I only named Dark Ward because it is the only assassin skill that helps against the hits in his burn phase. No idea why but those hits go through damage reduction and ignore defence chance(FT and MR) but they can be shielded.

And In his burn phase he actually hits as hard as raptus just that pretty much every real def is useless(again why i mentioned dark ward).

Edit: And every hit is as hard as raptus' abilities like rising slash. So imagine raptus doing one every 3 seconds without you flying to safety.

 

According to my logs, Xeno's Generate Urgency has no damage type, and I have defended it 0 times, but shielded it @ 71,4%. However, your statement that only Dark Ward is useful against it is false. An Assassin can use the following defensive cooldowns in the burn phase: Overcharge Saber (25% damage reduction. This will work on any attack in the game.) and Recklessness (boosts your Shield chance and Absorption), Dark Ward (not a cooldown, but the shield boost it gives does work). You can also use an Adrenal (Advanced Anodyne will work similar to Recklessness, Prototype Anodyne will just flat out reduce the damage you take).

 

On that note, a Juggernaut could use Invincible and Enraged Defense, and a Powertech could only use Energy Shield (and Kolto Overload of course, but, you know). This puts Assassin on first place when it comes to who is the best tank for Xeno. You can easily solotank it as well, since you can Force Shroud the start of Thermal Tolerance Evaluation and then either Force Speed or Phase Walk out of line of sight so the cast is terminated. If you time your Shrouds right, you take zero stacks throughout the whole fight. You can use the Force Cloak-shroud (utility) to boost your immunity time if you use Shroud too early, just remember to taunt after cloaking.

 

In the last phase, with an Assassin tank in full 220 gear, I took 7 hits of Generate Urgency at 8m HM while solotanking before I died. Total damage taken: 310k @ 8356 dtps. Both healers were fulfilling secondary roles. Main healers would have had no problem keeping me up while tanking practically every Generate Urgency.

I only named Dark Ward because it is the only assassin skill that helps against the hits in his burn phase. No idea why but those hits go through damage reduction and ignore defence chance(FT and MR) but they can be shielded.

And In his burn phase he actually hits as hard as raptus just that pretty much every real def is useless(again why i mentioned dark ward).

Edit: And every hit is as hard as raptus' abilities like rising slash. So imagine raptus doing one every 3 seconds without you flying to safety.

 

It's the soft enrage. The healers can just "healing challenge" on you, so long as you manage the agro drop correctly, and win. The HPS required is substantially lower than what is required (for example) to clear the fourth phase of NiM Cartel Warlords, or any phase of Nightmare Dread Guard. It's spiky, but healers have solid tools for dealing with that problem.

 

I really don't see the issue. Xeno has always been an extremely spiky boss during the burn phase, and his tank damage has been moderately high at all points (given that no one else is taking damage throughout most of the fight, that seems more than fair). I doubt you can solo heal it now, which is a nice change seeing as I've solo healed this boss in HM in every tier since 1.0. But if the criterion for "difficult boss" is "requires a full raid group to clear", I think we have bigger problems.

Edited December 11, 2015 by KeyboardNinja

According to my logs, Xeno's Generate Urgency has no damage type, and I have defended it 0 times, but shielded it @ 71,4%. However, your statement that only Dark Ward is useful against it is false. An Assassin can use the following defensive cooldowns in the burn phase: Overcharge Saber (25% damage reduction. This will work on any attack in the game.) and Recklessness (boosts your Shield chance and Absorption), Dark Ward (not a cooldown, but the shield boost it gives does work). You can also use an Adrenal (Advanced Anodyne will work similar to Recklessness, Prototype Anodyne will just flat out reduce the damage you take).

 

On that note, a Juggernaut could use Invincible and Enraged Defense, and a Powertech could only use Energy Shield (and Kolto Overload of course, but, you know). This puts Assassin on first place when it comes to who is the best tank for Xeno. You can easily solotank it as well, since you can Force Shroud the start of Thermal Tolerance Evaluation and then either Force Speed or Phase Walk out of line of sight so the cast is terminated. If you time your Shrouds right, you take zero stacks throughout the whole fight. You can use the Force Cloak-shroud (utility) to boost your immunity time if you use Shroud too early, just remember to taunt after cloaking.

 

In the last phase, with an Assassin tank in full 220 gear, I took 7 hits of Generate Urgency at 8m HM while solotanking before I died. Total damage taken: 310k @ 8356 dtps. Both healers were fulfilling secondary roles. Main healers would have had no problem keeping me up while tanking practically every Generate Urgency.

 

You`re wrong on the part where Overcharge Saber works. I tested it and he hits the same wheter it's up or not. Probably because his attack has no damage type and Overcharge Saber only gives damage reduction for kinetic, energy, elemental and internal damage. I didn't test it but i think energy shield should be useless as well and since Overcharge Saber doesn't work i'm pretty sure armor and damage reduction in general is useless. The other assassin defs u mentioned i mentioned as well. The adrenal will be gone after a few hits though. Concerning invicible it should work just like sniper shield and sonic rebounder.

Any phase before that is a joke anyway, especially as assassin and i only referred to the burn phase.

Also 8m HM is a joke compared to 16m sm he actually hits harder in 16m sm and the problem is, as u mentioned, not heal output but spikes. (I'm mainly refering to 16m HM though)

 

It's the soft enrage. The healers can just "healing challenge" on you, so long as you manage the agro drop correctly, and win. The HPS required is substantially lower than what is required (for example) to clear the fourth phase of NiM Cartel Warlords, or any phase of Nightmare Dread Guard. It's spiky, but healers have solid tools for dealing with that problem.

 

I really don't see the issue. Xeno has always been an extremely spiky boss during the burn phase, and his tank damage has been moderately high at all points (given that no one else is taking damage throughout most of the fight, that seems more than fair). I doubt you can solo heal it now, which is a nice change seeing as I've solo healed this boss in HM in every tier since 1.0. But if the criterion for "difficult boss" is "requires a full raid group to clear", I think we have bigger problems.

 

The only thing i wanted to say is that in his burn phase in 16m hm he is the hardest hitting boss i've seen so far and i've seen all 8m nim bosses(no 16er though). This is even worse because your defs are pretty much useless and if u taunt in his burn phase you`ll pretty much die for sure. I don't consider this boss hard either but i can understand that it is difficult for some pug grps with low dmg output because in his burn phase u can't buy much time as a tank (even less if you`re unlucky and shield doesn't proc. I imagine being a Pt in that fight is a nightmare) . And it basically turns into a dps race at that point.

I never once called him difficult though.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Caphalon

We did SM today, a PUG, 16 people, all players at level 65, except me (levelk 63) anbd someone else at 64.

 

We wiped 3 or 4 times, each time with 1 % health on Xenoanalyst II left - and he one-shotted us while being at extremely low health himself.

 

These shots were in the range between 40k to almost 50k

and then 1 time at 61k

and then again between 73k and almost 80k.

 

I really have no idea what was going on there.

 

I did not inspect the other people's gear, because I thought we'd do it at level 65 anyway. But that was seemingly wrong.

 

Even in our last try - which we finished - half of our group was already one-shotted ( including me ), when we finally made it.

Edited December 13, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer

Having tried Xeno HM with both a PUG (several brutal wipes) and a Guild group (almost flawless, 2 for 2 with one wipe on the first attempt), I would say that the fight is challenging, but is made significantly more challenging by the fact that leveling with Comps is so incredibly easy and quick now, that we are getting a lot of people who are poorly geared and/or have no idea how to play their classes and manage roles in this type of content.

That is not a shot exclusively at new 60+ players though, it is also one that I have seen from experienced players and also noticed with myself on more than one occasion - getting into a situation as a healer where I need to queue up the abilities in a particular order to maximize my healing, and I have a brainfart because I have not had to do that for so long, after face-rolling a character from 1 to 65 without grouping or needing to engage more than a basic healing rotation.

Basically, all of those "little" learning experiences that I was used to seeing and taking on-board during the pre-4.0 leveling journey have been smoothed out, and I now have them coming together the first time I run what should be challenging but eminently doable content.

Conclusion: I have just gotten too fat and lazy

Haven't read the whole thread, but my best guess, this is just a load of horsecrap and crying because there is something that actually needs some awereness and skill or IT WILL KILL YOU. Beware some rant incoming:

 

Did a 16 m Storymode earlier as dps. Thought it would be easy. As I got there, there was some talk about how they will finally kill him. Turned out they already tried three times. No idea what happend then, but was about to see this soon. The one and only tank died not 10 sec in the fight, guess the healers where still asleep. I had aggro for the next 15 seconds, the end of my participation at this fight. 4 Healers where not enough to keep me alive till the tank was finally rezzed and taunted the boss from who ever had it after my death. I spent the next 4 minutes watching the people around me. It was a mess. People running circles around the pillars in search for the buttons, totally crap dps with rotations that doesn't even deserve this name. No mechanic was done and the boss went down with like 7 out of 16 peeps alive. And most of them were like, hey, gratz, that's great and so on. I just looted, said bye and left the group.

 

Welcome to the future of Casual-nothing-is-allowed-to-kill-me-or-I-make-a-thread-on-the-forum-SWTOR.

The other day we managed to pull it off with 2 'pug' tanks and a dps. Had a couple of wipes but the sin tank managed to find a solution for himself. It was shroud. Healing was a no challenge basically. At the burn phase the sniper shield made wonders. No one died.

I understand.

SWTOR changes.

Now is expected that hm are faceroll for any pug group you can find in tython and NiMs are a thing of the past.

 

With that logic in mind everything makes sense.

Someone found a hm he failed to pug. It has to be reported because that is not intended. Thanks op.

 

And yeah the: Bbut it wasnt that hard before? it makes it even more funny.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Dark_Mithrandir

At the burn phase the sniper shield made wonders. No one died.

 

Interesting point. That was guessed by a few people in our PUG already, but we had no proof whether it would work or not. I used it within the fight, 2 times, but totally forgot using it in what you all call "the burn phase".

 

Regarding mechanics :

 

I have seen 2 sortsof Xeno groups yet :

 

- One gkind of group that does the data cores

- One group that doesn't do them.

 

I have no idea whether not doing the data cores but instead concetrate all damage on Xeno really helps "burning him through",

but my fear is that people got used so much to this tactic before 4.0 that they believe that it would still work this way - and I fear that it doesn't.

 

So, is doing the data cores really that irrelevant in Xeno SM today ?

Or might they have changed something within this mechanic that now makes people get 1-shotted ?

Interesting point. That was guessed by a few people in our PUG already, but we had no proof whether it would work or not. I used it within the fight, 2 times, but totally forgot using it in what you all call "the burn phase".

 

Regarding mechanics :

 

I have seen 2 sortsof Xeno groups yet :

 

- One gkind of group that does the data cores

- One group that doesn't do them.

 

I have no idea whether not doing the data cores but instead concetrate all damage on Xeno really helps "burning him through",

but my fear is that people got used so much to this tactic before 4.0 that they believe that it would still work this way - and I fear that it doesn't.

 

So, is doing the data cores really that irrelevant in Xeno SM today ?

Or might they have changed something within this mechanic that now makes people get 1-shotted ?

 

It's a dps thing. If you have plenty of dos you can easily skip the cores and straight burn xeno. The one shot mechanic is the final push on the boss since it's his scripted last phase. It's not a true one shot but it hits for a lot on a random member of the raid and it will get faster depending on time to kill. If people stack up for aoe heals at this point it's much easier. The other tank mechanic is thermal tolerance where the tanks should be swapping and the targeted tank hides behind a pillar.

On that note, a Juggernaut could use Invincible and Enraged Defense, and a Powertech could only use Energy Shield (and Kolto Overload of course, but, you know). This puts Assassin on first place when it comes to who is the best tank for Xeno.

 

Shadows don't win by this as much as they used to. Vgs can actually resist most of thermal with super defend (riot gas+battle focus) as they kite behind the pillar, when the attack is defended they don't get stacks. Resilience also doesn't work in the burn phase anymore due to the removal of a damage type on that attack. Guardians also got blade blitz which lets them resist thermal as they get behind the pillars.

 

Once it hits final phase though Guardians become the vastly suppior tank. Saber reflect DOES work on that attack (at least in sm, my guardian isn't geared enough for hm) enure can used before the attack hits to raise your health above a one shot, warding call 40% damage reduction works, challenging call can give allies the 10k shield to protect from a one shot. Saber ward doesn't do anything due to no damage type and focus defense is practically useless due to the size of the hits.

I would actually even give vgs the edge over shadows in the final phase now. Sonic rebounds protection of the raid can be invaluable along with riot gas helping everyone not just yourself with energy shield and battle focus being good cds as well.

Shadows lost resilience for that phase, deflection doesn't work either due to no damage type, so all that's left is potency and battle focus, with shadows aoe taunt "buff" coming in behind the other 2 tanks.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Nic__

Shadows don't win by this as much as they used to. Vgs can actually resist most of thermal with super defend (riot gas+battle focus) as they kite behind the pillar, when the attack is defended they don't get stacks. Resilience also doesn't work in the burn phase anymore due to the removal of a damage type on that attack. Guardians also got blade blitz which lets them resist thermal as they get behind the pillars.

 

Once it hits final phase though Guardians become the vastly suppior tank. Saber reflect DOES work on that attack (at least in sm, my guardian isn't geared enough for hm) enure can used before the attack hits to raise your health above a one shot, warding call 40% damage reduction works, challenging call can give allies the 10k shield to protect from a one shot. Saber ward doesn't do anything due to no damage type and focus defense is practically useless due to the size of the hits.

I would actually even give vgs the edge over shadows in the final phase now. Sonic rebounds protection of the raid can be invaluable along with riot gas helping everyone not just yourself with energy shield and battle focus being good cds as well.

Shadows lost resilience for that phase, deflection doesn't work either due to no damage type, so all that's left is potency and battle focus, with shadows aoe taunt "buff" coming in behind the other 2 tanks.

 

Battle focus only gives damage reduction against the 4 "normal" damage types and doesn't work in the burn phase(Those hits don't have attack or dmg type). I assume energy shield should have the same problem. I'd actually be interested if riot gas works. It only increases mr defense so it should have no effect. Guardians can also use intervention on their co tank before he taunts though.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Caphalon

Battle focus only gives damage reduction against the 4 "normal" damage types and doesn't work in the burn phase(Those hits don't have attack or dmg type). I assume energy shield should have the same problem. I'd actually be interested if riot gas works. It only increases mr defense so it should have no effect. Guardians can also use intervention on their co tank before he taunts though.

 

Well, first of all, Battle Focus doesn't give damage reduction, but resist chance. Since the attack has no damage type, Battle Focus is useless. Riot Gas... I'm not sure, it should only be a MR accuracy debuff, but you never know with this game. Overcharge Saber, Energy Shield, Warding Call, Rebuke, Guarded by the Force, Serenity-aoe taunt, Blackout, utility-Cloud Mind, Gunslinger aoe-shield and all their Imperial counterparts will work on the attack, since they don't give reduction against any damage types, but to damage received.

Interesting point. That was guessed by a few people in our PUG already, but we had no proof whether it would work or not. I used it within the fight, 2 times, but totally forgot using it in what you all call "the burn phase".

 

Regarding mechanics :

 

I have seen 2 sortsof Xeno groups yet :

 

- One gkind of group that does the data cores

- One group that doesn't do them.

 

I have no idea whether not doing the data cores but instead concetrate all damage on Xeno really helps "burning him through",

but my fear is that people got used so much to this tactic before 4.0 that they believe that it would still work this way - and I fear that it doesn't.

 

So, is doing the data cores really that irrelevant in Xeno SM today ?

Or might they have changed something within this mechanic that now makes people get 1-shotted ?

 

So basically you have 8 minutes to get Xeno to 20%ish health or he will enrage. So if you skip the cores, you can theoretically have more dps on the boss the whole time. On SM this works out fine, as skipping the cores will just cause the boss to fire off 3 shots that do around 30k damage each, which is easy to heal through (basically just need to do like 20k heals over a 10 second period). The difficulty comes on HM, where if you skip the cores he will one shot the tank. You can still do it that way, but you need a good stealther who is comfortable with stealth rezzing to make it work.

 

But as a previous poster mentioned, the cores have nothing to do with that sub-20% burn phase where he just starts hitting random people for 60k damage. That's where the the sniper field comes in handy.

It's HM, yeah. If you don't know what you are doing, it's not going to be friendly. Though frankly running in with a PuG with people that wouldn't be doing any other HM content, and don't have the gear for it, you should expect wipes. And in regards to the damage output by the boss, it's really not that crazy when you compare it to a lot of other HM's. There isn't much AoE it's mostly just single target until burn phase. I watched scrub lord pvp geared sorc healer solo heal tanks in 16m HM. You have to anticipate damage and follow mechanics, I'd say bioware fixed it.

Battle focus only gives damage reduction against the 4 "normal" damage types and doesn't work in the burn phase(Those hits don't have attack or dmg type). I assume energy shield should have the same problem. I'd actually be interested if riot gas works. It only increases mr defense so it should have no effect. Guardians can also use intervention on their co tank before he taunts though.

 

Can't check this to be 100% since I'm not in game but pretty sure riot gas simply says it lowers accuracy of all targets in the area not only m/r accuracy, while only 30% chance it is 30% chance on ALL attacks since even force/tech (and elemental/internal too I think) attacks can miss just less chance. As far as energy shield goes think it says lowers damage by 25% from all sources, if it says damage reduction though it may or may not work.

 

As far as battle focus I could be wrong, got forced onto my vg tank lately

 

Forgot about guardian leap nice catch

Edited December 14, 2015 by Nic__

Did 16M HM with my vanguard tank, went in blindly cause I never done it before, was really fun. Pug run, me and a guildie (he explained the tactics). Reactive Shield, Shrouded Crusader Relic, Riot Gas were definitely a big help, the "normal attacks" didn't seem all that powerful, I seemed to take way lower normal attack hits than the Guardian Co-tank (he got huge spikes from like 100% to 20% instantly while I was steady 100%>70%>40%...etc), but the guardian seemed to fair better against that laser debuff thing (I'd get away from it by the skin of my teeth, the guardian was at higher % HP when the attack ended). Both tanks died in the last 4% but the DPS stacked up under it and finished it off. Still managed to drop a Sonic Rebounder and Riot Gas as my masculine swan song before I died.

 

The small adds are a non issue. The bigger adds need a bit of kiting/dcd usage. The Rancor can be kited or facetanked but is defo worth killing it. Theres plenty of time to kill the rancor, no need to keep it alive. We did all the cores and killed all the adds. The major problem is the debuff laser (forgot what its called), a few ticks and you got a dead tank, gotta predict when it comes and go LoS behind a pillar and let the other tank taunt the boss. Highly spiky fight, I have no idea how would a Scoundrel Healer fair in it.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Iffyluse

This LoS thing is not clear for me. Last week we tried a HM, with me tanking for the first time this boss(didn't tanked SM before as well). When the boss cast thermal stuff I popped saber reflect and ran behind a pillar. The moment I hit the back of the pillar and the cast was interrupted I got instakilled. After the 3rd death in the same fight(we got an operative and he rezzed me) my team told me that I should not bother LoSing that and the healers will keep me alive. They didn't but with the operative I've got rezzed over and over again, however we viped because of lack of DPS and time ran out on us. So what's up whit this? Is this working as intended or I wasn't fast enough? Or I messed up something given it was my first time tanking it? Or should I just stick healing this fight and let others tank it?

This LoS thing is not clear for me. Last week we tried a HM, with me tanking for the first time this boss(didn't tanked SM before as well). When the boss cast thermal stuff I popped saber reflect and ran behind a pillar. The moment I hit the back of the pillar and the cast was interrupted I got instakilled. After the 3rd death in the same fight(we got an operative and he rezzed me) my team told me that I should not bother LoSing that and the healers will keep me alive. They didn't but with the operative I've got rezzed over and over again, however we viped because of lack of DPS and time ran out on us. So what's up whit this? Is this working as intended or I wasn't fast enough? Or I messed up something given it was my first time tanking it? Or should I just stick healing this fight and let others tank it?

The damage increases the more stacks you get. It is likely that you had a small lag and got another tick even though you were already behind the pillar. This boss is best done with a Shadow tank, but what you can do is:

• If you know Thermal Tolerance will start soon, stand at 30 meters to the boss, already next to a pillar. Make sure you already built enough aggro so you won't lose the boss.
  
• Once he starts casting Thermal Tolerance, immediately hide behind the pillar. Then you'll only receive 2-3 stacks which is healable. The offtank needs to immediately taunt once Thermal Tolerance starts.
  
• Ideally, you'd have dedicated healers standing next to you so they can heal you when you hide behind the column. The average healer will just stand idly in the middle and wonder why you are out of range or not visible. The operative you had probably was this kind of player.
  

Not running behind a pillar only works if you are a Shadow tank and can stealth out to interrupt the channel. All other tanks have to LoS to interrupt the channel since even the best tanks/healers cannot heal through the full channel.

 

By the way, the operative probably confused it with the SM tactic. In Story Mode, you don't get any stacks so the damage stays the same during the channel and is easily healable with cooldowns.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Jerba

Thank you so much! Lots of useful stuff for me to learn. The operative was a dps Edited December 14, 2015 by VegasTheLost
Type-o

It's HM, yeah. If you don't know what you are doing, it's not going to be friendly. Though frankly running in with a PuG with people that wouldn't be doing any other HM content, and don't have the gear for it, you should expect wipes.

 

My experience I told about was SM.

Did bioware break it?

You have to play it absolutely perfectly, i.e. know exactly when burst is coming and be ready to heal up, use gcds. It is a total pug killer this time around.

Why make it so difficult? I thought events were for fun, not for hardcore raiders.

 

done it several times with pugs this week hm and sm not a big deal only in 1 group we wiped few times