Looking for Ultimate Soldier (Elite) Mechanics (and Glitches) Advice

Was working on US(E) Elite Victory part 5 yesterday and visual bugs in the raid were excrutiating. The number one killer was bomb-carrying adds spawning mid "Imma spike this nuke at my feet beotch!" animation, with the explosion/dmg going off before the enemy model had even 50% materialized. Similarly, skull to flamethrower = there will be invisible fire at your feet that will kill you before you see it if you don't move lazily to the side. Lastly, bombs/strafes would occasionally load less than a quarter second before going off. Similarly, sometimes bombs/strafes would remain deadly for up to ~1s after the effect had completed (ie. strafe explosions/gunfire ends -> move through path where strafe used to be -> die instantly. Finally, there was a rarer but very weird thing where sometimes (maybe once an hour or so) US would just ditch all agro on the main tank and lunge from one end of the arena to the other, instantly killing every non-tank.

We understood the mechanics in general and had good mastery but ultimately people would get outed by invisible damage sources they couldn't possibly know were their until the visual effect loaded on their corpse. How do other people deal with this? Love the fight but holy crap is it a *********** of a buggy mess to this day. What's the best way to mitigate the risk of being killed by things we can't see?

What general approach do people use for this. We were doing 2x tank, 1x troll, 2x healer, 3x DPS with as much group shielding as possible. DPS was solid but it's still a very long fight regardless. The longer it goes, the greater the risk of someone eating cheese dmg. Our idea was to mitigate as much bs as possible with as much group shielding as we could bring. This could feasibly be done with 1x tank and 1x healer, which would shorten the fight dramatically but also greatly increase the risk. What have other people done this with? Lastly, our order was Temporal Commander -> DPS US while holding adds -> GG + adds -> DPS US while holding adds -> SG + adds -> zerg US. Main tank held US at overturned tanks in the back, second tank held adds/sub-bosses at entrance. People who could fly did so and everyone else hung out around the mound on the left.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Note: This isn't including the bugginess that occurs after the 30min mark, where enemies start walking through the ground.

PS pr PC?

The easier way to go about it is to do 2 Tanks (1 for Boss and 1 for Adds), 2 Healers, 3 DPS, 1 Troller. The reason you want to separate the adds and the Boss is so splash damage on the boss does not cause him to go to a lower health amount while you are trying to kill the adds which will result in more adds spawning. This also spreads things out a bit more so the ground is cluttered in one central area making it more difficult for the Tank to identify a bomb spawning, a strafing, or getting caught by fire because he is in the midst of an overwhelming number of adds.

So essentially, burn the extra boss down till adds spawn, kill the adds, burn the boss down, kill the adds, rinse and repeat until you finish off everything with Grundy . Excluding the last wave of adds. Once the main boss is down to like 10% health and adds start spawning just ignore them and burn down the main boss and finish it if your DPS are up to it.

In the end though, you are right about it being a buggy mess. However, there is no way Daybreak will ever take the time to actually repair the raid unfortunately.

I'm personally PC but can't speak for everyone.

Yeah sorry I derped my OP. We were 2Tanks 2Heals 1Troll 3DPS.

One thing were were considering though is having the off-tank switch to DPS once Grundy was down. Is that inadvisable?

Whatever works for you man . Only problem with going down to 1 Tank is if that Tank unfortunately gets caught by a mechanic or a bug (invisible fire) then you are screwed since the DPS that once was a Tank cannot switch back to Tank because of the time restriction between using an Armory in combat.

Aye I think I'd only be comfortable with it if one of the other DPS was able to switch to tank later if needed. In our group, no one could switch to Troll so we got US TO ~30 % a few times and ultimately wiped when the only Troll was outed. The whole thing feels like a war of attrition with the RNG of "will invisible mechanics kill anyone twice" being the deciding factor.

probably, might have been more advisable for the group to have kicked a dps for another troller if adds were especially a problem, crowd control is in their support role's name after all, control(ler). most of those harder raids it's advisable to do the 2-2-2-2 format, though i've noticed that people rarely want to perform roles in harder stuff raid/alert alike. usually when 3 or more dps are present, it's cause one or two of them just suck at it, like that time we had 3 beating on one black lantern add in blackest night and doing no damage.

Adds were never a problem, just the invisible one-shot mechanics. I think the only thing we died to that was objectively our fault was ppl hitting GG's shield occasionally and forcing his ohko.

I agree having a backup would be ideal though so at the very least we aren't hooped if our only troll gets out. Would be nice to have a DPS that could switch if needed.

Overall from the feedback I've received it seems like the consensus is "yes this raid is ******, just keep throwing manhours and human suffering at it until everything lines up in your favour" XD

wait till you get to earth 3 . owlman: bombs! bombs!! bombs galore!!! johnny quick(evil flash): the speed force lightning lasso of death and a nice round of hit the speed force user, ultraman(evil super man): fun with lasers dodging edition. in the earth 3 universe no one is safe.............

Have no problem with these or really any other raids. The problem here isn't the mechanics, it's the glitchiness of the mechanics. At least in Panopticon/Escape E and every other raid the mechanics are reliably telegraphed and even provide multiple outs. With US + Temporal + 2x Nanda Parbat it's a marathon bugfest, even at CR255-262.

Most raid mechanics are so well telegraphed that when you die to them it's like "yeah, I let my SA drop and ****** that up." US it's like "WHAT THE **** KI- OHHHHHH THE INVISIBLE ******* INFANTEER WITH A BOMB....Coool... Coolcoolcool."

Note: The issue isn't clearing the raid, it's clearing part 5 of Elite Victory which takes about 5x longer.

We've also had problems with the "mechanics" of this raid. All the ones you mentioned plus the random aoe bombs either not showing timers or just going off before they have even spawned in. I'm not sure if it's just us but we were starting to notice the glitches and lag in "mechanics" worsening the more times we wiped and the longer we were in the instance so we started disbanding after every second or third wipe. It did seem to make a difference.

On another note, they really need to stop with these stupid boss battles inside bubbles or domes. They really screw up the camera and I think it is a contributor to these glitches in USe. Outside of camera issues, it's not so bad in the new throne instance because there isn't so much going on during the battle like the US raids.

When I got it a while ago, we had a 2tank, 1heal, and 1 troll setup. We made sure to have a Dps that could switch to heal or troll if they went down. Seems like you know mechanics but unfortunately it is somewhat of an rng feat. We had similar glitchy problems, but luck favored us in a run to get it done. It has seemed like it helped if you are in there for over 30mins or so, just disband and get a new instance.

Omfg yes, the camera. Throne had the same problem in certain places, especially when trying to watch both the floor -and- the Sea Beast -and- Rath.

The time thing is apparently a long-standing known issue. Basically after 30m it falls apart. Eventually, enemies start falling through the ground.

Try clearing you temp files and cache before the next run and see if you make it further before you start seeing bugs. It sounds like too much data is being saved and causing issues.

You forgot another important thing... if you are in the instance longer than 30-40 minutes and start wiping, the lag will become excruciating. Better to disband and restart if you wipe after about 30 minutes.

Even in normal, having closed both the portals, I seem to recall that area would start going loopy after about half an hour and why yes, I did find groups bad enough to verify that naturally.

The funny part is that while I do really just wanna get this fifth of the feat done and move on, the bs factor succeeds in creating a "war is hell" perspective of almost hopelessness or resignation to one's fate. It's Schrodinger's game design: simultaneously a complete mess but also somehow perfect XD

It’s still one of my favourite raids, especially if like me you’ve already found the briefings in Saving Justice. Chilling stuff, and without a trace of gore anywhere. Just some random, unlucky, misguided guy that stepped on a landmine and gets reforged into a living murder machine, his mind degenerating until all he knows is words for killing. Oops, bit of a tangent sorry

This might be obvious but having someone calling out mines and strafing in voice chat and calling out Ghost's reflect are helpful