As the title says, I suspect the first boss of Manaan HM is bugged. It's not difficult at all—I've yet to see anyone die there—but it's an extremely long fight with very unfun mechanics.

—For starters, it appears to last around 15 minutes or a bit more. This is extremely long for a Flashpoint boss! The long duration is because of all the shield switches, and the boss having a lot of HP to start with.

—There is very little damage going around. My healers say they mostly act as gimped DPS for most of this very long fight. This is not challenging or fun for the healers.

—Once the boss starts casting High Explosive Shells, the tank spends most of her time being knocked around and stunned. This is a phase of many minutes where the tank is effectively not allowed to play the game..

Obviously we drag the droid's templates over the boss as much as we can, and it just doesn't seem to make enough of a difference. Is there a bug here, something we're doing wrong, or is this fight just meant to be extremely long, unchallenging and unfun? Have other people had a different experience?

Couple things.

This fight is poorly tuned with respect to melee/ranged DPS, its far far easier if you have 2 ranged. There are constant aoe pulses going out, so if you bring 2 melee DPS, it won't be such a snooze fest for your healer.

The fight can go pretty quickly if done properly, you have to balance out your DPS on the 2 shields so they both go down at the same time. The shields go back up after a certain amount of time, so if they go down at the same time, that's a longer period you have to DPS the boss. If you DPS them unevenly it can definitely take forever, as you have a small window to hit the boss in, you can even find yourself in a loop where by the time one shield is down, the other one has gone back up so you just constantly are attacking the adds and not the boss.

As far as I know, the tank getting punted around mechanic is just something you have to deal with. I THINK you can mitigate it somewhat if you get the adds to hit the boss with their grapple attack. Still a dumb obnoxious mechanic.

In general I hate this fight, but yeah, you need to get your DPS to balance the damage they do to the adds so both shields go down at near the same time.

How does this fight take 15 minutes ?? We usually kill it way way faster...

Only way I can imagine this takes that long is when you don't dps the droids to 50% at the same time(when they take back the shield)

Both droids will take back their shields when at 50% health, and after a set amount of time they will place it back on the boss... so if you split dps on the droids and take them to 50% roughly the same time you will have the most dps time on the boss... we usually only need to do this twice before the boss is down...

* edit: yeah what the previous poster also said..lol... I should read better next time...

Just boring, unless I missed a mechanic with the flechette round attack or whatever constantly knocks back the tank. If it were channeled and interruptible, a cone that could be stepped out of (like the 2nd boss in Rakata), or something that could be mitigated it'd be better.

If there's no mechanic I missed then for the first time in this game I actually hate a fight and want it changed.

Another crapstatic designed fight, like the stupid high HP droid in Czerka that wasn't hard, just long and boring combined with a trivial but annoying pull mechanic.

As others have said, you can reduce the fight time by syncing the dps on the two droids to get as much uptime as possible on the boss, but even so, the fight is long and boring for dps (might as well be fighting a target dummy) while the tank gets the always enjoyably job of being knocked around and watching the floor.

The fight isn't bugged or boring. Your DPS are not executing the mechanics of this fight properly if you are experiencing either of the following situations:

1. The fight lasting longer than four minutes.
   
2. The tank being knocked around by the explosive round for more than 20 seconds.
   

The proper way to clear this fight is to split your DPS so both droids are being damaged exactly evenly. That way they both transfer their shields from the boss to themselves at the same time. This provides maximum up-time for DPS to work on the boss while both droids are healing themselves back to full.

Having the boss exposed to damage for the longest period of time possible results in a short explosive round phase, and a short fight overall.

Explosive rounds begin when the boss hits a certain hit point percentage and lasts until he's dead. If you have a long damage window open on the boss, the boss will be dead within twenty seconds of explosive rounds starting if the droids do not transfer their shields back to the boss.

My clear of this boss yesterday lasted 3:52. When the mechanics are done properly this is actually the shortest of the three boss encounters in this flashpoint.

The new HMs are very good at exposing terrible DPS, both in the strength of the DPS numbers and in their ability to execute on mechanics.

The fight isn't bugged or boring. Your DPS are not executing the mechanics of this fight properly if you are experiencing either of the following situations:

1. The fight lasting longer than four minutes.
   
2. The tank being knocked around by the explosive round for more than 20 seconds.
   

 

The proper way to clear this fight is to split your DPS so both droids are being damaged exactly evenly. That way they both transfer their shields from the boss to themselves at the same time. This provides maximum up-time for DPS to work on the boss while both droids are healing themselves back to full.

 

Having the boss exposed to damage for the longest period of time possible results in a short explosive round phase, and a short fight overall.

 

Explosive rounds begin when the boss hits a certain hit point percentage and lasts until he's dead. If you have a long damage window open on the boss, the boss will be dead within twenty seconds of explosive rounds starting if the droids do not transfer their shields back to the boss.

 

My clear of this boss yesterday lasted 3:52. When the mechanics are done properly this is actually the shortest of the three boss encounters in this flashpoint.

 

The new HMs are very good at exposing terrible DPS, both in the strength of the DPS numbers and in their ability to execute on mechanics.

Generally true - though the caveat as always is that this is queue-able content designed to help players gear upon reaching level cap, not progression content for a team of min / maxed players used to running with each other.

At least to me, the other fights present a real challenge based on the mechanics, where this one just drags on if you have low, slow dps or a group that can't split dps between the droids.

IMO I'd rather see the fight have more pass / fail aspects to it rather than just make the fight annoying long if the group isn't following the mechanic.

IMO I'd rather see the fight have more pass / fail aspects to it rather than just make the fight annoying long if the group isn't following the mechanic.

LOL - the bonus boss in Manaan does exactly that.

LOL - the bonus boss in Manaan does exactly that.

That it does.

You have to DPS both droids down to approximately 40% health at the same time for the Riot-shield transfer to "hold" for any useable length of time.

Set the boss as your focus-target (<ALT-F> by default with what you want focussed being targetted), each DPS picks a droid, blast 'em down, move the instant the droid starts casting his grapple-thingy so this crap rendering-engine and/or server-tech doesn't rubber-band you back into it despite your client appearing to show that you were well out of it.

Keep an eye on the boss's buff-bar, switch targets as soon as the shields (there will be two icons, one from each droid) dissapear off him.

A bit of a cheesy mechanic, IMO --"I are 1337 <TAB> key spammer!"-- but he goes down pretty quick if you manage this correctly.

The final boss-fight more than makes up for this, though: Very intense fight, rapidly becoming one of my favourites, despite occasional frustration

The new HMs are very good at exposing terrible DPS, both in the strength of the DPS numbers and in their ability to execute on mechanics.

And as usual, it's the tank and healer who pay the price.

No but seriously, explosive shell is just bad design. Once it begins, the tank might as well go afk until the fight is over.

The final boss-fight more than makes up for this, though: Very intense fight, rapidly becoming one of my favourites, despite occasional frustration

Yeah it's a fight where the tank spectates or respecs to DPS, and where idiot dps request a guard because they don't realize why they're taking aggro (hint: not because of doing great dps). Very interesting indeed. Next time I hope we see a fight where the healer cant heal, or a boss that can't be damaged and just has to be survived for 5 minutes before you get your loot. Sounds fun for everyone. /s

And as usual, it's the tank and healer who pay the price.

No but seriously, explosive shell is just bad design. Once it begins, the tank might as well go afk until the fight is over.

 

 

Yeah it's a fight where the tank spectates or respecs to DPS, and where idiot dps request a guard because they don't realize why they're taking aggro (hint: not because of doing great dps). Very interesting indeed. Next time I hope we see a fight where the healer cant heal, or a boss that can't be damaged and just has to be survived for 5 minutes before you get your loot. Sounds fun for everyone. /s

LOL the dps would cry till whatever annoying mechanics were removed.

I remember hating tanking in SWTOR back in the 1.X days in the launch HMs as damn near every trash pull was nothing more than getting stunned and punted around as the tank.

It seemed to get a bit better with the latter FPs, and into 2.0, but the overused and annoying as hell mechanic of getting punted, cc'd and stunned every pull is still around, and sometimes like in Manaan, not just on trash.

No but seriously, explosive shell is just bad design. Once it begins, the tank might as well go afk until the fight is over.

I cleared Manaan HM again last night. I asked the DPS to focus on bringing the two droids down as evenly as possible to see just how short this fight could be. We were done in 3:31, and I was only punted around by the Explosive Shells twice before the boss died.

The Explosive Shells are, essentially, a soft enrage. The tank is much more likely to be caught by the droids' Riot Grapple during the Explosive Shell phase, and therefore take more damage.

Thanks for the answers.

I've been able to get it done in reasonable time by asking the DPS to shoot the droids evenly, so at least there's that. The ammount of tank punting in that fight is still obnoxious. I really don't think you can talk about a "soft enrage" for High Explosive Shells, because the ammount of damage in that fight is just too low. Even terrible PuGs don't wipe there, they just take way too long, subjecting everyone to more of these awful mechanics.

I'm guessing the clears in three and a half minutes are by people already overgeared and/or not a GF PuG. I'll try timing next time I have some guildies with me, I'd ballpark it at four to five minutes now that we do it the correct way.

If I'm going to be punted around alot, it should at least be part of the challenge, like the Rakata Prime bonus boss, not just something pointless that must be endured.

Okay, sort of related. Yesterday I healed this and there was a discussion between one of the dps with the tank (or should I say the dps kinda hassled the tank, lol).

"Tank, you suck , you can't hold aggro" The dps played the intended mechanic and downed the droids evenly.

That's my question. Can the tank actually hold both droids ? Kinda hard to do when the dps are nuking different targets. One of them will most likely go after the dps, specially during the first seconds. And specially considering the tank was a juggernaut, who don't have an amazing AoE threat generation

Also, I bellieve the droids' Riot thing whatever is a small AoE damage, so if you happen to have a melee dps and both droids are on the tank, the dps might take a lot of damage the entire time. So actually not even sure if the tank should have both droids when melee dps are on the group

when i tank on my jug i ask dps to bring adds to the boss and aoe taunt after first set of grapples, after that spam sweeping slash and (aegis assault + crushing blow) on cooldown - have 0 problem holding aggro. If dps don't listen to me then start on one droid - crashing blow + backhand, then taunt the other and leap to it after first set of grapples. Again you have them in your pocket and you still have aoe taunt as a backup.

Holding aggro on both helps a lot to controll grapples - 2 grapples go on you, take a step back and boss is guaranteed to step in and get pulled.

when i tank on my jug i ask dps to bring adds to the boss and aoe taunt after first set of grapples, after that spam sweeping slash, smash on cooldown and (aegis assault + crushing blow) on cooldown - have 0 problem holding aggro.

And specially considering the tank was a juggernaut, who don't have an amazing AoE threat generation

I don't know where this is coming from but jugs have a lot of abilities to hold aggro on multiple targets.

If dps don't listen to me then start on one droid - crashing blow + backhand, then taunt the other and leap to it after first set of grapples. Again you have them both in your pocket and you still have aoe taunt as a backup.

Holding aggro on both helps a lot to controll grapples - 2 grapples go on you, take a step back and boss is guaranteed to step in and get pulled