My guild is behind the curve so we're still working on HM TFB progression. We've been having a lot of problems with Oper IX, and I was hoping to get some advice. We were using MoX and I recently convinced everyone to upload their logs to TorParse at the end of the night for a more thorough inspection.

 

That said, I'm not entirely sure what to look for. I'm fairly certain that our DDs are pulling their weight since cores are dropping on time. However, we seem to struggle with keeping people alive through yellow. How can I determine if this is a tanking problem (i.e. tanks not geared and/or using cooldowns appropriately) or a healing problem (i.e. healers not putting out enough healing)?

 

When we fail, it's generally because we have a tank die on yellow shortly after the second champ comes out (we use a setup which has one tank channeling). I only have a couple parses to work with so far, but those show the tank taking 80-90k damage during the ~45s of yellow and receiving 50-60k healing during that same time frame.

 

Thanks in advance for any help/advice!

Are you failing purple? What is your full channeling setup? (i.e. do you have a DPS in the middle on every phase? do you have two DPS assigned to blue?) Yellow is the hardest phase to heal in Hard Mode, and that transition point is quite difficult if your tanks and healers aren't on top of things.

Hey thasensei,

 

if yellow phase is the problem, it might be a healer/tanking problem. This phase is hard, there is a lot of dmg incoming and with the healing debuff there isnt much place for mistakes. We have one tank channeling there aswell and the other one is tanking both regulators. One healer is in mid and all the dds are free for the cores.

 

Some advices i can hand out are

 

for the active tank:

- tank the first one with ur back to the pillar (orange or purple console)

- taunt the second one immediately (elsewise the healer in the mid might be stuned) and use ur stunebreaker

- save all ur cd for the moment the 2nd regulator spawns

- focus then on kicking one of the regulators and mark this one, so that the dps can focus it aswell

 

for the healers:

- save ur stunebreaker aswell and use it immediately if u get stuned in the mid

- if u have sorcer healers, save the bubble for the moment the tank gets the healing debuff

- try to time ur healcast that they will be finished when the tank looses the debuff

- just pump all ur heals into the tank xD

 

for the dps:

- make sure (especially the dps in the purple phase) that all recognizers are killed, the tank should just tank the regulators

- (when the cores are down) get one dps for kicking the "off-regulator" and the other ones for focusing the other one

 

I would say, any class is able to tank the two regulators. But if u have take a jugger for that. With saberreflect used when u have the debuffs u can avoid most dmg and support ur healers enormously. Besides that u have more then enough cds for that phase.

 

Although this arent special secrets, i hope i could help. For more advises ur whole setup is needed.

Good luck and have fun xD

Edited September 24, 2013 by Leylea

I really prefer the set-up with rDPS in the middle on both orange and yellow. It makes it much easier to tank. You tank two regulators for maximum 10-15 secs. Just have the DPS in the middle pop adrenal when first big adds spawns and burn hard even if he/she runs low on ammo in the end. On my gunslinger I can actually kill first add before second one spawns most of the time. If you have first bosses on farm you'll get there as well.

 

In our set-up we have 2 healers on purple, but can be healer and DPS as well so that healers are not the same colour.

 

Also it helps massively to stop DPS when core is almost down (one hit from dying) and there is a lot of time on timer and finish off any existing adds. We either do that or push extra hard and not get second add. You can actually get only one big add in yellow easily with high DPS.

We have a DD in the middle for all phases with a tank channeling yellow/orange and a healer channeling blue/purple. The setup that's worked best for us thus far is:

Color: (Middle/Channel)

Blue: DD/Healer

Orange: rDD/Tank

Purple: DD/Healer

Yellow: rDD/Tank

 

As it stands, we do not intentionally fail any phase, and generally we hold on the cores as long as possible to make sure we get the adds down.

 

Our free tank on yellow taunts the newly spawned strongs at the end of purple, then picks up the first champ out of yellow. Things get a little hairy here if the strongs don't die before the second champ spawns; two strongs and two champs just seems to be too much incoming damage.

 

However, even when the strongs do die on time, we still struggle with keeping that tank alive. I'm just not really sure how to tell where we need to improve (i.e. damage, tanking, healing) to get through that phase.

It sounds like you're doing the nightmare mode strategy. The problem with having a tank channel on Yellow and Orange is, like in Nightmare mode, it's really hard to get the first Regulator down before the second one spawns. Our guild's best ranged DPS parsed a 3.2k in 72s, and he's only able to get the first Regulator to about 20% before the second one arrives (in Nightmare Mode; I'm fairly sure he could do it in HM). Having a single tank with both Regulators is a *real* problem due to the healing debuff. If you really want to not fail a phase (good practice for nightmare), then you should probably have your healers channel on Yellow and Orange, rather than your tanks. It's not *that* hard to solo heal those phases (especially in hard mode), and having two tanks splits the load, doubles cooldown value and avoids getting healing debuffed into oblivion. If you can't solo heal yellow and orange, your healers will need to off-DPS, because that first Regulator *needs* to die in a hurry, which means you're practically solo healing it anyway.

 

With all that said, it is easier by far to just fail purple. It doesn't work in nightmare mode, but it makes things so much easier in hard mode. Have your DPS channel on each phase. Tanks in the middle on Blue and Purple. When Purple comes up, first clean up the Regulators from Orange, then kill one core. Group up, pop a sniper shield if you have it, and kill the Rectifier as soon as it spawns at the failure point. AoE down the Recognizers and then kill the remaining core. Blow your cooldowns on Yellow for the win. Two tanks focus targeting a single Regulator should be able to down it before the phase transition, which leaves one Regulator and the boss alive at the transition point. Still a lot of damage, so have the tanks pop cooldowns and it's smooth sailing from there. Just make sure that the DPS are mostly topped off when the go to kill the second purple core, because the AoE DoT ticks pretty hard after you've failed a phase.

Edited September 24, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

Towards the end of purple have the 3rd free DD come from core to middle and kill small adds before going to cores on yellow. We generally have our DD's help on adds as much as possible. Also there isn't much healing to be done in purple so healer can kill them as you have two healers free there in your setup. In our HM progression our scoundrel healer found out that he can do pretty good damage if needed (he also usually helps on cores in blue as we chave two mDPS in middle and on button in blue).

sounds like the rdps in the middle on yellow and orange isnt pulling his weight and getting the first big guy down fast enough, its the key to moving to the next phase/boss cleanly without too much damage happening.

 

Also if dps on cores is ok you can have another dps peel off near the end of yellow to help dps the adds before the operator spawns - it totally depends if you have enough to get the cores down if you can do that though.

With regards to some comments above I have never seen a healer doing the channeling before, certainly not during the yellow phase, I am a bit surprised that works for people. Personally I stand in the yellow circle during that phase and heal, it is really important to get everybody topped up for the transition between yellow and the boss, it really is not a time that you want to be single healing.

 

If you want to get fancy and not fail purple, then at least start doing that after you have already succeeded at the HM I reckon. It is a lot easier if you fail that one.

Try putting a ranged in the middle for orange + yellow. If the 1st regulator isn't dead or close to by the time the 2nd one comes out it'll be an issue. For HM the ideal strat for not failing purple would be a healer + dps for blue, tank + Ranged dps for orange, heal + dps for purple, tank + Ranged dps for yellow. Tanks + dps channel. Assign interrupts for the dps in middle and you should be good to go. Nightmare is a different story. Edited September 25, 2013 by TrillOG-

Healer channeling (nightmare mode): We've tried a couple different arrangements, and this works the best by far, at least for our group. We're not the only ones either. As I recall, both Death and Taxes and Drop it Like it's Hoth use this channeling arrangement.

If you are progressing HM (as you mentioned you are behind most guilds here) trying to do NiM strategy is not best in my opinion.

 

Most problems in yellow comes from two things:

 

- Recognizers are not killed when yellow starts (left overs from purple). This is why failing purple is such a good strategy. You have enough time to kill one core and bring other one down to 10-20%. Then fail purple. Kill Rectifier and new wave of adds and as soon as you clear them kill remaining core. This will give you clear entry into Yellow phase. Also when all dps go for adds in failed purple, have your healers to top them off. Your healers should never have to follow DPS and only focus tanks. Only heal DPS when they come over to clear adds. when i was looking thru the logs, damage from adds in pruple if left over in Yellow is very big. They have weak attack for 1-2k and then ever few seconds they hit for 5-6k. Together with Regulator damage this adds up to some huge damage. Also don't need to interput Regulators. All this does is knocks the tank down for one second with no damage to follow. I have checked the logs for it and big hit from Regulators is not to be avoided by means of interrupt. "Fragment!" damage is instant you can dodge it/shield it etc, but just have to heal thru it. I often stay a bit on Recognizers in the begining of yellow if for some reason two will spawn just we enter yellow

 

- healers healing DPS rather then tank due to high damage. We now have one tank on this phase on both Regulators and having both healers healing him during yellow is not a problem (as long as there are no Recognisers).

 

 

Recognizers can go after DPS and do a lot of damage to them which means healers will have to heal much more. We have one tank single tanut one add and other tank from the middle taunts one that goes for channeler. We also clear adds at the beginning of the purple phase as we fail purple anyway there is no need to sit on cores straight away.

 

Our typical setup:

 

DPS-Tank

DPS-Tank

DPS-Healer

DPS-Healer

 

DPS always channeling

 

this is from progressing times and now it goes much smoother ....:

 

 

ps. we currently thinking of doing more of NiM strategy with DPS-DPS first and Tank-Healer last phaseto have four DPS available for cores.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Macio

I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said, other than this: Make sure your tanks have adrenals for the regulators. It's pretty much the only place in hard mode I use them consistently, but the healers tell me it makes my (assassin) tank less prone to being spiked. Also, make sure the DPS is interrupting End Line on the first regulator to spawn. If the second one comes out before the first one is dead, the tank should 'rupt End Line on the second one.

I just wanted to follow up and thank everyone for all the suggestions and advice. We went in this week with a new arrangement, and while we didn't down it we're consistently getting into the second phase without losing anyone. At least for us, the key really seemed to be to have two tanks free on yellow to split the healing debuff.

 

At this point we're probably making things more complicated than it needs to be, but here's what's working for us (just in case anybody's curious):

 

(Channel/Middle)

Blue: DPS/Tank

Orange: Tank/rDPS

Purple: Healer/DPS

Yellow: Healer/rDPS

 

On Orange, we have two DPS solo cores and two on champs to make sure they die quickly. We don't fail purple which means we end up carrying two strongs into yellow. Towards the end of yellow, we have one DPS peel off the cores and help finish off champs, just to make sure we don't end up with two champs and the boss all up at the same time.

 

Another thing that seems to help a lot is to hold the second core in each phase until the last few seconds to give us extra time to kill adds.

- healers healing DPS rather then tank due to high damage. We now have one tank on this phase on both Regulators and having both healers healing him during yellow is not a problem (as long as there are no Recognisers).

Wait, healers are suppose to heal on Operator IX?

 

Strictly from a healers point of view.

 

1. Healer has to dps hard, but make sure you have the ability to spam heal the tank at any moment.

2. Interupt End of the Line.

3. If tank does not pick up a add. Damage it asap. You can't have it run to the person in the middle, the person channeling or to dps on cores. If you run out of the range of the middle picking up a add, run back within range of the middle so that person in the middle can help you kill the add or heal you.

4. Do not use AoE attacks or splash damage attacks.

5. Between adds, do whatever you can to restore energy/force as quickly as possible. Sawbones this is easy, use diagnostics scan to top off tanks, yourself, other healer, person in middle or channeling.

6. We have found it easier for Sage to concentrate more on heals and sawbones to worry more about getting adds down. As a healer just make sure you have a plan to get energy back up for the start of phase 2. As a sawbones I make sure I have 3 upperhands and coolhead up.

7. Phase 2 just heal people and throw down AOE (flyby) on adds and boss, hit boss with DoT as you can (I will also use pistol whip, just to help maintain upperhand). Break off heals when you have to move, don't wait for heal to finish.