Vaylin is to powerful in chapter 9

[Master_Kelvin]

I'm about to finish the Knights of the Eternal Throne storyline,

but the problem is is that Vaylin is undefeatable! What do I need to do to defeat her?

All my upgrades are max.

 

Please tell me what to do.

 

Best Regards

[merovejec]

I suppose you are talking about Master mode, if you wanna have it easy just group up with 6-7 friends and invite the group to your instance and you altogether will kill her in a few seconds

[DisIzMe]

Get her to move into green healing circles, it stuns her and she takes damage every time. Also, make sure you are keeping your distance from her at all times if you are ranged to prevent AoE damage.

[AllisonLightning]

To be fair, that fight is overtuned. I beat it on a Mara but then I beat it as a story/ PvP player. First few times were a wipe inside minutes but the third/fourth time, there was no repeat because I adapted. I don't presume to think everybody who tackles that fight does PvP or Ops, HM FPs- and I'll certainly never be releasing that trapped Sith again, even on a LS character.

 

Valkorian's fight by comparison is a boring cakewalk. I could fall asleep and he'd still go down.

[SteveTheCynic]

To be fair, that fight is overtuned.

It's not overtuned. It's a gimmick fight, so the question of tuning is largely irrelevant. Guild Wars 1 had many gimmick fights, fights that you take a specific build and/or tactical method to, and they are easy, but if you take an ordinary general purpose adventuring build and method, you're screwed.

 

The most notorious gimmick fight in GW1 is Augury Rock, where you face a foe that has the same abilities as you. It's normally very hard if you try to fight it normally, but if you take a bunch of abilities that you can use and it cannot, you can shred it in a few seconds(1). (A build in GW1 is, in effect, a set of eight abilities, coupled in some cases with specific gear. You have one action bar, and it has just eight slots which you must fill from the (huge) list of abilities that you know. I don't want to hear any complaints about the number of action bars in SWTOR ever again, thanks.)

 

So Chapter 9 is a gimmick fight. The details of exactly how you must fight it are slightly unusual, but on the scale of gimmick-ness, it pales into insignificance compared to Augury Rock.

* If you want to fight her, go toe to toe, inside the purple circle.

* Stand between her and the stairs so that if you muff up your reaction to the knockback, you get knocked back into the stairs instead of proving that HK-55 was right when he said that meatbags can't fly.

* Run away when she starts casting the knockback ability. The area of effect isn't huge enough to be a problem.

* If you don't want to go toe-to-toe, kite her into the green healing circles, because while they will heal you, they inflict huge damage if she touches them.

 

(1) The theoretical limit is if you have a high reputation with the Ebon Vanguard, and get the one-in-ten chance version of Ebon Vanguard Sniper Support, where you can one-hit the foe. It cannot use that ability at all.

[OwenBrooks]

* If you don't want to go toe-to-toe, kite her into the green healing circles, because while they will heal you, they inflict huge damage if she touches them.

 

Wish they had a Like button on the swtor forums

 

(this is my like button)

[grania]

I HATE fights where you get thrown off the side, so cheap and so boring trying to hug the walls the whole time

[SteveTheCynic]

I HATE fights where you get thrown off the side, so cheap and so boring trying to hug the walls the whole time

It's a gimmick fight. There's bound to be some gimmicky thing you have to do. It might be taking PvE-only skills to Augury Rock, so that the foe has no skills available to use against you, or it might be the various ways you have to fight Vaylin in Chapter 9. There is NOTHING wrong, as such, with gimmick fights, unless they are over-used. I'd have to admit that one interpretation says that GW1 contains more gimmick fights than is good for it, but SWTOR does not have that problem.

 

As always, you have to adapt your play style to the fight. This is true of ordinary fights just as much as it is of gimmick fights, even though the degree of adaptation required is greater for gimmick fights. If you don't adapt, your character gets killed or otherwise loses the fight. Well, duh, of course.

 

(Yes, I agree, to a certain extent, gimmick fights are a cheap cop-out, but so long as they are used in moderation, it's OK.)

[TUXs]

too...she would be "too powerful", not "to powerful".

[Halinalle]

I HATE fights where you get thrown off the side, so cheap and so boring trying to hug the walls the whole time

 

In what part you get thrown off? I have done this fight many times since 5.0 but I only got thrown off once. Can't remember where that was...

 

Btw, never play JK story past Nar Shaddaa if you don't like to be aware of your surroundings. You don't even have walls in that one fight on Tatooine.

Edited February 7, 2017 by Halinalle

[grania]

In what part you get thrown off? I have done this fight many times since 5.0 but I only got thrown off once. Can't remember where that was...

 

Btw, never play JK story past Nar Shaddaa if you don't like to be aware of your surroundings. You don't even have walls in that one fight on Tatooine.

 

Dunno, the part where Vaylin chases you around for 10 minutes. Once she (or someone? does Valkorian do it too?) knocked me off right at the beginning and I couldn't resummon Lord Dramath, was quite rankled.

 

As far as JK, I've mentally blocked most of that experience.

Edited February 7, 2017 by grania

[Xina_LA]

I'm still furious about the gimmicks on the Arcann fight. All that story time spent building a special lightsaber, just to put it down and use some knight's shield.

 

The Vaylin fight was extremely hard or relatively easy, depending on two factors.

1) LUCK -- If she hits you with enough stuns and stunning attacks, there's no way to get to a green circle.

2) CLASS -- Ranged classes were easier (at least for me).

 

I sincerely hope they get away from gimmick boss fights. I'd rather see special puzzle mechanics for sub-bosses.

[SteveTheCynic]

I'm still furious about the gimmicks on the Arcann fight. All that story time spent building a special lightsaber, just to put it down and use some knight's shield.

 

The Vaylin fight was extremely hard or relatively easy, depending on two factors.

1) LUCK -- If she hits you with enough stuns and stunning attacks, there's no way to get to a green circle.

2) CLASS -- Ranged classes were easier (at least for me).

 

I sincerely hope they get away from gimmick boss fights. I'd rather see special puzzle mechanics for sub-bosses.

I'm not a big fan of gimmick fights, but if you're faced with one, you just have to research the gimmick. You can do it the hard way, by fighting the fight and seeing what happens, or the easy way, by asking the Internet.

 

Re: your points:

1. LUCK - I didn't have this problem. Every class has an interrupt that you can use against the Force Slam thing. Use it only against that ability and you'll be fine.

2. CLASS - I've done it on Lightning Sorc, Gunnery Commando, and Vigi Guardian. Only the Sorc had any real problems, but that was (1) because I did her first, and (2) she released Lord D in Chapter VII. I didn't find it any harder or easier on the Guardian than on the Commando.

[grania]

I'm not a big fan of gimmick fights, but if you're faced with one, you just have to research the gimmick. You can do it the hard way, by fighting the fight and seeing what happens, or the easy way, by asking the Internet.

 

How do you get her to the green circles and assure you aren't going to get knocked off? That ability - it comes after she does that floating fetal position thingy, is that right?

 

I haven't had an awfully hard time defeating her myself but I think it's due to the tanky classes I play. Someday I might want to take something more "delicate" through and I foresee problems if I don't understand what's going on.

[SteveTheCynic]

How do you get her to the green circles and assure you aren't going to get knocked off? That ability - it comes after she does that floating fetal position thingy, is that right?

 

I haven't had an awfully hard time defeating her myself but I think it's due to the tanky classes I play. Someday I might want to take something more "delicate" through and I foresee problems if I don't understand what's going on.

Basically, the foetal-ball cast is the huge knockback. There's a red circle on the ground as she does it, but it takes *ages* for her to cast (ten seconds?) so there's plenty of time to get out of the circle or behind a wall or something (walls like the stairway protect you from the cast). There's also the Force Slam thing where she bounces you repeatedly into the ground (up and down), and the solution for that is your interrupt ability. If you want to get her into the green circles, run away (she can't move while casting the knockback) and she will follow you. Dodge around the circle to make sure she hits it. Each time she hits one, she takes around 25% of her max health.

 

Or you just duke it out with her like my Commando did. Stay *inside* the cloudy purple circle at her feet and blaze away. If you get outside the circle, she reflects your attacks, and you don't want that.

 

My Lightning Sorc (if you don't use the bubble correctly, that counts as fairly flimsy) had a hard time, partly because she was the first I tried it with, and partly because she let Lord D go in Chapter VII, but the principles I outlined above worked well for her once I worked it out. Gunslinger or Sniper might be harder, because all Sorcs have *some* self-heal ability *and* the bubble, and GS and Sniper don't.

[Damask_Rose]

I was awfully tired when I finally fought her, so I didn't identify when the big punt was coming, but I swear she managed to knock me forward while I was positioned against the stairs. I had trouble luring her into the green, so I just used them for healing. On story mode her damage output wasn't too bad for my knight.

[Eanelinea]

Vaylin isn't too hard, but I've learned make sure my characters have at least 105k hp when I get to her, helps with my more squishier toons. Most of how I play I learned in Everquest (kiting a mob, nothing like Druid and Wizard quad-kiting) or I watch my surroundings since I used to raid weekly as a healer, tank and dps in this game.

 

It's a small bit armor, watching surroundings and a lot of skill to know what to do when and figuring things out quickly. Figuring things out quickly is more important for raiding than anything else really in the game.

[mike_carton]

Guild Wars 1 had many gimmick fights,

.

 

Guild Wars 1 (all chapters + expansion) is a favorite of mine. An MMO for people who don't like grind. I still log in and play sometimes; lot of fun. GW2 improved on it in some respects but unnecessarily changed many things that worked well in GW1, not to mention not restoring Ascalon to humans. Never did get into GW2.

 

There are threads from Nov and Dec 2016 about the Vaylin fight that get into more detailed tactics.

[IanArgent]

I gave advice to my wife (playing her 'slinger) in that fight; and it's a painful fight for that particular class, since the AC is built to sit behind a tank and turret - the gimmicks in the fight go counter to everything that AC is built for, and changing specs or utilities won't really help. She may have literally thrown her mouse, and came very close to unsubbing.

 

It's another pointless difficulty spike in a game that randomly scatters them about like rakes in the tall grass. The whole "stay in melee range or get reflected" thing is overdone (yes, even in the Eternal Championship, which is at least optional). Even worse, it's not difficult at all if you're running a Guardian or a Vanguard (Or I suppose any other melee-focused character, especially one with decent passive defenses - I ran a vanguard through it and it took me a bit to comprehend WHY my wife was having so much problems when I blew through it with no issues), especially if you chose the earlier DS option.

 

To be clear, it's not the raw difficulty that annoys me so much as the inconsistent level of difficulty (depends on AC and build), and that there is no ramp-up to it.

[ImmortalLowlife]

I also would mention that this fight is a LOT easier if you (KotET story spoilers ahead)

 

 

Take the darkside hit, and keep Valcorians dad in the holocron. He'll be an ally in that fight if you do.

 

[Nightblazer]

I also would mention that this fight is a LOT easier if you (KotET story spoilers ahead)

 

 

Take the darkside hit, and keep Valcorians dad in the holocron. He'll be an ally in that fight if you do.

 

I actually did that and it made the Vaylin fight so easy

[Shwarzchild]

I gave advice to my wife (playing her 'slinger) in that fight; and it's a painful fight for that particular class, since the AC is built to sit behind a tank and turret - the gimmicks in the fight go counter to everything that AC is built for, and changing specs or utilities won't really help. She may have literally thrown her mouse, and came very close to unsubbing.

 

It's another pointless difficulty spike in a game that randomly scatters them about like rakes in the tall grass. The whole "stay in melee range or get reflected" thing is overdone (yes, even in the Eternal Championship, which is at least optional). Even worse, it's not difficult at all if you're running a Guardian or a Vanguard (Or I suppose any other melee-focused character, especially one with decent passive defenses - I ran a vanguard through it and it took me a bit to comprehend WHY my wife was having so much problems when I blew through it with no issues), especially if you chose the earlier DS option.

 

To be clear, it's not the raw difficulty that annoys me so much as the inconsistent level of difficulty (depends on AC and build), and that there is no ramp-up to it.

 

It's actually very easy to deal with Vaallyn on a slinger. You have tremendous defensives that you can let do all the heavy lifting. If you can't interrupt force blast or get out of her knockback hunker down. If you want to face tank her you can re-enter cover to reset your ballistic dampners, use shield probe, or evasion. If things get totally dicey you have the slinger shield coupled with the utility to heal yourself while under it and take an increase to damage reduction. Also, your roll can also heal you for 10 percent of your health and if you time it correctly resist incoming damage. Bag of tricks resets all that stuff as well as just re-entering cover to reset your ballistic dampners. She melts to the damage a slinger puts out and you can basically mitigate tons and tons of her damage.

 

For Valkorian - you can spec into speed boost on hunker down to quickly reposition or LOS as well along with the same strategy of rotating cool downs and such.

Edited February 11, 2017 by Shwarzchild