HEROIC - Blade Lord Ta'yak

[TeaLeaf]

[TeaLeaf]

Bump for Tuesday for RGT.

[Slush]

1. Run away from Blade Tempest.
2. Use a personal CD if u get Tempest Slashed into a tornado.
3. Loot.

[Ammon]

The blade tempest thing is quite straight forward.
though as i mistakenly learned,
it seems that there isn't a hard border afterall, i used sprint and moved "away" from the boss, bouncing off a couple of twisters in the process.
best to keep that in mind when speed buffs are used

the main pain i guess is the wind step doing three times the damage on heroic causing losses there.

[Slush]

There was this one thing that I just could not understand. Why are ranged running a bit in closer to the boss before Blade Tempest? We will get dragged in anyway and there is no "initial" damage after the pull-in. I died from the Wind Step (just before Blade Tempest), but TL had a suspicion (?) that my cause of death might be because of not being close enough to boss when Blade Tempest started.

From icy-veins (as usual):
Ta'yak's only new ability is called Whirlwind Icon Blade Tempest. It is only present during Phase One. Roughly every 60 seconds, Ta'yak will pull the entire raid to his location, and, a few seconds later, he will begin spinning for about 7 seconds, dealing a massive amount of Physical damage every 0.50 seconds, to any players in a 7-yard area around him. While Ta'yak is spinning, players are being slowly pulled back towards Ta'yak, and must run away from him to avoid being hit by the boss.

[TeaLeaf]

There was this one thing that I just could not understand. Why are ranged running a bit in closer to the boss before Blade Tempest?

This one is easy to answer:  It's like Sindragosa used to be with her 'pull in' & AOE, it's cake for melee but increasingly hard to run the required minimum distance away from the boss the further away from the boss you start out from.     It's a fixed time between the start of the pull-in and the start of the Blade Tempest damage.   So let's compare a melee & ranged:

Suppose the time between start of the pull-in and start of the blade tempest damage is 3 seconds (not sure if it is actually 3 seconds, but it is a fixed period of time):

Melee - pull-in to boss takes 0.25 seconds as they are literally on top of the boss, so they have 2.75secs to run away and get out of range
Ranged @ 10yds from boss - 0.5 seconds so they have 2.5 seconds to run out of AOE range
Ranged @ 30yds from boss - pull-in takes 1.5 seconds so they only have 1.5 seconds to run out of AOE range.

The latter case won't get out of AOE range in time and so is still going to take damage, so the aim for range is to modulate their distance accordingly:

-max range it when expecting tempest slash (tornados) so that you can strafe and MISS being hit by them! (stay too close and you won't give yourself a chance to strafe)
-reduce range to ensure close enough for Unseen Strike (and then get max range again)
-reduce range prior to Blade Tempest to allow sufficient remaining time to run out and avoid AOE damage (and then get max range again)

[TeaLeaf]

Checked through logs and it does look like 3 seconds from start of pull-in to AOE damage kicking in.

[Slush]

Ranged @ 30yds from boss - pull-in takes 1.5 seconds so they only have 1.5 seconds to run out of AOE range.

Aaahh... interesting theory. But...It felt like the pull-in took exactly the same no matter hos far away from I was. One quick BAMH! -> Spirit wolf -> run.
Been checking some forums aswell, and general tips ar like you mentioned get to approx 15y. Doesnt hurt too bad on my dps to run abit closer :-)

We need to get timing on Unseen Strike corrected somehow. Using my totem timer worked gret for Heroic mode when Unseen strike seemed to be set to 1 minute CD. (didnt work that well in normal mode).

Edit;
Situational CDs to avoid Unseen Strike damage (can be rotated if using 2 healers):
SP Disperse
Mage Blink
Shaman death -> Ankh

Edit 2 I digged up on a forum;
Paladins are amazing here, since they can spec Clemency and use two Hands of Protection and two Hands of Sacrifice in a row. My advice would be using Sacrifices on wind step targets if you have any when he's about to use Blade Tempest, and Protections on wind step targets when he's about to use Unseen Strike.

[TeaLeaf]

Re DBM & BW timers for this fight:

There's a bunch of stuff on the web about problems with timers, but looking at the logs it seems we just need to override whatever we see from the timers and follow logic.   According to the log last night, the boss is ALWAYS following this order:

(OA--WS)--US--(OA--WS)--BT--(OA--WS)--US--(OA--WS)--BT--(OA--WS)--US--(OA--WS)--BT etc

So if we keep on top of what we have just had, we know what is coming next.   Not an easy job but I'm sure we can handle it.

For example, if the WS target gets WS we can call 'SPECIAL next' (alternating US then BT)

If we stick to the order, then we'll never be caught closing range for a BT/US when he then tosses out an unexpected WS!

Bottom line - when he Wind Strikes, start closing up to boss as a SPECIAL is inbound.

[TeaLeaf]

Aaahh... interesting theory.

Trust me, it's not a theory, I recognise it from Sindragosa and the exact same mechanic.   You can also check to see who gets to run out first (ignoring wipes) and you'll find that ranged take more BT damage.  It's not coincidence, it's because they have less time to run out if they are at range, hence being closer helps hugely!

It should not be an issue though if we follow the 'WS>Group Up!' order outlined above.

(the Sindragosa experience is from being a Mage at 40yds from boss and seeing melee already running out from the boss whilst I was still in the air being pulled in towards the boss!)