Majordomo Staghelm - Defeated 16/8/11

[TeaLeaf]

http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=52571

[TeaLeaf]

Short fight tactics, will be updated once live versions appear...

Two phases that rotate. Scorpion first (?).

Scorpion
-Whole raid gather in front of boss to mitigate cleave damage.
-If Searing Seeds was casted before entering Scorpion phase, move when you are about to explode. Every player will have a different timer.

Cat
-Spread to avoid pounce damage
-Kill the cat illusion thingies

Searing Seeds should cast once Cat phase ends, so just keep eye on debuff once in Scorpion again.

[TeaLeaf]

http://www.icy-veins.com/majordomo-staghelm-detailed-strategy

Also Tankspot's:

Hello and welcome to the Firelands Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this guide I'll show you all you have to know about Majordomo Staghelm, the second to last boss in this new raid instance. We defeated this fight with 1 tank, 6 healers and 18 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

On 25-man difficulty, Staghelm has 180 million health and 57 million in his 10-man version. Staghelm is a druid and will switch between several different Forms depending on your raid's positioning.

When 18 or more players are stacked up together, Staghelm will shift into a Scorpion Form. When your raid is spread out, Staghelm will assume a Cat Form. On every third shift, Staghelm will briefly shift into human form and then adapt to your raid's positioning afterwards with either Scorpion or Cat.

The longer Staghelm remains in a form, the faster his energy bar will regen due to a stacking buff called Adrenaline. Whenever his energy bar is full, he'll use a devastating ability depending on the form he's in. Eventually, he'll use them so fast in succession that you'll be forced to adjust your positioning and make him switch forms. However, every time Staghelm switches forms, he also gains a stacking buff that makes him deal 8% more damage on those devastating abilities.

This acts as a soft enrage timer and means you're basically forced to keep him in one stance for as long as possible without endangering your raid's survival. We've found 6-7 applications of Adrenaline to be manageable, but depending on your gear level you might want to try using 5, or even more than 7.

You should start out the fight with the whole raid stacked together including the tank, with Staghelm facing everyone. This will trigger his Scorpion Form, and whenever his energy bar fills up, he'll use an ability called Flame Scythe, which will inflict about 2.3million fire damage split among all raid members in front of him. The damage on this is affected by Fury, so it will go up as the fight progresses.

Your healers will likely get behind as Flame Scythe happens faster, so you should aim to Aura Mastery or otherwise cooldown the last few each Scorpion phase. When you absolutely can't take another hit of Flame Scythe, your raid members immediately need to spread out across the room and trigger Staghelm's Cat Form. Your tank should then drag him to the middle of the room so you have plenty of space in this phase.

In cat form, he'll use an ability called Leaping Flames when his energy bar fills up. He'll pick a random ranged raid member, jump on him and leave a huge circle of fire on the ground. These fire puddles don't vanish while he's in cat form and you'll need ample space in the middle, so make sure that all your ranged raid members are at least 20 yards away from Staghelm during this phase.

Every time he leaps, he'll also summon an add called Spirit of the Flame. These need to be killed as they come out, so make sure to assign some DPS to them.

After about 6 stacks of Adrenaline, your entire raid should collapse on your tank in the middle, and Staghelm will shift into human form, briefly stun your raid, cast Searing Seeds on everyone but the tank, and then shift into Scorpion Form. The Searing Seeds debuff will have a different duration on every raid member, from roughly 10 seconds to roughly a minute.

When Searing Seeds expires, the raid member will explode everyone else within 12 yards of him for more than 60000 damage, so Whenever someone's debuff is about to tick off, they need to run out of the raid and away from other people. No one can tell you when to do this, you have to keep an eye on your own debuff timer. Failing to leave the raid in time will almost certainly result in a wipe.

On the other hand, panicking and leaving the raid too early might result in too many people being out of the stack and Staghelm switching forms prematurely. To avoid this, you should run out when your debuff has about 5 seconds left, give or take a few. That should be plenty of time to get 12 yards away from everyone else. As soon as your debuff explodes, re-join your raid members.

This is the part of the fight that will likely give you the most trouble, as raid damage on Flame Scythe will be increased with people temporarily out of the raid. Raid cooldowns should be reserved for most of the Scythes. If at all possible, try to stack Adrenaline to at least 5. When you cannot handle the damage anymore, initiate Cat Form and handle it the same way you did the last cat form.

Afterwards, collapse on the tank in the middle once more and go through another phase of Scorpion Form. Since you have four stacks of Fury at this point, your raid leader needs to judge how many stacks of Adrenaline you can handle and call for raid cooldowns. We did 6, but 5 might be safer.

The next time Staghelm changes Forms, he'll briefly switch into Human form again. This time, since you're transitioning into Cat Form, he won't cast Searing Seeds but instead use an ability called Burning Orbs. This will spawn 5 big flaming mushroom-looking orbs around the room that will each attack the nearest player every 2 seconds with stacking damage.

To deal with this, you should have two ranged players near each orb that switch off on taking the damage. Make sure that they get healed and that they switch off when they start taking too much damage (which should be around 5 stacks). The orbs last a minute, so they'll basically span your whole Cat Phase.

At this point, you've seen all possible stances and abilities that Staghelm can possibly use throughout the encounter and he should be close to death. You should aim to defeat him before his next human phase, as another Searing Seeds would likely prove to be deadly. We defeated him when he had 6 stacks of Fury, during a Scorpion phase, and used a raid cooldown for almost every Flame Scythe that phase.

It's incredibly important that your raid communicates smooth transitions - when a transition is called on ventrilo, everyone needs to move out of or collapse into the raid as soon as possible, else you chance delaying the transition and ending up with a wipe. This is especially important when transitioning from cat into scorpion, as you don't want Staghelm to reach full energy right before triggering his phase change and ending up with a fire circle in the middle of the raid.

Once you understand the transitioning and all 25 of your raid members understand when to run out with their Searing Seeds debuff, this boss shouldn't prove too much of a problem. As always, good luck and have fun! I've attached footage of the whole encounter, so you can see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail.

[TeaLeaf]

Whilst Alysrazor is likely our next raid goal, this one follows closely behind!  Be prepared!

[TeaLeaf]

Bump for after Alysrazor.

[TeaLeaf]

Alysrazor is dead, be prepared for this fight on Tuesday.

[Azunai]

I suppose the tank doesnt get hit by the seed debuff? Otherwise I suppose this is a pretty doable fight. Seems that melee dps has it relatively easy here. Apart from running out @ seeds and kitty adds it seems like a nukefest.

[Grimnar]

What we also noticed yesterday was that those adds go down pretty fast.
 
We rushed in yesterday and got the boss to 75%. With that i have to say we havn't seen the hardest part of the fight yet.
Moving out on your "own". People can't call that for you so you have to do that fully on your own.
 
With that under controll and healers can keep up with the stacks then it should be pretty easy.

[Azunai]

Said it before and Ill say it again: Power Aura's ftw! Set it to show a big blob of whatever on your screen when debuff time < 6 seconds, so you'll know when to move out. ...although I'm not 100% sure you can set it to check for time left on a debuff.

[TeaLeaf]

Range on the seed AOE is 12yds, so the tank should not get hit if people move correctly.

Adds have about 320k HP, so drop like flies.  We can probably focus a specific number of people to them to increase boss dps.

[Azunai]

No, obviously tank doesnt get hit by the explosions if ppl move right. ;-) I meant does he get the debuff himself, i.e. Does he have to run out?

[Twyst]

I meant does he get the debuff himself

Tanks don't get the debuff

[TeaLeaf]

P1 - Scorpion
Schedule raidwalls for #6 or 7 Flame Scythe
Group up, tank calls break on 6/7 stacks

P2 - Cat
Spread and position around circle to pre-determined positions
Move out of fire when he leaps
Assign 2 ranged dps to Spirit of Flame (are they tauntable?  - ie will they will die quickly enough in melee splash damage?)
Collapse to mid immediately he does 6th leap

Transition back into P1
When we return from Cat form to Scorpion, he briefly turns to Human form and casts Searing Seed:
Searing seed - duration 10-60 seconds - different for each person - CHECK & KNOW YOUR DEBUFFS!
Run out 5 seconds before debuff expires - AOE range is 12 yds - Set range check to 12 yards
Run back into group immediately after detonation of seed.

Second and later P1
Call break at about 5 - check damage levels and adjust!
Raidwalls for Flame Scythe essential as stacks build

Second transition into P1 (via Human form)
Burning Orbs cast instead of Searing Seed.
Three (?) orbs cast
Need to arrange three pairs of ranged/healers to handle the proximity debuff
Switch to next player at 5 stacks (just like Baleroc crystal handling)
Healers cover damage - use personal CDs to survive debuff if needed


I want to build a raidwall CD list please, I'm not sure my CD list is up to date.  Can you all please put your raidwall and CD in this thread please so that I can build a rotation?  Thanks.

[Whitey]

Assign 2 ranged dps to Spirit of Flame (are they tauntable?  - ie will they will die quickly enough in melee splash damage?)

I'm not sure if they are tauntable but they have the same threat table as the boss so go straight to the tank.  I was thinking more of melee taking care of the adds as the boss jumps out at regular intervals and so would be better if ranged were on him?

As for raid cooldowns, I have a DG.

[TeaLeaf]

As for raid cooldowns, I have a DG.

What's the CD on it?

I know we have a range of raidwalls, but I wanted to update my list of the talented CDs, so if people could post their raidwall & talented CD I'd be grateful


Healing
Grimnar - Tranqility - 8 min CD
Teaell - Divine Hymn - 8 min CD
Jas - Tranqility - 3 min CD
Slush/Puja - Spirit Link Totem - 3 min CD
Sheep - Tranq - 8 min CD

Mitigation
Twisted (DPS spec) - AMZ - 2 min CD
Whitey - Divine Guardian - 3 min CD

HP Adjustment
Torgen - Rallying Cry (+20% HP to raid for 10 sec) - 3 min CD