FrostRaven Posted September 26, 2012 Share Posted September 26, 2012 The droids in the initial phase of Kephess right now have been buffed their calibrating Shots buff. Previously had: Cast: 0.5. Effect: +12% damage output. You had to interrupt it but it wasnt and impossible fight to push through. It was pretty easy. Right now the Calibrating Shots buff gives an additional effect: +12% damage reduction to the droid. This makes the boss enter a imba enrage mode (with red color effect) at 8 stacks, because it cannot be killed. Even trying interrupting Calibrating Shots on the 3 droids with 2 tanks, and 4 dps the dps is too spread to down the three of them quickly enough and on top of it the casting classes lose dps when they cannot finish the casts or channel abilities. Any developer knows whats going on? Any guild has found this bug/buff to difficulty? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted September 26, 2012 Share Posted September 26, 2012 I can confirm this behavior, the droids that start the event cast a calibration chanel very quickly and if you miss to interrupt it adds an stack of a buff that reduces damage received, once it gets 8 stacks it becomes inmune. As a guildie said, looks like a mistake with versions control software and the new nightmare mode stealthy got into live server. BTW, awesome job with TfB operation its the best so far, GRATS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RLWalker Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 Isn't that how it always worked? I know on 16-man they enrage at 8 stacks. Everyone has an interrupt now so it should be even easier then before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaisies Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 Isn't that how it always worked? I know on 16-man they enrage at 8 stacks. Everyone has an interrupt now so it should be even easier then before. yes. Its always been that way, except its 8 on 8man, 5 on 16 man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RLWalker Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 yes. Its always been that way, except its 8 on 8man, 5 on 16 man. Thanks for the correction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrostRaven Posted September 27, 2012 Author Share Posted September 27, 2012 That's not true because I've been farming denova 8 HM for months and we always ignored the third droid and never calibrated until he was inmune. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 Isn't that how it always worked? I know on 16-man they enrage at 8 stacks. Everyone has an interrupt now so it should be even easier then before. NO, it isn't, i have no idea how it works on 16M, but ive been killing Kephes HM 8M every Tuesday for the last 4? months, i think our first kephes kill was in May, you can believe me, we have the encounter mechanics mastered to the point were it has become boring and done while chating about how much we want a new operation (welcome TfB) or how much we like the new sci-fi film on theaters .... Just go inside there and check by yourself, yesterday (just after 1.4 patch), Kephes encounter in HM 8M was working under a totally different mechanics. Now, after some sleep, i have change my mind, i dont want it fixed back to its previous state, maybe a new loot and explanation on the silent change, but i want it to remain with the new and more challenging mechanic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mutace Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 (edited) Same here on german side. Think they cast every 5 sec oder something. The most classes have a 12sec cd on their interrupt skill. So how to do enough dmg and interrupt these 0,5 sec casts with a group of 8 raid members (Rakata and BH gear)? You need 6 classes with 8sec cd to interrupt the casts from all 3 droids but then i think the aoe from kephess and the dmg loss on each will be a prob apart of the enrage timer ^^ EDIT: Done Kephess lot of times pre 1.4 and we always ignore these casts. Or I got this wrong? regards from germany Edited September 27, 2012 by Mutace Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xGBox Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 (edited) Wow. This definitely sounds like something reserved for nightmare mode. That's exciting! Treating it as a nightmare mode mechanic, it sounds like your healers would have to put in some effort with interrupting. Try the following composition for interrupts, per droid: Tank, DPS, DPS, DPS Tank, Heals DPS (Marauder preferred), Heals Most classes have a 12s interrupt. Jedi Knights, Sith Warriors, Vanguards, and Pyrotechs have an 8s interrupt. The droid starts casting Calibrating Shot at roughly every 6s after being interrupted. Theoretically, you should be able to interrupt all of them between two people. Even if that's not possible, the amount of stacks can be reduced by half with the addition of another interrupter. As someone who has healed EC HM before, the droid phase is not healing intensive. In this instance, you just need to find the time to work an interrupt in your rotation against a 0.5 cast time window. Good luck! Edited September 27, 2012 by xGBox Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RLWalker Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 I don't know what to say. If you google "kephess calibrating shot" and look at any of the guides written months ago, they all mention that this must be interrupted to prevent enrage and most mention that it increases damage, damage reduction. E.g. http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-872.html which was last modified in April. Now maybe they have decreased the time between casts in 8-man because everyone has an interrupt now. On 16-man the cast is every 4 seconds. I can only interrupt every 4th cast (probably because of lag) with a 12 second interrupt. You don't need to get every interrupt, just enough to prevent enrage and get through the phase relatively quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CitizenFry Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 (edited) The calibrating shots have always given a stacking buff that increases damage dealt and reduces damage taken, and at 8 stacks it has always granted an additional buff that gives them even more damage output. From the OP though it sounds like 8 stacks are making the droids literally invincible, which would be new (and frankly BS). FWIW, I play a Vanguard tank, and I am the only person interacting with droid #2 until the rest of the group has burned #1 completely, and I'm reasonably sure noone helps me with interrupts once they have jumped over. I've worked out a pattern to my attacks such that droid #2 will only have 2 stacks by the time he dies, but it requires some fairly tight timing and if I get even a tiny lag hiccup (or have a brain fart) he could easily be at 4+. Droid #3 is often at 7 stacks by the time #2 is down. Edited September 27, 2012 by CitizenFry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 A Dev word about this could be handy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kil-Gorbane Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 I can confirm this behavior, the droids that start the event cast a calibration chanel very quickly and if you miss to interrupt it adds an stack of a buff that reduces damage received, once it gets 8 stacks it becomes inmune. As a guildie said, looks like a mistake with versions control software and the new nightmare mode stealthy got into live server. BTW, awesome job with TfB operation its the best so far, GRATS I was wondering about this too. The patch notes mentioned changes to specific mechanics in EC, but it was right after a SM bullet (so I assumed the mechanic changes were to SM only). Did they dumb down EC HM? Is that the game plan? Do not give us a genuine NiM EC but just water down the first two so 1.3 EC HM is the new NiM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slayeromen Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 Right we encountered this last night. Found out that there will be one that gets off a cast every 15 seconds if you have 9 people. That assumes you have 6 players with 5s CDs on their interrupt and 3 per each droid so that the rotations would be ok.. SO this is obviously broken. Yes for crying out loud we know you have to interrupt calibrating shot and that they become immune if they stack 8. Yes we have downed this many a time, No this is not the same as pre-1.4 it is broken and if you can do hm keph right now your guild is godly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RLWalker Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 So is calibrating shot being cast more frequently or has it changed in some way (or both)? It's not really clear from the reports so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cerben Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 the bombers roket-blast one dps as well if we dont get an tank on it as sone as it spawns so this is realy an mess. we can beet the droids but not the second bomber as he killes one of the dps or healer every try so far. so it realy is hard mode now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeckoOBac Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 We did this just a couple of hours ago... It definitely feels different, and we wiped and actually had to study tactics for something we just roflstomped through... That said, that was the only change we noticed, though due to incredible lag both on the server and on some of our raiders (cursed night, it appears), we couldn't complete the encounter. What we did is, get 4 dps on the middle one, and one tank and one healer on each of the other two, for interrupts, then get one dps on another droid and the other 3 on one as well, and so on. It was definitely slower and it seems that the interrupts are quite slow, even with 4 people on one droid we did miss some shots (possibly due to server lag). Still, doable, though we're in full min maxed bh/campaign gear so guys in plain rakata may have a much harder time than before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amantino Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 Just downed him earlier tonight. First robots are different for sure, which ****s up every timing for the rest of the fight. In the last phase our tank was oneshot as well, when he did everything correct. So something is different for sure. Wiped a few times before we made it, so its absolutely killable. A bit harder/different, but far from impossible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PariahMessiah Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 It used to be a 1.5 second cast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slayeromen Posted September 27, 2012 Share Posted September 27, 2012 Are you getting immunity at 5 stacks though? seems its just buggy all around or complete fight change. regardless it will be fun trying it again tonight . The droids now cast CS every 5 seconds fun times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CitizenFry Posted September 28, 2012 Share Posted September 28, 2012 The cast time has always been .5s faster in Hard Mode than in normal mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FadedSpark Posted September 28, 2012 Share Posted September 28, 2012 Well, that was a rage quit for a group that previous had this on farm. Who decided to green light this decision? It's mentally deranged. That is INSANE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted September 28, 2012 Share Posted September 28, 2012 The worst part is the absence of patch notes and/or Devs words regarding this, its been 36 hours since it was first reported and still silence. Is this the new "more communication policy"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grobluk Posted September 28, 2012 Share Posted September 28, 2012 Even trying interrupting Calibrating Shots on the 3 droids with 2 tanks, and 4 dps the dps is too spread to down the three of them quickly enough and on top of it the casting classes lose dps when they cannot finish the casts or channel abilities. Any developer knows whats going on? Any guild has found this bug/buff to difficulty? Personally I haven't noticed any difference from before. Why do you split the DPS? Why not just have a tank interrupt a droid each, and send the 4 DPS on their "own" droid? Surely 4 DPS can handle interrupts between them, and the debuff synergy means that stacking DPS on 1 target is more effective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recsa Posted September 28, 2012 Share Posted September 28, 2012 Personally I haven't noticed any difference from before. Why do you split the DPS? Why not just have a tank interrupt a droid each, and send the 4 DPS on their "own" droid? Surely 4 DPS can handle interrupts between them, and the debuff synergy means that stacking DPS on 1 target is more effective. Obviously you have not done EC HM 8M since 1.4, 1 person alone CAN'T interrupt, and once the droids get up to 8 stacks they become inmune Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts