Raptus's threat table is weird. The weirdness occurs after a tank is knocked into the air and he lands. Sometimes Raptus will immediately swap back to the former tank (even when that tank hasn't touched Raptus yet.) Also, after the challenges, Raptus will switch aggro to the kiter even after a taunt and a good amount of threat on Raptus done by a tank.

 

I have a theory as to what is happening to his threat table. I wanted to see if it matched up to other people's experience. My theory is that the threat values are saved after an event and reset to the saved value a time later.

 

The easiest to explain is the change of aggro on the tanks:

1) The current tank's threat is saved as a variable A.

2) That tank's threat is set to zero and he is sent flying.

3) The second tank taunts getting 110% (or 130%) of the threat of the current highest threat. (NOT A; that tank's aggro is set to zero.) Call the current threat B.

4) The air tank lands and his threat is set from zero to A.

5) If A is more than 130% of B, then Raptus will go after the formerly airborne tank.

 

As for the challenges:

1) The called out target is focused by Raptus. His threat is always set to be 130% of the second highest target.

2) The threat of everyone else is saved as a collection of variables. Their current threat is set to zero as they move through the portals.

3) The tank comes out of his challenge and taunts Raptus. They are focused and have 130% of the kiter's aggro.

4) Shortly after the challenges are completed, the threat of everyone who went through the portal is set back to their former threat.

5) If the kiter's threat is 130% of the tanks' original threat, the tanks will lose aggro.

 

That is my best guess as to how his threat table works. I am not 100% convinced that the challenge idea is correct. I was hoping others could contribute so Raptus is less weird.

This seems to be how it works, considering the amount of times Raptus jumps back to me even after the other tank taunts while I'm airborne.

 

As a side note, I had a really weird occurrence last night in 16 man HM Raptus that I've never seen before.

 

The other tank was near the entrance bridge after having been knocked backward by his purple slash AOE. I tried to taunt off of him TWICE (both single and AOE taunt) and he seemingly ignored both of them. I tried a third time after the other tank got him back to the middle of the arena, but he ignored it, yet again. The other tank was not taunting or knocked up into the air at that point, so I have no clue what happened...

 

I do have combat logging enabled, so I think I'm going to go through the logs tonight and hopefully be able to make heads or tails of that.

Edited January 7, 2014 by VoW_LugNut

Your explanation for the knock up is exactly how I had been assuming it happened, and it matches how Tyrans behaves during simplification.

 

That challenge idea isn't something I had really considered, but a way to test it would be to have the second tank stay out and see if he were the one to taunt after the challenges, would he lose aggro like a tank who did the challenge does.

You mentioned Tyrans - that one I really don't understand sometime he will switch completely randomly to the other tank and I have seen it a lot of times. I can't believe I generate so much more threat then the other tank that I pull him off him 15-20 seconds after I dropped simplification and I've seen it happen a few times. Seemed more like random reset to second highest threat to me to be honest especially that I've seen him switch to a gunslinger randomly a few times as well.

While dropping simplification your threat is set to 0, and after it returns to what itwas before. If the other tank is slow taunting, they'll end up taunting off whoever is second, which may not be enough to hold aggro over the initial tank when he gets his threat back. In my experience this happens most often later in the fight, when the tanks are 1 and 2 solidly on the threat table, ad the second tank taunts late due to boredom or whatever.

 

It seems likely to me that this mechanic or method of coding te drops would be reused on other fights in the tier with forced tank swaps, like Raptus.

I've played it as always assuming I am going to lose agro to the dps who was stuck outside of the portals. I always taunt him the second I'm out and right before my taunt goes down my co-tank takes him and life seems peachy as we get ourselves set back up once more.

 

Maybe I can do enough threat to keep him off the dps, but it seems that only works every other time and it's simply safer to taunt swap.

Edited January 7, 2014 by mastirkal

As far as coming out of challenges goes, have your heals + tanks go in right away, and have the dps wait til the "30 seconds remaining for challenges" pops up to go in. This gives your tanks + healers time to get set up after the challenges AND allows one of the tanks to pick up raptus NOT BY TAUNTING but by getting closest to him and kiting. I've found that this makes it so he won't immediately swap to someone else when he is done spinning and allows for a swap after his thundering blast. Another important thing is to never taunt while he is spinning, I've seen this mess things up on multiple occasions and all I've seen people get out of it is a wasted taunt and/or dead heals/dps.. Edited January 7, 2014 by TrillOG-

Interesting theories in this thread, thank you for the great read! Unfortunately I have not seen this bug often enough to say whether theory could be true, but I'll definitely think of this in the future.

 

As far as coming out of challenges goes, have your heals + tanks go in right away, and have the dps wait til the "30 seconds remaining for challenges" pops up to go in. This gives your tanks + healers time to get set up after the challenges AND allows one of the tanks to pick up raptus NOT BY TAUNTING but by getting closest to him and kiting. I've found that this makes it so he won't immediately swap to someone else when he is done spinning and allows for a swap after his thundering blast. Another important thing is to never taunt while he is spinning, I've seen this mess things up on multiple occasions and all I've seen people get out of it is a wasted taunt and/or dead heals/dps..

I agree with this, I posted it in a few other threads as well. These few seconds will make a large difference in how your group can handle the post-challenge phase.

 

Note that each group only has 20 seconds on the mob's debuff anyway, so your DPS can even wait like five seconds after the 30 second message before entering and they are still guaranteed to finish it in time.

 

What I have not yet tried is whether or not the portal will close after some time. In other words, can the first tank immediately go in and start the challenge (even if he takes double damage for a few seconds) and can the second tank still enter like 10 seconds later if he has to get there from the other part of the room? (I know you can solo tank the challenge in HM but we are currently assuming that in NiM the damage will be too much for one tank, so we dual tank it and have our DPS practice the kiting)

I know that when you exit a challenge to late, you will get teleported back to a random portal instead of the portal you entered through, but I have not tried entering a challenge too late.

Edited January 8, 2014 by Jerba

from my experience and looking thru our tanks logs:

 

Both Tyrans and Raptus have no aggro DROP on tanks threat tables. This leads me to believe there is a new mechanic which is "threat ignore" when certain buffs/debuffs are present on a tank. Tyrans simplification is your best example. In the logs our main tank have never dropped threat but if off tank will not taunt during simplification Tyrans will go for whoever is on top of the list of his threat table. Ever since we got off tank taunting during simplification to get top threat (main tank will get ignored anyway but will remain second on the list) we have no issues with this boss and his Thundering Blast going thur ops group due to random platform switching.

 

If your offtank will not taunt during simplification but split second too late, his taunt will go on top of second threat on the list and this might not be enough to get past main tank. So once main tank drops simplification boss is straight back on him.

 

Raptus - taunting at the right time is very crucial. Same mechanic as Tyrans. If you taunt too late when main tank is in the air, you will get boss agro of DPS but when main tank is no longer ignored, boss will switch back to him if your DPS and off tank threat was way behind main tank.

 

Challenges - we notices that issue is usually caused by boss targeting DPS who was last one to use crustal on his throne (usually one kiting boss). To avoid it we have one tank kiting boss after their challenge, other tank gets his buff first as soon as, kiting tank makes sure he gets his buff last waiting for all DPS to get buffs.

For phase three only healers take buff. As boss is not returning to his throne anymore, we just ignore buffs (no longer required as they are only needed to enter challenge portals) and this makes it much easier to handle boss.

 

 

buggs reported by OP - we didn't have this issue our self but we have not done it this week yet. But i am sure this is happening as with every cartel pack we getting some strange bugs on boss fight. Last night on Brontes we got people with few tacks of nanites ..... one time (wipe ) we had tank with 4 stacks of nanites, getting hit by Arcing Volley (that was expected) and had sphere on him as well. Our healers manage to heal thru it until sphere exploded

This has happened a few times: Main Tank gets sent flying, off tank taunts to pick him up, taunt "misses" and he aoe's the dps effectively wiping the raid. We were a bit perplexed since taunts aren't supposed to miss.

 

Tyrans has the same deal tank tauns, dps threat drop, boss swtiches to dps

Wait when Raptus decides to go on the bridge for the tank that just teleported