Wtf this quest is damn near impossible a bunch of us are just about ready to give up on it, been trying for 2 days to beat the thing, anyway I think Crytpic really needa review this mission and maybe tweek it a bit.
Yep agreed - this is a total waist of time and nearly impossible...
5 of us blasting hell out of and after nearly an hour we managed to get it down to 98%..... :eek:
Warped out and dropped the quest - would suggest that everybody never takes it unless you know of about 20 people to do it with you and about 5 days to complete it......
There's so much misinformation that trying to pug this mission is impossible.
People spamming chat to not focus the shards because doing so heals him (it does not).
The most correct strategy is to slowly and steadily kill ALL of the shards while dpsing the boss down. Ideally half of the people should be dpsing the boss while the other half clean up shards.
Slow and steady wins the race, but 95% of player mentality is me first so everyone focuses the entity and tries to ignore the shards. Then when they finally have 10-20 shards chasing them, they blow evasive and think they won, but no, those shards then chase random people and blow them up. After dodging them for a while the shards quickly overwhelm even 20 players at which point the entity heals to full from the wipes.
Now that the ramming mechanic has been adjusted, Cryptic can look at untainted data from the encounters and make adjustments.. or maybe Cryptic will come back and say L2P!!! heh.
There's so much misinformation that trying to pug this mission is impossible.
People spamming chat to not focus the shards because doing so heals him (it does not).
The most correct strategy is to slowly and steadily kill ALL of the shards while dpsing the boss down. Ideally half of the people should be dpsing the boss while the other half clean up shards.
The thing is only healed by the small shards which spawn from large shards after they hit someone.
The large shards spawn if entity is down to about 33%
The problem is that people stay too close to the entity.
But anyways the encounter is too difficult as it is now.
Well working with 20 players we did this for 3 hrs and got no where fast. Some were killing the shards and the rest was working on the entity but would get him down to 34% then he would start going back up. I think we had a few deaths but not enough to regen his health almost all the way back.
I agree they need to take a look at this again and come up with something better and better loot for what you do in game with this beast.
the thing is also healing constantly that is why if you get it down to 1% it wont stay there. even if you play perfect it will heal backup. and THAT is the biggest problem.
Don't use mines. Have more power to engines so you can outrun the large shards. Don't let the large shards hit you or mines so they don't spawn the small shards to heal the entity.
I've beaten the entity a few times with a good number of people. Yes, it takes time...but keep your distance and ignore the shards.
Well working with 20 players we did this for 3 hrs and got no where fast. Some were killing the shards and the rest was working on the entity but would get him down to 34% then he would start going back up. I think we had a few deaths but not enough to regen his health almost all the way back.
I agree they need to take a look at this again and come up with something better and better loot for what you do in game with this beast.
The problem is that a few deaths are enough to heal the thing back up. Each large shard spawns three small shards if it hits, and it seems that each small shard is good for 3% regen or so.
Three players killed by three large shards each, each spawning three small shards is 3x3x3 = 27 small shards, thing regenerates 81%, back on full strength.
There spawn too many large shards, and the small shards cause to much regeneration.
I've beaten the entity a few times with a good number of people. Yes, it takes time...but keep your distance and ignore the shards.
If you killed it w/o ramming I would apreciate it if you write a guide how to kill it, and include such information like did you use torpedoes or not.
I have never seen the thing go down without a ramming attack when it was down at 30%, so it would be great to hear from someone who did it right from the beginning to the end.
CE was too easy in Open Beta so Cryptic turned the Difficulty Gear way over the other way at release. The other reported problem is that the player who puts out the most DPS wins the nice stuff and everyone else gets a battery or somesuch.
Even out the reward against the player level (and the number of players required) the encounter was designed for, and...well frell - just tune the danged encounter properly. Blargh.
If you killed it w/o ramming I would apreciate it if you write a guide how to kill it, and include such information like did you use torpedoes or not.
I have never seen the thing go down without a ramming attack when it was down at 30%, so it would be great to hear from someone who did it right from the beginning to the end.
No ramming at all ,actually. The first time I killed it it was pretty much a bunch of us lowbies still in our mirandas and a couple Tier 2 ships.
I used torpedos a lot. Once we stopped concentrating on the shards things were fine. Not one mine was dropped, which helped out. As long as one or two people continued to engage the Entity, it didn't reset itself. There really were a LOT of deaths during that engagement and it took a while, but it was done.
The second time was more recent. Still no ramming...lots of circling, ignoring the shards, used torpedos on the entity itself. Put good power to the engines so I'd always keep ahead of the shards.
The premise is simple, don't let anything damage you or destroy you, hence no mines. Shard damage heals it.
Then just DPS the entity down.
However, it's almost impossible in pug instances as it only takes one or two people who won't listen, who drop mines every few seconds and sit there being hit by shards and you won't win.
Whats fun is when you get to about 30% and suddenly the whole screen fills with shards
Did this fight yesterday and only saw it get to 25% once. Many people in that fight either can't read or have chat turned off cause a few would just sit still with mines on auto just shooting the boss.
I like a challenging fight, but this fight only takes one arsehole to mess it up for all.
I have been a part in this mission, 3 times, and on my first and third our group defeated the Entity.
You can't just be teamed up with a bunch of whirling Dervishes, randomly blasting away at everything. As anothers wrote, you have to go slow, methodical and keep your distance from the Entity.
I like a challenging fight, but this fight only takes one arsehole to mess it up for all.
And that is exactly why the CE is practically impossible. This boss runs like a raid event and you're trying to beat it with a pug. Plus, 99.9% of the game is 'DPS until it explodes', so people haven't learned this thing called 'strategy' by this point of the game (or ever).
Problem is as you can see that the post you quoted quickly dissolves into others disagreeing with the OP and each post above them; much like zone chat everyone thinks the opposite thing of everyone else leading to little coordination.
The CE would be fine as is for an end-game encounter aimed at organised groups. But throw in 20 random players, with different levels of knowledge and ability and there is too much complexity for a decent chance of victory. As others have said 1-2 people can TRIBBLE the whole thing up, and most people either disregard the chat facility altogether or are confused about the exact strategy.
Scrap this as a random fleet encounter already. Leave it for the end-game and replace with something more casual friendly please.
The PUG issue is the biggest problem. I tried this last night for the first time and it was a complete waste of time because people don't listen or pay attention. I spent the first few minutes reading the chat and trying to understand what was going on. It wasn't hard, just had to do it and figure out what your instance is doing with it.
Btw, we really need an instance number displayed somewhere so we can quickly tell where we're at. (if not already in and I've just missed it).
We couldn't even get a consistent way to rotate and you constantly had people going against the flow bringing shards at the rest of the raid who where going the other way. We were kitting the shards, which should work whether you try to kill shards or not. It is the "Small Crystal Fragments"(?) that heal him up, but they move quick once they appear after exploding, so have to be quick. And yeah, they defeat all the gains you made. It takes tens of minutes to get him down 10%, and two seconds to lose it all.
Problem is as you can see that the post you quoted quickly dissolves into others disagreeing with the OP and each post above them; much like zone chat everyone thinks the opposite thing of everyone else leading to little coordination.
Except that in this case, the OP is completely correct, except for omitting any mention of the beam attack that the CE has. Unless you're the main aggro target, you can safely reduce power to your shields (since the shields only help against the beam and not the shards) and instead put power to the engines and weapons. Full engine power will let you outrun the shards. He also omitted the fact that the CE doesn't start spawning the "large" fragments (and thus the "small" fragments) until the CE drops below 35% health.
CE encounter is pretty darn simple BUT does anyone expect to complete this with tons of idiots running around having no clue of what to do ? What is even worse, those people do not even bother with searching some info about this fight and they just sit there and spam space bar.
i was able to do this on my first try, with about 25/30 others and i just circled and killed shards that were chasing others, took about 30 min or so i think. we were getting nowhere untill someone said "dont let the shards hit you" then it went fast
ya few people in my guild have tried this recently. And any instance you can get into the best i saw it get down to was 30%. That with a full group of 20 and after a hour everyone gave up. it just kept going up to 40%. No matter what everyone tried it didnt work. even haveing a few ships kite all the shards didnt work either. With full engines the large one would eventually catch up to ya.
Comments
5 of us blasting hell out of and after nearly an hour we managed to get it down to 98%..... :eek:
Warped out and dropped the quest - would suggest that everybody never takes it unless you know of about 20 people to do it with you and about 5 days to complete it......
Absolutely pointless.....
People spamming chat to not focus the shards because doing so heals him (it does not).
The most correct strategy is to slowly and steadily kill ALL of the shards while dpsing the boss down. Ideally half of the people should be dpsing the boss while the other half clean up shards.
Slow and steady wins the race, but 95% of player mentality is me first so everyone focuses the entity and tries to ignore the shards. Then when they finally have 10-20 shards chasing them, they blow evasive and think they won, but no, those shards then chase random people and blow them up. After dodging them for a while the shards quickly overwhelm even 20 players at which point the entity heals to full from the wipes.
The thing is only healed by the small shards which spawn from large shards after they hit someone.
The large shards spawn if entity is down to about 33%
The problem is that people stay too close to the entity.
But anyways the encounter is too difficult as it is now.
I agree they need to take a look at this again and come up with something better and better loot for what you do in game with this beast.
I've beaten the entity a few times with a good number of people. Yes, it takes time...but keep your distance and ignore the shards.
The problem is that a few deaths are enough to heal the thing back up. Each large shard spawns three small shards if it hits, and it seems that each small shard is good for 3% regen or so.
Three players killed by three large shards each, each spawning three small shards is 3x3x3 = 27 small shards, thing regenerates 81%, back on full strength.
There spawn too many large shards, and the small shards cause to much regeneration.
If you killed it w/o ramming I would apreciate it if you write a guide how to kill it, and include such information like did you use torpedoes or not.
I have never seen the thing go down without a ramming attack when it was down at 30%, so it would be great to hear from someone who did it right from the beginning to the end.
Even out the reward against the player level (and the number of players required) the encounter was designed for, and...well frell - just tune the danged encounter properly. Blargh.
No ramming at all ,actually. The first time I killed it it was pretty much a bunch of us lowbies still in our mirandas and a couple Tier 2 ships.
I used torpedos a lot. Once we stopped concentrating on the shards things were fine. Not one mine was dropped, which helped out. As long as one or two people continued to engage the Entity, it didn't reset itself. There really were a LOT of deaths during that engagement and it took a while, but it was done.
The second time was more recent. Still no ramming...lots of circling, ignoring the shards, used torpedos on the entity itself. Put good power to the engines so I'd always keep ahead of the shards.
There's honestly nothing more to it than that.
This might be contributing to your CE frustration.
Then just DPS the entity down.
However, it's almost impossible in pug instances as it only takes one or two people who won't listen, who drop mines every few seconds and sit there being hit by shards and you won't win.
Whats fun is when you get to about 30% and suddenly the whole screen fills with shards
I like a challenging fight, but this fight only takes one arsehole to mess it up for all.
They're probably the same idiots who hang around starbases shooting off their fire extinguishers for hours for no reason.
If you shoot big shards, does it make small shards or not ?
A lot of people say yes
A lot of people say no
If no, 75% people shooting all the shards all the time could be a solution.
Impossible for me to know, when they spawn someone runs into them or drops a minefield on top of them
You can't just be teamed up with a bunch of whirling Dervishes, randomly blasting away at everything. As anothers wrote, you have to go slow, methodical and keep your distance from the Entity.
And that is exactly why the CE is practically impossible. This boss runs like a raid event and you're trying to beat it with a pug. Plus, 99.9% of the game is 'DPS until it explodes', so people haven't learned this thing called 'strategy' by this point of the game (or ever).
Problem is as you can see that the post you quoted quickly dissolves into others disagreeing with the OP and each post above them; much like zone chat everyone thinks the opposite thing of everyone else leading to little coordination.
Scrap this as a random fleet encounter already. Leave it for the end-game and replace with something more casual friendly please.
Btw, we really need an instance number displayed somewhere so we can quickly tell where we're at. (if not already in and I've just missed it).
We couldn't even get a consistent way to rotate and you constantly had people going against the flow bringing shards at the rest of the raid who where going the other way. We were kitting the shards, which should work whether you try to kill shards or not. It is the "Small Crystal Fragments"(?) that heal him up, but they move quick once they appear after exploding, so have to be quick. And yeah, they defeat all the gains you made. It takes tens of minutes to get him down 10%, and two seconds to lose it all.
Except that in this case, the OP is completely correct, except for omitting any mention of the beam attack that the CE has. Unless you're the main aggro target, you can safely reduce power to your shields (since the shields only help against the beam and not the shards) and instead put power to the engines and weapons. Full engine power will let you outrun the shards. He also omitted the fact that the CE doesn't start spawning the "large" fragments (and thus the "small" fragments) until the CE drops below 35% health.
But all of the points he makes are correct.