+ tank mind-trapped, resulting in boss hitting/killing random peopl

+ person getting cyclone targeted by ball lightning, resulting in an ball lightning killing roaming free

+ Lightning Orbs NOT exploding during phrases interlude - resulting in Orbs Explosions (x3) during 2nd phrase

+ Soa getting hit correctly by pillars in phrase 3, yet still invulnerable to damages

+ random bugs, resulting in people getting rooted, dropped through the floor, out of line of sight, perma trapped in mind trap

Man, it's harder to get pass all those bugs than actually killing the boss.

Fix your game, BioWare.

Yeah, we've also had 5 hours of tries last night and at least 3 were because of the above mentioned bugs.

Most buggy encounter on HM by far.

I was just going to mention these. So frustrating the damn bugs are their own mechanic to overcome. I can attest to every single bug listed above being an issue.

Players I encourage you to post similar experiences!

What about:

1) Random deaths in the lava cave

2) The puzzle just randomly having unclickable buttons

3) Soa chamber we wiped and all the sections of the upper floor didn't reset, and we were missing steps on our way down

4) Soa top chamber, you can get mind trapped right before the end of the top phase. People can't free you because they have to drop down. You just get left there to die

Here's a bunch of bugs my guild has encountered during Eternity Vault.

• After a wipe to Gharj, players will die when running back to the boss...or not running back, such as the mass death happening when we called a night the first time and everyone flew back to the Imperial Fleet only to die upon landing. This looks like it might be fixed in the next patch?
   
  
• During Ancient Pylons, we had both pylons solve row 3 at the same time and the pylons became bugged and would no longer move, making them unsolvable. We were forced to reset the Operation.
   
  
• During the Infernal Council, one of our Marauder's Berserk skill was triggering the 100% reduction debuff. It took 5 resets before we learned this was the culprit.
  

During Soa...oh my during Soa... He deserves his own list.

• There's a bug where the cyclone target takes damage in the air during normal mode. Either that or there's a bug where the cyclone target takes no damage. We're not exactly sure which is the intended mechanic here as it happens about half the time one way or another.
  
• Sometimes after a wipe the platforms will not fully reset, so there will be platforms missing, thus making the dropping part of the bossfight impossible.
  
• If a target is in cyclone as the platforms part begins, it will drop the person to the bottom of the arena. They may or may not be alive when this happens. Again it's about 50/50.
  
• During the last phase of the boss, Mind Trap will often target the tank, causing Soa to despawn and forcing the players to Exit Area and start again.
  
• Sometimes Soa will die and be unlootable.
  
• A bit of a minor bug, there's one bugged power source that exists outside of the actual graphic and can't be killed.
  

During Cyclone, you ARE supposed to take dmg when you hit the walls.

If you're in Cyclone during Phase Change, then you ARE supposed to fall to your death. This is preventable by having DPS slow or stop until the Cyclone target is down.

Everything else is a legit bug though.

We gave up on him yesterday after 6 or 7 bug wipes with different bugs.

He isn't worth it, hopefully they will patch the most bugs tomorrow.

We gave up on him yesterday after 6 or 7 bug wipes with different bugs.

 

He isn't worth it, hopefully they will patch the most bugs tomorrow.

The only bug-fix I saw for Eternity Vault was the Gharj bug where you just randomly die running back after a wipe.

And to add one more:

Destroying power sources simultaneously between P1-P2 or P2-P3 will occasionally bug his orb charge stacks resulting in SOA wiping the raid with aoe damage as soon as the phases begin.

We managed to avoid this by ONLY destroying 5 power sources between transitions and ignoring the rest.

What about:

 

1) Random deaths in the lava cave

2) The puzzle just randomly having unclickable buttons

3) Soa chamber we wiped and all the sections of the upper floor didn't reset, and we were missing steps on our way down

4) Soa top chamber, you can get mind trapped right before the end of the top phase. People can't free you because they have to drop down. You just get left there to die

@ #1 - happens all throughout the area... we've had random deaths while landing on the speeder (fast transport) and I had a random death when I tripped off of a short ledge and hit my head on the next rock while walking through the jungle... grrrr

@ #3 - major problems with both first and second destructible floors... instead of completely reseting, one or the other floors would have significant sections missing, forcing us to work with partial floors... it is doable but much more difficult (especially when you're missing half the outer ring); we had better luck with resets if we made sure everyone died instead of "exiting area" but still not perfect

@ #1 - happens all throughout the area... we've had random deaths while landing on the speeder (fast transport) and I had a random death when I tripped off of a short ledge and hit my head on the next rock while walking through the jungle... grrrr

Oh yes I am well aware We have even have wipes while on the Imperial Fleet!!!

His power extends even outside of the instance.

/agree, /signed, /whatever.

Beating SOA is actually pretty easy... defeating Bioware's bugs however, is the real challenge. That speaks volumes of your game, Bioware.

Oh yes I am well aware We have even have wipes while on the Imperial Fleet!!!

 

His power extends even outside of the instance.

On the bright side, you don't take durability loss from those random deaths.

+ tank mind-trapped, resulting in boss hitting/killing random peopl

 

+ person getting cyclone targeted by ball lightning, resulting in an ball lightning killing roaming free

 

+ Lightning Orbs NOT exploding during phrases interlude - resulting in Orbs Explosions (x3) during 2nd phrase

 

+ Soa getting hit correctly by pillars in phrase 3, yet still invulnerable to damages

 

+ random bugs, resulting in people getting rooted, dropped through the floor, out of line of sight, perma trapped in mind trap

 

Man, it's harder to get pass all those bugs than actually killing the boss.

 

Fix your game, BioWare.

Okay first and foremost please don't take this as an elitist response of you need to l2p noob. I ACKNOWLEDGE most of your above listed bugs and simply want to provide you, and anyone else who wants to down this encounter with some work around. I dare not call them solutions as I'm sure the developers didn't intend them but these suggestions should help you down this encounter with a relatively low amount of difficulty and improved RNG.

I have downed hard mode Soa 2 or 3 times now and I am in by no means a hardcore guild. I lead our raids that consistently have the same 4-6 people but any given night we may PuG 2-4 players. Often these players may have not even experienced the content yet but based off reputation they join my raid and tend to be pretty successful. This isn't meant as bragging by any means just trying to give you a picture of just about anyone with decent gear can do this. We have spent probably a grand total of no more then 4-5 hours on Soa and since working out the kinks we've one shot him ever since. When learning him and trying to counteract the bugs we'd do maybe 4-5 attempts and call it a night before anyone got too burnt out.

Anyways with all that said here are my work arounds to your issues.

tank mind-trapped, resulting in boss hitting/killing random peopl

- This is 100% intended, no different then someone pulling aggro off the tank and the raid getting out of control from there. If your DPS don't allow a small window for aggro gain or pull him during the fight you will run into this problem. This will happen A LOT in phase 2 if your DPS don't allow your tank a couple seconds for aggro. I know every second of DPS counts but...come on...

person getting cyclone targeted by ball lightning, resulting in an ball lightning killing roaming free - This is frustrating and the best way to deal with it is to have everyone stack together. If that happens you simply move your group to a slightly different position. The ball of lightning will harmlessly go to the spot your raid member was cycloned and no worries.

Lightning Orbs NOT exploding during phrases interlude - resulting in Orbs Explosions (x3) during 2nd phrase - Frankly, blow them up before transitions and this shouldn't be an issue. What you should be doing is stacking like stated above and if a ball of lightning gets on someone they IMMEDIATELY run out of the group at full HP, get a shield, and explode the ball. IMMEDIATELY running back into the group and restacking. Lightning balls should never be up for more then a few seconds.

Soa getting hit correctly by pillars in phrase 3, yet still invulnerable to damages - Seen this happen a couple times, however, there were always 2 consistent factors. The first being your tank simply messed up the positioning. The second being it is the 4th pillar and his enrage timer coincides with the drop and for some reason doesn't break the shield. It sucks, caused a lot of our early wipes. But the solution is better DPS and making sure your tank doesn't miss any of the first three. If he doesn't miss any of the first 3 and your DPS isn't good enough hope that RNG is kind to you on the fourth.

random bugs, resulting in people getting rooted, dropped through the floor, out of line of sight, perma trapped in mind trap - Almost all of these are caused by something, they aren't "random". I could explain every single one to you in detail if you were more specific but based on your vague descriptions I can kind of guess where you are going and can say none of those are random. If you want more details, please give me more and I will be happy to assist.

The bottom line is yes, this fight does have a number of bugs, or a the very least very poorly designed/quirky mechanics. But MANY guilds have managed to get past them on a regular basis with strats that don't involve anything crazy. You just have to be smart, which isn't a statement meant as an insult. What I mean by that is if you have a problem with someone being perma mind trapped...make sure you have all mind traps broken in p2 before pushing him under 30% to initiate p3. People need to remember that the encounter follows specific programming by a computer, it isn't random, there is a cause and effect to everything. I'm going to make another post about the full strategy and update this thread when I am done so you can see that this encounter isn't all that bad. There ARE indeed some bugs to work around but I assure you that they are a small part of the encounter.

totally agree with Kabutopps.

In my opponion, SOA has at this moment only few bug bugs, I could say some of the "bugs" ppl list here, just features of the boss...

pretty much the only thing that I count as a "bug" on soa at this moment, is the floor not spawning correctly (parts of the floor is missing), this makes the boss pretty much unkillable for that run.

Mind traps and electric balls between 2nd and 3rd phase can easily be avoided by taking the boss to 30% at right time.

I really dont know that which are actual bugs, and which are features, but I like it hard. Most of the bosses are sooo easy that it's nice to have atleast 1 hard boss.

-B

When you guys refer to *incorrectly spawning floors*, you're referring to the drop-down phases, correct?

You realize that on each of the drop phases, there are 2 sections of floor that take LONGER to drop then the rest? I believe these are intended positions to re-heal classes that cannot support themselves the whole way down [sentinels ,etc]

tank mind-trapped, resulting in boss hitting/killing random peopl

- This is 100% intended, no different then someone pulling aggro off the tank and the raid getting out of control from there. If your DPS don't allow a small window for aggro gain or pull him during the fight you will run into this problem. This will happen A LOT in phase 2 if your DPS don't allow your tank a couple seconds for aggro. I know every second of DPS counts but...come on...

I can assure you the boss disappearing in the middle of the encounter because a tank got mindtrapped is most certainly not 100% intended. Yes maybe the intent was for the tank to get mindtrapped, but currently he will just reset if the tank does.

random bugs, resulting in people getting rooted, dropped through the floor, out of line of sight, perma trapped in mind trap - Almost all of these are caused by something, they aren't "random". I could explain every single one to you in detail if you were more specific but based on your vague descriptions I can kind of guess where you are going and can say none of those are random. If you want more details, please give me more and I will be happy to assist.

It almost sounds like you're saying that those are features, not bugs. In that case Bioware should hire you for PR.

When you guys refer to *incorrectly spawning floors*, you're referring to the drop-down phases, correct?

 

You realize that on each of the drop phases, there are 2 sections of floor that take LONGER to drop then the rest? I believe these are intended positions to re-heal classes that cannot support themselves the whole way down [sentinels ,etc]

Referring to pieced of the floor actually being missing.

Like you walk into Soa's room and there are holes in the floor where floor pieces should be. When the platforming phase comes into play, those spots where there were holes in the floor missing platforms don't have platforms.

I can assure you the boss disappearing in the middle of the encounter because a tank got mindtrapped is most certainly not 100% intended. Yes maybe the intent was for the tank to get mindtrapped, but currently he will just reset if the tank does.

 

It almost sounds like you're saying that those are features, not bugs. In that case Bioware should hire you for PR.

 

 

 

Referring to pieced of the floor actually being missing.

Like you walk into Soa's room and there are holes in the floor where floor pieces should be. When the platforming phase comes into play, those spots where there were holes in the floor missing platforms don't have platforms.

The boss disappearing because the main tank somehow gets pulled "out of combat" and resetting...man...I haven't seen this in any MMO before. It must be some exclusive game breaking Bioware bug, it must be fixed immediately or I am deleting my account.

Does it suck? Yeah, but chance are if that is happening you were going to wipe anyways. Sad truth. I don't know if you know ANYTHING about coding but something like this would be pretty difficult to ensure never happens. Believe it or not but some things ARE worth not coding for as the effort to reward ratio is negative...like...severely. Again if the tank is getting mind trapped it is because of user failure, not the game.

I never said they were features, I simply said they aren't random. Again...back to coding things happen for a reason. My post - http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2346050#post2346050 which explains the encounter in detail deals with many of the reported "bugs". In computing rarely is anything truly "random" and I can tell you that almost all of Soa's "bugs" happen for some sort of reason and are preventable and/or avoidable. I personally believe that the encounter for the most part is functioning mostly as designed, definitely some flaws but I'm almost positive the reason Bioware hasn't rushed to patch it is because if executed correctly the fight is easily doable. And there is a pretty decent margin for error. Compared to a lot of WoW hard mode encounters the margins for error in this encounter are MUCH more forgiving. Not to mention the tasks required of you really aren't all that difficult. I'm not trolling anyone or saying you are a noob because you can't do it, I'm just saying don't rush to the forums to complain because you didn't invest a small amount of time figuring out the encounter and WHY certain things happen.

Look I've barely heard of this missing pieces of the platform bug. The number of times it happens compared to the actual number of attempts must be ridiculously low. If it seems to be happening to you all the time, then I suggest you reevaluate your strategy because you are clearly doing something wrong. Again, not trolling you, but lots of guilds execute this fight consistently without exploiting, getting lucky, or some bs that allows them to down the encounter while you get trolled by RNG. We deal with the same issues anyone else does and very rarely does true RNG actually screw us over. Does it happen? uh...yeah. But again good execution will more often then not trump the RNG.

The Lightning balls.... to charge them so they explode or run to them fast so they explode.... is not a sulution in nightmare mode and not a way to handle the incounter

they oneshot players in nightmare

The Lightning balls.... to charge them so they explode or run to them fast so they explode.... is not a sulution in nightmare mode and not a way to handle the incounter

 

they oneshot players in nightmare

Maybe in 16m. But for 8m this is false. There used to be multiple solutions to this encounter but since they made the lightning balls untauntable now you can either kite them or blow them up. I could see instances where they might one shot someone but with good player/cooldown management it still isn't an issue.

The boss disappearing because the main tank somehow gets pulled "out of combat" and resetting...man...I haven't seen this in any MMO before. It must be some exclusive game breaking Bioware bug, it must be fixed immediately or I am deleting my account.

 

Does it suck? Yeah, but chance are if that is happening you were going to wipe anyways. Sad truth. I don't know if you know ANYTHING about coding but something like this would be pretty difficult to ensure never happens. Believe it or not but some things ARE worth not coding for as the effort to reward ratio is negative...like...severely. Again if the tank is getting mind trapped it is because of user failure, not the game.

 

 

I never said they were features, I simply said they aren't random. Again...back to coding things happen for a reason. My post - http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2346050#post2346050 which explains the encounter in detail deals with many of the reported "bugs". In computing rarely is anything truly "random" and I can tell you that almost all of Soa's "bugs" happen for some sort of reason and are preventable and/or avoidable. I personally believe that the encounter for the most part is functioning mostly as designed, definitely some flaws but I'm almost positive the reason Bioware hasn't rushed to patch it is because if executed correctly the fight is easily doable. And there is a pretty decent margin for error. Compared to a lot of WoW hard mode encounters the margins for error in this encounter are MUCH more forgiving. Not to mention the tasks required of you really aren't all that difficult. I'm not trolling anyone or saying you are a noob because you can't do it, I'm just saying don't rush to the forums to complain because you didn't invest a small amount of time figuring out the encounter and WHY certain things happen.

 

 

Look I've barely heard of this missing pieces of the platform bug. The number of times it happens compared to the actual number of attempts must be ridiculously low. If it seems to be happening to you all the time, then I suggest you reevaluate your strategy because you are clearly doing something wrong. Again, not trolling you, but lots of guilds execute this fight consistently without exploiting, getting lucky, or some bs that allows them to down the encounter while you get trolled by RNG. We deal with the same issues anyone else does and very rarely does true RNG actually screw us over. Does it happen? uh...yeah. But again good execution will more often then not trump the RNG.

I stopped listening after your raging hyperbole.

I stopped listening after your raging hyperbole.

Too bad, you missed out on me owning you. It was quite a sight, I feel pretty bad. Life moves on though.

I can assure you the boss disappearing in the middle of the encounter because a tank got mindtrapped is most certainly not 100% intended. Yes maybe the intent was for the tank to get mindtrapped, but currently he will just reset if the tank does.

 

It almost sounds like you're saying that those are features, not bugs. In that case Bioware should hire you for PR.

 

 

 

Referring to pieced of the floor actually being missing.

Like you walk into Soa's room and there are holes in the floor where floor pieces should be. When the platforming phase comes into play, those spots where there were holes in the floor missing platforms don't have platforms.

Would just like to point out that Soa doesn't reset EVERY TIME the tank is mind trapped. In fact, it's never happened to my guild and we frequently find our tank being mind trapped. (Not saying it doesn't happen, I know it does)