2 tanks
3 healers
5 dps
Searing Plasma 280k healing
Blood Corruption Death - dispel it enough it turns into Earth
Blood Corruption Earth - do not dispel as it might turn back into Death
Degradation- Alalgamation deaths gives a stack, reduces raid's HP thus you must minimise number you kill
Tendon has big health - 13 million HP - takes 2 cycles to do it - 18 seconds per burn phase
BUY VALOR POINT TRINKET - short CD means buff is up for every tendon
Note the valor point trinket comment in bold. If you're DPS then go buy the trinket!
I've bought my Bottled Wishes (http://www.wowhead.com/item=77114)
i got this trinket too. whiii =)
tendon got 10,2m hp after the nerfs. for this boss all of our paladins should have the wrath aoe stun thingy glyphed.
Of course I converted almost all of my VP to Conquest points yesterday.
Bump for tomorrow!
little microid things we should start collecting the bloods 2-3s earlier at yesterdays tries we got a grip always right after or just in end of burning the tendons. i thing we started at 10s before jump that to 13s and the grip guy is happy =)
second thing was the targeting macro i noticed that every time we did the left side tendon my macro worked. on right it failed every time. maybe the macro will try to lock on the left even if its not exposed?
i would also start to use strong healing cooldowns on 4 algamation explosion. we will have then -15% hp. dont know how long the cooldown is for tranq or healing hymm. hope its enough for use in 4,5,6 algamations. 4 tranq 5 hymm 6 tranq again?
We deliberately delayed the bloods for this reason:
If we pick up adds too early then we get a Grip during the last few seconds of the tendon burn.
If we pick them up as we were then we get a Grip whilst the Amalgamation is moved into position and starts casting Blast.
Dealing with Grip in the latter case is far simpler and does not cost us any dps, so it was an informed choice to pick them up like that. Timing wise we used 5 seconds before Grip as the point at which the Amalgamation was moved ot the Bloods. Assuming the bloods are neatly grouped it stacks to 9 almost instantly and then moves to the plate and casts Blast. If anything I would delay moving the Amalgamation to 3 seconds before Grip to ensure we do not get a Grip at the other enc of the tendon burn phase.
Re the macro:
I have done some reading on this, apparently:
/target Buring Tendons does tend to work on one side only and not on the other side.
/targetexact Burning Tendons seems to work
or Boss2 works (which I have never used).
E.g.
/stopmacro [@boss2, noexists]
/target boss2
/cast [exists, harm] Avenging Wrath
/cast [exists, harm] Zealotry
/cast [exists, harm] Templar's Verdict/cleartarget
/targetexact Burning Tendons
/stopmacro [noexists]
/cast Shadowfiend
/cast Archangel
/use item:77114
The raidwalls are being used on 9 stack AOE rather than the explosion. The healers reported the main stress is not the explosion itself, but the AOE before it and the massively increased damage the Amalagamation does when buffed with 9 stacks.
All in all though it was nice progress last night. I'm pretty sure that with the macro changes above we'll increase our dps sufficiently to the levels to regularly burn through the tendons. The fact that we got onto and well into the 2nd Plate phase last night was hugely encouraging.
Bloods were an issue if we let them build up, me helping with a shed load of mind sear seemed to keep them well under control. The key I think will be to get the Amalgamation down to a correct HP level fast enough, so melee might need to ignore bloods and stay on Amalgamation. If the total dps then does not add up to enough then we'll move the bloods to right behind the Amalgamation to get cleave damage too - however this is significantly trickier for the tank to get a fresh Amalgamation into the tanking area, which in turn means: we might need to switch our tanking positions to put bloods next to the plate if it becomes a problem getting the newly spawned Amalagamation into position.
I'm real encouraged though that we have a bone fide chance of a kill this reset and to go 7/8 HC progress!
ahhhhhhh i mean 3 s later offcourse :D
Quote from: microid;348010i would also start to use strong healing cooldowns on 4 algamation explosion. we will have then -15% hp. dont know how long the cooldown is for tranq or healing hymm. hope its enough for use in 4,5,6 algamations. 4 tranq 5 hymm 6 tranq again?
We should also have a good deal of damage reduction buffs from the Blood of Neltharion debuff so in the end, if dispellers don't mess it up ;-) we should all be at 30% damage reduction (3x 10%). Evens out against the 36% health loss.
Quote from: microid;348010i would also start to use strong healing cooldowns on 4 algamation explosion. we will have then -15% hp. dont know how long the cooldown is for tranq or healing hymm. hope its enough for use in 4,5,6 algamations. 4 tranq 5 hymm 6 tranq again?
We should also have a good deal of damage reduction buffs from the Blood of Neltharion debuff so in the end, if dispellers don't mess it up ;-) we should all be at least at some % damage reduction. 3x 10% for each ideally but not sure if there'll have been enough debuffs for this. Evens out against the 36% health loss.
One dispeller is the trick with the debuff.........two confuses it. There is a bit of RNG in the dispelling as the Death debuffs come in groups with no knowing how many dispells you'll have to do before it turns to earth..........and they are all on a timer ......so don't get it right and as we saw a couple of times on Tuesday its BOOM bye-bye raidgroup.
We had it rolling relatively nicely on Tuesday for long periods - The aoe as the mob hits nine stacks we were dealing with by using a spirit link .....that helped a lot........and of course using spirit link for each gather up.
My only comment - people need to be aware when they have the plasma debuff.........and be very very careful not to annoy anything and take damage that we can't heal.....emergency healing on someone with plasma debuff who is taking damage is very very very expensive in mana terms as our only option is to spam big expensive heals to get the plasma debuff off them in order to heal them up. The plasma debuff is regularly on 4-5 people at all times.
Quote from: Niel;348063My only comment - people need to be aware when they have the plasma debuff.........and be very very careful not to annoy anything and take damage that we can't heal.....emergency healing on someone with plasma debuff who is taking damage is very very very expensive in mana terms as our only option is to spam big expensive heals to get the plasma debuff off them in order to heal them up. The plasma debuff is regularly on 4-5 people at all times.
*cough* WeakAura's. I'll make me one :P
Quote from: Azunai;348069*cough* WeakAura's. I'll make me one :P
Tbh, everyone's debuffs should be split AWAY from their buff list and shown in an enlarged format closer to your raid warnings already, so you should already know you have the debuff and not need a WA code. See my UI as an example.
ATM I have my buffs in top right corner, and debuffs as tiny icons below my health bar. That's enough of a general visual reference, but I like to keep my eyes on the field. So I prefer WeakAura's for the customization. I'm not stuck to ugly and intrusive icons that way. And not all debuffs are relevant for me personally to have them enlarged on my screen ;-) The end result is the same anyway.
The soundtrack/music has been chosen for the kill video so it must be a time for us to defeat Heroic Spine. Fraps is paused ready to record, Sony Vegas is on standby, let's get it done tomorrow night.
if you feel that the plasma is a problem just shout a name in TS. me and teal will give that person a few direct heals. we lose some dps on algamation. but from the logs it seems that torgen and leggs was doing enough to it anyways. also if the raw algamation dps aint a problem i can keep my healing rain up the hole fight and do the grip.
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/boss_shieldsmonitor
addon to show how much healing is needed to clear the plazma debuff .... may help save some mana
Quote from: microid;348137if you feel that the plasma is a problem just shout a name in TS. me and teal will give that person a few direct heals. we lose some dps on algamation. but from the logs it seems that torgen and leggs was doing enough to it anyways. also if the raw algamation dps aint a problem i can keep my healing rain up the hole fight and do the grip.
It is not the plasma healing as such that is a problem........it is people getting themselves into a situation where they have plasma debuff and annoy something enough to have it hit them repeatedly......dpeneding on their HP situation that might be ok but also could be a bad thing. Grip channeled on anyone with plasma debuff is a "bad thing" as if we are not quick about knocking the grip off then they lose a large amount of HP.
Good progress last night and definitely good dps. We'll need to be on top DPS form on Sunday though to continue the good work.
Timing of the Grip/picking up Blood stacks looked much better, but we must get rid of Grip quicker than we are currently.
When we clear a plate and kill the remaining Corruptions, don't sink into a soak hole and cause Deathwing to roll until the tanks have had an opportunity to pick up some blood stacks. Tanks call when to stack in a pit please!
Whilst we only had 25 minutes on this fight last night we showed we were looking really solid on P1 (when we did the DPS requirement).
We confirmed that the 'boss2' macro works, so all dps should be using it so that we get MAXIMUM DPS for the FULL DURATION of the tendon.
Sunday should be fun! :thumbsup:
Quote from: TeaLeaf;348489When we clear a plate and kill the remaining Corruptions, don't sink into a soak hole and cause Deathwing to roll until the tanks have had an opportunity to pick up some blood stacks. Tanks call when to stack in a pit please!
Yeh, timing on getting into and out of the hole is utterly important:"The easiest way to handle a Barrel Roll is to have the entire raid stack in the same empty hole on Deathwing's back. In addition to triggering a Barrel Roll, this will also grant players the Grasping Tendrils (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=109456) debuff. This debuff slows player movement speed and deals a very small amount of damage (6,000 in 10-man difficulty) every 5.2 seconds and is removed by moving out of the hole (something that raid members must only do after the Barrel Roll is over).
Now for the heroic change:Grasping Tendrils (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=109456) (10-man/25-man) now deal 12,000 damage per second in 10-man difficulty and 13,000 damage per second in 25-man difficulty, up from 6,000 and 6,500 respectively. Additionally, Grasping Tendrils now slow movement speed by 50%, up from 35%.
Dont go in until called... and please get out as soon as you see them mobs flying off/you have a big warning on screen saying "Deathwing rolls!"
Source: http://www.icy-veins.com/spine-of-deathwing-detailed-strategy
Quote from: TeaLeaf;348489Sunday should be fun! :thumbsup:
Yeh, GL to all of you. :)
Quote from: Slush;348508Dont go in until called... and please get out as soon as you see them mobs flying off/you have a big warning on screen saying "Deathwing rolls!"
There's a substantial delay between when you get that message and when that roll takes place. Enough to get out and lose the Grasping Tendrils debuff, sending you off into the air. I'd go with seeing the mobs fly as an indication ;-)
Quote from: Azunai;348511There's a substantial delay between when you get that message and when that roll takes place. Enough to get out and lose the Grasping Tendrils debuff, sending you off into the air. I'd go with seeing the mobs fly as an indication ;-)
Good catch, thats when I go aswell.
Nice progress tonight with several tries producing 2 plates down and our first look at the 3rd plate transition and final phase.
-need to work on grouping up more, better stacks = better healing & better add control
-post plate 1 TL stayed on adds; in plate 3 we kite not kill
-rest of dps prio Amalgamation to ensure down to low enough HP for picking up stacks
-team of 3 on Grip - Inc/Miicro/Hubb
Need to learn the kite phase once we're ont he 3rd plate.
Good work all, we're 60 seconds from heroism on the final tendon now, so we're progressing well.
im gonna post my p3 idea which i tried to explain on TS and that didint went so well =)
ok so here the idea last 2 burn phases on burning tenton we are talking about "phase3"
at first do everything as normal kill corruptions do a roll.
kill the spammed corruption and nuke the algamation to nearly dead
as it starts to explode we kill the corruption that is gripping us because on the last one we will have heroism on
we dont need halls dps he will drag the new algamation to the right place while we are dps the tendom
we will then use the rest of heroism time to burn that algamation down and when its low enough we will immediately stack it up whit bloods.
kill the corruption again dont wait for the right grip time just go when alga is low enough.
this will save some time. whitey cant keep kiting bloods for ever.
hope this a littlebit more clearer than my ts mumble jumble.
That seems like what we were intending, i.e. to kill the corruption after 2nd grip (instead of leaving it on 5% or so HP), then burn the tendon under heroism and use the remainder of heroism on the new amalgamation.
Quote from: microid;348675hope this a littlebit more clearer than my ts mumble jumble.
Barely. It is real difficult to read a paragraph when it has so little punctuation, so I edited your single paragraph to insert line breaks where I think you intended them to be. Please check and re-edit your post if I guessed incorrectly.
(Transition notes to remind me)
Adjust transition prios to:
-important to *leave* existing Corruption alive during completion of tendon burn
-plate flies off
-2 new Corruptions spawn at front
-kill existing Corruption that is probably <10% HP and off-tank near mid-left pit, clear up some blood stacks (less than 9)
-SPLIT dps into 2 groups - Group (1) kill Bloods which are tanked near mid left pit, Group (2) kill front RIGHT Corruption
NOTE
-Bloods MUST be killed between the mid left & front right pits, so that
-when front right corruption is killed we immediately gather in mid-left pit to force the roll
-the new Amalgamation (from front right) runs towards mid-left pit, through bloods, gets 9 stacks and immediately flies off
-then kill front left and MT taunt Amalgamation directly to plate
-drag remaining bloods to normal position relative to the plate and start the Amalgamation burn
This should avoid two 9-stacked amalgamations being up at the same time and reduce the number of bloods humping the tank. Healing requirements should therefore be a lot lower.
Can I check that all healers have a way of tracking
Blood of Neltharion on their raid UI?
QuoteAs you have probably noticed, the detrimental effects of Degradation are countered by the damage reduction granted by Blood of Neltharion. Keep in mind, however, that while all players will gain stacks of Degradation evenly, the same cannot be said for stacks of Blood of Neltharion.
As a result of this, you should have a way of tracking the stacks of Blood of Neltharion on your raid frames and you must pay special attention to players without any stacks (or with few stacks).
Regarding dispelling Blood Corruption: Death and Blood Corruption: Earth, the following things should be kept in mind:
Always dispel Blood Corruption: Death immediately;
Never dispel Blood Corruption: Earth unless
the raid leader wants the tanks to reach 3 stacks of Blood of Neltharion quickly, in which case you should dispel Blood Corruption: Earth until it ends up on a tank OR;
the player affected by it already has 3 stacks of Blood of Neltharion.
Finally, keep in mind that your raid leader will almost surely assign specific healers to dispelling duty (so that Blood Corruption: Earth does not accidentally get dispelled) and you should respect these assignments.
Have added it to show stack count - i could see it before but only just realised that the stack count was not showing
Ahh i see know i kinda inderstand it
QuoteRemember that if a player already has 3 stacks of (http://wow.zamimg.com/images/wow/icons/tiny/inv_elemental_mote_nether.gif) Blood of Neltharion (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=106213), he/she cannot gain any additional stacks, so make sure that you dispell it quickly so that it jumps to a player without stacks or without 3 stacks (First full duration applied stacks is normally 2 stacks)
We're soooo close on this now. After our initial 'warm up' pull, we had 90% of our tries into the P2-->P3 transition and lasting 9 - 10 minutes. We tended to wipe after the death of the 2nd tendon at the transition. This is the bit we need to focus on and improve our current strategy. To my mind (but I have not checked logs yet) we seem to lose the tank at this point.
Thoughts & suggestions welcome please!
Currently we:
1-mana hymn shortly prior to P2-->P3 transition
2-have TL AOEing full-time on bloods to keep numbers down throughout P2
3-DG through 9 stack add Amalgamation
4-switch to AOEing bloods immediately after the tendon is down and move to our 'mid' position
5-aura mastery & rally cry just after we have got the tendon down whilst tank is being humped
6-spiritlink & healing hymn when we jump into the pit
We need to make sure we have a massive push on bloods immediately after the tendon.
The only other thing I can think of atm is to switch 5 & 6 meaning we have have spiritlink/hymn running during the AOE of the bloods phase to help soak up the Plasma effect+Burst damage from the exploding bloods. That would leave us with AM/RC for the pit along with my healing hymn but it would lose my AOE for 10 seconds on the bloods.
We're tending to die right after the tendon goes down whilst we AOE adds and move to pit to roll, that's the bit we need to do and then this fight is ours.
the blood do explode and do some minor damage. many explodes and that minor becomes major. i think we should not kill any bloods after the 3 tendon dies. blood exploding and pit damage seems to be fatal.
also for that warmup thingy all first kill so far has been on the last tries of the night. but all the rest bosses last from 5-8m a kill. well yorshall was a 10m. spine and madnesss are long fights. 12-15m
i suggest we start on sunday 1h earlier and make it a 4h run to have the same amount of tries that previous bosses. we are old men we need more tries on warmup =)
Quote from: microid;348847the blood do explode and do some minor damage. many explodes and that minor becomes major. i think we should not kill any bloods after the 3 tendon dies. blood exploding and pit damage seems to be fatal.
also for that warmup thingy all first kill so far has been on the last tries of the night. but all the rest bosses last from 5-8m a kill. well yorshall was a 10m. spine and madnesss are long fights. 12-15m
i suggest we start on sunday 1h earlier and make it a 4h run to have the same amount of tries that previous bosses. we are old men we need more tries on warmup =)
1 hour earlier is not doable for me seeing i always have dinner @ my mom's house on sundays ( i never have anything in the fridge on sunday either so it works out great :) ) and i get back home at 19:30ish to log on for the raid :)
I think more people in the guild have family stuff to do on sunday as well :)
I think an earlier start is probably not possible for RL reasons.
Re the bloods. We do not need ot kill them all, but we should kill what we can, perhaps single target dps is the way forward and then roll, then kite until the end. We're never going to get all the bloods down, but if we can clear 50% of them then that's a win. Part of this will mean Hal will need to pick up and tank some bloods too (but not get them DPS'd and not killed).
We had one attempt last night where i thought we had the adds nearly controlled at the start of the 3rd plate - we didn't really get a chance to try it but it might be worth dropping as many earth elementals as we have in the raid onto them as well to to divert some of the attention from the tank while we clean em up a little. The issue seemed to be a number of people taking damage and maybe a spirit link with most gathered would even that up for a while while we got the adds under control also. If we can just get into a clean start to plate 3 i think we're clear to go on this and we're looking at a kill.
Niel
Just a thought ......but is there anything to stop us starting P3 with a roll before we kill the tentacles and a roll shortly after ?
Only thing is that rolling does not get rid of bloods. We'll roll anyway to get rid of surplus Amalgamations, but then we're left with the one Amalgamation which we need to keep.
Been researching this some more and found something interesting this morning.
What we need is Blood of Neltharion (damage reduction buff) on tanks, but we're not sure how to get it to tanks.
Apparently, you can pretty much control who gets the buff as it Death debuff jumps from side to side when dispelled. Hence if we have tanks on left-ish side and rest of raid on right-ish side then when a Death on right is dispelled then it will jump to tank on left. I found this on Blood Legion (World #3) video, the rest of the video is seriously boring but that piece of info is a gem!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uY-Y0tefHo
(positioning shown at about 4:20 in video 2 linked below)
If this works, with some adjustments to positioning we can get the damage reduction buff on the tanks from the first plate and this will remain on the tanks for the rest of the fight and probably solve our P2-->P3 transition problem.
Another interesting point from the 2nd video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVzJS4j4ZJ8
We currently roll the boss immediately after clearing the corruptions to get rid of the surplus amalgamations.
Blood Legion recommend not doing this because:
-initially bloods are slow and a 0-stack Amalgamation does almost no damage, so tank them
-when 9 bloods are down run one through to pick up 9 stacks (needs a bit of tank coordination)
-burn corruption as normal to say 45%
-now you are into the second half of P1, but you already have an amalgamation which is down to circa 50% HP, so you can probably push this one across in one grip not 2
Not quite sure how we would do this in 10 man, the tank coordination might make it a tricky thing to handle, but it was worth repeating here.
Part 3 of the video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP0C8LkoM6g
Worth watching imo, but a small warning, the 3rd one is 1hr40min.
Nice discussion about interraction of Spirit Link and the burning plasma debuff. They recommend using spirit link post roll to get rid of the debuffs, watching the video it really works well, so perhaps we need to consider moving where we use it.
the only way we could do that 3 algamation p1 thingy. is to switch places whit hal and whytee. blood to front algs to back. when we want to blow up one of them whytee just taunts the low hp one it will run to whytee colletct all the bloods.
Nice find TL .... With luck these will be the nuggets we need for the kill
Yup micro the tank taunt to gain stacks of bloods looks like a solid tac too
Sounds like a good plan...from what i have seen when i have dispelled Earth ( as a try on Thursday ) i suspect it has the same chance of turning to Death as Death as to Earth - around 20% or 25%.........so it turning to Earth on the wrong side most of the time should not be an issue as it will only take 1 dispel to drop it on a tank with a high chance of remaining Earth.
Niel
I dont really understand why we are switching a perfectly fine tack.. but ok. Normally i would not have a problem with it but i really really Hate this fight and i dont even want to do it. It makes me want to log off :S
Changing tacks makes it even more horrible.
I dont even understand why people are complaining about doing different tacks when the one we are using is working!
The problem is Hubbah, that we have a current tactic that gets us perfectly to a wipe in the P2-->P3 transition. Making this change is attempting to put us in a position where we can survive the P2-->P3 transition.
It took us most of the night to adjust to the new opening phase of the fight, but I think we're back to working on that P2-->P3 transition now.
Kill 3 Corruptions, off-tank all 3
We ALL stack in our strict left (tanks) & right (everyone else) positions and the tanks are now reliably picking up the buff. Burn Skull & Cross Amalgamations.
Once tanks get buffed we move to normal positions (bloods at plate, amalgamations just behind the raid) and continue. TL continues on Bloods.
DPS bring the Amalgamation to 250k
Blood tank taunts in the Amalgamation when 9 bloods are down to get stacks and DPS immediately kill (we had a couple of excellent goes where we had just one AOE pulse)
Raid backs off slightly for Nuke Blast, then moves forward to blood position to burn Tendon.
When tendon killed, kill Corruptions, roll and rinse & repeat from normal positions.
I thought it ended up quite well last night and we had some very solid tries. Whilst we also reliably got to the P2-->P3 transition last Tuesday, the difference last night was that we got there with both tanks having the buff - and that's the bit that will be critical in overcoming this element of the encounter.
One thing we're clearly still figuring out is when to best use our healing CDs and we need to learn to use them when Searing Plasma is going to cause us a problem.
I do think it possible to use the original tactic that we were solidly getting through P2 and still attempt to pursuade the Earth debuff onto tanks.
On the new tactics last night i'd did still feel ragged to me - positioning of the raid seemed an issue with people spread out and the tendon dps was for some reason reliably lower than we had got it to only a few days earlier.
Searing Plasma is an issue the whole fight - spirit link gives a temporary respite only. The main issue with plasma is that people that have it need to be real careful about their aggro.....i do see a number of occasions where people with plasma on low HP pick up aggro on a new mob.
As for moving on the Earth buff ...... i did it a number of times last night in an attempt to get it to a tank and not once did it turn back to Death.........bouncing it around is a big gamble and with the 10 seconds available to move it there's no saying where it will end up........if i couldn't get it to a tank i was leaving it on a healer as we do get a lot of love from the blobs due to healing aggro.
Cheers
Niel
Then here's a suggestion (as a mash-up):
P1 up to and including first Tendons burn:
We split left/right, let tanks get buffs. This should be real easy if we stick to the strict left/right as we saw last night.
There's no reason why this shouldn't give us at least 1 stack on each of the tanks, with luck one will proc for 2 stacks (it can do that apparently)
P1 towards second Tendons burn and everything afterwards:
We return to the old tried and true method where we tank the bloods in the middle and the Amalgamation near the plate. This has the advantage of the tank being able to assist with the Tendon dps.
That should be the best of both worlds... although I must say near the end we were doing ok on the new method as well, bar some DPS loss on the tendon.
QuoteWe return to the old tried and true method where we tank the bloods in the middle and the Amalgamation near the plate
One of the best parts on the "new" method was taunting the add into a pool of bloods next to the plate. Having sat out watching Hal's live stream on the old method the new taunt and pop realy looks like a win when we get it right
The Earth buff although not perfect seems to be mostly heading to tanks I think tighter positioning will help.
Puja ya bang on with Searing Plasma. You cant aford to be getting any damage or agro when you have this. Maybe for dps worth knocking up a weak aura so you cant miss that you are in trouble
Blood killing .... looking at logs we have people killing bloods during a tendon phase probs splash damage / cleave .. Can we not put any dps onto bloods at this point. Each time one pops we get a raid wide 3-5k hit and its a sensitive time for healing as we are still trying to get poeple up from the nova pulse and dps the corruption
We are well able to do single target DPS only, and we'll easily make the DPS curve on adds in P1. Afterwards there's only ever 1 target so no need to cleave/AoE at all.
I'm fine with doing the new tactic, it seemed to work well enough near the end of the raid (we nearly reached P3 there). I was just suggesting based on Puja's statement that it was harder (on healers, I figured). But if that's not then hey.. :-)
To be honest the only real negative difference I've noticed is that we're missing the tank's dps on the tendon, which tbh I think we should be able to cover for.
I'm not saying the new position makes it harder........but the positioning being a bit looser in the attempts so far does not make the best use of the Cleansing Flames proc on the DW healer MH that all of our healers are using. We averaged 6-8% of each healers output being from Cleansing Flames on Sunday.........with the previous tactics/positioning we we getting 10-15% of output. Cleansing Flames is basically free healing from the weapon proc and our positioning needs to make this as effetive as possible. I am pretty sure the cone of cleansing flames is a 140 degree frontal cone so we need to position the healers and as many people as possible in front of as many of the 3 frontal cones as possible..........its not 100% necessary but makes the removal of searing plasma easier and as it is free healing this means it costs less mana over time..........and mana is the big decider as far as the healing goes............we can up output during heavy loads but output comes at the cost of durability - and this is a long fight so we have to take advantage of everything. Even running smoothly we have 3 healers averaging 20K+ HPS for the whole fight with peaks of 26K HPS.........maintaining this is not a walk in the park.
Searing Plasma/HP/aggro awareness - mentioned before but i will reiterate it...............if someone has searing plasma and aggros mobs that then stick to them the only way to save their backside is to heal like hell to get the plasma off them..........high cost heals are a huge drain on mana and due to the levels of output required already it is a big negative to do this. I have used 30-40% of my total mana saving one person on occasions like this.........we simply can't afford to do it. If a mob gets solid aggro on someone it is because that someone has annoyed it enough for it to love them lots........if that person has searing plasma and does things that might lead to any mob taking such a liking to them that it needs a tank to taunt it off them then i think it reckless to get into that situation in the first place. As a healer i attract lots of attention from the blobs but i try to position myself that the aoe tank abilities remove it off me in short order. For me the searing plasma debuff should trigger something in people that says "hey, maybe i had better single target solidly tanked mobs until this is gone".............the fact is that right now people are usually gettign away with it because either a tank saves them from the beating or the healers save them by getting the debuff off.......i'd prefer the sitation to be triggered as little as possible as the best option. I'm not saying everything is awful.........but it is an improvement that would help as it does happen every attempt.
Cheers
Niel
i have addon called tidy plates its changes the color of mops health bar if i got aggro. so i should notice it right away. but the lag might show it too late and blob humps me a few time before whitee tell him something about his mother and it will go for a revenge =)
from last night tries i dont remember having agro from anything. the only time that can happend is when a new blob spawns it has to gain agro on someone and theres really nothing a dps can do about it on that time.
what i will try today is not to use searing totem. thats usual the reason for agro on shamans. gonna lose some dps on algamations but if this fix agro problem then so be it.
for the new tactics i like it. the position of the tanks is better. hal dont have to go around half of the DW back to bick up blood or try to avoid them when going in position whit the new one. whytee has hes back to the wall so all blobs will attack him from side. old tactics they every direction. avoidance parry/dodge dont work on attacks which comes from back.
Another thing with Puja comment for the positioning is my frontal cone heal - It is very dependant on positioning - Where before i would solid get it to hit 6 persons it now hits between 4-5 so thats healing down the drain along with the weapon proc. It is nothing we cannot cope with, but if people stack up better all the healers will do better healing.
Also the thing about aggro on searing plasma is a pain - If my HoP is on cd and someone is getting stomped by blobs i only have the choice to spam heal divine light/flash light depending on how low that person is or waste a LoH on that person that could have been used later in the fight where the real fun begins. I am also fine with the new tactic and getting into the later plates is going to be crucial, but if people could improve the stacking and being in a spot where the blobs are easy for the tank to pickup - Then this is going to be a succes.
Quotei have addon called tidy plates its changes the color of mops health bar if i got aggro
I have the same but the problem being if its shows I have agro its already too late. The trigger should be I have the plazma debuff dont aoe/get agro
i though we already agreed that no aoe in this figth? so no one should not be doing it
Well there's a good chance you'll grab some while cleaning up Bloods in the later part of the fight. That's where you need to be careful with AoE if you have the debuff, mainly. For the 1st part, yes, don't AoE on the Amalgamations.
Following up on the one pull last night, it was clear we're into the last critical transition and just need to handle it to see the phat loot at the other end of the rainbow. The key to my mind is how we use spiritlink to remove excess plasma debuffs when we get into a phase where the raid will be taking high damage (like getting rid of bloods or a plate transition). We have 2 spirit links and we had 10 mins of fight last night. The average kill is about 11 min30, so we're real close to finishing this fight off.
In terms of positioning, let's make sure we get the spiritlink 10yds from the plate - it is OUR responsibility to group tightly after each roll (and at all other times) to ensure we are within 10yds of the totem and getting its effect. Spiritlink is awesome at removing plasma debuffs so we need to maximise their use.
I also think that we will need to ignore trinket CDs not being over and just push right through under heroism once into the 3rd plate phase - as soon as the Amalgamation is at 250-500k we should stack it up to 9 and push into a tendon burn phase during which we'll run heroism which should cover lack of trinkets. The trinks will then be back up for the 2nd half of the 3rd tendon burn. If we don't do this then we're adding another 3 minutes to the fight instead of the 90 seconds that it might cover. I guess we'll need to see how that phase goes.
Sunday should be a kill so let's get a good turnout!
Went through all of the Fraps from our Sunday attempts and some common themes stood out. I timelined the tries where we did not pooch something too soon and looked at the timing differences between tries and what worked, what can be done better and where we were effective. The spreadsheet results are here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgpVmSSOvlTsdHc2cHFEcldPa0RERW51NWdYYlJHd0E) if you want to see the numbers. Note: In the spreadsheet, Taunt also covers Hal running in with the Amalgamation
My viewing notes were these:
Raid is positioned up at plate by blood tank, melee on Amalgamation, ALL in rain
Must run Amalgamation into Bloods quicker
Must burn corruption & group to roll quicker
Must get quicker barrier post roll to coincide with other 2 CDs
Too early on the Spirtlink wastes it and Plasmas do not get removed
Must Skull new Amalgamation quicker
Use Hideous Amalgamation macro to burn quicker
Hal watch to not get Tendrils whilst tanking Amalgamation
Don't kill Corruption before Blast starts
Amalgamation aim is 250k (higher means too slow)
Under CDs, pump healing into NON-PLASMA targets
Taunt to Tendon Burn generally = 15 secs
On first phase, blood tank keep taunt available when near the Amalagamation taunt
Nuclear Blast is 5 seconds
Possible to blow CDs before we roll to minimize Plasmas?
Assign melee to front left Corruptiom, Ranged to 'rear'
Position of Barrier
Burn strategy for bloods during P3 - ensure we get 9
From these notes, the timeline and viewing of the Sunday Fraps I see these as the key factors:
Amalgamation DPS
This is the single biggest thing we can change to make this fight easier. On the first plate either bloods (1st burn) or Trinket CD (second burn) are the limiting factor. From the 2nd Plate onwards (i.e. from 3rd tendon burn onwards) the Amalgamation HP is the limiting factor. Post a tendon burn we HAVE to get onto DPSing the Amalgamation immediately and hard. The sooner we get it down to 250k the fewer bloods we have to deal with and the sooner we can get into another burn phase. We need to push as hard as we can to keep closer to the 90 second trinket CD timing & Hal needs to remember to skull the add ASAP to assist.
USE a target macro!!
Burn 1-1: Limited by blood numbers
Burn 1-2: Limited by trinket CD
Burn 2-1: Limited by Amalgamation DPS (currently 10-20 seconds behind)
Burn 2-2: Limited by Amalgamation DPS (currently 15 seconds behind)
Burn 3-1: Reached once, 24 seconds behind
Burn 3-2: (not yet reached)
(e.g. Burn 1-2 means Plate 1, 2nd burn)
Positoning
Raid is positioned up at plate by blood tank, melee on Amalgamation, but ALL in healing rain, not spread out all over the shop.
The Taunt/Run-In
From the point at which we run the add in to the start of a tendon burn is about 12 seconds, so the aim is to move the Amalgamation to the bloods no later than 12 sec left on trinket CD. Clearly this is limited by the Amalgamation HP, but from 2nd plate onwards do not wait for a call as there will automatically be enough bloods ready to stack. Waiting for a TS call will waste precious seconds.
Post-Tendon Burn
We have to ensure that the moment the Tendon Burn is over that DPS switch immediately to either the new Amalgamation (first half of a tendon burn) or the new Corruptions (after a tendon has been killed).
The Roll
After a tendon kill we leave front right corruption and:
-Melee should always kill front left
-Ranged should kill the 'other rear' tendon
-ALL have to be closer to mid-left to initiate the ROLL sooner (currently there's a big delay)
We roll ASAP.
Searing Plasmas
Reviewing the Fraps I saw big differences in the effectiveness of how we used out spiritlink, healing hymn & power word barrier. Our problem seems to be that by the time we get to a ROLL we have 3-6 plasmas up already, are sometimes struggling to keep people alive, hence the wish to use spiritlink pre-roll.
However, on most tries where we had 4 or fewer Plasma debuffs up at the roll the effectiveness of Spiritlink was greatly reduced. On tries where we had more than 4 Searing Plasma debuffs up Spiritlink then become seriously effective. I therefore think we need to make the spiritlink call an optional one for the shaman. Perhaps using a rule something like: 5 or more is a pre-roll spiritlink, or, 4 with low health is a pre-roll spirit link, 3 or less is a post-roll spirit link. (there was one try with 4 plasmas where we were a lot lower HP than usual and on that particular try spiritlink worked really well).
We then need to get way better at coordinating the barrier & hymn. We had a couple where palcement of the barrier was an issue or the timing of the combo was poor. We need to hit these together if we use them at this point. Aim for barrier in mid just ahead of the roll-pit. It is the raid's responsibility to get there and stay there ASAP after a roll to benefit from the healing CDs - it's no good if you run out of range!
REMINDER - when we're healing under spiritlink, resist the urge to heal low-HP debuffed targets, only heal those WITHOUT Searing Plasma or you totally waste your mana.
Possible Strategy Change for Searing
One thing I am still thinking about, is the option post tendon kill to: kill corruptions, group up nicely & blow all healing CDs to get rid of plasmas, and only then do the roll. It might allow more effective searing plasma mitigation.
Possible Strategy Change for Burn 1-2:
We're regularly getting this first tendon down to circa 40% on Burn 1-1, so we might be able to do Burn 1-2 without the trinkets. This would mean we could trigger the Burn 2-1 about 25 seconds earlier and with far fewer bloods, which by the time we get into P3 will really help us.
Thoughts?
Quote from: TeaLeaf;350257Positoning
Raid is positioned up at plate by blood tank, melee on Amalgamation, but ALL in healing rain, not spread out all over the shop.
Small request to Hal in this regard: If you can, pull the Amalgamation a bit more to the center of the platform. I have to be behind the Amalg to maximize DPS and I noticed you kept it on the right side a couple of times (in P2+, after the roll). This leaves me out of the healing rain.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;350257Possible Strategy Change for Burn 1-2:
We're regularly getting this first tendon down to circa 40% on Burn 1-1, so we might be able to do Burn 1-2 without the trinkets. This would mean we could trigger the Burn 2-1 about 25 seconds earlier and with far fewer bloods, which by the time we get into P3 will really help us.
Not sure if it'll make a huge impact as the spawn rate is of course lower, but yes, every bit probably helps so I say go for it.
Quote from: Azunai;350264Not sure if it'll make a huge impact as the spawn rate is of course lower, but yes, every bit probably helps so I say go for it.
We have surplus bloods left over fom Burn 1-1, so there should be little or no blood limitation to adopting his change, thus the deciding factor is the dps on the tendon - if we can kill it without the trinket on Burn 1-2 then we should be ahead of the curve with the add spawn rate for later in the fight.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;350257Post a tendon burn we HAVE to get onto DPSing the Amalgamation immediately and hard. The sooner we get it down to 250k the fewer bloods we have to deal with and the sooner we can get into another burn phase. We need to push as hard as we can to keep closer to the 90 second trinket CD timing & Hal needs to remember to skull the add ASAP to assist.
USE a target macro!!
Of all the issues mentioned in your post, this stands out to be the most important one in my eyes.
After the SUPERIMPORTANT Tendon-burn, its easy to sit back and "wait" for next Tendon-burn-phase.
Yeh, this could make things easier.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;350257Possible Strategy Change for Burn 1-2:
We're regularly getting this first tendon down to circa 40% on Burn 1-1, so we might be able to do Burn 1-2 without the trinkets. This would mean we could trigger the Burn 2-1 about 25 seconds earlier and with far fewer bloods, which by the time we get into P3 will really help us.
Agreed. With the optimal/close-to optimal raid setup, its quite doable.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;350257However, on most tries where we had 4 or fewer Plasma debuffs up at the roll the effectiveness of Spiritlink was greatly reduced. On tries where we had more than 4 Searing Plasma debuffs up Spiritlink then become seriously effective. I therefore think we need to make the spiritlink call an optional one for the shaman. Perhaps using a rule something like: 5 or more is a pre-roll spiritlink, or, 4 with low health is a pre-roll spirit link, 3 or less is a post-roll spirit link. (there was one try with 4 plasmas where we were a lot lower HP than usual and on that particular try spiritlink worked really well).
Well, bear in mind that the Searings just keeps popping up. All the time.
-Pre-roll; We always manage to get everyone back up.
-Post-roll; People are lower on HP due to "hole-debuff = damage" and there will be new Searing Plasmas applied to the raid as soon as roll is finished. In majority of the fights, at this time, healers are often (not always) struggling... And having Spirit Link on CD when this happens is not optimal.
Quote from: Slush;350269Well, bear in mind that the Searings just keeps popping up. All the time.
-Pre-roll; We always manage to get everyone back up.
-Post-roll; People are lower on HP due to "hole-debuff = damage" and there will be new Searing Plasmas applied to the raid as soon as roll is finished. In majority of the fights, at this time, healers are often (not always) struggling... And having Spirit Link on CD when this happens is not optimal.
Post corruption kill you get more Plasma every time so I'm afraid with all the bloods and all the amalgamations we're not getting all the people back up to full HP pre-roll Slush. That's the whole reason why Puja was having to use Spiritlink before the roll.
When I watched the fraps from Sunday the effectiveness of pre-roll spiritlink depended on how many plasmas we had out at the time.
We can heal up the minor tendril/pit damage far easier if we don't have plasma out on the raid. The problem comes when you get 5 or 6 plasma and then jump into the pit. That's the problem I was trying to resolve.
Sooo... Fiery Grip seems to be doing alot of evil to us now. We had several deaths due to grip both thursday and sunday. Any thoughts?
well.. i do or not enough dmg or to mutch .. im really trying .. but the first try's i nuked it to 50% in 2 seconds.. so i have to hold back :S
Spent some time looking at numbers on Tendon DPS as the fact that we could so 61% on the first tendon burn and then fail to do 39% on the second was grinding my groin. Not sure what the numbers tell me, only looked at tries 7-11 inclusive, other than we're way too variable in our DPS output in that phase. Target with macros, zero delay on starting dps, be fast!
Spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgpVmSSOvlTsdHY1dTFaeW9iQzByOUpXSTBqNjVtb2c)
Pot buffs:
We defintely lost DPS by not using pots on all tries. Mine is macro'd in, so I know I used mine and the logs show the number of buffs we received from our buff pots. This is something we have to fix seeing as we are *regularly* seeing us miss the DPS goal by a very small amount, an amount which a buff pot would more than cover.
DPS Buff Pots used:
Teaell 12
Incéndia 10
Jesung 7
Guru 6
Zaul 0
Please ensure you have a supply of your own buff pots in your bags at all times and USE THEM. As an example, I currently have about 190 Volcanic Potions in my bags as I tend to make up batches of 200 at a time and then have a plentiful supply for raids. Having loads in your bags also makes it psychologically easier to use one as you know you have loads left! Make sure you have good supplies too.
Raid Classes
I think some classes are clearly struggling to consistently get high dps on the tendon. A lesson for raid leaders is that perhaps we need to only have one lower burst dps class in the raid at a time (attendance allowing).
Mea culpa: forgot to replenish my pots stack before the raid.
Apart from that, i've noticed the unholy spec has a couple of issue with bursting the tendons: the application of diseases (which gives dps over about 40 secs), the time for the ghoul to reach the tendon, and above all the gargoyle. The gargoyle in particular needs a target to be used, so i'll have to use 2 globals just to activate the cooldowns (outbreak and gargoyle); in addition to that, the gargoyle somehow bugs, for he does not start attacking immediately after he's summoned (which takes another couple of seconds for the silly animation) but on the spine in particular, i noticed it's summoned too close to the tendril (over the plate) and then has to get back on "legit" ground before it starts attacking, which means i lose about 5 secs of it. Since it's a 15 seconds window, i'm losing about a third of it setting up the burst and 10 seconds actively bursting. As much as i'd like to do this fight (i like the mechanics and the fight itself) i think for the time being i'm the best candidate for the bench, since i'm the lowest dps on the tendons anyway.
A few seem to be in the same boat Tirk .... overall dps is good tho burst is poor. 2H frost my be required for this one.
Quote from: JonnyAppleSeed;354570A few seem to be in the same boat Tirk .... overall dps is good tho burst is poor. 2H frost my be required for this one.
Was thinking something along those lines, but something came to my mind. First, we'll be losing the anti magic shield raidwise on the roll, and that may not be a big issue, just an extra burden on the healers. In addition, the frost spec dps rotation includes a frequent use of howling blast, which is also the main aoe dps of the frost spec. I'm afraid it will cause some mess during the fight because it will hit all the corrupted bloods around my target, making positioning and timing more problematic.
I'm not sure if these issues are big enough to even be considered, since last week was my first time in dragon soul heroics (better including minor issue than omitting major ones, i think).
I'd rather try it with everyone potting first.
My :2cents:
Be aware please that as of 29th August reset:
Most dispel mechanics have changed:
E.g. priest now has an 8 sec. cooldown
And as a result:
The Spine of Deathwing encounter has been adjusted to accommodate the new dispell mechanics.
-The Blood Corruption debuffs in the Spine of Deathwing now turn to the buffs after the first dispel.
Just saying I've read all this and my job seems boring, stand at back and collect Amalga's. Here's some quotes from the last 7 pages that might be useful:
/targetexact Burning Tendons for tendons, Been reported that /target Burning Tendon does not work for one side.
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/boss_shieldsmonitor addon to show how much healing is needed to clear the plazma debuff
Wondering if RGT have any advice for the new dispelling.
Post patch dispelling.........all change. Where before we had one dispeller bouncing it around to turn it to earth and also try to move it to an appropriate target........now due to the cleanse CD basically all healers must do it. Debuffs do still arrive in groups though smaller than before. Not a major problem now but just harder to bounce around to one someone that you would like it on.