HEROIC - Feng - DEFEATED 12/02/13

[TeaLeaf]

Thread for the discussion of the Heroic version of this encounter.

[TeaLeaf]

This one looks a bunch of fun in Heroic, 4th phase, lots of action and I think it's something we can handle if we stop panicking for the Velocity/Resonance phase!

Everyone should check out their AOE builds, Jes need you to check out Demo plz too!

[Slush]

Im a big fan of the Icy-veins "Whats the difference between normal and heroic" section in their guides... I just did a copy/paste:

11. Heroic Mode

The Heroic mode of Feng the Accursed presents raiders with a fairly accessible challenge. The fight, as we will see, remains largely unchanged, but an additional, all-new phase is added.

11.1. Differences from Normal Mode
As we just mentioned, the Heroic mode has an all-new, Heroic-only phase. Additionally, there are several minor differences from Normal mode.

We present the minor differences here, and the new phase in a separate sub-section.

Feng the Accursed has more health in Heroic mode, and all of his abilities deal more damage.
Feng no longer enters his phases in a predetermined order. Rather, he enters a new phase at 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% health. The phase he enters is the phase associated with the statue he is nearest to, allowing your raid to choose the order of the phases. Feng can only enter each phase once, as the respective statue is destroyed when Feng absorbs it.
Every time Feng enters a new phase, he gains a stack of  Strength of Spirit, which buffs his damage done by 5% per stack, until the end of the fight.
Finally, as we mentioned above, there is a new phase that your raid will have to deal with. We detail this below.

11.1.1. New Phase: Spirit of the Shield
During this phase, Feng uses 3 abilities.

 Shadowburn is a stacking debuff that Feng applies to the tank, identical to those which we discuss in the shared abilities section. Shadowburn inflicts Shadow damage.

 Chains of Shadow is an ability that Feng spams with relatively high frequency. It deals damage to a random player, and then jumps to other nearby targets, dealing damage to them as well. The damage to each successive target is lower than the damage to the one before. In 10-man, Chains of Shadow affects 3 targets, while in 25-man it affects 8.

 Siphoning Shield is cast by Feng every 30 seconds. He throws his shield at a nearby location, which causes a number of adds (5 in 10-man and 10 in 25-man) to spawn on the location of random raid members.

The adds, called Soul Fragments, simply travel towards the shield. They perform no other actions, and deal no damage. Upon reach the shield, each Fragment heals Feng for 5% of his maximum health.

The Soul Fragments can be slowed, stunned, and knocked back.

11.2. Strategy
The main new element for your raid to master will be dealing with the Heroic-only phase. In addition to this, you will have to choose the best order for the phases, depending on your own circumstances.

11.2.1. Spirit of the Shield
During this phase, your two tanks will have to take turns tanking Feng, due to the  Shadowburn debuff.

Your raid should be stacked up near Feng. This will cause  Chains of Shadow to deal its full damage, and it will be a source of possible deaths for your raid members, but it remains the optimal positioning during this phase.

Finally, your raid must be quick to kill the Soul Fragments when they spawn. Since you will be stacked together, it will simply be a matter of AoEing them down while making sure that they are slowed, stunned, and knocked back (away from the shield, of course).

It is interesting to note that by channeling  Nullification Barrier on the shield thrown by Feng, the adds in that wave will simply despawn.

11.2.2. Order of Phases
As we mentioned above, in Heroic mode, you can choose the order of the phases. Simply pull Feng close to the statue that you wish him to siphon, and when he reaches the next transition percentage, he will siphon that statue and enter the respective phase.

We will start out by saying that the fight can be defeated regardless of the order of the phases. In order to make sure that Feng enters the appropriate phase at the start of the fight, the tank who pulls him should already be standing next to the respective statue.

Our recommended order is:

Spirit of the Staff;
Spirit of the Fist;
Spirit of the Shield;
Spirit of the Spear.
The reason for choosing this order is that this way, the most problematic phases come first, allowing you to quickly know if the attempt is a success or a failure, and to save a lot of time.

Indeed, Spirit of the Staff presents your raid with high damage from  Arcane Velocity, and a lot of potential for deaths, due to  Arcane Resonance.

Spirit of the Fist is easy if your tanks manage to stun Feng often, but can otherwise prove quite problematic.

The final two phases, including the Heroic-only phase, are not really difficult.

Lastly, keep in mind once more that Feng's damage will increase by 5% each time he enters a new phase, due to  Strength of Spirit. This means that the damage dealt during the final phase will be high. In our recommended order, this means that the raid damage from  Draw Flame will be very high, and your healers must be prepared for this.

[Midd]

Nice outline from Icy Veins there.  Looks relatively simple, although I would possibly suggest swapping Shield and Fist in the order of phases as we're better at the epicenter CD than we are at getting flames put down in the right place!

[TeaLeaf]

Spear is fire, not Fist.

[TeaLeaf]

Quick notes from the graveyard:

Staff - Velocity/Resonance phase
Shield - NEW phase - adds spawn on shield throw
Fist - Epicenter phase
Spear - Spark & Draw Flame phase

Weapons are positioned around the platform in a clockwise direction, starting from near left: Staff->Shield->Fist->Spear

Boss goes to closest weapon, on pull and each transition (100%, 75%, 50% and 25%) ensure boss is closest to the weapon you want to select.

ORDER:
I actually quite liked the order we had with Staff>Shield>Fist>Spear.   I absolutely would not want Spear earlier and have any ticks spill over into the following phase so I think Spear has to be last.  

Comparatively speaking, damage was, lower in the Shield phase, so I think putting it in between Staff & Fist was a good plan to allow CD timers to tick off and allow for greater regen.


STAFF
We still have people not moving when they should.  Movement rules are:
-default position is 10yds from boss (resonance AOE range is 6 yds!)
-if you get resonance stand still (you only need to move closer to reduce Velocity damage if you were already too far away!)
-do not collapse to middle unless a velocity happens and you do NOT have resonance
-if velocity & resonance timers overlap/clash, wait at 10 yards and see who gets resonance, then collapse to middle for velocity
-if resonance timer is due to overlap/expire near end of velocity then start running out to 10yds position at 2 seconds remaining on velocity.

We need to sort raidwall order for the ones without a barrier.  Hubbah, remember to move please, you stayed out a few times when you should have collapsed to middle!


SHIELD
Null barrier negates all the adds and significantly speeds up this stage, so we need to ensure we use it on alternate spawns.  

We group on Blue2/Shield spot, tanks remain on Star until Shield thrown in general direction of Black4/Spear, then rapidly kite boss towards Blue2 and rest of raid for AOE splash damage, follow adds back towards Black4 and stop in middle again with boss still facing Black 4 for next shield throw.

My preference here is to aim for 4 sets of adds before pushing next phase, Null 1, AOE 2, Null 3, and then AOE 4.   This means we then go into P3 with a Null barrier available and do not have to blow heroism.

Abilities tried on adds (please add yours in this thread and I will edit them into this bit)
Abilities that work:
Shaman - Capacitor totem - 5 sec stun
Druid - Ursol's Vortex

Abilities that do not work:
Shadow priest void tendrils
Shaman Earthbind totem


FIST
If we have a null barrier for first Epicenter then we should be ok to get into a normal routine as it will allow time for a cast to be stolen etc.   We need to sort out remaining raidwalls here and what will be off CD with a mind to what we will need in P4.

Note: I think it is worth letting boss pick up Fist weapon, then taunting him to Blue2/Shield so that we get a bit more dps time as the boss transits across the platform towards the Spear at the end of P3.


SPEAR
Defintely want this one last!  Fire placement seems ok, but damn that tick damage will need chained raidwalls and CDs.   To quote something from the Normal version thread:

Anyways we figured absorbing first draw flame was worse than second because first gives him around 10 stacks, second gives him around 20 so we let him absorb first, we absorb second wave, he took third, we absorbed fourth and just continued to phase 3 as he ran out of those stacks

So, if this holds true in Heroic still, we can exit P3 after a Null barrier epicenter, then let him absorb first draw flame and raidwall it, then barrier 2nd, raidwall 3rd, barrier 4th etc.   That's the plan we should aim for imo.


Anyway, finishing with a 19% wipe on a bugged try was pretty awesome, so well done all :thumbsup:

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[Niel]

Shield Adds- Capacitor totem worked like a dream on them.....a full 5 second stun on all of them ( so long as we were not tardy in grouping up on their spawn ).......dropped a few yards ahead of them on their path i hit them all every go but one where we had a split spawn due to not being grouped properly.

[Milli]

All Stacking in same place enables me to drop Ursol's Vortex and was finding I didnt have to use Typhoon at all as adds were being locked down and AoE'd quickly but was always positioned close to shield in case.

Important note - dropping to travel form makes it easier for said druid to be able to stack again with time to spare

[Niel]

Missed out the "does not work" bit.

Earthgrab totem ........does not work on the adds

[Slush]

That plan for spear looks solid TL :yahoo: cant wait to see a proper try on this boss. I didnt Get to try frost shock adds, but that should work as a single target slow. Will do if we Get one infront of the others. Tbh, ele shaman with glyphed earthquake would be amazing here aswell.

Either way: aoe magma totem will be down to help out on dps.

[TeaLeaf]

Bump for Tuesday night and additional feedback please.

One option still being mulled over in my head is whether we range Epicenter instead.  We do the interrupt & null barrier well, but if we miss one we wipe and it requires us to enter that phase with an available null barrier, which in turn forces us to exit Shield phase after a 4th set of adds:

-if we can finish Shield phase without heroism and with only 3 sets of adds then I reckon we should take the time and enter Fist without a Null barrier (and adjust to a ranged epicenter strategy)
-if it takes us 4 add phases in Shield then we may as well enter Fist with a Null Barrier for first and remain grouped up as per our Normal strategy

Discuss!

[Midd]

For the record : No frost mage abilities work on the adds except the slow given from frostfire bolt/frost bolt.  So Freeze and Nova DO NOT work.

[ayla]

hi sorry for the lateness in putting this on the forum page.  My charging ox wave seems to work well as a stun, it has one minute cd to bear in mind and only stuns for 3 seconds.

[TeaLeaf]

Frustratingly close on this one.

P1 seems fine so long as people do NOT stand too far away.    Because of the off-centre positioning that makes it a little wierd, but in particular the 'wide' side tends to stand outside the ring as if the boss were centred fully, which makes the run in longer & therefore damage taken more than it should be.   Just take time to minimise range to boss, 10yds is sufficient, more than that is just unnecessary.

P2 looks good now so long as we get towards the Blue line quickly.   Remember on the first wave of adds we're probably going to be  fractionally in front of Blue, but from the second wave onwards let's maintain that tight grouping.   (healer-tank range is what limits movement for the first wave).   When we focus we get the adds down and have shown that we can handle that phase regularly now.

P3 is almost there.   Tanks are now happy for the entire raid to head to group up under the boss (as on Normal) for the Epicenter phase.    Personally I'd love a hunter to be used for the fist, not a mage.   Despite the mage having self-heals, the hunter has a mitigation CD which means the damage doesn't hit in the first place, which has to be better.   Discuss!   I suspect the problem we saw was Hubbah taking two consecutive fists rather than every other one.  With improved tank-fistee communication I think we'll resolve that and this will allow Midd to remain in a nuking role and standing with the rest of the raid.

P4 we need more time on.    We need to roll CDs and make sure we get there with sufficient mana.

This fight has been defeated in the early days by guilds in predominantly blue gear, so we need to figure out where we are going wrong as insufficient mana means either inefficient healing, the dps being way too slow, or the raid taking to much unavoidable damage.  Discuss!

[Slush]

P3 is almost there.

Lightning Lash + 3 stacks of Strength of Spirit

I heard Hal said he just got 3 stacks (when he died second time). This make me happy, because current guides suggest swapping on two stacks:
Source Icy-veins.com:
"These abilities all warrant a tank switch. We recommend that the off-tank taunts the boss when the current tank has 2 stacks of the debuff."

And by the way: Switching at 2 stacks goes for all phases, are tanks currently doing this or going for 3? Would this make hots more useful, overhealing go down and generally ease the job for the healers?

P4 we need more time on.    We need to roll CDs and make sure we get there with sufficient mana.

This fight has been defeated in the early days by guilds in predominantly blue gear, so we need to figure out where we are going wrong as insufficient mana means either inefficient healing, the dps being way too slow, or the raid taking to much unavoidable damage.  Discuss!

Dps need to pull out more self heals in later parts of the fight (me included ofc). Dont be afraid to use any self heal/mitigation/absorb/reflect CD when its up. Heroism from start of p4. Rolling the CD's the way we do on Elegon/Windlord.


On different note;
Whytee/Hal - Sacred Shield (lvl45 talent) healing seems to be pretty insane for some tanks, this is an example of a Prot Paladin with it up;