Hey all,

 

My group has been attempting to prog on Nim EC for a little bit now, and we're totally stumped on the tanks. Our group comp is two combat sents, two gunslingers (typically in dirty fighting...on tanks dirty fighting). We can get to the enrage on every pull, but we're just so off on damage. It's definitely my fellow gunslinger and me who are too low, but neither of us can really think of how better to attack the fight than what we're doing currently.

 

Our strat has one gunslinger sitting on firebrand, the other on stormcaller and attacking firebrand (this dps takes the second double destruction since we get two each time). Two sents on stormcaller. And, we basically keep two dps on each for the duration of the fight.

 

The other gunslinger and myself can get to about 5k maybe 5.1 iff we're lucky on the pulls, but ultimately we're at a position where the best we have done was like 15 percent on Firebrand, and 4 percent on Storm. We've identified some things we can do better as slingers, but ultimately those things aren't going to mathematically cover the gap (which one team member said at one point in one of our pulls we have 30 seconds till enrage and we have about 24 percent left to go damage output wise which was like over 2 mil in raw damage that had to still come out)

 

On avg: Slingers: 4.8-5.1

Sents: 1 @ avg 6.2, 1 at avg 5.7

Tanks about 1.7k and some change.

 

I guess what I'm looking for here are any tips, tricks, or a recent kill video from people with comparable group comps so we can see what's going wrong with us, and what's going right with others. The other slinger and myself both parse above 6.6 if that's meaningful which it probably isn't)

 

It's obviously a dps issue so how are people attacking this fight as a slinger really. We dot the tanks as we run back on them (with 95 percent damage reduction during defensive systems we don't really focus too heavily on hitting the tanks until its over). We can attempt double dotting the tanks, but it doesn't seem like that's ultimately the gap closer by itself. I refuse to accept that the comp we have isn't sufficient, but the devil's advocate in me does wonder since we are able to one - shot Zorn and Toth with ease with myself and the other slinger pulling 5k-5.3, and then on the only other nim boss we've done (Writhing Terror) we can clear before enrage with the both of us sitting virtually the same at 5.4-5.7 and change.

 

Maybe we are just plain approaching the Firebrand and Stormcaller fight incorrectly from a strategy standpoint? I know we can survive about 10 seconds of enrage max. Is it something simple like starting with three dps on Firebrand, and having only one sentinel on storm until the final shield phase ends and having the sentinels swap after double destruction. I feel like we're either missing something, or we just plain suck.

 

But regardless, any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Shwarzchild

While it won't make up all the damage have you tried syncing defensives within the group to allow healers to put out some damage. Mandos especially with mortar volley, electronet, full auto, HIB and charged bolt have alot of high hitting abilities. With 2 slinger shields, healers should have windows of opportunity to throw out some deeps. its amazing how much damage even something like weakened mind will do if the dot is kept up for the entire (or most of) the fight.

Strat-wise, there isn't really much to improve I think. I'm assuming you have assigned a healer to drop the voids so the DPS can stay on the tanks.

 

When you have no trouble with the mechanics but wipe due to enrage, it's time to think how to improve. Based on your numbers, you'll need around 6k additional DPS and I fear healers DoTting up the boss won't nearly be enough.

There are plenty of ways to increase DPS (e.g. solo-healing and playing with 5 DPS, or having tanks wear DPS gear) and there are those small details (like damaging the tanks while under the shield, maybe even having the sents go back on the tanks earlier with Guarded by the Force.

There's also the potential for a tank swap: The left boss puts an "Incinerate Armor" debuff on the tank that doubles the damage taken (but only from the left boss). So ideally, the right tank would taunt right before the debuff is applied, and then the left tank taunts back the boss. That way, the healers have much less to heal.

And finally, you can always get yourself the NiM crystal to increase your DPS, then you should be able to defeat the boss with your current DPS numbers. I know it's like cheating and you want to kill the boss honestly, but if you remain stuck on it but want to see the following bosses, it would be an option.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Jerba

Are you continuing to DPS all the way up to the point you get flung off the Tanks by defensive system, until that happens they are still fully vulnerable, all you have to do is point yourself in the right direction for getting thrown into your sides shield, doing this when the shield spawns on the side your tank stands can b skipped as the cleaves are nasty but that's still 2 outta 3.

 

Ideally you want only 1 DD between shields. You can always cycle your class buffs to help. Have Inspiration at the start then assuming your healers are not the same class, there buffs for 2nd and 3rd.

 

I should add you mentioned having 2 dps attacking each boss, I prefer having them all attack the same boss down till 15% or so then switching focus the the other, this way you can maximize dps and minimise the amount of swapping and movement for the first half of the fight.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Botho

On avg: Slingers: 4.8-5.1

Sents: 1 @ avg 6.2, 1 at avg 5.7

Tanks about 1.7k and some change.

 

The two slingers are very low on damage output at 4.8 and 5.1. Even the sentinels dps output is a bit low for the dps check of that fight.

 

The tanks got each 4342190 HP and each add got 108453. With 5 adds per phase and 4 phase. That put a total of 20 adds to kill for 2169060 HP. That put the total HP at 10853440 for a fight of 6 minutes 20s (enrage timer) the dps needed is 28561.

 

If the tank and heals do together 4k dps (which is totally doable for that fight), that leave 24561 dps needed for the 4 DPS. Which is about 6140 dps per DPS. With that requirement only 1 of your 4 DPS are doing close to it.

 

To improve the dps output in that fight, the gunslingers need to improve their dps by 1k each and if they got the gear for NiM, they should be able to do that kind of damage in Dirty Fightning. For the sentinels, watchman can improve their damage output on the boss if they are also good in that spec.

 

To improve the dps output, the 4 DPS need to stay on the tank for as long as possible, they just got to place themselves so that the knockback will get them as close as possible to the shield. That's a 2-3% of the tanks HP per phase. Doing it 4 times can reduce by half what you're missing in dps on the tanks. Also, since they are using Dirty Fighting, both gunslinger should put their DoTs on both tanks. Over the entire fight, that's quite a bit of dps done in extra. Right after the adds are dead, the gunslingers need to put their dots on the tank in range and cast Fly By so that it drops after Firebrand channel is over. Another thing that can help is to use the utility Hot Pursuit so that you use Quick Shot instead of Flurry of Bolt while running back on the tank since your dots are supposed to be already up.

 

It's a series of things that can increase the dps just enough to get throught that fight.

Edited March 10, 2016 by ludoviccb

The two slingers are very low on damage output at 4.8 and 5.1. Even the sentinels dps output is a bit low for the dps check of that fight.

 

The tanks got each 4342190 HP and each add got 108453. With 5 adds per phase and 4 phase. That put a total of 20 adds to kill for 2169060 HP. That put the total HP at 10853440 for a fight of 6 minutes 20s (enrage timer) the dps needed is 28561.

 

If the tank and heals do together 4k dps (which is totally doable for that fight), that leave 24561 dps needed for the 4 DPS. Which is about 6140 dps per DPS. With that requirement only 1 of your 4 DPS are doing close to it.

 

To improve the dps output in that fight, the gunslingers need to improve their dps by 1k each and if they got the gear for NiM, they should be able to do that kind of damage in Dirty Fightning. For the sentinels, watchman can improve their damage output on the boss if they are also good in that spec.

 

To improve the dps output, the 4 DPS need to stay on the tank for as long as possible, they just got to place themselves so that the knockback will get them as close as possible to the shield. That's a 2-3% of the tanks HP per phase. Doing it 4 times can reduce by half what you're missing in dps on the tanks. Also, since they are using Dirty Fighting, both gunslinger should put their DoTs on both tanks. Over the entire fight, that's quite a bit of dps done in extra. Right after the adds are dead, the gunslingers need to put their dots on the tank in range and cast Fly By so that it drops after Firebrand channel is over. Another thing that can help is to use the utility Hot Pursuit so that you use Quick Shot instead of Flurry of Bolt while running back on the tank since your dots are supposed to be already up.

 

It's a series of things that can increase the dps just enough to get throught that fight.

 

Yeah, us gunslingers definitely know we're the low ones by a large margin in that fight. We just are at a bit of a loss when it comes to answers as to what to do to improve our damage out. We're being pretty aggressive in our rotations while on the tanks. There are times where we screw up a little bit, but on the times where we are just dead on in our execution of our rotations we're not seeing the huge jump needed. We're both running the triple dirty blast rotation, maybe the answer is to go to the two dirty blast one? I have no experience with the 2 db rotation so I don't know if it's more packed with power or not. Another thought I had is that if we were to do what a previous poster suggested and hit stormcaller with all four dps: would that effectively shorten the shield phases and add time on the final phase? Final phase at 2 minutes left till enrage would definitely equate to quite a bit of a damage improvement from the slingers since the spec would have a lot of time to "warm up and get hot" as someone told me once.

 

The dotting of the tanks when transitioning to the shield phase doesn't make sense to me to much. With the tanks being under a 95 percent damage reduction in that missile barrage channel it seems like it's not entirely worth much there. Maybe I'm wrong? Casting fly by is an interesting idea as an addition. I know that on my side (firebrand) When it's called to get back on the tanks, I'm just finishing that third bomb add so I'm not sure the time I'd spend casting that would be truly beneficial, but I can certainly give it a go. No harm not to for sure.

 

I know that on the move we do prioritize using quickdraw. Using hot pursuit is an interesting suggestion.

 

So after doing some math on it. If the slingers double dot that would account for conservatively about 700k extra raw damage out (2500 per tick *18 seconds * 2 cycles through the rotation *4 phases* 2 slingers. if we extend the final phase by 80 seconds (estimated that getting only double d instead of 2 would add about 20 seconds to the burn phase *4 phases) which conservatively speaking would be 500k per slinger since really we're dummy parsing at that point would be 1.7 million. 300k would be found from improvement from our second sentinel, and potentially dots from healers and maybe tanks using dps barrels/ hilts. I'm I right on this breakdown?

 

I'm still a little confused on the free quick shots on hot pursuit and how that fits in though.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Shwarzchild

To help you out in a way, cuz I nowhere near NiM raiding, you can refer to Thrax's Engineering/Sabouteur guide. The reason I link this Dulfy article is that you can find a video of NiM Firebrand and Stormcaller in it. So you can maybe snap some tricks out of it, even if you play Dirty Fighting(or even respec to Sabo if you feel like it).

 

http://dulfy.net/2015/11/16/swtor-4-0-engineering-sniper-guide-by-thrax/#Playing_Engineering_in_a_Raid_Environment

 

Hope this helps you out somehow and all the best for a successfull kill!

Most nim groups that have cleared tanks use a different strategy than you are using which has been mentioned you should have your melee on firbrand ranged on storm and all dps focusing fb until sub 20 then all dps on stormcaller 2dps on each side for dd. Your snipers for sure need to be double dotting I personally use a modified 3 cull rotation where I maintain dots on both targets. I will also say that the dps numbers people are providing you with are somewhat inflated for a couple reasons. You will hit enrage I promise, I have killed the boss with multiple groups and many of the best dps in the game and we have always hit enrage. Your numbers should be around 6k but they do not need to be greater to be successful. You have 2 sniper sheilds that should help a lot in final burn. After you switch to stormcaller because your dps is low I recommend you straight burn stormcaller and not worry about firbrand's health. Once storm is dead a final set of sheilds will spawn as firbrand does his enrage mechanic. Your slingers can stay under the shield and kill for brand indefinitely so once you get to that point as long as you have a healer and dps alive it's a win. Have seen a kill 2 min into enrage using this strategy BTW.

Our strat has one gunslinger sitting on firebrand, the other on stormcaller and attacking firebrand (this dps takes the second double destruction since we get two each time). Two sents on stormcaller. And, we basically keep two dps on each for the duration of the fight.

 

Two words: PASSIVE RAIDBUFFS!!!

People underestimate the value of having a well balanced team. If you have 2 dirty fighting gunslingers on 1 boss and 2 combat sents on the other you will miss a ****ton of damage.

 

A combat sentinel will provide sunder which should add around 150 easely to the dirty fighters.

The slingers sadly have nothing to offer sents but if each slinger deals 150 extra dps purely by grouping up with 1 sent you would see at least 110k extra damage.

 

Alternativly you could let 1 slinger respec to sharpshooter.

 

1 Other thing which might be handy is to save your bigger hits for the bosses instead of the adds. Also I assume you are pushing the adds away from the shieldgen so you can multidot?

 

Lastly, and I forgot which tanks you had with you. My group has a guardian tank who will quite happely survive the debuff from firebrand by using cooldowns efficiently. Less swapping for tanks means more damage for them too.

Last lastly (pinky swear ), if the tanks are okey to heal ask them to regear a bit to dps gear. A tanks main job is surviving but after that goal has been reached its not a bad thing to help out the dps

 

Good luck and hf

Most nim groups that have cleared tanks use a different strategy than you are using which has been mentioned you should have your melee on firbrand ranged on storm and all dps focusing fb until sub 20 then all dps on stormcaller 2dps on each side for dd. Your snipers for sure need to be double dotting I personally use a modified 3 cull rotation where I maintain dots on both targets. I will also say that the dps numbers people are providing you with are somewhat inflated for a couple reasons. You will hit enrage I promise, I have killed the boss with multiple groups and many of the best dps in the game and we have always hit enrage. Your numbers should be around 6k but they do not need to be greater to be successful. You have 2 sniper sheilds that should help a lot in final burn. After you switch to stormcaller because your dps is low I recommend you straight burn stormcaller and not worry about firbrand's health. Once storm is dead a final set of sheilds will spawn as firbrand does his enrage mechanic. Your slingers can stay under the shield and kill for brand indefinitely so once you get to that point as long as you have a healer and dps alive it's a win. Have seen a kill 2 min into enrage using this strategy BTW.

 

Thanks a ton for the feedback. So am I correct that in order to push for only one double destruction we need to be on firebrand and not Stormcaller? I only ask out of curiosity. A video I saw on youtube had the group focus Stormcaller first so I assumed that was the way to get only one double destruction. Or is it a situation where it's just push either down to sub 20?

Edited March 10, 2016 by Shwarzchild

Thanks a ton for the feedback. So am I correct that in order to push for only one double destruction we need to be on firebrand and not Stormcaller? I only ask out of curiosity. A video I saw on youtube had the group focus Stormcaller first so I assumed that was the way to get only one double destruction. Or is it a situation where it's just push either down to sub 20?

That is correct you as a sniper should be focusing firebrand until 20% but you should also be maintaining dots on stormcaller for better dps output. You can actually push either, but DD is hard to deal with if you have people on firebrand and that will still be going off also maras cloke of pain will proc off the DD dot so that will help you meet the dps check. I will highlight our last kill when I get home and post it for you, I believe the footage is still up in the archives of my twitch channel.

Edited March 10, 2016 by sevenfaced

Agree with MuskyBoy up above. From my healer's perspective, when the group is on the tanks (and not during add phase), the healing isn't severe and is mostly on the tanks as long as there's not a major oops. As an operative/scoundrel or sorc/sage it's not too rough to maintain a fairly consistent double-dotting on both tanks (which I find is usually good for ~500 dps or about ~200K on this fight), or if I'm on my merc I mostly just try to hit rail shot and electro-net on cooldown on Firebrand with everybody else like Seven said.

 

It won't solve all your problems but every little bit helps.

That is correct you as a sniper should be focusing firebrand u til 20% but you should also be maintaining dots on stormcaller for better dps output. You can actually push either, but DD is hard to deal with if you have people on firebrand and that will still be going off also maras cloke of pain will proc off the DD dot so that will help you meet the dps check. I will highlight our last kill when I get home and post it for you, I believe the footage is still up in the archives of my twitch channel.

 

Awesome. Thank you.

 

So just to confirm (I'm a habitual double checker sorry)

Melee DPS on Firebrand. RDPS on Storm. rDPS handle double d. and with all dps on firebrand that will allow us to only go through 1 double d.

Hit fire to sub 20. Switch to Storm. Burn storm to dead.

Back to Firebrand. Alternate sniper shields

(Question: Does this shield that firebrand spawns come out when Stormcaller dies or when the actual enrage hits?)

When shield spawns, healers and rDPS head under.

Tanks thanks for your service

mDPS thanks for your service

Kill Firebrand.

Awesome. Thank you.

 

So just to confirm (I'm a habitual double checker sorry)

Melee DPS on Firebrand. RDPS on Storm. rDPS handle double d. and with all dps on firebrand that will allow us to only go through 1 double d.

Hit fire to sub 20. Switch to Storm. Burn storm to dead.

Back to Firebrand. Alternate sniper shields

(Question: Does this shield that firebrand spawns come out when Stormcaller dies or when the actual enrage hits?)

When shield spawns, healers and rDPS head under.

Tanks thanks for your service

mDPS thanks for your service

Kill Firebrand.

Your pretty much correct, what I actually expect to happen for you guys is burn firebrand to 20% switch to all on storm. You will hit hard enrage closer to dead the better as soon as enrage hits I recommend you pop a sniper shield that should cover 6 of your 8 raid members continue to do mechanics normally until storm dies. This will trigger a different enrage from firebrand and spawn a final shield on his side everyone should get under the shield ranged DPS hit firebrand while melee/tanks take care of adds. Also after firbrands normal rain of missles channel finishes he will take normal damage so should be pretty quick to burn the last few % at that point. Ohh should also mention that the missiles outside the sheild hurt like a ***** during enrage so pop defensives and get to that shield fast.

Ohh I just thought of another option and thought it would be fun to confuse you further. If you are still too far off enrage with the previously mentioned strat you can have one Mara and one sniper on each tank. Have the Mara on firebrand and the two snipers focus firebrand(still double dot), while the final Mara puts his dps on stormcaller this will increase the dps of the Mara on stormcaller by a decent margin because he will be able to utilize cloak of pain throughout the fight. After firbrand goes sub 20% you continue as I previously stated but you have stormcaller much lower.

 

As promised our most resent kill you should not switch back to firebrand like we do. http://www.twitch.tv/sevenfaced/v/53688730

Edited March 11, 2016 by sevenfaced

One other thing if you have a mando healer keep them on storm caller and tell them to spec into reflective armor. It hits for around 1500 per sec (in a geared healer) over 12 secs if you use this 3 times on DD that's about 50-60 K damage. Not much but you are looking for as many tips as possible.

i suggest first trying the burn one to 20% strat, and if that doesnt work, then think about switching disciplines to get better passives (especially armor debuff).

Two words: PASSIVE RAIDBUFFS!!!

People underestimate the value of having a well balanced team. If you have 2 dirty fighting gunslingers on 1 boss and 2 combat sents on the other you will miss a ****ton of damage.

Oh, i can't emphasize enough how correct you are.

Dirty fighting/virulence is the absolute worst spec in game in terms of damage output if having only debuffs it can put itself. Try dummyparsing without armor debuff and you'll see that (word is, it was actually already done by someone and put together). Switch 1 slinger to mando and getting 20% armor debuff on boss would skyrocket your dps. Swap sent and slinger to get a few more hundred dps by simply having more debuffs on targets.

Short answer - think about dps mechanics rather than dps performance. Debuffs each class can put on boss is widely omitted from players' view for no good reason. After that comes knowledge of classes but that you could likely figure on all yourself with time. That's what progression is about from the perspective of personal skill.

Lot of good points in this thread, I would add that Juggernaut tanks can push the group raid DPS further than the other tank classes due to all the stuff they can reflect in that fight.

 

If you started your NiM progression in Denova (which makes sense if you do it in chronological order), you may want to know that this fight is the toughest one in term of pure sustained DPS (maybe Brontes and Styrak in some phases too, but those are endbosses). At least it was for us.

Edited March 16, 2016 by tonatoprice

Lot of good points in this thread, I would add that Juggernaut tanks can push the group raid DPS further than the other tank classes due to all the stuff they can reflect in that fight.

 

If you started your NiM progression in Denova (which makes sense if you do it in chronological order), you may want to know that this fight is the toughest one in term of pure sustained DPS (maybe Brontes and Styrak in some phases too, but those are endbosses). At least it was for us.

 

That's encouraging news actually. And, yeah we did start our nim prog in Denova. Not from a chronological sense, but from a "are we worthy" sense. We're pulling tanks tonight (we only run once a week) so I'm excited. I think with the tips you all have given us I'll have good news to report, and maybe even a minefield kill if the rng gods allow it.

That's encouraging news actually. And, yeah we did start our nim prog in Denova. Not from a chronological sense, but from a "are we worthy" sense. We're pulling tanks tonight (we only run once a week) so I'm excited. I think with the tips you all have given us I'll have good news to report, and maybe even a minefield kill if the rng gods allow it.

 

I think if you kill the tanks there won't be any question about that "you're worthy enough". Matter of fact being on NiM Tanks proves a lot to me. With my group we're a bit far from NiM raids

And the tanks are dead. Thanks for the help everyone. Talk about an epic moment of chills, shakes, and an insane amount of satisfaction

 

and the obligatory kill pic

http://imgur.com/l3R30Bk

And here is the kill vid as well.

 

https://youtu.be/0HyCD1c_Jzw

Edited March 17, 2016 by smokesnake

And here is the kill vid as well.

 

https://youtu.be/0HyCD1c_Jzw

Gratz on the kill!

 

Do you actually play with the numpad or do you have those keys bound somewhere else?

I have my mouse set to num pad, its a logitech g600 mmo mouse that has 12 side buttons plus a few others. Then i have my cool downs set to 1 to + or i can hit control plus one of my mouse buttons