We have killed this boss on hard mode a few times now. Tonight however he was simply unbeatable due to the random generator.

Scenario 1: One player has to pop an Orb, he does so and is at 5% health, immediately after popping the Orb he is picked up and hurled around. There is no chance this player will survive as we can't heal them while theyre flying.

Scenario 2: 1 Healer is picked up and hurled around, the second healer is put into a mind trap.. er ok, no healers for several seconds. If theres any Orbs to pop at that time or your tank takes a couple of badly timed big hits your screwed.

Scenario 3: Both healers are targeted by Orbs, nothing you can do really except pray the one nearest you is the one thats targeting you so you can pop it and get back to healing the rest of the group, if you have to wait until your Orb is in the clear, chances are someone has been picked up and the healers haven't had a chance to heal people up.

Scenario 4: One healer is either trapped or flying and the Tank gets picked by an orb. Thats a crazy amount of healing needed by 1 healer.

Scenario 5: One person is targeted by an orb and gets picked up, you have milliseconds to pop the Orb in this case or the Orb will just wander through the raid until the guy thats flying lands at too low health to survive the blast from the Orb thats waiting for him.

Bah, this is a great encounter thats completely spoiled by situations that for the most part are completely out of your control.

Either we are missing something vital in our attempts or you just need to be really lucky as to who gets picked by each ability. Any suggestions?

While I agree, those things happen, they aren't 'impossible' to counter.

- Many classes have heals, even if they aren't heal spec'd. They need to cover when one or both of your healers are incapacitated.

- Many classes have self dmg mitigating abilities, these should always be used before running into an orb (nobody should drop to 5% health from one orb, ever).

Good luck, it's a buggy fight at times -- but your issues above are more mechanics than bugs.

~Taz

The mechanics of the fight are so jacked up that BW should really do some tweaking to the fight.

Where it stands now, with the RNG mechanic issues and the occasional bugs, the encounter exists to frustrate people.

It's just a poor implementation of a raid boss.

A common mistake that I've seen a lot of raiders recently fall into with this fight is that you can not just go through the motions and expect Soa to die. Just looking at the odds, it is clear that a 7min fight with this guy is built where something will go wrong. This is a fight built to see how you react to the unexpected, and if the DPS thinks they can just eat balls and shoot lighting to kill him then they are sadly mistaken.

Now it sounds like your group has all the vitals down and know what they are doing. It's just a matter of everyone putting forth there part in survival and doing what they can to survive that 1 or 2 bad moments that are inevitable.

The number one thing that allows this is to make sure everyone is topped off at 100% as much as possible. I'm a healer myself and I know it's incredibly hard to achieve this, but when you achieve the ability to both predict and anticipate when and where the damage is going to strike, it becomes possible.

The second best thing is to have everyone understand that their HP needs to remain above 50% especially after popping an orb. Shields, medpacs, self heals, cooldowns, anything the individual can do to maintain this every time will give that edge to surviving that unlucky moment.

Last is the requirement or awareness to the surroundings. Don't always assume the orbs will be taken care of cause mostly likely at some point, they wont. Simple awareness will allow the avoidance of extra damage from orbs which will more then likely lead to some other bad situation from occurring.

As a side tip, I believe the most common problem for random deaths are related to people going airborne before orbs are popped or people landing on orbs after being in the air. As a solution, my guild has pressured everyone to immediately run for the outside ring as soon as their name appears. If they wait for the calling through vent/TS then they are wrong and putting everyone else in danger. This has ensured orbs to never go to the center.

Anything else outside this situation can be resolved with calling when healers are out of action and making sure the raiders know what they can do to help.

Scenario 1 Solution:

1) He shouldn't be dropping to 5% in the first place, healers should be able to help mitigate some of the dmg (merc or sorcs can). He can pop a cooldown before busting the orb.

2) You cannot heal a person once they are in the whirlwind, this is true. But hots WILL heal them. Therefore, you should have any hots you CAN have on a ball target on them BEFORE they pop the ball--i.e. as soon as their name appears.

Scenario 2 Solution:

1) Any time a healer is incapacitated, it should be communicated to the raid. This means that the ball poppers should be relying more on personal cooldowns than healer preventing dmg.

2) When BOTH healers are incapacitated, they should clearly communicate that there are NO HEALS. The tank should use cooldowns appropriately. Ball poppers should use medpacs and personal cooldowns. In addition, this would be the key for the dps mercs, ops, or sorcs to help cover heals.

3) As soon as one of the healers is available again, they should call that they are healing AND they should call when they feel that you are out of the "danger zone."

As an aside: when I killed this before all of the nerfs to it... I was the only full specced healer in the raid. The only time anybody else healed was when I was out of the game because of a whirlwind or mindtrap. It is completely possible to survive this fight with the healers out of commission simultaneously. I promise.

Scenario 3 Solution:

The situation is never that dire. If both healers are targeted by orbs, that means nobody but 2 healers plus the tank are taking damage. This is the time to communicate to the tank that he's going to have light heals on him. Hit your personal cooldowns (or shield yourself if you're a sorc without a personal cooldown) and take care of it. You have plenty of time to be smart here and not cause a wipe. Something that might help prevent your scenario is assigning one healer to north side and one healer to south side. That way the ball for the other healer will never head toward them.

Scenario 4 Solution:

This is the perfect opportunity for a tank to use a cooldown. The tank isn't taking a ridiculous amount of dmg unless he's doing the wrong thing. He should be able to blow a cooldown and be fine.

Scenario 5 Solution:

The timers are not so close together that you have "milliseconds" to handle the orb. There's generally 5 seconds in between the two timers. If the whirlwind DOES drop you right on the orb, it sucks and you should use a battlerez, but responding quickly to your orbs will prevent it.

Bah, this is a great encounter thats completely spoiled by situations that for the most part are completely out of your control.

Hopefully you can see from my explanations for each scenario that they ARE in your control for the most part. A lot of your problems seem to be centered around heals. The healing on this fight really isn't intense. In phase 2 there should be at maximum 4 people to heal at any given time: 1 tank, 2 ball poppers, 1 whirlwind target.

Healer 1 can be the "tank healer" that means their primary responsibility is the tank. That doesn't mean that they don't heal the other people, it means that when the tank dips, the tank should come before the ball popper. Healer 2 can be the "raid healer." (sorcs are very good at this job for this fight) This means they are responsible for reading the raid warning and pre-healing the ball poppers. Bubble & Resurgence for each as a sorc, a shield to reduce dmg from a bounty hunter. Healer 1 CAN AND SHOULD help with this. If they cast 1 instant heal on 2 targets, that's 3 seconds off of the tank and the tank is NOT TAKING THAT MUCH DAMAGE.

Anyway, this is all pretty straight forward. You can do it. Step one is taking responsibility for how your raid handles the mechanics of the fight and addressing the problems you encounter.

Scenario 1 Solution:

1) He shouldn't be dropping to 5% in the first place, healers should be able to help mitigate some of the dmg (merc or sorcs can). He can pop a cooldown before busting the orb.

2) You cannot heal a person once they are in the whirlwind, this is true. But hots WILL heal them. Therefore, you should have any hots you CAN have on a ball target on them BEFORE they pop the ball--i.e. as soon as their name appears.

 

Scenario 2 Solution:

1) Any time a healer is incapacitated, it should be communicated to the raid. This means that the ball poppers should be relying more on personal cooldowns than healer preventing dmg.

2) When BOTH healers are incapacitated, they should clearly communicate that there are NO HEALS. The tank should use cooldowns appropriately. Ball poppers should use medpacs and personal cooldowns. In addition, this would be the key for the dps mercs, ops, or sorcs to help cover heals.

3) As soon as one of the healers is available again, they should call that they are healing AND they should call when they feel that you are out of the "danger zone."

 

As an aside: when I killed this before all of the nerfs to it... I was the only full specced healer in the raid. The only time anybody else healed was when I was out of the game because of a whirlwind or mindtrap. It is completely possible to survive this fight with the healers out of commission simultaneously. I promise.

 

Scenario 3 Solution:

The situation is never that dire. If both healers are targeted by orbs, that means nobody but 2 healers plus the tank are taking damage. This is the time to communicate to the tank that he's going to have light heals on him. Hit your personal cooldowns (or shield yourself if you're a sorc without a personal cooldown) and take care of it. You have plenty of time to be smart here and not cause a wipe. Something that might help prevent your scenario is assigning one healer to north side and one healer to south side. That way the ball for the other healer will never head toward them.

 

Scenario 4 Solution:

This is the perfect opportunity for a tank to use a cooldown. The tank isn't taking a ridiculous amount of dmg unless he's doing the wrong thing. He should be able to blow a cooldown and be fine.

 

Scenario 5 Solution:

The timers are not so close together that you have "milliseconds" to handle the orb. There's generally 5 seconds in between the two timers. If the whirlwind DOES drop you right on the orb, it sucks and you should use a battlerez, but responding quickly to your orbs will prevent it.

 

 

 

Hopefully you can see from my explanations for each scenario that they ARE in your control for the most part. A lot of your problems seem to be centered around heals. The healing on this fight really isn't intense. In phase 2 there should be at maximum 4 people to heal at any given time: 1 tank, 2 ball poppers, 1 whirlwind target.

 

Healer 1 can be the "tank healer" that means their primary responsibility is the tank. That doesn't mean that they don't heal the other people, it means that when the tank dips, the tank should come before the ball popper. Healer 2 can be the "raid healer." (sorcs are very good at this job for this fight) This means they are responsible for reading the raid warning and pre-healing the ball poppers. Bubble & Resurgence for each as a sorc, a shield to reduce dmg from a bounty hunter. Healer 1 CAN AND SHOULD help with this. If they cast 1 instant heal on 2 targets, that's 3 seconds off of the tank and the tank is NOT TAKING THAT MUCH DAMAGE.

 

Anyway, this is all pretty straight forward. You can do it. Step one is taking responsibility for how your raid handles the mechanics of the fight and addressing the problems you encounter.

I see what you're trying to do there, but your "solutions" for Situations 1 & 2 don't really cover it. There is nothing you can do in either of those cases.

and.. since when did bug fixes = nerfs? Even still, being successful at raid content in this game is less a matter of skill/gear and more a matter of luck and beating bugs.

To the OP: I feel your pain. We've got the short end of the stick when it comes to rng as well. Our last run through there on hard-mode, one of our healers had to hit his ball and was immediately taken up in the whirlwind. Not expecting that, our second ball popper .. popped his as well, seemingly at the exact same time.. our second healer got taken into a mind trap. First healer was killed upon landing from whirlwind, second healer got out of the mind trap and could never fully recover on his own with the additional balls and tank damage. Every time we face Soa, there is either a bug to beat or a (near-impossible) rng.

I see what you're trying to do there, but your "solutions" for Situations 1 & 2 don't really cover it. There is nothing you can do in either of those cases.

 

I disagree, as a mercenary healer I watch the people running for the orbs and time my heals to go off just after contact. One cast heal to one immediately followed by a instant cast heal to the other, ensured their health is high enough to survive what ever could follow that. I don't do this every time due to obvious reasons but half the time I'm aware if someone is already in the air or not based on what I see in the raid frames. On top of that, when I go myself I use my own bubble shield and take only around 35% of my health.

There is far worse things then situations 1 and 2 occurring in that fight. All of which involves someone doing something stupid before hand. Taking extra ticks of damage from orbs, hitting two orbs at once, not hitting the orbs at all. These are the unpredictable situations that, when conjoined with the RNG, will lead to health being around 5% or less

I disagree, as a mercenary healer I watch the people running for the orbs and time my heals to go off just after contact. One cast heal to one immediately followed by a instant cast heal to the other, ensured their health is high enough to survive what ever could follow that. I don't do this every time due to obvious reasons but half the time I'm aware if someone is already in the air or not based on what I see in the raid frames. On top of that, when I go myself I use my own bubble shield and take only around 35% of my health.

 

There is far worse things then situations 1 and 2 occurring in that fight. All of which involves someone doing something stupid before hand. Taking extra ticks of damage from orbs, hitting two orbs at once, not hitting the orbs at all. These are the unpredictable situations that, when conjoined with the RNG, will lead to health being around 5% or less

I can appreciate your perspective, and I can make the assumption that you are a very good healer and your guild is lucky to have you. But what happens if you're in a mind trap and the other healer gets pulled in the air? just like the scenario I mentioned in my earlier post. There is nothing a healer can do about that, just like I said.

One of our attempts, our Sorc healer blew up his ball, started casting a heal on himself and was immediately pulled into the air. Even with that, he WOULD HAVE survived the fall damage if he hadn't landed on top of another lightning ball. Which will supposedly be fixed in 1.2... but I'm not holding my breath.

I can appreciate your perspective, and I can make the assumption that you are a very good healer and your guild is lucky to have you. But what happens if you're in a mind trap and the other healer gets pulled in the air? just like the scenario I mentioned in my earlier post. There is nothing a healer can do about that, just like I said.

 

One of our attempts, our Sorc healer blew up his ball, started casting a heal on himself and was immediately pulled into the air. Even with that, he WOULD HAVE survived the fall damage if he hadn't landed on top of another lightning ball. Which will supposedly be fixed in 1.2... but I'm not holding my breath.

I never really understood where the problem arises when one healer is tossed and the other is trapped, both effects last around 10 seconds and the only damage the occurs during this is two orbs, no one should die in the process since everyone should be high on health anyways and it's not like someone will take an orb and get tossed because a healer is already in the air. The tank will take a few hits which aren't bad and become practically nothing if they decide to pop a cooldown.

Sure when the healer lands and the other is broken free, there is a ton of damage to be healed up for but that's the exact moment cooldowns are made for. I've never really noticed an issue with getting everyone at least at 50% by the time the next air toss occurs and setting priory immediately to who gets the orbs next.

and I agree completely with the orb -> toss -> orb combo is just ruthless. My guild has done everything we could think of to avoid that one and it still occurs occasionally. Not enough for it to be a game breaker though.

I see what you're trying to do there, but your "solutions" for Situations 1 & 2 don't really cover it. There is nothing you can do in either of those cases.

 

and.. since when did bug fixes = nerfs? Even still, being successful at raid content in this game is less a matter of skill/gear and more a matter of luck and beating bugs.

It's your choice whether to take advice or not. But my suggestions are coming from the perspective of somebody who has been doing this boss 2-3 times per week for 2 1/2 months. The healing really isn't as intense as the OP made it out to be and if your raid cannot survive when one or both healers is incapacitated, you have larger problems than "rng."

As for "bug fixes", the fight was directly nerfed. Balls were nerfed to do less damage. Mind traps were nerfed to have less health. The number of balls spawning was nerfed in phase 3. The whirlwind & mindtrap rng was nerfed so that you wouldn't have the healer out of an entire phase. LITERALLY one night I didn't see but 20 seconds of phase 2 on multiple attempts. This is not a bug fix. This is manipulating the mechanic to make it easier for groups to down it. In addition, the raid warning announcement of who is being targetted by balls was implemented. This is a HUGE nerf as this was one of the most difficult parts of the fight initially.

Being successful in raids right now does not take a lot of gear or skill, I agree. But it has nothing to do with rng. Name one single fight that is rng-centric. Sure there are attempts that are more difficult than others because of luck, but that doesn't prevent you from downing the boss. The number of ACTUAL bugs in the endgame right now is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than these forums would let on.

TL;DR: Stop blaming your lack of progress on rng or bugs. There ARE bugs and there ARE some attempts that are more complicated because of luck, but you can overcome them with organization, communication, and a tiny bit of skill. Come to these forums for suggestions and help, but if you're too stubborn to listen, don't blame the game for your own failings.

Sure when the healer lands and the other is broken free, there is a ton of damage to be healed up for but that's the exact moment cooldowns are made for. I've never really noticed an issue with getting everyone at least at 50% by the time the next air toss occurs and setting priory immediately to who gets the orbs next.

/agree

To add to this real quick, something I've found that helps in this exact scenario is to call out exactly who I'm going to heal. That way both healers are more effective at topping the raid off.

About the only thing in this fight that can kill you timing wise is eating a ball and getting tossed immediately after. This is a perfect situation to save medpacks for, or healers to throw hots on someone right after they explode their ball (They did nerf the hell out of this fight when they tell you with Giant Red Letters who lightning balls are targeting...surprisingly enough these will be the same people you should worry about landing a hot on quickly, amazing how simple that idea is). You do get a combat rezz for a reason. All the other "RNG" claims are situations that good communication and play can solve by having a plan to deal with.

If a healer getting tossed and one in the trap suddenly means your raid dies, your dps needs to break them out faster and the raid needs to figure their **** out. The only person who should be taking damage in this scenario is the tank and the healer in the air. Everyone else can maintain until they break the trap and the tank can pop cooldowns.

Scenario 5: One person is targeted by an orb and gets picked up, you have milliseconds to pop the Orb in this case or the Orb will just wander through the raid until the guy thats flying lands at too low health to survive the blast from the Orb thats waiting for him.

I got this Bug 3 times in a row, I popped the LB once but then when I was in the air I was already dead. What you have posted here are good examples of bugs and a lack of proper testing.

TL;DR: Stop blaming your lack of progress on rng or bugs. There ARE bugs and there ARE some attempts that are more complicated because of luck, but you can overcome them with organization, communication, and a tiny bit of skill. Come to these forums for suggestions and help, but if you're too stubborn to listen, don't blame the game for your own failings.

I'm not "blaming" any lack of progress on anything. My guild didn't start operations until about a month ago, once a week. We've cleared 4/5 HM EV and will be doing KP this week on HM and I'm completely satisfied with that. I could care less where my progress stands compared to other guilds.

The intent of my original post was to agree with the OP, I just happened to come across your "holier-than-thou" snotty post and thought it needed to be responded to. In addition, when the boss resets 3 times in a row because someone got stuck when the floor fell out from under us.. I think I can safely blame the game if I so choose. Those 3 in a row came just after we spent an hour fighting a bug on the council (fight>reset>fight>reset...). Oh, and did I mention the puzzle bug? Bug after bug after bug after bug.

Excuse me for expecting end-game content to work properly when the game has been out for 3 months.