Cold Storage Automatons

[Zeffyr]

Okay, so pardon me for asking this probably dumb question.

 

I play FM and always am on aggro duty for the robots... to all the ranged players out there, is there any particular strategy you have to keep all of the robots away from the boss? I watch out for his ground pound that signals which robot will activate and then hit it once with lmb/rmb, and then stand away from the boss. It becomes an issue for me when more and more robots spawn in, and I have to manage all of them at once.

 

They seem to bounce off the wall and come back at me once they hit the other side, but when there are 3, 4, 5 out at once I have a hard time paying attention to every single one of them and standing in just the right spot so they all avoid the boss. Not considering that I have to run all the way to another robot to get its aggro, which may cause one that was previously following me to change directions and go towards the boss anyway.

 

Any tips? Or is there some mechanic I am missing here. Should I still keep attacking the boss for DPS or just only robot duty?

[th4d]

Keep DPS the main boss.

 

In your party if there is a BM with HM block he can use it so you block when the little automaton come.

You can spec your tab in T2S3 iirc to pary when it come to you. You have to time it correctly.

[Dlacik]

@Zeffyr It`s not that big deal if one automaton hits the boss. As FM  you can pop frost sheath when he is going to explode to protect group from blind&dmg. Just don`t let too many of them hit the boss in short time.

Important thing is to have at least one automaton on  you when you get frozen to get unfrozen and get the pierce buff for group.

[Silahk]

I main FM as well. For this to work, you need to rely on your other party members to cc the boss. If you lose track of the robots to get off a KD or stun, kiting 5 automatons is a clusterf, so just sheathe/ice tab or i-frame his aoe as needed.

 

Wintermane has to be tanked by the wall, and not the center of the room. You need as much space as you can get to work with the automatons without them running into the boss. Easiest place to tank is probably right by the entrance, but it doesn't matter as long he is between the bot spawn points. Wherever the boss is tanked, let's call his position 12 o'clock.

 

Pull the first bot so that it lands at around either 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock in relation to the boss. This will ensure you can tag the next bot without kiting that first one back into the boss. 

 

When the next bot spawns, draw an imaginary line between the first bot and the second one. Position yourself so that you would be the 3rd point in forming a close-to-perfect triangle (equilateral for those that paid attention in geometry)...you want yourself and the 2 bots as points on a triangle. You may have to run to the new bot, quickly tag, then SS back into position. If you succeed, the goal here is to kite those 2 bots to the same point on the wall, or very close to it.

 

Getting the first 2 automatons to stack is critical...failing that you will have a hard time correcting this...but if you can pull it off the first time, you just rinse and repeat the process. Draw a line from the your stacked bots to the 3rd, and position yourself between them in that triangle so they all stack again. 

 

It doesn't have to be perfect, and it likely won't be everytime. But I've managed to get through the fight without a single bot hitting the boss multiple times. Sometimes...you will need to just sacrifice one new bot hitting the boss to avoid kiting the pile into his path, so use your discretion there.

 

 

[Shadovvv]

I'm honestly surprised this kind of thread would come up. In most of my pugged Cold Storages, no one bothers dealing with the automatons (even with majority of the party as ranged) and they all hit Winter Mane, blind everyone, kill people/waste dragonblood, and overall delay the run. And then there's people who don't even know the piercing buff mechanic at all.

On 5/25/2016 at 10:43 PM, th4d said:

Keep DPS the main boss.

In your party if there is a BM with HM block he can use it so you block when the little automaton come.
You can spec your tab in T2S3 iirc to pary when it come to you. You have to time it correctly.

Honestly I would much rather have one person spending a little time to kite adds, as opposed to the entire party getting stalled out and/or potentially dying. And I certainly don't expect people to iframe perfectly, nor do I rely on others to use Winged Protector/Frost Sheath/etc. It's much more effective to minimize risks as much as possible, and if there's a boss mechanic that lets me avoid using iframes and continue damaging the boss I would pick that option.

[Tsuchiryu]

As a Destroyer, I gave up trying to avoid letting automatons hitting Winter Mane. Nowadays, I just Hurricane (although I really should learn to iframe as well when these are available if it's anything like that "Suncast' thing the Silk twins in Talus Dungeon do, which they should be as I don't need them for anything else during the fight) to reduce damage taken and keep on DPSing and helping with CC to interrupt the boss big AOE attack. If the automatons hit boss anyway, which they often do, PUGs or not, I'd rather they do it early, so I can worry only about the blinding effect instead of any AOEs Mane can perform in the meantime to deal heavy damage I've no way to defend against due to said blinding. Because having too many of them hitting boss in a row due to trying to avoid that and failing is a much, much worse alternative IMO.

 

It's because of things like this that it's important for everyone to learn their iframe, status resist, party protection and damage reduction skills.

[KurooSakura]

I'm an FM too, but I usually tell the destroyer/ BD in the party to grab boss and move him away from the automation after his aoe. We usually finish the first boss in around 1-2 minutes with 500+ party cause we avoid blind phase completely.