Zekvir ? ? - RNG =\= Skill Check

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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Zekvir ?? is among the last few things I have to do for Season 1 in Delves and it’s complete @$%&@$%&.

And I know some folks will probably read this and either say to themselves (or reply) “But I did it. It’s not hard. Gitgud. etc”. That’s fine. It’s fine if you did it when Brann was OP or you did it on a DK, Monk, or Paladin.

Too Much RNG

This encounter simply has too many scenarios of RNG to make it anywhere close to a “skill check” fight.

  • Egg placement is RNG
  • Order of casted abilities is RNG
    – The amount of lethal abilities contributes to the RNG insanity. Three major abilities in Phase 1, which some get altered in Phase 2, to make them worse in addition to the spider add if you do not kill it, and a required interrupt on the heal.
    – The fact that these spells can pile up in a spell queue and be cast randomly also multiplies the RNG factor.

The combination of those two points can generate a number of scenarios that just screws you over as a player, most of which guarantee a death.

This encounter is not a skill fight. It’s an RNG fight. And to make matters worse, there are some classes and specs that simply can’t do this at all while other classes and specs breeze through it because their toolkit allows them to ignore some, if not all of the major mechanics of the fight.

What kind of “challenge” design is that??? It’s not.

Brann is completely useless and unreliable as both a healer and as a DPS.

If your class relies on Brann to dispel the very lethal dot, or at the very least every other application, good luck.

It’s a shame he was completely gutted as a DPS when folks were able to use him to help kill the boss. Everyone else, well too bad!

I can appreciate a good challenge. When the overall success has so much relying on RNG, though, it’s no longer a challenge of skill. It’s “pull enough times until you get your good luck RNG pull” and that is not fun at all.

FTR, I’m 626 ilvl as a MS prot warrior and I’ve cleared a level 11 delve just fine solo. It wasn’t anywhere near as annoying as this specific encounter. It didn’t require any boss mod adjustments, no special macros, etc. Just went in and cleared it without issue.

I hope it gets a serious adjustment before the season ends so that others can complete it reasonably. I really hate the fact that I may have to gear another class to gimmick the fight and get it done.

Challenge designs, by default, should be able to be completed by every class at a relatively same level. The fact that you have some classes that have a significantly easier time than others speaks to the issue of this encounter being terribly designed.

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I did it als healer and had to try a few times but i think it was fine. It was challenging and at should be.

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bruh sorry but you have no excuse on your class. I did it as sin rogue months ago, which doesn’t even have a short CD to cleanse the poison. I was having to track brann’s cleanse CD and save vanish.

there are WA packages and boss mods that will tell you the order of his ability.

I don’t normally say this but you’re 626 and I did it at 611. git gud my friend

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You mean the time when Brann wasn’t nerfed and was doing the majority of the damage “months ago”? When others at that same item level were also able to do it with low item levels and low level Branns “months ago”?

I tried checking your achievements to see when you precisely got it but you’re posting from an alt that doesn’t have an armory. Edited: Provided character with the achievement date.

I run Big Wigs and Weak Auras. His abilities go into a spell queue when they don’t cast right on time. When this happens consecutively, two or three of those spells can end up in the queue and are cast randomly.

Stick with your original habits.

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check now friend, back in october. also i had brann as healer, he did less than 5% of my damage

1 Like
6

This was week 1 of delves being available. It was fixed by September 16th and then there were 10 days where the fight was exceptionally hard, then it was heavily nerfed on September 26th.

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Congrats, genuinely. Edited my reply.

I’m about 30 pulls in and the best I’ve gotten him to is 16%. Unfortunately my original points still stand.

As prot I need to get on the egg almost immediately or risk not killing it due to every other mechanic forcing me off the egg. Then there are several times that Zekvir isn’t close to the egg and forces me off of it with one of his few lethal mechanics. If I don’t have leap available and he casts his wide cone, I’m not making it out. I’ve lived the hit but depending on other possibilities (dot ticking and Brann not cleansing), I end up dead 4 out of 5 times.

Browse the forums. Browse Reddit. Yes there are others who do this run in various times. Yes others have the achievement. But there are much more threads of complaints (I feel bad for BM hunters) and other non-gimmick classes that have to put in 50 or even 60 pulls before they get their “good RNG pull”.

I’ll keep trying, no doubt. My frustration comes from the position that this isn’t a skill fight. It’s a luck fight and I don’t really care for those.

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What RNG is there for BM hunter that affects them? Doing it as a prot warrior is going to make it more difficult certainly but there’s still some ludicrously impressive low ilvl prot warrior kills without brann bug. The biggest thing is while there are elements of rng, better play will mitigate them. Gear, skill, rng, class are all factors, and the less of one you have the more of the others you need to make up for it.

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It’s not so much as RNG as it is carefully monitoring their pet. The posts and videos I’ve seen (and personally experienced) of Zekvir just outright 1-shotting their pet.

Setting aside those threads that say “Just do it as Marks or SV”, the general rule is to obviously disable growl but, additionally, to wait to have your pets active for a bit or pull and let Zekvir kill them a few times before he stops doing it. Even then, some good damage and the pets pull aggro and die again, anyway.

When you have classes like Monks, Paladins, and DKs that can essentially ignore every single mechanic with one (or more) piece of their toolkit, it baffles me that Blizzard designs a fight that almost disables a primary toolkit of another class (A BM’s pet).

I get it. A BM could easily roll over this fight if their pet wasn’t always in danger of getting nuked. That’s not a valid argument to almost completely disable them in the fight when that’s the primary source of the spec’s damage.

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I think bliz just didn’t want BM pets tanking zekvir. You can still use your pet as your primary damage source you just have to build threat with barbed shot for a bit so kill command spam in bestial wrath doesn’t rip aggro. It’s stupid but it can be dealt with without problem.

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11

Sure, I can see this point. But what “better play” will mitigate

  • Zekvir spawns Egg across the room (RNG spawn)
  • You charge to start damage
  • Slow cone is cast so you move to avoid the damage and the heavy slow
  • Frontal cone is cast so you leap (given that you have it) out and charge back in
  • Zekvir casts his heal that you have to interrupt so you run out (because both charges and leap are on CD) and interrupt
  • Zekvir follows you back and casts fear so you get off the egg.
  • The egg spawns and now you have to juggle that.

And, yes, while “RNG”, it’s happened more times than I’d like to admit because he refuses to target Brann with anything due to said RNG.

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The egg spawns are random to a point but are also largely dictated by where in the room he is. The more central the better for this situation.

If you get a far egg you want to run to it not charge, and ideally take a slightly curved route so if he frontals on the way you can side step it and still be travelling towards the egg.

DPS eggs from the side at max melee range.

Spider spawns are bad but you don’t need to fear them as much as you seem to, you have 2 different stops for their cast which don’t work on zekvir (Fear + Stun) and they almost always spawn in execute range so shouldn’t take too long to dispatch.

In P2 you can stand in the fear with spell reflect active. It won’t hurt him but it’ll stop you taking damage.

If you ran to the egg youll have charge (And zekvir will be closer) for the heal cast. Also this can go off, it sucks but it’s better than dying.

As for the spittle, you’re one of I think 5? Specs in the entire game that can’t clear every single one themselves (One of the others amusingly being assa rogue) which does suck. I hope the underpin is a better designed fight overall, but I also hope it’s tighter tuned than zekvir has been.

I’ll leave you with this (Somewhat ridiculous) demonstration of what I’ve mentioned above by Sense. He’s probably the equivalent of ilvl 580 whilst doing it, but with a lower ilvl weapon so you can better see what he’s pooling for eggs without overkilling them. The less time you need for eggs the more consideration you can give to Zekvir’s positioning, so optimising killing them quickly let’s you take longer to reach them.

https://youtu.be/K6pDXbja9RY?si=-K4BIl7mQRFgcww9

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Yeah I watched that video earlier lol. Almost five and a half minutes in P1 alone is crazy. I’m curious at how many attempts it took him before he got that kill.

16% is my best. I’ll get it eventually.

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Knowing him? probably not that many. Given the video of it went up maybe a day after his first kill. I’m not going to say he could do it at that ilvl every time, but through better play he reduces the number of scenarios that come up which cause problems, and with more reasonable gear that would reduce them even further (Likely to the point nothing is unhandleable).

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Nah, don’t prot, arms or fury is better. If you insist on prot, make sure you play collosus to have demolish+demo cry every 45s for eggs.

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16

Logged in this evening. Had a guildmate craft me a 619 2H Claymore just so I could try it as Fury.

It took 7 pulls.

Sigh. Glad that’s over. Thank y’all for putting up with my frustration. :rofl:

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17

When I was doing it as a warlock, I found it easier to not even attempt pet tanking, so turning off the felguard threat buff.

This was before swapping to destruction, and just using fel hunter for kick

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Congratz !!! :slight_smile:

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