Raid bosses & directional attack patterns.

[KullOfValusia]

Although now I'm getting into the absurdly detailed, after having nearly every boss on farm mode I would like to explore the directional attack patterns for raid bosses.

We're trying to answer 2 parts to this question, special attack patterns and the more difficult to answer melee directional attack patterns.So, a good example is Arbanus. His attack pattern looks something like this...

General attack pattern: melee(10 seconds),unholy word(7 seconds),more melee(10 seconds),blood ritual(7 seconds), melee(10 seconds @ 50% or less health) occasionally skips this attack, blood draw(7 seconds).

Directional attacks: up, left, up, left, up, right (repeat). For melee attacks only.

Probably forgetting a couple things but that's the general idea for other boss fights you may want to discuss about. BTW, nearly all raid boss special attacks seem to be aoe based(non-directional), although I could be wrong about this.

[LunaticAsylumLA]

Archfiend of Gore's special attack is cone-based.

[cins]

When the boss is flailing with its weapon, arm, tail, claw or tentacle without a castbar, it's a normal directional hit. Look how Arbanus hits everyone in front with that giant huge sword while Gyas only hits the target with those giant daggers*, they are normal white hits (or what passes for white hits for raidbosses). Castbar means spell regardless of area of effect, even if the damage is physical, mobs don't do combos.
*I know raidmobs are giants to prevent visibility problems but they look so ridiculous.

That said, it might be possible that there really are actual direction rotations for raidbosses. But even if so, do you really have time to take up a shield rotation on top of your combos while tanking Gyas or similar?

[Misiuggah]

Castbar means spell regardless of area of effect, even if the damage is physical, mobs don't do combos.

Those attacks aren't combos in terms of shielding, but they aren't spells either.

F.e. Flashing Defense works vs Gyas' Whirlwind or Hathor-Ka's poison spikes. They deal physical damage and somehow the games has them flagged as melee attacks.

[Lurvi]

Directional attack patterns would be interesting to take a closer look at indeed.

It's a shame how slow it is to swap around the shields, some delay.

[Eilien]

In the old days, when T2 was something people looked upon as a hard place to grind, and T3 was only on the drawing boards i remember poorly geared tanks had to set there shield for some bossfights. Not sure if i remember them 100% but Levi and Yakhmar was all shields top, Stinky was 1 top and 2 left [or maybe right].. not that the bosses in T1 and T2 matter any longer, but that made a big difference in tanking for example Stinky since he was a pain in the ass at that time. Combo, doubletap backwards, run up to him, rinse and repeat untill Stinky was a dead one ;D

[Scaevacas]

there is a lot of fake information out there. For example, some people say crushing damage means you must have your shields up, slashing left, piercing right. In my experience, this is completely false, except for Cavern of Malice.

If you watch your shields light up you will see it is not true, and crushing/slashing/piercing can hit from any of the 3 directions. If you can prove me wrong I welcome it.

[Argantes]

In the old days, when T2 was something people looked upon as a hard place to grind, and T3 was only on the drawing boards i remember poorly geared tanks had to set there shield for some bossfights. Not sure if i remember them 100% but Levi and Yakhmar was all shields top, Stinky was 1 top and 2 left [or maybe right].. not that the bosses in T1 and T2 matter any longer, but that made a big difference in tanking for example Stinky since he was a pain in the ass at that time. Combo, doubletap backwards, run up to him, rinse and repeat untill Stinky was a dead one ;D

yeah, there was A LOT of min-maxing at Stinky back in those days, taking in account every possible buff, every possible debuff, optimising every heal, not to forget Holy Cleansing and whatnot .. heh, I still feel kinda nostalgically proud of being one of the few tanks able to solotank him (when lot of raids was still using 2 tanks on him at that time), when I come back to that AoC era in my memories

there is a lot of fake information out there. For example, some people say crushing damage means you must have your shields up, slashing left, piercing right. In my experience, this is completely false, except for Cavern of Malice.

If you watch your shields light up you will see it is not true, and crushing/slashing/piercing can hit from any of the 3 directions. If you can prove me wrong I welcome it.

THIS.

Seems like it doesn´t matter how often I correct people, there is still a lot of them left spreading (or at least believing in) this myth. And there´s even quite a lot of experienced veterans among them. Well, no wonder, when one of the first topics on these new forums started with this misinformation..
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=180940

PS: I´m repeating myself, but make that topic a "Sticky", please..