There is no questioning that NM requires stable and good perfoming pcs.[/Quote]

Sorry for my harsh words, but to be honest, NM shouldnt be cleared by everyone. [/Quote]

Yeah, only the people with highest performance machines.

 

 

You sound like NiM is something superhard when in reality it's only recycled content with some new mechanics and more bugs. If a game requires computing power instead of player skill to beat its mechanics and bugs, it's a sad game indeed.

It requires both. And as i stated you dont need a super computer, but a decent pc perfomance. If you pc cant handle adds and shows those 10-30seconds later nm is nothing for you. But it also means that there is a conflict within your pc because actual pcs or pcs that are 3-4 years old should be easily capable of running the game.

 

NM DF is easy. But the bosses differ in difficulty.

 

Nefra : Easy as hell, can be compared to a sm 16 boss

Draxus : Mediocre, needs good management and tactics.

Grob'Thok : Easy, if tanks know what to do. Difficulty is also reliant on which ac your tanks are

Corruptor : Easy, if played in a not intentioned style ( all stack on boss), mediocre if played the intentioned way ( everyone spread, mines have to run to boss)

Brontes : Hard, even if you know perfectly what to do. Rng biased, bugs that troll you ( Tentacles spawn @100% @ last phase)

 

Without the NM bufff those bosses gonna be a lot easier, making DF basically how Fortress should be in Hardmode.

 

Even with those easy Bosses raids struggle to kill the bosses ( most wipe at draxus, bc Nefra is free loot). Draxus is where you see the difference between a mediocre raid and a casual raidgrp

 

If your skill level is high but your pc offers a bad perfomance ( i.e. 5fps in raid) your perfomance at fights will be bad. There is no questioning that. Even when you played 10 years in progression raids, with 5 fps your own perfomance will suck. So without a FAIR ( not high) pc perfomance you can perform according to NM content. If your skill level is low even the best pc in the world wouldnt make you perform better. The tank described by the op has Problem #1. His pc is underperforming ( lowest graphic settings, adds invisible for about 30 sec). So he prrobably can't perform at his maximum bc of the bad pc. PC problems differ ofc. Sometimes it is a fps drop for about 1-2 seconds which doesnt influence your own perfomance that much. But not being able to see adds for more than 30 seconds is in a too big influence in order to perform Nm raid in my eyes.

 

I didnt say that you need a high end pc, but at least a working system. I mean honestly, you can play tor on smarthphones nowadays. There is no excuse for a bad pc performance.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Methoxa

The novella you've composed is great, but multiple accounts, complete with video evidence, show that in most cases the bugs mentioned have nothing to do with the PC falling short of what's necessary. There are many instances where repetitive bugs are occurring regardless of processor and GPU type, and being observed by all in the Op.

The bug the op describes is the cleave bug of the Guardians at Draxus. This bug occurs when the guardian is casting his cleave (at that point you see the frontal aoe indicator) and then another person gets aggro. The guardian will cast his cleave in the direction of his new target but the aoe indicator will not change. This has something to do with aggro. If the tank is not capable to hold the aggro then you might change something. Might be tactics or playstyle. But when i read the tank doesnt see the adds for about 30 secs its clear to me why it occurs. Mainly its a bug yes, but you can easily debug it yourself by improving your playstyle/tactics/pc performance. The earlier the tank sees the add the earlier he can build up aggro. Late spawns are not the only problem the op describes. He also says that this particular tank runs everything in low settings, meaning his fps might not be too good as well. This might have influence on his apm and therefore on his tps. Having tps issues in NM raids aren't good. Saw 10seconds of the video. I looked at a try where the videocreator attacked a guardian then ran to the adds under the shield of the bulwark while having aggro from the guardian. Not a great idea to pull the guardian where everyone has to stand and you can not be healed, but thats another point of discussion. The tank never should have lost aggro. The guardian casted ravage on the videocreator. Thats normal. But then the guardian should've jumped back to the tank, he didnt because the tank #1 didnt taunt what he should do while tanking the guardian #2 didnt build enough threat. #1 can be done while having low perfomance but is situational bc sometimes you dont have a taunt ready because you mistaunted something or bc of low experience in that particular bossfight. #2 Can not be done with low performance ( bad fps ) because the guardian moves away from you and depending on your system and your fps you might not even realise that meaning you will still spam your rotation but a funny message will appear at the upper center of the screen saying "You are to far away to do that". After the first ravage jump of the guardian there has to be a taunt. After that you shouldnt loose aggro except if your doing something wrong. And thats exactly the point that is wiping the op. Their Tank looses aggro after the 2. ravage jump which causes in most cases a dead person. But then the guardian is brought to the location where the group is most likely to move to by the videocreator. Which not only causes 1 dead person but a wipe. I presume the video showed more of those trys. Instead of crying for fixes and blaming the developers/the game/the bugs adapt to it. Ever thought about that this is intended? Because you can clearly see on bosses like Raptus that the frontal aoe indicator can move accordingly to whoever got aggro at that moment. Maybe the developers wanted to make it harder for you and didnt insert a ezmode raptus style aoe indicator thingie but a trollvariation of it?

 

Short version answer to Prototypemind : It is not the pc perfomance of those raidmembers who got hit by the cleave but the (pc) perfomance of the tank who looses the aggro from the guardian.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Methoxa

Again, I'm stating that others are seeing this issue as well, not just the OP where the tank has a sub-par PC. There are also other issues popping up in other parts of the HM/NiM fights, so that's what I'm speaking to. It seems that what the OP's tank has going on may be exacerbating it, but there are problems that need to be fixed none-the-less, and I don't assume that you're arguing against that? For instance, the Bulwarks cannot be consistently backstabbed regardless of whether the attacker had attacked prior and pulled aggro or not. Backstab/Maul is lit up, indicating that it may be used and the person is behind the target, but it won't fire. That's a significant DPS loss there. Not a game breaker, but another example of the way the bugs pile up in the Hard/Nightmare Modes of these fights and cause issues.

There are bugs i am not questioning that. But blaming failing on bosses only bc of bugs like the op does and consider quitting the game because of the "massive amount of bugs" like the op stated in his opening post is what i am questioning. There are minor bugs in some fights, yes. They are not game breaking and there are only a few in the new operation:

 

Nefra : 0 bugs, the one that allowed tanks to stay in an area where nefra couldnt attack them but tanks still nefra got fixed

 

Draxus : 2 Bugs : Visual bug with guardian cleave, Bulwarks not able to be "backstabbed"

 

Grobthok : 0

 

Korruptor : Mines dont collide when they are taken off before the first stack, meaning you can alle stack on boss and never have to worry about mines

 

Brontes : Sometimes 1 orb stays in the boss area after a wipe ( rare ), Short before the Droid phase when Brontes will switch to 50% and an orb spawns it can happen that this orb wont have a target and just stay in the edge where it spawned but still gain stack and explode on 20 ( very rare). Big Tentacles respawn with 100% of life in the last phase ( rare ) .

 

 

There should be done more effort by the developers to avoid bugs that cause an instantwipe ( i.e. Tentacles on 100% in the last phase, if you have that bug you can instantly type in /stuck). But minor bugs that happen rarely and will only kill someone who is not attentive/aware of how to compensate that bug ( i.e. Orb spawning 1 second before Droid phase w/o a target = just have a tank taunt it) will always occur in new operations and dont need to be high prioritized. I also think that the guardian visual cleave indicatior bug is that kind of bug. It doesnt even occur when your tanks can hold aggro and the guardian only switches targets for his ravage and than jumps back to the tank. Take those bugs as features and adapt to it accordingly.

 

 

Again, I'm stating that others are seeing this issue as well, not just the OP where the tank has a sub-par PC

 

Again i am stating that aggro loose is the reson for the bug, resolve the tps lack of the tank and that bug will disappear ( and i am not talking about the ravage target switches)

Edited June 7, 2014 by Methoxa

You do realize that there is no Bioware anymore, other than a sign above an EA division?

Finally. Someone that gets it.

16 man in general is a mess for whatever reason. We've seen the slam issue before, we've seen interrupts miss (interrupt goes on cooldown, and debuff applied but cast goes off), we've seen people die from interrupting even without a debuff (saw that happen to a sentinel several times last week, no he never leapt). On Grob'Thok we've seen the adds run straight through the fire without losing their shields. On both Grob and CZ we've had more than half the raid not see the adds physically spawn, no matter what changes to graphics settings were made.

 

It's one thing to wipe because of your own incompetence, and we've certainly had plenty of that, but it's absolutely infuriating to execute perfectly and still wipe because of crap like this, and yes if you do it enough you'll stop wanting to play.

 

Fix this crap BW.

we've seen interrupts miss (interrupt goes on cooldown, and debuff applied but cast goes off)

 

The success rate for interrupts are based off of your character's accuracy. Therefore healers and tanks with 90%-94% accuracy will have their interrupts miss approximately 10% of the time.

 

Always have DPS be responsible for interrupts to avoid this issue, which shouldn't be an issue in 16-man runs.

 

In my guild's 8-man clears, healers are responsible for only one interrupt in the fight, in Phase 8, and they pop accuracy adrenals to ensure they do not miss. Works like a charm!

The success rate for interrupts are based off of your character's accuracy. Therefore healers and tanks with 90%-94% accuracy will have their interrupts miss approximately 10% of the time.

 

Always have DPS be responsible for interrupts to avoid this issue, which shouldn't be an issue in 16-man runs.

 

In my guild's 8-man clears, healers are responsible for only one interrupt in the fight, in Phase 8, and they pop accuracy adrenals to ensure they do not miss. Works like a charm!

 

It's different for 16 man. On 8 man, when you interrupt the Mass Affliction, it has the normal lockout that you get with interrupting a skill, but in 16 man version of that particular fight, there is no lockout so they will continually cast until they are dead. We get around this from waiting until near the end of the cast and then chaining interrupts in general. In order to prevent cases since healers can miss, we have two healers interrupt on each side in phase 8 just to make sure it goes through. If tanks miss an interrupt on the despoiler, there can be issues as well.

 

Regardless, the fact that key skills like interrupts can ever miss was a clear oversight from Bioware and important abilities like that should not be subject to RNG. There are too many cases in that where tanks and/or healers should be interrupting something important (Mass Affliction or the Despoiler's heal) and an accuracy adrenal is not up for all of them. This is especially true when it's getting done without much gear from DF NiM.

Due to the nature of interrupts and how they work on 16man, Vanguard/Powertech and Guardian/Juggernaut can use their leap to interrupt, if that "misses" they can use their interrupt skill, makes it a bit less RNG. Healers is another case but the casters normally dies before healers needs to use their interrupts, but yes I agree this was probably overlooked by Bioware, or else they would have introduced something Healers and Tanks had to take care of during this phase.

The success rate for interrupts are based off of your character's accuracy. Therefore healers and tanks with 90%-94% accuracy will have their interrupts miss approximately 10% of the time.

 

Always have DPS be responsible for interrupts to avoid this issue, which shouldn't be an issue in 16-man runs.

 

In my guild's 8-man clears, healers are responsible for only one interrupt in the fight, in Phase 8, and they pop accuracy adrenals to ensure they do not miss. Works like a charm!

 

Two problems this:

1) Interrupts like taunts should never miss. Missing an interrupt on Draxus (at least pre-nerf) was an instant wipe, and since, as mentioned, interrupts don't grant a lockout on casting in 16 man (another bug it seems!) you almost certainly don't have the spare interrupts to make up for it. Especially since you're deliberately interrupting so late in the cast that by the time you realize you've missed, the cast has gone off.

 

2) We've seen interrupts miss from DPS with over 99% accuracy.

 

We still have healers responsible for one interrupt each during the double corrupter phase, but with the famous "5% chance to fail" that I'm sure is at work here it's irrelevant. Interrupts should not miss. The end.

Two problems this:

1) Interrupts like taunts should never miss. Missing an interrupt on Draxus (at least pre-nerf) was an instant wipe, and since, as mentioned, interrupts don't grant a lockout on casting in 16 man (another bug it seems!) you almost certainly don't have the spare interrupts to make up for it. Especially since you're deliberately interrupting so late in the cast that by the time you realize you've missed, the cast has gone off.

 

2) We've seen interrupts miss from DPS with over 99% accuracy.

 

We still have healers responsible for one interrupt each during the double corrupter phase, but with the famous "5% chance to fail" that I'm sure is at work here it's irrelevant. Interrupts should not miss. The end.

 

Just to clarify, the interrupts in 16 man on that fight do not provide a lockout, but that's intentional. They did give you the lockout on the PTS originally, but it made the fight too easy in comparison since we have 2.5 times the DPS. Thus, they changed it after the first week or so to force different strategies.

Due to the nature of interrupts and how they work on 16man, Vanguard/Powertech and Guardian/Juggernaut can use their leap to interrupt, if that "misses" they can use their interrupt skill, makes it a bit less RNG. Healers is another case but the casters normally dies before healers needs to use their interrupts, but yes I agree this was probably overlooked by Bioware, or else they would have introduced something Healers and Tanks had to take care of during this phase.

 

Using this strategy for the Tanks would kill themselves, because even a missed Interrupt would apply the Debuff to you, and using your own interrupt after that would kill yourself, and not interrupt the mob. Just poor programming and if you check the NiM progression forums you'll see that a huge pool of progression players are unsubscribing due to the state of the game and the constant bugs that exist in it, myself included.

Interrupts based on the accuracy of your character is working as designed according to the latest developer post (#20 in this thread.)

Hey folks!

 

I spoke with the combat team regarding this, and this is working as designed. Accuracy affects anything you attempt to do to a hostile target whether damage is being done or not. The only exceptions to this rule are abilities that taunt, which cannot be resisted per their tooltips.

 

-tait

Using this strategy for the Tanks would kill themselves, because even a missed Interrupt would apply the Debuff to you, and using your own interrupt after that would kill yourself, and not interrupt the mob.

It would kill them but it would interrupt mob. And I hope you understand that ressing one player is possible, while healing whole raid if debuff goes out is not.

 

Anyway, should have used past tense, as NiM debuff is gone

It would kill them but it would interrupt mob. And I hope you understand that ressing one player is possible, while healing whole raid if debuff goes out is not.

 

If your fight strategy is going as planned, I don't see why anyone would need to interrupt a corruptor twice. Tanks do not need to interrupt at all in the Draxus fight. Healers can pop an accuracy adrenal before the one interrupt they're responsible for in Phase 8 to guarantee they don't miss.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Levram

It is actually pretty rare that a healer needs to use their interrupt in our 16man nim runs if at all. The casting mobs are usually dead shortly after the second interrupt. If a third interrupt is needed that often on the last interrupt phase there is usually a dps problem. And if you know you have a couple dps that fall behind make sure the two dps that aren't on first two interrupts will get the third if needed. If you need four of the third interrupts your dps as a whole is failing. And never seen a dps interrupt not work. If it doesn't they screwed up or are lagging.

 

The slam animation bug from guardians was annoying the first night we did it. Since then we've avoided it every single time by adjusting for it which takes little effort.

 

Never known mobs not to spawn for someone more then a second maybe. Sounds like a latency or hardware problem. Every now and then we'll have some people not able to see a circle on the ground or another effect but that's because they have crappy computers and forgot to turn their settings down before starting the raid. And then that fixes it.

 

I don't know, nim is hard to do and requires adjusting and great team work. Yes bugs some times happen or things don't go your way as expected but some guilds adjust and never have a problem with them again. Some guilds never get past them.

If your fight strategy is going as planned, I don't see why anyone would need to interrupt a corruptor twice. Tanks do not need to interrupt at all in the Draxus fight. Healers can pop an accuracy adrenal before the one interrupt they're responsible for in Phase 8 to guarantee they don't miss.

 

The suggestion was to use a leap to interrupt first, and then interrupt again if the leap misses, killing the player but ensuring the interrupt. Also, I can't speak to 8 man, but in 16 we use tanks to interrupt the despoiler in phase 8.

 

DPS can miss if they're running less than 100% accuracy, which some classes are running because they're using 4 accuracy enhancements and an alacrity piece instead of 5 accuracy pieces. Since a miss is a wipe in NiM, that's a pretty catastrophic design failure. You can espouse all the work arounds you want, but at the end of the day it's crappy design.

 

It is actually pretty rare that a healer needs to use their interrupt in our 16man nim runs if at all. The casting mobs are usually dead shortly after the second interrupt. If a third interrupt is needed that often on the last interrupt phase there is usually a dps problem. And if you know you have a couple dps that fall behind make sure the two dps that aren't on first two interrupts will get the third if needed. If you need four of the third interrupts your dps as a whole is failing. And never seen a dps interrupt not work. If it doesn't they screwed up or are lagging.

 

The slam animation bug from guardians was annoying the first night we did it. Since then we've avoided it every single time by adjusting for it which takes little effort.

 

Never known mobs not to spawn for someone more then a second maybe. Sounds like a latency or hardware problem. Every now and then we'll have some people not able to see a circle on the ground or another effect but that's because they have crappy computers and forgot to turn their settings down before starting the raid. And then that fixes it.

 

I don't know, nim is hard to do and requires adjusting and great team work. Yes bugs some times happen or things don't go your way as expected but some guilds adjust and never have a problem with them again. Some guilds never get past them.

 

Our first several kills we had both healers use their interrupts. DPS has never been our strong suit. That being said we still had enough to actually kill the boss. Your experiences in general do not match mine, but it must be nice that everyone in your raid group has no visual issues. How do you adjust for slam not being where it says it is oh wise one? Some guilds push past the problems anyway, and some guilds get all arrogant because they never have issues so assume everyone else having issues is their own fault.

 

Fix your crap BW.

 

edit: I will note that since the change to respawns within the instance there seems to be a lot less visual issues. For whatever reason constantly reloading the instance always made the issues worse. I've had several progression nights where the adds pop fine on pull 1, and by pull 5 they're taking 5-10 seconds to show up which ends up with us doing a reset of the instance. With the changes this week, visual issues are down to around the 1 second mark you claim. Our usual work around btw was to have a DPS who had no issues seeing the adds for whatever reason set as the DPS focus target and then just have all the DPS acquire that person's target. That it could be worked around was no excuse for the issue to persist for so long though. Still if respawning inside the instance continues to prevent the issue, I'll put that as a double win in BW's column. So that would be 2 wins for BW and 5068294721044643216576157 failures.

Edited June 12, 2014 by ArchangelLBC