So I thought I would shed some light on the numerous bugs that we encountered doing Soa last night since we wiped on him for 3 hours and literally every single wipe was due to a bug. There are also bugs that slow down the process of getting rezzed up and ready for another attempt. Here is a list of bugs that I was able to come up with from my experience.

 

 

1. If the raid wipes while people are in a mind prison you have to wait for the prison to kick you out before you can have the boss kill you to reset the fight. Sometimes the boss would already be reset and the only option would be to jump in the lava. This severely hinders the pace of the raid having to wait for people to die like this.
    
   
2. If the boss does not reset after everyone that is outside a prison dies there is a chance that once people who are in prisons get out the boss will put them back in thus prolonging the wiping process.
    
   
3. Occasionally after wiping and after the boss has reset everyone will be stuck in combat even if they are outside the instance.
    
   
4. Sometimes people would just randomly die after a wipe while not in combat, especially on the speeder ride from the start of the instance to the farthest completed point. This was not exclusive to Soa and was a problem throughout the entire raid.
    
   
5. Soa would occasionally put the tank in a mind prison and as soon as the tank was broken out the fight would reset leaving everyone at the bottom of the chasm.
    
   
6. One of the most common bugs was that the pillars that are used to break his shield in phase 3 hit him they would not always remove his shield. We were positive that he was getting hit by them because he would kneel down in his stun pose but the shield would still be on him.
    
   
7. Occasionally after a phase 3 wipe some of the mind prisons from the previous attempt would still be present. If you accidentally killed it during the current attempt the person that was in that specific prison from the previous attempt would be teleported to one of the ledges and be unable to move, see other players, or the boss.
    
   
8. Ball Lightning corpses would persist even after they exploded.
    
   
9. In phase 2 if someone is in a prison or being flung through the air when the phase 3 transition occurs they are instantly killed with no corpse to battle rez. I have a feeling this is intended but the no corpse thing seems buggy.
    
   
10. if anyone died during the transition phases there was no corpse to battle rez.
     
    
11. Accepting a battle rez would occasionally port someone out of the instance.
     
    
12. This is not a bug but in phase 3 he puts people in mind prisons so far away from the center of the room that it severely hinders melee heavy groups, especially if none of the melee Shadows/Assassins with Force speed.
    

 

 

So this is all of the bugs that I could think of from our attempts. the two that gave us the biggest issues where the tank getting mind prisoned and the fight resetting and the pillars hitting him but not taking off his shield.

 

I realized a lot of people have cleared this boss already and we would have also if it had not been for the bugs, but this honestly needs to be fixed before adding additional bosses to Kragga's Palace which is in the current test realm notes. It also needs to be fixed before adding additional flashpoints which are also in the test realm notes.

 

In Summary, The entire raid and especially this boss would be a lot of fun if it was not for the game breaking bugs.

Edited January 9, 2012 by MetalT

1. Use the exit area button rather than waiting for the mindtrap to despawn.

2. The boss didn't bug for us after we started killing the pylons in order though it may not fix the problem. (Don't let the second platform pylon die before the first)

3. Mindtrap not despawning=DON'T TOUCH THAT TRAP (Mark it)

4. The tank getting put in mindtrap is due to his loss of threat.

5. Wait to accept your Battle Rezzes for about 5-10 secs.

 

Yes, the fight is buggy like many other encounters in EV. Reset the fight after every encounter.

 

 

***You forgot about occasional floor pieces missing and invisible textures (lightning balls, green AOE, the entire floor, etc.)

Edited January 9, 2012 by Cepheid

We spent about 4 hours last night with the same bugs...

 

We were able to get him to 7% HP on multiple attempts and then his shield would not come off on the last break.

 

Very frustrating.

So why did you guys stay on the encounter for 3 hrs?

well, you waste a lot of time when all the floors do not respawn and you have to exit, reset, run back about a mile when it happens and then hoping another bug doesn't come up on your next try.

rough

We got him after 3 tries, you just have to know what to do and be focused. Got him down in 3 dps phases.

Sadly my guild has had a few similar nights of 3 hour wiping to this fight as well. The biggest bug that needs attention in my opinion is the one where the boss' shield doesn't come down after clearly hitting him with the pillar. With his enrage timer it is essential not to miss more than one of those and with the bug it is hit or miss. I wish they would focus on fixing existing content before putting out new stuff which will probably be buggy too. I know of two end game raiding guilds who are now considering leaving SWTOR due to the poor polish on end game raids.

We had all of the same bugs plus a couple of others.

 

One in particular is the lightning balls are invisible if you view them from the wrong angles. Their name-plates will also disappear if viewed at the wrong angle. I would say about 33% of the balls we encountered had no nameplates. About 33% of the rest were completely invisible and could only be detected with nameplates. Some had no nameplates, and no graphical rendering.

 

Ultimately though, the main issue that caused wipes was the boss despawning for no reason - even when the main tank had aggro (nothing to do with mind traps).

The other encounter-breaking bug was when Soa got hit by a pylon square on the head and he wasn't deshielded.

 

Several times we had him at 10% with a third pylon hitting his head with the entire 16 up and he despawned, or he didn't get deshielded.

 

Sometimes pylons would appear and crash into the ground 3 seconds later.

 

Those are the worst two bugs, but combined the bugs that are present are infuriating.

 

We lost a good half dozen kill shots where no one is dead, and uncontrolalble bugs happen, and really just ran out of time for the night. The fight isn't even that difficult, but the bugs make it frustrating beyond belief. (Note we didn't see all of these bugs in the 8 man, and the 8 man is infinitely easier because of that).

It's lotto.

 

Terrible

Edited January 11, 2012 by MarauderFH

Haven't had any of those bugs, downed him successfully last week. The problem we're having this week is that when he's being moved to position under the pylon he'll stop to cast lightning balls and the pylon will miss him.

Getting him to 9% with two of the pylons is no problem, if we could hit him with a 3rd then we'd down him but he just keeps stopping.

We had all of the same bugs plus a couple of others.

 

One in particular is the lightning balls are invisible if you view them from the wrong angles. Their name-plates will also disappear if viewed at the wrong angle. I would say about 33% of the balls we encountered had no nameplates. About 33% of the rest were completely invisible and could only be detected with nameplates. Some had no nameplates, and no graphical rendering.

 

 

The invisible lightning balls really suck on hard as they also shock you for a decent amount of damage besides exploding on the unweary. Like you said, we've encounted this annoying bug even with nameplates turned on. Seems to be an issue if camera zoom is set more than 10m from (my character anyway) and if standing on the outer ring of his chamber.

3 weeks of downing him, no bugs, tonight we had to kill him in 4 pylon phases because the third one wouldn't break the shield. All the others worked, but not the third, it was very strange. Edited January 15, 2012 by Skodar

We downed him last night as well but only after several hours of combating the bugs and the RNG of the traps and throws. The biggest bug was the shield not dropping from the pylon. We had it happen so many times it was making our entire group rage, but we were determined to at least clear it. Sadly, after clearing him the people who were stuck in mind traps on Soa's death were unable to get their loot.

 

It's good to see that other people are encountering the same issues we were, but it's sad that there are still so many bugs in the first operation and they're already releasing more content without perfecting these bugs first. Our raiding group is now apprehensive about going into Karraga's Palace to enjoy a bug caused wipefest again. I hope this gets fixed soon. Our entire group submitted bug reports to hopefully show that these issues need to be fixed because more and more people are hitting max level and this content needs to be fully functional.

The 2 major bugs we encountered were:

 

1) In transition phases sometimes destroying pylons would reduce his buff to 3 stacks and then stop. It seemed linked to killing the 2nd pylon before the first. This is partially due to the first pylon having a delay on activating sometimes, and we would jump down, be unable to target it, and then jump to the next platform and kill that pylon instead. I don't believe it bugged once we waited and made sure to kill the first pylon first.

 

2) Last week, the 3rd ancient artifact in the final phase would always fail to weaken the boss. This was the most significant bug (there were others, but hardly worth mentioning IMO) that directly led to multiple wipes. We had several sub 5% wipes due to the 3rd artifact hitting the boss, not removing his immunity shield, and then him enraging on the 4th kneel. We often had dps taking him down ~9% per weakened phase, and would have easily secured kills if the 3rd artifact worked properly. We ended up getting a kill with some lucky RNG that allowed our better DPS to stay out of mind traps/cyclones during weakened phases, and we were able to kill him on the 4th (but only 3rd working weakened phase). This one needs to be fixed at highest priority and patched in immediately.

We have had similiar problems and had to give up on attempting him because regardless of times we reset the instance the front floor panels wouldn't respawn so we couldn't jump down to the boss.. seems to be there is always atleast 1 or 2 floor panels missing for us before we even start the encounter.

You cannot force leap this guy for some reason.

[...]

 

2) Last week, the 3rd ancient artifact in the final phase would always fail to weaken the boss.

 

[...]

 

We got this today. Every 3rd artifact failed. Sadly some of our members got very hard lags sometimes during the fight (which occured the first time) and thus the dps wasnt enough to get him down after the 4th artifact. With the 3rd artifact working we would have kicked his ***.

Samey for the third pylon. There are also some issues when the boss is in phase 3, but will behave like in phase 2 if you bring him close to the middle, IE completely stops in the middle and start shooting lightning about 40 meters away while I stand next to the soon-to-be-crushing pylon. When that happens, needless to say that the pylon will never hit him. We only had this issue when the second pylon appears right across the map and he happens to stand in the middle while being kited.

 

Another issue we've encountered is the levitation spell insta-killing someone because transition phase occurs while they were still flying. Not a bug per se, we just delayed the transition by stopping DPS until everyone had their feet on the ground.

 

Another issue we've faced was when the boss was kited in phase 3. Sometimes, I would bring the boss right under the pylon, but because of a centimeter-high wall, his pathfinding skill will allow him to either go around me in a 90 degree angle, or straight behind me, resulting in him dodging the pylon completely. Sometimes, it is possible to kite him further and adjust, but sometimes else, it's a last second move resulting in failure.

 

Lastly, I would recommend a reticule on the floor that would precisely indicate where the pylon is going to hit.

If the boss does not reset after everyone that is outside a prison dies there is a chance that once people who are in prisons get out the boss will put them back in thus prolonging the wiping process.

 

 

This one seems to be caused by people releasing before the boss has reset / died. Might be an urban myth but it played true for us when we tested it.

You cannot force leap this guy for some reason.

 

His kneeling animation looks a lot like the sniper cover animation. I'm guessing maybe they were lazy and used it on him which prevents force leaping and such.

recommend a reticule on the floor that would precisely indicate where the pylon is going to hit.

 

Or give the damn thing a shadow, at least.

 

The only significant bug we've encountered was the third pylon not breaking the shield. Nothing too game breaking, but certainly annoying.

Is the lightning orbs in phase two of Soa supposed to become invisible? That wouldn't really make sense, this really should be fixed with 1.1 or Soa is gonna continue being a pain to do.

We eventually killed him 16-man hard mode, after several wipes caused by his shield not breaking even when he was in the correct position. Very frustrating.

 

Regarding OP's point #9 - you're partially right. If you're in the air and you push the boss into phase 3, you will be dead when you land. Sometimes your corpse will be rezzable at the bottom, but not always. If you're in a mind trap, you're ok. Once the mind trap debuff wears off (think it's 90 seconds) you'll be teleported to the bottom floor and be reunited with the rest of the raid. This will probably be ~30 seconds after the rest of the raid has reached the bottom floor. You should aim to avoid having any players in the air when you reach the 30% transition though - wait (stop DPS) at around 32-33% on the boss until he's thrown someone and they're on the ground again. Controlling this transition is important, and the enrage timer doesn't start ticking until you reach the bottom floor, so take your time.

 

As for some of the complaints made by the OP:

1. If the raid wipes while you are in a mind prison, you can simple click Exit Area above the minimap in the bottom right. You'll still have the mind prison debuff but this won't prevent the encounter from resetting.

4. Yep. Happens frequently and needs to be fixed. Can even happen when you take the escape pod at the start of the instance.

5. Don't think I've ever experienced this one.

6. Needs to be looked into by the development team, happens regularly.

8. Turn on nameplates for enemy NPCs - makes it very easy to determine which balls are active and which are dead.

12. Pretty much every encounter in the game hinders melee-heavy groups.

Hello we got a nice bug tonight on soa HM 8 man. Operation was set on Hardmod but soa was on nightmare with 1M+ HP and also mind trap with 200K hp. We try absolutly everything, to put soa in HM instade of Nightmare but nothing work.

-reset operation

-try to put in normal, enter then leave, reset and put in hardmod

-make a new group with a new lead

-try to change the lead and let the new leader enter first etc....

 

Also the most fun fact is that sometines, one player come back in front of soa before the other one and before the other comes, he saw soa with only 899K hp which is his real Hp in hardmod, but when all the group join him and com in front of soa the Hp of the boss raise up to 1M with no reason, this means that soa is in nightmare with *********** mind trap 200k hp.

 

Thx BW !

 

sorry for my poor english.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Ooryl_qrygg

So currently my guild is enjoying the operation content there is, however the bugs are putting a strain on that fun. Each EV run we run into bugs which lead to wipes. I really hope Bioware fixes these soon cause I got a few members leaving because of said bugs and being tired of “unfinished raids”. So here’s my EV bug list:

 

1. Gharj does not create a path leading to the first island and does not sink the first island. After the second island, it will work though.
   
2. Gharj manages to kill people after wiping after he does his idle animation.
   
3. After Ghajr is dead and ressing people, people still get the lava debuff despite standing on an island.
   
4. The ancient Pylons rarely refuse to lock.
   
5. SOA leaves gaps in the floor after wiping. We had a big segment missing during the second phase (second level).
   
6. SOA keeps people stuck in combat after the fight.
   
7. SOA rarely does not give a certain platform while It should be there.
   
8. SOA sometimes keeps aggro on somebody in the prison thus making him not movable during P3.
   
9. Various chests do not respond well when using master looter leading to loot not lootable.
   
10. People who fall down between P2 and P3 are unable to be combat ressed during P3.
    
11. Various bio-patterns do not work that drop from these mobs.
    
12. Upon resetting the instance when at SOA, the speeder bikes only land you before the ancient pylons instead of at the pylons.
    

 

And some general bugs raid-wise:

• As a raid leader I get spammed to death that there’s no room for my companion on screen as well each chat-tab.
  
• Sometimes EV gives two instances which leads us to reset the instance to fix this because some members can’t join our instance.