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The Joys of SOA


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Why is it that even after all this time, countless patches later, SOA still remains the most buggy, glitchy painful boss to take down?

 

Our raid team is pretty much rakataed out. We've 1-shotted all the HMs almost with our eyes close. Last night, after 1-shotting KP HM and all of EV HM up to SOA, we just hit a brick wall. Some weeks are just like this. Everything else is fine and working as intended, but SOA just makes everyone cry and hate the game.

 

So after 20 tries, we just gave up. Of the tries we had:

3x where pieces of the floor were missing, prompting badness when you get out or into the mindtrap

2x where the pylons would drop on SOA, but did not drop his shield

1x where someone would get mindtrapped when we were about to hit phase 3. Seems all good then right as phase 3 is about to start, he gets magically transported to a non-existent mindtrap and gets stucked there

3x invisible lightning ball that no one can see decides to randomly wipe people

2x our tanks would dye randomly while dpsing next to SOA after the pylon drops (they were at full health when after the pylons came down)

4x battle rez would not work/take when a person died one phase and we proceeded to the next phase (has to do with lousy platform logic?)

 

It just makes for an excruciating time. Being at the mercy of these bugs are not 'fun'. How can these still exist? You guys only have TWO Ops right now!! TWO!!! And this boss continues to make everyone hate EV, not for the challenge, but for the sheer randomness of luck and wipe-tastic bugs.

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Zone resets fix the floor pieces missing. From our experience, as soon as we never wiped during a transition phase, we've never had issues with floor pieces missing whether we reset the zone or not.

 

Invisible lightning balls means you need to turn nameplates on, and that someone wasn't exploding their ball fast enough.

 

Not sure what the issue is with a mind trap at transition...they changed that so it auto releases someone once his shield goes up. If you're having him cast it right as the transition is going, that's just really bad timing, have never seen that happen in 3+ months.

 

Battle rezzes, I don't know why people have problems with this. My only guess would be you can't do it during a transition but if you rezz someone during the phase they died in shouldn't have any issues (we haven't).

 

If tank is too close to pylon dropping, it will do damage to them. As for it not hitting Soa, the working theory in some threads that some have semi confirmed is if you have him positioned too far on the "cracked" ground around the outer area in phase 3, sometimes the pylon won't register as having broken his shield. Our tank manages to position him properly for every pylon drop, pretty sure he just tries to keep him off the outer area as much as possible while still being on the edge of where a pylon is landing.

 

Will full Rakata you should be demolishing HM Soa. With titles done we run it on HM every week and the only issue we've ever run into on HM/NM for the most part is lighting balls getting off an extra shock at times. On NM it can be a pain but on HM it's pretty much never an issue...especially in full Rakata.

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Most weeks we 1 or 2 shot SOA. But last night was a nightmare. Some much glitchiness and lousy luck.

 

Last night was the first time we've encountered some of the bugs. With the missing floors, we reset it as well. But sometimes it happens again. Makes no sense.

 

As for the mindtrap, what happened was someone was mindtrapped right before end of phase 2. Soa goes to next phase and the game releases said person. All is fine and dandy as we negotiate the platforms down. Then 2nd to the last platform, he gets magically teleported to a non-visble mindtrap. Needless to say we could not get him out.

 

As for the pylon dropping and the tank dying, the tank that died was actually not close to soa when it happened. Pylon drops, he eats his ball and jumps to soa. As he was DPSing him down...poof...he dies. One of the healers said for some reason his DPS kept dropping by 5-6k increments, even though he was no where near the next ball as other melee did not take damage.

 

Maybe the "invisible" ball was someone taking so long eating their ball, but from what we've seen, they DID eat their ball. There is no reason for it to still exist and spawn right smack in the middle of melee.

 

Just so damn frustrating.

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Our woes. Cyclone + Ball lightning = death. Platforms fail to align. Battle rezz loads tank outside of the instance. Mind trapping the tank resets the encounter. Pylons fall, but don't break his shield. Double damage ball lightning. This is just tonight. This boss is so random and buggy it's retarded.
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Don't forget how gay it is that the speeder doesnt take you all the way to the puzzle boss when you reset the operation ;]

 

Just fueling your fire ;]

 

The only issue we ever have is when we bring in new people and they dont know how to take the balls. Also we only use 1 tank during raids so when she's dead and we dont have a battle rez we reset.

 

As for being a healer and the only sorc in our raid group i have learned to not depend on the battle rez because it doesnt seem to work half the time. Also i have noticed if i use it in one fight and the 5 min cooldown/debuff goes away it still wont let me rez anyone.

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This has happened to us multiple times. Every time tonight we made it to the bottom of Soa he bugged on us. After submitting a bug report I got this conversation below (or not - no cut/paste and deletes the text after so much)in response.

 

To summarize it being angry I wanted my gear drop and was furious so asked for that in bug report. The customer service guy in live chat stated that the fault lies with the developers. So i asked to speak with a dev (of course they cant talk to me) the rest of the conversation was basically canned responses but the thing I have taken away is this:

 

1. The stance of customer service is that all of this is the responsibility of developers and the bugs and is a known issue

2. Since it's the developer's fault (says customer service) I will from now on keep up with repair bills from bugged wipes for my entire guild ops. Then at the next guild summit I or someone from my guild will be there to ask for those credits from a developer directly. I suggest all high level guilds do this. directly from James or Georg Zoeller.

3. The fact that a bug known from beta has not been fixed is unacceptable. If BioWare doesn't start addressing things timely people WILL leave this game for another.

 

the convo: Okay so i was going to post the convo but cannot cut/paste it due to a combination of massive frustration on my part. plus once u scroll up so far the above conversation is deleted apparently.... but oh well... i then said that needs to be submitted as a bug report/game update

Edited by Ossian_Mills
updated that i could not cut/paste
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Invisible lightning balls means you need to turn nameplates on, and that someone wasn't exploding their ball fast enough.

 

This is simply not true. I have name plates turned on and a majority of the times the ball lighting nameplates will only stay up one i have targeted them as in once u target and target again it will stay.

 

Also the lighting balls have "dead bodies" which makes the fact of not always displaying ball lighting problematic sine you cannot tell the difference between the two

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This is simply not true. I have name plates turned on and a majority of the times the ball lighting nameplates will only stay up one i have targeted them as in once u target and target again it will stay.

 

Also the lighting balls have "dead bodies" which makes the fact of not always displaying ball lighting problematic sine you cannot tell the difference between the two

 

/signed

 

I have nameplates turned on and can confirm 100% the invisible lightning balls are in fact previous balls that have already exploded on the intended target but failed to despawn and are somehow invisible until they hit their next target, which of course, is unannounced.

 

How do I know this? I was hit by this bug twice personally.

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Our woes. Cyclone + Ball lightning = death. Platforms fail to align. Battle rezz loads tank outside of the instance. Mind trapping the tank resets the encounter. Pylons fall, but don't break his shield. Double damage ball lightning. This is just tonight. This boss is so random and buggy it's retarded.

 

The base ressing on battleres happens everywhere not only in soa.

its also not really a bug and can be avoided.

When you get battleressed you get 2 options:

1. use battleres, this has a slight cooldown you need to wait for.

2. res in base (fleet).

 

When the countdown on 1. reaches 0 it disappears for a tiny sec placing option 2. right where 1. used to be.

 

So if u keep clicking option 1. during the countdown over and over u will res in fleet.

Simply wait for the countdown till it shows its rdy. Than press it once.

 

 

 

As for the lightning balls. on HM and nightmare the lightning balls also do a 1s interval AoE attack around them that hits about 5k (depending on class). and also ofc the explosion dmg.

 

if you are unlucky this tick can hit u 1ns or 2 times + the explosion dmg is a sure death for most dps.

 

We always make sure the player actively runs into the ball and not let the ball run into you. this way u get no or sometimes 1x extra dmg.

 

 

hope it helps

greetz

Aidan

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we have seen a bug this time (for first time ever) that the ball lighting will hit you and explode... then disappear. however people in the general area where it "died" will still take dmg.

 

IF you are watching that area you will see the ball appear every now and then with like 5% of it's full health and is invisible (not no nameplate or anything just plain invis) so we have to tell people to avoid that area in case the ball is still "alive" but invisible.

 

bottom line there shouldn't be a "oh we can run it this way" being said by us, the players. They have designed the mechanics of the fight, we have the tools to defeat the boss and the knowledge to defeat the boss we shouldn't have to be like - oh here is a workaround for the fact the bugs have never been fixed.

 

Honestly if people didn't do the workarounds so much then they would have been forced to work on the fix a long time ago rather than put off these fixes patch after patch.

 

the problem is not that Soa is unbeatable but that he can wipe you a large percentage of the times because of bugs. If he was unbeatable then these bugs would have been fixed long ago. right now he is just annoying enough to tick off us - but not so bad on biowares radar because they are like "oh people are killing him though so lets fix something else"

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Our tank kept spawning lightning bolts only to be picked up (to be tosssled around) before landing on his own ball of lightning (which never moved after he got picked up) to die

 

we had no sorc for bubbles or a lucky pull back down

 

happened twice in a row before we called it

 

Its doable if your raid is willing to wipe until the RNG gods are on your side

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This is simply not true. I have name plates turned on and a majority of the times the ball lighting nameplates will only stay up one i have targeted them as in once u target and target again it will stay.

 

Also the lighting balls have "dead bodies" which makes the fact of not always displaying ball lighting problematic sine you cannot tell the difference between the two

 

It absolutely is true, works for us just fine with zero issues. The majority of the time I ever even need this to see them is when it's someone else's ball because I always blow mine up as quickly as I can.

 

It's fairly easy to tell the difference between a "dead" one and a live one as well. I wish I knew what so many people did on this fight.

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/signed

 

I have nameplates turned on and can confirm 100% the invisible lightning balls are in fact previous balls that have already exploded on the intended target but failed to despawn and are somehow invisible until they hit their next target, which of course, is unannounced.

 

How do I know this? I was hit by this bug twice personally.

 

Sounds like a player ran through the ball that was not targeted on them...and due to the fact the person it was actually targeted on hadn't run through it (since the other person wouldn't actually be able to explode it) eventually after a period of time it would turn invisible. Thus you have raids swearing up and down players ran through "their" ball without it exploding to hover invisible waiting to kill someone else. Just a theory, but it's what I would bet my money on hearing how most people think they know what's going on in this fight.

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My group just ran into a bug THREE TIMES where the Tank got mindtrapped in the third phase, causing Soa to despawn and reset the entire raid because he couldn't reach the person he had aggro on! Even me taunting him didn't work! I would drag him to a pylon and he would immediately despawn! VERY disheartening when the runs were otherwise flawlessly executed.

 

It SUCKS! Eternity Vault bosses are so much less frustrating than the bosses in Karagga's Palace, but the final boss is a glitchy piece of ****! My raid group has yet to clear a single Normal Mode EV, but it's not our gear or tactics... it's bugs! We've gotten halfway through HARD MODE EV because we gave up on finishing Soa on Normal Mode and wanted a challenge that would actually let us finish!

Edited by Vid-szhite
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@Marraith

 

The majority of my guild have had our infernal titles for almost a month now and have dealt with countless bugs and bug 'fixes'. Why are people unable to accept something the way it is (the bugs and the ways to deal with them) and blindly dispute facts because they don't have firsthand knowledge (of the bugs themselves let alone how to get around them)?

 

@ OP

 

Don't get me wrong though. Bugs suck and we shouldn't have to deal with this many on a daily basis. I feel your pain but keep trying and eventually you will get it on farm! GL!

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I think they should just add a conversation when you first attack him:

 

"Mortals, dare you face me in combat or would you like to see how lucky you'll be?"

Option 1 - Fight him as normal

Option 2 - He makes everyone in group /roll, if everyone rolls over 80 he dies.

 

As that is generally how the fight goes.

 

It's more like a game of chance than an actual fight as if you get the right amount of luck it's a dead easy fight.

 

Rolled 100 - Both healers were not assigned lightning balls at same time

Rolled 100 - Any character was not immediately picked up and thrown through the air to their death, the second after they popped their ball.

Rolled 100 - Someone was not picked up into the air immediately after their ball spawned resulting in it running loose around the room.

Rolled 100 - Battle Rez will work if you try to use it.

Rolled 100 - Lightening balls will all have labels when they spawn so you can actually see which are live and which are the mass of dead ones.

Rolled 100 - During any movement phase all platforms spawned correctly

Rolled 100 - Soa will join you in phase 3 rather than not turning up at all (not happened for a while).

Rolled 100 - Soa will not randomly despawn during the 3rd phase

Rolled 100 - The game will actually register that he died (killed him 7 times and still have the 'Defeat Soa' quest).

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@Marraith

 

The majority of my guild have had our infernal titles for almost a month now and have dealt with countless bugs and bug 'fixes'. Why are people unable to accept something the way it is (the bugs and the ways to deal with them) and blindly dispute facts because they don't have firsthand knowledge (of the bugs themselves let alone how to get around them)?

 

 

That's fantastic. We also have been clearing it for months and have our Infernal titles as well. I'm not sitting here saying that bugs don't exist, only that literally other than dealing with floor pieces missing the first week or two 3 months ago...the only "bug" that people bring up that we've dealt with on Soa is lightning balls getting off that extra shock seemingly when they shouldn't be (and even this is only an issue on Nightmare).

 

I'm not disputing the "facts" that other guilds run into issues, I'm only stating that we've been doing it the same way for 3 months, with 1 tank, and don't have any of these issues week after week. Pretty much every issue people bring up certainly seems to be controllable by actions you take as a raid.

 

I understand it's frustrating for people, but people stating it's pure RNG and any run without experience bugs is just "lucky" are not stating the facts.

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I think they should just add a conversation when you first attack him:

 

"Mortals, dare you face me in combat or would you like to see how lucky you'll be?"

Option 1 - Fight him as normal

Option 2 - He makes everyone in group /roll, if everyone rolls over 80 he dies.

 

As that is generally how the fight goes.

 

It's more like a game of chance than an actual fight as if you get the right amount of luck it's a dead easy fight.

 

Rolled 100 - Both healers were not assigned lightning balls at same time

Rolled 100 - Any character was not immediately picked up and thrown through the air to their death, the second after they popped their ball.

Rolled 100 - Someone was not picked up into the air immediately after their ball spawned resulting in it running loose around the room.

Rolled 100 - Battle Rez will work if you try to use it.

Rolled 100 - Lightening balls will all have labels when they spawn so you can actually see which are live and which are the mass of dead ones.

Rolled 100 - During any movement phase all platforms spawned correctly

Rolled 100 - Soa will join you in phase 3 rather than not turning up at all (not happened for a while).

Rolled 100 - Soa will not randomly despawn during the 3rd phase

Rolled 100 - The game will actually register that he died (killed him 7 times and still have the 'Defeat Soa' quest).

 

yeah and mer must always roll 100 with his guild.... they are the luckiest people ever :)

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I understand it's frustrating for people, but people stating it's pure RNG and any run without experience bugs is just "lucky" are not stating the facts.

 

I'm sure you're correct that skill and experience can compensate for these bugs, but the fact remains that this is production, not beta, and we shouldn't still be dealing with bugs after 3 months.

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