Damn apparently my guild has been doing it the hard way -_-

I single tank it, and bring him back and forth between fire and ice, skipping lightning. No wonder I always had 10 stacks of some debuff and was taking some rather large hits, and the damn droids keep getting annoying.

Oh well, we still killed him last night so at least I'm learning some things from this thread that will make it a lot easier in the future.

Yawn. Another rant without any facts.

If you completely lack any reading comp or a decent strategy for the fight. The guy I quoted even laid it all out for kids who can't figure it out.

My guild did this for the first time last night, we got him down but it took multiple attempts.

The amount of droids by the end of the fight on normal is crazy , and that sticky bomb that he shoots on a person and causes a knockback caused a couple wipes because of all the droids everywhere.

Our group can sleepwalk through the first three bosses on normal, and this boss is just not scaled well. Its doable, but I think it is harder than all the EV hardmode bosses besides Soa. I think he either needs less health, or the droid spawn rate needs to be cut down for it to be more in line with the other normal mode bosses.

Cleared him for the first time earlier this week with my guild. We originally were trying to use the left and right chutes for the burns. This was not working out well for us so I had my switch clickers use right and middle instead.

Our group comp:

Me - Sin MT

PT Offtank

2 Marauder DPS

2 Merc DPS

1 Sorc Heals

1 Merc Heals

I had both of my Merc DPS on the switches and my marauders killing stun droids and DPS'ing the boss with the tanks. After each burn we had 1 DPS Merc stay on switches and the other one DPS the boss. Once the dmg debuff ran out he would go back to hitting switches. Our Merc DPS was able to complete the puzzle so fast that there were times that the debuff had just fallen off the boss and we were ready to burn again. This made for an interesting fight because I actually had to have my melee DPS ignore the boss at one point even though he had the debuff because we needed to clear stun droids, lol. I cant reiterate enough how fast my RDPS was able to complete the puzzle with just using the right and middle burners. As for healing we had our Merc heals stay down below with the melee and our Sorc stay up on the platform so he could heal both the melee/tanks and the Merc DPS that was clicking the switches. Merc DPS is nice for hitting the switches because their Jet Boost can knock the proximity mines away to a safe distance. In addition if they are specced for it they can rocket punch them to knockback as well.

Someone mentioned this before, but I'll repeat it because its great info. You can activate the switches before engaging the boss and allow people to practice their routine on the switches. The timer for the encounter doesnt actually begin until the first burn goes off. Once we used this method it was a cakewalk. Hope this helps those of you that are struggling. We also struggled for a night before modifying our strat.

To OP:

Two side:

Side one, something is wrong with encounter, try hard mode. It's easier.

Side two. nothing is wrong, L2P

It is not your job to prove or figure out which side is right.

Next time you run, run on hard mode.

You will know the answer, that is true for you.

Special note : do not read any farther, nothing constructive follows.

Neither side will convince other. Even if 99.999% of people have easier time on hard mode, side two will believe everyone else is wrong and they are only one who knows how to play this GAME "properly"

Even if Dev come out and says there was bug and they fix it, and here is the line of code that was broken, they will still say it is conspiracy and dev just gave into the whiners in forum.

Oh the flip side, if dev come out with all the hard number that prove normal mode is easier than hard mode, Side one will still say their testing method was bad and it proves nothing.

We are all unique special snowflake and none of us can handle even the possibility of being wrong about a game mechanic cause .. I dunno, this is very very important and serious and even if I have to hire a team of Ph.D. to help me prove I am right, I will cause I know I am right!

Well our guild had 12 tries or so on normal mode two weeks ago, last week we really didn't have the group for the fight (only 1 rdps and 2 pugs) so I didn't want to waste time learning it, and tonight we just went for HM just to see.

It's my opinion that HM is easier, mostly because it's more controllable. We took 4 tries, 1 for a new guy to learn the puzzling, 2 withmajor ****ups (I the tank stood in a jet, puzzle got messed up badly), and then a clean kill with 30s or so to spare on the enrage. That was with 7/8 people that had him enrage at 22% on normal 2 weeks earlier. We did some tweaks to our tactics sure, but there wasn't any of the 'I can't do the puzzle due to crazy droids' any more.

We killed Karagga too, 4 tries, so now we're 5/5 4/5 HM and only 3/5 5/5 on NM.

It may be that under some standard normal mode is easier. Maybe we are doing something badly wrong. Maybe our group has the wrong members. But certainly the fight seems way off on difficulty. I feel that on normal mode I shouldn't have to care about the gear on the players, about group composition, about cm tight positioning, about every member pushing an optional rotation, about buffs, about getting everyone on vent. And that's why I believe that G4 is tuned badly on normal.

I'm fine with having a challenging kill or two on HM, and I'm not asking for free loot. On the flip side I'd say that the Gharj and 3rd boss of Karagga could be a bit harder since I don't see much of a challenge, and I wouldn't mind Soa lighting orbs being a bit less damaging on HM because there too the difficulty gap seems large.

This boss can be tanked by one tank no problem. The debuffs are nothing more then annoying, but not deadly and they dont stack beyond 10.

As for clickers we have always used 3 clickers on any difficulty and ventrilo coordination for faster clicking.

The faster you rearrange the sequence the faster you kill the boss because he becomes virtually invulnerable 5 seconds after the burning debuff wears off.

Also on Normal mode you do not need to use all 3 burning stations, it is enough to just alternate between right and middle station. On normal mode all stations do the same.

It is even not necessary to have only ranged up top clicking. Since Sages/Sorcs seem to be so abundant on all servers you can always have them rescue your melee clicker back up.

Pulse droids do not need to be killed off since you can just use a knockback to move them out of the way.

I unfortunately dont have a normal mode kill video, but here is the 16-man nightmare version:

As you can see I am a Shadow and have no problem in clicking my buttons along with a Commando and a Gunslinger. The boss was being tanked by a single Jedi Guardian.

Differences:

In 8-man you do not have to change your station and you can just stay at the same button all the time

In normal mode you do not need to use all 3 burn stations and can just alternate between right and middle.

As a side note: in my opinion this is one of the best boss designs in the game (probably after SOA if he ever gets fixed).

DPS in this fight is nowhere near as important as Fast clicking on the consoles. If your fast on the towers a one leg chicken and a dog can dps em down in normal. Slow on consoles and your gonna eat the enrage E V E R Y T I M E

EDIT simple tips

Question in regards to the debuff and when to move to resequence for another fire dump. We dump fire, clickers move to add DPS, debuff ends and the droids defense starts piling up 1.. 2 etc. What is the optimal point to disengage and go back to clicking for another fire dump?

it depends on # of clickers, how good/quick they are on the puzzle and how quickly they can avoid/move/knockback/kill probes

some groups stick with 2 clickers some 3 I've even seen a group roll with 1 but try this:

the enrage timer doesn't start till you actually press the fire button, you can start the tower cycle and get your clickers used to it.

Usually it's best if you never stop cycling the towers, your doing ok if the boss buff never goes above 2-4

EDIT

it depends on # of clickers, how good/quick they are on the puzzle and how quickly they can avoid/move/knockback/kill probes

some groups stick with 2 clickers some 3 I've even seen a group roll with 1 but try this:

the enrage timer doesn't start till you actually press the fire button, you can start the tower cycle and get your clickers used to it.

 

 

EDIT

ours usually uses 2 rdps and a healer on panls/ on debuf dpsrs start a hot burn on boss healer grabs the one off the just fired twoer and runs to next tower and drops it in. It makes a tone when droped, upon tone 1 of the rdps runs over to the unused tower while the healer runs to the just fired one pops the two wich the rdps that just peeled off grabs for his, again noise que for the next rdps to have some fun. By now probes should be up or almost up

BM thanks for the response. I am not sure if I am asking the question right. G4-BC is in debuff post fire dump. Then he enters a defensive buff state. 1 then 2 then 3 etc. all the way to 10. Assuming 3 clickers at what point do we stop DPSing and go back for another fire dump. At 1 on G4-BC's defensive buff? At 5? Is their an optimal point or do we do it the moment the debuff wears off?

BM thanks for the response. I am not sure if I am asking the question right. G4-BC is in debuff post fire dump. Then he enters a defensive buff state. 1 then 2 then 3 etc. all the way to 10. Assuming 3 clickers at what point do we stop DPSing and go back for another fire dump. At 1 on G4-BC's defensive buff? At 5? Is their an optimal point or do we do it the moment the debuff wears off?

as counter intuitive as it may seem your panel dpsrs can contribute more dps to the fight by stayin on panels than shooting 1(debuff)=dbl dmg 2(debuff)= normal dmg to boss 3 stacks and above = lower than normal net dps to boss

EDIT It's more importnant that you keep the panel cycle going than have them worry about dps, particuarly in normal mode. As your clikcers get more comfortable with it you can vary your rotations and setup for whats more comfortable for your raid

DBL EDIT if your raids melee heavy the panels a good place for them as the stun and probes on the main floor are fairly melee unfrindly, and you have less chance of an OOPS moment with the fire

The definitive method of completing G4-B3

by Zephyros of Daragon Trail

It is time to revolutionize how you complete this boss (sorry for having to replace spaces with periods, unfortunately spacing was not working properly, and it is still a little off. of course, it all lines up in my notepad document)

The goal of this strategy is to ONLY use the right firing slot. This alleviates the need to move/reposition the boss and only have to deal with one stun droid that spawns on the boss.

H is a healer of choice

R is a range DPS (preferably sage)

B is the boss

T is the Tank

O is the remainder of the ops group

On droid spawns, the ops group kills the stun droid on the boss. R and H both explode the stun droid on the platform,

(a sage can shield themselves and alleviate healing), and then kill the droids in front of b and c respectively.

R is responsible for killing or knocking off the droid in front of a. H can spot heal the raid and is responsible for keeping themselves and player R alive. Avoid getting 2 stacks of the debuff from the exploding droids.

R and H should begin solving the puzzing when the boss gets his first stack of the armor buff.

If the tank debuff is too much with one tank, try having a melee DPS taunt and blow defensive cooldowns until

the stack drops off of the main tank. Be aware that this may result in the need to reposition. DO NOT PULL AGGRO OFF OF THE MAIN TANK, especially on the pull. -So please be careful-

EDIT: Here is an image without all the messy periodshttp://imgur.com/5E25k

______________

|....................O.|

|...................B..|__

|...................T......|

|...|...__..__...__....|

|...|..|..|..|R|..|H|...|

|...|a.....b.....c........|

|...........................|

.a..b..c

|.......1.| start stacked in slot c.

|.......2.| Person H alerts melee of firing and clicks to fire

|.......3.|

|_.._.._|

|.........| move the 1.piece to slot b

|.......2.| person H clicks slot C then person R clicks slot b

|...1..3.|

|_.._.._|

|.........| move the 2 piece to slot a

|.........| H clicks slot c then R clicks slot a

|2..1..3|

|_.._.._|

|.........| move the 1 piece to slot a

|1........| H clicks b then R clicks a

|2.....3.|

|_.._.._|

|.........| move the 3 piece to slot b

|1........| H clicks c then R clicks b

|2..3....|

|_.._.._|

|.........| move the 3 piece back to slot c

|1........| R clicks b then H clicks c

|2.....3.|

|_.._.._|

|.........| move the 1 piece to slot b

|.........| R clicks a then H clicks b

|2..1..3|

|_.._.._|

|..........| move the 2 piece to slot c

|........2| R clicks a then H clicks c

|...1...3|

|_.._.._|

|........1| move piece 1 to slot c

|........2| R clicks slot b then H clicks slot c

|........3| back to the top

|_.._.._|

Here's my 8man Nightmare video on soloing the console clicks for Heavy Fab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIBc16yj5ec

You can follow this exact same pattern with 16 player setup as we use the exact same strat, just ensure you have 3 clickers because of the debuff you get. The trick is so that when the last person clicks the combination for the fire switch the guy in the middle console clicks either (if that makes sense).

- Starting the fight

M > R > L > R > Fire switch

- Right to Left

R > L > R > M > L > M > R > L > M > R > M > L > R > L > Fire Switch

- Left to Right

L > R > L > M > R > M > L > R > M > L > M > R > L > R > Fire Switch

Occasionally people actually want constructive help, sometimes they just want to whine without knowing what they're talking about. I just didn't want people walking into normal believing some of these guys. I'm not going to lay out our strat for everyone to copy, you can read all the responses to see how wrong they are in the first place. I guess I'll just have to live with you not believing me about one shotting normal mode fights hahaha.

You're just thumping your chest. It's a "Hey look at me!" post. They updated his HP on normal mode because their metrics show people over-wiping on it compared to other bosses. So in spite of how awesome you believe you are the people talking about it overtuned are right.