I'm glad i'm not the only one who noticed these items!
For the gems I tried they seem to work every other breath, wondering if others have had the same.
Also it may be worth noting that some are protection during attack (Red-Protection from fire ), some seem to be debuff (Black-Remove Acid). So timing of usage may be an issue. (As an advanced maneuver this adds ability for 1 person to grab an off colour debuff for your party for mid game strategy shift if a dragon head is lagging in damage, and Share a protection area during on colour attacks)
If you look at the "Reclaim Hoard" mission that is running in the Well of the Dragons prior to the Tiamat fight there are 4 levels of buffs tied to the amount of treasure that is turned in. Some of those buffs reduce the cooldown of the Dragon Gems to 90 seconds and 60 seconds (tier III and tier IV respectively). So if enough people do a decent amount of turn-ins then everyone can use the dragon gems more often.
The other parts of the buffs are also nice, including a whopping +5000 HP and +1000 Power for the Tier IV buff.
Just a few new observations about the Tiamat fight:
It seems that many people are starting to figure out the fight, at least a little. I am seeing many more people grouping up at the fires, working together and supporting the other teams which may be lagging behind. I would like to think that this guide has had a part in that.
The most difficult Heads to fight seem to be Green and White. Green because that poison cloud is nasty, lasts a long time and covers a large area. That makes it difficult (but not impossible) for other teams to fight the Green head without excessive deaths. To combat this, I suggest that a member of the Black team and the Red team grab a green gem if possible. That would allow 2 other teams to have some protection from the green breath if it turns out to be a problem. This is not necessary, but it has helped me out in a few runs.
White is problematic because the freeze effect is not countered by the White gem, all the gem does is protect you from the damage. If you watch closely you will see that the White breath does not cover the entire area of the platform, there is usually some space on one side or the other that is "safe" even without the gem. When i am running on a white team I have been getting a blue gem, simply because I have found the white gem to be effectively useless. I am either avoiding the breath entirely or the freeze causes me to get killed by a random mob or the dragon just eats me. I do not suggest that the entire white team skip getting white gems, but I think it is safe for 1 or 2 people to get blue "just in case". Has anyone else noticed the lack of usefulness of the white gem? or am I doing something wrong? (entirely possible)
Ice Storm (for the CWs) seems to be an excellent power in this mission. It has excellent knockback, does good damage, and can clear a platform easily. Do the rest of you find it to be useful in protecting the Clerics, or is it causing more problems that it solves by spreading the mobs out? The same question is directed at the DC's using Sunburst (I think that is the heal/knockback power, but I don't play DCs)
On the topic of surviving the breath attacks: The Shard of Valindra's Crown has saved my butt numerous times when fighting Tiamat. The combination of knockback and damage/status effect immunity is a real life saver in there. I recommend it to anyone that has the chance to try it out. Any other artifacts that seem to work especially well?
I am working on an update to this guide and I am actively looking for suggestions and tactics. I want to thank the NW_Legit_Community for their assistance thus far, many completions would not have occurred without the players from that channel forcing organization down the throats of the people that find themselves in there with no clue what to do.
If anyone has specific suggestions or complaints you can reach me here or in game, my main is a CW, Eigil@tickdoff
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realmdieMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 11Arc User
edited December 2014
did anyone try killing all head in phase 2 when dps is crazy? will it buggy or no reward?
i sometime got ppl that can dps 4 head to less than 30% health in phase 1, and can possibly kill all of it on phase 2. but still most ppl shouting that dont kill it in that phase, though i already seen all head less than 10% and still have 1m.
if no buggy and still get reward, it seems most ppl's thinking really are shallow to must kill it on phase 3.
If everything is under 25% in phase 2 it is really not that big a deal to just go for it. If you have that kind of dps you are an auto-win in phase 3. But note: one dragon at 80% and 4 dragons at 10% is NOT everything under 25%. Go clobber the 80%.
The reason the logic works out is suppose the heads are 25%, 20%, 10%, 15%, and 10% with 60 seconds to go on wave 2. You start killing things and you only get to 0%, 0%, 0% and 15% and 10%. So what... everything is at 25% on wave 3 you win. You always have a full 2 minute wave 3. You can always kill 5 heads at 25% if you had that kind of dps at wave 2.
Now on wave 3 if you get them all down to 10% and you only have a few seconds left, the logic is different. You won't have a full two minute wave 4, so you need to keep them low. Me I think if you arn't getting them on wave 3 you need a small miracle on wave 4 so I don't sweat it much.
That said, most people just don't want to encourage people to kill things on wave 2=). To many people do it at the wrong time. Like when there is still a dragon at 80%
Something I wondered is if two groups on phase 1 heads would be more effective since you can't reply on pugs to have the right and even amount of debuffs and so if you went green and blue, you should be able to dps it faster. I suppose it depends on the debuffs, if there's lots of repeated non stacking ones, then 5 groups of five is better, if there isn't then 2 initial groups may be faster. There doesn't seem to be many cws that still go for the hv set which I still like for the debuff. With the short distance to white red and black, then if you have a dodge, you can just dodge onto the platform in no time. Don't kill the heads though as they seem to regen with more hp than just leaving them low. For a balanced raid, 5 groups of 5 is still a logical way to do it. Of course keeping an eye on any heads that may need more help for the next phase, or same if you can.
Something I first didn't realise was that black actually applied a defence debuff and so the gem removes that so you use it after the breath attack as it's not a protective shield. Same goes for white for cleansing allies frozen status and frozen floor. I noticed a lot of other people didn't realise too. Debuffs are very important in this raid.
i see a lot of cws using 2/2 set for more power which is dumb. HV is the best set.
also the ideal 5 people per head is a fail strat imo. I have never seen 5 groups which mirrors others to have the same debuff on each head. going 10/10 is the best ive seen (finished in 2nd phase).
more protip: always use the greater dragon slaying potions and WEAR your dragon slaying rings, almost everyone are underestimating these rings but it gives more dps than any ring on the game. (when fighting dragons of course)
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urlord283Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,084Arc User
Do NOT charge the heads as soon as the cleric meters light up, EVERY time I see a bugged instance I see people who charged the heads before the Phase changed over.
You MAY get away with it a little here and there, but sooner or later you will find yourself bugging it out for everyone. Make sure all the adds are dead before rushing in, this will give you a better cushion.
Thank you. Very nice guide. I actually wasn't aware of the more adds on the middle cleric thing. This will be very helpful to people trying to do the event.
There are two issues with player behaviour that is becoming increasingly prevalent and as a consequence increasingly detrimental to the outcome of the fight.
First of is people rushing from the clerics as soon as all three are defended, entering the head area too early and leaving anything from a few to many straggler adds behind. These adds will a) prevent anyone in combat with them from mounting up, b) charge after, attack and potentially kill players in range and c) linger behind, making it increasingly difficult for players who have to release to the campfire to reach their desination heads. It takes a few seconds to kill the remaining adds if everyone stays, and alot longer (if at all) if most players rush off, only to spend those seconds they could have been killing adds to wait for the heads to emerge anyways.
This is not a solo race, the fight as a whole benefits from having a group mindset.
Secondly is how the adds are fought during the cleric phase. We can either control them where they spawn and kill them, or try to knock them off the ledges. Regardless of method used, knocking adds all over the place doesn't help the players, it actually hurts the fight as the mobs will now, instead of being located within a small area, be spread over a large area and come gunning for the clerics from several different directions. A single CW can control a spawn point, and keep the adds nearly permanently locked down. A GF can taunt them as they spawn and tank them in place until killed by the other players. A combination of the two, or by either and other players is all it takes to make sure they adds stay where they spawn instead of going to the cleric. If a DC stands on top of the spawn and casts Sun Burst on the adds they're now all of a sudden in four different places instead of one, making it impossible to control them and any area of effect used by the players (which would otherwise be ideal for this type of fight) is rendered significantly weaker. The same of course applies to CWs using Ice Storm as their go-to daily, which has become very fashionable throughout the day.
Always keep the adds closely bunched together, either in order to knock them off the edges, or to kill them where they spawn. Any panicked knocking around in order to at any cost prevent them from hurting the clerics will end up hurting the players more than anything.
First Tiamat, at launch, everything was new, everybody was discovering the map. We failed but who cared.
Fifteen next attempts: We were duly making groups, each group had a leader, each leader was shouting in caps in the "Say" chat, coordination, gems, clerics. Elaborate orders. TWO FROM BLACK AND ONE FROM WHITE HELP PROTECT LINU, things like that. We always failed.
Yesterday: zerg approach. No groups, no gems, nothing. One guy was shouting in caps in the "Say" chat. Quite simple orders. BLACK. STOP. NEXT BLUE. STOP. Things like that. We won.
Both Zerg method and my method can work well. But neither will work if there is no communication. If half the group is zerging and half the group is taking individual heads your Tiamat encounter is in trouble (not necessarily doomed to failure, but it is more difficult than it needs to be)
I have now done several zerg mission, probably 6 or 7. We succeeded once, none of them bugged out. Many of them were very close to a victory, we needed maybe 5-10 more seconds to finish (one of them literally needed 1-2 more seconds for white to go down to complete). *IF* everyone knows what they are doing, where to go, when to go there, when to stop attacking the heads etc. etc. the Zerg method works well. If you could enter Tiamat with a pre-made 25 man group zerging would be excellent. But zerging Tiamat requires coordination and large group situational awareness that I find difficult to achieve in a PUG.
With the method that I support (hence my guide) you are giving the average person much less to focus on at once. They mainly need to pay attention to their own head with maybe one person in each group watching the neighboring heads to see if they need help. Less things to worry about makes it easier for the average pugger to understand what they are doing, where to go and when to do it. Yes, coordination is still required, but in my experience it is easier to get that level of cooperation in a "Tactical" approach than in the zerg, at least currently. That may change in the future if the zerg method becomes the de facto method, but I do not think we are there yet. I have completed approx. 20/22 Tactical Tiamat runs, usually with lots of time to spare. However, the 2 failures were absolute disasters, with no one paying attention, poor DPS, almost no one protecting the middle cleric, and several people hanging out at the camp fire. So my method also has it's drawbacks. But I maintain that the Tactical method is currently a better guarantee of success.
Bottom line: Both can work, or either can fail. As long as the entire 25 man team is working from the same playbook. If you get too many people trying a different method from the majority you are hindering yourselves and courting disaster.
Note: In all of the zerg runs I have been in, I did everything possible to achieve victory. Once it was obvious that we were only zerging I no longer attempted to form coherent groups or encourage people to take individual heads. I worked with the rest of the players as much as possible, and was also shouting in /Say what needed to be done next. But I think too many people either do not pay attention to ?Say, or possibly most of those people already have me on /ignore
Edit: I hope that the NW_Legit_Community will decide on which runs are going to be Zerg, and which are going to be Tactical. Legit Players are typically much more willing to work as a coherent team, but the difficulty of getting everyone to agree on which method to use in the shorter amount of time that we typically have is problematic. I respectfully suggest that one time is chosen for the Zerg runs and a second time is selected for the tactical runs. I wish the Zergers the best of luck (truly I do), but I prefer to run Tactical missions and I will try to avoid the predetermined zerg runs when possible.
I have already seen some attempts to separate the two types of runs on Legit, I am putting this plea here in an attempt to make the NW_Legit_Community more willing to set separate times for the different runs.
To use a quote of which I am quite fond: "To wives and girlfriends, may they never meet."
I have tried like many the colors methods in the first days
no matter what was the GS it was always fail
best method is one big group or split to 2 that require bit more communication
the method of colors still confuse ppl, even if one person think he is smart and go to attack the green alone he will provoke deadly poison that can cause fail for the all group
even with the zerg you can fail, ppl disconcert and small leg can wipe half your group and time is short
don't underestimate big group.
one allowed ground of cleric is 15% damage to the all group --> for 25 ppl its like you group do damage of 29 ppl
and with plague fire, high prophet, terror, draconic armor... its like 100 ppl attack the head and even then you see fails cause time is short
so far I never saw or heard that the colors method works
so far I never saw or heard that the colors method works
Try running with the crowd from NW_Legit_Community. The Tactical method is working great for the vast majority of our runs. (to be fair, many people on Legit also run the zerg method and are having success as well). If you would like to see a good Tactical run in practice join NW_Legit_Community or look me up in game before a Tiamat run. Eigil@tickdoff
I have tried like many the colors methods in the first days
no matter what was the GS it was always fail
..
so far I never saw or heard that the colors method works
Most runs the first days failed because alot of the players didn't know what to do, it would have been exactly the same if every single run had been zerg out of the gate. Now far more players have a good idea how the fight works and consequently alot more runs succeed.
I have just under 30 wins by now and just a single one of those has been a full zerg, two or three more have been some yellers in #say demanding zerg while the rest ignore them and group up and the zerg crowd decide to do their thing all alone. All the other have been five proper groups, with the usual disconnect or campfire hangaround here and there.
We had a run yesterday where a bunch of the zerg crowd rage quit early on because they didn't get their way, and we still managed to pull it off in the end with as little as 15-16 players left in the instance. When zerg fails there's little to save it, to a large extent due to the mentality of the participants. Group method however can be saved by just one or two of the groups being very competent.
I don't understand
you admit that with all the buffs party of 10 ppl is much stronger then 2 separate party of 5 ppl
you know you can go form green to black in one jump
why shouldn't the black and green join forces, start on green and finish on black? what do I miss?
isn't it consider split run?
the zerg method fail a lot
but so far I didn't see even one color run make it while zerg make it sometimes
*the ZERG fail mainly cause the vanguard attackers trigger the green dragon and cause delay of 15-20 sec for the rest of the group or even kill them
or because not all follow the same tactic
so far the split is the best tactic I saw, but by some reason very few are willing to do it
so far I never saw or heard that the colors method works
Heard yes, quite a lot. Saw, never. In 15+ attempts it always failed by a wide margin, never even close. Hopefully the changes announced by the staff won't prevent the players from not using this one-coloured-group-for-one-coloured-head tactics.
Heard yes, quite a lot. Saw, never. In 15+ attempts it always failed by a wide margin, never even close. Hopefully the changes announced by the staff won't prevent the players from not using this one-coloured-group-for-one-coloured-head tactics.
I have now been in a total of 2 successful Zerg runs, and both of them were disasters that just happened to succeed. The Tactical Method has worked for me about 24/26 times now. To each their own, but I prefer Tactical.
My only major complaint: It seems far to easy for a few people to Highjack a Tactical run and force a Zerg down everyone's throat. I have no problem with people running the Zerg, but I want to avoid them because i see much more success, much less stress, and much more fun from doing a tactical run. I wish there was a way to designate a specific group as one type of run or the other before people entered the instance. But I am at a loss as to how to implement that.
I have killed Tiamat 6/6 times. Of course with the help of others and have had 1 Linu's Favor drop. So, you do not get a drop everytime. I wish you did
I have been in the Temple 6 times and have killed Tiamat everytime. Of course with the help of others and have only had 1 linu's favor drop. I was wondering. Does it matter where you rank in the Encounter? I have finished in the top 5 and received a epic reward. Like Dragon Egg etc. The other time I finished like 24 and received Linu's favor.
melee need to concentrate in 4 locations for the 3 clerics out front so that the casters can range or KB from behind the clerics to keep the mobs off them
these are fast rough placements capured from live but they are very close to the correct location
My only major complaint: It seems far to easy for a few people to Highjack a Tactical run and force a Zerg down everyone's throat.
This is certainly my experience today. All it seems to take is one of two people saying or asking "zerg" and the herd follows. Whilst I've had equal success with both methods, I favour the so called tactical approach. The zerg is certainly effective and it's strength seems to be it's simplicity, even if people dont know what they're doing they can pretty much follow everyone else.
The zerg approach seems somewhat contrary to the design of the encounter so I'm interested to see what, if any changes are to come.
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vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
edited December 2014
if there are 2partys to fight two head which are dangerous (green and blue f.e.) and the rest is zerg to fight three others heads, it looks like ideal solution to win at Tiamat. in the end, if your 25 man have enough dps they will succeed, of course some dps can be replace by skill but i dont think much at random que nowadays
so far I don't see color method posting time
if you think its good method. post time which is not the zerg time (zerg time posted every hour)
*to all ppl that tink its not legit, or that the developers didn't intend to do it like this. keep in mind that one year ago it was impossible to finish karrundax first boss or ToS without tricks. 12K CW was a god and even he had no boons compare to today
This is certainly my experience today. All it seems to take is one of two people saying or asking "zerg" and the herd follows. Whilst I've had equal success with both methods, I favour the so called tactical approach. The zerg is certainly effective and it's strength seems to be it's simplicity, even if people dont know what they're doing they can pretty much follow everyone else.
The zerg approach seems somewhat contrary to the design of the encounter so I'm interested to see what, if any changes are to come.
Actually had the opposite today. Landed in instance and went tactic-blue. Since I actually had a group we decided to ignore the zerg and do our thing. End of instance? 2 of the top 5 ranked were from my party.... Kinda ruins that whole 'group our buff/ de-buff' argument don't it?
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darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
edited December 2014
The problem today is there are a lot of people who have either never run Tiamat before or maybe tried it once or twice last weekend.
Mid-week I was having success almost every time, today I am 1/5, with a lot of people not joining groups, not moving to a head that needs more dps, etc.
Comments
If you look at the "Reclaim Hoard" mission that is running in the Well of the Dragons prior to the Tiamat fight there are 4 levels of buffs tied to the amount of treasure that is turned in. Some of those buffs reduce the cooldown of the Dragon Gems to 90 seconds and 60 seconds (tier III and tier IV respectively). So if enough people do a decent amount of turn-ins then everyone can use the dragon gems more often.
The other parts of the buffs are also nice, including a whopping +5000 HP and +1000 Power for the Tier IV buff.
It seems that many people are starting to figure out the fight, at least a little. I am seeing many more people grouping up at the fires, working together and supporting the other teams which may be lagging behind. I would like to think that this guide has had a part in that.
The most difficult Heads to fight seem to be Green and White. Green because that poison cloud is nasty, lasts a long time and covers a large area. That makes it difficult (but not impossible) for other teams to fight the Green head without excessive deaths. To combat this, I suggest that a member of the Black team and the Red team grab a green gem if possible. That would allow 2 other teams to have some protection from the green breath if it turns out to be a problem. This is not necessary, but it has helped me out in a few runs.
White is problematic because the freeze effect is not countered by the White gem, all the gem does is protect you from the damage. If you watch closely you will see that the White breath does not cover the entire area of the platform, there is usually some space on one side or the other that is "safe" even without the gem. When i am running on a white team I have been getting a blue gem, simply because I have found the white gem to be effectively useless. I am either avoiding the breath entirely or the freeze causes me to get killed by a random mob or the dragon just eats me. I do not suggest that the entire white team skip getting white gems, but I think it is safe for 1 or 2 people to get blue "just in case". Has anyone else noticed the lack of usefulness of the white gem? or am I doing something wrong? (entirely possible)
Ice Storm (for the CWs) seems to be an excellent power in this mission. It has excellent knockback, does good damage, and can clear a platform easily. Do the rest of you find it to be useful in protecting the Clerics, or is it causing more problems that it solves by spreading the mobs out? The same question is directed at the DC's using Sunburst (I think that is the heal/knockback power, but I don't play DCs)
On the topic of surviving the breath attacks: The Shard of Valindra's Crown has saved my butt numerous times when fighting Tiamat. The combination of knockback and damage/status effect immunity is a real life saver in there. I recommend it to anyone that has the chance to try it out. Any other artifacts that seem to work especially well?
I am working on an update to this guide and I am actively looking for suggestions and tactics. I want to thank the NW_Legit_Community for their assistance thus far, many completions would not have occurred without the players from that channel forcing organization down the throats of the people that find themselves in there with no clue what to do.
If anyone has specific suggestions or complaints you can reach me here or in game, my main is a CW, Eigil@tickdoff
i sometime got ppl that can dps 4 head to less than 30% health in phase 1, and can possibly kill all of it on phase 2. but still most ppl shouting that dont kill it in that phase, though i already seen all head less than 10% and still have 1m.
if no buggy and still get reward, it seems most ppl's thinking really are shallow to must kill it on phase 3.
The reason the logic works out is suppose the heads are 25%, 20%, 10%, 15%, and 10% with 60 seconds to go on wave 2. You start killing things and you only get to 0%, 0%, 0% and 15% and 10%. So what... everything is at 25% on wave 3 you win. You always have a full 2 minute wave 3. You can always kill 5 heads at 25% if you had that kind of dps at wave 2.
Now on wave 3 if you get them all down to 10% and you only have a few seconds left, the logic is different. You won't have a full two minute wave 4, so you need to keep them low. Me I think if you arn't getting them on wave 3 you need a small miracle on wave 4 so I don't sweat it much.
That said, most people just don't want to encourage people to kill things on wave 2=). To many people do it at the wrong time. Like when there is still a dragon at 80%
Something I first didn't realise was that black actually applied a defence debuff and so the gem removes that so you use it after the breath attack as it's not a protective shield. Same goes for white for cleansing allies frozen status and frozen floor. I noticed a lot of other people didn't realise too. Debuffs are very important in this raid.
also the ideal 5 people per head is a fail strat imo. I have never seen 5 groups which mirrors others to have the same debuff on each head. going 10/10 is the best ive seen (finished in 2nd phase).
more protip: always use the greater dragon slaying potions and WEAR your dragon slaying rings, almost everyone are underestimating these rings but it gives more dps than any ring on the game. (when fighting dragons of course)
This is a big help
Urlord
You MAY get away with it a little here and there, but sooner or later you will find yourself bugging it out for everyone. Make sure all the adds are dead before rushing in, this will give you a better cushion.
First of is people rushing from the clerics as soon as all three are defended, entering the head area too early and leaving anything from a few to many straggler adds behind. These adds will a) prevent anyone in combat with them from mounting up, b) charge after, attack and potentially kill players in range and c) linger behind, making it increasingly difficult for players who have to release to the campfire to reach their desination heads. It takes a few seconds to kill the remaining adds if everyone stays, and alot longer (if at all) if most players rush off, only to spend those seconds they could have been killing adds to wait for the heads to emerge anyways.
This is not a solo race, the fight as a whole benefits from having a group mindset.
Secondly is how the adds are fought during the cleric phase. We can either control them where they spawn and kill them, or try to knock them off the ledges. Regardless of method used, knocking adds all over the place doesn't help the players, it actually hurts the fight as the mobs will now, instead of being located within a small area, be spread over a large area and come gunning for the clerics from several different directions. A single CW can control a spawn point, and keep the adds nearly permanently locked down. A GF can taunt them as they spawn and tank them in place until killed by the other players. A combination of the two, or by either and other players is all it takes to make sure they adds stay where they spawn instead of going to the cleric. If a DC stands on top of the spawn and casts Sun Burst on the adds they're now all of a sudden in four different places instead of one, making it impossible to control them and any area of effect used by the players (which would otherwise be ideal for this type of fight) is rendered significantly weaker. The same of course applies to CWs using Ice Storm as their go-to daily, which has become very fashionable throughout the day.
Always keep the adds closely bunched together, either in order to knock them off the edges, or to kill them where they spawn. Any panicked knocking around in order to at any cost prevent them from hurting the clerics will end up hurting the players more than anything.
Fifteen next attempts: We were duly making groups, each group had a leader, each leader was shouting in caps in the "Say" chat, coordination, gems, clerics. Elaborate orders. TWO FROM BLACK AND ONE FROM WHITE HELP PROTECT LINU, things like that. We always failed.
Yesterday: zerg approach. No groups, no gems, nothing. One guy was shouting in caps in the "Say" chat. Quite simple orders. BLACK. STOP. NEXT BLUE. STOP. Things like that. We won.
I have now done several zerg mission, probably 6 or 7. We succeeded once, none of them bugged out. Many of them were very close to a victory, we needed maybe 5-10 more seconds to finish (one of them literally needed 1-2 more seconds for white to go down to complete). *IF* everyone knows what they are doing, where to go, when to go there, when to stop attacking the heads etc. etc. the Zerg method works well. If you could enter Tiamat with a pre-made 25 man group zerging would be excellent. But zerging Tiamat requires coordination and large group situational awareness that I find difficult to achieve in a PUG.
With the method that I support (hence my guide) you are giving the average person much less to focus on at once. They mainly need to pay attention to their own head with maybe one person in each group watching the neighboring heads to see if they need help. Less things to worry about makes it easier for the average pugger to understand what they are doing, where to go and when to do it. Yes, coordination is still required, but in my experience it is easier to get that level of cooperation in a "Tactical" approach than in the zerg, at least currently. That may change in the future if the zerg method becomes the de facto method, but I do not think we are there yet. I have completed approx. 20/22 Tactical Tiamat runs, usually with lots of time to spare. However, the 2 failures were absolute disasters, with no one paying attention, poor DPS, almost no one protecting the middle cleric, and several people hanging out at the camp fire. So my method also has it's drawbacks. But I maintain that the Tactical method is currently a better guarantee of success.
Bottom line: Both can work, or either can fail. As long as the entire 25 man team is working from the same playbook. If you get too many people trying a different method from the majority you are hindering yourselves and courting disaster.
Note: In all of the zerg runs I have been in, I did everything possible to achieve victory. Once it was obvious that we were only zerging I no longer attempted to form coherent groups or encourage people to take individual heads. I worked with the rest of the players as much as possible, and was also shouting in /Say what needed to be done next. But I think too many people either do not pay attention to ?Say, or possibly most of those people already have me on /ignore
Edit: I hope that the NW_Legit_Community will decide on which runs are going to be Zerg, and which are going to be Tactical. Legit Players are typically much more willing to work as a coherent team, but the difficulty of getting everyone to agree on which method to use in the shorter amount of time that we typically have is problematic. I respectfully suggest that one time is chosen for the Zerg runs and a second time is selected for the tactical runs. I wish the Zergers the best of luck (truly I do), but I prefer to run Tactical missions and I will try to avoid the predetermined zerg runs when possible.
I have already seen some attempts to separate the two types of runs on Legit, I am putting this plea here in an attempt to make the NW_Legit_Community more willing to set separate times for the different runs.
To use a quote of which I am quite fond: "To wives and girlfriends, may they never meet."
no matter what was the GS it was always fail
best method is one big group or split to 2 that require bit more communication
the method of colors still confuse ppl, even if one person think he is smart and go to attack the green alone he will provoke deadly poison that can cause fail for the all group
even with the zerg you can fail, ppl disconcert and small leg can wipe half your group and time is short
don't underestimate big group.
one allowed ground of cleric is 15% damage to the all group --> for 25 ppl its like you group do damage of 29 ppl
and with plague fire, high prophet, terror, draconic armor... its like 100 ppl attack the head and even then you see fails cause time is short
so far I never saw or heard that the colors method works
Try running with the crowd from NW_Legit_Community. The Tactical method is working great for the vast majority of our runs. (to be fair, many people on Legit also run the zerg method and are having success as well). If you would like to see a good Tactical run in practice join NW_Legit_Community or look me up in game before a Tiamat run. Eigil@tickdoff
I have just under 30 wins by now and just a single one of those has been a full zerg, two or three more have been some yellers in #say demanding zerg while the rest ignore them and group up and the zerg crowd decide to do their thing all alone. All the other have been five proper groups, with the usual disconnect or campfire hangaround here and there.
We had a run yesterday where a bunch of the zerg crowd rage quit early on because they didn't get their way, and we still managed to pull it off in the end with as little as 15-16 players left in the instance. When zerg fails there's little to save it, to a large extent due to the mentality of the participants. Group method however can be saved by just one or two of the groups being very competent.
you admit that with all the buffs party of 10 ppl is much stronger then 2 separate party of 5 ppl
you know you can go form green to black in one jump
why shouldn't the black and green join forces, start on green and finish on black? what do I miss?
isn't it consider split run?
the zerg method fail a lot
but so far I didn't see even one color run make it while zerg make it sometimes
*the ZERG fail mainly cause the vanguard attackers trigger the green dragon and cause delay of 15-20 sec for the rest of the group or even kill them
or because not all follow the same tactic
so far the split is the best tactic I saw, but by some reason very few are willing to do it
Heard yes, quite a lot. Saw, never. In 15+ attempts it always failed by a wide margin, never even close. Hopefully the changes announced by the staff won't prevent the players from not using this one-coloured-group-for-one-coloured-head tactics.
I have now been in a total of 2 successful Zerg runs, and both of them were disasters that just happened to succeed. The Tactical Method has worked for me about 24/26 times now. To each their own, but I prefer Tactical.
My only major complaint: It seems far to easy for a few people to Highjack a Tactical run and force a Zerg down everyone's throat. I have no problem with people running the Zerg, but I want to avoid them because i see much more success, much less stress, and much more fun from doing a tactical run. I wish there was a way to designate a specific group as one type of run or the other before people entered the instance. But I am at a loss as to how to implement that.
these are fast rough placements capured from live but they are very close to the correct location
This is certainly my experience today. All it seems to take is one of two people saying or asking "zerg" and the herd follows. Whilst I've had equal success with both methods, I favour the so called tactical approach. The zerg is certainly effective and it's strength seems to be it's simplicity, even if people dont know what they're doing they can pretty much follow everyone else.
The zerg approach seems somewhat contrary to the design of the encounter so I'm interested to see what, if any changes are to come.
if you think its good method. post time which is not the zerg time (zerg time posted every hour)
*to all ppl that tink its not legit, or that the developers didn't intend to do it like this. keep in mind that one year ago it was impossible to finish karrundax first boss or ToS without tricks. 12K CW was a god and even he had no boons compare to today
Actually had the opposite today. Landed in instance and went tactic-blue. Since I actually had a group we decided to ignore the zerg and do our thing. End of instance? 2 of the top 5 ranked were from my party.... Kinda ruins that whole 'group our buff/ de-buff' argument don't it?
Mid-week I was having success almost every time, today I am 1/5, with a lot of people not joining groups, not moving to a head that needs more dps, etc.