Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Hardest High-End Bosses Ever (or How I Learned to Start Cursing and Hate the Raid)
Posts
That's just to prevent making the fight too easy
Huhuran pre-nerf was one heck of a hard encounter. Post nerf Stoneform made you immune to the poison vollies and popped you out of the sleep to continue DPSing.
gogo Alliance noobs.
I remember one crazy 1% heartbreak on Vael but after that we got him. Magtheridon was probably the worst though. Raiding on our server is pretty bad, and the Alliance guild who's usually at least half an instance ahead of us was having issues of their own, so we were positioned to get the server first kill on Mag. We had a long night of good attempts. One to 3 fucking %. Everyone pulled out the extra elixirs and whatnot, vowed to stay late enough to get him down, etc. But every attempt after that 3% seemed to get worse, and eventually we had to call it. Next day, a day we don't raid, the Alliance guild gets him. Oh the pain.
One of my favorite (tiny) triumphs was Jin'do. Mostly because I was the required tank. Rawr.
Okay here is the deal. Get a group of 5 people together. Go into zone. Get to top of zone, fight boss.
This quest can be done at level 30.
Simple right? Nice and easy?
No sir.....NO SIR.
The LEVEL CAP is 30. Meaning if you had a job over 30, when you step in, you are deleveled to 30 temporarily. Okay, no big deal.
You cannot beat any of the monsters Third floor and up. Nope, can't do it. At all. Not a chance. Don't even try. This is INDIVIDUALLY. The monsters. You cannot beat a single monster with your group of 5 people.
They are all social. There are a fuckton of them. There is little to no map.
So you have to run. Run for your goddamn life. Pray no one is stupid. Pray no one lags, not even a little. Pray that people listen. Pray that you are not fucked over by random pathing.
This is BEFORE the boss. BEFORE IT. Getting TO the boss. It can take you HOURS to get through this portion. THIS PORTION. THIS PART. GETTING TO THE BOSS.
Then there is the boss. You must have two Summoners Or replace one summoner with a Black mage. You must have two warriors. Or replace one warrior with a ranger. you must have a good white mage.
one mistake, one misfired astral flow, one mistimed heal, one errant aggro you are done. Finished. Done. Pray you did not blow all of your rerezzes on getting to this boss so that you may try him again.
If you DID?
you get to do the whole thing over again. Congradulations.
I wiped us at 3%
BOOOM 28 people dead. Funny thing was, damage meters picked it up, and i shot to #1 position too.
That was somewhere early december, and i still get comments on it at times.
At first, I laughed uncontrollably at this post. Then, I cried, remembering that I did (read: attempted) all three of the Promyvions. In one night. A week after the expansion came out. The horror.
All of Chains of Promathia pre-nerf was one long nightmare, let me share my story of Omega and Ultima.
Classic FF bosses, right? Yeah, you fight 'em both in a battleground in some of the later missions in CoP. Level 60 cap, kind of irritating but we dealt with it. My group went in, killed the mammets (easy dudes) no problems. We were good on time; there was a 45 minute cap to this fight. So we watch the cutscene, and see Omega. First off, he looks terrifying. Second, he killed us all in about the time it took to type "What just happened?" We think it's a fluke, we hadn't been having many problems with the boss fights up til this point; after all, we were all experienced, high level players. Should be easy, right? Well, not really. We get in the battleground again, kill the mammets, and proceed to be pounded into tiny adventurer bits by Omega. Again.
This went on for a good 2 or 3 more fights before we called it a night. We were all bummed out, this battle seemed stupidly hard. However, we learned that we could get an item that locks down Omega's and Ultima's special attacks.
Cue next day after hours of farming for said items. We go into the fight, new strategy plus new items. We beat Omega, woot! But, er, wait, still have to deal with Ultima... Yeah, with no items left to use on Ultima, he kicked our trash hard. Instead of boring you with just exactly how many times we died, I'll just say we spent the next week farming for items in the day, then doing that mission a few times each evening. Our group's attitude slowly went from "Well, we'll beat it next time" to "I hope I don't lose too much EXP today", to "What merciful god would allow this to continue"
The real kicker is that they nerfed the fight (and many other CoP fights) to a much more manageable difficulty, after my group had finished them all, naturally.
I'm certain that the designers of Chains of Promathia are sustained by the tears of their players.
I was considering resubscribing a few months ago, but then I remembered I'd have to deal with garbage like that and that I'd need to start over from scratch since all my characters have been undoubtedly deleted.
I don't want to do the summoner fights again, or all the subjob quests again. There's no way I would stomach doing the missions again.
Or genkei, ugh.
That fight is epic.
Hah. That made me smile.
And makes me wish I could actually explore a raid boss on my own without everyone in the raid reading up on strategies and explaining them over vent.
The best part is the datamined info on that ability.
This one looks fun too.
I remember Maexna being a pain in the ass, because the encounter was bugged. People who got stuck to the wall couldn't always be targetted properly, lots of line of sight issues. And every wipe got me yelled at by some fat nerd I didn't know, over vent. Good stuff.
A hunter says: "Shield wall active!", activates this hunter dodge ability and evasion tanks the rest.
"Shield wall active!" is now a much-used sentence in our guild
In EQ not only did you lose experience when you died, but you needed a Cleric (preferably) to resurrect you to regain some of it.
When you died your items were left on your corpse, and eventually your corpse would rot destroying all of your equipment as well.
Fun times.
edit: death happens OFTEN in mmos. making it too frustrating seems like a bad idea in hindsight.
As stupid as the proposals one sees for a permadeath server or MMO.
Yeah... The closest we get to this, really, is new trash. There isn't often as detailed information on trash pulls as on bosses, and it's hard to match the feeling like when we first zoned into The Eye and sorted out what could be CC'ed, who tanked what, which ones whirlwinded, etc. It still happens with bosses at times because people like to adapt the accepted strats, or there are variants, but everyone still knows the abilities beforehand.
That's something I'm really looking forward to with Zul'Aman - for the first time since the game was released, a new instance will be added and I'll be of a high enough skill and gear level to do it on day one.
Admittedly, some info will probably leak out from the test realms, but hopefully most of it will be new to everyone.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
Errr.....
Noone beat C'thun pre-nerf. He was literally impossible. They day he got nerfed was the day the first kills from Nihilum and D&T came in. I remember it clearly, there was a lot of EU vs US bitching going on because it went live first on one server, and only later on another.
EU maintenance is earlier than the US', so EU guilds had extra time to clear and and make their attempts on C'Thun.
With regards to the video of a raid getting lazor'd to death...it was their fault for being idiots and running into the room all at once. The spell works like Holy Wrath, except it does more damage.
If you want to know one of the reasons why C'Thun was really broke, check out Fun With Tentacles. The victim is EJ's own Gurgthock.
They nerfed him a couple times, I was not sure which you meant.
Amen brother. Amen.
"Of course we can take him! You're level 10 and I'm level 7. That's like having a level 17"
Ouch.
Steam - Talon Valdez : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk
EU Maintainance is on Wednesday, US on Tuesday. Which one is earlier?
That's the worst part of WoW, walking into a new instance, clearing some trash, then while you're staring down a boss, having the raid leader open up "okay.. this is how the fight works.."
Hardest fight I ever witnessed was the Rathe event in EQ. It was 100% abusive to the players and no one looked forward to doing it.
Queue Furor's legendary rants about Plane of Earth and the fact that the key for PoEB was left on your corpse.
It's a shame that I didn't stick around too long with Vanguard. All of this EQ 2 I'm playing now has made me curious about what lay ahead for me had I managed to come within at least viewing distance of the current end-game.
First, you had to get keyed for PoEB. Not a huge deal, just clear Plane of Earth A, kill the huge alligator, kill the last dude quickly enough, and voila, keyed.
PoEB was really short. Some trash, I think there was big arena area where you had to kill 4 named guys and then you hopped down to The Rathe. It's been years, so forgive me if some of the details are a bit sketchy.
You had 12 guys that looked like Egyptian Pharaohs. They each hit really hard, and if I remember, 6 were mezzable, and 6 weren't. Once the first one died, you had like 10mns or so to kill all of them and then the Avatar of Rathe or something spawned.
There was a tiny alcove where you started, and then a big platform on which the 12 were located, in a circle. In the middle, there was a big light. This is the best picture I could find.
So, you basically went around with a bard to figure out which were mezzable and which had to be offtanked. You would grab the first mezzable, work his health down to about 10%, and pull him into the tiny alcove where your enchanters and one UNLUCKY SON OF A BITCH wizard would be (usually my goofy ass). One enchanter would then start chain mezzing that coucilmember. The wizard would click his staff of the flux because it helped to make the councilmen less resistant to mez - the wizard and the bards did this NON STOP, for hours. You also had a bard doing the aoe mez or whatever in case something did break. You did this 5 more times, each time positioning the councilmen very carefully, without vent, all in-game. You usually had 2/3 enchanters and a wizard doing all that work with a backup enchanter in case things went sour and a cleric to patch heal when they resisted for that half second.
Then the other 6 would be offtanked with a warrior/priest/priest/paladin combo or something like that. There was a reason you brought 72 people to this shit. Then you started killing the mobs - first the ones outside, then you'd work your way back inside the alcove.
If at any given point a) an offtank, b) an enchanter, c) the wizard, d) a healer, e) the bard died, you wiped. This boss fight alone took 4 hours+. We did it in 4h30mns or so the fight night we got it done. I think they nerfed it eventually. Anyhow, once all the councilmen die, then the Avatar spawns and he hits like a fucking truck, etc etc but you start the olde Cheal rotations and win. That was 1/4th of your time key, but you usually went for that last because it was the hardest.
The other 3 parts were from Fennin Ro, the demon guy in plane of fire, then you had Coirnav, the water douche dps-insane event in Plane of Water, and then Xegony, the goddess in plane of air that summoned waves and waves of mobs that went for healers first. She was a genuinely fun fight.
Then they changed it to breaking all your gear that was equipped and in your bags. BREAK.
And right before launch they switched it to what we have now.
In short, no, not really.
This includes Vael, Prince, and to a lesser extent, Aran.
It gets worse, when you take into account the mechanics of the game.
Bosses did so much damage that a tank would die in under three seconds, no questions asked, nothing anyone could do about it. I think the fastest heal in the game took right around 3 seconds to cast, I don't really remember. But the point was there was no way you could safely wait for a tank to take damage before healing. Raids got around this by setting up a specific "heal chain", using a spell that (if I remember right) took 10 seconds to cast. Cleric 1 would start to cast the heal, and at 2 seconds, cleric 2 would start to cast the next heal, so on up to 5 clerics. At 7 seconds the tank would pull, and hopefully he'd keep agro and the healers wouldn't get creamed. These poor clerics did this, and nothing but this, for the entire duration of was probably a 30 to 45 minute fight. The raid would have backup clerics to fill in when one ran out of mana. There was no way to spot heal, there was just nothing in the game that could cast fast enough and heal enough damage.
It was similarily bad for other people as well. Threat was an all or nothing thing in EQ, if you inched above the tank at any point, the mob would destroy you. All DPS classes (those that had one) got around this by using whatever threat-clearing abilities they had every time the cooldown was up. Rogues got some kind of feint ability, few other classes got feign death, etc. Average cooldown was around 6 seconds.
Tanks had it bad too. Their only real threat generation was "taunt", on a 6 second cooldown, that if not resisted (you got no message that it was resisted either) bumped you to the top of the threat list, plus a small bonus. That was it.. your melee damage and the taunt button was all you had to hold agro. They improved on this after a while by putting in weapons with threat producing procs, but I guarantee every warrior spent every fight of his career mashing taunt every time the button popped.
Only people that really had it easy were ranged dps. But even they had problems, resists were a huge problem and for several years, and dots would not stack (which completely fucked the necromancer class, a dot based class). The resist problem was worked around by casting a debuff that reduced resists (forget who casted it.. shaman or enchanters I think). They had to refresh this debuff once a minute or so I think. Shaman would have to spam cast a spell that would slow the boss' attack speed, or else the tank would die, Bards would have to cast 2 or 3 spells on a 6 second rotation or something retarded, and necromancers would have to sacrifice their entire mana pool to transfer mana to a healer.
Pretty much every boss fight required this level of repetition, and it never got fun. Yet we did it anyways, because seeing bosses dead most definitely was fun.
Press 1 to turn on song 1.
Press 1 to turn off song 1.
Press 2 to turn on song 2.
Press 2 to turn off song 2.
Press 3 to turn on song 3.
Press 3 to turn off song 3.
Repeat.
Unless you had Teamspeak or Vent, a bard could not communicate while fighting.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!