Like most of the replies in this thread, I think you are way overstating the difficulty that a tank would have taking out the portals. The fact that you just keep repeating the worst-case scenario calculations and disregard the suggestions other posters have offered tell me that you already have your mind made up.

A decent tank will not have the issues slotting some DPS gear and taking them out. I've done this fight with three tanks and none of them had the issues that you are claiming.

I think you just dont like this fight because it does not conform to your preference of what a boss fight should be, namely one in which requires a rigid 4 person trinity to always do their roles. How boring. How unimaginative. The designers have consistently said from the beginning that every class was expected to perform functions beyond their expected role. Even the beginning regular dungeons have mechanics in place that more or less required healers to do something other than heal and DPS more than do damage. You do not have to respect your CPs and abilities to do this fight, stop exaggerating.

And why should players always be in control? Players are in control 99% of the time in this game. It's fine for 1% to push us outside our comfort levels. One of the great things about the Mantikora fight was precisely the players were not in control where the portal spawned and thus had to be prepared to adapt and act accordingly. You seem to want every fight to boil down to a predictable formula. You claim to dislike fights that players can just out DPS them, but this is precisely what happens when you remove the random elements that you dislike because the group's DPS, tanking, and healing are always optimized. Once the magic formula is discovered, players always faceroll the enemy and never be taken out of their comfort zone.

@Joy_Division and @Yonkit I completely understand they want to branch out and I agree with both of you.

This was a rant because I was/am irritated that I brought a really good tank into this fight and he was unable to take out the portals before the ograms rolled us. The tank finally just volunteers to leave and we invite a DPS from the guild to come in and we face-roll the boss. The DPS drops and we re-invite our tank to finish.

Honestly Yonkit, you just laid out one of my main reasons for disliking the stamina while blocking change. With the exception of this fight (everyone should have DPS and heals/shields), it's narrowed the tank's responsibilities more to stamina management and block timing. The pierce armor debuff is less common, and now shards and repentance is more necessary than ever - even with caster dps. While everything used to be facerolled, I honestly found the healing and tank roles more interesting as you could more readily push your DPS instead of resource management.

@ZOS_RichLambert

1 bad apple spoils the bunch

#PlanarInhibitor
#FleshSculptor

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Thornos?

My experience with this fight is limited, and I was playing a healer (not my usual role), but I agree that there seems to be a lot of RNG associated with this fight. When I hear about Tanks (good tanks) actually reallocating CP points for one fight, something is probably a touch broken. I am not prepared to toss the fight out the window, because I have no issues with needing to actually learn mechanics to finish a boss, but I do agree with OP that the standard group composition (Tank, Healer, DPSx2) is going to have a lot of trouble with this fight, especially if the DPS are melee. Changing a skill or two for a boss encounter is okay with me, having to change your whole build, maybe not. Unless of course ZOS wants to give us a dual spec.

@Oreyn_Bearclaw , I ended up doing it again last night. We finished with 3 people that could be healing at any one time.

Kallipsoe wrote: »

I Highlander l wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

Have 2 people rotate pinions, if one of the 2 people get portals rotate another person in. Keep the healer on non portal duty.

Skills that can destroy portals in 1 or 2 hits: Flying blade, steel tornado, force pulse/crushing shock, radiant oppression, eruption, crystal frag.

Use shields to deal with the DoT until the boss crouches down to the floor to reset it

Did you read what the op posted?

This is honestly why I have almost no interest in most end game pve. Its so heavily focused on these dps races that I couldn't care less. Engaging mechanics that require attention and engage me as a player in the situation. Yes sign me up. Just spam the maximum dps rotation until the boss is dead, ignoring everything else or these games of russian roulette where the players are simply being dragged by their ears into the systems, i'm not interested. It is sad to see ZOS so heavily focused on these rng systems that dps can ignore rather than ones that make the players feel engaged in the fights.

The boss isnt really that much of a dps race at all. You dont have to kill it on the 1st down phase if you cant, its not required.

You have to pay attention to the pinion, and you have to deal with the portals at least until execute phase. You dont even need to have the best dps to complete it. As long as you stay focused on the pinion,portals and watch your feet, Too many peoples downfall is looking at the portals too much and not checking the ground for circles so they end up dying.

You can take alot longer than required to beat this boss, even more so with the stupidly sad nerfs last patch.

@I Highlander l I respectfully disagree, this boss is a DPS race. If you do not kill it before its third complete rotation "where she stuns herself on the ground" to many portals spawn and you will get overwhelmed by adds. The only thing that wipes my group is the Ograms that spawn from the portals. That is because the Tank gets portal duty on the late second to third boss rotation.

My issue is why are we making the tank obsolete on this fight? Why is it a hindrance to have a Tank during this fight?

This can be a challenging and fun fight without making the Tank obsolete.

If your getting ogrims, even with a tank, your doing something extremely wrong with the portals.

Scyantific wrote: »

Hahaha wow, one of the few encounters that has a non-tank/spank mechanic and you're complaining about it.

If mechanics are bad or are bad for certain roles, then they deserve to be discussed.

Just because a fight has a mechanic or two, doesn't mean that the fight shouldn't be criticized. Just because people criticize a fight with mechanics doesn't mean that those people don't want mechanics based fights in general.

We are discussing this specific fight for the difficulties that it is causing tanks. We already know that we can adapt by becoming a DPS, but if we should have to adapt in such a way is a question for the developers to answer. We are leaving feedback. Don't say that we are just complaining and imply that we aren't being helpful. We are being helpful by helping the developers understand parts of their combat design which are flawed.

The developers want us to give this kind of feedback. Please don't stifle debate by making such comments as you have.

Scyantific wrote: »

Hahaha wow, one of the few encounters that has a non-tank/spank mechanic and you're complaining about it.

@Scyantific I admit I was ranting, but I also named the title of this thread rant/ suggestions. Because I did leave some suggestions on how in my opinion the fight can be changed to still present a challenge but not force a Tank to change their setup. It was not just me complaining.

Next I would like to make a suggestion to @ZOS_RichLambert for a future dungeon mechanic I think everyone will love. In fact this is not completely sarcasm because I would really love to see a mechanic like this in the game.

The players will fight a boss like Hovantud the Fire Maw from Vet City of Ash. You know that guy that hits really hard. But along with the boss will be a boss like Yokeda Kai from Hel Ra Citadel that stands over the arena and watches the fight.

When the group get Hovantud down to 80% Yokeda ports everyone but the player with the highest DPS into another room with him.

The player with the higher DPS now must tank Hovantud and live by himeself while the other three burst Yokeda down without their top DPS and as you know he splits into three different versions of himself across the room and only one of them is the real one. Once the group of three get him to the same health as Hovantud the players are ported back together to continue the fight.

At 50% everyone but the Healer is transported to the room to fight Yokeda while the healer tanks Hovantud. Again the group of three must bring Yokeda to the same health as Hovantud without the healer.

At 25% health Hovantud will get a big shield on him and enrage. Hovantud will put a debuff on the Tank that after 6 seconds he will bypass all armor and shields for 20 seconds. Another player must taunt the boss off the tank and then another after 6 seconds and so forth so that everyone in the group must Tank the boss one after the other.

Once the group kills Hovantud, Yokeda shows up and the players must kill him. This time though he puts a debuff on anyone that heals. After a player casts a heal he is debuffed for 6 seconds so that every heal during that time heals Yokeda and not the players. Players must rotate heals in order to keep the group alive and not heal the boss.

Lets force the dps to tank and heal. I think this fight would be fun.

Yonkit wrote: »

Daveheart wrote: »

Honestly Yonkit, you just laid out one of my main reasons for disliking the stamina while blocking change. With the exception of this fight (everyone should have DPS and heals/shields), it's narrowed the tank's responsibilities more to stamina management and block timing. The pierce armor debuff is less common, and now shards and repentance is more necessary than ever - even with caster dps. While everything used to be facerolled, I honestly found the healing and tank roles more interesting as you could more readily push your DPS instead of resource management.

When I asked you if you had a real tank, you said no, therefore you are not long part of this conversation! GATOGTFO (get a tank or get the *** out)

Where's your tank Yonkit? Are you using your conflagration for that now (have you hit v16 with it)? If you really need a tank Yonkit, just grind the 13 levels I've got left and send me the gear, and then I'll tank for you. I promise not to intentionally aim bosses' conal attacks at you.

Scyantific wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Scyantific wrote: »

Hahaha wow, one of the few encounters that has a non-tank/spank mechanic and you're complaining about it.

If mechanics are bad or are bad for certain roles, then they deserve to be discussed.

Just because a fight has a mechanic or two, doesn't mean that the fight shouldn't be criticized. Just because people criticize a fight with mechanics doesn't mean that those people don't want mechanics based fights in general.

We are discussing this specific fight for the difficulties that it is causing tanks. We already know that we can adapt by becoming a DPS, but if we should have to adapt in such a way is a question for the developers to answer. We are leaving feedback. Don't say that we are just complaining and imply that we aren't being helpful. We are being helpful by helping the developers understand parts of their combat design which are flawed.

The developers want us to give this kind of feedback. Please don't stifle debate by making such comments as you have.

Yeah I don't think you know what kind of feedback they want. If stuff like this was the feedback they wanted to hear they would have made several changes to the stuff they put into the game while the IC patch was on the PTS (block change, shield breaker, battle spirit reduction, etc.)

Just because I'm leaving feedback, doesn't mean the developers have to follow the feedback. You keep making these leaps in logic to prove your point, but all those logic leaps are doing is showing that you aren't thinking your debate through.

You know what, I encountered another forum user just like you who told me to stop bringing up the fact that the Obsidian Shard ability should be further buffed.

They heavily discouraged and even mocked me for wanting the buff, but you know what, the developers listened, buffed the skill, and now it is quite good. Please don't act as if feedback should only be taken by a selective few people. Everyone deserves to have their feedback listened to. Yes, even tanks.

Kyoma wrote: »

Did you know that the person that takes every other pinion doesn't get portals?

No, I'm not aware of that manipulation being part of the portal mechanic.

I'm wondering if Invasion would help with the portals. In terms of moving the tank to where he needs to be.

It uses stamina, but so does sprinting, an you get the reductions from the s+b passives.

For a Templar maybe toppling charge as an alternative? And chains for a Dr? Since you'd chain yourself to the portals?

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Like most of the replies in this thread, I think you are way overstating the difficulty that a tank would have taking out the portals. The fact that you just keep repeating the worst-case scenario calculations and disregard the suggestions other posters have offered tell me that you already have your mind made up.

A decent tank will not have the issues slotting some DPS gear and taking them out. I've done this fight with three tanks and none of them had the issues that you are claiming.

I think you just dont like this fight because it does not conform to your preference of what a boss fight should be, namely one in which requires a rigid 4 person trinity to always do their roles. How boring. How unimaginative. The designers have consistently said from the beginning that every class was expected to perform functions beyond their expected role. Even the beginning regular dungeons have mechanics in place that more or less required healers to do something other than heal and DPS more than do damage. You do not have to respect your CPs and abilities to do this fight, stop exaggerating.

And why should players always be in control? Players are in control 99% of the time in this game. It's fine for 1% to push us outside our comfort levels. One of the great things about the Mantikora fight was precisely the players were not in control where the portal spawned and thus had to be prepared to adapt and act accordingly. You seem to want every fight to boil down to a predictable formula. You claim to dislike fights that players can just out DPS them, but this is precisely what happens when you remove the random elements that you dislike because the group's DPS, tanking, and healing are always optimized. Once the magic formula is discovered, players always faceroll the enemy and never be taken out of their comfort zone.

This fight is unfair for tanks because it causes them to do things that other roles don't have to do.

Performing functions beyond an expected role is much less controversial than becoming an entirely different role outright. The later is what is happening with this boss fight. Additionally, using specific champion points on the Planar Inhibitor isn't an exaggeration. I have put points into thick skinned and elemental defender for no other reason but to fight this specific boss.

As for your Mantikora analogy, it fails because all players have the ability to dodge the Serpents Image portal. That avoidance is happening in high end raids because of how a bad RNG (tank or healer going down) can end the fight. The Planar Inhibitor is similar in that the OP wishes there to be a way to better control the fight so that tank can avoid portals. Just like with Mantikora, it would be interesting if a group could do something extra in order to better manipulate the Planar Inhibitors portal mechanic.

I question your use of the word unfair. No, asking the tank to do some DPS is not unfair, it is an opportunity for a good adaptability tank to showcase her versatility and for a fight to be something more than a boring tank & spank.

For DSA, it is not unfair to ask a healer to put on a sword and shield and tank the boss. Far from it, it was actually fun to do something different, unexpected, unconventional.

You didn't have to reorient your champion points, you chose to do that. Whether that was because you some sort of perfectionist who demands that the character that you play be 100% optimized in every situation or because you deliberately choose a narrow build (which should have consequence), that was a decision that arose from choices that yor made, not because of the mechanics of the fight or what was necessary to complete it.

And, yes, I am aware players can circumvent the intended mechanics of the Mantikora fight by dodging the portals. In fact, circumvent them altogether because the optimal strategy is to avoid the portals totally and simply burn the Mantikora to 100% health precisely because nobody is taken out of their comfort zone: the same tank is always there, there is no off tank because the nine dps don;t have to do anything but stand in a single spot and practice their rotations, while the healers completely control where the spears land. Nice. We have turned what had been the signature fight in the entire game that kept Raiding guilds interested in this game into a cakewalk. Don't worry, soon someone will find an exploit to the Planar Inhibitor fight as is done with any reasonably challenging boss in this game, and you can totally be in 100% control, never taken out of your comfort area that fits your build 100% of the time, and faceroll it, which apparently you deem is fair.

I do not agree at all with your assessment and hope ZoS introduces more fights that reward adaptable and versatile builds in the future.

I question your use of the word unfair. No, asking the tank to do some DPS is not unfair, it is an opportunity for a good adaptability tank to showcase her versatility and for a fight to be something more than a boring tank & spank.

You are misrepresenting the fight. Tanks aren't trying to do some DPS. They are becoming full out DPS or, sometimes, DPS and heals. Those that are trying just to have some DPS are not doing as well as those that are totally dropping tanking on the fight.

For DSA, it is not unfair to ask a healer to put on a sword and shield and tank the boss. Far from it, it was actually fun to do something different, unexpected, unconventional.

I agree about this. VDSA was great content in which all roles could try many different things. That being said, for your example, nobody expected the healer to just tank or even, for that matter, change their armor. You can find in my signature that I have no issue in adapting or changing up my role if you find my VDSA build linked in my signature. The Planar Inhibitor is a whole different ball game.

You didn't have to reorient your champion points, you chose to do that. Whether that was because you some sort of perfectionist who demands that the character that you play be 100% optimized in every situation or because you deliberately choose a narrow build (which should have consequence), that was a decision that arose from choices that yor made, not because of the mechanics of the fight or what was necessary to complete it.

Just because it is my choice to use my champion points in a certain doesn't mean that such a choice is good for tanks. The Planar Inhibitor makes 65 out of my 100 warrior champion points useless. That isn't fair for tanks, the role which has the largest champion point demands to begin with.

You also missed that I said how I am putting champion points into Thick Skinned and Elemental Defender specifically for this fight. You are wrong that the boss mechanics have nothing to do with my decisions.

And, yes, I am aware players can circumvent the intended mechanics of the Mantikora fight by dodging the portals. In fact, circumvent them altogether because the optimal strategy is to avoid the portals totally and simply burn the Mantikora to 100% health precisely because nobody is taken out of their comfort zone: the same tank is always there, there is no off tank because the nine dps don;t have to do anything but stand in a single spot and practice their rotations, while the healers completely control where the spears land. Nice. We have turned what had been the signature fight in the entire game that kept Raiding guilds interested in this game into a cakewalk. Don't worry, soon someone will find an exploit to the Planar Inhibitor fight as is done with any reasonably challenging boss in this game, and you can totally be in 100% control, never taken out of your comfort area that fits your build 100% of the time, and faceroll it, which apparently you deem is fair.

If an exploit is found with the Planar Inhibitor, then the question of tanks place in this game still isn't answered. We don't necessarily want the Planar Inhibitor to be an easy fight to tank, but we are asking the developers to be more considerate of our role in the future. Tanks have the largest burden in the different ways that they have to adapt in the many different areas of the game. Tanks are still held back by severe diminished returns. Tanks can't go right from PVE into PVP and be effective. On top of it all, tanks got a stamina regeneration nerf because of certain peoples wrong opinion that the role was too easy. If the developers are going to make the game better for tanks, which they claim to want, then they will have to start thinking about the hurdles that tanks have to jump over every step of the way.

nordickittyhawk wrote: »

When people say this boss is impossible...my mind just goes "Wow.... you guys just cant adjust or admit that u need to get better" so ill leave you with this.


https://youtube.com/watch?v=Je0AC-zsqbI
^ my reaction to this post and comments.

What do you think about tanks role in this fight?

Let's hypothetically say that if I personally get better at the DPS role, then the fight will be easier for myself and party. That is pretty reasonable, but such adapting ignores whether or not tanks should have to get better at the DPS role. Yes, practically tanks should get better at the DPS role if they want to beat the Planar Inhibitor, but if they should be faced with such content in the first place is the real question.

I don't have the year experience as a DPS that DPS players have and, as much as that is my choice, it was no tanks choice to introduce a fight into the game where tanking isn't valuable. That is why we are discussing this fight.