Ragnaros - DEFEATED 20/09/2011

[TeaLeaf]

http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=52409

[TeaLeaf]

In phase one, Ragnaros has two primary abilities. The first one is Sulfuras Smash. He targets the ground with his hammer and lava begins to boil on the ground; a few seconds later, he slams the hammer down. This impact causes Lava Wave to radiate out from the blast. They're easy to avoid, but when we did get hit, they were pretty minimal damage. They put a debuff that can be dispelled that causes periodic damage. It's likely in heroic it would hit for too much or be unremovable as a way to make the mechanic more punishing.

The second ability he uses are Magma Traps. He summons one on a random player in the raid. They function a lot like the Shadow Trap mechanic from heroic Lich King, except they don't remove you from the platform. This makes them relatively harmless. Unlike the heroic Lich King ones, they also don't despawn during phase transitions. We ended up clearing them with our priests--they would purposely set them off, take the initial damage, then use Levitate to avoid taking fall damage right before they came back down.

Other than these two abilities, it was fairly simple. Hand of Ragnaros is casted every once in a while and it's a lot like Static Shock from the Al'Akir encounter. Casters just shouldn't stand in melee to avoid it. Ragnaros also casts Wrath of Ragnaros on a random player so players should be careful to not be in front of Magma Traps so they aren't punted back into one. One thing that isn't covered in the video are the tanks. We used two because there was a debuff and we found it easier if the tanks taunted off each other to reset it; we found out later you could one tank it if you wanted to, but this probably isn't working as intended.
Phase Two

Phase two starts at 70%. Ragnaros spawns his Sons of Flame after throwing down Sulfuras. They speed towards the hammer and if they get close to it, they explode. They can't be slowed, but they can be stunned. We had ranged burst them down and melee get ones that were coming closer. They have a buff called Burning Speed which increases their speed if their HP is above 50%, so our melee just switched to ones that were high then switched off after and allowed ranged to finish them off.

After you clean up the Sons, Ragnaros comes back up and throws down a Molten Seed at every member of the raid. When they come down, we switched sides to the other end of the platform. After ten seconds, they spawn adds that can't be tanked. Luckily they don't hit for very much, either. We just gathered up and AoE'd them down then switched back to Ragnaros.

Other than that, it was a fairly simple phase. He also casts Engulfing Flames on the platform to make certain areas obscured, this doesn't become much of an issue until phase three, but should still be watched out for.
Phase Three

The final phase starts out at 40% with another intermission similar to the last except for the addition of two Lava Scions. These two mobs can be tanked and are fairly harmless except for the fact that they heal Sons of Flame who stand in their wake. We just made sure they were tanked off to the side to avoid this.

Phase three's whole mechanic relies on Living Meteors. Ragnaros will summon on down from the sky and it will fixate on a random raid member. You can alter its path slightly by DPSing it--every time it's hit, it rolls away. However, if you're in the meteor's landing path or within a couple yards of it (regardless of whether it's following you or not), it will kill you. Thus only ranged DPS can alter its path. These meteors can't be killed and more of them continue to spawn, effectively making this last phase an intense burn one. The raid must run back and forth to avoid the meteors while finishing the Lava Scions that were left up from the intermission and also damaging Ragnaros.

Of course, Engulfing Flames is still being cast on one third of the platform, making the meteor kiting even trickier.

After this phase, Ragnaros dies--since we only got about two hours of testing in and it was our first time killing him, we didn't kill him. We got pretty close, though, so it was a fairly easy fight to learn and adjust to. The mechanics were a mixture of old and new with some cool ideas thrown in. Phase three was by far the most hectic and satisfying of the phases. It'd be cooler if more phases were like that as kiting the meteors took more execution and felt much more complex than the previous phases' special abilities.

[TeaLeaf]

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

TL;DR version: DONT STAND IN THE FIRE

3 phases and a transition phase in between. 4th phase in heroic only, only ability information so far.

Phase 1

-Dont get hit by hammer or its lava waves.
-Trigger lava traps when you can afford it.
-Dont clump up.
-Dont get knockbacked in to lava.

Transition 1

-Kill adds before they reach hammer. Closest ones first. Use knockbacks & stuns.

Phase 2

Sulfuras Smash remains from Phase 1, lava traps and knockback are gone.
-Split raid on both sides of room, empty in middle.
-Dont stand in World in Flames fire. Derp.
-When Ragranos uses Molten seeds, move to the center, pop survivability cooldowns and aoe until the adds that spawn are dead. This is currently buggy and should change a lot on live, so dont take it for granted.

Transition 2

-Kill adds before they reach the hammer, just like in transition 1.
-2 big adds spawn in addition to smaller adds. Burn these while moving them around, dont let them heal themselves by standing in their path.
Small adds > Big adds.

Phase 3

Sulfuras Smash and World in Flames will remain from previous phases.
-Living Meteors will spawn continually, which follow players around and kill them (and anyone nearby) if they reach them. Attack the meteors to knock them back.
-If the meteors hit lava waves, something happens. They werent exactly functional on the PTR.

[TeaLeaf]

Start reading & prepping up for this fight please.  RGT have done 4/7, this is 2 fights away so let's be prepared!

[TeaLeaf]

Now is prep time for Ragnaros.  RGT are 5/7 and Ragnaros is now in sight.  Be ready for it please so that we can get on to Heroic modes ASAP.

[Grimnar]

Well i have no clue on what to post really...

First phase is simple for me, just nuke the boss and hoping i don't get knocked back into the firewave.. (happend once at first try)
Without the knockback the waves are freaking easy to avoid as melee dps. Just stand at the boss and you are behind it

phase 2 well that is one i am still wondering about, my job was the closest add at the left side, i seemed to able to just kill it in time but then just in time!!
1 try we had a clear phase 2 with 3 adds getting very close to the hammer but enough dps from all of us on it (aoe dps) to kill them just in time. The try after that was a complete mess...

With that in my mind i still have no clue on how to solve that phase as for me i had already trouble with my own add and i really had not to start thinking about being able to help out the others fast enough.
My stunn works on them but it costs me 5 combo points to be effective on them, that means 2 full energy bars gone just for the stunn at that point i still have to burn him down..  when the add dies i am completly out of energy and aint able to do aoe damage, aoe damage is at that point needed near the hammer as the other adds seemed to be grouped at that point.

For the rest i don't know havn't seen the rest of the fight yet as this was my first go into this fight.

[Whitey]

I think the way to handle the first transition phase is to do what we were doing in as much as having an assigned player to each add but if you are on an add that is a long way from the hammer then just dps down to 40-50% and then help attack one that's closer to the hammer.  The first proper try we had went well and with everyone alive I'm sure we will handle them fine.

[Jesung]

I need to work on my timing of the traps as I nearly killed Whytee a couple of times in the first phase. Otherwise It was pretty simple from my end, I didn't have any trouble avoiding the Sulfuras smash waves. I still hate his absolutely ridiculous hit-box which causes haunt to take about 4secs to reach him.

[Twyst]

I still hate his absolutely ridiculous hit-box which causes haunt to take about 4secs to reach him.

Maybe cast it when it's off CD instead of delaying it. Not maintaining near 100% haunt uptime is a big DPS loss for affliction.

[Azunai]

Ok, notes from me

1) I think we're making P2 harder than it needs to be (with the running around and boxed positions). I know this is suggesting a pretty big change from what we're doing now, but I wanna throw up the ball regardless. In the Tankspot vid, the way they handle P2 is pretty much the same as P1, with regards to positions. There's two differences: 1 - they stand 6 yards apart, obviously, and 2 - they keep a strip of ground in the middle (from the boss to the entrance of the area) completely clear. Once seeds have spawned, everyone runs to the middle front of Ragnaros (there's a dot in the floor there, makes it easy), stacks up and kills adds, then goes back to their positions. The bit tricky (esp on 25) is that you may get seeds in eachother's paths, but with 10man it should be very easy to move around it. This makes it far less of a hassle to run around and get proper positions. See the video below at 05:05. As for the Engulfing Flame, people would just handle those individually. Charred fire under your feet? Move the F out! :-)

[video=youtube;Cc0kfS8-KB0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc0kfS8-KB0&feature=channel_video_title[/video]


2) Hammer in the Middle. Simpler solution to when this happens (imo) would be to have the 4 dps (as we had it tonight: TL+Nocto and Torgen+Grim) on the middle 4 adds, rather than have me and Grim on the outer ones. If I'm not mistaken it was Jesung on two of the middle adds? Me and Grim can dish out a lot more burst dps. But I reckon this was already obvious at the end of last try tonight ;-)

[Grimnar]

Well atm i will leave out the tactics for other people to type down. as for it was abit confusing etc. I knew my job and did it

But feral dps point of view:

Phase 1, Easy for melee dps. Just a few things to look for and to do.

First you start with nuking the boss, the way we did it the last few tries you will be just or nearly done putting up your first dps rotation when heroism gets launched, so be ready for that. When first rotation is going hit your trinkets/pots and beserk and go full shred mode. (you need to be on the far left to be behind the boss)(you won't be able to use shred from there all the time as the tanks move around a bit aswell and are spread, if lucky you can use it the whole time if not swap to mangle.
Then the things to look out for: "Hammer Time"  that is his hammer smash on the ground make sure you are at the edge of the platform, that way you don't have to worry about the 3 lava waves. But your biggest concern here is the knockback timer.
There is 1 moment in phase 1 that the hammer and knockback timer are going off at the same time. So time your position correct so that you get launched behind the passing wave and not infront of it. (when you have seen the fight you will know what i mean).
Another thing that can also be a pain to do is giving your innervate to an healer. As most of the time they where out of range of me, or the healer that needed is was at the far end of the platform. If the last thing is going on then it is just bad luck for that healer, just stick your innervate to the closest healer near you. (the healer near you lets you being out of range so you can do your normal dps rotation and not being a full dps loss)(thnx Puja for letting me staying at the spot i was)

Phase 1.5

Adds to kill. 2 out of the 3 options are easy for a feral druid the 3 one (and still unclear) is still a ??.

1. Hammer drops on the left:  feral dps take the add left of the hammer that is at the back, the other melee dps with way more burst dps takes the add closest to the hammer. (only 2 adds at the left side of the hammer) after your add is down you nuke the other incomming adds at the hammer. (all adds may not reach the hammer)

2. Hammer drops on the right: You stay at where you where at the platform but this time there are 6 adds your side. The 2 at the back are left alone at the start. You just nuke nr 3 from that point with the heavy melee dps next to you. When your add is at 50% you swap to the other adds to slow/kill them.

3. Hammer drops in the middle: Now 4 adds either side of the hammer. Here is where we failed today for a bit. We used to have the 2 last adds on our side and then helping with the rest. (feral druid at he last one) But next time we will change that order i think as the burst dps is needed at the 2 adds closest to the hammer either side of it. (so more info on that later)

When all adds are down phase 2 starts..

a tip for phase 1.5:  make sure that when ragnaros hits 76% you save your tigersfury for the add phase. When boss reaches 72/71% stop hitting with special attacks. This makes sure you have a full energy bar (2) for nuking the adds as you are a dps loss on the adds as a feral with just a little burst dps at the start and end of that phase. This way you maked sure your side did/can do his job without trouble.

phase 2:

Stacking up (6 yards between al of us) at the left side of the boss. still watch out for the big hammer and its waves of lava. As soon as you get the fire bubble around you move to the right side of the platform and really stackup. (in the meanwhile keep attacking the boss) When fully stacked up you will see a horde of adds comming your way save a full energy bar for them and swipe the crap out of them (boss still as your target) maybe even save tigersfury for this.
Point to watch out here is the big fire on the ground move out of it as a group asap!
This repeats all the time untill next phase...

That is all i have to say as a feral as i think that was what i have seen.. might have missed something but the others will have said that

[TeaLeaf]

From my POV, whilst it was my first night in there we seemed anecdotally to get P1 way more reliable and P1.5 under almost 'good' control.  We started failing with the first Engulfing Flame in P2 when we got there.  However, we still wasted far too many tries with first deaths early in the fight from avoidable things:

Try Number:

• Amber in Lava Wave
• Grim in Lava wave (was this when you found out about the knockback coinciding with the wave?)
• AOE raid wipe (Sons reached Hammer)
• Nocto died due to Wrath & Trap within 5 seconds (Jes & Healers be aware)
• AOE raid wipe (Sons reached Hammer)
• Jesung triggered trap and ported right into a Lava Wave (all within less than a second)
• AOE wipe - double traps triggered within 1 second (don't stand too close to an un-triggered trap or you might get knocked into it)
• AOE raid wipe to Engulfing Flames
• Jas in took melee range knockback into trap
• Amber in Lava Wave
• AOE raid wipe (Sons reached Hammer)
• Slush got humped by Molten Infernos (movement & placing of seeds was wrong)
• Puja in Lava Wave
• Amber in Lava Wave
• AOE raid wipe (Sons reached Hammer)
• Slush in Lava Wave
• Puja had Wrath knockback into trap and died from fall damage
• AOE raid wipe (Sons reached Hammer)

The purpose of the list is not to point out who did what, but to summarise where we can get better.  Of the 18 tries last night (not a bad number for this boss for a raid), we:

5 tries to Sons reaching Hammer - this is largely now fixed (still some work to do on Middle Hammer)
3 tries lost to people getting knockback into a trap (this is avoidable)
7 tries lost to people getting hit by Lava Waves (this is avoidable)
1 lost to poor Seed positioning (this is avoidable)

So more than half our night (11 of 18 tries) was lost due to avoidable damage or our own errors.  5 tries to something we have largely now fixed and then we lost 2 tries to other things.  

If we fix us first, we'll have more time to figure out which bits of this fight are tricky and then get on and kill the bugger!



Ground Rules:
The five phase fight is really a 3 phase fight, with P1, a P1.5 transition, P2, a P2.5 transition and P3.  So treat reference to the phases accordingly and let's be consistent!

Sons of Flame numbering convention:
For a left or right hammer:  1 & 2 are far side of the Hammer.  3-8 are boss-side of the Hammer & cover the area from the Hammer, past middle to the opposite side of the platform.
Middle Hammer: 1-8 are from Left to Right as you look at the boss from the entrance to the platform.

Heroism
Heroism blown 10 seconds into the fight.   We'll get to use it again towards the end of the fight.  However it does mean someone else (last night this was me) needs to trigger last trap before P1.5.  Leap of Faith was a good safety net and also shortened the air-time for me so ensured I was on the ground and able to cast when the Sons spawned.  I suspect that very quickly we will defer heroism as we bring the fight down to the 10 minute mark with gear upgrades and familiairity, so this is most likely a short-term thing.

I know this is suggesting a pretty big change from what we're doing now, but I wanna throw up the ball regardless.

I'd rather you ran it up a flagpole and see if anyone salutes it.

, with regards to positions. There's two differences: 1 - they stand 6 yards apart, obviously, and 2 - they keep a strip of ground in the middle (from the boss to the entrance of the area) completely clear. Once seeds have spawned, everyone runs to the middle front of Ragnaros (there's a dot in the floor there, makes it easy), stacks up and kills adds, then goes back to their positions. The bit tricky (esp on 25) is that you may get seeds in eachother's paths, but with 10man it should be very easy to move around it.

If we try this it is not too far from what we do at the moment.  I do not like the amount we have to run from blue to green during P1.5 post seed spawn.  Anything to reduce that is good and it will increase our dps.   Arguably we could group in a horseshoe around a central collapse point (keeping the mid clear) and do a similar thing (horseshoe is less running for those at the far end of for example a line).  It should mean less distance to run, thus getting onto DPSing the little adds more quickly and that also means we can then spread again earlier - which in turn means we are better positioned for Engulfing Flames (still having adds up for the first engulfing flames killed us at least 3 times last night).  Once we're spread again (post-seed adds) and into P2 with the Engulfing Flame then being better spread will help reduce damage, but I think this would have happened anyway if we had handled adds faster.

2) Hammer in the Middle.

This is what we dealt with very poorly last night and need to be on top of in order to get a reliable, repeatable strategy in place.  Agreed that we need burst dps in middle, so TL+Nocto on 4 & 5, Torgen & Grim on 3 & 6.  However with a middle Hammer *everything* is close and Jes will always struggle somewhat due to cast time and their movement speed so we might need to do something like:
(assume middle hammer):
1 & 2: Jes plus Torgen (leap) & Grim (pounce)
3 & 4: Torgen & Grim stun only then go dps on 1 & 2 with Jes
5 & 6: TL & Nocto to 50%, then Nocto finish 5 & 6, TL dps 4 then 3 to 50%
7 & 8: Whytee & Twisted then clean up anything on right side
All: clean up once your add is down
 
Hammer Time
People are either (a) not moving enough and getting caught, or moving too much and losing dps or healing time.  It's easy, look at a few, figure out the width of the lava walls and learn to avoid *and* move by minimal amounts (most often not having to move at all!)

Seed Placement
Basically we sucked on a couple of tries.  Standing in mid or close to mid is not an option and will wipe us.

There is 1 moment in phase 1 that the hammer and knockback timer are going off at the same time. So time your position correct so that you get launched behind the passing wave and not infront of it. (when you have seen the fight you will know what i mean).

An excellent point for people in melee range to note.

[Grimnar]

yeah point number 2 was the time that both went off at the same time and i was to far away from the hammer smash so i got knocked back into the wave.

btw the way you stand is also the way you get knocked back to.  

easy example: If you have your back to the boss you will get launched to the boss and will have a nice swim in the lava

[Grimnar]

Well not much new stuff from my end, only have to say that the add controll on my end was easy doable and this most of the time without my expensive stunn...

I used my stunn when i noticed an emergency and if i was able to ofcourse.. This means when someone else his add ran past me with loads of hp... in that case i tried to stunn mine and dps that one with the little dps i had left at that point.
What i also noticed a few tries was that my add with only 1 rotation on it was the last add alive and still far away from the hammer (right hammer) (everyone left that add alone untill the end) so you can somewhat say some dps is better spend at that point somewhere else.
That is what we already noticed when Torgen was in the group, it seems where he had dps for 3 adds i have for 1,5/2 when enough playground ofcourse.. That should help out Jes if he plays his normal spec and also saves a cd from Sheep or Nocto at the hammer.

Jesung last few tries where great, we sort had a small problem with one of his adds as that one was in the lava pool and since it was melee side i couldn't hit it... but the backup came in on time.

[JonnyAppleSeed]

P2 group position (seed phase) as default should be as far forward as possible (right on the edge of the lava) We may need to move it back if we get fire but it should prevent us getting split up