Spirit of Vengence

[Traceguy]

Every time this FP is selected in Group Finder, 1 or more players will drop the group immediately.

My question is: why? This flashpoint has no cutscenes or dialogue. I'd wager it's even shorter than other older Flashpoints like: Boarding Party, Foundry, Directive 7, Koan, Lost Island. No one drops those, with the exception every once in a blue moon someone does drop from Koan.

I'm curious to hear opinions from others, especially from those who are doing the dropping.

[HypSpec]

Are you talking about VM or MM? For VM it may be just its length, but as you said, it is really not that long. For MM, I think it is due to two bosses. The first and third ones (I think it is the 3rd where the group has to line up during one channel and immediately separate) can be tough for some groups. The mechanics are not that hard but often one or two people in the group are not familiar and the group struggles with coordinating, especially with the impatience that is often shown by some players. Add in the sense of length and some may just opt out right away.

Edited February 26 by HypSpec

[DeannaVoyager]

It's also very toxic for melee players. Every trash mob and their mother has a knockback and/or root. 

[SteveTheCynic]

6 hours ago, Traceguy said:

My question is: why?

It has a reputation for being unreasonably difficult.

[Jdast]

I would combine what @DeannaVoyager and @SteveTheCynic wrote and agree with the sentiments they both expressed. I can only speak to Story and Vet mode, though I recognize you are talking about Group Finder only in this thread, but the same basic issues apply.

I didn't find the bosses overly difficult (though far more difficult than, say, Secrets of the Enclave where Bioware took it to the other extreme and made it steamroll easy), but found the trash mobs irritating with stuns and knockbacks.

In terms of difficulty, it requires more situational awareness than other Flasphoints b/c it is far easier to pull other Mobs if someone in the group isn't paying attention. You also actually have to pay attention to kill order in SoV unlike most other Flashpoints.

As it turns out, Bioware did actually decrease Mob density in SoV about six months after it was released, which definitely made mitigated the level of tedium.

Dasty

[Traceguy]

17 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

It has a reputation for being unreasonably difficult.

I don't know if it was in the past, but it's surely not difficult in the current version. Most of the mob packs can just be AOE'd to death.

 

16 hours ago, Jdast said:

is far easier to pull other Mobs if someone in the group isn't paying attention. You also actually have to pay attention to kill order in SoV unlike most other Flashpoints.

There's really no sneaking in this one at all, so there's no pulling mobs, but rather pushing through them. As for kill order, this is pretty easy, and every level 80 player who joins should have learned by now. Medics die first.

 

I would encourage everyone to group for it today, because it sounds like players are remembering it as being worse than it actually is.

Edited February 27 by Traceguy

[SteveTheCynic]

3 hours ago, Traceguy said:

I don't know if it was in the past, but it's surely not difficult in the current version.

Much of that reputation probably came from the initial versions of solostory, which were tuned fairly high, and people just haven't tried it in its more recent versions, because they "know" that it's going to be too hard.

[Jdast]

6 hours ago, Traceguy said:

I don't know if it was in the past, but it's surely not difficult in the current version. Most of the mob packs can just be AOE'd to death.

 

There's really no sneaking in this one at all, so there's no pulling mobs, but rather pushing through them. As for kill order, this is pretty easy, and every level 80 player who joins should have learned by now. Medics die first.

 

I would encourage everyone to group for it today, because it sounds like players are remembering it as being worse than it actually is.

I agree with a good chunk of what you just wrote, but not all of it. You say medics should die first but then say most Mob packs can just be AoE'd.

Concur that medics should die first -- or Acolytes / Lorekeepers -- as they are called in SoV, but that by definition means you don't just mindlessly AoE. Sure, you can probably still grind the pack down with just AoE, but I find SoV goes much faster when singularly targeting the Medics / Healers first. Seeing as most of the Mob packs have 1 healer (many have 2), I find this makes the run go much more smoothly on Story and Vet (haven't done MM).

Edit: I should clarify what I meant about "pulling other Mob packs" -- I didn't mean you can stealth through them. I meant that sometimes if a player is not aware of positioning, it is easier to pull an additional Mob pack; e.g., the room beyond the kitchen where the Droid with the adorable chef hat is cooking.

Also agree with @SteveTheCynic that some players have formed their perceptions of SoV based on its initial incarnation. It wasn't difficult per se -- but it was tedious, very tedious. Not sure how you change that perception amongst the masses.

 

Dasty

Edited February 27 by Jdast
Clarity

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Also if you are stealth keep in mind that the enemies that see stealth will spot you from further distances than the regular aggro range. 

 

In other words, don't try to stealth through those mob filled rooms, you'll get the whole room aggro'd when an enemy sees through your stealth instead of just one mob at a time.

[Traceguy]

On 2/27/2024 at 2:21 PM, Jdast said:

You say medics should die first but then say most Mob packs can just be AoE'd.

Sorry for the confusion. Most is not all, so it leaves room. However, what I was implying is that the mobs have very little health. I can go in as a Juggernaut and spam the Smash attack, or the spin attack as an Assassin and it seems to just melt away the mobs. Some mob packs do heave medics (some with other names as you mentioned). As you approach each mob pack, you can burn the medics down instantly, and then go into an AoE strat. I'm guessing the medics just die form the AoE if you really wanted to.

 

Edited February 29 by Traceguy

[MagicTerror]

On 2/26/2024 at 6:05 AM, Traceguy said:

Every time this FP is selected in Group Finder, 1 or more players will drop the group immediately.

My question is: why? This flashpoint has no cutscenes or dialogue. I'd wager it's even shorter than other older Flashpoints like: Boarding Party, Foundry, Directive 7, Koan, Lost Island. No one drops those, with the exception every once in a blue moon someone does drop from Koan.

I'm curious to hear opinions from others, especially from those who are doing the dropping.

Today I tried to do it in Master, I thought I was lucky to get into a group with people that didn't just instaquit it, but we tried to do the first boss and experiment with what was killing us and figure out how to avoid it, but despite my suggestions one person continued to fail to follow it and caused us to take too much damage and die. I had to leave bc I don't want to waste time bashing my head against one boss in a flashpoint with no reward (I did warn the group before our last pull that this was the last one)

Simply, the threshold of difficulty that people will accept for a random selection before they eat the lockout and quit and try again on an alt to get an easier fp? That's just becoming smaller and smaller each year. Since 3.0, when the team has come out with content that's unique and challenging, random gf groups can't figure it out in one or two pulls and the content dies aside from friend groups that purposely try to clear it with determination. The last time I remember this happening was on Nathema: novel challenging mechanics and a damage table that was actually unforgiving if you didn't do the bosses the right way

The people who quit long flashpoints are something of jerks, but the people who quit difficult ones I can understand. Lately there is no reason to go through teaching a random person who may not know how to deal with the bosses or care, when they can get virtually the same rewards breezing through hammer station/red reaper for the 100th time. I'm going to post another forum topic on this soon about flashpoints not created equal.

People are more familiar with the older flashpoints, and several of them haven't had their damage tables appropriately upscaled for many patches, which is why you might see groups that stick through the longer ones. Though I'm surprised that people don't drop Lost Island, that always seemed like more instaquit fodder to me.

We don't get people who know the content in GF anymore, because the ones that know it also know that the chance a random teammate is going to fail awareness/skill checks and lose to the boss is fairly high, they just don't want to deal with that so most of them will quit right away.  

Edited March 16 by MagicTerror