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So...Draxus


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Anyone else think this guy is going to be the new Firebrand and Stormcaller?

 

I can't count how many times today that I saw "LFxM Tank/Heal/DPS Dread Fortress at second boss" on Oricon. For my own personal experience, I went in with most of my regular raid group (we clear some nightmare TFB and SnV). and we had a little bit of trouble with it. One of our guild's other raid groups (who has cleared more nightmare than our group has) also had similar trouble. This was on SM, mind you.

 

We raid on Wednesday, and we're jumping right into HM, but we wanted to get a feel for the Op today in SM just to get an idea of what we were in for. We expected to just roll over the place (and we did, aside from Draxus and Brontes), but this guy humbled us a little bit. Granted, one of the two pugs we had was wearing 63 gear --63 PvP gear, at that-- and wasn't in mumble to communicate with the rest of us, so I'm sure that set things back a little bit, but I don't think he was the main cause of the problems.

 

Personally, I enjoyed the challenge, but he seemed overtuned for SM compared to the rest of the operation. With the exception of Brontes, you could literally just ignore almost every other mechanic from the rest of the bosses. Perhaps Draxus himself isn't really overtuned, but maybe it's that the first, third, and fourth bosses are undertuned. I would have really liked those other guys to present some sort of a challenge.

 

On a side note, Brontes was a really fun fight to learn. We went in with absolutely zero knowledge of what mechanics to expect. It's been a while since I've learned a boss encounter that way, and I forgot how much fun it could be. The fight itself wasn't difficult; it was just figuring out the mechanics. I give that encounter an A, with the only downside being the underwhelming final phase, in my opinion. But hey, it's story mode.

 

What are you guys' thoughts?

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2nd and last boss are buggy as hell. We had weird things happening - 2nd boss disappeared and never came back, Last boss had his beam attached to one of the tanks - who could move it around and there were no adds spawning, or only one.... we managed to kill both of them (16man SM for majority of the guild to get a feel for him), but there were a few wipes not really due to misplayed mechanics. I guess next times will be easier and they will fix the bugs. Overall it's fun and I love the artwork then went into it but other bosses were funny one-shots and really like mini-boss fights.
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2nd and last boss are buggy as hell. We had weird things happening - 2nd boss disappeared and never came back, Last boss had his beam attached to one of the tanks - who could move it around and there were no adds spawning, or only one.... we managed to kill both of them (16man SM for majority of the guild to get a feel for him), but there were a few wipes not really due to misplayed mechanics. I guess next times will be easier and they will fix the bugs. Overall it's fun and I love the artwork then went into it but other bosses were funny one-shots and really like mini-boss fights.

 

We didn't experience any Bugs with the last boss. We also didn't experience the bug you did on the second boss (disappearing and not coming back). However, after I posted my thread, I came across this thread:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=684969

 

Now, I'm not sure if that's a bug, or if that's a normal part of the encounter. I do know that it seems way out of tune with the rest of the Operation, though.

 

In general, I like the Operation. I do love the visuals. Most of the bosses are laughably easy, but that's what I expect for SM, especially for being as geared as most of us were (min-maxed 72 with 75's sprinkled in. The mechanics seem interesting enough for HM though, which is what we're doing tomorrow. I'm also looking forward to going into Palace, which I didn't bother with today because of the bugged boss.

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We went into HM without knowing any tactics, but soon found out that dismantlers do a load of dmg, as do all the lightning guys combined, so you'd do good to assign dps to different spawnplaces. Good coordination is required to get you through this fight
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Draxus is easy IMO, a lot easier than it was on the PTS in SM. The only problem is the average hack and slash pug is going to wipe you due to not killing the right adds when they need to.

 

Generally you will need to avoid bringing any derps, people who don't use their brain can't be carried through the second that easily compared to previous ops bosses. It's not like on for example thrasher where most pugs I've seen tend to sit back and hack away thrashers backside and just hope they don't get firebug.

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draxus is a skill check boss imo

both personal and group wise

 

Definitely this, at least in hard mode. It requires a lot of people knowing when and how to use interupts, what mobs to kill first, and some taunt swapping on certaint phases on the boss. At this point I couldn't see a pug being able to do this fight unless they were in someone's voice chat and relatively raid competent.

 

It's a fun fight though.

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draxus is a skill check boss imo

both personal and group wise

In HM at least, I found him more of an awareness check on my sawbones. Group gets spread out and as a healer you have to know who is where at any given moment so that you get them back in range for a heal or cleanse.

 

I thought these operations were going to be a complete bore after spending the past couple months in NIM, but they are actually fun. Sure after a couple runs through they will lose some of the luster, but right now they are a blast. Can't wait to try them on dps alts, I am even interested in seeing SM just to see the difference in mechanics.

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I agree entirely with the OP. The difficulty of this encounter, at least on 16-man story, is WAY out of line with the rest of the instance. It's now fair to expect everyone that joins a Group Finder Story mode operation to be in full 66s (because you get that just by completing the Oricon storyline) but such a group is just going to get annihilated here.
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It's over-tuned for SM relative to the rest of the bosses. Even Brontes isn't anywhere near as difficult. I'm all for hard bosses (more on this in a second), but this boss needs to be nerfed slightly in SM. Not only is the average pug going to stall out here, but even some guild groups are going to fall. It's just not in line with the rest of the instance (which is a one-shot fest on SM).

 

In HM, this boss is definitely one of the harder ones, but I don't think it's over-tuned per-se. Rather, I feel that the Rancor is under tuned, since we easily two-shot it despite not having any real idea of what we were doing (Dulfy's guide is highly inaccurate on nearly all of the HM bosses, probably as a result of post-PTS changes). Draxus, on the other hand, took some actual progression (8 or 9 wipes, I think). It was a group composed of primarily random parts from normal guild groups (i.e. wasn't our progression team), but still. I think that's about what all of the HM bosses should be like.

 

I would leave Draxus the way he is in HM (where he is a very satisfying boss for all roles), nerf the damage levels in SM, and buff the heck out of the Rancor in HM.

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(Dulfy's guide is highly inaccurate on nearly all of the HM bosses, probably as a result of post-PTS changes)

 

Except there were very few changes, so I don't know why the guides would be particularly inaccurate unless whoever wrote it didn't do them.

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Except there were very few changes, so I don't know why the guides would be particularly inaccurate unless whoever wrote it didn't do them.

 

Off the top of my head (we didn't have time to finish HM DF yesterday, and we haven't been in DP yet):

 

  • Lightning adds in Draxus do significant damage and can't be deprioritized as Dulfy suggests
  • Nothing in Draxus is interruptable (MAJOR CHANGE FROM PTS)
  • Guardian Ravage needs to be stunbroken to enable the taunt back (since not interruptable)
  • Draxus is immune to damage in his final phase until some of the adds die or the buff times out
  • Draxus agro dumps twice every time he's out and does a VERY high damage attack immediately after dumping (didn't happen on the PTS)
  • Pipe Smash makes it nearly impossible to move. Rancor needs to be pre-positioned before he starts the attack
  • Pipe Smash is not a frontal cone, despite what the animation seems to convey
  • You cannot stunbreak the lift in HM (you get restunned immediately)
  • The main tank on the Corrupter droid gets a stacking damage buff to force a swap whenever the adds drop
  • The explosion debuff doesn't apply to the tanks

 

Those are just the things I have off the top of my head. Many of those mechanics are not apparent in Dulfy's PTS kill video, which makes me suspect that they are simply new. Some of them (most notably, Draxus's agro dump) are significant enough that there would be absolutely no excuse to not have them in a guide, since they are wipe-inducing if not handled correctly.

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Off the top of my head (we didn't have time to finish HM DF yesterday, and we haven't been in DP yet):

 

  • Lightning adds in Draxus do significant damage and can't be deprioritized as Dulfy suggests
  • Nothing in Draxus is interruptable (MAJOR CHANGE FROM PTS)
  • Guardian Ravage needs to be stunbroken to enable the taunt back (since not interruptable)
  • Draxus is immune to damage in his final phase until some of the adds die or the buff times out
  • Draxus agro dumps twice every time he's out and does a VERY high damage attack immediately after dumping (didn't happen on the PTS)
  • Pipe Smash makes it nearly impossible to move. Rancor needs to be pre-positioned before he starts the attack
  • Pipe Smash is not a frontal cone, despite what the animation seems to convey
  • You cannot stunbreak the lift in HM (you get restunned immediately)
  • The main tank on the Corrupter droid gets a stacking damage buff to force a swap whenever the adds drop
  • The explosion debuff doesn't apply to the tanks

.

 

Lightning adds already did plenty of damage on the PTS, we still didn't prioritize them since they're still the least threatening add.

You can still interrupt corruptors, so your second point is literally not true.

Any changes to guardians were not significant enough to warrant any mention by either of our tanks.

I'll grant him being immune to damage was a change but you're supposed to be mopping up adds at that point anyway, doesn't significantly change the fight.

Draxus always dropped aggro on the PTS, been that way for weeks.

Pipe smash literally does not make it impossible to move, another point that isn't true. We had no issue positioning the rancor after he grabbed his pipe.

If someone on dulfy thought that pipe smash was a frontal cone, they didn't fight the encounter.

If someone on dulfy claimed it was a good idea to cc break the magnet lift, they didn't fight the encounter (or they didn't make clear that you should ensure the magnet was no longer over you, making them a bad writer)

The only significant change to corruptor zero that caused any issue was the hall-filling laser was more threatening, and concussive mine. We never really figured our concussive mine, I wasn't able to read the debuff before it killed the person it was on. We suspect it grows more powerful if you try to cleanse it, so we just spread out and didn't cleanse.

 

The DP bosses were made easier, if anything.

 

Seriously, a well-written guide would have told you how to beat all these bosses. If the guides are so wildly inaccurate, someone's bad at writing them.

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Lightning adds already did plenty of damage on the PTS, we still didn't prioritize them since they're still the least threatening add.

 

It's really just a difference of whether or not you consciously leave them alive during a regen break.

 

You can still interrupt corruptors, so your second point is literally not true.

 

Yes, my assertion was over-broad. The main change from the PTS is that the guardians and the Swipe adds (can't remember the name) are no longer interruptable, so the Swipe adds are simply a DPS race and the guardians require actual positioning (rather than interrupt chaining).

 

I'll grant him being immune to damage was a change but you're supposed to be mopping up adds at that point anyway, doesn't significantly change the fight.

 

I actually rather like the "nuke the boss and ignore the adds" strategy and I wish they had left it intact. A nice change for NiM would be full damage immunity until both Guardians are dead (not the case now) and a tight enough enrage timer to force you to ignore the other adds. A soft-enrage in the final 20% would also work.

 

Draxus always dropped aggro on the PTS, been that way for weeks.

 

Didn't see it in the video at all. I'm not sure why, but it simply didn't happen.

 

Pipe smash literally does not make it impossible to move, another point that isn't true. We had no issue positioning the rancor after he grabbed his pipe.

 

You didn't tank it. You *can* position him, but it's very difficult to do so. A guardian/juggernaut would probably have the easiest time, since they could friendly leap to gain some ground, and vanguards/powertechs would probably be ok due to the physics immunity CD, but shadows/assassins are effectively movement debuffed into the ground during that phase. If I don't have him in position (or rather, if *I'm* not in position) when he starts Pipe Smash, it's going to take me a disturbingly long time to move him over.

 

The only significant change to corruptor zero that caused any issue was the hall-filling laser was more threatening, and concussive mine. We never really figured our concussive mine, I wasn't able to read the debuff before it killed the person it was on. We suspect it grows more powerful if you try to cleanse it, so we just spread out and didn't cleanse.

 

The tanking debuff just wasn't in the guide. I didn't watch Dulfy's PTS kill video, so I don't know if it was there. The mine is handled by closing to melee range of the boss, fyi. Cleanses have no effect, to the best of my knowledge.

 

Seriously, a well-written guide would have told you how to beat all these bosses. If the guides are so wildly inaccurate, someone's bad at writing them.

 

They were misleading enough that we weren't able to really rely too much on what we were reading. We effectively treated the guides as partial lists of changes and then treated it as a mostly-blind clear of the boss.

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I agree entirely with the OP. The difficulty of this encounter, at least on 16-man story, is WAY out of line with the rest of the instance. It's now fair to expect everyone that joins a Group Finder Story mode operation to be in full 66s (because you get that just by completing the Oricon storyline) but such a group is just going to get annihilated here.

Which is exactly why they AREN'T in the group finder que. Think its too hard? Work harder, change things up, just handle it. It doesn't need a nerf, its everyones first week through the fights on live, you can't expect just to blow through everything like TFB/S&V at 55. Not to mention that going into SM after HM is a joke, half the mechanics just go away or can be ignored.

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They were misleading enough that we weren't able to really rely too much on what we were reading. We effectively treated the guides as partial lists of changes and then treated it as a mostly-blind clear of the boss.

 

The majority of the inaccuracies you described are changes from the PTS to live. We raid late than some other guilds and I didn't get a chance to correct some of them until the raid is over so alot of you read PTS version of the fight.

 

Also, I never mentioned Pipe Smash being a conal attack, the only conal attack is the Roar, please don't confuse these two.

 

Also, I wouldn't call it misleading. The guide is there to give you an idea of the basic mechanics and then you fine tune it to your guild/raid group composition. Despite the small changes Bioware placed from PTS to live, it served its purpose.

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The majority of the inaccuracies you described are changes from the PTS to live. We raid late than some other guilds and I didn't get a chance to correct some of them until the raid is over so alot of you read PTS version of the fight.

 

Also, I never mentioned Pipe Smash being a conal attack, the only conal attack is the Roar, please don't confuse these two.

 

Also, I wouldn't call it misleading. The guide is there to give you an idea of the basic mechanics and then you fine tune it to your guild/raid group composition. Despite the small changes Bioware placed from PTS to live, it served its purpose.

 

You get him Dulfy. Your guide led us to a full clear and we appreciate all your hard work. Quick question, are you a native English speaker? Sometimes I find your writing hard to understand and I think thats what leads to some confusion among others.

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Which is exactly why they AREN'T in the group finder que. Think its too hard? Work harder, change things up, just handle it. It doesn't need a nerf, its everyones first week through the fights on live, you can't expect just to blow through everything like TFB/S&V at 55. Not to mention that going into SM after HM is a joke, half the mechanics just go away or can be ignored.

 

6K per 2 second tick on an uncleansable debuff is no "joke." The rest of the fight isn't really that hard; just takes a bit of coordination/add prioritizing. But this strange debuff that goes out during the guardian adds seems broken. Here's a link with logs:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6804403

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You get him Dulfy. Your guide led us to a full clear and we appreciate all your hard work. Quick question, are you a native English speaker? Sometimes I find your writing hard to understand and I think thats what leads to some confusion among others.

 

I am unfortunately not a native English speaker so yes some of my writings can be a bit hard to understand. There are probably alot of grammar/spelling errors you can pick out too. It also depends on how fast I am writing them as well, the faster I write them the more mistakes there tends to be.

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The guide is there to give you an idea of the basic mechanics and then you fine tune it to your guild/raid group composition. Despite the small changes Bioware placed from PTS to live, it served its purpose.
That it did and it is really appreciated by the majority of the community. Thank you, we didn't get a full clear of HM, due to time, but I have no doubt we would not have gotten to Corruptor Zero without your help..
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I agree entirely with the OP. The difficulty of this encounter, at least on 16-man story, is WAY out of line with the rest of the instance. It's now fair to expect everyone that joins a Group Finder Story mode operation to be in full 66s (because you get that just by completing the Oricon storyline) but such a group is just going to get annihilated here.

 

My guild went in there 16 man Story Mode as well and got this guy on our second attempt. We never even saw this fight on the PTS. All it takes is a bit of situation awareness by the players and a general knowledge of what each add does and it's perfectly doable.

 

If there are bugs in the fight we didn't see them last night. In our raid group we had a range of players from newer raiders to those who attempted NiM TFB. The consensus after our raid was this was a hectic but very fun fight. If dmg has to be tuned up and down that's fine, but I would encourage Bioware to keep exactly the same mechanics. It's a really great fight and with a little awareness of what adds spawn during each wave it's a great fight.

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We did an 8m SM tonight and couldn't get past wave 5. We split into two groups (T, D, D, H each) and on wave 5 with the bulwarks and dispatchers, but we keep losing healers. For some reason they'd just suddenly start taking massive damage (I assume reflective, despite healers not DPS'ing and everyone standing within the shield).

 

Group 1 stacked on West, and Group 2 stacked on East. Everyone was within their respective bulwark shield. We tried killing the bulwarks first. As soon as 1 bulwark would die, we'd suddenly take massive damage spikes. So we tried killing the dispatchers first, and the same thing would happen--we'd get big damage spikes. One of our tanks died to his own AOE attack, despite being stacked up on the bulwark.

 

We couldn't even get the East and West groups killed to go handle South. Meanwhile, OT was keeping boss busy so he wouldn't hit either group with a cone attack.

 

I'm just not sure what we're doing wrong. Saw the Dulfy guide but it seems to imply all you need to do on those waves is stack within the bulwark shield and pew pew.

 

Thoughts?

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We did an 8m SM tonight and couldn't get past wave 5. We split into two groups (T, D, D, H each) and on wave 5 with the bulwarks and dispatchers, but we keep losing healers. For some reason they'd just suddenly start taking massive damage (I assume reflective, despite healers not DPS'ing and everyone standing within the shield).

 

Group 1 stacked on West, and Group 2 stacked on East. Everyone was within their respective bulwark shield. We tried killing the bulwarks first. As soon as 1 bulwark would die, we'd suddenly take massive damage spikes. So we tried killing the dispatchers first, and the same thing would happen--we'd get big damage spikes. One of our tanks died to his own AOE attack, despite being stacked up on the bulwark.

 

We couldn't even get the East and West groups killed to go handle South. Meanwhile, OT was keeping boss busy so he wouldn't hit either group with a cone attack.

 

I'm just not sure what we're doing wrong. Saw the Dulfy guide but it seems to imply all you need to do on those waves is stack within the bulwark shield and pew pew.

 

Thoughts?

 

On Wave 5, you need to handle south first. There's two Corruptors there that NEED to be interrupted. Your healers have to just heal through the damage from the Dispatchers until the the Corruptors are taken care of.

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On Wave 5, you need to handle south first. There's two Corruptors there that NEED to be interrupted. Your healers have to just heal through the damage from the Dispatchers until the the Corruptors are taken care of.

 

Ah, OK. Thanks. We thought they were dispatchers. :) Lesson learned!

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