For the past two weeks, my guild as well as others ive talked with have been unable to clear HM stormcaller and Firebrand. We are getting bombarded by bugs, and im wondering if anyone here has advice or is facing similar experiences.

The first and strangest of the bugs we faced happened about 5 seconds into the fight, when a lightning ball dropped on the healer that was positioned on stormcaller. This immediately wiped us all out, and we had to zone out and come back in. When we did, all the adds that we just cleared were re-spawned, and we had to re-clear all trash.

Another thing that has been happening is the Firebrand shield will get killed while the bombardment is still occuring, and it is for certain that none of the dps, tank, or healer are doing damage to the shield itself, strictly single target work. The first bombardment that hits those people will instantly kill them with 20k damage.

Two other problems happen on stormcaller, where a) he drops agro after casting double destruction, and he will wipe out the two dps that take his DD, this is regardless of whether the tank uses a taunt or not. and b) stormcaller cosistantly drops lightning balls on the dps/healer either as defensive systems is being cast, or even while the dps are under protection of the shield. Let it be known that the tank constantly has agro during these events, as the "target of target" is enabled, and clearly shows the tank holding agro.

Most of the problems you describe are usually fixed when people learn the encounter properly. All I can say is that once our group got a firm hold on the encounter, we never got blue balls under bombardment domes, or domes dying too quickly.

The blue ball spawning on top of players standing on tanks happens when Double Destruction and Defensive Measures happen within seconds of each other.

Most people avoid this by having 3 DPS focus on Stormcaller, until after the last dome where all DPS goes on Firebrand. We were quite frustrated by the blue ball deaths as well, but we have never seen it happen since we adopted the tactic described above.

For the past two weeks, my guild as well as others ive talked with have been unable to clear HM stormcaller and Firebrand. We are getting bombarded by bugs, and im wondering if anyone here has advice or is facing similar experiences.

The first and strangest of the bugs we faced happened about 5 seconds into the fight, when a lightning ball dropped on the healer that was positioned on stormcaller. This immediately wiped us all out, and we had to zone out and come back in. When we did, all the adds that we just cleared were re-spawned, and we had to re-clear all trash.

Another thing that has been happening is the Firebrand shield will get killed while the bombardment is still occuring, and it is for certain that none of the dps, tank, or healer are doing damage to the shield itself, strictly single target work. The first bombardment that hits those people will instantly kill them with 20k damage.

Two other problems happen on stormcaller, where a) he drops agro after casting double destruction, and he will wipe out the two dps that take his DD, this is regardless of whether the tank uses a taunt or not. and b) stormcaller cosistantly drops lightning balls on the dps/healer either as defensive systems is being cast, or even while the dps are under protection of the shield. Let it be known that the tank constantly has agro during these events, as the "target of target" is enabled, and clearly shows the tank holding agro.

These all sound like slight mechanic misses that will lead to the fatal result of a wipe, HM EC is very unforgiving in that regard.

First of all when a lightning spire lands on one of the tanks that early on its most likely due to the healer or dps being a little too slow to get up on the tank. The respawning trash was fixed in a patch not so long ago so should not happen again.

If the shield gets destroyed during the mortar fire it is most likely due to a mistaken hit on the shield generator. I know you said they dont target it but there are ways mistakes can happen here. Some tanks have proc aoe hits for easier aoe threat that can accidently hit the shield even though they dont target them, proc relics damage the shields even though you dont target them (if this bug wasnt fixed i dont think so?) and also theres an option in preferences thats called auto target closest. DISABLE THIS! Basically this will auto target the closest enemy if you activate an ability just as your curret target dies thus targetting the shield. If you avoid all of this it wont happen unless someone makes a mistake.

As far as DD killing the dps, he doesnt actually do an aggro drop after DD that im aware of, its probably your tank losing aggro to the DPS at the worst time possible, or maybe your dps are standing to close to his front taking cleave damage? The cone damage from Stormcaller is a bit messed up...

As for the last thing.. could be your tank is too slow off the boss? maybe your ds/healer are too fast off it and get hit by a normal lightning spire? Other than that i dont really have any ideas..

Hope you take them down!

"First of all when a lightning spire lands on one of the tanks that early on its most likely due to the healer or dps being a little too slow to get up on the tank. The respawning trash was fixed in a patch not so long ago so should not happen again."

I am aware of the patch that was made, but apparently, it didn't do its job. the healers and dps getting on the tank too slow could definately have been a cause to the spire drop early on, however ive never heard of this mechanic with stormcaller. I was given to believe that spires ONLY dropped when defensive systems were cast, and that is why some raid formations are able to place ranged dps and healers on the ground. Given that it is true, that spires drop on people if they arent on the ships, then why doesn't the runner with the yellow circle get hit by these?

"If the shield gets destroyed during the mortar fire it is most likely due to a mistaken hit on the shield generator. I know you said they dont target it but there are ways mistakes can happen here. Some tanks have proc aoe hits for easier aoe threat that can accidently hit the shield even though they dont target them, proc relics damage the shields even though you dont target them (if this bug wasnt fixed i dont think so?) and also theres an option in preferences thats called auto target closest. DISABLE THIS! Basically this will auto target the closest enemy if you activate an ability just as your curret target dies thus targetting the shield. If you avoid all of this it wont happen unless someone makes a mistake."

I wasn't in the shield that had this problem, i actually was tanking stormcaller and running his spires around. But I think you may be right, it may have been that the tank used crushing blow or a smash to get agro. I will have to have a discussion with him.

"As far as DD killing the dps, he doesnt actually do an aggro drop after DD that im aware of, its probably your tank losing aggro to the DPS at the worst time possible, or maybe your dps are standing to close to his front taking cleave damage? The cone damage from Stormcaller is a bit messed up..."

Like i said, i have been the one tanking Stormcaller, and i take pride in my agro hold The thing im noticing about this DD though is that he *consistently* is dropping agro, right at that moment, every single time. i may even use my taunt when DD has about 1 second left til it is cast, giving me a 5 second window to spin him around and make sure the raid isnt hit. Even still, the boss will focus on either the healer or one of the dps and throw his first frontal aoe on them, and only afterwards, spin back to attacking me.

"As for the last thing.. could be your tank is too slow off the boss? maybe your ds/healer are too fast off it and get hit by a normal lightning spire? Other than that i dont really have any ideas.. "

In reading a post from the guy before you, he mentioned that if DD and DS go off within a close time range, a spire will drop early. That would probably be our case, and that is why he is dropping his spires on our faces. However that doesnt explain why the spires land on the dps/healers instead of tank, despite clear agro hold. Can you further explain what you mean by the tank not getting off fast enough/ dps&healer getting off too quick? generaly what ive always done is let the boss launch me toward the tree, and the dps/healer toward the shield, in every other run, this

The first and strangest of the bugs we faced happened about 5 seconds into the fight, when a lightning ball dropped on the healer that was positioned on stormcaller. This immediately wiped us all out, and we had to zone out and come back in. When we did, all the adds that we just cleared were re-spawned, and we had to re-clear all trash.

There is/was a bug where if everyone was outside of the instance at the same time, and then tried to zone in they might end up in different instances and reset trash. Work around is to 1) Leave one dead until atleast one person zones in. or 2) If everyone releases, have the Op leader zone in first. This is not bound to FB/SC, but Operation wide.

Another thing that has been happening is the Firebrand shield will get killed while the bombardment is still occuring, and it is for certain that none of the dps, tank, or healer are doing damage to the shield itself, strictly single target work. The first bombardment that hits those people will instantly kill them with 20k damage.

As noted earlier there were some changes made to AOE Tanking. Speaking from the Vanguard POV, I can no longer use High Impact Bolt under the shield.

Two other problems happen on stormcaller, where a) he drops agro after casting double destruction, and he will wipe out the two dps that take his DD, this is regardless of whether the tank uses a taunt or not. and b) stormcaller cosistantly drops lightning balls on the dps/healer either as defensive systems is being cast, or even while the dps are under protection of the shield. Let it be known that the tank constantly has agro during these events, as the "target of target" is enabled, and clearly shows the tank holding agro.

If you get a second double destruction before defensive systems you will have a lightning spire inbound after the channel finishes. People have to move immediately or you will die. You have to either 1) improve DPS and avoid the second Double Destruction before Defensive Systems. 2) Understand there is a lightning spire coming to kill you and immediately move after the channel finishes.

It seems that the majority of the "bugs" that you're facing are, actual mechanics of the fight; or being caused by misunderstanding of the mechanics of the fight.

I am gonna go out on a limb and assume that you are doing the 8 man version of the raid, and are having a dps take the incinerate armour debuff on Firebrand; if not some of this information may not be useful. First off, Stormcaller becomes taunt immune while he is casting double destruction, save your single target taunt for right after he finishes double destruction to reassure that you are winning the threat race; you also want to get into the habit of taunting while defensive systems being cast as well. Secondly, if you're getting two double destructions, you need to make sure you jump off the tank once the yellow beams are targeting the DD soakers; this will insure that the spire that drops will be on the ground and not on top of the healer or dps. Also you have to remember overall you will have less threat generation during the fight because you're not doing a tank swap, so you need to make sure you're always taunting from >2.5m range and to pad your threat at the key moments.

I think the rest of your issues have been covered, besides maybe to make sure you dont have more then 4 people under a single shield, since the damage to the generator is done by the people under the shield, more then 4 people will cause the shields to die at a quicker rate then what is intended.

I can guarantee that there is no threat drop in this fight. My other tank was insisting that it was dropping threat during DD because he consistently lost aggro and wiped the DPS. Looked through the logs and there isn't drop, swapped tanks and fixed the problem.

The lightning spire at the end of DD seems to lock onto the tanks position and drop a few seconds later. So it targets the tank while he is behind the DPS, tank moves, spire drops on DPS. Also if you don't have a single person on the ground spires will drop on people on the tanks.

For the shields, as was mentioned: avoid ANY AoE and unequip proc relics for this fight. I know Knight classes love to use Force Sweep and Tanksins love Discharge. It actually takes focus not to use those abilities during that phase. On HM the shields also take damage from the Mortar Volley, enough to kill them at the end of it so any damage will kill them early, maybe not straight after the hit, but before Mortar Volley ends.