I really feel other healers need some buffs after last night. We had a merc healer and an op healer and both were quite good, had absolutely no trouble on any of the other bosses, but phase 3(counting out of 5) of SOA is a nightmare for them it seems, they just aren't built to heal fast enough from us having to take those lightning balls. And it seems like we have to take them or they hit the whole party. Has any other groups done this without a sage or sorc healer? Any tips?

I really feel other healers need some buffs after last night. We had a merc healer and an op healer and both were quite good, had absolutely no trouble on any of the other bosses, but phase 3(counting out of 5) of SOA is a nightmare for them it seems, they just aren't built to heal fast enough from us having to take those lightning balls. And it seems like we have to take them or they hit the whole party. Has any other groups done this without a sage or sorc healer? Any tips?

 

Our set-up:

 

Jugg tank

PT tank

Sorc Dps

Marauder dpsx2

Merc dps

Merc healer

Agent healer

 

No problems with lightning balls whats so ever... Maybe your dps should stop speccing complete glass cannon and remember to use their cooldowns?

 

Our sorc dps helps bubble from time to time but it is rarely necessary. Marauder speed buff helps a lot to get through them fast and not take much of the spark damage (the aoe explosion still hits, but its fairly weak). We also, of course, call out the two names that are targeted, and one of our healers concentrates on them to make sure they don't get picked up into a toss with low health after the explosion.

 

I wouldn't say that a sorc healer is needed , at all. Just two competent & geared healers.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Nessirin

There are some things you can do to mitigate dmg on those who have to eat the balls, as it were. Your biggest loss will be the bubble and circle heal obviously, but other classes have some tricks that help. I know jugs can intercede to take 20% off the dmg off a targeted ally, not to mention saberwarding themselves. Snipers get a large group bubble as well. I'm sure theres more, I just cant think of them all, but some classes have party protection effects that help.

 

The other end is self protection effects and cooldowns, which players should be already by using. Almost every class has some dmg avoidance/reduction cooldown. And absorb adrenals/END stims might be an asset here as well. If you are biochem and not already using the END stim, you can switch to it, eat the ball damage, then switch back after.

 

Im surprised you dont have sorcs tho. We have too many, usually 3 or 4. Never had this problem, tho it is a unique challenge. Best of luck!

Lose your merc healer and get a sorc. Hate to say, but that's the best advice I have for you.

because an agent healer is better then a merc healer? lol........

Our set-up:

 

Jugg tank

PT tank

Sorc Dps

Marauder dpsx2

Merc dps

Merc healer

Agent healer

 

No problems with lightning balls whats so ever... Maybe your dps should stop speccing complete glass cannon and remember to use their cooldowns?

 

Our sorc dps helps bubble from time to time but it is rarely necessary. Marauder speed buff helps a lot to get through them fast and not take much of the spark damage (the aoe explosion still hits, but its fairly weak). We also, of course, call out the two names that are targeted, and one of our healers concentrates on them to make sure they don't get picked up into a toss with low health after the explosion.

 

I wouldn't say that a sorc healer is needed , at all. Just two competent & geared healers.

 

They're both competent and geared, and so was everyone else, and we were using our defensive cooldowns when we had to take ball hits, but if one healer had to take a ball or got mindtrapped it all goes downhill during that.

I really feel other healers need some buffs after last night. We had a merc healer and an op healer and both were quite good, had absolutely no trouble on any of the other bosses, but phase 3(counting out of 5) of SOA is a nightmare for them it seems, they just aren't built to heal fast enough from us having to take those lightning balls. And it seems like we have to take them or they hit the whole party. Has any other groups done this without a sage or sorc healer? Any tips?

 

I am still trying to get by this ....

Most of our kills have been with the following setup.

 

Tanks 2

Guardian

Vanguard

 

DPS 4

Gunslinger

Shadow

Shadow

Sage

 

Healer 2

Commando

Scoundrel

 

Havnt been a healing issue so far.

I am still trying to get by this ....

 

Haven't done hardmode soa, have you?

 

Lose your merc healer and get a sorc. Hate to say, but that's the best advice I have for you.

 

Keep horrible advices to yourself.

 

 

They're both competent and geared, and so was everyone else, and we were using our defensive cooldowns when we had to take ball hits, but if one healer had to take a ball or got mindtrapped it all goes downhill during that.

 

Idk what to tell ya, in my experience the only class that can't efficiently handle lightning balls is snipers (bad self protection cd's unless popping the aoe one)

 

Our mind traps are broken 5-6 seconds after they're set up (you can start dpsing the mind trap before the person is even sucked into it)

 

You could try issuing some medpacks to everyone in the raid (the good blue ones, with HoT on them) and make sure that everyone that is biochem pops rakata for 15% extra health. Also make sure your dps specs into survivability talents, its not a dps fight. (For example, me as a marauder, I go for 30% aoe damage reduction instead of extra crit on one of my dps moves, and therefore take about 5k damage from lightning ball explosion).

Edited February 8, 2012 by Nessirin

Our group doesn't have a sorc, not even a dps one for bubbles, and we've managed the balls on nightmare alright. I'm not entirely sure why you think a sorc healer would help there. The damage from other sources is relatively low, so I don't see why they'd have that much trouble topping off the ball eaters.

Sorc healer isn't really going help here. Healing Soa you have to heal through a lot of what I like to call "burst random single target dmg". Sorcs aren't really any better at healing this type of dmg than the other classes. In fact, their actually slightly worse equipped to heal this kind of dmg than Merc healers, and somewhat on par(maybe slightly better) than Agent healers.

 

Where Sorcs really outclass the other 2 healers is in predictable large AoE dmg situations(ie healing the falling dmg from the platforming, annihilation droid, karagga). If you have a dps sorc in the group, make sure he/she is bubbling the ball targets.

If you have trouble with SOA HM without a sorc you'll be crying when you do NM.

 

As a Sorc healer with 18k hp and a shield, I die from taking a lightning ball in NM. That's right, over 20k dmg from ONE LIGHTNING BALL!!!! Even our medium armor classes almost die with full hp and a shield.

 

In HM is easy since it's only 10k dmg and I can just top myself off right after. I have no idea if this is a bug (I bet it is, seeing as how BW can't fix ****) but the few times we make it past phase 2, we end up wiping in phase 3 from insane lightning ball dmg.

 

I've even tried to just run away from the ball but then it turns invisible and someone ends up running into it and dying lol. This game is just too awesome! Just toss in a bunch of game breaking bugs to boss fights and not fix it to make it challenging.