I think most are crying out about the fact that you have to chain them, not use them reactively to situations. Players are just preventing all damage, if that is what has to be done then there was no need to a Damage change, they made Arhmatal hit less hard but gave him more HP (maintaining difficulty of the fight) but players are STILL chaining-temps to prevent all damage because healers can't heal 800K in between Auto-Attacks. If that was the point then Arhmatal should just be hitting for 10,000,000 per hit, it would make no difference since clearly the goal is to just not take damage (temp-chain). It sounds stupid when I word it like that because it is stupid. Yet, no offense there Treejay, that is what your saying needs to be done; temp-chains. At which point incoming damage is not a relevant point of the fight. I don't see the fun in doing that myself. It's not a real challenge to me to just watch my Tower of Stone or Last Man Standing and just hit the next in a series when one falls off or reaches 1.0 seconds on it's duration. It doesn't challenge me as a player. Bosses in Drunder Challenge were challenging me as a player because I had to time my Temp perfectly or die. There is no timing to Arhmatal beyond clear-cut "is my last save almost out? If yes then hit next" The fields of fire he spawns have no precursor no do they really do too much. You can easily walk out of them before anything really detrimental happens. The black-screens is identical to Stinas' script where two players meet up to remove it. I would rather a fight where healers are having to heal 200-300K HPS, which means two healers is advised unless you want to time out your Temps when the healer needs the help. Currently Arhmatal is doing 600-800K DPS which unless you plan to bring a Channeler, Defiler, Templar and Warden along with a Brigand and your Tank, isn't going to be healed through during those phases of a Tanks Temps being down. Temps are great, we should have to use them to either block death-effects or short bursts of high damage spikes. That or we should be using them to aid a healer who is struggling to get us back to full HP. We, as tanks, should not be using them to do the healers job for them (prevent damage/restore health) that's what a healer is for. In truth if I could get a group together that was good at Pot-Curing and had enough DPS, I could clear Vulak'Aerr's Dominion without a healer right now, to me that's a problem.
I did it on launch day by running monk/bruiser/sk/sk/beastlord/inq. 9 minute kill. Now that is 'chaining temps'. The zone isn't that hard. It used to require coordination and asking for death prevents and damage reductions. Now though running through it and the tank basically keeping himself alive works fine.
How many people who have killed it really isn't the point. if you have enough death prevents, temps or beastly dps (screw the healer, bring an extra dps), yeah sure, you can kill it..even I have killed it, and my guardian isn't very uberly geared. But very few set ups can heal through it. That goes for most of the zone really. The devs stated that one-shots wouldn't be the way to go forward... I guess 7 hits in a second technically isn't a one-shot, but still.. come on, most will die from it. I like having to deal with scripts/strats that require me to use my abilities, but it feels really lame having to use abilities to permanently prevent auto attack. Have him rage for 20 seconds at a time.. give him red text things.. whatever, just something a bit more predictable and less luck-based. And as for gear, it all depends on the tank. Some tanks will require fully upgraded potent armor or better, while others will do just fine with arcane or less.
Shadowknights have 1 'Tsunami' effect, Shadowknight's Furor, that if you spec left side lasts for 25 seconds. They also have 'Divine Aura' which stoneskins damage sub 50% of max for 15 seconds. That means at most a Shadowknight can 'block' damage for 40 seconds. Yet, Shadowknights are clearing the zone. The facts show the statement 'unless you block all damage you can't kill it' to simply be untrue.
Not sure why you used that odd spacing there Darkon, paragraph breaks are for separating points, unless your trying to be overly obvious with each point. I was saying that if the goal was block all damage, a damage rating is moot. I know it's doable, I still clear it as long as my DPS isn't lacking or my healers aren't slacking.
I am honestly confused as to what the issue is here. I can currently tank it on my sk without using a single temp. I have 3 pieces of ungemmed raid gear and the rest is heroic. I group with a mystic and a templar and between the three of us we have 0 issues healing through his damage. There are a LOT of people here complaining about incoming damage but when I go and loot at their eq2u profiles they are sporting cryptic/quest armor. This, in my opinion, is your problem. I'm sorry that this is the ONLY gear check heroic mob in the expansion but it is what it is. If they lowered the damage so much that cryptic/quest geared players could kill it without chaining temps then it would be just as trivial as the rest of the heroic expansion (its pretty trivial as is). There's no hard script to this fight and Sony is not going to completely rework how this fight works then drop the dps to 25%. Come on guys its one mob. Go do the other daily missions, get your gear upgraded, come back and you'll see how easy it really is. Edit I do use scales of justice on the fight. Its very useful. Edit2: Im not trying to sound like an elistist jerk, sorry if it comes across that way. I just think this mob's damage is completely in line with heroic gear progression. (I would prefer if it had some cool script to do as well but oh well)
Yeah get full upgraded potent armor, including the BPs from doing the DD that only requires you to kill the four lesser named in there.. But for what? BPs you no longer need as you already have it?
I'm sorry, I just really expected more? from the heroic end-boss of the expansion. Seeing that the average strat is "keep temps up or die" makes me sad.
That's how I feel Spira. Just because I can bring two healers and heal-through the fight, or just bring one and Temp through it saddens me. As annoying as Nox Incessit was or Mreglt The All-Tender (Heroic X2 in Wurmbones End) at least those bosses felt adequate for what they dropped. Arhmatal feels, bland. Whatever goes on in the fight there is not enough feedback, preemption or interaction to keep me interested beyond watching my hotbars. Heh, that has me worried after all wasn't one of Smokejumpers goals to have us stop watching our hot-bars? Well, here is my response to him "Make a more interesting game so I don't feel watching numbers tick down is more interesting!" Sorry, slight derailment to EQN fears there. Back to Dominion. My issue with the zone is that it's either: - A gear check on the Tank/Healer to survive. - A bland exercise in chaining-temps to let the DPS try to kill it before it kills you. Neither of which I as a player find interesting.
Timing temps in drunder wasnt hard either, ACT triggers, GG. now i just stare at the timer and wait then hit it...that's so much different you're right... The game went in a direction where it wants tanks to chain temp. I like pressing 100% of my buttons..if it goes back to just death touches where i just time a temp, then im clicking the same temp over and over again..that's not fun either.
Timing a death-block has been in the game since Raiding was introduced. ACT just made it easier rather than using Stopwatches. People did both. If it weren't for the charms or the fact I still need Leggings I wouldn't even run Vulak'aerr's that's how much the fights disintrest me. I can run High Keep because I find it enjoyable as a zone to run just for the Etyma. I can enjoy Hive to an extent by seeing how much I can pull before it leashes. Temple (Labs/Halls) are alright because they are at least engaging. Vulak'Aerrs is not engaging to me. It may be that I differ from others in opinion about this zone (which btw is very highly probably) in that I feel it's boring. I enjoyed Drunder Raiding as I felt it pushed everyone in the raid and it wasn't just a gear-check. Vulak'Aerrs feels like a predominant Gear Check, even if people could clear it on Launch. Good for them, skill actually does matter in a game. I did it in Arcane a 1/3 Potent my first time, overall the zone strikes me as a gigantic "meh" that I spend more time flying around than I do fighting.
Why are you still comparing old raid fights to a group zone? edit: I was clearing it at launch, it was possible.
Because this in all technicality a X2 Raid with only One Group also known as a Challenge Heroic which up until Tears of Veeshan had been pretty good about properly challenging and awarding players.
Wurmbones weren't challenging at all? What challenge mode heroics were before that? other than SG which again wasn't difficult and was also doable with a solo healer.
And its not "technically" a x2 at all...its "technically" a heroic zone with x2 tags and the mobs just hit hard...if it was really a x2 it would be a joke and all the mobs would all die in >1min... the last difficult heroic zone I remember is Palace of Ferzhul
Zraxth's Unseen Arcanum Elements of War Talavan Abyss Those are the "X2 Heroics" I know of. All of them were leagues better than Dominion for enjoyment.
The enjoyment factor I agree with. But they were still doable with one healer if the tank was using all his abilities properly.
To which I can agree because I myself have done it in addition to hearing others state they have in that fashion.
I pointed out some facts that utterly just blow away the argument that you can't heal through the mob. The facts were completely ignored in favor of this 'the sky is falling omg' mentality.
