Eternity Vault: SOA

[Rooks]

(03-02-2012 03:26 PM)Parkerdude2003 Wrote:  Has anyone tried to 3 heal this on Hardmode? We have fantastic DPS so I'm really not worried about the 3rd phase but I feel like 3 healing we may be able to deal with some of the RNG better.

Going to assume you mean on 8 man. On 8 man, I never found healing to be an issue if everyone is executing. Pulling out DPS for a third healer could get you backed up on Mind Traps though. If you have hard hitting DPS that you think can pull it off, you can always try, but this is an execution fight pure and simple.

I think people tend to overemphasize the randomness of the fight. Yeah, it can be frustrating, but your best results come from having a clean Phase Two (killing mind traps and popping balls) to give yourself as good a shot at Phase Three as possible.

[illwill18]

My guild has struggled with this fight for a couple weeks now on nightmare, we completely rape this fight on hard, and aside from the random bugs, we still must be off.

How are you guys having success handling the cyclone in P2 on people with ball lightning? The biggest difference I can tell with our strategy than the accepted and widely used strategies here is that we tend to rush the ball lightning. I tell folks to not run into them if they aren't basically full health, but we don't wait at all. The reason for this is because when people with ball lightning on them get cycloned then we have issues in melee range, or when they come back down they land on it. The issue with rushing and popping it is, a lot of times they get picked up by cyclone before our healers can top them off and then die while being flung around. Any advice here would be great, maybe it isn't an issue but we had some problems early on.

Lastly, in P3 I see many folks say to have tanks stay in and take the pylon hit, but that 4th one kills but at the same time I don't want to get fancy and try to dodge it and have it not him him, we've had enough instances where his shield doesn't break despite him being in range... a ground graphic would really help here. I've watched some videos and seen some tanks able to run out or stand right on the edge, but unlike fabricator there isn't a good guide on the ground, so some advice on handling that would be great too.

It's our last fight on nightmare and we are all pretty frustrated. We had several 9k, or few % wipes. And lastly and solid advice for not getting multiple ticks? I've told people go straight for them and stop in the center of them, but sometimes we still get multiple ticks and dead folks, perhaps thats not one we can avoid.

[Petrus]

Illwill18, if you're interested in learning, watch these please:

8m: We miss 3 pylons due to bugs, and still down the fight. I uploaded this one specifically to show that Soa is a control fight, and how to handle p3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xS0SLOG9...e=youtu.be

16m: More or less a perfect kill. Had 3 deaths, but other than that the fight was executed just about perfectly. Specifically, watch for how we handled the orbs in p2, and the pylons in p3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6kedXdKJs4

Also, just about everything you asked about has been covered in great detail in this thread, generally in the last 3 or 4 pages, and it would help you a lot to go read those. To sum it up though:

1. Soa is a control fight, not a burn fight.
2. WAIT to pop the balls in p2 until *after* someone is picked up (with full health) by the cyclones. This makes them become a non-issue.
3. If you stack west, as outlined in this thread, and have people run out to kite the balls right away, lighting orbs should never hit the middle, and you should never have a problem when cycloned people land.
4. IF you stay in to take the hit, you should be popping a CD every time. If you can't do this, you should have an OT (DPS juggy in tank stance, for instance) who can do the same thing. Pylons should never kill the tank, no matter how long he's enraged. I believe our tank positions him so he won't get hit, but pops a CD anyways. This is very clear in the two videos I linked.
5. Read back a page or two where I list about 6 things you can do to avoid multiple ticks. You probably shouldn't stop in the center of them though - run straight through them and keep going until they've exploded. Doing that, plus the additional things I mentioned in my other post, should mean no one is dieing to balls.

Quote:I think people tend to overemphasize the randomness of the fight.

I 100% agree with Rooks here. Soa is only a RNG fight if you don't execute it properly. Honestly, EVERY "rng" factor can be mitigated by heads-up play and planning. A perfectly executed fight will really have no serious chance of having anyone die.

[illwill18]

Appreciate the reply Petrus, and I did read through most of this thread before asking, I just didn't see any specific response regarding cyclone handling. Did we encounter a bug in our early encounters where if the player cycloned was also targetted with a ball lightning that it would move to the center and wait for them while zapping anyone close? Or if this is still a reality, how is it a non issue as your describe below? Especially given you can't move him in P2 to move your melee away from a stuck lightning ball.

I have watched your videos and did so before posting here, it did help quite a bit and this west strategy I will definitely be pursuing.

I appreciate the feedback and while I think we are a very good guild, the frustration level runs high on this fight due to motly our own mistakes but lately being unable in most cases to rez someone from a single death due to bugs. Also we believed up until I did some research that his enrage was time based and not based on pylons, this fact alone should greatly change our approach to this fight, so again I appreciate the information.

(03-02-2012 11:40 PM)Petrus Wrote:  Illwill18, if you're interested in learning, watch these please:

8m: We miss 3 pylons due to bugs, and still down the fight. I uploaded this one specifically to show that Soa is a control fight, and how to handle p3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xS0SLOG9...e=youtu.be

16m: More or less a perfect kill. Had 3 deaths, but other than that the fight was executed just about perfectly. Specifically, watch for how we handled the orbs in p2, and the pylons in p3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6kedXdKJs4

Also, just about everything you asked about has been covered in great detail in this thread, generally in the last 3 or 4 pages, and it would help you a lot to go read those. To sum it up though:

1. Soa is a control fight, not a burn fight.
2. WAIT to pop the balls in p2 until *after* someone is picked up (with full health) by the cyclones. This makes them become a non-issue.
3. If you stack west, as outlined in this thread, and have people run out to kite the balls right away, lighting orbs should never hit the middle, and you should never have a problem when cycloned people land.
4. IF you stay in to take the hit, you should be popping a CD every time. If you can't do this, you should have an OT (DPS juggy in tank stance, for instance) who can do the same thing. Pylons should never kill the tank, no matter how long he's enraged. I believe our tank positions him so he won't get hit, but pops a CD anyways. This is very clear in the two videos I linked.
5. Read back a page or two where I list about 6 things you can do to avoid multiple ticks. You probably shouldn't stop in the center of them though - run straight through them and keep going until they've exploded. Doing that, plus the additional things I mentioned in my other post, should mean no one is dieing to balls.

Quote:I think people tend to overemphasize the randomness of the fight.

I 100% agree with Rooks here. Soa is only a RNG fight if you don't execute it properly. Honestly, EVERY "rng" factor can be mitigated by heads-up play and planning. A perfectly executed fight will really have no serious chance of having anyone die.

[Darklighter]

On Hardmode/Nightmare Soa are you guys running any certain raid setup? We normally run a melee heavy raid and it seems to make P2 a little more challenging.

And on P2 ball lightning, I've seen the strat for grouping up and having the two run out. Our issue is sometimes the balls dont fully despawn when someone blows them up. Is that a known bug or working as intend?

Our setup is
Jugg Tank
Assassin OT
BH Healer
Operative Healer (Or another BH healer, our Sorc left the game)
Marauder DPS (me)
Operative DPS (melee)
Merc DPS
Last dps varies between another Marauder, Lethality. Just depends on who can make it.

[Cosmic Osmo]

(03-19-2012 03:18 AM)Darklighter Wrote:  And on P2 ball lightning, I've seen the strat for grouping up and having the two run out. Our issue is sometimes the balls dont fully despawn when someone blows them up. Is that a known bug or working as intend?

The ball blows up and turns into a ball-corpse that has basically the same graphics as a ball. Turn on all enemy nameplates. Real balls have a red nameplate, dead ones have gray.

[Aequitas]

I have a question regarding HM SOA.

We run with 2 operative healers and not having the shield-casting sorcerer healer is really hurting us in HM SOA. We are stuck on him for 2 weeks now. The 2nd stage mainly. The one time we got him to 6% on the 3rd stage i was targeted by lightning 3 times.

For the sake of the SOA fight alone I figured I would make a Full Utility - Off Heal / Off DPS build. This build is probably not that useful outside of SOA but what do you think about it.

(12-7-22)
http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201Gor...cMfRsbko.1

Along with my BM force-mystic set bonus (2 Piece) I can cast static barrier in 2 seconds and deionized cooldown is lower as well. Since SOA is not really that much of a DPS race [he isn't that hard in 3rd stage even after enraging] and my other Guild DPS'ers [For e.g. our Off-tank DPS JUGG does 500k + in PVP] can more than make up for the drop in mine.

Basically this build will allow me to static barrier everyone whose targeted by lightning allowing us to hopefully down him. Any criticisms or suggestions?

Edit*
Also how does one time the 'grapple' maneuver. Is there a way to know this? So that we can make sure not to pop lightning if grapple is incoming?

[nex]

DO i understand this correctly, its better NOT to Force Speed to the balls? Usually I pop speed when I start running to the side when I see my name. Using speed to close on the ball should be better, but I dont know how bioware coded this thing.

Another question, are the lighning balls spawning from South and West all the time? ATM I often find myself MT-ing the encuonter on hard mode (we are still working on it ) and its kinda hard to run in the right direction to get my ball. If they always spawn from South/West this will make it a lot more easier for me

[Petrus]

(03-19-2012 08:22 PM)nex Wrote:  DO i understand this correctly, its better NOT to Force Speed to the balls? Usually I pop speed when I start running to the side when I see my name. Using speed to close on the ball should be better, but I dont know how bioware coded this thing.

Another question, are the lighning balls spawning from South and West all the time? ATM I often find myself MT-ing the encuonter on hard mode (we are still working on it ) and its kinda hard to run in the right direction to get my ball. If they always spawn from South/West this will make it a lot more easier for me

You can force speed TO the ball, but you shouldn't be under its effects when you actually run through it - because generally you go too fast, it doesn't pop, but you take several ticks of damage.


All of your ranged should be stacking on the west. The Orbs spawn either N/NE/E/SE/S. Generally it seems to be NE/E/SE more than S or N.

[Shaffi]

Wouldn't it be much easier to stack up in the middel, and just go out to pop the lightning balls?

Anyway I got another question: if you got grabbed by Soa before popping the lightning ball, what exactly happen to the ball? I think i saw the ball moving towards soa. Could somebody else pop the ball or got the ball a new target?