline-specific things with DPS allocations and tanking to beat the checks. Basically, nightmare-level intricacies with strategies and at least hard mode-level execution" in reference to Underlurker. I'd love to see your strat for the fight because it may be possible that it's being over-thought on SM. All respect, maybe you're overthinking the fight. I know there are fights where I have overcomplicated something just because I expect more complexity.

Edited by justinplainview
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KeyboardNinja

KeyboardNinja

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I'm not saying that the fights aren't harder than SM usually is....but Walkers HM only required like 3.8EHPS from each healer in our first clear, and SM requires even less. I'm not saying that means SM Walkers is a joke, because SM Walkers IS no joke, but honestly once you get used to the mechanics and you stay out of stupid, Walkers is not a hard fight. Almost every time I've seen SM walkers done on twitch or read posts about how it's too hard, I'm seeing and reading that they are taking way too much damage and they are straight up doing the fight incorrectly. I was reading posts where some guild had 2 healers doing 8kEHPS together and still wiped in SM because of the damage and it's like HEY THAT MEANS YOU ARE TAKING A TON OF DAMAGE YOU DON'T HAVE TO. This is the main difference between this SM and last: There are many mechanics that you actually have to perform on SM. Previously in SM you could legitimately just IGNORE mechanics. You can not do that on some bosses in this new tier.

 

As for Underlurker, I don't really think it's that difficult for SM, the only issue is that the DPS check for SM seems a bit high comparitively to what makes sense in the rest of the SM fights in this new tier. The fight in and of itself is not hard to heal or tank.

 

I think the biggest issue is not that it's impossible or that it's not clearable with margins to spare in current gear, but that the tuning is completely out of whack with respect to the other fights at the story mode level. It's the old Nightmare Dread Guard problem all over again. Sure, the tuning is fantastic and very mechanical, and one can make the argument that story mode really should be stepped up to this level, but there's no denying that 8/10 of the other bosses are more forgiving. Under the assumption that more bosses are tuned than untuned, I think the conclusion that Sword Squadron and Underlurker are significantly overtuned is a fair one.

 

When I cleared Sword Squadron on my healer, I had very little opportunity to seriously AoE heal (no knockback and like, two Kolto Bombs), and I still was around 3900 eHPS. I think some of that may have been compensation for my scoundrel cohealer, who had just hit 60 and was very unfamiliar with optimal use of the new changes, but still. There's no question that we took extra damage in several places (I can think of at least seven instances in that fight where one person or other took a hit that was avoidable), but that's not much of a margin.

 

Now, these HMs are waaaaaay harder than HMs of the past. That's readily apparent once you start pulling them.

 

I'm having an absolute blast in HM right now. It feels really really good, and the bosses feel much better tuned (e.g. Malaphar is a significant jump from SM to HM, while the walkers are definitely a step up but not by the same relative percentage). The tuning feels exactly as tight as it should feel with our current gear and class inexperience.

 

EDIT: Also, Tam, IDK what you mean by "We've also had to do some weird discipline-specific things with DPS allocations and tanking to beat the checks. Basically, nightmare-level intricacies with strategies and at least hard mode-level execution" in reference to Underlurker. I'd love to see your strat for the fight because it may be possible that it's being over-thought on SM. All respect, maybe you're overthinking the fight. I know there are fights where I have overcomplicated something just because I expect more complexity.

 

I was specifically thinking of the Underlurker clear that I was healing the other day. We had a scoundrel and three commandos DPSing, with a commando/scoundrel healer comp. Among the other things that we discovered and had to compensate for, the adds do more AoE damage the closer you are to them (our melee was taking substantially more damage than the tanks). This was also the night where we initially had the most trouble with the enrage, since we were mostly fresh 60s who hadn't practiced much on the PTS.

 

Ultimately, we ended up doing a couple weird things. First, the scoundrel spec'd Ruffian and turreted on the boss the whole time, leaving the adds to the commandos. We rotated offensive and defensive buffs (including the Bloodthirst-wannabes) and assigned people to stand out in the storm for a few extra seconds to finish cleaning up the adds. The main tank helped DPS the outside adds (avoiding standing between adds to minimize damage). The off tank (a shadow) dynamically moved Phase Walk around to compensate for healer positioning, and the ranged collapsed toward the healers (who positioned relative to the adds) after the cross for AoE healing. Meanwhile, the tanks played taunt games to prevent the boss from jumping to random people, while also recentering the boss following the storm to improve uptime and reduce movement slightly during the run in to the cross.

 

With these changes, we were just barely able to keep up with the healing while beating the enrage by just a few seconds (we also ignored the last add pack and ended up killing the boss during the storm channel).

 

Now that I think about it, I suppose it might be an exaggeration to call these nightmare-level strategies, but I think it would be highly inaccurate to term them "story mode level". Sure, a lot of that was only necessary to compensate for weaker gear (several people weren't even in full 180s) and/or sub-optimal play with the class changes, but still.

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wadecounty

wadecounty

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I'm not saying "please nerf story mode its too hard", but at the same time, I play with a wide variety of people, not just my nightmare raiding friends. And I can tell you that there are certain people/groups that I probably wouldn't even be able to do story mode with the way its currently set up because of those 2 bosses. And they aren't necessarily horrible at the game, although in the raiding community that's tough to say, because to a lot of raiders, doing less than x dps or not executing mechanics perfectly makes you horrible.

 

The point is, there's a nice middle ground between "stand in stupid all day and still won't wipe" and "stand in stupid for 1.5 seconds too long and you will wipe". Or not having extreme DPS checks on a story mode boss (looking at you Underlurker).

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Damastes

Damastes

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There aren't too many fights that, once learned, don't become much easier, no matter the content level, Justin :D. While I really like where the SMs are at right now (it felt like an accomplishment finally taking down Underlurker), I'm of the mind that SMs should mostly be tuned for PUGs. Let the HMs and above be where the real horror begins.

 

SM Underlurker wiped us the most, no doubt about it. Once DPS gets higher across the board, I'd thought the strategy for that fight would be to leave one DPS on the boss to make the fight a lot smoother. We also thought it could be beneficial to kill the middle add first to reduce overlapping damage for the final two (while increasing it for the first), but ultimately the DPS check for us was so tight that we'd always have to immediately start attacking the closest add to the boss. What also helped us was everyone picking the same rock to hide behind so we never had to chase the boss (he'd leap to us) and had ample time to get to our cross positions (when the tank didn't prematurely leap after the rock was destroyed, that is). We also started our burn on the boss early as we had 6 adds when we killed him.

 

I'd say I agree that Underlurker is only overtuned because of the DPS check at the moment. The mechanics are fine. As for the walkers, it could probably use one or two less "this hurts" mechanics for SM.

 

Also, how did you 5 DPS the Underlurker? While it could have just been the cross being buggy, we tried one tank in a DPS spec and it seemed like the cross knew it and murdered us for it. I won't discount the possibility someone did something wrong, of course.

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wadecounty

wadecounty

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Also, how did you 5 DPS the Underlurker? While it could have just been the cross being buggy, we tried one tank in a DPS spec and it seemed like the cross knew it and murdered us for it. I won't discount the possibility someone did something wrong, of course.

 

Just popped tank stance when the hit came from the cross, I think the mechanic works by splitting damage based on the amount of people there, since the tanks are by themselves they take the biggest hits but with tank stance that helps soften the blow a ton.

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bluecheesebandit

bluecheesebandit

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Also, how did you 5 DPS the Underlurker? While it could have just been the cross being buggy, we tried one tank in a DPS spec and it seemed like the cross knew it and murdered us for it. I won't discount the possibility someone did something wrong, of course.

 

It seemed to me that the main tank and off tank had to have first and second highest threat for the cross to be successful. In a raid group on BC we had a powertech dps play the part of the "off-tank" just to see what would happen and lo and behold, the cross was completed. He had the top threat of the dps in parsec as the rest of us were dumping aggro and our real off-tank was just dpsing in his tank gear.

 

I may be wrong in that, but that is what seemed to work for us.

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Damastes

Damastes

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It seemed to me that the main tank and off tank had to have first and second highest threat for the cross to be successful. In a raid group on BC we had a powertech dps play the part of the "off-tank" just to see what would happen and lo and behold, the cross was completed. He had the top threat of the dps in parsec as the rest of us were dumping aggro and our real off-tank was just dpsing in his tank gear.

 

I may be wrong in that, but that is what seemed to work for us.

 

For the record, this worked like a charm tonight :) We just had our main tank and our Vanguard tank (in DPS spec) taunt swap early on in the cross phase. (As I recall, if they waited too long it tended to screw things up.)

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