HEROIC Warmaster Blackhorn - DEFEATED 01/04/12

[hubbah]

loggin now.. we got TB

[TeaLeaf]

Next TB battle at 15:20 GMT (16:20 Game Time).  Cya then.

[Milli]

Watch a lot of this guys vids - officers might find something they can take from the fight...

[video=youtube;sH8DDi9C55M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH8DDi9C55M&list=UUAIz7Y435Tf5wgTBARRcqIQ&index=3&feature=plcp[/video]

[TeaLeaf]

I like 2 bits from that video: (1) that they had never been into P2 and had not planned it and yet killed the boss and (2) the positioning of the corners which mean that if people group in those areas then they will automatically be looking 'into' the deck area and therefore are less likely to miss an onslaught or a barrage.

Been thinking some about this fight, so here goes:

Twilight Onslaught
This hits for 1.2m damage shared amongst the ship & players within 10 yards.  We need to aim for about 4 barrages in P1, so a quick table of damage taken either by each player or the ship depending on the number of soakers:


The key thing here is to notice that there are diminishing returns to the number of people soaking each Onslaught.  If 9 people soak then the ship and we take 120k damage each.  If we struggle to get 10 people to soak we only reduce the damage to ourselves and the ship by 11k to 109k and lose a large amount of DPS or healing in the process through movement.   By the time you add in a CD (like a raidwall) for each Onslaught then there is not a lot of damage being taken by players (e.g. 87k with 10 people soaking under a DG) so we should not beat ourselves up if we soak an occasional barrage with only 8 or 9 instead of say 10.

The second thing to extract from that graph is that an onslaught can be soaked by a relatively few people with bigger cooldowns.  For example, if a fire mage & a shadow priest soaked (cauterise & dispersion) then the ship would only take 400k damage and we'd have 8 other people still doing DPS/healing/Barrage soaking and have saved a raidwall for later use.  As the ship would take 120k damage anyway even with 9 people soaking, then it's a difference of only 280k damage, which is the same as missing just TWO Barrages. (9 people soaking as the DG tank would remain outside as DG does not reduce the caster's damage)

Perhaps aiming to soak the 1st Onslaught with a Mage/ShPriest, 2nd with a DG, 3rd with a DG and 4th with Mage/ShPriest  would allow us better DPS, healing and soaking elsewhere during the 1st & 4th soaks.  It also saves us tranq/PWB/AM/Hymn/RC/Spiritlink for later use.

Now clearly if the ship takes 400k damage when only 2 people soak with it then that's bad, but compare it to other sources of ship damage as 1xtwo-soaked Onslaught is the same as 2 missed Barrages!

Twilight Barrage
Barrage deals 140000 Shadow damage to players within 5 yards of the point of impact.  If no players are struck, the ship suffers the full 140k.  The key difference here is that we need to get someone into every Barrage.  

 
From this we can see that we get some basic rules about soaking:

• with 0 debuff stack you can PAIR soak without a CD (140k damage)
• with 1 debuff stack you can SOLO soak if you have a CD (e.g. Mirror) (148k damage)
• with 1 debuff stack you can PAIR soak without a CD if on full HP (140k damage)
• with 2 debuff stacks you can PAIR soak with Mirror (148k damage)

I've ignored solo soaking with dispersion/cauterise as this is likely to be used on Onslaught soaking.

I believe that Barrage soaking will be the key to us getting through this fight.   Ultimately missing a few Barrages will hurt us more than getting fewer people into an Onslaught.  So the key will be to minimise the Barrages by (a) soaking and by (b) not allowing them to be cast in the first place.

Killing Drakes faster means fewer Barrage casts and this is where I think we need to focus.

We should consider tanking the Slayer under the left tethered drake for cleave (Leggs might be excellent for this as it's equivalent to his Claw damage at Zon'ozz) whilst the DPS burn down the right drake first.

Either way, all DPS need to burn the first drake down as a priority (whilst the Slayer is tanked under the other drake) and NEVER let the second Drake break its tether and fly off to continue casting Barrages unimpeded.  The Dread & Slayer are relatively minor irritations in the scheme of things and should go down as a second priority (Dread then Slayer)

In terms of soaking, I like the idea of marking the 4 corners of the deck and assigning 8 people to those areas so that they are facing in to 'see' the Barrages.  
If we soak Onslaughts as above we'll get way higher DPS on the drakes in the 1st & 4th Onslaughts.  
Less running for Onslaughts means better Barrage soaking whilst we DPS drakes down and dead drakes means less Barrages.

We can then save Heroism for Goriana.

I think it would help to have a Weak Auras code to let people know when it is safe to Solo soak or Pair soak with or without a Mirror.  I'll try to think about how best to do this as it might need to be done in 2 or 3 strings to satisfy the rules.

Final thought:   Bane of Havoc on Goriana as he flies in Jesung.  It will help hugely in P2.

Anyway, back to work for a bit now I guess.

[microid]

that barrage damage cant be true i have 160k hp whit raid buffs and it will kill me if i solo soak. that damage from wowhead must be normal version damage. i think it more close to 200k. and also it seems to be shadow dam and we have a 24% resistance for that on. so it must be alot more than 140k.

if i understand the how the barrage works it will hit the ship always will we soak it or not we will just reduce the dam. lets say the dam is 3 points. 1 soaker means 1,5 to ship and soaker. whit 2 guys its 1 point to each.

[Azunai]

It deals 280.000 damage on Heroic 10m, 140.000 on Normal (see the Dungeon Journal in game). So that graph is a bit weird. Then there's a bit of a vaguery in the description of Twilight Barrage vs Twilight Onslaught:

Twilight Barrage:

The twilight drakes launch bursts of dark energy at a random location on the deck of the Skyfire. Twilight Barrage inflicts 280.000 Shadow damage, divided evenly among all players within its 5 yard radius. If the attack strikes the deck of the Skyfire without hitting a player, the gunship suffers the full damage instead.

Twilight Onslaught:

Goriona unleashes a massive blast of dark energy at a random location on the deck of the Skyfire. Twilight Onslaught inflicts 1.200.000 Shadow damage, divided evenly among all players within its 10 yard radius and the Skyfire. If the attack strikes the deck of the skyfire without hitting a player, the gunship takes the full damage.

That is to say, if we're nitpicking the spelling, Twilight Barrage's description implies that the ship takes no damage if the Barrage is soaked by at least 1 person, and the total damage is divided among the soakers equally (but not going to the ship). Now of course, it could just be a typo... However, it leaves me confused as to how much damage is going to who. I've got 4 ways to interpret this:

If there are soakers, ship takes no damage, and the full damage is divided equally among the soakers.
0 people soaking: Ship takes 280.000 damage
1 person soaking: Ship takes 0 damage, player takes 280.000 damage
2 people soaking: Ship takes 0 damage, players each take 140.000 damage

and so on, OR

If there are soakers, ship takes no damage, and half the damage is divided equally among the soakers.
0 people soaking: Ship takes 280.000 damage
1 person soaking: Ship takes 0 damage, player takes 140.000 damage
2 people soaking: Ship takes 0 damage, players each take 70.000 damage

and so on, OR (if it's just a typo)

If there are soakers, ship acts as 1 soaker, and the total damage is divided equally among the soakers + the ship.
0 people soaking: Ship takes 280.000 damage
1 person soaking: Ship takes 140.000 damage, player takes 140.000 damage
2 people soaking: Ship takes 93.333 damage, players each take 93.333 damage

and so on, OR (this is just getting funky, but I'm confused as to which one it really is)

If there are soakers, ship takes half the damage, the other half is divided equally among the soakers.
0 people soaking: Ship takes 280.000 damage
1 person soaking: Ship takes 140.000 damage, player takes 140.000 damage
2 people soaking: Ship takes 140.000 damage, players each take 70.000 damage


I'm tempted to say the 1st option is true.

[TeaLeaf]

I updated my numbers on the chart, but they look awfully high.  I solo soaked quite a bit and I'm pretty sure I was not losing that much HP....

Re Barrage, the tooltip is correct.  If someone soaks it the ship takes zero damage.

[JonnyAppleSeed]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1238[/ATTACH]

Would it be possible to split the soaker teams to cover 3rds of the boat .... with melee beating away in mid or as TL posted possible still move out a melee add to cleave a drake
At the mo the spit into 4 areas always leaves someone soaking solo unless we take only ranged

[Azunai]

Well... if the players instead of the ship take the full damage if they're soaking, then 1 person soaking with 2 stacks (the 1st purple column) is going to take 2x 50% = 100% extra damage, is 280.000 + 100% = 560.000 damage. So that graph seems good now.

As for your ability to solo soak a couple... Maybe you mitigated through Shadow Resistance? If I remember correctly (and if Blizz hasn't changed it since vanilla Ragnaros days) the way resistance works is the more of it you have, the higher your chance of resisting either 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of the damage (the 1st %'s are made up for the sake of example):

With 0 resistance:

0% chance of resisting 25% damage
0% chance of resisting 50% damage
0% chance of resisting 75% damage
0% chance of resisting 100% damage

With 100 resistance:

70% chance of resisting 25% damage
40% chance of resisting 50% damage
15% chance of resisting 75% damage
5% chance of resisting 100% damage

With 400 resistance:

99% chance of resisting 25% damage
75% chance of resisting 50% damage
45% chance of resisting 75% damage
30% chance of resisting 100% damage

So with only a little bit of resistance, there'd still be a very small chance to resist a big heap of the damage.

[TeaLeaf]

I refer the hnourable gentleman to the most excellent Combat Ratings post over at EJ:
http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t29453-combat_ratings_level_85_cataclysm/

Yes it's an average damage reduction, but it's a solid one and I did not factor in the effect of  say Kings and other buffs in the overall reductions.

[TeaLeaf]

Currently running through the logs on this one.   Last night was a truly 'heroic' effort, 31 pulls in a night is a seriously  impressive level of commitment to a boss kill.  

The ongoing effort is really appreciated, we'll get him soon. :thumbsup:

[hubbah]

Just one comment: If you and your partner have to soak just keep going and dont think "maybe my partner will not make it lets stop running" and let your partner die while soaking alone
This is something we should be really aware off

[TeaLeaf]

Blade Rush:
Across the whole night we tookl 18m damage from this avoidable attack and we need to get better at avoiding it.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ycso9svlsyk7cxjc/spell/109014/?enc=wipes&boss=56427
^^You can see that we all take more damage than we should and some a lot more than others.  Miicroid & Jesung did best so well done both of you.   If we can reduce our charge damage to Miicroid's & Jesung's level then the healers will avoid having to heal up an additional 8.3m HP.

Points to note:
The damage of blade rush extends well beyond the end of the line on the deck/floor.  I took damage several times when I was at least 5 yds off the end of the designated charge line so we need to move off-axis completely and by I'd suggest 8+yds.  

In addition, there is some really wierd server timings issues on blade rush, you can move out and still get hit when you are off-axis by quite some way if you leave the movement until too late - the lesson is to move immediately and not wait.


Sappers:
We need to assign one person to call each of these on TS.  Too many times we got to it late as not all had noticed the spawn.

Survivability
Please note that just because someone's name is mentioned it does not mean that it was their fault, we just need ot understand why.   For example, Barrage soaking is a team thing and if someone dies it's usually because they solo-soaked something that shoulod have been shared with an absent partner!
Try|Early Deaths|Note
1|Puja|170k onslaught - was debuffed with 1 stack at the time
1|Hubbah & Miicroid|Miicro - hit by Blade rush charge & Barrage at same time whilst also having 1 stack of debuff.  Hubbah - hit by 80k Barragae (normal) but had also taken 62K blade rush 10 seconds before (not healed up)
2|Jas|162k barrage - needs detailed log check to see if was debuffed or if trinket used
2|Puja|hit by Barrage (150k) then Blade rush charge within a second whilst probably also having 1 stack of debuff
3|Puja|hit by Blade rush charge then Barrage (150k) six seconds later
4|Puja|hit by Barrage (160k).  
5|Onslaught fail|Not enough soaking, killed 3 people
6|Miicroid|hit by Barrage (89k & 170k within 10 seconds)
6|Whytee|hit by 8k Degeneration - slow death over time, insufficient healing
7|Leggs|Last 6 seconds took an Onslaught, Degeneration, Blade Rush and a Barrage
7|Torgen|Last 7 seconds took an Onslaught (82k) and a Barrage (112k)
8|Miicroid|Last 9 seconds took 89k Barrage then 120k Onslaught
8|Incendia|Last 4 seconds took an 87k Blade Rush then an 88k Barrage
9|Puja|hit by Barrage (175k)
9|Onslaught fail|Not enough soaking, killed 3 people
10|Teaell|Pair soaking worked, but forgot to click Mirror
11|Teaell|Hit by 66k Barrage, but took 60k from Deck Fire in previous 4 seconds
11|Whytee|hit by 1575 Degeneration, but took 35k from Dreadblade and 125k Onslaught in previous 1 second
12|Onslaught fail|Not enough soaking, killed 3 people
13|Leggs|Hit by 116k Onslaught and then 50k Degeneration cone
13|Torgen|hit by 57k Blade Rush then 11k Barrage
14|Teaell| hit by 165k Barrage
14|Incendia|hit by 113k Barrage then 130k Barrage 9 seconds later
15|Torgen|hit by 170k Barrage
15|Onslaught fail|Not enough soaking, killed 2 people
16|Leggs|
17|Jas|hit by 50k Barrage then by 118k Onslaught 4 seconds later
18|Torgen|hit by 157k Barrage
19|Jesung|hit by 115k Barrage (60 deck fire taken in previous 12 secs)
19|Incendia|in final 12 seconds took 31k Onslaught  solo soak, 33k Deck Fire, 8k/19k/19k/19k Cauterize then the final 25k Deck Fire killed
20|Whytee|hit by 140k Barrage
21|Tank error|Hubbah then Torgen killed by loose Dreadblade
22|Teaell|final 5 seconds hit by 79k Onslaught, 56l Blade Rush then 36k Barrage
24|Hubbah|hit by 66k Blade Rush and 105k Barrage at same time
25|Torgen|hit by 150k Barrage
25|Jas|hit by 163k Barrage
26|Jas|hit by 160k Barrage
26|Incendia|died to Cauterize after a solo soak, but also took 38k Degeneration post-soak
27|Whytee|hit by 181k Barrage
27|Jas|hit by 161k Barrage
28|Puja| hit by 96k Onslaught, but got meleed by a Dreadslayer for 83k just 4 seconds beforehand
28|Teaell|stood like a lemon in 2 blade rushes for 55k & 55k
29|Hubbah|tried to soak 2 Barrages in 3 seconds, took 34k then 169k damage
30|Torgen|hit by 130k Barrage 7 seconds after taking 74k Onslaught
31|Torgen|hit by 168k Barrage 8 seconds after taking 74k Onslaught
31|Whytee|hit by 146k Barrage, 33k Balde Rush, 26k normal melee and 7k Degeneration in last 3 seconds

Barrage
Almost every single death above involves Barrage in one way or another.  

• We took a Barrage too soon after Onslaught (use common sense here, we've got 2 healers and they're keeping tank up and trying to bring raid HP back up, so don't go rush to soak Barrages after the Onslaught!)
• We took it in conjunction with something else (like Blade Rush - just MOVE!)
• We miscommunicated and solo-soaked something we were planning to pair soak.  

BARRAGE is the game, that's where we need to fix things.   If we handle Barrage  better then we avoid 29 of last night's 31 wipes.  That's HUGE.

Dreadslayer - frontal cone damage
Need to look out for the frontal cone damage.  Torgen (1.37m), Leggs (845k) & Hubbah (651k) took significantly more than others.  Melee have it slightly harder, but we can still avoid more.  Everyone else took 88k-340k.


....and that's enough for now.

[Niel]

I think we should have a go at single soaking with Trinket ( not saying it is the answer but would be interested to see how it went )........we lost a lot of people last night down to the "stutter effect" leaving us with one person in and one person very nearby but out. I soaked a number of the small swirls solo last night with trinket ( running in and then realising i was going to be on my own i popped the trinket to save my arse ).....and whilst it does make for a harder hit it is not so much of an issue healer wise as it is one person to heal rather than 2 ( or often 3 where the small swirl was on the border of 2 areas ).

In an ideal world both people would commit and be there - the reality is that sometimes one is ahead of the other and thinking that no 2 is not going to make it no 1 starts to pull out........there is a bit of a dance and the end result is that one ends up in there dying solo. Comms would help, but we can't really do that as we'd end up flooding out TS with calls.

Blade Rush - this hits if you are in place when the rush starts ........so even if you have moved to a good place by the time the rush reaches where u were.....you still get counted as hit ( in fact i get an audio ping of damage to me BEFORE the rush animation has started telling me i have been hit )

Healing wise - it is getting a lot better....the levels of output needed to heal people up are going down to a sustainable level so it means that generally people are managing to avoid more of the unnecessary damage ).

Cheers

Niel

[TeaLeaf]

I think we should have a go at single soaking with Trinket

I think we'll get better at the teamwork required to avoid the stutter problems, so pair soaking will improve as we improve.   We could single soak as you suggest we're then in a bit of a bind as solo-soaking a Barrage would requires use of Mirror and on average you will still take 148k damage  (sometimes more and killing you, sometimes less).  If we take any other damage or are not at pretty much full HP then you're dead.

If you work it through, I do not believe that it affects the number of Barrages you can soak per minute as:

Initially a pair would soak 2 Barrages (2 total), the first without Mirror, the second with Mirror, then soak as a pair once every 15 seconds until the mirror is up again.
Initially solo-soakers would soak 1 each (2 total), then pair soak every 15 seconds until Mirror CD was up.

I guess you could argue that two solo soakers might be able to soak 2 faster than a pair, but it's marginal at best imo.  I think we just need to learn to work as a pair better than we are currently doing as 148k damage is a little but on the high side for my liking.