So later this week, I'm gonna be takin my 10man team into ICC for the first time. We've been doing ToC for 3 weeks to get coordinated and finish gearing up a few people.
Since I'm a tank, I don't really know what dps do in ICC. Anyone have tips or important things, like what's the the deal with bonespikes, and what goes on in the Deathwhisper fight.
Ok, first 4 fights.
1. Basic tank and spank. He casts a spell called bone spikes every so often, which impales one non-tank on a, you guessed it, bone spike. The bone spike should be burned down by the dps ASAP. Also, tell them to be careful after he does bone storm, because he drops aggro (though he is tauntable).
2. For the first part of lady deathwhisper (while she has mana), she will remain stationary and summon adds. The melee should focus on adds and the ranged should dps her (she has a mana shield). Ranged should switch to Risen and Deformed Fanatics when necessary (they take little melee damage). Afterwards, it's tank and spank.
3. On gunship, when the zero mage casts below zero, have most of your dps jump to the other ship to burn it down (a tank should jump too to tank Saurfang). Have one or two dps stay behind and take care of adds that spawn on your ship.
4. Saurfang will spawn blood beasts periodically, which should be slowed and burned down quickly. Other than that, it's tank and spank. Also, ranged should stay spread out as often as possible.
So later this week, I'm gonna be takin my 10man team into ICC for the first time. We've been doing ToC for 3 weeks to get coordinated and finish gearing up a few people.
Since I'm a tank, I don't really know what dps do in ICC. Anyone have tips or important things, like what's the the deal with bonespikes, and what goes on in the Deathwhisper fight.
The first section before Marrowgar
The thing to watch out for are the really tall guys, one on the left and right sides of both rooms (four total). They hit really hard and cleave, and do a disrupting shout at intervals.
At first they'll be gray statues and untargetable/unhittable with no aggro radius. Each of the four is tied to a large but invisible trap that gets triggered when you run over it. If you have a rogue they can detect nearby traps, and you can either disarm them (for one hour) or trip them intentionally (so you don't have to worry about it coming back later, and also for extra rep). If you don't have a rogue you'll want to draw pulls back to areas you've already been in so you don't accidentally pull a statue in the middle of a pull.
In 25 man all four traps spawn at once; in 10 man only two will be up at a time, with a new one replacing each tripped one up to the fourth(not sure what happens when you disarm one). This can actually be harder to deal with, because it means a new trap can appear in an area you've already checked. Particularly if you have no rogue, this can lead to two traps being tripped in quick succession if the new trap spawn happens to be on or near your raid.
Marrowgar
Bonespikes immobilize one non-tank player until the DPS destroys them (and maybe damages the player too? Not sure about that part). They should always be the top priority, both to free the person and because there's an achievement if no bone spike lasts more than 8 seconds.
Marrowgar does a bladestorm-like Bonestorm periodically which does aoe damage over a fairly wide area. It's actually much less dangerous than it appears, as long as you don't stand directly underneath him (it does more damage there) and you don't stand in the blue flames which spread out in a diagonal cross pattern.
Speaking of blue flames, he'll do a targeted blue flame attack randomly when he's not Bonestorming. It's basically like a Starcraft lurker attack, make sure people get out of those.
Also, in case you didn't know already, make sure you and the other tank are standing on top of each other whenever he's not Bonestorming. He does a meteor-fist like attack that splits damage between up to two people, and you don't want that all on one person.
Deathwhisper
The fight has two phases. In both phases she has a death and decay; nothing tricky there, just try to stay out of it and get whatever you're attacking out of it too so melee can dps. She also has a curse which makes cooldowns last much longer; I'm not sure if this is just phase 1 or both of them, but it's important to decurse that so I'm putting it up here.
Phase 1 lasts until you get the mana shield down, and is all about dealing with the adds quickly. Throughout phase 1 sets of 3 adds will spawn on alternating sides of the room in one-minute intervals (starting a few seconds after you engage); all DPS should get them down ASAP so you don't get overrun by multiple waves. Deathwhisper will transform adds into more powerful forms; some get either a damage shield or magic immunity, while others will transform into very hard-hitting versions that look all bloated and should be kited until killed. The faster you kill adds the fewer transformations you'll get. Once the adds are dead go back to attacking her until the next wave spawns. Make sure you don't finish the phase right as the next wave is about to spawn, or you may get to phase 2 with a fresh wave of adds up and that'll be trouble. She casts shadowbolts at random people, but they don't hit that hard and are just healed through.
In Phase 2 the adds are replaced by untargetable ghosts that run around and can one or two shot clothies. I think the ghosts despawn after a bit, but either way if you see one going after you run away as much as you can until they go away. You'll probably want to move her down to the flat court area, as tanking her where she starts can cause LOS issues. Deathwhisper starts casting frostbolts instead of shadowbolts, and the frostbolts hurt a lot (30k+). Fortunately, unlike the shadowbolts they can and should be interrupted as much as possible. She stacks a debuff on the tank that reduces threat done by 20% per stack, so after 5 stacks you won't be doing any. Because of that you'll want to swap at 3-4 stacks or whenever your current one falls off. Fortunately taunt still works, so if you lose a tank you can still keep going by taunting immediately whenever you lose aggro.
Smasher on
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
So later this week, I'm gonna be takin my 10man team into ICC for the first time. We've been doing ToC for 3 weeks to get coordinated and finish gearing up a few people.
Since I'm a tank, I don't really know what dps do in ICC. Anyone have tips or important things, like what's the the deal with bonespikes, and what goes on in the Deathwhisper fight.
The first section before Marrowgar
The thing to watch out for are the really tall guys, one on the left and right sides of both rooms (four total). They hit really hard and cleave, and do a disrupting shout at intervals.
At first they'll be gray statues and untargetable/unhittable with no aggro radius. Each of the four is tied to a large but invisible trap that gets triggered when you run over it. If you have a rogue they can detect nearby traps, and you can either disarm them (for one hour) or trip them intentionally (so you don't have to worry about it coming back later, and also for extra rep). If you don't have a rogue you'll want to draw pulls back to areas you've already been in so you don't accidentally pull a statue in the middle of a pull.
In 25 man all four traps spawn at once; in 10 man only two will be up at a time, with a new one replacing each tripped one up to the fourth(not sure what happens when you disarm one). This can actually be harder to deal with, because it means a new trap can appear in an area you've already checked. Particularly if you have no rogue, this can lead to two traps being tripped in quick succession if the new trap spawn happens to be on or near your raid.
Marrowgar
Bonespikes immobilize one non-tank player until the DPS destroys them (and maybe damages the player too? Not sure about that part). They should always be the top priority, both to free the person and because there's an achievement if no bone spike lasts more than 8 seconds.
Marrowgar does a bladestorm-like Bonestorm periodically which does aoe damage over a fairly wide area. It's actually much less dangerous than it appears, as long as you don't stand directly underneath him (it does more damage there) and you don't stand in the blue flames which spread out in a diagonal cross pattern.
Speaking of blue flames, he'll do a targeted blue flame attack randomly when he's not Bonestorming. It's basically like a Starcraft lurker attack, make sure people get out of those.
Also, in case you didn't know already, make sure you and the other tank are standing on top of each other whenever he's not Bonestorming. He does a meteor-fist like attack that splits damage between up to two people, and you don't want that all on one person.
Deathwhisper
The fight has two phases. In both phases she has a death and decay; nothing tricky there, just try to stay out of it and get whatever you're attacking out of it too so melee can dps. She also has a curse which makes cooldowns last much longer; I'm not sure if this is just phase 1 or both of them, but it's important to decurse that so I'm putting it up here.
Phase 1 lasts until you get the mana shield down, and is all about dealing with the adds quickly. Throughout phase 1 sets of 3 adds will spawn on alternating sides of the room in one-minute intervals (starting a few seconds after you engage); all DPS should get them down ASAP so you don't get overrun by multiple waves. Deathwhisper will transform adds into more powerful forms; some get either a damage shield or magic immunity, while others will transform into very hard-hitting versions that look all bloated and should be kited until killed. The faster you kill adds the fewer transformations you'll get. Once the adds are dead go back to attacking her until the next wave spawns. Make sure you don't finish the phase right as the next wave is about to spawn, or you may get to phase 2 with a fresh wave of adds up and that'll be trouble. She casts shadowbolts at random people, but they don't hit that hard and are just healed through.
In Phase 2 the adds are replaced by untargetable ghosts that run around and can one or two shot clothies. I think the ghosts despawn after a bit, but either way if you see one going after you run away as much as you can until they go away. You'll probably want to move her down to the flat court area, as tanking her where she starts can cause LOS issues. Deathwhisper starts casting frostbolts instead of shadowbolts, and the frostbolts hurt a lot (30k+). Fortunately, unlike the shadowbolts they can and should be interrupted as much as possible. She stacks a debuff on the tank that reduces threat done by 20% per stack, so after 5 stacks you won't be doing any. Because of that you'll want to swap at 3-4 stacks or whenever your current one falls off. Fortunately taunt still works, so if you lose a tank you can still keep going by taunting immediately whenever you lose aggro.
Hell yes the bone spikes hurt. Your raid healer(s) will have to stop spot healing the tanks and start healing the spike person(s). The initial tick is the worst part. If someone was standing in fire and THEN gets impaled it's an issue.
The AOE heals during Bonestorm can be intense, depending on how good your raid is at avoiding it. He targets random people, bouncing around the room. If people run too far healer range can be an issue.
Deathwhisper's caster adds cast Curse of Torpor, so unless you forget to kill an add at the phase transition, it's just a Phase 1 thing.
Also I know you're running 10man, but on 25 you have adds spawn on both sides simultaneous, and one in the back behind you, and the boss randomly mind controls. Fun times.
Her ghosts explode when they hit people. They're hard to see, but they used to be even harder to see.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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Kevin CristI make the devil hit his kneesand say the 'our father'Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
Thing my Guild does on Marrowgar is to have all the DPS and healers stack up behind him within the red circle that appears when you target him, which lets us ignore the blue fire. Then we scatter when bonestorm is used and collapse back in afterwords. Hunter's can't be that close, but when DBM announces the incoming bone spikes they run in to the rest of the raid in case they get spiked. Easier to AoE the spikes down.
hrrrrrg ICC 10 did not go so well last night. We picked up where we left off Sunday, at Rotface. After a couple shots we got him down, then proceeded to die about 7 times to Putricide. We 3 shot him last week our first time seeing him, with a nearly identical group (I think 1 tank and 1 dps were the only swaps) but just could not even get him to phase 3 this time.
So we went to the new wing and spent about 40 minutes on Valithria and failing there too. God damn that fight is harder than it sounded. We 2 healed it for a while with me going in the portal, but that didn't work too well, so we switched to 3 healing it, but 3rd healer wasn't doing a whole lot of good. How long is that fight supposed to last on 10 man? We made it to about 3 minutes each time before getting overwhelmed by adds. Only once did we manage to do more than 2m healing to her, and that's because i managed to get 23 stacks. Maintaining those is a bitch.
hrrrrrg ICC 10 did not go so well last night. We picked up where we left off Sunday, at Rotface. After a couple shots we got him down, then proceeded to die about 7 times to Putricide. We 3 shot him last week our first time seeing him, with a nearly identical group (I think 1 tank and 1 dps were the only swaps) but just could not even get him to phase 3 this time.
So we went to the new wing and spent about 40 minutes on Valithria and failing there too. God damn that fight is harder than it sounded. We 2 healed it for a while with me going in the portal, but that didn't work too well, so we switched to 3 healing it, but 3rd healer wasn't doing a whole lot of good. How long is that fight supposed to last on 10 man? We made it to about 3 minutes each time before getting overwhelmed by adds. Only once did we manage to do more than 2m healing to her, and that's because i managed to get 23 stacks. Maintaining those is a bitch.
The fight is only supposed to last about 6 minutes. If you are getting overwhelmed at 3 you are doing something very wrong. Make sure you have the correct kill order for the adds.
You should have 2 people continuously going into the portals and keeping up the stacks while one sits out the whole time and does raid healing and doing some on valithria.
As for Putricide you should be getting to phase 3 fairly easily. Phase 3 is where the real problems occur because its a DPS race.
It sounds like you are having problems with DPS, either being too low or not knowing what to do.
Any tips on how to succesfully go from p1 to p2 on Arthas 10m ? We managed to get him down to 65%, but still had two Raging spirits alive and kicking. Is that supposed to happen or are we doing something wrong ?
I can't really speak for putricide, since as I said, DPS were almost all the same as last week, and even this week he usually went into Phase 2 while the very first add was still up being killed by DoTs during Tear Gas. In P2 things just hit fan it seems. Me or the shammy healer getting targetted by the Vile Gas, meaning it's really hard to keep both us and the tank up since neither of us can heal on the move. The person being rooted by green slime getting targetted by Malleable Goo right as the slime is about to reach him, nasty shit like that happening.
And yeah, kill order on Valithria was Suppresoors, Blazing Skellies, Archmages, everything else. Maybe we just didn't have enough AoE, as the rot worms were doing tons of damage. How do you handle those?
DPSwise we had:
2 DKs (both great)
2 Ret pallies (one great, one the extra tank's offspec)
1 hunter (great)
1 lock (not as great)
Do just need more bursty classes like an arcane mage? We had an ele shammy but he went heals on the last few attempts.
edit: most of those DPS are our top dps in guild. They normally pull 8k on most fights, but were all just barely around 4k on this fight. is that normal too?
Blazing skeletons should be first over suppressors, their aoe damage can not only set you back on the dragon herself, but also do a hell of a lot of damage to the raid which needs to be healed back.
Rot worms suck, I'd almost suggest to kill those before the blazing skeletons.
Our kill order is skeletons > rot worms > zombies > mages > aboms, with one ranged DPS assigned to pick off suppressors.
The rot worms apply a stacking debuff that ramps up quickly, so they need to die ASAP. The zombies are annoying because the tank has to kite them, which makes it hard to deal with the other adds.
Were you single-tanking it (since you mentioned an "extra tank")? I can't imagine that would work out well. There are just too many adds to deal with.
Any tips on how to succesfully go from p1 to p2 on Arthas 10m ? We managed to get him down to 65%, but still had two Raging spirits alive and kicking. Is that supposed to happen or are we doing something wrong ?
There's your problem. After the transition is over, you should only have 1 raging spirit alive in phase 2. Let the plague kill the shambler and incidental aoe kill the ghouls.
Bosskillers suggested a single tank. We tried with 2 tanks the first few attempts, but while adds were more 'tanked' we still had way too many of them up. Switching to 1 tank seemed kind of a wash, less control, but they died a little faster. Kill order came from bosskillers too, but maybe we'll try doing skellies first.
Bosskillers suggested a single tank. We tried with 2 tanks the first few attempts, but while adds were more 'tanked' we still had way too many of them up. Switching to 1 tank seemed kind of a wash, less control, but they died a little faster. Kill order came from bosskillers too, but maybe we'll try doing skellies first.
How are you positioning the raid? We do it with two tanks, melee split up with a tank each and ranged stand in between the two groups. Tanks stay very close to where the suppressors spawn so when killing the higher priority adds you can hit them with incidental AoE too.
What you need to do is break the fight down into its respective parts, then have people learn those parts. We actually ran people through essentially the entire fight one night start to finish so they'd have an idea of what will happen.
Untauntable bosses requiring tank swaps are nothing really new.
This sort of thing further supports my theory that the way they design fights these days is to design the fight, and then remove elements until they have the original "hard mode" and then the playtime "normal mode," which compared to mechanics in past expansions are generally a joke.
Also I really don't want to have to wipe through our "pew pew lol" DPS relearning how to deal with a threat-dropping boss who can't be taunted.
It seems the only real way to limit attempts on a boss is giving a limited amount of time from the first pull, like Algalon.
That's no different from limited number of attempts... Crazy people could still have a second raid to get a second portion of time on the boss. And time limits like that were a BAD BAD IDEA. Oops, tank DCed for a bit? 1/3 of your time this week is gone, better luck next week.
I don't think there's really much point in aiming to make the game challenging for career WoW players
Anything that challenges them is going to be unplayably frustrating/difficult for regular people, or even the "casual" 30 hour a week players
I'm very happy with the game's current difficulty level. I can raid 2 days a week and see most/all of the content on non-heroic, I can join a guild that raids 4 days a week and instantly replaces you if you screw up if I want server firsts, or I can piggyback from there to an even better guild if I want world firsts
What sucked before was that if I raided two days a week, that basically meant that I got to see karazhan and part of SSC. The only time I saw Kael'thas was in that crappy 5 man, since I wasn't interested in filling out an application to a guild like it's a job and going through an interview with some sweaty teenager
You don't even have to raid a lot per week to see heroic-mode content either these days. We raid 4 days per week yes, but only 3 hours per night and are currently number one on our server. The trick is finding like-minded people that play well and all coordinate well together.
We tank Sindragosa sideways so her side is facing the steps and her head is to the east. We put the tomb in P3 10 yards to the left of the MT so maximize DPS time on returning to Sindragosa before the next tomb is formed and also so that you can 2 tank it.
my guild's a lot of fun, but I swear, the more DPS a player in my guild does, the stupider he is
Every week these guys tank malleable goo again and again, it's ridiculous. I know for a fact that healing requires a lot more attention than a hunter DPS rotation, and yet I'm able to watch the malleable goo timer wind down until the goo comes out. I watch it slowly bounce toward a pack of hunters and mages. Time slows down as it inexorably drifts toward them, healers scatter to either direction but the hunters and mages hold their ground. They stand firm until the malleable goo is literally right on top of them, at which point they make a halfhearted attempt to strafe, get hit, and either fail to notice what happened if it's one goo, or if two landed they die. They contemplate this fact for several seconds, then shout "WHAT THE F" in vent
I've found I often have time to target one of them and type out "/frown" before the goo hits as I get out of the way, so they can see "X frowns in disappointment with Y"
It certainly used to be the case that healing required more attention than DPS but on the whole that just isn't the case anymore. A healer's whole job is to watch for and anticipate the incoming damage for fight mechanics. They have no rotation, little in the way of spell priority, and can by and large, focus their attention on what the boss/encounter is doing. When healing my attention is all outwards. When DPSing its totally the opposite. Its a much more internal process, your attention is what you are doing and it is therefore easier to lose sight of what is going on around you. I am not excusing people tanking Slime Crash, it is still a fail, but they are probably doing high DPS beacuse they are very focused on their own little world. I am saying that where you place your attention as a healer is intrinsically different from a DPS, and it makes it easier to keep an eye on debuffs and mechanics. Of course arcane mages and the like really have no justification as you don't even need to pay attention to their rotation.
It certainly used to be the case that healing required more attention than DPS but on the whole that just isn't the case anymore. A healer's whole job is to watch for and anticipate the incoming damage for fight mechanics. They have no rotation, little in the way of spell priority, and can by and large, focus their attention on what the boss/encounter is doing. When healing my attention is all outwards. When DPSing its totally the opposite. Its a much more internal process, your attention is what you are doing and it is therefore easier to lose sight of what is going on around you. I am not excusing people tanking Slime Crash, it is still a fail, but they are probably doing high DPS beacuse they are very focused on their own little world. I am saying that where you place your attention as a healer is intrinsically different from a DPS, and it makes it easier to keep an eye on debuffs and mechanics. Of course arcane mages and the like really have no justification as you don't even need to pay attention to their rotation.
Staying alive and avoiding avoidable damage is all part of being a DPS class.
I'd rather take a DPS to a raid that does 10% less damage, but lives through the entire fight, and doesn't require being healed through a pancake or standing in the fire.
I don't think he was arguing against that though Iron. He was just saying DPS isn't as easy as slamming your head on the keyboard and drooling on yourself for some classes and as such doing good dps takes concentration.
I don't think he was arguing against that though Iron. He was just saying DPS isn't as easy as slamming your head on the keyboard and drooling on yourself for some classes and as such doing good dps takes concentration.
This is an adequate description of 90% of dpsers though.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Just teach your raid members: Dead DPS don't deal damage.
Decomposey on
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Actually, i could be dead for more then half of a fight and still out damage more people in my raids then I would like to admit.
Of course, your total damage done is crap. If someone is doing 8k DPS for half the fight then dies, he's a worse player than the guy who only does 6k but is DPSing the entire fight.
You can't DPS if you're dead. DPS need to learn, part of your job is staying alive.
I'm a healer. If I die, I can't use the excuse of "But shit! I was pulling l33t HPS before I died! It's not my fault we wiped". Same with DPS.
Posts
Ok, first 4 fights.
1. Basic tank and spank. He casts a spell called bone spikes every so often, which impales one non-tank on a, you guessed it, bone spike. The bone spike should be burned down by the dps ASAP. Also, tell them to be careful after he does bone storm, because he drops aggro (though he is tauntable).
2. For the first part of lady deathwhisper (while she has mana), she will remain stationary and summon adds. The melee should focus on adds and the ranged should dps her (she has a mana shield). Ranged should switch to Risen and Deformed Fanatics when necessary (they take little melee damage). Afterwards, it's tank and spank.
3. On gunship, when the zero mage casts below zero, have most of your dps jump to the other ship to burn it down (a tank should jump too to tank Saurfang). Have one or two dps stay behind and take care of adds that spawn on your ship.
4. Saurfang will spawn blood beasts periodically, which should be slowed and burned down quickly. Other than that, it's tank and spank. Also, ranged should stay spread out as often as possible.
Steam: pazython
The first section before Marrowgar
At first they'll be gray statues and untargetable/unhittable with no aggro radius. Each of the four is tied to a large but invisible trap that gets triggered when you run over it. If you have a rogue they can detect nearby traps, and you can either disarm them (for one hour) or trip them intentionally (so you don't have to worry about it coming back later, and also for extra rep). If you don't have a rogue you'll want to draw pulls back to areas you've already been in so you don't accidentally pull a statue in the middle of a pull.
In 25 man all four traps spawn at once; in 10 man only two will be up at a time, with a new one replacing each tripped one up to the fourth(not sure what happens when you disarm one). This can actually be harder to deal with, because it means a new trap can appear in an area you've already checked. Particularly if you have no rogue, this can lead to two traps being tripped in quick succession if the new trap spawn happens to be on or near your raid.
Marrowgar
Marrowgar does a bladestorm-like Bonestorm periodically which does aoe damage over a fairly wide area. It's actually much less dangerous than it appears, as long as you don't stand directly underneath him (it does more damage there) and you don't stand in the blue flames which spread out in a diagonal cross pattern.
Speaking of blue flames, he'll do a targeted blue flame attack randomly when he's not Bonestorming. It's basically like a Starcraft lurker attack, make sure people get out of those.
Also, in case you didn't know already, make sure you and the other tank are standing on top of each other whenever he's not Bonestorming. He does a meteor-fist like attack that splits damage between up to two people, and you don't want that all on one person.
Deathwhisper
Phase 1 lasts until you get the mana shield down, and is all about dealing with the adds quickly. Throughout phase 1 sets of 3 adds will spawn on alternating sides of the room in one-minute intervals (starting a few seconds after you engage); all DPS should get them down ASAP so you don't get overrun by multiple waves. Deathwhisper will transform adds into more powerful forms; some get either a damage shield or magic immunity, while others will transform into very hard-hitting versions that look all bloated and should be kited until killed. The faster you kill adds the fewer transformations you'll get. Once the adds are dead go back to attacking her until the next wave spawns. Make sure you don't finish the phase right as the next wave is about to spawn, or you may get to phase 2 with a fresh wave of adds up and that'll be trouble. She casts shadowbolts at random people, but they don't hit that hard and are just healed through.
In Phase 2 the adds are replaced by untargetable ghosts that run around and can one or two shot clothies. I think the ghosts despawn after a bit, but either way if you see one going after you run away as much as you can until they go away. You'll probably want to move her down to the flat court area, as tanking her where she starts can cause LOS issues. Deathwhisper starts casting frostbolts instead of shadowbolts, and the frostbolts hurt a lot (30k+). Fortunately, unlike the shadowbolts they can and should be interrupted as much as possible. She stacks a debuff on the tank that reduces threat done by 20% per stack, so after 5 stacks you won't be doing any. Because of that you'll want to swap at 3-4 stacks or whenever your current one falls off. Fortunately taunt still works, so if you lose a tank you can still keep going by taunting immediately whenever you lose aggro.
The AOE heals during Bonestorm can be intense, depending on how good your raid is at avoiding it. He targets random people, bouncing around the room. If people run too far healer range can be an issue.
Deathwhisper's caster adds cast Curse of Torpor, so unless you forget to kill an add at the phase transition, it's just a Phase 1 thing.
Also I know you're running 10man, but on 25 you have adds spawn on both sides simultaneous, and one in the back behind you, and the boss randomly mind controls. Fun times.
Her ghosts explode when they hit people. They're hard to see, but they used to be even harder to see.
Works well enough for us.
Steam: YOU FACE JARAXXUS| Twitch.tv: CainLoveless
So we went to the new wing and spent about 40 minutes on Valithria and failing there too. God damn that fight is harder than it sounded. We 2 healed it for a while with me going in the portal, but that didn't work too well, so we switched to 3 healing it, but 3rd healer wasn't doing a whole lot of good. How long is that fight supposed to last on 10 man? We made it to about 3 minutes each time before getting overwhelmed by adds. Only once did we manage to do more than 2m healing to her, and that's because i managed to get 23 stacks. Maintaining those is a bitch.
The fight is only supposed to last about 6 minutes. If you are getting overwhelmed at 3 you are doing something very wrong. Make sure you have the correct kill order for the adds.
You should have 2 people continuously going into the portals and keeping up the stacks while one sits out the whole time and does raid healing and doing some on valithria.
As for Putricide you should be getting to phase 3 fairly easily. Phase 3 is where the real problems occur because its a DPS race.
It sounds like you are having problems with DPS, either being too low or not knowing what to do.
And yeah, kill order on Valithria was Suppresoors, Blazing Skellies, Archmages, everything else. Maybe we just didn't have enough AoE, as the rot worms were doing tons of damage. How do you handle those?
DPSwise we had:
2 DKs (both great)
2 Ret pallies (one great, one the extra tank's offspec)
1 hunter (great)
1 lock (not as great)
Do just need more bursty classes like an arcane mage? We had an ele shammy but he went heals on the last few attempts.
edit: most of those DPS are our top dps in guild. They normally pull 8k on most fights, but were all just barely around 4k on this fight. is that normal too?
Rot worms suck, I'd almost suggest to kill those before the blazing skeletons.
The rot worms apply a stacking debuff that ramps up quickly, so they need to die ASAP. The zombies are annoying because the tank has to kite them, which makes it hard to deal with the other adds.
Were you single-tanking it (since you mentioned an "extra tank")? I can't imagine that would work out well. There are just too many adds to deal with.
It only really gets ugly if you have more than one abom in a short period of time.
There's your problem. After the transition is over, you should only have 1 raging spirit alive in phase 2. Let the plague kill the shambler and incidental aoe kill the ghouls.
Steam: pazython
How are you positioning the raid? We do it with two tanks, melee split up with a tank each and ranged stand in between the two groups. Tanks stay very close to where the suppressors spawn so when killing the higher priority adds you can hit them with incidental AoE too.
2 tank it, one tank on each wing. This ensures that incidental AoE from killing any target will also kill any supressors standing there.
that is all
Fixed that for you.
What seems to give you guys the most trouble?
EDIT: Because I can't read.
Wow, I totally failed on that one
This sort of thing further supports my theory that the way they design fights these days is to design the fight, and then remove elements until they have the original "hard mode" and then the playtime "normal mode," which compared to mechanics in past expansions are generally a joke.
Also I really don't want to have to wipe through our "pew pew lol" DPS relearning how to deal with a threat-dropping boss who can't be taunted.
DPS get to turn into awesome things and summon val'kyrs and skeletons.
We get ... an invisible lightwell. Woo.
That's no different from limited number of attempts... Crazy people could still have a second raid to get a second portion of time on the boss. And time limits like that were a BAD BAD IDEA. Oops, tank DCed for a bit? 1/3 of your time this week is gone, better luck next week.
Anything that challenges them is going to be unplayably frustrating/difficult for regular people, or even the "casual" 30 hour a week players
I'm very happy with the game's current difficulty level. I can raid 2 days a week and see most/all of the content on non-heroic, I can join a guild that raids 4 days a week and instantly replaces you if you screw up if I want server firsts, or I can piggyback from there to an even better guild if I want world firsts
What sucked before was that if I raided two days a week, that basically meant that I got to see karazhan and part of SSC. The only time I saw Kael'thas was in that crappy 5 man, since I wasn't interested in filling out an application to a guild like it's a job and going through an interview with some sweaty teenager
my guild's a lot of fun, but I swear, the more DPS a player in my guild does, the stupider he is
Every week these guys tank malleable goo again and again, it's ridiculous. I know for a fact that healing requires a lot more attention than a hunter DPS rotation, and yet I'm able to watch the malleable goo timer wind down until the goo comes out. I watch it slowly bounce toward a pack of hunters and mages. Time slows down as it inexorably drifts toward them, healers scatter to either direction but the hunters and mages hold their ground. They stand firm until the malleable goo is literally right on top of them, at which point they make a halfhearted attempt to strafe, get hit, and either fail to notice what happened if it's one goo, or if two landed they die. They contemplate this fact for several seconds, then shout "WHAT THE F" in vent
I've found I often have time to target one of them and type out "/frown" before the goo hits as I get out of the way, so they can see "X frowns in disappointment with Y"
Staying alive and avoiding avoidable damage is all part of being a DPS class.
I'd rather take a DPS to a raid that does 10% less damage, but lives through the entire fight, and doesn't require being healed through a pancake or standing in the fire.
This is an adequate description of 90% of dpsers though.
Fine, about 5 people.
Fucking casual guilds with exceptionally nice yet completely untalented people. 4k dps on festergut/rotface? Missing the enrage by 5-10%? Nerd Rage
Of course, your total damage done is crap. If someone is doing 8k DPS for half the fight then dies, he's a worse player than the guy who only does 6k but is DPSing the entire fight.
You can't DPS if you're dead. DPS need to learn, part of your job is staying alive.
I'm a healer. If I die, I can't use the excuse of "But shit! I was pulling l33t HPS before I died! It's not my fault we wiped". Same with DPS.