So ive ran HM Essless twice now as a properly geared shadow tank (all pvp gear thats been modded to replace accuracy with shield chance+ shield absorb) with some buddies who are also almost equally geared as me and for the life of us we seem to get stuck on Ironfist

 

The setup is me Shadow Tank, Commando healer, Scoundrel dps and the other person has either been a dps commando or Hybrid sage.

 

We interrupt all of his aimed shots to eliminate that factor and when adds come i Aoe taunt them while they get dpsed down quickly and during rockets everyone huddles close so we can just aoe heal through the hits

 

Usually no one will die during the fight but it seems like we get him down to 10-20% and he must be hitting his enrage time because i will suddenly drop like a rock with the rest of the team to of course follow.

 

A couple times on our last run he would occasionally seem to turn and Shoyruken the scoundrel and basically one shot him which both seems odd that he does that much damage in one hit as well as the possibility of me losing aggro is impossible

 

Is there something were doing wrong here? Is it really that were just not doing enough damage and hes enraging?

 

Any advice is welcome

Edited January 13, 2012 by Xarem
title clarification

I've done him a couple different ways now. Once we did it with the dps and healer between him and the computer consul to prevent knockback to give more time to dps. However, according to the healer we were taking a lot more damage. At the end of the day we just did the fight with no special mechanics. Your dps output may just not be high enough for hard mode.

You didn't do enough DPS. It's as simple as that.

 

Tell your Sage to spec all the way into DPS. None of this hybrid stuff. DPS him through Missle Salvo -- do not run around. You obviously don't want to die, but you need to do DPS through the attack.

 

HM FPs, sadly, are all about "did you bring enough DPS." Your group didn't.

You didn't do enough DPS. It's as simple as that.

 

Tell your Sage to spec all the way into DPS. None of this hybrid stuff. DPS him through Missle Salvo -- do not run around. You obviously don't want to die, but you need to do DPS through the attack.

 

HM FPs, sadly, are all about "did you bring enough DPS." Your group didn't.

 

I'm sorry to say this is the truth. I can keep my team above 50% health all of the time until he hits enrage and pwns us. You have to focus on interrupting his headshots and DPSing him a lot.

 

If you hear one sharp "Pow!", it's over.

so is every fight in every hard mode an enrage timer fight?

so is every fight in every hard mode an enrage timer fight?

 

Yes. Once you hit 50 the game becomes a simple DPS check.

As far as i can tell the majority of instances on HM have a gear check boss, Usually the second or first ( Not including mini bosses ). Ironfist is a tight enrage i suggest that all your dps stay on the boss and u as the tank cleave down the adds, sit on the boss during the missile phase (sorry healers) and constantly interrupt his headshot

Yes. Once you hit 50 the game becomes a simple DPS check.

 

you have to be kidding me .. that's pathetic. it's hard to believe what has happened to this genre.

you have to be kidding me .. that's pathetic. it's hard to believe what has happened to this genre.

 

I couldn't agree more. My group tried Black Talon tonight on hard mode. We're on a low pop server so pickings for a 50 are low enough as is, and half the the 50's at present only want to farm PVP, so when I got a healer me and my 2 RL friends tried it, we had 2 tank spec, figured it'd be fine, but enrage killed us every time, and it wasn't even a long timer it was about 3 min and then we were gone.

 

It's truly pathetic that we can't even attempt a flash point now without the "optimally perfect" set up to do "lawls big numbers fast!". There's no strategy, just have the best gear and do damage faster than the boss can rage. There's 0 fun factor in that. The boss fights were challenging enough, adding artificial difficulty is a cheap and terrible game design and shouldn't be done.

Well im not really sure,. but we just wiped 5x,. after the 2nd missile barrage his enraged,. thats not even 2min into the fight,. we got him down to 30% in under 2min,.. so is it bugged or do we have to kill him in 90sec?

You've got a few minutes to down him. Way more than 90 seconds, for sure.

 

I've beaten this fight. It's ok, but it is a gear-check. It's actually not so much of a gear-check for the tank and dps as it is for the healer, however. If you have enough dps to beat the first boss, you have enough dps to beat this one. What you need to make sure of is that you're using it right.

 

To avoid the enrage timer, you really need to be dpsing the boss during his missile phase -which means you're not running around to avoid it (though some sensible spacing of ranged/healer may help), which means the healer has to be able to handle the burst healing this entails, across multiple players. If you have a good interrupt rotation, the boss's damage output when he isn't doing his missiles is very low. As shadow tank, my passive healing and healing from telekinetic throw basically offsets his white damage, freeing the healer up to do a little dps certainly during the opening phase of the fight.

 

I don't think it's right to say that all Hard Mode fights are gear checks. Quite a few of them have pretty complex tactics. There is, however, an expectation that you will have a certain baseline of gear for hard-modes, along with (in most cases) a tank + healer + 2x dps group setup. It's not that hard to get the gear you need for hard modes - do your daily quests for a few days to get hilts/barrels/armouring from daily commendations, do a bit of crafting (or visit the auction house) to fill in the gaps and run Battle for Ilum/False Emperor a couple of times. After a couple of days, you should be good to go for hard modes.

 

If it's any consolation, once you beat Ironfist, the rest of Esseles Hard Mode is much easier. The droid bosses are only one step up from "tank and spank" and the last boss just needs good reactions and a bit of movement - it's a simpler fight than Ironfist.

Ironfist is way overtuned for being the second boss in Essels. The easiest way to beat him is not to engage right away. Have everyone move up to the level behind him and onto the bridge, then pull him and move back to the window. That will force him up onto the upper level where you can engage. Now, when his adds spawn they won't aggro you. The fight is now more manageable. You don't waste any DPS on his adds. Edited January 30, 2012 by KiranK

So ive ran HM Essless twice now as a properly geared shadow tank (all pvp gear thats been modded to replace accuracy with shield chance+ shield absorb)

Isn't the priority defense > shield chance > shield absorb?

Ironist is avert manageable fight so long as you are always DPS'ing him, I am watchman specced sentinel and the Dots that myself and our scoundrel were able to put in him proved useful in keeping up the DPS, also clustering round him and healing through his missile barrage is almost essential to keep up enough DPS. If all works out you should be able to kill him before he enrages, and even if he does he should be low enough for you to finish him off. Alas it is somewhat of a DPS race :/ a slightly longer enrage timer would be nice

So ive ran HM Essless twice now as a properly geared shadow tank (all pvp gear thats been modded to replace accuracy with shield chance+ shield absorb) with some buddies who are also almost equally geared as me and for the life of us we seem to get stuck on Ironfist

 

The setup is me Shadow Tank, Commando healer, Scoundrel dps and the other person has either been a dps commando or Hybrid sage.

 

There's your problem. I know, it sucks.

 

Also, if we had Recount, this type of situation would be easilly solved.

Edited January 30, 2012 by dargor-

Isn't the priority defense > shield chance > shield absorb?

 

Close, but not quite on the mark.

 

Defense -> Absorb -> Chance on a 5:3:1 ratio.

None of the fights in the HM FPs are really "gear checks" outside of maybe having a tank with 15k+ HP (easily doable in 1 day of dailies). I still remember doing every single HM FP in early December with a group of fresh 50's. The only boss we hit enrage on was Bulwark in D7 at around 15%; we still managed to down him.

 

Your DPS simply didn't know how to play their class - simple as that. Gear only acts as a bandaid for weaker players that don't know their optimal rotation or priority system.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Exertim