by Voriel Tue Jul 10, 2012 6:50 pmHere's a guide on the Nexus: http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/celestial-hills/topics/A-little-guide-to-Nexus
When you arrive, you can choose to automatically join a group. For those 60 and interested, let's meet up with others, and rock these.
Will post the guide here too.
Posted by Abriael
First of all a little disclaimer: This isn't a widely accepted set of rules you *must* follow, it's just a result of observation during every single nexus since the introduction of the feature. It's designed mainly to give a few hints to those that have no idea on what to do during a nexus and to ensure smooth sailing for everyone involved.
Introduction:
During each nexus three waves of monsters will spawn. The first will be just trash mobs. The second will be three BAMs plus trash, the third will be a quite overpowered BAM (Fimbrilisk, Dragon or Vulkan) that will require effort and time to kills.
During each phase additional minions will spawn. They're not just there to annoy you, as they drop motes that will heal those that pick em up.
You will also have a debuff that will in most cases slowly kill you (it also provides positive effects, but the DOT is the most noticeable and crucial one), so you will have to rely on healing or motes to survive.
Each defeated wave will grant gold ad agnitor reputation/credits. At the end of a third wave the whole zerg wll move to the next nexus.
There are six nexus spawns a week, focused in the week end. You can find the schedule and the zone in which our server starts each time here: http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/celestial-hills/topics/Proposed-Nexus-Schedule
The starting point is also normally announced in Trade and LFG chat before we start.
Here are a few pointers:
1: Make sure you're prepared. Most rigs lag, no matter how powerful, a lot during Nexus due to the high number of people present. Put your graphics to preset 0 and deactivate names display on monsters and other players not in your party. This will reduce your lag a lot and allow you to be more effective.
2: Decide your crystal setup. No one will blame you if you don't wear your costly crystals during nexus. Death is a very common occurrence, and in the zerg the benefit of every single crystal is limited. That said, wearing no crystals at all is a little cheap, makes you deal less damage and makes you die more (which means even less damage, slower killing and less benefits for everyone involved). My advice is to use crystals from the normal crystal vendors in capital cities (the non pristine ones). They're cheap as hell (8 gold each) and they still help.
Good choices are Relentless Cruxes to increase your HP (and survivability). Vigorous Cruxes can provide you some counter to the nexus debuffs if you have no healer. If you're a lancer threatening cruxes are great to help you hold stable aggro. If you are a damage dealer Brilliant Cruxes are great for mana regen (great for healers too), and anything that lets you deal more damage from the back also helps a lot (don't use cruxes that raise damage on knocked down monsters, getting a knockdown on a nexus boss is *very* rare).
3: If you're a lancer remember that your first priority is still tanking. The damage you deal is minimal, so if you're just poking the boss means that you aren't doing your job ad you're just taking space. Even if you don't have a healer in your group, you can still survive much better than anyone else just with out of group heals and motes, so use those shouts and aggro-generating skills more than anything else.
Also, try to understand on what side of the boss most of the lancers are (at least those that are doing their job and not just poking the boss like gimped DPSs), so that you won't continuously turn it around whenever you grab aggro. It isn't healthy for the squishies.
Ultimately, if you don't have aggro it's your duty to try and get it. You can notice if you have aggro because you'll have an orange circle around your feet. If you never see that circle, shame on you.
4: The second phase goes smoother and faster if you group the BAMs. If you're a tank and see they're spread out, go grab the stragglers and try to herd them together so that AOE DPS can kill them faster.
5: Mystics: Your motes are great, but they can have an adverse effect in nexus. Only those in your party can pick them up, so use them only if you find yourself struggling for healing and mana. If you fill the battlefield with them, those that don't have healers and need motes to survive will find themselves often receiving the message "this isn't yours" when trying to grab a mote from the ground, and if that happens when they have just a silver of life, it will cause them to die.
6: If you can bring arunic panaceas with you. They can be farmed very easily by solo running low level dungeons. If you fight with your stamina constantly at 0, your contribution will be much lower.
7: This is very important: Identify the leader. There's pretty much always someone telling the zerg where to go and when to move. Identify who that person is and follow him. Ignore any conflicting information from anyone else. Two that often lead during nexus are Takarazuka and Loli. If they aren't around, try to use common sense to identify who's leading.
8: Just as important as #7. be an indian. The one thing that can easily turn an entire Nexus session into a crap experience for everyone involved is "too many chiefs, too few indians". Only one person should give instructions. Don't give instructions that conflict with his. Don't even make public "suggestions". Some may follow them without thinking and split the zerg. Don't discuss or complain if the leader takes a decision you don't agree with, and don't try to get the zerg to follow you elsewhere. If you really have to suggest something do it in whisper.
I understand and appreciate that some may find politically advantageous to have their voice heard during a nexus in sight of the next vanarch election. But please understand that we're here to have fun and win, and not to hear your campaign. If you really have to, at least don't contradict the leader.
You may think that what the leader is saying is dooming us all, but by splitting the zerg, you'd do worse.
9: Follow Area chat and move to the next nexus when asked by the leader. Often there won't be enough time left to kill the third wave boss, and the leader will instruct to move even if the nexus is closed. Getting the rewards for the first two waves somewhere else is better than staying and getting nothing. Also, the zerg may not have enough numbers to defeat a certain boss, in that case moving to the next and knocking out the first two waves may be better. Of course move *only* if the leader instructs to do so. When he does, do it quickly, or you'll be left behind and killed, and there won't be anyone to raise you.
10: If you are a healer, always take your time to rez the dead, unless you see your party in serious danger. More people alive = more people beating on the boss = better rewards for everyone involved. When a nexus closes always stop to raise everyone still dead before moving to the next. Leaving people behind isn't fun.
11: Know the bosses. There are only three kinds of third wave bosses, and knowing their attacks is the key to your survival and their quicker demise. Given that the engine is a little strained during nnexus, many times attacks that involve effects (like fire breath or fireballs), won't be visible, so you'll have to learn to read the animation of the boss instead.
a: Dragon. Arguably it's the easiest of the bosses, It does have a few gimmicks. His fire breath is basically ivisible. You will see his head moving all the way from side to side. That's when it's time to dodge or block. If you're not a tank try ti stay behind him.
When he rears he's about to do a 360 degrees attack in which he sticks his scales in the ground all around him. Time to dodge and block.Doesn't do much damage but it will knock you down.
When he waves his head back and forth from left to right quickly, he's going to do his spinning tail attack and hit all around him. AOE attacks can hit only a limited number of people, but since you don't know if it will hit you, just dodge or block.
When he takes off he's going to breathe fireballs on the ground directly in front of him. Deals a lot of damage and knocks down. Also, be ready to follow because he will fly backwards.
He has the habit to push tanks around like a locomotive. He can easily push the tank with aggro all the way from one side to the other of the nexus. Occasionally the tank can even be pushed outside. When that happens it's important to turn the dragon around towards the inside of the nexus, so that he doesn't walk out and reset to full life. Remember that you can turn it at any time while he's pushing just by walking around him, because his push doesn't deal any damage.
Edit: little addition. Using shield bash during the push (and presumably any other stunning ability) will stop it on its tracks.
b: Fimbrilisk. Arguably the hardest of the three. His normal attacks aren't of much concern (he behaves mostly like a normal fimb). The BIG problem is that he jumps around a lot, reducing damage dealt to him, and dealing a ton of damage to the people he lands on.
His jump is particularly nasty not just because of the initial jump and bellyflop on people's face, but also because he will "rebound" to his initial position, hurting and knocking basically everyone in his path. It's very easy to drop your guard after the first jump thinking it's safe, and then getting caught in the rebound, so be careful.
Depending on the power of the raid the leader may or may not decide to abandon a fimbrilisk and just move to the next nexus. Whatever the decision is, some will moan and oppose it. Ignore them and do what the leader says.
c: Vulkan. He's somewhere in the middle difficulty-wise, but can be tricky. He moves around a lot, so damage output on him will be lower than on dragons. This means that if DPSs aren't at the best of their games he has solid chances to reach his enrage phase and go completely apesh*t. If that happens he'll jump around even more and attack non-stop. Lancers will have to be very much on the ball with blocks or be obliterated.
Beware of his jumps. He has three kinds. One will make him jump quite far towards the front. If he flops on you, it'll hurt. So be careful. The second will be in place, again, be careful of the landing phase. The third is backwards.Landing hurts, but he flops on his belly, so the area affected is bigger. Both during the front and backwards jiump, he'll deal damage even during the take off phase, so be mindful of that.
If you have aggro and he's not in melee range, you're in for a treat. More often than not you'll see him swing his arm. BLOCK! (or dodge). Even if you can't see it, he's throwing a fireball at you. If it crits, it's an almost surefire oneshot. I've seen fully equipped tanks with 70k HP go from full to zero.
His second most deadly move is his walk. If he walks agaist you not only it'll deal a TON of damage with multiple hits, but each will also knock you down and backwards, resulting in a chain of knockdowns/damage that can easily kill a tank. When he does block immediately.
He will also hit with his claws and sink them in the ground in front of him, but that's standard vullkan fare. It still knocks down (on the third attack when he does the claw attack), so try to block or dodge.
That's pretty much it. Hope it'll be useful. Again feel free to add your own advice or discuss.
Edit 1: remember to get the Nexus daily every friday, saturday or sunday for added reputation/credits, you can find it in Kanistria or in Hidden Camp in Granarkus. Also remember to complete only 9 dailies that quests. If you do the full 10 before nexus you won't be able to complete this one.
Edit 2: - Once in a while you'll get a nexus debuff called Dimensional Vigor. When that happens every jump will give you a stack of a power debuff up to 5, you'll need to renew it by jumping once every 20 seconds. Get jumping!
- Motes on the ground are great, But don't be greedy, If you have a healer in your party, try to leave them to those that don't. In any case use them only when necessary, since there maybe someone that really needs them around you.
- If you have aggro, it's tempting to put your back to a solid object. Don't do it. Try to stay clear of obstacles at all time. It leaves more room for the DPS (that are quite cramped already) and it makes it easier for the healers to target you. It's also more easy on your camera, allowing you to tank better. If the boss pushes you against an obstacle, move it away ASAP.
Edit 3 (contributed by Citrine): if you have a mystic healer, their only direct way to heal you is with a lock on (motes and thrall of life are difficult to execute properly in a nexus, and the totem doesn't do enough healing by itself). If you are in a huge crowd of people and your health is low, it may be hard for your mystic to target you in a timely manner unless they aim precisely at you and don't run into many other targets. If you can, consider backing off from the crowd for a moment to allow the mystic to lock on clearly. This is obviously not as much of a problem if your healer is a priest, as they have a few aoe circles and the like that they can throw on you.
When you arrive, you can choose to automatically join a group. For those 60 and interested, let's meet up with others, and rock these.
Will post the guide here too.Posted by Abriael
First of all a little disclaimer: This isn't a widely accepted set of rules you *must* follow, it's just a result of observation during every single nexus since the introduction of the feature. It's designed mainly to give a few hints to those that have no idea on what to do during a nexus and to ensure smooth sailing for everyone involved.
Introduction:
During each nexus three waves of monsters will spawn. The first will be just trash mobs. The second will be three BAMs plus trash, the third will be a quite overpowered BAM (Fimbrilisk, Dragon or Vulkan) that will require effort and time to kills.
During each phase additional minions will spawn. They're not just there to annoy you, as they drop motes that will heal those that pick em up.
You will also have a debuff that will in most cases slowly kill you (it also provides positive effects, but the DOT is the most noticeable and crucial one), so you will have to rely on healing or motes to survive.
Each defeated wave will grant gold ad agnitor reputation/credits. At the end of a third wave the whole zerg wll move to the next nexus.
There are six nexus spawns a week, focused in the week end. You can find the schedule and the zone in which our server starts each time here: http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/celestial-hills/topics/Proposed-Nexus-Schedule
The starting point is also normally announced in Trade and LFG chat before we start.
Here are a few pointers:
1: Make sure you're prepared. Most rigs lag, no matter how powerful, a lot during Nexus due to the high number of people present. Put your graphics to preset 0 and deactivate names display on monsters and other players not in your party. This will reduce your lag a lot and allow you to be more effective.
2: Decide your crystal setup. No one will blame you if you don't wear your costly crystals during nexus. Death is a very common occurrence, and in the zerg the benefit of every single crystal is limited. That said, wearing no crystals at all is a little cheap, makes you deal less damage and makes you die more (which means even less damage, slower killing and less benefits for everyone involved). My advice is to use crystals from the normal crystal vendors in capital cities (the non pristine ones). They're cheap as hell (8 gold each) and they still help.
Good choices are Relentless Cruxes to increase your HP (and survivability). Vigorous Cruxes can provide you some counter to the nexus debuffs if you have no healer. If you're a lancer threatening cruxes are great to help you hold stable aggro. If you are a damage dealer Brilliant Cruxes are great for mana regen (great for healers too), and anything that lets you deal more damage from the back also helps a lot (don't use cruxes that raise damage on knocked down monsters, getting a knockdown on a nexus boss is *very* rare).
3: If you're a lancer remember that your first priority is still tanking. The damage you deal is minimal, so if you're just poking the boss means that you aren't doing your job ad you're just taking space. Even if you don't have a healer in your group, you can still survive much better than anyone else just with out of group heals and motes, so use those shouts and aggro-generating skills more than anything else.
Also, try to understand on what side of the boss most of the lancers are (at least those that are doing their job and not just poking the boss like gimped DPSs), so that you won't continuously turn it around whenever you grab aggro. It isn't healthy for the squishies.
Ultimately, if you don't have aggro it's your duty to try and get it. You can notice if you have aggro because you'll have an orange circle around your feet. If you never see that circle, shame on you.
4: The second phase goes smoother and faster if you group the BAMs. If you're a tank and see they're spread out, go grab the stragglers and try to herd them together so that AOE DPS can kill them faster.
5: Mystics: Your motes are great, but they can have an adverse effect in nexus. Only those in your party can pick them up, so use them only if you find yourself struggling for healing and mana. If you fill the battlefield with them, those that don't have healers and need motes to survive will find themselves often receiving the message "this isn't yours" when trying to grab a mote from the ground, and if that happens when they have just a silver of life, it will cause them to die.
6: If you can bring arunic panaceas with you. They can be farmed very easily by solo running low level dungeons. If you fight with your stamina constantly at 0, your contribution will be much lower.
7: This is very important: Identify the leader. There's pretty much always someone telling the zerg where to go and when to move. Identify who that person is and follow him. Ignore any conflicting information from anyone else. Two that often lead during nexus are Takarazuka and Loli. If they aren't around, try to use common sense to identify who's leading.
8: Just as important as #7. be an indian. The one thing that can easily turn an entire Nexus session into a crap experience for everyone involved is "too many chiefs, too few indians". Only one person should give instructions. Don't give instructions that conflict with his. Don't even make public "suggestions". Some may follow them without thinking and split the zerg. Don't discuss or complain if the leader takes a decision you don't agree with, and don't try to get the zerg to follow you elsewhere. If you really have to suggest something do it in whisper.
I understand and appreciate that some may find politically advantageous to have their voice heard during a nexus in sight of the next vanarch election. But please understand that we're here to have fun and win, and not to hear your campaign. If you really have to, at least don't contradict the leader.
You may think that what the leader is saying is dooming us all, but by splitting the zerg, you'd do worse.
9: Follow Area chat and move to the next nexus when asked by the leader. Often there won't be enough time left to kill the third wave boss, and the leader will instruct to move even if the nexus is closed. Getting the rewards for the first two waves somewhere else is better than staying and getting nothing. Also, the zerg may not have enough numbers to defeat a certain boss, in that case moving to the next and knocking out the first two waves may be better. Of course move *only* if the leader instructs to do so. When he does, do it quickly, or you'll be left behind and killed, and there won't be anyone to raise you.
10: If you are a healer, always take your time to rez the dead, unless you see your party in serious danger. More people alive = more people beating on the boss = better rewards for everyone involved. When a nexus closes always stop to raise everyone still dead before moving to the next. Leaving people behind isn't fun.
11: Know the bosses. There are only three kinds of third wave bosses, and knowing their attacks is the key to your survival and their quicker demise. Given that the engine is a little strained during nnexus, many times attacks that involve effects (like fire breath or fireballs), won't be visible, so you'll have to learn to read the animation of the boss instead.
a: Dragon. Arguably it's the easiest of the bosses, It does have a few gimmicks. His fire breath is basically ivisible. You will see his head moving all the way from side to side. That's when it's time to dodge or block. If you're not a tank try ti stay behind him.
When he rears he's about to do a 360 degrees attack in which he sticks his scales in the ground all around him. Time to dodge and block.Doesn't do much damage but it will knock you down.
When he waves his head back and forth from left to right quickly, he's going to do his spinning tail attack and hit all around him. AOE attacks can hit only a limited number of people, but since you don't know if it will hit you, just dodge or block.
When he takes off he's going to breathe fireballs on the ground directly in front of him. Deals a lot of damage and knocks down. Also, be ready to follow because he will fly backwards.
He has the habit to push tanks around like a locomotive. He can easily push the tank with aggro all the way from one side to the other of the nexus. Occasionally the tank can even be pushed outside. When that happens it's important to turn the dragon around towards the inside of the nexus, so that he doesn't walk out and reset to full life. Remember that you can turn it at any time while he's pushing just by walking around him, because his push doesn't deal any damage.
Edit: little addition. Using shield bash during the push (and presumably any other stunning ability) will stop it on its tracks.
b: Fimbrilisk. Arguably the hardest of the three. His normal attacks aren't of much concern (he behaves mostly like a normal fimb). The BIG problem is that he jumps around a lot, reducing damage dealt to him, and dealing a ton of damage to the people he lands on.
His jump is particularly nasty not just because of the initial jump and bellyflop on people's face, but also because he will "rebound" to his initial position, hurting and knocking basically everyone in his path. It's very easy to drop your guard after the first jump thinking it's safe, and then getting caught in the rebound, so be careful.
Depending on the power of the raid the leader may or may not decide to abandon a fimbrilisk and just move to the next nexus. Whatever the decision is, some will moan and oppose it. Ignore them and do what the leader says.
c: Vulkan. He's somewhere in the middle difficulty-wise, but can be tricky. He moves around a lot, so damage output on him will be lower than on dragons. This means that if DPSs aren't at the best of their games he has solid chances to reach his enrage phase and go completely apesh*t. If that happens he'll jump around even more and attack non-stop. Lancers will have to be very much on the ball with blocks or be obliterated.
Beware of his jumps. He has three kinds. One will make him jump quite far towards the front. If he flops on you, it'll hurt. So be careful. The second will be in place, again, be careful of the landing phase. The third is backwards.Landing hurts, but he flops on his belly, so the area affected is bigger. Both during the front and backwards jiump, he'll deal damage even during the take off phase, so be mindful of that.
If you have aggro and he's not in melee range, you're in for a treat. More often than not you'll see him swing his arm. BLOCK! (or dodge). Even if you can't see it, he's throwing a fireball at you. If it crits, it's an almost surefire oneshot. I've seen fully equipped tanks with 70k HP go from full to zero.
His second most deadly move is his walk. If he walks agaist you not only it'll deal a TON of damage with multiple hits, but each will also knock you down and backwards, resulting in a chain of knockdowns/damage that can easily kill a tank. When he does block immediately.
He will also hit with his claws and sink them in the ground in front of him, but that's standard vullkan fare. It still knocks down (on the third attack when he does the claw attack), so try to block or dodge.
That's pretty much it. Hope it'll be useful. Again feel free to add your own advice or discuss.
Edit 1: remember to get the Nexus daily every friday, saturday or sunday for added reputation/credits, you can find it in Kanistria or in Hidden Camp in Granarkus. Also remember to complete only 9 dailies that quests. If you do the full 10 before nexus you won't be able to complete this one.
Edit 2: - Once in a while you'll get a nexus debuff called Dimensional Vigor. When that happens every jump will give you a stack of a power debuff up to 5, you'll need to renew it by jumping once every 20 seconds. Get jumping!
- Motes on the ground are great, But don't be greedy, If you have a healer in your party, try to leave them to those that don't. In any case use them only when necessary, since there maybe someone that really needs them around you.
- If you have aggro, it's tempting to put your back to a solid object. Don't do it. Try to stay clear of obstacles at all time. It leaves more room for the DPS (that are quite cramped already) and it makes it easier for the healers to target you. It's also more easy on your camera, allowing you to tank better. If the boss pushes you against an obstacle, move it away ASAP.
Edit 3 (contributed by Citrine): if you have a mystic healer, their only direct way to heal you is with a lock on (motes and thrall of life are difficult to execute properly in a nexus, and the totem doesn't do enough healing by itself). If you are in a huge crowd of people and your health is low, it may be hard for your mystic to target you in a timely manner unless they aim precisely at you and don't run into many other targets. If you can, consider backing off from the crowd for a moment to allow the mystic to lock on clearly. This is obviously not as much of a problem if your healer is a priest, as they have a few aoe circles and the like that they can throw on you.
