Orcus: I'm doing it all wrong and need some help

rubytrue

I'm a 2.7 Prot OP, and for the life of me, I can't tank Orcus at all. I've tried different strategies, power combinations, etc, but he just wipes the floor with me. I'm obviously doing something wrong. Anyone got some advice on how to tank him correctly?

Thanks

Fat E

armadeonx

Well firstly it depends on which platform you're on as the consoles don't have the changes yet.

It also depends on how much temp health you can generate, how often you can pop your daily and if you have enough recovery to cycle through your encounters.

Bear in mind temp health generation is based on damage output. This means you need full armor pen (~60% RI) and decent power (15k as an absolute minimum but should really be in the 20's). You should also have companions that give a flat increase to damage (e.g. air archon) as this will also directly translate into more temp health.

The basic rule of thumb would be to time your skills correctly so you are moving between damage absorption (BO) & temp health boost (TW) and applying debuff (Bane) constantly. You should space your Divine Call out as it lasts for 10 seconds and you should only hit TW while it's up as it gives you more dps (so more health).

Keep an eye on Orcus and fire your Daily whenever he raises his arms as something big is about to hit you. If the moving balls appear, break aggro if they come near you and kite for a couple of seconds til it's clear to go back as you probably won't be able to take both them and him at the same time.

When he floats up remember to have everything ready for when he comes back. Just before he arrives, hit Divine Call and TW whilst standing near others so your TH maxes then pop your Daily. Hit BO then 3 strikes of Bane.

You should use Radiant Strike and Shielding Strike for at-wills, shielding strike gives you extra protection whilst everything else is recharging. You're probably also best using Aura of Truth instead of Courage at this stage so you're reducing his damage output by 12.5%. Only switch to Courage when you can take it or if you have an AC DC spamming AA.

rubytrue

I really appreciate the feedback. I was doing almost all you were saying; the problem I was having with BO is that he would hit right through it so I would take his remaining damage + the damage from BO and it would simply wipe me out. I will switch to Aura of Truth instead of Courage and see if that makes any difference. Things are so bad that I am getting killed through Divine Protector with full temp HP. I think I will also pick up a Soulforged to pick me up when I go down.

thrill

rubytrue said:

I think I will also pick up a Soulforged to pick me up when I go down.

I have gone back to Soulforge as well. A lot of people criticize Tanks using Soulforge. Yes, I know "Tanks shouldn't die." But we do and Soulforge gives me a second chance to avoid having the entire team wipe. Also since I cannot yet afford a trans enchantment I think Soulforge is by far the best low level enchantment. Someone, unscientifically, pointed out that with a lesser Soulforge you basically get 90% of the enchant's power at lesser. Resurrecting you is the important part. A few thousand extra XP is kinda moot considering how hard those double taps usually are.

When I can afford it I may go to Trans Elven, until then I will stick with my budget Soulforge.

mamalion1234

thrill#1417 said:

rubytrue said:

I think I will also pick up a Soulforged to pick me up when I go down.

I have gone back to Soulforge as well. A lot of people criticize Tanks using Soulforge. Yes, I know "Tanks shouldn't die." But we do and Soulforge gives me a second chance to avoid having the entire team wipe. Also since I cannot yet afford a trans enchantment I think Soulforge is by far the best low level enchantment. Someone, unscientifically, pointed out that with a lesser Soulforge you basically get 90% of the enchant's power at lesser. Resurrecting you is the important part. A few thousand extra XP is kinda moot considering how hard those double taps usually are.

When I can afford it I may go to Trans Elven, until then I will stick with my budget Soulforge.

from expierence the most wipes for a tank coming when they use negation instead soulforge( in fbi-sva)

emilemo

rubytrue said:

I'm a 2.7 Prot OP, and for the life of me, I can't tank Orcus at all. I've tried different strategies, power combinations, etc, but he just wipes the floor with me. I'm obviously doing something wrong. Anyone got some advice on how to tank him correctly?

Thanks

Fat E

As a relatively low item level tank at orcus you will have to make sure your base DR is at max and forget about BO. BO will get you killed. BO is the courtesy of high powered paladins now. Lets go thru the steps:

1) You need temp HP! Temp HP is for us what the Shift is for Guardian Fighters (because our own Shift suxx). Slot Templar's Wrath. Now you need good damage in order to build a lot of Temp HP with a single TW hit and since you also need DR slot..

2) Circle of Power - you should have at least ~50% base DR from stats. The +10% DR Prot OPs get is not displayed on the character sheet from what I can tell and the divine call DR(another +10% for 10 seconds) also isn't. Anyway with ~50% base DR CoP will boost you to near max DR. It will also provide an awesome +30% damage boost. So we have covered damage resistance, temp hp and damage boost. What you need now is more utility..

3) Bane - this will debuff the target's damage output and also increase your whole party damage to the target. Here someone may think that slotting Absolution is a better option. I dont think so - you are already at DR cap or near and you have your Temp HP.

At this point with good divine call management and timely use of Divine Protector/Shield of Faith you should be able to stay alive and provide reasonably good party benefits (protection from damage to the party, damage boost to the party, auras). If your party also has a decent healer (which it should have since you are in CN after all) the fight should be a success. I say should be cause many times a second's delay (lag) at Orcus can wipe a tank. If you have aggro management problems with the above setup you take oath strike instead of shielding strike.

armadeonx

rubytrue said:

I really appreciate the feedback. I was doing almost all you were saying; the problem I was having with BO is that he would hit right through it so I would take his remaining damage + the damage from BO and it would simply wipe me out. I will switch to Aura of Truth instead of Courage and see if that makes any difference. Things are so bad that I am getting killed through Divine Protector with full temp HP. I think I will also pick up a Soulforged to pick me up when I go down.

I assume you are on PC in that case and this was the exact feedback we gave to the devs about the BO change, that lower IL pallies would die from a single hit.

Can you tell us your stats? Hit Points, Power, Crit, RI, DR, AP Gain and what companions you use (including bondings on summoned). We'll be able to work out your weak points from this.

rubytrue

armadeonx said:

rubytrue said:

I really appreciate the feedback. I was doing almost all you were saying; the problem I was having with BO is that he would hit right through it so I would take his remaining damage + the damage from BO and it would simply wipe me out. I will switch to Aura of Truth instead of Courage and see if that makes any difference. Things are so bad that I am getting killed through Divine Protector with full temp HP. I think I will also pick up a Soulforged to pick me up when I go down.

I assume you are on PC in that case and this was the exact feedback we gave to the devs about the BO change, that lower IL pallies would die from a single hit.

Can you tell us your stats? Hit Points, Power, Crit, RI, DR, AP Gain and what companions you use (including bondings on summoned). We'll be able to work out your weak points from this.

I appreciate everyone's feedback. I think emilemo kind of hit it on the head; I needed to be using Circle, Bane and TW; I was already using Bane and TW and I use Circle on most everything else. Not sure why I didn't use it on Orcus; maybe because it was a bit outside the box. I've temporarily respecced to devotion to see what it is like (I prefer Protection, I think).

Here are my relevant stats: (Boon=Stronghold boon)

HP: 117,562

Defense:
Base: 6,678 (Damage resist +35.2)
Boon: 13,878 (Damage resist +53.2)

Power:
Base: 13,539
Boon: 21,539

Armor Pen:
Base: 2,023
Boon: 9,023 (+70? RI)

Companion:
Blue Young Yeti with R7 lesser bonding stones x3

Armor: Trans Shadowclad (I know, aggro loss, but it never seems to get to 8 stacks to trigger stealth)

Against Orcus, I typically go in with the 13.8K defense, 13.5K Power, 9K ArP; I chose the higher ArP over Power so that TW could have full effect for more temp HP. If I switch to Circle instead of either BO or Absolution, that should put me at 83.2 Damage Resist, correct? Three stacks of Bane should reduce his damage by 30%, correct? Aura of Truth, in lieu of Courage, should reduce it by another 12.5%? Does anyone know if these reductions are additive or mulitplicative (~34% vs 42.5%)? I want to keep Aura of Wisdom so that TW comes up faster.

If I am at 83.2% Damage Resist with Circle, does Shield of Faith do me any good? I suppose if I am out of Circle, it would be needed.

Maybe once I can afford a Trans Fey for my Weapon, the damage reduction/transfer would tip the scales in my favor again....

Thoughts? I really appreciate the feedback.

Fat E

emilemo

Shield of Faith is another 30% damage reduction layer on top of whatever DR your character has (DP also is a separate layer of DR). So if you sit at 80% any hit coming your way will be reduced by 30% if SoF is on and then by another 80%. Bane should debuff a targetr for 30% yes. Aura of Truth should also debuff but feedback suggests it doesn't work...

CN needs a good party and buffs/debuffs really shine there. An AC/DC for example could make your run easy.

armadeonx

Thanks for the info ruby. A point of note is that although DR caps at 80% of incoming damage, any enemy with armor penetration will increase the amount of DR required. E.g. Orcus has 15% RI so if you have 80% DR he's doing 35% damage. You can increase to 95% DR to counter this.

It would serve you well to increase RI on your gear and switch to the power boon. With armor pen increasing at ~100pts to 1% RI, it's a lot cheaper to get this to -60% RI than it is to get an extra 8k power. I assume you know you can scroll down on your stat screen to see your RI and DR stats? appx 6.5k armor pen = -60% RI on the pally.

Your health is quite low, which armor are you using? DF should get you to around 135k.

rubytrue

rubytrue said:

I appreciate everyone's feedback. I think emilemo kind of hit it on the head; I needed to be using Circle, Bane and TW; I was already using Bane and TW and I use Circle on most everything else. Not sure why I didn't use it on Orcus; maybe because it was a bit outside the box. I've temporarily respecced to devotion to see what it is like (I prefer Protection, I think).


Fat E

Welp. Nope. I've come to love DevOP now that I picked up a Soulforged enchant. DevOP does an insane amount of damage and the Dailies are *constantly* up. I don't know if I will switch back now. I will gear out this toon over time and then share the build; it is a bit different from what I've seen out there so far, but it is a blast as I am running it as kind of a Blackguard/Dark Paladin.

emilemo

rubytrue said:

rubytrue said:

I appreciate everyone's feedback. I think emilemo kind of hit it on the head; I needed to be using Circle, Bane and TW; I was already using Bane and TW and I use Circle on most everything else. Not sure why I didn't use it on Orcus; maybe because it was a bit outside the box. I've temporarily respecced to devotion to see what it is like (I prefer Protection, I think).


Fat E

Welp. Nope. I've come to love DevOP now that I picked up a Soulforged enchant. DevOP does an insane amount of damage and the Dailies are *constantly* up. I don't know if I will switch back now. I will gear out this toon over time and then share the build; it is a bit different from what I've seen out there so far, but it is a blast as I am running it as kind of a Blackguard/Dark Paladin.

Can you keep your party healed? Keep in mind the queue considers the dev op for the same spot as the cleric. Your primary role would be healer. As for Orcus, last night I noticed my paladin going out of combat constantly during the Orcus fight. That resets the temp HP and might lead to an immediate 1-hit kill if im not careful. Buggy fight is buggy.

rubytrue

emilemo said:

rubytrue said:

rubytrue said:

I appreciate everyone's feedback. I think emilemo kind of hit it on the head; I needed to be using Circle, Bane and TW; I was already using Bane and TW and I use Circle on most everything else. Not sure why I didn't use it on Orcus; maybe because it was a bit outside the box. I've temporarily respecced to devotion to see what it is like (I prefer Protection, I think).


Fat E

Welp. Nope. I've come to love DevOP now that I picked up a Soulforged enchant. DevOP does an insane amount of damage and the Dailies are *constantly* up. I don't know if I will switch back now. I will gear out this toon over time and then share the build; it is a bit different from what I've seen out there so far, but it is a blast as I am running it as kind of a Blackguard/Dark Paladin.

Can you keep your party healed? Keep in mind the queue considers the dev op for the same spot as the cleric. Your primary role would be healer. As for Orcus, last night I noticed my paladin going out of combat constantly during the Orcus fight. That resets the temp HP and might lead to an immediate 1-hit kill if im not careful. Buggy fight is buggy.

Yeah. The DevOP is a healing machine; no deaths--of course, we had a high IL ProtOP tanking so that helped. On other dungeons, however, everyone's HP remained topped off. The build I'm playing with now allows for me to do a ton of damage and tons of heals at the same time--at least that is what I am experiencing. Of course, the meta I was experimenting with as a ProtOP allowed for tons of healing as well--it just wasn't a sturdy tank against foes like Orcus.

emilemo

Yep, its a sturdy tank vs hordes of weaker enemies but the lack of a GF-like block makes us weak vs the insane burst of some bosses.

armadeonx

Yeah it's a perverse situation when your shield becomes less effective the more DR you stack...

joaoggpaim

I still don't know if you want comments, but I wanted to leave mine since I was very frustrated with Orcus.... I'm a protection Paladin with 2600 IL, and I can tank him today.

I was very happy in the game, tanking easily everything until I meet him. Then, weeks of frustration until I start being able to do so. And this is definitely not about item level.

First thing I have to say, my build is different from 80% of the paladins out there, I don't go for Power / DPS. I'm a full tank! And I have to disagree with a few comments saying you need a lot of armor pen and Power to make full use of TW on Orcus. I have 7K power and 1K armor pen and I can make my full life shielded with TW everytime I fight Orcus, so this is not a DC debuff. I just think Orcus doesn't have an armor so strong. He has an extremely strong attack!

For me, the are 3 secrets to tank him:
- Experience, so you know right time to use your encounter powers
- you need to have fast recharge speed to use a lot your encounter powers
- build your divine energy as fast as possible, to use divine call and recharge encounter powers

My mistake in the past was to use the circle of power. I really thought it was great due to the DR increase. It took me a while to see that it doesn't build divine energy!!! So I changed it to Smite, it has a very fast cooldown and build a LOT of divine energy! so this helped me a lot, really made the difference!

I saw your post about your status, but I didn't saw anything about your recovery. I believe you don't focus on that. Honestly, defense is not enough to tank him, you will need a good DC to tank him just relying on your defense. 10K defense, 20K or 30k defense for Orcus won't make that difference.... you probably know it.

I am pretty sure that with your 14k defense you can tank him, but you need to use binding oath as much as possible.

So, finally, what I would recommend:
- I hope you have justice paragon so divine call recharges encounter power 35% faster
- use aura of wisdom. Mandatory
- aura of truth would be better than aura of protection as Orcus debuff is better than your defense buff.
- have a tank companion, and fight close to him. This way when Orcus hit him, the party won't get scared. And when you take one or 2 hits less it's time to breath and build divine energy.
- shield up in the strongest hit with his staff, as this is the one which can be a hit kill. Usually starts with this, then 3 weaker.
- If after that you still can't, I would say to put more recovery on your build. This way you can have more recharge time increase and AP gain to save the party with the buble in the ranged attacks.
- Use ring of rising focus and sudden defense (you and in your companion)
- as a companion, I definitely suggest Shieldmaiden. 3 defensive slots, 2 ring slots, attacks each 2s with melee, agros a lot, very cheap!! Mine is just on green and I really like her. Had a lion but she's is performing better due to the ring slots

Well, this is all I had. Hope it helps.

sundance777

There are two choices right now on xbox, the binding oath path - this requires that you pop binding oath every 7 seconds or so, if not, you die - and the circle of power/bane approach. I have not moved over to this approach just yet for Orcus, I have tried it in etos with no issues. I am planning to make the full switch soon as binding oath will change in a few days and will kill you even more!

@emilemo I just noticed this too last night in Orcus with four ranged dps, I would loose combat and temp HP and then take a face plant on the floor...weird, this is the first time I noticed that.

@joaoggpaim Temp HP goes up way beyond one full health bar, head over to the training dummies and view your buffs while hitting with TW. I too thought it was just one full HP bar full, but it really can go up way higher and is why the CoP/Bane/TW combo needs high power and ArPen.

emilemo

@joaoggpaim#3073 when you said ''full tank'' I thought you were bulwark

Wonder how a bulwark would fare, i might respec on preview to check it out. As for Orcus, with my current build I can take him no problem..unless the above mentioned exit of combat happens and then my pally might die.

Overall this thread generated some nice replies so @rubytrue take your pick

armadeonx

@joaoggpaim#3073 as Sundance says, temp health does indeed go past your bar. TW gives you temp health that is 3x your damage and it does not have an upper limit, so while you may be hitting him for ~150k (you didn't state your hit points) and getting a full bar, he will be negating upto 50% of your damage (assuming your Armor Pen is your only RI source) and thus you are losing 50% of your potential temp health.

You said you go against Orcus wth TW and Smite but can you tell us the 3rd encounter? I'm assuming it's BO and you are a console player - as such BO is about to change and you are going to need that extra temp health because Orcus will break your BO shield in 1 or 2 hits and smack you for 50% of your normal health. I do like Smite though and think it's underrated. With high recovery you can keep it's 15% damage debuff up permanently.

Very high recovery will enable you to pop your Daily and TW quickly and is the old meta where Pallies ran with perma-bubble due to it offering 100% protection and a decent uptime (which was shortened considerably) but this is about to change for you again - it's now going to provide 60% which means your group will take 40% of the damage from all hits whilst it's up.

The other thing you didn't state was how fast your runs are. Most groups of higher IL players will want an OP that can deliver a decent damage increase/buff (to them) and thus speed up the run.

At 7k power and with all defence bondings (and assuming 150k HP) your total powershare will be around 5.5k to each DPS which will translate to somewhere around 1 to 5% extra damage depending on the stats of the recipient. A power-specced OP will get their power to between 60 - 120k in-combat (depending on IL) and thus provide 15 to 30k extra power to DPS classes, thus making the runs faster and smoother.

emilemo

Id love to be able to use Smite more but in the current PC meta i cant see it unless my party can carry me. Id also love to be able to run divine touch, its a half-decent aoe with a nice incoming dmg reduction but dps wise its way too low. In a sea or adds Im better off with CoP, TW, BL. The total cc and dps those provide is unmatched among pally encounters. BL's cc+dps beats divine touch's dmg reduction by a mile vs adds. VS bosses like Orcus I need to be at my tankiest. I usually run public queue or guild runs and as such both end up with me being the highest item level thus i must provide what my roles suggests which is protection.

PS: I think something is off with Bane. I have more success running Absolution now which is weird. Bane should be better.

sundance777

I reworked my pally a bit to run a little more power and HP and ran a couple fights with Templars, Bane and Circle of Power, I kept Binding oath as a backup as we on Xbox are still a couple weeks out from the mod. I think one thing to watch out for is relying too much on your companion for stats while in there because the companion is going to die. I found that if my companion dies things get a little hairy until it is back up and procs gifts again, but overall it went just fine.

I have about 55% DR, 15K power, 60% RI and 8K recovery and 150K HP standing still and the Justice path....seems to get it done.

armadeonx

sundance777 said:

I found that if my companion dies things get a little hairy until it is back up and procs gifts again, but overall it went just fine.

I found the same on xbox but as we've just gone through the Winter Festival, Lliiara's Bells are really cheap again. Also, I tried running a Con Artist for the debuff but he was dying with 1 hit from Orcus as he's melee so I switched to Fire Archon as a ranged attacker and things are going much better.