Order of the Blue Garter Twintania Down (No Exploits)

[Onolock]

All this illustrates to me is that your MT and Healer are have trouble communicating when DS is incoming. Our MT who has only ~6k HP (600+ less health than BG's MT for reference) can and does MT the entirety of phase 2. Additionally, he can - with CD's - be solo kept up by a single healer if one goes into a conflag. And our healers have one (!) Allagan piece between the two of them. You over-estimate infirmity's effectiveness. I do that entire fight in Sword Oath minus the adds at the start and the snakes. You can do this without having your MT jump into a conflag. My group is four weeks behind first week raiders and we still have the DPS to deal with conflags.

What's my point here? Phase 2 isn't even hard enough for a serious progression guild for this to matter. It is more likely due to being worn out repeating this phase ad nauseam that they just went with the method that allowed them to shut-off. Even if the MT jumping into the fire is a bug, it doesn't matter, everybody has figured out how to get past this phase with a very high degree of accuracy at this point. Is the title incorrect? Maybe, but everybody was up to Twisters not conflags.

If you want my personal opinion, I do think the AI script is dodgy as hell, but again they did it to get through a section most serious progression guilds (themselves included) bested weeks ago. If someone turned around and said; "BG has never completed phase 2 without that tactic," then I'd be more willing to side with you. And even then, I'd reserve judgement until SE said something.

I personally think you're transplanting your own groups difficulties onto BG.

I'll ignore anything you assume about our raid because that is laughable. Yes, with CD's, but those CD's will run out, and leave tanks open to much more danger with healers being in conflag or even the offtank being targeted for conflag which can happen. They completely ignore any danger at all in this phase with breaking the boss and ignoring mechanics. This phase is essentially trivial. I'm not concerned about what your guild does or my guild, I'm concerned with the fact that this world first kill was a proven exploit and BG knows it because their only defence in this thread was a poor one.

So if they are so pro and this phase is so easy, why then did they choose to exploit? Any guild who genuinely cared about posting a world first strat "legit" would have not have resorted to such methods. Their stance has changed over the last 24 hours as posted earlier, they know what they did and people called them out on it. Actually, most guilds did not best this phase because they simply skipped it with sleeping conflags/using the rez strat because no one had the gear to kill conflags or keep their tanks up. This allowed guilds to see phases they shouldn't be able to see since they can't progress. It might be easy now that we have had 5-6 weeks to gear up in Coil...so of course it would be easy. This isn't my point, so again you aren't really seeing the problem at hand. So, this point is still false.

Sounds to me like you really don't fully know what you are talking about and just endorsing guilds who knowingly exploit fights.

[Onolock]

Whether or not Phase 2 is trivial isn't the heart of the dissenting argument, and I think this line of logic needs to finish dying. There is a very specific reason they are executing this encounter this way and you can find BG guild members alluding it it on this and other forums, but they've been very clear that there won't be an official explanation until after the developers weigh in.

From the reddit thread :

Emphasis mine. There's more at play here but we won't know until they go into it. I think the point is that even if it is just a way to skip a trivial phase there's questionable behavior at play, and a lot of us thought we'd see a kill video that managed the mechanic "normally" be it rotating cooldowns on the main tank, or utilizing tank swaps, or whatever. Instead, this is the exact same mechanic that caused the developers to shut the fight down for an entire week, minus the tank logging out afterwards. Seeing the touted "World First 100% Legit Kill" using this exact same strategy is raising a lot of eyebrows but really the only people who can give this the green/red light is Square Enix.

Personally speaking, it's not helping BG any that their official stance has shifted slowly in the last 24 hours from "100% Absolutely positively working as intended" to "maybe just a creative use of game mechanics" to "we're awaiting official response and will adjust as necessary" because to me that raises doubts that they truly believed this was ever actually intended boss behavior in the first place. Again, the only entity who can confirm anything is Square Enix. I remain skeptical but hopeful that this will yield a positive result for everyone.

I agree completely, they know what they did, and have been called out on it. Just have to wait and see what SE says, they knowingly exploited this phase and possibly even other phases of the fight. SE has the final word on this.

[CrashQQ]

Kill was 100% legit. Don't know why you, in particular, are so upset about it.

[Onolock]

No idea what you guys are doing but, yes, it is quite possible to heal the tank through the healing debuff. Not even close to hard. We've been doing so for weeks. Just saying. (No, we're not being inefficient, if that's what you're intending to say. And yes, we do tank swop at some point.)

Other than that, you're nitpicking at the easiest phase in the entire fight, which most of us can do with our eyes closed by now. /shrug Just saying.

Edit: P.S. That's a whole lot of people for you to quote...

If that phase is so easy, why then did they choose to do it incorrectly and exploit it? I don't care how easy it is for your guild or any guild, the fact of the matter is this World First legit kill is not legit at all. This is the issue. I could care less about how easy or hard a phase is or how much dps x guild does or how awesome x guild is. Your e-peen flaunting is wasted. Cheating is still cheating any way you look at it. If some team exploited some mechanic on a map in DotA 2( or any other game or sporting event) for example at an international competition, you better believe people would be up in arms about it. Fact is, the they bugged the boss AI effectively breaking her in order to negate an entire phase of mechanics to achieve their "legit" kill. This is the same boss breaking bug that was used in a similar way, and why the boss was shut down. Again, your insults are wasted on me because I don't care how easy a phase is for you or how awesome your guild is or lol your guild must be bad so you are jealous(which I'm not). Facts are facts, and other people have posted their concerns in here as well; I'm just more adamant and vocal about it.

[Horg]

...Just have to wait and see what SE says...

That's funny, what do you think they are going to say?
A. They already have a hard-on for BG because of the guild's history with FF MMOs
B. This fight has been extremely controversial and I bet SE has been praying for ANYONE to down it so they can say "See, it is killable!
They will call this a legit kill.

Personally I don't like the strategy, I think it is abusing mechanics in a way that was not intended (this includes conflags, dive-bombs, fireballs and death sentence), but it's definitely not clear cut exploiting a bug. I applaud BG and agree they should get legit world first, I'm impressed at their perseverance and their creative use of the mechanics of this fight. However, if all content in FF is going to consist of finding uneven terrain points and mechanics that make you invincible in order to avoid boss skills...I'm not sure how long I'll be a raider or player here.

[Onolock]

That's funny, what do you think they are going to say?
A. They already have a hard-on for BG because of the guild's history with FF MMOs
B. This fight has been extremely controversial and I bet SE has been praying for ANYONE to down it so they can say "See, it is killable!
They will call this a legit kill.

Personally I don't like the strategy, I think it is abusing mechanics in a way that was not intended (this includes conflags, dive-bombs, fireballs and death sentence), but it's definitely not clear cut exploiting a bug. I applaud BG and agree they should get legit world first, I'm impressed at their perseverance and their creative use of the mechanics of this fight. However, if all content in FF is going to consist of finding uneven terrain points and mechanics that make you invincible in order to avoid boss skills...I'm not sure how long I'll be a raider or player here.

Yes...this is clear cut a bug and using this bug is an exploit... I've already explained why many times in this thread, so you can read back if you want. The boss AI script is effectively reset every conflag and the boss acts no differently from the offline strat previously exploited.

Other companies would have banned the offenders or taken achievements away as well as loot. SE might not do this, and yes I agree with you on the PvE in this game. Setting the standard for actions against exploiting and other offenses need to be dealt with to show they will not tolerate it. After all, they didn't even ban the JP group that bugged her with the offline bug, so my faith in them isn't that strong. I will not sit idly by though and let a guild claim world first using "clever" mechanics and exploiting bosses. I will be vocal, only because I would like to see a healthy competitive raiding environment(everyone should care about a level playing field) for all guilds, not one filled with who can exploit and use clever mechanics the quickest.

[Laryndra]

snip

Dude you are mad, and clearly have no prior experience with SE and the way they run their MMOs. This kill is legitimate, get over it. You won't be the first no matter how hard you want it.
Also - The groups that exploited the sleep bug got their achievements stripped and they were temp banned two weeks. Wont happen in this instance because -it isn't a bug-.

[Soulburn32]

I'm not gonna say I understand what is going on here. But it does seem strange that the dragon suddenly does 0 damage when the red circle shows up.

You can see the healers just standing there doing nothing during these phases.

[Laryndra]

Bosses sitting there doing nothing under certain circumstances is not new to SE and thier MMOs. This is ONE example, there are about 60 different bosses you can do the same or similar things to (Or if not stun completely for an extended duration - Disable certain abilties or spells)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...ZyIoejO7I#t=76

[Gamemako]

There's more at play here but we won't know until they go into it. I think the point is that even if it is just a way to skip a trivial phase there's questionable behavior at play, and a lot of us thought we'd see a kill video that managed the mechanic "normally" be it rotating cooldowns on the main tank, or utilizing tank swaps, or whatever. Instead, this is the exact same mechanic that caused the developers to shut the fight down for an entire week, minus the tank logging out afterwards.

Interesting insight. I'd only been considering the active mechanic itself -- probably a novice oversight due to not knowing the mechanics of the fight in the first place. Any AI reset could have significant consequences down the line as well.