Blade Lord Ta'yak - DEFEATED 18/11/2012

[TeaLeaf]

[TeaLeaf]

Bump for RGT.

[Ammon]

This has become less of an issue as we reached phase two though:
leaving the post up.

Melee are having issues Maintaining the 8 yard , especially when the boss is moved, often pinned between each other tanks and ranged that have moved in too close.
Its causing more people to end up dotted by wind steps.

Right now there seems to be a choice of, hit the boss, or stay out of range, need to tighten up movement.

Edit:
I started watching the wind step cd and running to a safer spot when it times.
Edit:2
further things were discussed in raid, so this thread will so expand.

[Milli]

A few things that might be of note....

Some info on going into final phase - notably the slowing dps to make sure all healed up
HERE


And here "tips and tricks" not had time to read through it but hopefully some useful stuff
HERE

[Ammon]

A warlock portal was mentioned, while i immediatly snapped that it wouldn't be very helpful from the start to halfway due to potentially appearing inside a tornado.
would it be workable from halfway to the end, so at the very least a tank & healing team gets zipped to the boss so they can start casting instead of running?.

[Jesung]

A warlock portal was mentioned, while i immediately snapped that it wouldn't be very helpful from the start to halfway due to potentially appearing inside a tornado.
would it be workable from halfway to the end, so at the very least a tank & healing team gets zipped to the boss so they can start casting instead of running?.

I really don't think it would be too useful to be honest, for one thing it can only port 5 players total, and that is after it has charged all 5 stacks, which takes 1m 15 secs, which means it would have to be placed whilst we are still doing the first wave and if it is slap bang in the middle of the room someone is bound to accidentally trigger it, also as I found out on Elegon on the walls that the gateway acts more as a dash than a teleport so I am betting if you were to pass through one as you were flying it would sweep you back.

[Ammon]

I see your point, had a run in with a warlock gateway earlier when pugging firelands, one was cleverly placed under where a ragnaros add spawned.
It even swept me up in the middle of a killing spree.

[TeaLeaf]

From the first MMO thread linked above; I found this comment to be very helpful and we should implement:

Make sure everyone is near 100% hp before pushing him to phase, if you have to slow dps do so. You can use personal 1m CD's the second before he phases, so you take less damage. Once you reach the platform, stay put top everyone up, then move as a group so healing is easier when you are moving, if people starting sprinting/rocket boots and get there before everyone they will end up dying. Once you reach the platform with boss use aoe heal and raid walls. Btw when running, you can't attack so everyone can use CD's/absorb/Candies and one the platform use **** like AMZ/Devo/Tranq/Sprit Link totem don't waste then by overlapping as you need to do this twice.

[TeaLeaf]

DPS:
Our dps does seem low for this fight and it will present us with a problem if we do not increase it.  Our best try last night showed 258k rdps during an 8 minute try and the boss hit about 19%.   WoL shows median 330k rdps with the slowest kills being 8mins - 8 mins 15sec (ie right up against and at the 8min hard enrage limit), so we need to push it more in P1 to keep ahead of the curve.  Part of this will be getting all of the right buffs in the raid, but that last try had the crit buff too, so no excuses there.

Unseen Strike:
This ability is relatively harder in 10 man as it hits for 25% more per person than it does in 25 man, but that's irrelevant.  All it means is we need to make sure we handle it well and we're not at the moment.  

In 10N it will hit for 3,000,000, so if we all share the damage then we get hit for a very manageable 300k each.
If 1 person misses and only 9 take the Strike we get hit for 333k each.
If 2 people miss and only 8 take the Strike we get hit for 375k each. <<< we start losing people at this point as it's close to our buffed HP
If 3 people miss and only 7 take the Strike we get hit for 429k each.

You can easily see that we ALL need to get hit by this and we're not all getting hit all the time as the table linked below shows:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/s197pt7bcfnopnl9/spell/122994/?enc=wipes&boss=63664

Reading the MMO thread it seems we need to get in front of the targeted player:

It's easier to just have everyone to stack at the tanks, you don't have to waste time looking around to find the targeted player.
The cone of Unseen Strike will always go in the direction from Boss' position (before vanishing) to Targeted player's (when he reappear), so have your marked ones place themselves slightly in front of the tanks by ~1 step.

Still looking for additional info on this as it is just a single post.

Positioning:
Personally I like have a relatively 'clean' side and then the current side we're working on with no hurricanes.  However, I can see the sense in maybe grouping on tanks and using an 'all around' tactic now that we are better able to cope with the mechanics.   This might reduce the run time for people to the group up spot and make us better able to handle & soak Unseen Strike.

Overwhelming Assault:
We lost a tank or two when the MT had 2 stacks last night.   This info from an mmo thread might help:

If you're doing 10m and switching on 2 applications of the debuff, you can watch the timer on the first debuff application and when it gets to 25 seconds remaining you can pop a cooldown and survive pretty easily. What you have to watch out for though is if the boss is about to do an Unseen Strike then you should hold off on the cooldown until a second after coming out of the unseen strike.

Personal:
I'll be using Halo Instead of Cascade for this on Tuesday night to help with healing load.  I've discovered a new addon that makes my use of Halo much more reliable: HaloPro.   Having played with it on a Raider's Training Dummy I can highly recommend it, in fact it is almost an essential addon for effective Halo use.

I'll add more to this post if I find more in what I am reading.

[TeaLeaf]

Let's get more input here please folks, I feel like I'm talking to myself sometimes and there's only 20 hours until the next raid!

[Niel]

Unseen Strike - if we can sort this out....decide positioning of the targeted person and the rest of he raid........but no dancing around. There is a timer for it and I think we can afford to get into position a lot sooner.

The reason we spread 8 yard debuff....sorry can't remember the name......some of the write ups recommend that people with his should not gather to take unseen strike.......and I suspect this is the reason for some of our deaths.....unseen strike  damage plus a tick @ 80k is almost certain death.

Heal up to max before final phase......

Final phase - worth considering Druid casting symbiosis on a shammy to get spirit walkers grace......this means we can start out quickly with a SG'd tranquility on the move ...Sticking together !! Rest of the run being done by whatever healing we can get on he move ( shammy SG and chain heal,healing rain to run through and totems )

[TeaLeaf]

Final phase - worth considering Druid casting symbiosis on a shammy to get spirit walkers grace......this means we can start out quickly with a SG'd tranquility on the move ...Sticking together !! Rest of the run being done by whatever healing we can get on he move ( shammy SG and chain heal,healing rain to run through and totems )

Agreed.

[Guru]

I'm still not convinced yet by the strategy we use on this boss which is moving frequently to avoid tornadoes.

As I stated earlier during last raid that we might solve one issue (Tornadoes) but we will bring more problems to this encounter (low DPS duo to moving a lot, random deaths and timer for berserk will be short in p2).

In my opinion dodging tornadoes is just what we need for this encounter.

Pulling the boss down stairs and start nuking in that area (which is huge area actually) might gives us the chance to kill this boss if and only if we managed to dodge tornadoes.

Here is a pic for the pulling position:



Source:

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?80268-10N-Heart-of-Fear-Blade-Lord-Ta-Yak-Guide-By-Mysticknight

This video explains exactly what I need to say:

[video=youtube;pfxRVh_MmAY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pfxRVh_MmAY[/video]

[Milli]

I know I might be getting ahead of myself but found this little snippet

In phase 2 (tornado alley); you have to run through the tornado maze to the end of the hall. At about 11-12% hp, the raid team, minus the tanks, should jump into the slipstream (sides of the 'alley') and let it carry them all the way to the other end of the room. Let the tanks + dots push the boss to 10%, where he will jump across the room, landing right where the rest of the raid team is waiting. In this method, you can effectively only have to navigate tornado alley once - which seems the be the hardest part of this entire fight... especially if you don't have a druid on the team. Remember, no tanks are needed in phase 2, he does not melee - so if the tanks die, its not a problem. (sorry tanks)...

Not sure how much damage it causes but perhaps worth considering

[TeaLeaf]

The reason we spread 8 yard debuff....sorry can't remember the name......some of the write ups recommend that people with his should not gather to take unseen strike.......and I suspect this is the reason for some of our deaths.....unseen strike  damage plus a tick @ 80k is almost certain death.

Wind Step - averaged 47k net per tick across the final try (156k ticks in Heroic), 8 yard range

Unseen Strike
Happy to try the positioning in the Sweet Victory video.  It should produce a bit more dps and a little less movement.  I still can't see from the video exactly how they position things for Unseen Strike (ie in front or behind the Unseen Strike target).  They seem to just clump up, perhaps KISS is what we need to do too and just group up and accept a little tornado damage if we get thrown into one.

We'll try to prepare a series of raid walls for Unseen Strike though, logs show them coming in every 55 seconds.

Travel Plans
I like the idea of sending the raid downwind before 10% with a good load of DOTs and a tank to finish the job.  Do we have a gnome tank?