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How to kill soa in hardmode?


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Hey guys,

Soa in HM is extremely hard, considering the bugs, luck-factor and the coordination of team movement.

 

we tried at first everybody stay in center, only those who are named by lightning balls go out and eat them; then we tried everybody stay in west. What strategy are you guys using?

 

How do you position your team on the 2nd platform? and what's the mechanics you guys use?

Once you get to ground floor, how do you position yourselves? when tank is kiting soa to pillars, how you guys organize dodging lightning balls etc?

Edited by seektravota
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We've had general success with keeping people in the middle, but haven't actually got through the entire fight yet due to some of the bugs(invisible lightning ball kills healer through the floor after stage 2, platforms randomly not where they should be after stage 2, etc.)

 

The damage on the balls is pretty hard to deal with, but I'd generally say that keeping people in the middle is a viable strategy as long as everyone knows how to deal with theirs.

 

If that strategy doesn't seem viable, you probably need to gear up your group more.

Edited by LordZanos
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There IS a luck factor but only in 1 of 2 attempts. Yes, a person can be tossed right after eating a ball or dropped from tossed right into a ball. This is how you should spend your 1 rez. Yes, Soa can bug-out and reset when almost dead. This is something BW needs to fix.

 

The rest of the fight is practice, practice, practice... focus, pay attention, look for cues, and some more focus. There is a learning curve. Once you have beaten him and seen it done it becomes very easy.

 

Some people may never "get it" because they aren't articulate or focused enough to make good on the "lucky" half of attempts. Sorry, but these people are bad and should stick to alts.

 

Edit: the factor with keeping people in the middle is only really important with 2 sage/sorc healers to maximize efficiency of ae heals. That is your answer to that part of the question.

Edited by Kaelano
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Awareness is critical and using your own survival skills when taking the hit from the Lightning Balls. Some use the visual of the balls but they have a nasty AOE but I personally find using the minimap as a critical element so you can easily move away from a ball if it is going close to the middle or where you are located on the 3rd phase. *(speaking as someone who has done it in NTM).

 

Group makeup can also control how much damage you take as Sages Bubble are really useful.

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We've had general success with keeping people in the middle, but haven't actually got through the entire fight yet due to some of the bugs(invisible lightning ball kills healer through the floor after stage 2, platforms randomly not where they should be after stage 2, etc.)

 

The damage on the balls is pretty hard to deal with, but I'd generally say that keeping people in the middle is a viable strategy as long as everyone knows how to deal with theirs.

 

If that strategy doesn't seem viable, you probably need to gear up your group more.

 

everybody in my group is full columni and 2-3 pieces of rakata if they wish to put on. still find this fight very hard.

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everybody in my group is full columni and 2-3 pieces of rakata if they wish to put on. still find this fight very hard.

 

This is how we did it om HM. For phase 2 and 3 we grouped up in the middle, lightning balls are priority 1 THE ENTIRE FIGHT AT ALL TIMES. This next sentence is VERY important: *Everybody panned the camera every now and then to see where the lightning balls spawn (you can tell by the small pyramids they start to glow).* We called out the names on TS right away when the lightning balls spawned and those people got sage shields and ran to their lightning. If your having trouble knowing which balls belong to who, have one person running left and one right from the group in the middle. Mindtraps are priority 2 after lightning. When we were close to 35% we made sure no one was flying and lightning balls gone before DPSing to the next phase.

 

At phase 3 lightning is still 100 % first priority even when Soas shield is down. Group up in the middle and look around for the flying pillars that remove his shields, call out pillars and lightning on TS. When soas shield is down mind traps are seconday to DPSing Soa.

 

Its all about control in this fight, Soa was enraged for quite a long time but it doesnt matter he doesnt hurt, the lightnings are the problem and if you make sure you focus on them at all times it should be easier.

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everybody in my group is full columni and 2-3 pieces of rakata if they wish to put on. still find this fight very hard.

 

Then it's your communication that is lacking, People maybe have bad reaction time in your group and don't know what to do every second of the fight. I did EV HM with my alt that is tionese geared, We had 3 people in full columi, rest where in blues/tionese. We just knew the fight very well and knew what to do, and we had luck ofc.

 

As for the geared part, Are you talking about purple items on the right side of your character sheet, Wit implants & relics being green/blue or is everything purple?

 

Because if your group truly is that well geared then it's your communication that is terrible, or people in your group have bad experience with the fight.

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stay in the middle even you can stay on top of boss, who ever got lightning ball (for example, first name go left, second name go right when runing to balls) just run out fast and take his ball, it can target someone else sometimes, dont let anyone sleep in raid, if somone see a ball coming to group just run away a little, with a little practice it is not hard
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First thing to do for Soa is going into settings and increase camera range. A wider view of the area helps with situational awareness.

 

In phase 2... Need to make sure no one tracks their Ball Lightning thru the middle. Everyone that gets tossed in the air lands in the middle. If a Ball is there when they land, they usually die.

 

Don't transition to P3 with someone in the air. That person will die and you will not be able to battle rez.

 

If you are below 30% health, pop a medpack/and or heal yourself(dps sorc/merc/op).... don't wait for a heal. Getting tossed in the air at low health = death.

 

Make sure Sorcs are putting a bubble on people before they pop their Ball Lightning. Again, low health + tossed in air = death. Don't want anyone to get low.

 

As far a positioning for phase 2, more then one strat works... just make sure everyone understands that Ball Lightnings spawn only from the 4 outside pylons to the east.

Edited by Xneco
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Then it's your communication that is lacking, People maybe have bad reaction time in your group and don't know what to do every second of the fight. I did EV HM with my alt that is tionese geared, We had 3 people in full columi, rest where in blues/tionese. We just knew the fight very well and knew what to do, and we had luck ofc.

 

As for the geared part, Are you talking about purple items on the right side of your character sheet, Wit implants & relics being green/blue or is everything purple?

 

Because if your group truly is that well geared then it's your communication that is terrible, or people in your group have bad experience with the fight.

 

everything purple, 2 or 3 of us have rakata/battlemaster weapons even. soa seems to be able to kick our *** regardless of our gear. ya, will try the advice you guys have for this weekend's raid.

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This fight is all about Lightning Ball control.

 

As soon as lightning balls spawn the people who get them have to drop whatever they are doing, quickly identify which one is theirs and run into it. The lighning balls will not go away unless they reach their target.

It helps to have a dedicated Sage/Sorc putting bubble on the people who get balls to avoid them taking too much damage.

Have your members make sure that they are full health and use their defensive cooldowns when they take a lightning ball and make them use a medpack when they are done.

It is critical that your members only run into THEIR OWN ball. Anything else will be suicide.

Resilience (duno what the sin equivalent is called) makes Shadows/Assasins immune to the balls damage.

 

Our Nightmare 16 kill:

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The lightning balls only spawn on the southern half of the platform. You should have your whole group sit in the middle while FACING south. This way everyone will be accountable for the lightning balls because they'll be able to see it.

 

This fight is EXTREMELY heavy on individual skill and ability to react. Have one person go left and one person go right (we use the person on top to go left and bottom right) The lightning balls will gravitate towards them and boom! Pop goes the ball. They need to pop those balls ASAP though because if you get four up at a time, it's no good.

 

Also, you should require your members to turn on the enemy npc name plates in the interface in order to distinguish dead lightning balls from live ones. Then have them turn their camera distance on max so that they can see the lightning strikes on the pillars and be ready. We split our dps on the boss and on the mindtraps so that we can reduce our time spent in that phase as well.

 

Also, if you're dps can close the gap at the third phase then you can try three healers, which is what we do.

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Flip it to nightmare for a night or two of attempts. The balls in phase 2 WILL kill The person if done wrong, instead of just usually stressing healers (which usually snowballs into a wipe). This is the best way for everyone to learn the individual responsibility needed in the fight. After a night or two, flip it back to HM and the fight will feel easy all of a sudden!
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we are having a few issues on Part 2 that I need clarification on whether we are doing it wrong or it is a bug:

 

1. Person named for a lightning ball will get THROWN before they reach their ball. Naturally this wipes us since now the ball is loose. This happens only sometimes.

 

2. We've had Sorcs bubble up to hit their lightning ball and they end up 1-shotted dead or possibly damaged after they hit their ball with something else (Soa?). We cannot figure this out. Is it that our Sorcs are dumb and hit the wrong ball? Does Soa sometimes do damage to someone who hits their ball but is too slow? Seems only like the sorcs so not sure on this one but it happens quite a bit for the healer sorcs. We kind of assume they f-ed up somehow.

 

thanks for your time.

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My guild Rutilus Nex kills this on a weekly basis on 8 man nightmare difficulty rutilusnex.guildlaunch.com

 

Phase 1 is pretty simple no need to explain here.

 

Phase 2 Have the raid stack up in the middle with the tank on the opposite side. Have one person , preferably your sorc healer who is spec'd into instant bubbling call out who is targeted with the orbs in voice chat and also throw a sorc bubble on them immedietly.

 

The two people who are targeted run through the boss into a V shape pattern and decide whos lightning orb is whos. Soon as a person is selected to be thrown into the air you are safe to pop your lightning orbs. Make sure you pop any defense cooldowns you have or hit your rakata med pack for extra health before popping these orbs. Sometimes they can double tick resulting in higher damage than anticipated. For this very reason i have my low health , armor people like sorcs use endurance stims for this fight. Sometimes our inquisitors can just sprint through the orbs (works now they fixed it) and not take any ticks.

 

Now the 2nd orb pack that comes out you can pop immedietly soon as you decide who it's on and they have sorc bubbles and personal cooldowns used. The third orbs that come out you want to wait to pop them again due to him throwing someone up again. It goes throw, mindtrap , throw mind,trap every other orb spawn.

 

As far as the person being thrown into the air make sure no one pops an orb in the middle near the boss. If the tank is targeted with an orb he is safe to run out and pop the orb like anyone else.

 

Also in phase 2 your tank can be put in a mind trap , we had an off tank assassin just go into dark charge stance right away and tank the boss for a few seconds while we broke the tank out.

 

Also in phase 2 you want to wait till no one is in the air to push the boss over to 30% transition phase. Wait till the person lands and then push the boss past 30%. You may have to stop dps entirely.

 

Phase 3 same thing stack in the middle unless the drill is coming down there. Take care of mind traps and orbs till the boss is debuffed with the drill. You don't have to worry about anyone being thrown in this phase. The tank can still be put into a mind trap though. People take care of their orbs is priority then boss dps 2nd priority and mind traps third.

 

 

 

This strategy eliminates alot of rng in the fight. It still sucks when a healer is thrown and another healer is put in a mind trap. Good time for the tank to use cooldowns and any people with heals to help heal the tank till at least one healer is out.

 

Good luck to you!

 

Rutilus Nex of The Twin Spears Server

Edited by andretious
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All of the strats in here are pretty much dead on to what we use and will result in a downed boss.

 

This fight is all about Lightning Ball control.

 

As soon as lightning balls spawn the people who get them have to drop whatever they are doing, quickly identify which one is theirs and run into it. The lighning balls will not go away unless they reach their target.

It helps to have a dedicated Sage/Sorc putting bubble on the people who get balls to avoid them taking too much damage.

Have your members make sure that they are full health and use their defensive cooldowns when they take a lightning ball and make them use a medpack when they are done.

It is critical that your members only run into THEIR OWN ball. Anything else will be suicide.

Resilience (duno what the sin equivalent is called) makes Shadows/Assasins immune to the balls damage.

 

Our Nightmare 16 kill:

 

^This is the Key.

 

Soa will only enrage after the 4th Pillar hit in Phase 3, so don't feel rushed. Control your balls and survive. Do that and you will win.

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The rest of the fight is practice, practice, practice... focus, pay attention, look for cues, and some more focus. There is a learning curve. Once you have beaten him and seen it done it becomes very easy.

 

Some people may never "get it" because they aren't articulate or focused enough to make good on the "lucky" half of attempts. Sorry, but these people are bad and should stick to alts.

.

 

Well said.

 

The fight is buggy but you can work around the bugs with situational awareness. Only two bugs cannot be mitigated :

 

1) Damage debuffs not being removed from Soa when killing ancient power sources. If the stacks don't go down by the time you are waiting at the 2nd drop point just exit area to minimize wasted time.

 

2) If tank is laggy he will believe he is smacking soa in the head with pillars on phase 3 when actually missing - this one really just is what it is - pick someone with a good ping and high graphics settings to main tank and off tank.

 

Everything else can be worked around by skilled players who have very strong situational awareness. This implies that clickers will have a lot of trouble with this fight and it is correct - it's hard to impossible to be kiting stray lightning, keeping awareness of what Soa is casting to know when it is optimal to be popping lightning, hitting damage consistently on mind traps and Soa and using target of target to identify lightning targets on stray lightning - while simultaneously trying to click skills to activate.

 

- Soa casts lift after mind trap. If mind-trap is mid-cast wait for someone to get lifted before popping and if you are lifted call it out so people can move out of the way.

 

- For the lightning balls, many times people are targeting tthe wrong balls. Use target of target on a mousebind to identify your ball if you don't have enough time to get it to follow you to confirm.

 

- Turn off friendly player nameplates, turn on enemy NPC nameplates.

 

- @ 33% prepare to halt DPS on Soa and start stacking west.

 

- In Phase 3, set tank as focus target so you can immediately hit Soa when his shield is down.

 

- Practice, practice, practice. At least until you get to a point where everyone gets it other than one or two and then swap those people out.

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In summary, you want to go into phase 3 with your battle rez. You want to also have everyone alive. Requires good raid awareness in phase 2 as well as good communication. Like someone mentioned, when ever people are targeted by the lightning ball, you drop what you are doing and get to your ball, make sure you're not low on health and don't cross other people's paths. Also get Mind cubes fast and if you're tossed in the air, well you gotta hope you land and can heal up fast. It's important that people stay at full health during phase 2. If you can get into phase 3 with all people and your battle rez then it's just practice after that.
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I have a piece of advice that helped our guild out a lot. First, make sure all of your members are watching their chat window, the red warnings that pop up mid screen don't last very long. Second, use the mini map! The location of the ball spawns will show on the minimap. We typically call them out over (insert voice chat option). Also, if you aren't melee heavy its nice to let melee stay on the boss and have range burn the mind traps. This helps out a ton when ball lightning spawns next to/on the mind trap. I have my camera zoomed out pretty far and call melee off the mind traps if ball lightning is spawning in the vicinity. Again, they will show up on the mini map BEFORE they actually spawn. This helped us a ton.
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When we were learning this fight, my thoughts occasionally lead to 'there's some luck / RNG involved here...' but once you get better at this fight you realize there is no luck / RNG at all. It's all about execution.

 

As a previous poster mentioned, ball control is the most important. I would change that to aggressive ball control. Being lifted by Force Cyclone before you can soak a ball is not 'luck.' If you're aggressive in soaking, this will not happen.

 

There also isn't luck as far as him resetting goes. I'm assuming we're talking about tank -> mindtrap and then Soa resetting. This is a bug, no question about it. Soa is looking for the tank and eventually evades when he can't find him/her. All you have to do is TAUNT Soa. He really doesn't hit hard, and anyone with a taunt (Shadow/Vanguard/Guardian) can flip their tank stance on for defensive bonuses. You do this, he doesn't reset. No luck involved.

 

Your gear is also irrelevant, more or less. Soa is NOT a gear check (within reason). You obviously cannot go into the fight in all tionese and expect to win (on hard mode). The only time there is a remote DPS / gear check is phase 3. Everything else prior to that is a communication, coordination, and competence check.

 

This fight has a TOUGH learning curve for your raiders. It will seem like you're not getting it. But then one night, you will nail the troublesome mechanics and get a kill. It takes times. Work on your communication, coordination, and overall raid competencies and you'll get a kill.

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Don't drop him to 30% if a player is being thrown around the room. This is not a bug, when his health hits 30% he will destroy the floor. If your mother was being thrown around the room, would you knock him below 30% then? No, because you don't want your mother falling to her death (I hope). If you've got a guy in the air, stop DPSing for a couple of seconds. Edited by VampireGranny
typo
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The lightning balls only spawn on the southern half of the platform. You should have your whole group sit in the middle while FACING south. This way everyone will be accountable for the lightning balls because they'll be able to see it.

 

This fight is EXTREMELY heavy on individual skill and ability to react. Have one person go left and one person go right (we use the person on top to go left and bottom right) The lightning balls will gravitate towards them and boom! Pop goes the ball. They need to pop those balls ASAP though because if you get four up at a time, it's no good.

 

Also, you should require your members to turn on the enemy npc name plates in the interface in order to distinguish dead lightning balls from live ones. Then have them turn their camera distance on max so that they can see the lightning strikes on the pillars and be ready. We split our dps on the boss and on the mindtraps so that we can reduce our time spent in that phase as well.

 

Also, if you're dps can close the gap at the third phase then you can try three healers, which is what we do.

 

do they really spawn only on the southern half of the platform???

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Flip it to nightmare for a night or two of attempts. The balls in phase 2 WILL kill The person if done wrong, instead of just usually stressing healers (which usually snowballs into a wipe). This is the best way for everyone to learn the individual responsibility needed in the fight. After a night or two, flip it back to HM and the fight will feel easy all of a sudden!

 

hahaha good advice

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