Bastion of Twilight: Cho'gall - Defeated March 31st 2011

[Whitey]

wowwiki:Cho'gall
[video=youtube;eWHNzND_wY8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWHNzND_wY8&feature=player_embedded[/video]

Originally Posted by Aliena                                          Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Bastion of  Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you  all you have to know about Cho'gall, the fourth encounter in this new  raid instance. We completed this fight with 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5  DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

10-man Cho'gall has 33.5 million health and is a two-phase encounter.  While he has an intimidating number of abilities, the fight is actually  fairly straightforward. The entire fight is based around a Corrupted  Blood Mechanic that works similarly to Atramedes' sound bar. At the  start of the fight, a Corrupted Blood meter will pop up in your UI, and  getting hit by any of Cho'gall's or his minions' abilities will increase  your corruption.

Depending on how much Corrupted Blood you accumulate, different things  will happen. At 25 stacks, you get a magic debuff that greatly  accellerates your stack gain. This can and needs to be dispelled. At 50  stacks, you periodically get a debuff called Sickness, that'll make you  vomit onto any raid member in a 5 yard cone in front of you. At 75  stacks, you grow a tentacle that will cast Shadow Bolts at your raid  members. At 100 stacks, you're immune to any healing but will deal 100%  more damage.

The goal in the normal encounter is to keep your stacks as low as  possible throughout the whole fight. When you trigger phase 2 at 25%,  Cho'gall will activate a spell called "Corruption of the Old God", which  deals shadow damage to every raid member every 2 seconds until he dies.  This spell will deal more damage the more stacks of Corrupted Blood you  have, and each tick of it will cause you to gain 1 stack of Corrupted  Blood.

As you can see, phase 1 is all about keeping the fight controlled and  avoiding as many of Cho'galls abilities as possible, whereas phase 2 is a  burn phase, a race against Corrupted Blood stacks.

Let's go over Cho'gall's phase 1 abilities. As soon as you engage him,  he'll switch into a stance called Flame's Orders. Cho'gall will switch  between this stance and another stance called Shadow's Orders throughout  the entire phase 1. While in Flame's Orders, Cho'gall's melee hits will  deal an extra 20,000 damage and he'll spawn little fire puddles all  over the room. Fire is bad news, don't bathe in it. Make sure your  Cho'gall tank receives a lot of healing during Flame's Orders.

Shadow's Orders will cause Cho'gall to omit 3 pulses of a Shadow AoE  spell. This seems to hit harder the more stacks of Corruption people  accumulate and your healers need to be prepared for it. He'll switch  stances approximately every 20 seconds.

The reason you need two tanks for this fight is Fury of Cho'gall - this  is cast on his main threat target, deals 60k damage and greatly  increases shadow and physical damage taken for 45 seconds, so when a  tank is afflicted by Fury, the other tank should taunt off of him fairly  quickly to minimize the chances of tank deaths.

The next ability you need to watch out for is Worship - this will mind  control 2 random raid members. Worship can be interrupted by any stun,  scatter, silence or fear effect and the sooner you do so, the better.  While your raid members are mind controlled, Cho'gall will stack up a  damage buff called Twisted Devotion. Each stack gives him 10% increased  damage, and this stacks up to 20. To counter this, we had everyone stack  up on Cho'gall for most of the phase, so everyone could be interrupted  quickly by abilities such as Shockwave, Scatter Shot, Psychic Scream and  many more.

The only exception to the stacking up is whenever Cho'gall summons a  Corrupting Adherant. This happens approximately once per minute, and as  soon as the add spawns, your raid should spread out to avoid getting hit  by the add's Corrupting Crash ability. Corrupting Crash looks like a  little shadowy swirl on the ground, and a few seconds after the swirl  appears, a missile will hit its center. If anyone is still in it by the  time the missile hits, they'll take damage and increase their corruption  stacks by 10.

Make sure that all your DPS switch over to kill an Adherant as soon as a  tank has it secured. If you're the tank, make sure to face adherants  away from your raid members. If you play a class with an interrupt, make  sure to interrupt their Depravity ability, which is a raid wide shadow  AoE with a 1.5second cast time. The adds NEED to be killed as soon as  possible. If an add is still up by the time Cho'gall casts Fester Blood -  which happens 40 seconds after an Adherant spawns -  the add will gain a  Shadow AoE ability that will pretty much wipe your raid.

Of course, those aren't the only gimmicks the Adherants have. Upon their  death, they'll spawn a black puddle on the ground that won't disappear  until you hit phase 2. Standing in a puddle will deal damage and  increase your Corruption, but even worse is that everytime Cho'gall  casts Fester Blood, 5 little slimes will spawn from each black puddle.  Yes, each. That means if you've killed 4 adherants, you will have 20  slimes coming to eat your brains.

Of course, getting hit by the slimes will increase your Corruption too,  so you want to avoid that. We dealt with this by killing all Adherants  next to each other at the entrance to the room, so the slimes would all  spawn in the same general area and had to travel a long way to get to  us. Applying a frost trap or slowing them down through other means is  also almost essential. On the first two slime spawns your ranged DPS  will likely be able to take the slimes down by themselves, but on later  waves melee DPS might have to help them out with Fan of Knives spam or  other AoE abilities.

Controlling adherants and slimes is key to this phase, and if you manage  to take them all down in a timely manner and without increasing  corruption stacks by much, you're well on your way to defeating this  encounter.

When Cho'gall's health hits 25%, you'll trigger phase 2. Any bloodlust  or time warp effect should be saved for this phase. He loses most of his  old abilities but he does retain Fury of Cho'gall, so your tanks need  to keep taunting off of each other whenever that happens.

As mentioned before, he'll activate Corruption of the Old God, which  will increase your Corruption stacks by 1 every 2 seconds and deal  increasing damage. This is unavoidable, and each raid member needs to  keep a close eye on their stacks. Any raid member hitting 25 stacks  NEEDS to be dispelled as soon as possible, and any raid member closing  in on 50 stacks needs to face away from anyone else to avoid vomitting  on them.

Of course, since you'll take increasing shadow damage, this also acts as  a soft enrage timer. Eventually, your healers just won't be able to  keep up. Additionally, as soon as you hit phase 2 and every 30 seconds  afterward, Cho'gall will summon 4 tentacles called Darkened Creations.  These will channel a beam on random targets that reduces damage and  healing done by 75%, deals damage and increases Corruption, so they need  to be killed immediately.

To quickly wipe them out, designate a DPS leader and have all other DPS  assist him on his target. When the tentacles are down, DPS can attack  Cho'gall again. This cycle will repeat until Cho'gall dies. Make sure  that no one vomits on any raid member, and if you have sufficient DPS  and healing and keep controlling the fight, Cho'gall should go down.  I've attached footage of the whole encounter in case you'd like to see  how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail.  Good luck and have  fun!

[TeaLeaf]

Bump to prep for this.

[TeaLeaf]

...and again, he's up this week.

[TeaLeaf]

Tuesday is a whole night of Cho'gall.  Be prepared!

[Slush]

Tuesday is a whole night of Cho'gall.  Be prepared!

I lolled. This guy will go down... in less than 12 tries. Guess we are doing Al'akir after.

[Slush]

13 tries. No win.

Damage taken by spell:

1.Melee 40.5% Lowered by quick interrupts.

2.Unleashed Shadows 35.6% AoE Shadow damage, unavoidable (Shadows Orders)

3.Flaming Destruction    7.7% Extra Flame damage to tanks, unavoidable (Flame orders)

4.Depravity 2.6% Adherent casts this. MUST be interrupted, or more corrupted blood on targets.
We got hit 171 times through 13 attempts by this. Was Add-tank or Noreia on interrupts?

5.Corrupting Crash 2.6% Move from shadow crash, or get more corrupted blood on you.
Note to self, and others. Dont finish casts.. just run! The crash site is bigger than it looks.

6.Shadow Bolt 2.1% This is when you get 75 stacks of corrupted blood, you start pew pew Shadow bolting other players.

7.Blaze    2.0% Annoying flame puddles. Move out. Or move into if wipe is called. :-)

11.Corruption: Sickness 0.6% This is the vomiting. Doing this on other players, makes them stack up more corrupted blood

12.Spilled Blood of the Old God 0.4% Puddles from the Adherents. Dont move into these.

As you can see, the bolded ones are those that add up on our Corrupted blood. We can all do our part to avoid it.

Btw TL, i think the interrupting was greater in the later tries, but using Psychic Scream is a bit meh, because it makes 2-3 people flee for 8 seconds if not dispelled. And during add phase, this can be pretty anoying. Rdps and healers fleeing while they should be taking care of adds.

[Slush]

This is from a successful attempt on Choggy 10M Normal. Some nice random EU guild
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/nr8e7dsefr6ypwxe/?s=2532&e=2834
Damage taken from Depravity = 0

[Slush]

11.Corruption: Sickness 0.6% This is the vomiting. Doing this on other players, makes them stack up more corrupted blood

 
These are because we did too bad on Depravity and Corrupted Crash.

[TeaLeaf]

Btw TL, i think the interrupting was greater in the later tries, but using Psychic Scream is a bit meh, because it makes 2-3 people flee for 8 seconds if not dispelled. And during add phase, this can be pretty anoying. Rdps and healers fleeing while they should be taking care of adds.

I agree, but the point I would make is that the fact you were being feared means you were still MC'd and nobody had broken it, hence me blowing fear.  I'd like to avoid using it because I then had to dispell it and that costs mana which I felt the effect of later in the fight.

Not had a chance to go through the logs myself yet, hoping for some time tonight, but nice work so far Slush, thank you.  Looking forward to seeing what other people come up with.

[TeaLeaf]

Problems:
We suck at adds.
Add damage really was poor and led to a lot of corrupted blood and people being too spread out when a Worship hit, leading to long periods of being MC'd and a lot of increased damage stacks on Cho'gall who then humps are MT hard and our healers go oom (how's that for a chain of events).
Worship
The MCs are not reliably broken and we need to ensure that this is fixed.  Go check your class abilities and whether or not they work on the MC in the Cho'gall fight.  Shadowfury, Dragonbreath, Psychic Scream, Wind Shear, Strangulate, Psychic Horror, Avengers Shield, Typhoon, Solar Beam, and Mind Freeze all break the MC, is one of these abilities yours?
Corrupting Crash
Way too much damage.  Avoid it.


Ideas:
Adds:
ALL dps on the adds!  Yep, melee dps can help out too, especially as you are stood where they spawn after kiting the adherent there - they aggro healers first so as long as you rotate your primary target you should not get aggro.
Frost mage with slowing blizzard and (super) frost novas are a win in P1 on adds.  Apparently a single frost mage can pretty much solo the adds for the first couple of waves.  Even nova from a non-frost spec helps a lot - remember they aggro healers not you.
Warlocks - Glyph of Shadwoflame (http://www.wowhead.com/item=45783)
Frost DK (not that we have one) -  Chillblains for the 50% slow and Howling Blast
Boomkin (ditto) - solar beam
2 heal it!
I know Jas said 'no way' last night, but reading around it should be doable and I see many raids running 2 healers and bringing one more dps.  This would really help, especially in P2 when it is a DPS race.

If you are getting the worships fast and people are dodging crashes the only big source of damage is shadow phase aoe that can be slowly healed up over a long time. There is very little damage when the fight is done correctly.

P2
Tank boss right up close to a wall, this forces the tentacles to spawn in a semi-circle around him and close to melee, thus improving the speed with which these can be killed.
P2 Transition
Big adds despawn as you go into P2, so if we're knocking on the 25% door with a big add about to spawn just keep dps on the boss and ignore big add.

[TeaLeaf]

Been doing some log reading:

Adherent DPS:
This is FAR too inconsistent.  We had some people do less damage on the adherent than the tank which has to mean they are not following it properly and dpsing when they should.  Remember, if the adds go down promptly (in the right place) then we get more time to group again for Worships and are in the right spot for Fester Blood adds.   The dps ranged from 10.1m for the night all the way down to 5.9m (tank did 7m damage on the adherent) and this is too big a spread, we need all the dps doing more damage than the tank.

Interrupts
We need to consider alternative interrupts on Adherent.  Noreia reported Wind Shear as seeming intermittent despite it being cast and in range.

Fire!
Don't stand in fire.  Both tanks need to watch this!

Shadow Crash
Area of effect is bigger than the animation.  As soon as you see one coming, stop casting immediately and run well out of range.  Healers in particular got hit a lot by this.

Add Humping
Healers & ranged need to watch out and move away if an add starts humping your leg.  Tanks, that applies too, move back to give dps more time if you have to.

[Grimnar]

Interrupts
We need to consider alternative interrupts on Adherent. Noreia reported Wind Shear as seeming intermittent despite it being cast and in range.

I had no problems with the interrupts, i have a 10 second cooldown on mine and the add does his cast every 10 seconds.
 
I only missed a few because i was mind controlled for the rest i had them all in time.
 
 
 
Only skullbash works as an interrupt btw for a feral druid, my second interrupt didn't work on the big adds.

[Tirkad]

To me, the main problems that are holding us back are 2.

-Corrupted Blood: We still have people getting too high too soon, it was quite usual to have someone at 70-80 or even 100% when the boss was still halfway down. That means that these people will not be able to get any healing, and even if they will do double dmg, they will dmg the other members of the raid, increasing their Corrupted Blood level, creating a domino effect.

-Adds Management: It was difficoult for the dps to get the ads down in some situations becouse they were spread, and thus some of them survived the AoE and had to be killed one per time. We will have too many adds to kill them one by one, and as said during the raid we all MUST help the dps getting this job done. However, i reckon that there are factors related to the previous point that may force us to address that one first, such as the vomit, and the dmg done to the surrounding players. One last note about this: when you have an add on you, try to get back to the boss and to keep them in the same group, it will help the dps peeling it off you; remember that the fire DOES NOT increase the amount of corrupted blood you have (i've tested this tonight to be 100% sure) and its dmg can be healed through if it cannot be avoided, so if there's a wall of fire in front of you and to avoid it you have to go all around the room with an add on your back, just run through it and try to take less dmg you can while doing it (aka don't take too much to pass through it, use your speed buff if you have any, and so on).

All the rest is marginal, however i'd like you to have someone who will be able to get out of the worship mind control the adds tank's healer. I don't know why, but often i was caught all the way back with hal and had to endure most of it, getting released in the middle of the adds.

[TeaLeaf]

Corrupted Blood
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fmm0omx6hp2opknt/spell/81701/
To allow a full comparison, you can multiply Jas' numbers by 6 as he was only in for one try and add 20% to Tirk's numbers as he was in for 5 tries not 6, then the list is comparable.

Corrupting Crash
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fmm0omx6hp2opknt/spell/81689/
Stop casting, get out of the area.  You get about 3 seconds warning so move out!  I'm embarrassed that I was standing in 1.5 crashes per try, I'll do better.

Standing in Fire
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fmm0omx6hp2opknt/spell/81538/?enc=wipes&boss=43324
Remember that 'Ready to Raid' achievement?  Fire is a basic one, we should not be standing in it!  You'll always get 'some' damage as it is instant cast, but there's no excuse for remaining in it - you just need to move out immediately it spawns under your feet.

Missed Interrupts
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fmm0omx6hp2opknt/spell/81713/
Depravity was a lot better handled, but we're still missing a few as mentioned.  

Question:  Can the OT handle interrupts on his own, allowing a melee to remain on boss all the time?

DPS is too low
This is a major problem imo.

Bottom line is that most people kill in 8 minutes and our best was a 27% wipe at 9 minutes.  Our dps numbers are simply not good enough, no excuses.  We're having to spend too much time on big adds, so losing dps time on boss, spending too much time on little adds, so losing dps time on boss, and also not doing enough dps period.  Our numbers are too low and we need more.

To analyse dps start here:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fmm0omx6hp2opknt/sum/damageDone/?s=7571&e=8011
This is Try 1 of Cho'gall from last night.
First:  uncheck Total DPS from column on left.
Then: check any players you want to compare.
What do you see: a time line of the DPS done during Try 1.  Look at the differences and think about why.
To look at any other try, mouseover 'Cho'gall 10N Try 1 (7:20)' along the bar at top of chart, Wipes-->Cho'gall-->select any of the tries from last night and repeat above.

Look at where you personally were doing less DPS than others and figure out why.  Yes there will be some short-term issues, but the graphs show some major differences which should not exist.

Is melee a problem?
No.  Here's a kill from a guild using only 2 ranged, so melee are not a problem.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/inf2xym58lfzklp8/sum/damageDone/?s=10197&e=10763

Thinking some more, but the summary for me at the moment is we are not performing at the required level in terms of DPS and we're failing real hard at some basic stuff like avoiding damage.

[Slush]

Its like you say, TL. Dps is too low. Bring in another. Give this.... 10 tries on Tuesday, please.

Meaning:
2 tanks (pala/pala or pala/dk)
1-2 melee (OT and 2 melee needs to handle Adherent interrupts every time and dps him down at the appropriate location).
4-5 ranged (all ranged on small adds and on boss. No ranged needs to big on big Adherent).
2 healers (1 MT healer + 1raid+OT healer)

Just 10 tries.
If it doesnt work out, well... I was wrong :-D