HEROIC - Rhyolith - DEFEATED 11/10/11

[TeaLeaf]

I think we knew enough about mechanics, we got confused over some of the names, but it turned out that we knew that aspect anyway in the end when we looked it up again.  It was not mechanics that killed us, it was simply not getting to the second phase before Superheated.

Interesting to note Jas' comments about logs showing 2 healers on this fight, this will help, but we still need more dps.  If you add another DPS at our average we're still below where we should be and need more from people.  Moving to 2 healers/7 dps/1 tank might just squeeze it to the kill for us, but I'd really like to see more consistently higher DPS than we're seeing.

Let's go 2 healers tonight when we try it again.

As for 20k hps, looking at the logs I see a shed load of damage being taken that we can avoid by stepping out of it before we get hit!

[Azunai]

While dps of course needs to go up, the problem for melee dps is not so much the steering - any decent raider should be able to keep up a rotation while switching targets and slightly on the move. My steering calls don't really impact my overall dmg output much either, while I can't pull off perfect rotations all the time. Rather, I think we need to work on dropping his armor stacks as fast as possible, as these are the biggest obstructions to dps. You can see that this is the problem when you look at how many armor stacks we still had up by the time he goes superheated on some tries. I've seen 40+ which is more than half.

This is very much tied to RNG - get two active volcanoes right infront of him and you do 20% more dps in a matter of seconds. Have the bad fortune that the volcs are miles apart and his hp will crawl down. This makes it essential that we don't oversteer (as happened a lot last night, especially with more dps on legs) and miss active volcanoes.

If I say "left" everyone seems to dive on left and he goes almost 180 degrees, despite Grim going on opposite leg. I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to have equal dps on both legs, with only one person switching around to do steering, at his own descretion? i.e. Put Grim on one, Noreia on another (or two per if we're going with more dps on legs), and in order to steer, I'll just hit the leg I want to turn. My only concern with this is that he may steer too slowly. But if it works it could make the steering aspect more controlled, especially without my erratic shouting "left! Noo right! Noo left again!"

[TeaLeaf]

Yes, and I did forget to mention armor in my post, but I meant to include it in the general scheme of things.  Faster armor drops increase dps too, so we can then all hit decent numbers.  Every lil'bit helps!

[Slush]

Howcome we dont move with rhyolith? Having the whole group only 5-25 yards behind him would increase splash damage on fragments and legs ALOT.
As soon as the Spark spawns, MT pulls it out. A dedicated few rdps kills the sparks... then back to legs/fragments.

Pros:
-This probably means there will be alot less dps-downtime because Rhyo will never be out of range for rdps.
-Easier to 2-heal because mdps will not be out of range.
-Mdps AOE splash damage on Fragments will increase the dps on legs for rdps.

Cons:
-Raid group needs to be more mobile.
-Hard for whytee to know what direction to pull Spark to.

Any thoughts?

[Azunai]

Could work, although I'm not sure if AoE affects leg movement (I know dots don't) -> gonna be quite hard to steer him when you lot are AoEing him straight. Might actually kill some of the oozes in the process too.

Another 2 cons:
- Have to be a lot more dynamic with the fire lines.
- Within 20 yards of the stomp you get knocked back (or was this removed, I can't remember?)
 

Though I can't shake the feeling something's horribly wrong with it and it'll just lead to a quick death xD

EDIT: Fatboss guide shows 2 healers, as well as 4 dps split on the two legs with a 5th dps freely assisting where needed (and 2 dps on small adds). Note: Yesterday we had 3 dps on legs, with Sheepy assisting, though not assigned in a split manner (2 per leg).

[video=youtube;ejAKEb_NSRQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejAKEb_NSRQ[/video]

They also have just the 2 melee steering (switching targets) and the other 2 dps on their assigned leg fulltime.

EDIT: Another tactic I read is somewhat related to Slush's idea:

have your off tank pull the fragments of ryolith between his legs where your dps start aoeing them down meaning you succesfully damage the legs to speed up p1 and deal with the adds, do not worry about having an impact on his trajectory since you`ll be aoeing you`ll be hitting both legs and the damage from one cancels out the damage the other meaning you will have no impact on where he moves.

before you start saying " but hey dont we need more dpsers and not tanks for this fight to beat the soft enrage timer of Superheated? " stop and think for a few seconds.
you`ll be losing half the dps that 1 player would deal to 1 leg and you`ll be gaining the dps that 2 or maybe 3 players deal to 2 legs. why half the dps? well cause a tank still can deal some dps to the legs even though he`s in tank spec.

this tactic works miracles on heroic mode where we struggled a lot with beating the superheated soft enrage. we got from him getting superheated at 30% legs health during p1 to him getting superheated at 8% during p2

With a DPS instead of the OT, this should work even better. You then end up with Slush's idea. ALthough I'm still not convinced of the impact it'll have on steering.

[Grimnar]

Here is what i have seen and what i thought that worked or has to be changed a bit.

It is about the last few tries of the night after our 4% wipe.

We had some changes in how to dps the legs and get him moving.

For the main leg dps team i can see a tactic that can work and we tried it but didn't go so well if it was up to us or the placement of he volcanos (yes that is our biggest problem and not really our movement)
We had Hal and myself (Grimnar) each on one leg. Hal on the left leg and i was on the right one all the time. It sounds like a good tactic and it should work with two others doing the movement. But the dps difference between Hal and myself are a little problem aswell. A Ret pally has very little down time inbetween attacks, where a Feral druid has alot of downtime inbetween his attacks. A pally has direct damage where a druid has damage over time. In theory the two others should/can adjust that but for what i have seen yesterday was that it didn't go as we wanted it to go. Also a little problem with direct damage to the legs sometimes even on critical moments is that we loose 1 or 2 dps for a little while.
Those are TL and myself mainly. TL doing his mana and healing special abilities and me doing an innervate or battleress. With that i am the biggest dps loss at that point.
I have to walk away from the legs do what i needed to do then swap back into feral and start moving back to the boss again, while TL can sort of stay in the middle and starts his attacks again.
This happend a few times and to be honest it will happen again.


My own feeling that the movement with 1 dps on each leg all the time works while two others do the movement. But also with the weird moves the boss makes it can go weird.. Like the point where i had the feeling tl was on a sort of breaking point that a left was called and the boss still went right.. For atleast on my screen with that new addon all dps where at that point on the left leg, but keep in mind a right call was maked before the left call and for instance if i just put in a full rotation including a tigersfury used then i can sort of see why he was turning abit slow.



That for the main leg dps team:devil: Also what can bring in trouble and almost did a few times where you heared the stress a few times on ts from the leg team is that the others are dps'ing the legs aswell without really knowing the movement calls or how to split the dps. They just might pick a leg and bring in a few attacks and then back to their normal jobs. That is deadly for all of us and i think that played a big role aswell.


That is what i noticed with the last few tries, the 4% wipe we had all free in attacking, with me already doing the counter movement all the time what i felt was working but in a more steady created attack plan it should work what we did the last few tries. But then still our main problem will be our biggest pain and that is how will the volcanos spawn and activate... that is just pure luck and a few times bad luck for us.

[Azunai]

Nothing really contributing - I'm with Ice, I don't think we're using a wrong tactic, but we're just really dependant on what RNG gives us. We can do our best to act accordingly, and I think our current setup - 2 on legs full time, 1 melee steering and one ranged splitting dps - is working. Although I get the feeling we're often acting on instinct as well, which may help us a lot, or it may break the attempt.

But just so people not on the legs at all get an idea of what it's like... I have this analogy which I think sums it up: If you ever played football as a kid (or as a grown man ) and the ball landed in a nearby pond, you'll know what I mean. In order to get the ball out we would throw stuff in the water on the opposite side of where we wanted the ball to go, so the ripples would carry the ball in a certain direction. Very inaccurate and it could take a good few minutes before the ball would slowly drift towards the bank. The delay between your action and the result, and the echo of your previous action resounding in your new one, is sort of what this fight reminds me of.

[Niel]

I was initially sceptical about 2 healers - however it does seem it is possible.....I know others have done it with two but for me it feels I'm squeezing about as much as I can at the mo. It is pretty intense healing wise and is really on the edge and highly susceptible to RNG......but I think if we continue to improve as we have then the last hurdle to really overcome is the gather and raid shield coordination whilst avoiding the beams.

No real suggestions on improvements but I think we're on the right track already.

[TeaLeaf]

I've been reading into this further and these are the things I think we need to work on:

-heroism after 3rd Spark dies, it speeds the boss HP down to P2 and is quicker than trying to get the armor down further (ideally circa 50% HP and 40% or lower armor and frags down - the heroism takes us to 25%).
-we need to use Sheepy to constantly knockback the little tickturds and then use Fragment AOE on them.  If the AOE also hits the legs, so much the better.  
-If we kill the spark pronto then we can use the MT for collecting the fragments alongside the legs.
-all ranged kill spark immediately (no slow burn by 1 dps)
-tranq for the first stomp in P2
-raidwall any other stomps, P2 does not last long
-Balance number of hits not dps on the legs for better steering.
-during burn phase all focus the same 1 foot

[Slush]

I count 10 tries yesterday between 4 and 6 minutes. Hrmf.

[TeaLeaf]

305 seconds is about average for a heroic kill, so the first kill might be slightly slower, but we're there or there abouts at the moment, we just need to stay alive into P2 and finish the last 2.5m hp.

[TeaLeaf]

First kill was 302 seconds, so we were spot on.

Note for future:  
Ignore last spark before we push P2 as it despawns, just dps boss instead.
Raidwall use is essential, early tranq in P2 to get hp up for the first stomp is a win (good job Sheepy).

Allocation of dps last night:

Full-time on legs: (total of 5 - this was needed to beat the Superheated 5 min enrage)
Driver: Torgen
Single leg focus:  Noreia, Incendia, Sheepat, Grimreaper  (Sheep & Grim did 10 sec dps on new spark then reverted to their focused leg)

Spark & Adds
Jesung & TL

[Azunai]

To be honest, when looking at the video I was suprised we even made it at all. The leg steering was really dodgy in some points. But it goes to show that the higher DPS makes up for a lot of that, which is good to know.

[Slush]

I just want to say... We had some pathetic tries yesterday.

Let me explain how this fight works for a healer-POV: OMFGFIREEVERYWHERE!!!

So, when you are standing in the lava lines 10 seconds before boss does a stomp... You are litteraly wiping the raid. The amount of CD's and high-mana/low efficiency heals that went out yesterday was through the roof. This is heroic tries. Its not farm content. And I love using my Nature's Swifness and see those HP bars go full in 2 seconds... but.. but... Its on a 2 minute CD!
So get a grip!
Stay out of those lines. They cut a hole in you, eating 50% of your health, and dont think you "avoided death" in any way when your HP bar goes back up! You might have costed us the bosskill, due to insane usage of mana.

Melee group... Noreia in particular... Dont go to the other side of island from the rest of the group, please. Stay as close as possible to ranged camp while dps'ing your leg. Running out to throw hots and heals on you just cost way too much in this super-thight fight.

Help your healers.
Help yourself.
Dont take unnecessary damage.


I was frustrated. I still am. Grrrr...

[hubbah]

i said it before, and ill say it again.. This boss is sooooo damn anoying.

Is there a reason we are trying this boss week after week ( well 2 weeks i been here.. but hey ) its just so random like you saw yesterday.
All other bosses are just down to our own "skill" ( in lack of a beter word ) and therefor we have a beter chance of killing those instead of Lord Randomlot.