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

[Arcticfire]

I am giving up, I guess things I say make more sense in my head then on paper.

[Slush]

Rofl. Yeh. .-) Those voices, eh?

[Arcticfire]

actually I ment that I am clearly not able to put down the things I think on a way that other people know what I mean.

[Slush]

No, its voices mate. Have a doctor check it out.

[Slush]

Ok. Back on topic. New goal. New aim. Lets say we are good on heals. We are good on dps. Tanks rotations are ok.
What kills us? Corrupting Blood. Everytime.

Read:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/872065-cho-gall-issues#3

And I am quoting:
"No-one may have ANY corruption before p2 begins. Interrupts on the big adds must not fail, small adds may never reach the raid, interrupts on players, especially healers must be within a second or the incoming damage will grow. We have 1 gaypile during the bossphase, and an additional gaypile during p2 for the ranged. Make sure especially your melee is getting the interrupts right, and also make sure all of your dps plays defensively."

This is it. We know (Im monitoring Corrupted Blood through all fights Ive been in) that people get corrupted blood everytime.
There are 3 main reasons for this:
-Corrupting Crash - So easy to move from, its hard not to.
-Depravity - Interrupt Adherent when this is cast. Wait! WHAT!!!! YES!!!! THATS THE ONE TO INTERRUPT, MYTH!! I cant believe i found out in the logs that you were hit by Corrupting crash, and when I told you to move out in a whipser, you told me Corrupting Crashes were hard to interrupt. Let me straighten one thing out once and for all:
MOVE OUT OF CORRUPTING CRASH!
INTERRUPT DEPRAVITY!
-Blood of the old god. Seriously, I know you were dpsing the small adds, and they shouldnt reach us. But they did. And it increased our corrupted blood.

Im not sorry for being harsh, but I thought... when the guild had gone through over 30 tries, we really should know what to do.

May I ask for a goal next week:
Not getting any corrupted blood until p2?


Furthermore, this is how we should be set BEFORE he hits 25%.



Source:
http://www.raidbs.com/bastionoftwilight/chogall/totalbs-chogall/

[Tirkad]

We discussed this last night and the main issue with going 3 healers is that most guilds doing this have more dps than us.  We would like to have a try again with three healers but we really need everyone to look at what they can do to improve their dps.

Ok. Back on topic. New goal. New aim. Lets say we are good on heals. We are good on dps. Tanks rotations are ok.

I'm sorry if i was a bit harsh to someone but i feel we're in the situation where we either improve the dps (general role duties intended here, not just raw damage per second) or we're not going anywhere (this means your very hypothesis are wrong there, Slush: you're not gonna reach any realistic conclusion from them).
Again, i don't want to be harsh, insulting or anything like that, but this is the simple truth to me: the dps department needs to make some effort to get better. I don't complain your decision to demand 50% more effectiveness from each healer (on an end boss, that just by itself is hard enough), as long as we're not the only one making an effort to get the kill.
Speaking with some officers, i felt that they're making their improvement requests in a way to get the kill as soon as possible and this meant demanding a lot from the healers instead trying to get what should be the bare minimum from the dps. I've got different feelings about it. First of all i'm flattered, becouse that means that i'm part of a group (the healers) that can be trusted in a greater challenge, even when this challenge has been discarded by all the guilds becouse it's too hard on their healers. But at the same time i'm doubtful, becouse that means you're using different weighting when analyzing the different roles performances. Let me explain myself better: i had some bad moments when first hitting some solid raid content, i was still doing plenty of mistakes. So i tried to get better, both consulting the theory and trying to figure out what i was doing wrong, becouse getting an extra healer or asking more from the dps didn't even come to my mind: it was something i knew i had to solve myself. And so i did, correcting my mistake, using more efficient spells at the right time, coordinating better with other healers.
Now the table is turned, but the burden of the progress feels like on the healers shoulders only (or at least for the greatest part).
TL;DR
I don't mind to push my limit further, quite the opposite: that's what i'm asking when i ask for progress. However it seems only fair that the others share at least part of the effort we're making. So i'm very happy to keep on using the 2 healers tactic, as long as those dps numbers keep going up.

@ Slush & Dreaman
We're open to any suggestion. If i understood what Arctic meant, he suggests we keep on using every mana cooldown every time the cooldown is up (and i'm speaking about raid wide cooldowns), starting after the first 20 seconds. The problem there is that it may go to waste if everyone is doing their job, since usually both me and slush are above 85% of mana until cho'gall hits 60% under that condition. However, as i said, we can try and see if it makes a difference.

[TeaLeaf]

From my perspective the story goes like this:

We started without sufficient dps to handle the adds
Moved to a 2 healer set up and got immediately into P2
We then gradually learned how not to get corrupted blood
Discovered frost mages
2 healer set up uses 1 ranged dps who is not on the adds at all at the moment
2 healer set up is not quite avoiding the 4th add and we have to call a dps break

So all of the above implies these choices:

(1) we push boss dps more to avoid the 4th add and keep healer mana reserves at a satisfactory level
(2) we move to 3 healers again (now that we are better controlling corrupting blood) and move the spare ranged dps back to help on the adds too - this should leave us pushing over into P2 just before a 5th add

(1) is not happening, so that leaves (2) as the next logical step imo.

The other MAJOR factor is that we need the boss moved into the alcove before we move into P2 and we as a raid need to follow.  If we're pushing it over prior to a 5th add then we'll not have the "small adds + P2" clash that we currently see, so it should be an easier transition.  Better placement by us will allow tentacles to be in a much more compact area.

:2cents:

[Slush]

Corrupted Blood eating us alive. Every single try.
We didnt have one single try where all was 20 or below. This is kinda sad. We should all do our best to avoid this, and this must be prio numero Uno.

We were doing good things tonight, though:
-Getting out of crashes.
-Interrupting depravity.
-Not running into the puddles of dead Adherents.
-Putting all kinds of slows on the small adds.

But; If we are running this with a one melee setup again. Let him stay on the boss throughout the fight.
Ranged (4) will then kill Adherent, and small adds. This means no Corrupted Blood on the melee guy.

Phase Final:
Corruption of the Old God â€" Cho’gall begins pulsing a raidwide AOE that hits for 5,000 shadow damage per two seconds. Damage is increased by 2% for every stack of Corrupted Blood an individual raider has.

I want to see this guy dead :-(

[Grimnar]

Well, today i was on the add for interrupts and then full on boss and helped out on adds as soon as i noticed they where close to the boss.
 
But i have done the little adds aswell another raidday, and i came only in problem with add wave 3/4 (to many adds to agro) but i still had my corruptedblood thingy at 20 max.
So it is very doable for even melee to not get agro and dps them down.

[TeaLeaf]

TL : DR Version
Move!  Don't take damage.  Do more DPS.  Right now we're ensuring we will die horribly in P2 by making a complete dog's dinner of P1.  

Not sure what else to say.  


Detailed Version: (no offence to individuals, but we need to address the numbers that we see and understand why)

Corrupted Blood
We have a few people who are not paying attention to adds.   Who had their leg humped last night:

Jesung   467341   19.6 %
Mythmaster   415472   17.5 %
Sheepher   277652   11.7 %
Amberleigh   197286   8.3 %
Tirkad   180261   7.6 %
Water Elemental   158350   6.7 %
Teaell   133473   5.6 %
Slush   133200   5.6 %
Earthbind Totem   108493   4.6 %
Zappa   107666   4.5 %
Grimnar   86136   3.6 %
Halbarad   36159   1.5 %
Jubrin   33895   1.4 %
Whytee   18040   0.8 %
Ebon Imp   13537   0.6 %
Tanales   11416   0.5 %

if you're toward the top of the list, it has to change.   Yes they should go down, but if they do not then you need to move and allow time for them to be killed.  If they're humping your leg then you were not paying attention!

Corrupting Crash (Shadow Crash)
I know that we will on occasion get an MC that means people get the MC broken and end up stuck in shadow crash, it happened to me twice last night.  However we need to handle this better because the bulk of what we are seeing is not down to being MC'd.  The top 5 shadow crash damage was taken by:

Amberleigh   779245   43.7 %   
Sheepher   268185   15.0 %   
Slush   218828   12.3 %   
Teaell    158244   8.9 %      
Mythmaster    142676   8.0 %   

We should handle this better and pay more attention. It just makes P2 harder or impossible if we do not.  

Make sure you have spell details turned up to Maximum and allow 5 yard clearance as the area of damage is wider than the animation.

Standing In Fire
Can't happen.  We have to move the moment it spawns.  Damage taken last night by standing in fire:

Mythmaster   752342   27.2 %   
Tirkad   351845   12.7 %   
Slush           346179   12.5 %   
Halbarad   223482   8.1 %   
Amberleigh   222927   8.1 %   
Grimnar   200557   7.2 %   
Sheepher   198231   7.2 %   
Whytee   192402   6.9 %   
Jesung   156646   5.7 %   
Teaell     74949   2.7 %      
Tanales   49104   1.8 %   

We *have* to be able to move out of fire.  Ther more we take, the more impossible we make the fight in P2.

Make sure your Scrolling Combat Text highlights damage you are taking so that you can see you are stood in damage!

Adherents (big adds)
Why such a disparity in the amount of damage done on these?  They are a dps priority the moment they spawn so that we can all get back to the boss and dps some seconds before the little adds spawn.  Damage done on adherents last night:

Teaell    10264189   21.0 %
Halbarad     9115704   18.7 %
Mythmaster 7963278   16.3 %
Jesung     6518229   13.3 %
Sheepher     6463220   13.2 %

Blood of the Old God (little adds)
People are still not always remembering that they spawn.  Several tries had an 'oh ****' moment where I realised that half the dps had not yet turned around.  We need to personally handle this better and be especially mindful of worships hitting just as adds come in and deal with the worship promptly.

Make sure your boss mod timers are in clear view of where you normally look on your screen!  If you miss them, move them and make them bigger!!

DPS
This is still a major concern of mine.  We're slow killing stuff, so we end up struggling with adds and then getting a 5th big add to off-tank until we push into P2.  This causes issues.  I looked on World of Logs and out of 35,805 logged Chogall kills, we have yet to reach the raid dps of the worst of them (and remember that the worst dps kill I found was a January kill and therefore most likely done in mostly blues not the phat puplz we're currently wearing).  

Of the 9 wipes on Chog last night, 4 just met the dps threshold (just barely), 5 failed it by a decent margin.  
In our best try we survived  8 mins 52 seconds but our dps levels for the 4 tries where we met threshold was on target for a 10 mins kill.  How would we survive over a minute of additional AOE with our corrupted blood levels so high at the start of P2?

Right now we're ensuring we will die horribly in P2 by making a complete dog's dinner of P1.

[Tirkad]

As healers, we really need to sort that last phase. I've checked different videos and logs from other guild of our levels and we have a lot to do in the last phase: the healing will be hectic and very, very stressful; from the next time i suggest to adapt our playstyle in order to have ALL the raw healing power cooldowns for the last phase. In each log i studied, there's a massive increasing in the healing in the last 15% of the fight, and that's the alcove part. Of course we'll need to have as much mana as we can at the start of that phase, and for this i really beg all the player attending to pay max attention in avoiding unneeded dmg/corrupted blood.

Standing in fire

This is SO unfair! When you tell us to wipe it up fast i'm standing in the fire the whole time!

[Slush]

Lol, no. Fire is where we stand when a wipe is called.
So stand in fire means... dont stand in fire?
Wrong:
The reason we say stand in fire, is because it doesnt add to your corrupted blood. And thus is almost harmless. So please. stand in fire when wiping. Dont take damage from other sources. It makes logs easier to read and to interpret.

The corrupting crashes:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/52fd9vxj1y07zbo0/spell/81689/?enc=bosses&boss=43324

The next night of tries on this boss: The ones who take 0 hits from Corrupting Crashes... I will give 1000golds each .-) Happy reward, and a reminder to myself. As I

I looked on World of Logs and out of 35,805 logged Chogall kills, we have yet to reach the raid dps of the worst of them

I think this is it.
Our best try took this guy to 14%. And duh.. it lasted 8:46'sih? You know there is a 10 minute enrage timer?
Sheep, Tan, Myth, Grim, Mal, Monkey, Hippo, John and Paul... We need you to do something.
You need to look on your glyphs, your talents, your rotations/priorities, your reforging.
You need to kick it up. We are getting close to the enrage timer here. 70k total avg dps. This is not enough.
10-12k is not enough. We need 15k delivered from each and everyone of the dps'ers.

So ask yourselves... What can you do to reach 15k?
You say theres alot of movement? We know. Alot of target switching? We know, deal with it. And reach 15 k. (im a biitich! :-))

Now iover to something completetely different:
Healers: When 1 of you is MC'ed/ feared... the raid healer need to step it up and save the tank.
Slush: Yes, thats me, and im sorry, and I will step that up. I think both Hal and Whytee deserves to live, and I promise that I will do my best to not letting it happen again. The 2 times last night was 2 times too much :-/

[Tirkad]

The problem isn't just dps, even if it seems the biggest one, atm. We need to sort healing in a way to have A LOT more healing in the last phase. If you see the logs, sorted for healing done, you can see from the graph that in the last phase it's massively more stressful. That means we need to have a lot more mana and all the cooldowns we can have for the last phase, not to mention that a 2 healers strategy is not even an option, since the raid willl never survive the last phase with just 2 healers, at least in our current gear.

[Slush]

The problem isn't just dps, even if it seems the biggest one, atm. We need to sort healing in a way to have A LOT more healing in the last phase. If you see the logs, sorted for healing done, you can see from the graph that in the last phase it's massively more stressful. That means we need to have a lot more mana and all the cooldowns we can have for the last phase, not to mention that a 2 healers strategy is not even an option, since the raid willl never survive the last phase with just 2 healers, at least in our current gear.

Doh.
Let me repeat:
Phase Final:
Corruption of the Old God â€" Cho’gall begins pulsing a raidwide AOE that hits for 5,000 shadow damage per two seconds. Damage is increased by 2% for every stack of Corrupted Blood an individual raider has.

Math question:
If you have 20 stacks.. thats quite normal in our raids.. how much shadow damage will you take every 2 seconds?
20x2%=40% extra shadow damage. Meaning... it will tick for 7000 every 2 seconds, instead of 5000.
How much is this, if the last phase lasts for... 1 minute?
2000 extra x 30 ticks = 60.000 hps extra.
5000 original aoe damage x 30 ticks = 150.000 original healing.
A total of 210.000 healing on a person with 20 stacks in the last phase alone.

This means... that if Slush get unlucky, and gets 50 (not 20) stacks before the last phase. We have to heal him for... 150.000 extra during the 1 minute last phase. to a total of 300.000 in 60 secs.
Thanks for the wipe, Slush!!!
In addition comes the stacks that Choggy puts on us :-/


2 man healing is an option. Its a very viable option, as WE ALL need to avoid shadow damage taken. And dps needs to kick it up. Thats really it.

But in addition.. Sure. Lets make sure healing assignments are sorted before we reach p2 :-D

not to mention that a 2 healers strategy is not even an option, since the raid willl never survive the last phase with just 2 healers, at least in our current gear.

Wait... in current gear? We are not undergeared. Rather the opposite...
Being that sceptic to a great solution isnt good.

Lol 1 healed:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/p0yodm7wipqgrzmy/sum/healingDone/

[Tirkad]

Lol 1 healed:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/p0yodm7wipqgrzmy/sum/healingDone/

I stand my case. The paladin you linked have at least 15 points more of my avarage ilvl, not to mention most of the best in slot, including the [ITEM=http://www.wowhead.com/item=64645]trinket[/ITEM] (God knows how much i've farmed it ). Not to mention that the whole raid performed almost flawlessly on the control side (the dps is a bit low, as you can see), with only one person breaking the 1k dmg taken.
Honestly, i'm trying to be realist here. No doubt we need to aim high, but i'm not expecting to see people going from 2,5k dmg taken to 800 in the span of a couple of days.
I expect, however, to see people getting better and more familiar to the fight mechanics, thus improving the general performance of the raid, and of course this include healers.
As you were so kind to show us, that healer pumped out 2 times the healing of each one of us, confirming my doubts about our (healers) performance, that MUST be improved, since there surely is space for improvement. To prove this point is enough to check the other aszune's guild who recently have killed Cho'Gall for the first time: they were all going for a 3 healers setup and a general raid healing of about 32k. Of course, some used a particular setup for this fight (like 2x survival hunters, to abuse all the traps talents), but in general the setup was similar to ours.