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Moderator: To replace Karazhan Strategies/Discussion
The continuation to the Karazhan thread, since many of us have since passed Karazhan almost completely, let's open it up to a broader forum.
I'm starting SSC with my guild this week. Which boss do you think we should go for first?
We are heavy on healing and ranged DPS. Two solid, well geared tanks, (and three others w/ medium gear) and only a handful of melee DPS. (Our two tanks are maxxed out on NR/FrostR gear for that one fight, but I don't know if only the tanks need it, or the whole raid).
Do Hydross. Work on getting a third offtank in a good mix of NR/FrR (aim for 150 each) to tank adds, though you can go without. Shouldn't take you all that long to get him down, and he's right there.
EDIT: Here's a link to the video one of our raid leaders made of our first kill... should give you a good idea of how the encounter plays out.
We're probably going in in a two weeks or so.... Gruul will die for the first time tonight most probably (Already had him below 10% twice, we geared up our tank nicely yesterday in kara, and now everyone understands the beauty of those free flask). Nightbane is dieing very smoothly.
My question is: Apart from the NR/FrostR you listed, will we need anything else?
Ok.... anyone know how the current situation is with Demo Shout / Curse of Weakness? I've read a few conflicting reports on how they stack, up to how much they can reduce etcet. On a hardhitter like Gruul, should it be kept up, only 1 of the 2, or both?
My guild wandered into SSC for the first time last night, and we had Hydross down to 46% or so on our best attempt. I think our DPS is fine, we've just had some issues during the transition from poison to frost, when some douchebag has a hard dot on him so he swaps to frost, then runs over to the casters and goes back to poison, raping us with 8 adds and so on. Also it took three or four botched pulls before the warrior tanking frost phase got down the ability to engage/intercept him before he crosses the transition line. He seems fine with it now though, and I think they're gonna hand him some swiftness pots just to make it even easier.
I love what Blizzard did to raiding in 2.1. I finally feel like my guild can make steady progress again. Much nicer than the endless wipes against Magtheridon pre 2.1.
I've read a lot of the bosskiller strategies for the gruul/mags/ssc. I'm almost always disenheartened when I get to the paladin section and see that its usually just "make sure to spam FoL"
Except morogrim, they allow pallys to act as tanks there.
I've read a lot of the bosskiller strategies for the gruul/mags/ssc. I'm almost always disenheartened when I get to the paladin section and see that its usually just "make sure to spam FoL"
Except morogrim, they allow pallys to act as tanks there.
Yeah, I was looking at some of those strats yesterday and they make *no* mention of a paladin tank anywhere at all. It's always a druid OT or warrior tanks. Way to go .
For those of us who haven't gotten past Kara quite yet, how about some links to good beginner guides? I'm going to start MTing the fucker on Saturday.
I'd say wowwiki suffices for boss strats. Otherwise, for the easiest way up to curator, take the following with you:
2 tanks
3 healers
5 dps
including
1x priest (shackle)
1x paladin (BoSacr for Maiden, undead fear for Moroes/attumen trash, BoP for mores)
1x warlock (up tank hp, fear on oz/banish a few select mobs, AoE Moroes trash)
1x mage (water, Dampen Magic on Maiden, AoE Moroes trash)
With that, everything is doable. A second priest or paladin helps with early trash and Moroes, a good hunter that traps consistantly works too though. R/J interrupts benefit from a rogue. Treeform druid on your tanks might make it easier, as would a shadowpriest feeding back mana to healers, especially if either tanks or healers are not yet that well geared.
At the start, watch your trash clearing tempo, and pull the attumen trash far back. The horses fear, and if you wipe more then once, you might end up in respawn hell.
If I would i got to choose from my whole guild, my raid would prolly look like this:
Prot Warrior - MT
Fury warrior - OT (15points prot would help)
Warlock
Resto Druid
Rogue
Shadowpriest
Resto Shaman
Holy Paladin
Mage
Hunter
SanderJK on
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
0
TTODewbackPuts the drawl in ya'llI think I'm in HellRegistered Userregular
edited June 2007
I don't see a space chicken on that list. Obviously that guide is a gateway to failure and humiliation.
Let me enlighten you...Yes. I will enlighten you on how to form a Karazhan group
You put the shadow priest with the tank group instead of the casters?
Epic, epic failure.
Gork on
0
TTODewbackPuts the drawl in ya'llI think I'm in HellRegistered Userregular
edited June 2007
I didn't want that third tree druid to be all alone.
Besides, you need THREE trees to be a forest.
If I only have two together all I have is an orchard. And who the fuck wants that
Technically, you could replace the third tree with a shadow priest and settle on peaches and apples.
Okay, so I've been looking through the loot tables for Gruul/Mag/SSC, and outside of the T4 (questionable) upgrades, it doesn't look like I have much to look forward to in upgrades from kara gear until midway through SSC (I see alot of dps plate, and healing plate, but little in the way of tanking gear). Am I missing something?
Okay, so I've been looking through the loot tables for Gruul/Mag/SSC, and outside of the T4 (questionable) upgrades, it doesn't look like I have much to look forward to in upgrades from kara gear until midway through SSC (I see alot of dps plate, and healing plate, but little in the way of tanking gear). Am I missing something?
Sounds about right. You're gonna have to use the "warrior" plate off-drops from Karazhan to stay competitive. That'll keep you fine in terms of mit/health through SSC, though.
We did from Moroes through Shade with 5 druids. We had two dedicated healers, one resto druid and one priest. Shade was pretty much a pushover(no warlock either).
But then, this guild has been downing shade for a while.
So, have been killing Aran for a couple of weeks now, but no joy on Prince yet. We seem to be having a couple of problems... one, we keep switching who is calling the positioning, and I don't think we have a confident caller yet, so our movements are a bit wonky. Two, Prince hits very hard, our tank almost always goes down in phase 2, often because the healers have to reposition because something is falling on their heads. It's a frustrating fight, and I'm not sure what to do to make it better.
martini on
I raised the wall. And I will be the one to knock it down.
Two, Prince hits very hard, our tank almost always goes down in phase 2, often because the healers have to reposition because something is falling on their heads. It's a frustrating fight, and I'm not sure what to do to make it better.
Prince can be a bitch, if you're not already, have your tank chug an Ironshield at 61%, and make absolutely sure that Demo/TClap/Scorpid Sting/etc are staying up. It's not a whole hell of a lot, but it adds up, and has meant life or death for our tanks on Prince many, many times.
How many healers are you bringing, by the way?
Morogrim and karathress are far easier than hydross.
It'd be incredibly diffucult for me to disagree with this more. Yes, there's less thinking required on Tidewalker/Karathress on your DPS' part than Hydross, but the requirements are much steeper on those two.
Oh, and for anyone going to Leotheras soon, I'd really suggest having your MT FR tank him. We don't do it, but good lord it makes it so incredibly easy.
Okay, so I've been looking through the loot tables for Gruul/Mag/SSC, and outside of the T4 (questionable) upgrades, it doesn't look like I have much to look forward to in upgrades from kara gear until midway through SSC (I see alot of dps plate, and healing plate, but little in the way of tanking gear). Am I missing something?
The shield off Gruul is better than the shield off nightbane. Other than that single piece just about everything is somewhat equivalent, either being slightly worse or slightly better. The big advantage with tier sets though is that your much more likely to get yours to drop compared to offset pieces.
Two, Prince hits very hard, our tank almost always goes down in phase 2, often because the healers have to reposition because something is falling on their heads. It's a frustrating fight, and I'm not sure what to do to make it better.
Prince can be a bitch, if you're not already, have your tank chug an Ironshield at 61%, and make absolutely sure that Demo/TClap/Scorpid Sting/etc are staying up. It's not a whole hell of a lot, but it adds up, and has meant life or death for our tanks on Prince many, many times.
How many healers are you bringing, by the way?
I think last weekend we were a bit light on healers, pretty sure we only had 2 specced healers, plus a feral druid and shadowpriest. The Druid shifted out to drop some HoTs in phase 2, basically till he had no mana, then went back to cat form. Not sure whether the SP was helping with heals much. I think this week we'll have 3 specced healers plus the SP, so that should help.
martini on
I raised the wall. And I will be the one to knock it down.
Okay, so I've been looking through the loot tables for Gruul/Mag/SSC, and outside of the T4 (questionable) upgrades, it doesn't look like I have much to look forward to in upgrades from kara gear until midway through SSC (I see alot of dps plate, and healing plate, but little in the way of tanking gear). Am I missing something?
The shield off Gruul is better than the shield off nightbane. Other than that single piece just about everything is somewhat equivalent, either being slightly worse or slightly better. The big advantage with tier sets though is that your much more likely to get yours to drop compared to offset pieces.
I was shooting for the crest of sha'tar though, wouldn't that still be better just from the stamina alone?
So, have been killing Aran for a couple of weeks now, but no joy on Prince yet. We seem to be having a couple of problems... one, we keep switching who is calling the positioning, and I don't think we have a confident caller yet, so our movements are a bit wonky. Two, Prince hits very hard, our tank almost always goes down in phase 2, often because the healers have to reposition because something is falling on their heads. It's a frustrating fight, and I'm not sure what to do to make it better.
We got to Prince 3 weeks ago and have downed him every week since, with changing groups. I think this is a good fight to have a Paladin Tank on. I'm that Paladin, twice I've been the only tank, last night I tanked and our Prot warrior did what damage he could. It worked out well - with 8 charges on Holy Shield I take fewer crushings (I did take one or two because of latency on refreshing it.) He kept up Commanding Shout and Thunderclap, one of our warlocks switched to CoWeakness, and our Hunter used Scorpid sting in Phase 2. We've gotten through it without using those skills before, but usually we me flasked (all I used was a food buff this time), and chugging Ironshield Potions, and using Nightmare seeds.
So, moral of the story: to survive Phase 2, use as many AP reducing / attack speed reducing abilities as possible. And a Paladin tank may be less crushable than a warrior. (Though they have to make up for lack of Last Stand with Nightmare Seeds, if necessary.)
My raid couldn't kill Aran last week after about 3 attempts before repops, and while a lot of it was the RL who's done it a lot telling everyone to stand on him during blizzards and then promptly not moving out of the path and all the healers and caster dps getting killed, we had one good attempt where we had the mana lower than the health until he decided he was thirsty at about 18% mana. Is that normal and should we aim for a sheep/pyroblast, or should we just try to burn him down faster?
Also, any strategies on Illhoof now? We have one lock but he kept complaining that he wasn't able to cast many seeds before the little imps started attacking him and messing up his cast or running OOM.
Why would you not have the warlock tank leo's demon form. If you don't do that, you effectively take your melee out of the fight. And for our guild, those other fights were easier than hydross, but thats not saying much.
We are susually at the same level Health/Mana during the Aran fight so we hit him down to 40%, kill the adds, become one with our inner sheep and then kill him. He will not fight to 0% Mana but sheep around 20%, though i have seen him go as low as 15%. If you are very DPS heavy and have good interrupts you can probably burn him down faster, but I don't think the average Karazhan geared guild can do that. Make sure everyone has a health stone/pot ready right after the pyro to minimize casulties.
what.. did they do to aran? we just burned him down tonight, he didn't even polymorph o_O
autono-wally, erotibot300 on
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited June 2007
*sighs* I still have my AQ40 shield on my poor little Gnome. TBC burnt me out so hardcore, having to key up to raid.. I've been deep in to Nax, but never seen the inside of Kharazan.
My raid couldn't kill Aran last week after about 3 attempts before repops, and while a lot of it was the RL who's done it a lot telling everyone to stand on him during blizzards and then promptly not moving out of the path and all the healers and caster dps getting killed, we had one good attempt where we had the mana lower than the health until he decided he was thirsty at about 18% mana. Is that normal and should we aim for a sheep/pyroblast, or should we just try to burn him down faster?
Also, any strategies on Illhoof now? We have one lock but he kept complaining that he wasn't able to cast many seeds before the little imps started attacking him and messing up his cast or running OOM.
On Shade if the mana is below the health then you're too slow on DPS, either pick it up alot or just force him to drink around 45% then pop healthstones and health pots when you come out of it.
Warlocks should never run out of mana, even on Illhoof. Put a paladin in his group with concentration aura up and have him spam seed on Illhoof and keep siphon life and agony up as well if possible. Dark pact when at 50% mana until the imp is empty then spam seed again, life tap 2-3 times at 25% mana then seed again, rinse and repeat.
If the warlock is Destruction spec then it's even easier and using Seed is just gimping you alot. Put a paladin with them again, concentration aura as well. Stand ontop of Illhoof and the big imp and just spam hellfire with some amount of FR gear on, roughly 100-200, can go with less if they have nether protection. If they have shadowfury then get them to use it when you start to get overwhelmed by imps. A well timed Shadowfury after a full duration Hellfire will kill every imp and if not they will be left at very low health. The paladin can also Holy Wrath during the fight to help out a bit.
But.. you only have to clear Arcatraz to a bit after the first boss, a bit of trash in Steamvault (not even a boss) and reach murmur (you don't even have to kill him)
autono-wally, erotibot300 on
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
But.. you only have to clear Arcatraz to a bit after the first boss, a bit of trash in Steamvault (not even a boss) and reach murmur (you don't even have to kill him)
I have the key, I just happen to burn out and quit just as my guild was starting to run it seriously. I could go if I wanted to, but my gear is so out of date now, it would take me a month or more to catch up with basic gear. I am still wearing mostly Wrath with some scattered Dread. All T2/2.5/3 level stuff. I wouldn't mind replacing it all, but I refuse to get rid of my Widow's Remorse :P Still one of the coolest looking swords in the game.
Why would you not have the warlock tank leo's demon form. If you don't do that, you effectively take your melee out of the fight. And for our guild, those other fights were easier than hydross, but thats not saying much.
Chaos Blast range was decreased from a 20yard radius based on the target, to 10. So, if you just stand behind Leo you'll never get hit by it.
Posts
EDIT: Here's a link to the video one of our raid leaders made of our first kill... should give you a good idea of how the encounter plays out.
My question is: Apart from the NR/FrostR you listed, will we need anything else?
Hydross is right there, getting him out of the way makes clearing to further bosses alot faster after trash respawns.
There are a couple of gearcheck fights that are sort of disguised as strategy fights, so don't get discouraged.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I love what Blizzard did to raiding in 2.1. I finally feel like my guild can make steady progress again. Much nicer than the endless wipes against Magtheridon pre 2.1.
For boss strategies, I'd reccomend Boss Killers over anything. They've got a large selection of reviewed guides and movies on any boss encounter.
Except morogrim, they allow pallys to act as tanks there.
Yeah, I was looking at some of those strats yesterday and they make *no* mention of a paladin tank anywhere at all. It's always a druid OT or warrior tanks. Way to go .
Ghalan - Tauren Druid
I'd say wowwiki suffices for boss strats. Otherwise, for the easiest way up to curator, take the following with you:
2 tanks
3 healers
5 dps
including
1x priest (shackle)
1x paladin (BoSacr for Maiden, undead fear for Moroes/attumen trash, BoP for mores)
1x warlock (up tank hp, fear on oz/banish a few select mobs, AoE Moroes trash)
1x mage (water, Dampen Magic on Maiden, AoE Moroes trash)
With that, everything is doable. A second priest or paladin helps with early trash and Moroes, a good hunter that traps consistantly works too though. R/J interrupts benefit from a rogue. Treeform druid on your tanks might make it easier, as would a shadowpriest feeding back mana to healers, especially if either tanks or healers are not yet that well geared.
At the start, watch your trash clearing tempo, and pull the attumen trash far back. The horses fear, and if you wipe more then once, you might end up in respawn hell.
If I would i got to choose from my whole guild, my raid would prolly look like this:
Prot Warrior - MT
Fury warrior - OT (15points prot would help)
Warlock
Resto Druid
Rogue
Shadowpriest
Resto Shaman
Holy Paladin
Mage
Hunter
Let me enlighten you...Yes. I will enlighten you on how to form a Karazhan group
Group 1:
Feral (Bear) Druid
Feral (Bear)) Druid
Feral (Cat) Druid
Shadow Priest
Warlock
Group 2:
Moonkin Druid
Tree Druid
Tree Druid
Tree Druid
Mage
Epic, epic failure.
Besides, you need THREE trees to be a forest.
If I only have two together all I have is an orchard. And who the fuck wants that
Technically, you could replace the third tree with a shadow priest and settle on peaches and apples.
Our first Kara run had 4 druids: 1 Bear, 1 Cat (Off Bear), 1 Chicken and 1 Tree.
Shade was awful.
Then Bear became Off Bear, Off Bear rerolled Elemental Shaman, Chicken became Tree, Tree leveled his Prot Warrior and all was right with the world.
Sounds about right. You're gonna have to use the "warrior" plate off-drops from Karazhan to stay competitive. That'll keep you fine in terms of mit/health through SSC, though.
But then, this guild has been downing shade for a while.
Prince can be a bitch, if you're not already, have your tank chug an Ironshield at 61%, and make absolutely sure that Demo/TClap/Scorpid Sting/etc are staying up. It's not a whole hell of a lot, but it adds up, and has meant life or death for our tanks on Prince many, many times.
How many healers are you bringing, by the way?
It'd be incredibly diffucult for me to disagree with this more. Yes, there's less thinking required on Tidewalker/Karathress on your DPS' part than Hydross, but the requirements are much steeper on those two.
Oh, and for anyone going to Leotheras soon, I'd really suggest having your MT FR tank him. We don't do it, but good lord it makes it so incredibly easy.
The shield off Gruul is better than the shield off nightbane. Other than that single piece just about everything is somewhat equivalent, either being slightly worse or slightly better. The big advantage with tier sets though is that your much more likely to get yours to drop compared to offset pieces.
I was shooting for the crest of sha'tar though, wouldn't that still be better just from the stamina alone?
We got to Prince 3 weeks ago and have downed him every week since, with changing groups. I think this is a good fight to have a Paladin Tank on. I'm that Paladin, twice I've been the only tank, last night I tanked and our Prot warrior did what damage he could. It worked out well - with 8 charges on Holy Shield I take fewer crushings (I did take one or two because of latency on refreshing it.) He kept up Commanding Shout and Thunderclap, one of our warlocks switched to CoWeakness, and our Hunter used Scorpid sting in Phase 2. We've gotten through it without using those skills before, but usually we me flasked (all I used was a food buff this time), and chugging Ironshield Potions, and using Nightmare seeds.
So, moral of the story: to survive Phase 2, use as many AP reducing / attack speed reducing abilities as possible. And a Paladin tank may be less crushable than a warrior. (Though they have to make up for lack of Last Stand with Nightmare Seeds, if necessary.)
Also, any strategies on Illhoof now? We have one lock but he kept complaining that he wasn't able to cast many seeds before the little imps started attacking him and messing up his cast or running OOM.
On Shade if the mana is below the health then you're too slow on DPS, either pick it up alot or just force him to drink around 45% then pop healthstones and health pots when you come out of it.
Warlocks should never run out of mana, even on Illhoof. Put a paladin in his group with concentration aura up and have him spam seed on Illhoof and keep siphon life and agony up as well if possible. Dark pact when at 50% mana until the imp is empty then spam seed again, life tap 2-3 times at 25% mana then seed again, rinse and repeat.
If the warlock is Destruction spec then it's even easier and using Seed is just gimping you alot. Put a paladin with them again, concentration aura as well. Stand ontop of Illhoof and the big imp and just spam hellfire with some amount of FR gear on, roughly 100-200, can go with less if they have nether protection. If they have shadowfury then get them to use it when you start to get overwhelmed by imps. A well timed Shadowfury after a full duration Hellfire will kill every imp and if not they will be left at very low health. The paladin can also Holy Wrath during the fight to help out a bit.
I have the key, I just happen to burn out and quit just as my guild was starting to run it seriously. I could go if I wanted to, but my gear is so out of date now, it would take me a month or more to catch up with basic gear. I am still wearing mostly Wrath with some scattered Dread. All T2/2.5/3 level stuff. I wouldn't mind replacing it all, but I refuse to get rid of my Widow's Remorse :P Still one of the coolest looking swords in the game.
Chaos Blast range was decreased from a 20yard radius based on the target, to 10. So, if you just stand behind Leo you'll never get hit by it.