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Consolidating Info on 16-man NiM Stormcaller and Firebrand


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My guild just spent 5 or so hours chewing on the tanks and brainstorming tactics and figuring out mechanics. I'm hoping to get some feedback, ideas, or help from other 16 man guilds with this fight.

 

Differences from 16-man HM:

 

Incinerate Armor: The tank with this debuff now takes 100% more damage from Firebrand. Previously, this move only made the tank's armor 0. We found that the tanks had to taunt and switch faster than normal to prevent the tank moving FROM Firebrand to be near death when he arrives at Stormcaller.

 

Double Destruction: People who get Single Destruction will now be one-shot if they take Double Destruction for a second time. We found it easy to just make the 2 people who get it first time to move toward the back of the tank so that they won't even get close to getting it a second time.

 

Targeted/The yellow beams: We found that the AoE range of this attack is bigger than the reticle will lead you to believe. The person needs to run away quite a bit after cleansing the debuff in order to not get 1 shot.

 

Defensive Systems: This gave us the biggest curve ball. In HM, both 8 and 16 groups, the tanks would do a push back in which we would usually use to get into shields faster (position yourself to get pushed almost into the shields). However, we experienced people taking fall damage and damage from hitting any walls from this pushback. Literally, the other healer and myself would - appear - to get 1 shot after crashing into a rocky wall or after landing. After making adjustments, we found that getting off the tanks immediately and moving away around 80% on the bosses, no one would take a ton of damage from the transition.

 

Trandoshans and Shield Phase: We actually never made it past this phase tonight. We are correctly dividing the raid and going to our assigned shields without any problems but between people being too slow to get there before a Mortar Volley strikes, the Trandoshans whittling away HP too much and keeping the tank kiting the spheres from dying, there's a lot of damage and dps might be a little lacking it seems. We are also correctly avoiding AoEs and refraining from killing the Trandoshan that will explode upon death until either he is the last one standing and the phase has just ended, or until a ranged DPS can pick him off when he's atop the boss.

 

Raid make up was:

 

Tanks

- Guardian (nearly full 63)

- Vanguard (mix of 61 and 63)

 

Firebrand side

DPS

- Commando x2 (we had 1 kiting the spears and yellow beam)

- Guardian

- Gunslinger x2

 

Healers

- Scoundrel (mixed 61 and few 63)

- Sage (mixed 61 and few 63)

 

Stormcaller side

DPS

- Gunslinger

- Sentinel

- Sage (who was kiting the spears and yellow beam)

- Shadow

- Vanguard

 

Healers

- Scoundrel (all 61)

- Sage (I'm in mostly 61 with a few 63s)

 

Thoughts on damage, healing and DPS:

 

Oh boy. What. A. Fight. Compared to the tanks, Toth and Zorn hit like *****es. Our tanks are way more geared than all the healers and most of the DPS and they are being really wailed on. Not only that, this fight tough on healers and DPS as well. We might be missing something on the shield phase, but it's really kicking us in the ***. The Trandoshans have a sizable amount of HP to get through in the short Mortar volley phase (35k each, x3 for front and back shields - only 2 in the middle one - in a 25 second phase).

 

After playing around with the positioning and jobs of the healers, we found that we had to abandon our HM tactics and have a DPS on each boss take care of the spears and the cleanse. The damage on the tanks was simply too much for our healers to juggle that job as well. Upon changing our strat, the healers had no problems with healing until the 80% mark.

 

Discuss~

Edited by Jinxblog
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I have done this fight on 8 man NIM, and have to say the KB from the tanks isnt that brutal and just a lil bit more damage then it was in HM. You shouldnt be flying into trees or walls though, not to sure if that is causing excessive damage or not, because i didnt have that issue.

 

On a sidenote i was wondering if someone could post how much HP they have on 16 man, for we can figure out how much dps is needed in 16 man compared to 8 man. As it stands i would like to think that 16 man should be a bit easier with the fact that if you get a second double destruction you have people already on the tank that can eat, and dont need to have dps switching tanks mid fight, or having to be very creative to avoid the second one completely.

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Both tanks have around 2.5 million HP. On our 16 man kill we had a few people doing over 2k DPS on the tanks and the majority was doing 1600 or more (I believe we averaged out at around 1700-1800 on the tanks, not including adds). We still hit enrage.
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Bear in mind I haven't done nightmare yet so it may not be possible there but...

 

Have you tried switching the shadow to firebrand? He can simply taunt firebrand during the double destruction, soak the incinerate, let the tank go on tanking firebrand as normal. Voila', no tank swap.

Works PERFECTLY in hard mode, we haven't been doing a tank swap there forever.

 

If that works, it would make everything much easier.

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Bear in mind I haven't done nightmare yet so it may not be possible there but...

 

Have you tried switching the shadow to firebrand? He can simply taunt firebrand during the double destruction, soak the incinerate, let the tank go on tanking firebrand as normal. Voila', no tank swap.

Works PERFECTLY in hard mode, we haven't been doing a tank swap there forever.

 

If that works, it would make everything much easier.

 

This does work on 8man nightmare. Can't confirm on 16man.

 

Also if you do this you prob want your vanguard on firebrand, as he's all mitigatable, vs storm caller who eats right thru VG/PT defenses. Guardians have better mitigation vs storm caller's elemental damage and cooldowns that work on that damage.

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Bear in mind I haven't done nightmare yet so it may not be possible there but...

 

Have you tried switching the shadow to firebrand? He can simply taunt firebrand during the double destruction, soak the incinerate, let the tank go on tanking firebrand as normal. Voila', no tank swap.

Works PERFECTLY in hard mode, we haven't been doing a tank swap there forever.

 

If that works, it would make everything much easier.

 

I thought the same thing. They already have a Guardian dps on firebrand who can do it. Trivializes the incinerate armor mechanic.

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I thought the same thing. They already have a Guardian dps on firebrand who can do it. Trivializes the incinerate armor mechanic.

 

Yeah missed the dps guardian, that works as well. Though maybe the shadow can cleanse the incinerate with resilience? Not sure, but as long as they stay clear of the frontal cone it shouldn't matter anyway.

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Bear in mind I haven't done nightmare yet so it may not be possible there but...

 

Have you tried switching the shadow to firebrand? He can simply taunt firebrand during the double destruction, soak the incinerate, let the tank go on tanking firebrand as normal. Voila', no tank swap.

Works PERFECTLY in hard mode, we haven't been doing a tank swap there forever.

 

If that works, it would make everything much easier.

 

Yes, this works very well. Once the taunter gets the timing right it makes incinerate armor trivial. However if the taunter taunts too early or late it can wipe the group if the main tank gets incinerate or if the taunter can get a massive hit.

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Glad to know the DPS taunt is a viable option in Nightmare still, but what is giving us problems isn't the taunt and switch or damage to the tanks. It's still the shield phase and transitions before and after it.

 

We messed around in 8 man NiM to test out strats and execution and my god, 8 man is a walk in the park. The bosses and mobs tickle. The DPS check is not nearly as demanding as well. I'm glad to see there is finally a tough challenge!

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Glad to know the DPS taunt is a viable option in Nightmare still, but what is giving us problems isn't the taunt and switch or damage to the tanks. It's still the shield phase and transitions before and after it.

 

We messed around in 8 man NiM to test out strats and execution and my god, 8 man is a walk in the park. The bosses and mobs tickle. The DPS check is not nearly as demanding as well. I'm glad to see there is finally a tough challenge!

 

We killed it using the DPS taunt so it means that it works :p Shield phase is definitely the hardest part of the entire fight and requires everyone to be paying attention and killing the right things.

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We killed it using the DPS taunt so it means that it works :p Shield phase is definitely the hardest part of the entire fight and requires everyone to be paying attention and killing the right things.

 

Agreed. A perfect run is the only thing that will down these guys.

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Agreed. A perfect run is the only thing that will down these guys.

 

Hahaha trust me i know! Wipe after wipe! It's all about raid setup and without your A team it would be very hard to down this boss with the high dps requirements.

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Agree with the OP's thoughts. We have been having a hard time getting through the Trandoshan Adds Phase due to player error (think Firebrand / Stormcaller KB). Our lineup was a bit different, we had 3 Tanks instead of 2 (these were the available players). With 3 Tanks we did not have any problems with Incinerate. We did encounter a second DD on Stormcaller but was able to get through it by just simply pushing DPS. Imo the hardest part (for my guild at least), is getting everyone into their respective Shield bubbles during Defensive System and not dying if they find that they need to walk towards it... IA evasion, SIN evasion, SW saber ward negates the mortar volley. Not sure for Force Shroud. Edited by paowee
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Defensive Systems: This gave us the biggest curve ball. In HM, both 8 and 16 groups, the tanks would do a push back in which we would usually use to get into shields faster (position yourself to get pushed almost into the shields). However, we experienced people taking fall damage and damage from hitting any walls from this pushback. Literally, the other healer and myself would - appear - to get 1 shot after crashing into a rocky wall or after landing. After making adjustments, we found that getting off the tanks immediately and moving away around 80% on the bosses, no one would take a ton of damage from the transition.

 

Could the damage be coming from the Mortar Volley itself?

 

Get KB-> Hit a wall ->Get hit by the Mortar AoE while trying to run under the shield.

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Could the damage be coming from the Mortar Volley itself?

 

Get KB-> Hit a wall ->Get hit by the Mortar AoE while trying to run under the shield.

 

15:04:12.094 Stormcaller Blast Tank's Defensive Systems hits Kemenotic for 843 kinetic damage, causing 843 threat.

 

That is on 8 man, i doubt it would be hitting for over 2k on 16 man, so it is still very little amount of damage as long as you're topped off and fly back into a shield and not in the middle of no where.

 

You can find the complete log here.

Edited by Chaqen
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15:04:12.094 Stormcaller Blast Tank's Defensive Systems hits Kemenotic for 843 kinetic damage, causing 843 threat.

 

That is on 8 man, i doubt it would be hitting for over 2k on 16 man, so it is still very little amount of damage as long as you're topped off and fly back into a shield and not in the middle of no where.

 

Yeah i think you are right here. No one should even be using the tanks to get to their shields. It's not very hard to walk off the tank and get to your shield within the (10?) seconds defensive systems is being cast.

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Yeah i think you are right here. No one should even be using the tanks to get to their shields. It's not very hard to walk off the tank and get to your shield within the (10?) seconds defensive systems is being cast.

 

one can argue that you loose time to dps from running. Let say you loose 8 secs per shield phase, 4 shield phases, so a total of 32 seconds total in the fight... depending on how much dps people are pushing out walking of flying can mean the difference between death to an enrage or a kill. With that said though people shouldnt be killing themselves to dps; meaning if for what ever reason you're sitting at 50% life and DD on you, you should be poping a CD and running.

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one can argue that you loose time to dps from running. Let say you loose 8 secs per shield phase, 4 shield phases, so a total of 32 seconds total in the fight... depending on how much dps people are pushing out walking of flying can mean the difference between death to an enrage or a kill. With that said though people shouldnt be killing themselves to dps; meaning if for what ever reason you're sitting at 50% life and DD on you, you should be poping a CD and running.

 

Another good point, but for example on stormcaller when the shield is at the other side of the door when getting knocked off you can get stuck in a tree and die. Walking worked fine for me as a sentinel who was taking double destruction and i still managed to pull out 1900 dps in the full fight and 2k dps on the bosses themselves. So if the players are somewhat competent walking is no problem.

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Yeah i think you are right here. No one should even be using the tanks to get to their shields. It's not very hard to walk off the tank and get to your shield within the (10?) seconds defensive systems is being cast.

 

I've always used the tank's KB to get myself into a shield to try put in as much extra hits / dps as I can (this was back in Hard Mode though). I think the point of that certain discussion was if 1) getting KB deals enough damage to warrant walking away as soon as possible to avoid the KB's damage (which was proven negligible ~830 damage as per Kemonotic's parse). Walking to a shield bubble or getting KB = personal preference (imo).

Edited by paowee
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Could the damage be coming from the Mortar Volley itself?

 

Get KB-> Hit a wall ->Get hit by the Mortar AoE while trying to run under the shield.

 

We thought that might have been it too but looking at combat logs, the damage taken did not add up to our healers' health. 1 Scoundrel only took a complete total of 12k damage in one run and still managed to die. In another instance, I hit the wall after the pushback, went down to 10% HP and actually reached my designated shield before any of my group members and I had way less health than any of them. Additionally, we would have seen everyone get hit with an early Mortar Volley right after the pushback. This did not happen. Something was wrong.

 

Additionally, the red "-14,000" did not appear on my screen, leading us to believe I and the scoundrel was NOT hit by a Mortar Volley. It's certainly a strange thing. Using the pushback was a great way to reach the shields faster. Interesting and challenging to see this tactic possibly removed.

 

Trying the tanks again tonight. We've made it to the second shield phase and upped the DPS on Firebrand; we now do not get to a second DD.

Edited by Jinxblog
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Yeah i think you are right here. No one should even be using the tanks to get to their shields. It's not very hard to walk off the tank and get to your shield within the (10?) seconds defensive systems is being cast.

 

This is what we've been doing instead of flying off. As soon as the shields come up on the mini-map we move to them, no one takes unnecessary damage.

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