Plane of Innovation: Masks of the Marvelous (Heroic)

Exactly.

Gearclaw has a faster damage gain. Within 20 sec (the length of the GG fight), he is up to 17 million. Explains why I can handle the GG but not Gearclaw the Collector (look at the rate of the multiplied damage). Why would this not be a broken mechanic for a tier 1 heroic?

Even if I had orange adorns giving me 100% health or even 200%, we'd reach the 45 million damage point long before even a couple minutes had passed. So the self destruct feature (10 minute timer) is always moot. Even a group of well geared players, if they just stand there and wait 4-5 minutes, healing through it, they'll get killed at that rate long before he can ever self destruct.

There is also debate about whether or not to dispel "Energized" and I'm not sure it matters if your health is already 40 million+. It only matters to the people who are only tier 1 ready. My purpose in continuing the thread is to try and find out about these strategies and which ones are based on good logic. Already the ACT trigger has been problematic, as mentioned before.

So to get back to the strategy as I understand it:

1. Tank keeps Gearclaw the Collector 20 feet away from the group, staying in LOS with the healer.

2. When he "flops" everyone targets themselves, not the tank, not the mob. All damage off if possible because of memwipe.

3. Tank aggro's the Collector after they turn the key. Note: it's unknown what he effect is of dispelling Energized. (does anyone know? can shed light on that? Thanks.)

4. Dps continues until next "flop", repeat until dead.

What breaks it is if you bork the aggro of the tank by hitting him with something and not following with a hate loss skill. Because as his damage ticks go up, it will only be possible to have the tank survive, he will one shot everyone else if he gets close enough.

Honestly, the only strategy here is to improve your gear that you can get by soloing and *shudder* doing PGs, and by grouping with other people that have done the same. I remember looking at the resolve check for the T1 zones last expac and getting murderised in the Spire zones, despite those zones supposedly being the 'easy' ones, and the heroics are no different this time around. Resolve requirements are so misleading as to be completely irrelevant imo. I see people lfg with 550+r and when I look them up, they're deficient in all sorts of stats, just like my wizzy is. Yes, passing the resolve check is an absolute must, but people mistake it as an official acknowledgement that they can actually be effective in the zone.

Can't say I've noticed a memwipe. That may just be spike damage from someone using an ascension spell. Hard to say because monks are stupidly OP at the moment and I don't usually lose aggro at any point during the fight. Range doesn't seem to matter either, although in your case, those 20 metres do buy you a bit of extra time to grab the mob back if someone else does grab aggro.

Well Frannk, thank you for realizing your wizard would be a hindrance without his epic and not making groups suffer! This is not sarcastic btw. I personally appreciate when people realize they're not ready for something and get appropriately geared instead of having others drag them along and say "well it's doable because I completed (got 100% carried through) this task". I also feel your pain about alt tanks not really being a thing. I don't have PG adorns or orange adorns from the summer event on mine so it's bad enough still. Everything is still doable but, unless you're a monk with Dragonfire shenanigans, good dps still pull agro frequently and there's nothing tanks can do to stop it. For what it's worth though, Beet has told me a couple times that you're a good tank and that he enjoys grouping with your monk.

Thanks for the kind words. I probably did come across as a little, I dunno, dismissive of Semp in my first post when that was not my intention at all. It's absolutely fine to tag along with groups when they know you need gear. I came to last expac 4 months through and had to rely on the sympathy of people to get groups with my bard, and I still had to work on my epic, tome, etc for a long time before I felt I was really fully contributing. The real problem is when you have a terribly under-geared tank or healer, or 2 or 3 under-geared people in the group and you may as well just trio the zone with less people to roll on shinies and gear.

I will disagree with you about monk though. I was a bruiser for 9 years before I reluctantly switched to monk a couple of weeks ago. Yes, Dragonfire is ridiculous, but I was tanking all the zones (except the broke t3) fine with bruiser up to that point. It's just nice to get back to my DPS roots and occasionally see myself on top of the parse lol. I'll switch back to bruiser in a heartbeat if Dragonfire gets nerfed, which it surely should be.

The summoners in my guild parsing 3+ billion zw give me aggro fits on my zerker. I can't possibly generate enough constant AoE threat to keep them from ripping the mobs they have targeted, and with chain pulls you just run out of snaps at a certain point. At least jeering onslaught is on a short CD! It's still fine and not like they're tanking the zone, but it's not like the old days where aggro was hardly a thing with a proper group setup. I can't help but think summer ethereal adorns and of runes would help immensely, but I can't be bothered for those on an alt as the heroic stuff is doable anyway. I guess I'll live.

the third name and last name vary greatly, depending group makeup. Sadly, I don't want to run with anything other than a Defiler heals, atm. We have some good inqs and druids, no slam to them, but some of these just don't seem do-able.

As to amount of health needed for a tank, the only way I stay up when the fight goes south--when folks are licking the stone cold floor tiles--is due to being about 50 mil health in group (running around 43 mil stand-alone). The pulses on last boss yesterday were ticking at 32 to 35 mil. No else could stay up with me.

This seems a bit excessive for a T1 zone, most likely the first one groups will try. I would love to see this adjusted. There needs to be some Heroics that are doable.

In my mind, I'd like to believe that this fight is possible with a full group of players in all mastercrafted 24 resolve gear (and jewelry) - but I just cant see how that's possible.. with that amount of damage being pumped out. Looking at Frannks monk, maybe having 400K plus arcane resists is the thing? Or some arcane ward pot? Guild standard bearer?

Or perhaps the progression from solo to heroic is similar to whats been done for raid - wherein you make a few pulls on the mobs you *can* kill, and save the ones that punch your face in until you've farmed all the rest of the T1s ? Maybe that's why some of the trash mobs in those zones drop gear... so you clear trash for a few days getting gear.. then move on to some nameds that you can kill..then etc.

12/19 Patch notes:
Plane of Innovation: Masks of the Marvelous [Heroic]
Bosses should no longer continue to try to cast the recurring damage over time ticks on players who have already died from the spell.
Can confirm - you still die. After that, you die again. Until everyone is dead.

Not much in regards to forum feedback / beta testing either.
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ovation-masks-of-the-marvelous-heroic.581327/

But hey - I'm glad they fixed the shiny spawn point in the zone...

This really is no different from the last expac. As I mentioned, I came to KA about 3 months in, by which time everyone else had geared up, had their epics, and were well into their ascensions. As a dirge, I could join any group as long as I passed the resolve check and it wouldn't be a problem. My dps was awful, but as I'm fond of saying, if your groups success relies on a dirge dpsing, it's probably not going to be a pleasant experience. That said, I remember hearing about the puzzle mount in the spire zones, so I organised a group for all 3 zones with people who were above the resolve check, but we got

face-punched into oblivion and gave up when it was clear we were nowhere near ready for even the 'easy' zones, despite being above the resolve check. You could easily join a guild group as a warm body and get gear that way, but if your whole group, or more importantly the tank and healer, is barely above the resolve check or the minimum requirements for the zone, it's exactly the same as KA and you'll have a very tough time of it.

nb yes, my monk has 400k resists now, but he didn't when the expac came out, and I was pretty much forced to tank, above playing my troub main because there was an acute tank shortage both in guild and PUGs, and I died plenty. If I tanked this zone now with 5 other players in sub-par gear, I'm still going to die horribly through lack of heals, and the fight going on too long and the damage tick going up. My best advice for people right now is to do exactly what I did last year, ask to tag along in t1 guild groups and say you won't roll on loot, shinies, crafting mats etc above other people. 99% of the time you'll get gear just from everyone else passing on it and it won't be too long before you have the gear to contribute properly.

I occasionally also see people asking for warm bodies for PUGs, just ask to join them, and say you'll not roll on all the important stuff. They will definitely take you over someone who is going to need on absolutely everything in the zone, but contribute nothing. . .

Agreed. The 'strange ticking' effect was adjusted because apparently the memwipe before you turn the key was causing him to switch targets and each target switch was upping the damage amount. Now he switches targets still, but the damage doesn't increase unless he is active and switching.

That's why the ACT trigger tells you (the DPS, not the tank) to stop attacking when he goes inactive.

I played this again a couple of days ago and the same thing you just described happened. I did try to tell people to stay 20+ feet away, but people don't listen, or they can't listen because they're a melee class. We got him down to 10% and the tank finished him off while we were kissing dirt. Also this means the tank needs to pull to one side of the area and we need to stay on the other. It's a limited space, but he could also have pulled up the pile of rubble, giving us more room. Whatever, we won.

I noticed also that the strange ticking now seems to be encounter wide, and zone wide. I tried to revive and then run back to rez the healer but I was instantly killed on the next "tick."

I had the same thought. Except it doesn't fit the mission system. The missions give you the best drops. And nothing those zones drop will give you enough health as a tank to tank it. So it can't be "farm the lower level bosses" strategy. They must really mean for us to be able to kill the last boss, in T1 gear. But it's not happening that way.

That zone really ticks me off. (heh)

The zone was fixed, but the DMG output is still the same, even my group often falls over even though we are already in T2 beat around. The main problem is that it should be a T1 zone and the values are designed for solo content gear but this is not true because with the gear from solos you will not reach the resolv or the necessary hp what you need for T1 of pot we want not even talking, not all have played the last addon or unnecessary time spent in PG here must be spoken again because Devs their minds what did they think and soory the addo should be very old friendly according to Kander and Gninja that was the best joke ever.

Let's say it like this is the addon was made with little effort and ideas what the whole farms so synonymous shows and that should go a year like this, I can unfortunately as a 13-year-old player only shake his head with what is produced here, and I only play the game because of my good friends because I do not want to leave them behind.

Not sure what is going wrong for you all, but I've run this with guild mates every night for the last week and never die in the zone. Most the toons are over 500 resolve, which is well above the t1 requirement. We always dispel the buff he gets after you turn the key and never have any issues and we're usually standing right on top of him.

Good to know. If they changed the mechanic, I missed the memo. I haven't run it in over a week now so idk.

Agreed, did not know it was tweaked. I have not tried it this week either.