Thread: Fire Frost CM is (actually) Impossible

Originally Posted by Phoeniks

We tried now for 3 raid days (ignoring saruman right now)

It is possible to get both giants (separeted more than 40 m) down to 440k togehter. Then the new mechanic starts and reduces all 15-20 seconds the rage down by one. It looks very good...but then comes the next shadow crush. The main point is getting both giants in 150 seconds down to 440k together. Then the new mechanic starts and this is half way...

Problem bubble. We ignore all bubbles --> so rage goes up 1 for all 90 seconds.
Corruptions with melee fighters always a problem --> rage up 1 by 90 seconds.

We get two elements for each giant and this reduces rage by 2 every 120 seconds.


So Rage goes up for each giant:
+1 bubble, +4 timebased = +5
down
-5 new mechanic, -2 adds = -7

But all corruptions must be taken... Right now we can not handle it. The ministrel could be the answere because in infight he can take 5 corruptions.

For all we can hold rage and even reduce it by one every 2 Minutes, but EVERYTHING must work. If corruptions does not work for both giants we stand still... and if someone dies rage goes up one for each giant.

Our main problem ist the shadow crush during positioning (comes after 5sec, 10 sec, 30sec and 35 sec in shadow phase- every time 4 hits). Without this attack the healer can go infight and take 5 corruptions by himself. But in shadow phase this is a highway procedure for ministrels...

Does anyone understand the stone toss? is it random? Right now it seems that anyone in range of 40 m is attacked.

Do the sums, do them if everything in the fight goes your way and check how long it will take you to do (without spawning extra grims) now do the sums and add a death, missed bubble or missed corruption. (your numbers are off too btw)

Originally Posted by Burio

You are right but what is your point?

well the guy was saying that u need to kill 2 elemental grims in elemental phase and that dont make no sense since u can kill them whenever u want,asap is probably best.

Originally Posted by Smugo

A mad thought I've had would be to nuke one boss before the first tier up (30 sec). While it's being nuked have 3 people in front of the boss for 3 grims to kill later. Once it's dead, dps shifts to the second boss whle the grims are lowered to the second CC point. Each time the giant tiers up a grims is CC'd and killed keeping at 0 the majority of the time. With 3 grims it gives you 3 total tier ups which is 2 min (kill before the 4th tier up).

Ignoring level difference, the giants have approximately equal morale to the turtle. With an 11 man mixed group (not stacking for dps more than usual) we were able to kill the turtle in just under 30 sec. While the giants are higher level, their mitigations are significantly lower, so it's quite possible it could be done.

The thought is mad and of course my dps loving kin tried this exact strat multiple times even before the update. The problem is, mathematically the dps is probably doable, but since you're going to be blowing all your cooldowns on the first boss it's doubtful that you'll get the second one down quickly enough. Also killing the first boss in 30 seconds is a challenging feat on its own, this isn't like a speed acid run, you don't have time to buid up a rotation. By the time your initial skill animations have gone off, debuffs applied, you're already down to 25seconds (and don't forgot the occasional 5-10 second lag spike... I hear those are a Brandywine special). And since you've stacked a dps heavy group to even try this strat, you then need to survive the spawning of 3 grims, survive with them while you dps them down and then kill the boss, AND no one can die. If you can pull it off then my hat goes off to you, but otherwise you should probably save yourself the time. Comparing this to the turtle doesn't even make sense.

Originally Posted by Litharne

Do not compare this to a turtle regardless of what you want to ignore.
Killing one Giant asap is fine, if the other giant's rage gets too high you will lack the ability to reduce.

Turtle Morale ~ 1 Giants Morale, that's all that matters. The turtle can be killed by a mixed group in 30 seconds, so a dps heavy group should be able to kill 1 giant in 30 seconds.


If you can kill one giant in 30 sec, killing the second in 1:30 should be a cake-walk :P

Originally Posted by Smugo

Turtle Morale ~ 1 Giants Morale, that's all that matters. The turtle can be killed by a mixed group in 30 seconds, so a dps heavy group should be able to kill 1 giant in 30 seconds.


If you can kill one giant in 30 sec, killing the second in 1:30 should be a cake-walk :P

The initial bubble seems to be morale-based, so add an additional 150k to your total. Also, level really does make a difference. A level 75 group will be critting a lot more on the Turtle (a level 67-ish mob?), and far less on the F&F Giants (level... 77 or so?).

Also, there's a timing flaw with your idea. If you were actually able to zerg one giant down in 30s, then you would've killed it before it spawned any grims. So now you'll need to actually let the first giant live past 30s and add in the time needed to bring in a grim from the other giant and kill it.

Interesting idea, but I don't think that it's feasible.

Originally Posted by Lestache

The initial bubble seems to be morale-based, so add an additional 150k to your total. Also, level really does make a difference. A level 75 group will be critting a lot more on the Turtle (a level 67-ish mob?), and far less on the F&F Giants (level... 77 or so?).

Also, there's a timing flaw with your idea. If you were actually able to zerg one giant down in 30s, then you would've killed it before it spawned any grims. So now you'll need to actually let the first giant live past 30s and add in the time needed to bring in a grim from the other giant and kill it.

Interesting idea, but I don't think that it's feasible.

The initial bubble will never come before initial grims, and according to my observations, will not come at all if the giant is killed fast enough (Seen this many times doing plain T2). Level makes a difference, but due to turtle having higher mitigations, I've only noticed a ~5% difference in dps between it and the giants. (Turtle is actually level ~60 btw)

Killing a giant in 30 sec isn't quite fast enough to stop the grim spawn, in order to stop it you would have to do 600k damage before the animation finished as the grims spawn at 95% of the combined morale.

turbine doesn't know how to balance content. Two weeks after saruman t2 CM is done and FF still seems a LONG way. They need to examine this fight because this is stupid...

All I am going to say is you guys seem to be missing one thing we found that everyone in this post says happens, but does not. You can kill fire grim and frost grim while both gaints are being tank together when they spawn in the group. Try it and you will find that the rage does go down for both but never up for both as was thought when you did not kill them away from eachother. We just kill the FF grims when they spawn right under both gaints and are trying to kite the shadows. Good luck with this new info.........

Originally Posted by Phoeniks

Does anyone understand the stone toss? is it random? Right now it seems that anyone in range of 40 m is attacked.

rock toss goes on second aggro target of that grim. But it's AOE where it hits.

Originally Posted by Burio

rock toss goes on second aggro target of that grim. But it's AOE where it hits.

if the 2nd-aggro-target stands near the Giant there aren't stones?

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

All I am going to say is you guys seem to be missing one thing we found that everyone in this post says happens, but does not. You can kill fire grim and frost grim while both gaints are being tank together when they spawn in the group. Try it and you will find that the rage does go down for both but never up for both as was thought when you did not kill them away from eachother. We just kill the FF grims when they spawn right under both gaints and are trying to kite the shadows. Good luck with this new info.........

No offence, but after watching your Saruman T2 attempt video, multiple attempts at this fight ourself, and you saying to kite the shadow grims rather than killing them, forgive me for being skeptical of your advice. But, prove me wrong, please. I personally would love a video of alternative strategies. I'd love to eat crow if it meant finishing this fight.


We've tried multiple grim scenarios, with 1, 2, 3 elementals all with varied success. It just seems that no matter how we slice the pie, we can't get both giants down to their turn-to-punch phase early enough with minimal rage. Missing a corruption sequence, bubble, or what not ends up being taxing to the group since it adds time to the fight, and it provides another sequence of events that might not get dealt with. One mistake can turn into 4 quickly.

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

All I am going to say is you guys seem to be missing one thing we found that everyone in this post says happens, but does not. You can kill fire grim and frost grim while both gaints are being tank together when they spawn in the group. Try it and you will find that the rage does go down for both but never up for both as was thought when you did not kill them away from eachother. We just kill the FF grims when they spawn right under both gaints and are trying to kite the shadows. Good luck with this new info.........

If you tank the Giant on top of each other and spawn and kill elemental grims on them, you are cancelling them out. Killing a Frost Grim near Crissiant raises his rage while killing a Fire Grim near Crissiant lowers his rage, vice verse on Usgarren; you're effectively raising and lowering the rage on each Giant each time making no headway, which I believe others have said in this thread as well.

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

All I am going to say is you guys seem to be missing one thing we found that everyone in this post says happens, but does not. You can kill fire grim and frost grim while both gaints are being tank together when they spawn in the group. Try it and you will find that the rage does go down for both but never up for both as was thought when you did not kill them away from eachother. We just kill the FF grims when they spawn right under both gaints and are trying to kite the shadows. Good luck with this new info.........

I don't think you're right. We tried killing the grims next to both giants, and rage tiers down by one giant and goes up by the other. For example if you kill frost near both giants, fire rage goes down by one but frost rage tiers up. You have to split the giants before you kill a grim, and there is a mechanic that allows you to do so. Still its damn hard cause of the shadow crush. Maybe others can correct me or share experience, but I'm pretty sure that you can't just kill the grims if you tank the giants together.

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

All I am going to say is you guys seem to be missing one thing we found that everyone in this post says happens, but does not. You can kill fire grim and frost grim while both gaints are being tank together when they spawn in the group. Try it and you will find that the rage does go down for both but never up for both as was thought when you did not kill them away from eachother. We just kill the FF grims when they spawn right under both gaints and are trying to kite the shadows. Good luck with this new info.........

If this is the case, which I'm 99% certain it's not, then you should have gotten challenge mode by now.

Originally Posted by AndraxxVanyar

I don't think you're right. We tried killing the grims next to both giants, and rage tiers down by one giant and goes up by the other. For example if you kill frost near both giants, fire rage goes down by one but frost rage tiers up. You have to split the giants before you kill a grim, and there is a mechanic that allows you to do so. Still its damn hard cause of the shadow crush. Maybe others can correct me or share experience, but I'm pretty sure that you can't just kill the grims if you tank the giants together.

There have been disagreements within kin about this. Thanks for making it clearer.

You also managed to do it without acting like a self-righteous tool. Some people are incapable of that, unfortunately.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...72#post6190572

Only way they did it was killing one giant within 50 seconds with stacking burgs.

Originally Posted by polishtrmpt94

If you tank the Giant on top of each other and spawn and kill elemental grims on them, you are cancelling them out. Killing a Frost Grim near Crissiant raises his rage while killing a Fire Grim near Crissiant lowers his rage, vice verse on Usgarren; you're effectively raising and lowering the rage on each Giant each time making no headway, which I believe others have said in this thread as well.

But that was before the last update that people stated that, it was also stat that spawning more the one grim would not work either, but we now that is not true. We watched the rage as we killed one grim near both giants, rage went down for one and the other did not move, than we kill the other grim and the same thing happen. Just try it now and you will see.

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

But that was before the last update that people stated that, it was also stat that spawning more the one grim would not work either, but we now that is not true. We watched the rage as we killed one grim near both giants, rage went down for one and the other did not move, than we kill the other grim and the same thing happen. Just try it now and you will see.

thats strange, we tried that a week ago and when we killed him at the wrong giant, the rage went up like it did before the update. We wanted to test that as well and it behaved as it did before the patch.

PS: it's not new that multiple grimspawns did not effect the rage before update 7. If you spawned 2 grims, you were able to tier it down by 2. They just had too much hp that it was of any use.

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

But that was before the last update that people stated that, it was also stat that spawning more the one grim would not work either, but we now that is not true. We watched the rage as we killed one grim near both giants, rage went down for one and the other did not move, than we kill the other grim and the same thing happen. Just try it now and you will see.

We tried that after the update, and the rage went up on one giant and down on the other, just as expected.

As jwbarry said a long time ago, there are 6 ways to raise rage and 2 ways to lower it. At this point, all of them are known, and one of the ways to raise rage is to kill a grim under the giant from which it spawns.

Originally Posted by Lestache

We tried that after the update, and the rage went up on one giant and down on the other, just as expected.

As jwbarry said a long time ago, there are 6 ways to raise rage and 2 ways to lower it. At this point, all of them are known, and one of the ways to raise rage is to kill a grim under the giant from which it spawns.

My bad guys, I fraped it tonight and I was wrong. Sorry for the mis info. My bad.

Does turbine ever intended to fix this before rohan? Or should we just start recruiting burgs for all future content as well.

I think, if the RNG is your best friend for 3/4 minutes this can be done with 2 burglars, maybe..
But a fix would be welcome, perhaps something related to the amount of rage reduced by a dead grim, duration between 'plus' rage or something to do with the shadow grims.

I hope to see F&F CM fixed very soon. What I would really like to see fixed to is the stacking of burglars. The stacking of burglars has gone on far too long. Yes, I realize that is how is always has been, but in my opinion a game mechanic that never should have happened and should not have ever been left as it is to this day!

This fight is now in the same place as Saruman T2 before U7, ie it is *in theory* possible given a jaw-dropping run of luck on resists/misses/crits.

However, it is not possible to defeat this encounter reliably using the methods envisaged by the developers. The giants hit too hard, the dps requirements are too high and the timers are too unforgiving. One of these has to give, or one of the mechanics has to be scrapped.

My vote would be for making changes to, or removing altogether, the shadow phase/shadow grims. The bubbles, corruptions, distributed damage and elemental grims are all manageable with good co-ordination, but not when having also to deal with devastated shadow-crushes and shadow grims.

I think 2 simple changes would be enough to make the fight balanced:
1.) only 3 curruptionstacks so that there is room for misses
2.) the event when the giants punch each other reduces the rage by 2 instead of by 1.

These changes would make that 2nd game mechanic way more important. You still have to handle the grims and probably you should still spawn an extra grim (thats not a big deal for a good raid). The fight would be shorter so there would be less chances for errors and together with the corruption-nerf the luck-factor should be ok i guess.

The shadow crush is ok imo, at least we figured a way to deal with it. The grim damage and the dps requirement is ok as well (you dont need to burn down both bubbles, just spawn an extra grim).

I think that these changes would make the fight very doable in the way it's intended to be done.

@ burgstacking: i still think thats not the problem, the problem are the encounterdesign. For example it's not doable for shadow, since you need ranged. Another problem are purely timer-based fights like this one or acid, where you can just stack dps and you do not need to deal with any fightmechanics. Again bad encounterdesign.
If you change that burgdebuffs do not stack anymore you won't need a burg anymore. better take a 2nd champ, he's tankier or even a 3rd hunter, because they are ranged, take less damage and are more easymode. Right now a balanced setup of 1-2 burgs, 1-2 champs, 1-2 hunters, 1 rk, 2 captains, 2 guards/wardens, 2 minstrels and a lm are a perfect setup for a full-ortanc t2 run except f&f cm. It's pretty balanced that way, so why change that? Just don't make the mistake again to design purely timer-based fights, thats it.

We haven't attempted the challenge mode on this fight yet but the non-burg stacking tactics that we were considering to attempt was to stack champs instead and spawn multiple frost/fire grims when the first giant is low on health and killable. I believe these grims should be killable with champ aoe quite quickly and if needs be can use last stand and harms way to get through this part of the fight.

Rinse and repeat for the second giant as well keeping the fight alive if harms way and last stand are needed to kill the multiple grims. I know we would be substituting the stacking of one class for another but this would possibly eliminate the luck factor that burg stacking requires.

Any kins try this yet or any thoughts on how this would or wouldnt work?

Originally Posted by Blister_Burster

We haven't attempted the challenge mode on this fight yet but the non-burg stacking tactics that we were considering to attempt was to stack champs instead and spawn multiple frost/fire grims when the first giant is low on health and killable. I believe these grims should be killable with champ aoe quite quickly and if needs be can use last stand and harms way to get through this part of the fight.

if you spawn ~5 grims, any champs will be killed in no time. better stack red-skilled loremasters and let a tank tank them away for the group.
I dont know how many grims you want to spawn, in our normal tactic trys we spawned 2 and 3 grims (for the giant where we didnt kill the bubble). It worked out, we didn't wipe because of the grimdamage, but every additional grim won't be possbile imo with melees.

Originally Posted by Blister_Burster

Any kins try this yet or any thoughts on how this would or wouldn't work?

Everyone in the group will die. The grims each need to be CC'd twice before they die, something I suspect was put in precisely to stop them simply being blended by AoE. By the time this happens, the pulsing damage will have killed everyone, especially if a giant decides to do a distributed attack at the same time.

I'm pretty sure that by now all possible permutations of tactics have been tried. The numbers simply don't add up. Each of the mechanics can be dealt with, they just can't all be dealt with at once. This is what happens when encounters are designed on a spreadsheet and not properly tested in real conditions.

Originally Posted by Blister_Burster

We haven't attempted the challenge mode on this fight yet but the non-burg stacking tactics that we were considering to attempt was to stack champs instead and spawn multiple frost/fire grims when the first giant is low on health and killable. I believe these grims should be killable with champ aoe quite quickly and if needs be can use last stand and harms way to get through this part of the fight.

Rinse and repeat for the second giant as well keeping the fight alive if harms way and last stand are needed to kill the multiple grims. I know we would be substituting the stacking of one class for another but this would possibly eliminate the luck factor that burg stacking requires.

Any kins try this yet or any thoughts on how this would or wouldnt work?

As far as I've read through this thread + my own experiences, only the shadow grim's are the ones you can personally keep spawning. The Fire and Frost grim's enter on a timer?

Originally Posted by Thorebane

...only the shadow grim's are the ones you can personally keep spawning. The Fire and Frost grim's enter on a timer?

The mechanism for grim spawning is the same for Shadow and Elemental grims and you can spawn as many or as few as you want.

Originally Posted by Tarmas_Eldar

The mechanism for grim spawning is the same for Shadow and Elemental grims and you can spawn as many or as few as you want.

O.O Now THAT I didn't know ... :S

Whenever we stood in front of the giant, no matter what time of the fight we got only 1 first and frost every 45 seconds - 1 minute. Though we'd spawn loads of shadows :/

lol another update and they refuse to balance out this fight...way to go turbine.

Originally Posted by witchking782

lol another update and they refuse to balance out this fight...way to go turbine.

The fight has been completed by at least 2 groups CM.

Try try again.

Originally Posted by Crell_1

The fight has been completed by at least 2 groups CM.

Try try again.

3 - But all seems only be able to finish this fight with Burgstacking - which shows that it's too hard to finish with a "normal" groupsetup...

I dont think bringing 3 burgs is burg stacking for a 12 man RAID.

Originally Posted by Crell_1

The fight has been completed by at least 2 groups CM.

Try try again.

We missed it by 2 seconds one week then 1 second the next. We know that it's possible, but Krip likes to whine.

I'm not expecting any more changes to the fight since jwbarry already made the changes that he said he would make, but it is the first raid fight I've ever taken part in in LOTRO in which nearly everyone in the kin has said something along the lines of, "I don't want to ever do this fight again after we beat it."

Originally Posted by Lestache

We missed it by 2 seconds one week then 1 second the next. We know that it's possible, but Krip likes to whine.

I'm not expecting any more changes to the fight since jwbarry already made the changes that he said he would make, but it is the first raid fight I've ever taken part in in LOTRO in which nearly everyone in the kin has said something along the lines of, "I don't want to ever do this fight again after we beat it."

So close! I do find it disappointing to see that kind of feedback, Raid content should be enjoyable enough to keep us coming back even after we've completed the challenge.

Maybe the next raid will have less fights with encounters that can be so widely impacted by the timing of the RNG.

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

I dont think bringing 3 burgs is burg stacking for a 12 man RAID.

Respectfully disagree, considering a normal raid group will have 1 Burglar, bringing in 3+ Burglars just to be able to complete the challenge is, in my opinion, class stacking.

Do hope that they "balance" out this fight before RoR, although it is very unlikely that it will happen at this point. Having to stack classes greatly hinders a fight, players ability/want to get into the raid, and overall enjoyment of the instance. Add that in consideration with the quality of the loot from F&F CM being the same as Acid and Lightning makes for very little to no incentive to repeat this fight once it has been completed.

I too agree that you should not have to stack a class to beat something and wish it was not the case. Though knowing the fight now and also just missing it ourselfs, stupid bleeds, I think it could be done with only 2 burgs. And if the update tomorrow does get rid of the lag, that is going to help alot too.

Originally Posted by Jamesm429

I too agree that you should not have to stack a class to beat something and wish it was not the case. Though knowing the fight now and also just missing it ourselfs, stupid bleeds, I think it could be done with only 2 burgs. And if the update tomorrow does get rid of the lag, that is going to help alot too.

It definitely can be done with 2 burgs as well, the dps just has to be very very good. We do it with 3 burgs lately and there is still some room left. We had to burn a bubble on the first giant today and it still worked, so if you dont get a bubble, you dont need 3 burgs. We are always using 2 for the rest of the raid, since a lot of us have burgs and there is room for 3 melee dps -> 2 burgs 1 champ for us, other raids might wanna go with 1 burg 2 champs which works as well.

Once again we screwed up F&F cm though that id ... would have had the title once again, Saruman is just easy going now, without any troubles. So lets hope for Thursday that noone dies at the same moment the 2nd giant dies