Thread for the discussion of the Heroic version of this encounter.
This one looks a bunch of fun in Heroic, 4th phase, lots of action and I think it's something we can handle if we stop panicking for the Velocity/Resonance phase!
Everyone should check out their AOE builds, Jes need you to check out Demo plz too!
Im a big fan of the Icy-veins "Whats the difference between normal and heroic" section in their guides... I just did a copy/paste:
11. Heroic Mode
The Heroic mode of Feng the Accursed presents raiders with a fairly accessible challenge. The fight, as we will see, remains largely unchanged, but an additional, all-new phase is added.
11.1. Differences from Normal Mode
As we just mentioned, the Heroic mode has an all-new, Heroic-only phase. Additionally, there are several minor differences from Normal mode.
We present the minor differences here, and the new phase in a separate sub-section.
Feng the Accursed has more health in Heroic mode, and all of his abilities deal more damage.
Feng no longer enters his phases in a predetermined order. Rather, he enters a new phase at 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% health. The phase he enters is the phase associated with the statue he is nearest to, allowing your raid to choose the order of the phases. Feng can only enter each phase once, as the respective statue is destroyed when Feng absorbs it.
Every time Feng enters a new phase, he gains a stack of Strength of Spirit, which buffs his damage done by 5% per stack, until the end of the fight.
Finally, as we mentioned above, there is a new phase that your raid will have to deal with. We detail this below.
11.1.1. New Phase: Spirit of the Shield
During this phase, Feng uses 3 abilities.
Shadowburn is a stacking debuff that Feng applies to the tank, identical to those which we discuss in the shared abilities section. Shadowburn inflicts Shadow damage.
Chains of Shadow is an ability that Feng spams with relatively high frequency. It deals damage to a random player, and then jumps to other nearby targets, dealing damage to them as well. The damage to each successive target is lower than the damage to the one before. In 10-man, Chains of Shadow affects 3 targets, while in 25-man it affects 8.
Siphoning Shield is cast by Feng every 30 seconds. He throws his shield at a nearby location, which causes a number of adds (5 in 10-man and 10 in 25-man) to spawn on the location of random raid members.
The adds, called Soul Fragments, simply travel towards the shield. They perform no other actions, and deal no damage. Upon reach the shield, each Fragment heals Feng for 5% of his maximum health.
The Soul Fragments can be slowed, stunned, and knocked back.
11.2. Strategy
The main new element for your raid to master will be dealing with the Heroic-only phase. In addition to this, you will have to choose the best order for the phases, depending on your own circumstances.
11.2.1. Spirit of the Shield
During this phase, your two tanks will have to take turns tanking Feng, due to the Shadowburn debuff.
Your raid should be stacked up near Feng. This will cause Chains of Shadow to deal its full damage, and it will be a source of possible deaths for your raid members, but it remains the optimal positioning during this phase.
Finally, your raid must be quick to kill the Soul Fragments when they spawn. Since you will be stacked together, it will simply be a matter of AoEing them down while making sure that they are slowed, stunned, and knocked back (away from the shield, of course).
It is interesting to note that by channeling Nullification Barrier on the shield thrown by Feng, the adds in that wave will simply despawn.
11.2.2. Order of Phases
As we mentioned above, in Heroic mode, you can choose the order of the phases. Simply pull Feng close to the statue that you wish him to siphon, and when he reaches the next transition percentage, he will siphon that statue and enter the respective phase.
We will start out by saying that the fight can be defeated regardless of the order of the phases. In order to make sure that Feng enters the appropriate phase at the start of the fight, the tank who pulls him should already be standing next to the respective statue.
Our recommended order is:
Spirit of the Staff;
Spirit of the Fist;
Spirit of the Shield;
Spirit of the Spear.
The reason for choosing this order is that this way, the most problematic phases come first, allowing you to quickly know if the attempt is a success or a failure, and to save a lot of time.
Indeed, Spirit of the Staff presents your raid with high damage from Arcane Velocity, and a lot of potential for deaths, due to Arcane Resonance.
Spirit of the Fist is easy if your tanks manage to stun Feng often, but can otherwise prove quite problematic.
The final two phases, including the Heroic-only phase, are not really difficult.
Lastly, keep in mind once more that Feng's damage will increase by 5% each time he enters a new phase, due to Strength of Spirit. This means that the damage dealt during the final phase will be high. In our recommended order, this means that the raid damage from Draw Flame will be very high, and your healers must be prepared for this.
Nice outline from Icy Veins there. Looks relatively simple, although I would possibly suggest swapping Shield and Fist in the order of phases as we're better at the epicenter CD than we are at getting flames put down in the right place!
Spear is fire, not Fist.
Quick notes from the graveyard:
Staff - Velocity/Resonance phase
Shield - NEW phase - adds spawn on shield throw
Fist - Epicenter phase
Spear - Spark & Draw Flame phase
Weapons are positioned around the platform in a clockwise direction, starting from near left: Staff->Shield->Fist->Spear
Boss goes to closest weapon, on pull and each transition (100%, 75%, 50% and 25%) ensure boss is closest to the weapon you want to select.
ORDER:I actually quite liked the order we had with Staff>Shield>Fist>Spear. I absolutely would not want Spear earlier and have any ticks spill over into the following phase so I think Spear has to be last.
Comparatively speaking, damage was, lower in the Shield phase, so I think putting it in between Staff & Fist was a good plan to allow CD timers to tick off and allow for greater regen.
STAFFWe still have people not moving when they should. Movement rules are:
-default position is 10yds from boss (resonance AOE range is 6 yds!)
-if you get resonance
stand still (you only need to move closer to reduce Velocity damage if you were already too far away!)
-do not collapse to middle unless a velocity happens and you do NOT have resonance
-if velocity & resonance timers overlap/clash, wait at 10 yards and see who gets resonance, then collapse to middle for velocity
-if resonance timer is due to overlap/expire near end of velocity then start running out to 10yds position at 2 seconds remaining on velocity.
We need to sort raidwall order for the ones without a barrier. Hubbah, remember to move please, you stayed out a few times when you should have collapsed to middle!
SHIELDNull barrier negates all the adds and significantly speeds up this stage, so we need to ensure we use it on alternate spawns.
We group on Blue2/Shield spot, tanks remain on Star until Shield thrown in general direction of Black4/Spear, then rapidly kite boss towards Blue2 and rest of raid for AOE splash damage, follow adds back towards Black4 and stop in middle again with boss still facing Black 4 for next shield throw.
My preference here is to aim for 4 sets of adds before pushing next phase, Null 1, AOE 2, Null 3, and then AOE 4. This means we then go into P3 with a Null barrier available and do not have to blow heroism.
Abilities tried on adds (please add yours in this thread and I will edit them into this bit)
Abilities that work:Shaman - Capacitor totem - 5 sec stun
Druid - Ursol's Vortex (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=102794/ursols-vortex)
Abilities that do not work:Shadow priest void tendrils
Shaman Earthbind totem
FISTIf we have a null barrier for first Epicenter then we should be ok to get into a normal routine as it will allow time for a cast to be stolen etc. We need to sort out remaining raidwalls here and what will be off CD with a mind to what we will need in P4.
Note: I think it is worth letting boss pick up Fist weapon, then taunting him to Blue2/Shield so that we get a bit more dps time as the boss transits across the platform towards the Spear at the end of P3.
SPEARDefintely want this one last! Fire placement seems ok, but damn that tick damage will need chained raidwalls and CDs. To quote something from the Normal version thread:
QuoteAnyways we figured absorbing first draw flame was worse than second because first gives him around 10 stacks, second gives him around 20 so we let him absorb first, we absorb second wave, he took third, we absorbed fourth and just continued to phase 3 as he ran out of those stacks
So, if this holds true in Heroic still, we can exit P3 after a Null barrier epicenter, then let him absorb first draw flame and raidwall it, then barrier 2nd, raidwall 3rd, barrier 4th etc. That's the plan we should aim for imo.
Anyway, finishing with a 19% wipe on a bugged try was pretty awesome, so well done all :thumbsup:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1678[/ATTACH]
Shield Adds- Capacitor totem worked like a dream on them.....a full 5 second stun on all of them ( so long as we were not tardy in grouping up on their spawn ).......dropped a few yards ahead of them on their path i hit them all every go but one where we had a split spawn due to not being grouped properly.
All Stacking in same place enables me to drop Ursol's Vortex (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=102794/ursols-vortex) and was finding I didnt have to use Typhoon at all as adds were being locked down and AoE'd quickly but was always positioned close to shield in case.
Important note - dropping to travel form makes it easier for said druid to be able to stack again with time to spare
Missed out the "does not work" bit.
Earthgrab totem ........does not work on the adds
That plan for spear looks solid TL :yahoo: cant wait to see a proper try on this boss. I didnt Get to try frost shock adds, but that should work as a single target slow. Will do if we Get one infront of the others. Tbh, ele shaman with glyphed earthquake would be amazing here aswell.
Either way: aoe magma totem will be down to help out on dps.
Bump for Tuesday night and additional feedback please.
One option still being mulled over in my head is whether we range Epicenter instead. We do the interrupt & null barrier well, but if we miss one we wipe and it requires us to enter that phase with an available null barrier, which in turn forces us to exit Shield phase after a 4th set of adds:
-if we can finish Shield phase without heroism and with only 3 sets of adds then I reckon we should take the time and enter Fist without a Null barrier (and adjust to a ranged epicenter strategy)
-if it takes us 4 add phases in Shield then we may as well enter Fist with a Null Barrier for first and remain grouped up as per our Normal strategy
Discuss!
For the record : No frost mage abilities work on the adds except the slow given from frostfire bolt/frost bolt. So Freeze and Nova DO NOT work.
hi sorry for the lateness in putting this on the forum page. My charging ox wave seems to work well as a stun, it has one minute cd to bear in mind and only stuns for 3 seconds.
Frustratingly close on this one.
P1 seems fine so long as people do NOT stand too far away. Because of the off-centre positioning that makes it a little wierd, but in particular the 'wide' side tends to stand outside the ring as if the boss were centred fully, which makes the run in longer & therefore damage taken more than it should be. Just take time to minimise range to boss, 10yds is sufficient, more than that is just unnecessary.
P2 looks good now so long as we get towards the Blue line quickly. Remember on the first wave of adds we're probably going to be fractionally in front of Blue, but from the second wave onwards let's maintain that tight grouping. (healer-tank range is what limits movement for the first wave). When we focus we get the adds down and have shown that we can handle that phase regularly now.
P3 is almost there. Tanks are now happy for the entire raid to head to group up under the boss (as on Normal) for the Epicenter phase. Personally I'd love a hunter to be used for the fist, not a mage. Despite the mage having self-heals, the hunter has a mitigation CD which means the damage doesn't hit in the first place, which has to be better. Discuss! I suspect the problem we saw was Hubbah taking two consecutive fists rather than every other one. With improved tank-fistee communication I think we'll resolve that and this will allow Midd to remain in a nuking role and standing with the rest of the raid.
P4 we need more time on. We need to roll CDs and make sure we get there with sufficient mana.
This fight has been defeated in the early days by guilds in predominantly blue gear, so we need to figure out where we are going wrong as insufficient mana means either inefficient healing, the dps being way too slow, or the raid taking to much unavoidable damage. Discuss!
Quote from: TeaLeaf;363559P3 is almost there.
Lightning Lash (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=131788) + 3 stacks of Strength of Spirit (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=116363)
I heard Hal said he just got 3 stacks (when he died second time). This make me happy, because current guides suggest swapping on two stacks:
Source Icy-veins.com:
"These abilities all warrant a tank switch. We recommend that the off-tank taunts the boss when the current tank has 2 stacks of the debuff."
And by the way: Switching at 2 stacks goes for all phases, are tanks currently doing this or going for 3? Would this make hots more useful, overhealing go down and generally ease the job for the healers?
Quote from: TeaLeaf;363559P4 we need more time on. We need to roll CDs and make sure we get there with sufficient mana.
This fight has been defeated in the early days by guilds in predominantly blue gear, so we need to figure out where we are going wrong as insufficient mana means either inefficient healing, the dps being way too slow, or the raid taking to much unavoidable damage. Discuss!
Dps need to pull out more self heals in later parts of the fight (me included ofc). Dont be afraid to use any self heal/mitigation/absorb/reflect CD when its up. Heroism from start of p4. Rolling the CD's the way we do on Elegon/Windlord.
On different note;
Whytee/Hal - Sacred Shield (lvl45 talent) healing seems to be pretty insane for some tanks, this is an example of a Prot Paladin with it up (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-gr1xyml6445no0h8/sum/healingDone/?s=3065&e=3551);
Quote from: Slush;363561And by the way: Switching at 2 stacks goes for all phases, are tanks currently doing this or going for 3? Would this make hots more useful, overhealing go down and generally ease the job for the healers?
On different note;
Whytee/Hal - Sacred Shield (lvl45 talent) healing seems to be pretty insane for some tanks, this is an example of a Prot Paladin with it up (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-gr1xyml6445no0h8/sum/healingDone/?s=3065&e=3551);
With regards to the stacks we always try and swap at 2 stacks and I think that the time I said I had 3 stacks it had just came on a few secs before and that is within the marging that they overlap and also noticing how many stacks the other tank got (we do have things to do as well :P )
I acually do have sacred shield in my spec and trying to keep it up every time I'm tanking but again we are but human :P whitey do runs with eternal flame that gives him a instant heal and a hot that tics on him for 30 seconds so we have chosen to go with 2 different specs that works for us
Quote from: Michelanio;363562I acually do have sacred shield in my spec and trying to keep it up every time I'm tanking but again we are but human
Sounds good. But I guess I didnt phrase myself correctly; Your self-heals are far below what other paladin tanks are
capable doing. Our healers numbers shows they are equal to what other guilds are doing.. Random logs:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3pm0xbmknoz0h5cd/sum/healingDone/?s=5863&e=6408
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/zpisveehhb2l92ze/sum/healingDone/?s=3517&e=4061
Saying other tank pairs are capable of doing 25% of total healing does not equal Hal+Whytee should do the same, as you have several other assignments in this fight. Maybe your current specs are not optimal for this fight? If you get self heals up to 18-20%, that would save alot of healers mana throughout the fight. Maybe its not doable. I always feel the need to check logs after a night like yesterday.
But then again... maybe it is optimal? Tanks dps is really good. And we dont want to see that one drop :D
UpdateLogs for when tanks had 3 stacks of the bad buffs (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/k9p6cvjaws50eady/xe/?enc=bosses&boss=60009&x=%28%0D%0A+++++%28spell+%3D+%22Lightning+Lash%22++and+amount++%3D3%29+or%0D%0A+++++%28spell+%3D+%22Flaming+Spear%22++and+amount+%3D3%29+or%0D%0A+++++%28spell+%3D+%22Arcane+Shock%22++and+amount+%3D3%29%0D%0A%29)
There might be many reasons for this; wipe, tank deaths and so on..
The issue with self healing for me is that the heal I get is huge (can be 70% of my health pool) and I don't want to use it to overheal or just top myself up (it takes a while to build 5 stacks) and so I save it for when my health is low. That doesn't happen very often in this fight. If the healers want to leave me on half health then I can use my big heal every time I get 5 stacks or I could shout not to heal me for a few seconds when it's available but neither seems appealing with everything else we're doing in this fight.
Quote from: Slush;363563Logs for when tanks had 3 stacks of the bad buffs (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/k9p6cvjaws50eady/xe/?enc=bosses&boss=60009&x=(+++++(spell+%3D+)
There might be many reasons for this; wipe, tank deaths and so on..
I think that's a pretty good job. There's not a lot of time between the 2 stacks dropping off and the next taunt so the fact we only reached 3 stacks on those occasions with all the stuff we have to manage during the fight is a good result in my book :D
Time to start looking at the logs for Slush :devil:
Quote from: Whitey;363574The issue with self healing for me is that the heal I get is huge (can be 70% of my health pool) and I don't want to use it to overheal or just top myself up
Should you then use Eternal Flame (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=114163) at all for this fight? Or would Sacred Shield (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=20925) + Glyph of Avenging Wrath (http://www.wowhead.com/item=41098) be a more viable options? Glyph of Holy Wrath (http://www.wowhead.com/item=41095) (as you currently have is no good vs humanoids(adds (http://www.wowdb.com/npcs/60781-soul-fragment)).
I dont know enough about Protadins, but in
this fight: absorb > Hot? Please arrest me if Im wrong, but I just see so high self-heal numbers from other Protadins using Sacred Shield.
Quote from: Whitey;363574I think that's a pretty good job. There's not a lot of time between the 2 stacks dropping off and the next taunt so the fact we only reached 3 stacks on those occasions with all the stuff we have to manage during the fight is a good result in my book
Good to hear. I just wanted to bring focus on it. My mission is accompished.
Raidleader asked:
"so we need to figure out where we are going wrong as insufficient mana means either inefficient healing, the dps being way too slow, or the raid taking to much unavoidable damage".
I try to find answers. Your input is appreciated aswell. Why dont you ask why Slush isnt putting down Healing Stream Totem more? Why did I go for Ancestral Guidance instead of Heaing Tide Totem?
Quote from: Whitey;363574Time to start looking at the logs for Slush
Please do. All tips are appreciated. Saying stuff like that make it looks like im the only one (except TL) bothering to go through logs...
I do like having the big heal of Eternal Flame as it's saved me so many times but I'll make the changes and see how it works out. I'm sure you realise (in the example you linked) that you are comparing us with a pally with the 4 set bonus and a much higher iLevel.
p.s. I do think your last comment was uncalled for Slush as I was joking hence the :devil:. There are a number of raiders who I know look through the logs, me included, the fact you decided to focus on this one encounter/night doesn't mean the rest of us don't bother. :sideways:
Quote from: Whitey;363631I do like having the big heal of Eternal Flame as it's saved me so many times but I'll make the changes and see how it works out. I'm sure you realise (in the example you linked) that you are comparing us with a pally with the 4 set bonus and a much higher iLevel.
I did not dig that deep, no. You know ALOT more about protection paladins than I do. 6 ilvls and set bonus probably does alot here. You've been main tank for ages and know your class very well. Its quite possible this doesnt appeal to your playstyle either. You/TL mentioned yesterday on TS a Str+Haste heavy spec, and I just think... wooosh.. you are past my point of knowledge already. With that being said; Im glad you find it exciting and maybe to be open for other priorities/talents/glyphs. It shows the strengths of our tank team, as it looks like you and Hal are discussing various options alot.
Quote from: Whitey;363631the fact you decided to focus on this one encounter/night doesn't mean the rest of us don't bother. :sideways:
As you, I feel I am contributing on a permanent basis if I have a clue what I am talking about. You can see my suggestions on Gara'jal.. there is none. We killed it in two nights (?) and I didnt really see that we had to go 2 healers to kill. You can see my suggestions on Garalon when we hit enrage and needed more dps. Well thought through suggestions that we used (atleast one of them during one kill). And on Elegon aswell when we hit enrage, I asked for 4+4. And I think you do bother and care and check logs. I would just wish there was more links from the logs in these forums. I dont know the logs language good enough. I will try to learn and step it up :D
I've been reading around on the prot pala stat prio this morning and its been quite interesting. As usual, stat prio seems to depend on what you want to achieve.
The old school 'avoidance tank' prio seems to prio parry & dodge before hit & expertise and ignores haste. This leads to high avoidance and arguably the lowest damage taken overall but is a total nightmare to heal as the damage taken is extremely spiky. As in vanilla, generally this type of spec is not preferred and is why most tanks went down the EHP route instead. Avoidance tanks seem to only work well for specific roles, e.g. hateful strike tanks. Personally I am not a fan of this build unless it is for that specific fight role.
The Haste/Strength spec we mentioned last night (and I have been learning more about this morning) seems quite interesting. Strength is obvious so I'll not repeat why, but the build otherwise puts a stat prio as hit/exp>haste>mastery. The theory being, that holy power regen is hasted and threat/DPS is maximised. The aim is to provide the regular self-healing instead of the increased block from mastery, along with the benefit of increased DPS/threat.
The mainstream/traditional EHP role seems to swap haste and mastery to the more logically expected order, i.e. hit/exp>mastery>haste to get more block for a smoother damage profile but at the cost of lower holy power gen and lower dps & threat.
(Parry : Dodge is assumed at roughly 2:1 across all of these builds)
Having spent a couple of hours on exploring this across various websites, I think it is worth trying a heavy haste build. I'd be happy to put my vote in for guild bank paying for any respec/experiment costs (the other officers would need to agree too), but if we haste sufficiently we'd have an 'in effect mastery based tank' as the haste provides the mitigation via increased holy power regen. The raid gets a nice benefit too from the DPS side of things.
Worth further research and testing tbh. Hasted sufficiently I can see it would provide a lower mana cost to healers. Where precisely that optimal haste level is........that's the tricky question!
I did the reforge/gem last night but I'm not able to hit the hard expertise cap with my current gear although it's not too far off. I was already going down the hit>Expertise>Mastery route so it's not too big a change other than needing to find a lot more haste.
Is there anything we can craft or BOEs we can buy to help you Whitey?
Bump for Tuesday.
Dropped real easy on the 3rd pull of the night. Nice one RGT :thumbsup:
gzzz guys!