Words, Words, Words, the Master Wants Murder

Day 2 on Heroic Cho'gall.

Weird lag issues in raid tonight affecting everyone. The kind that lets you chat but not being able to do anything in raid. Despite all Cho'gall's abilities, this appears to be the most puzzling. 47 mins after it seems we are ready to pound Cho'gall's face(s).

Today we didn't change much into the strategy, only add management being a factor. Purely range on elementals so melee doesn't have to be out of the group in case they get MCd.. The melee would switch onto adherents as soon as they entered and alternate assigned interrupts. So far however we've made zero progression and only seemed to step back, rarely reaching a second set of adherents.

Another case of the wednesdays for EL it seems where everything just seems to be going wrong and no one seems to take the encounter seriously.

Alysrazor Strategy

http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/06/16/alysrazor-video-strategy-guide-10-normal/


The Alysrazor encounter has 4 different Phases
The 1st Phase Alysrazor moves skyward and summons adds
The 2nd phase Alysrazor will summon Tornadoes throughout the area
The 3nd Phase is a Burn Phase where Alysrazor is immobile
The last phase is a Re-ignite phase where Alysrazor reignites and nukes the raid
After that she returns to Phase 1

Note: Currently this fight is undertuned. Blizzard may take actions to alter this fight.


Alysrazor

STEP 1: Start the fight and Healers wake up!

The raid moves in and pulls Alysrazor
Alysrazor will cast Firestorm immidiately, doing huge damage and knocks everyone back
Everyone is on low HP. Healers heal everyone up (100-120k per person)
Alysrazor moves to the other side and flies up
Alysrazor will loose a couple of feathers in the meantime (see step 4)

Step 2: Ground Phase

Split the raid in two evenly groups (DPS/heal wise):
One group moves to the entrance
One group moves to the spot where Alysrazor flied up
Two tanks stand in the middle
Talon Initiates
Alysrazor summons two adds called: Blazing Talon Initiate
Both groups (on each side) kill their add fast
Talon initiates will continuously spawn unkillable fire blobs that move around
Be sure to dodge these blobs
The two groups kill any talon that is summoned (each grp taking one half of the room)

Step 3: Hatchlings

Two tanks move to the middle, after the talons have spawned
Two eggs will be summoned which will hatch into 2 hatchlings
The 2 tanks each tank 1 hatchling
The hatchling will imprint the tank. This allow tank to do insane damage vs the hatchling
Make sure only the tanks attack and kill the hatchlings
Move the Hatchlings to the fire worms that spawn in the room
The Hatchlings will eat the worms , which will greatly debuff them
The tanks kill these adds

Step 4: Flying phase

Alysrazor drops 6 feathers when she moves up in the air
Two of your best ranged DPSers each pick 3 feathers up
These players will fly up and follow Alysrazor
Fly though all the orange rings to get a stacking buff
This buff increases your haste and flight time
The flying players need to alternate which player moves to the rings
You can cast spells while flying in the air, be sure to DPS Alysrazor
After a while your flight time runs up, be sure to save yourself when falling down

Step 5: Tornado Phase

Alysrazor will move to phase 2: Tornado Phase after 3 minutes
She will summon a tornado in the middle, move out of the middle
Alysrazor will summon tornados that fly around the room
Move to the marked save spot to dodge all tornados
The safe spot is located here

Burn Phase
After a minute the tornados disappear and Alysrazor will crumble in the middle
Alysrazor is immobile. Bloodlust and DPS Alysrazor down
Interrupt the talons that try to revive Alysrazor

Step 6: Re-ignite Phase

After 30 seconds Alysrazor becomes alive and begins to AOE the raid
Stack up and heal everyone to full
Tank her away from the raid
When she returns to 100% mana, she returns to phase 1
She will move to the air and summon talons again
Continue the same routine

Beth'Tilac Strategy

http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/06/17/bethtilac-video-strategy-guide-10-normal/

Beth’Tilac is a spider boss located in Firelands
-There is a large web ceiling where raiders can move up to by clicking the threads
-The raid is split in 2 groups: one group below and one group above the web
-Kill Beth’Tilac and all spawning adds before she kills the raid
-Beth’Tilac is a soft-enrage fight: You have to kill her before her damage becomes unhealable

Step 1: Pull and DPS Beth'Tilac

-The raid moves in and pulls Beth’Tilac
-Beth’Tilac retreats up to the safety of her web on the ceiling
-Spiders will spawn in the middle on threads. Kill the spiders The threads will stay.
-If Beth’Tilac is not engaged she will cast Venom Rain which does massive damage
-So one group needs to move up the web to engage Beth’Tilac to stop Venom Rain
-The rest of the raid stays on the ground and deals with the adds

Step 2: Group Above the Web

Assign one (elite) team to move up the threads. This consists of:
-10man: 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 melee
-25man: One tank, 2 healers and 5/6 melee

-Use the threads to climb up the web . Only one person can climb each string
-Beth’Tilac will use the following abilities when she is tanked on top of the web:

Meteor Burn

-Beth’Tilac casts a Meteor Burn. Move out of the impact zone.




Smoldering Devastation

-Beth’Tilac has an energy meter (called Fire Energy)
-Whenever this is at 0 energy, she will cast Smoldering Devastation
-This ability will kill you wipe (immolate aura doing 40K damage per sec)
-In order to dodge this, you will need to jump down the hole in the middle of the web
-Assist on killing any big spiders when you are on the ground
-Make sure to move back up after Smoldering Devastation is gone.

Step 3: Group Below the Web.

-The group on the ground is positioned in the north like this



-The groups deals with the following adds like this:

Cinderweb Spinner

-These spider hang on thread. They always spawn in the middle



-Let 1 ranged DPS (10man) or 2/3 ranged DPS (25man) kill these spinners
-These spiders deal mediocre damage and continue to spawn during the fight

Cinderweb Drones

These are big spiders that need to be tanked here



-Do not stand in front of the adds (they use an acid cone)



-If these spiders run out of energy they will move up the ceiling to heal the boss
-So kill the big spiders before they run out of energy

Cinderweb Spiderlings

-Beth’Tilac occasionly summons small adds that spawn left and right of the middle



-If these small adds reach the other spiders or the boss, they will get consumed and heal them
-The small spiders are high killing priority and need to be AOE’ed down fast 

Step 4: Beth'Tilac moves down her web

-Beth’Tilac moves down after 3 Smoldering Devastations
-You need to have Beth Tilac down to about 70-75% now
-Any % higher means your DPS is too low (move more people up the web)
-Make sure that all big spiders are killed when she moves down

Positioning

-The raid is positioned in a triangle like this when Beth’Tilac is on the ground



-Beth’Tilac uses the following abilities in this phase

Abilities

-She gains a stacking buff called Frenzy which does more damage over time
-This is a soft enrage timer: Beth Tilac damage will become unhealable at some point
-She also cast The widow’s Kiss on a tank. This is a stacking debuff
-The debuff reduces healing and gives the tank an aura that damages nearby allies (stacks up)

In order to deal with this do the following:

Tank Rotation

-The maintank tanks Beth’Tilac
-At some point (randomly) she casts The Widow’s Kiss on the maintank
-The offtank takes over, the maintank moves to the offtank positioning
-The offtank tanks Beth’Tilac for 20 seconds
-The maintank takes over, etc.
-Why 20 seconds? Is the exact time for the debuff to run out
-Continue the same routine and kill Beth’Tilac



~written by Peekingtom of Exiled Legion~

Heroic Nefarian Down!

Last Tuesday marked a moment in history for my guild Exiled Legion and my server Doomhammer. Short history lesson being that there have always been 2 hardcore progression on Doomhammer, Drow and Singularity. Drow being a top 100 guild who clears everything and Singularity resting at 2, clearing most content due to their 20 hour a week raid schedule. Well all that changed on Tuesday he 14th 2011 when Exiled Legion downed Heroic Nefarian and took the mantle of second on the server. This has been such a bold statement for Doomhammer, now a casual hardcore guild with a 9 hour a week raid schedule can over take  a guild that just raids so much more. This all comes down to the hours of research we put in to strategies and the power of our raiders to succede against all odds. I really hope this carries over into Firelands in 4.2.

I'm not going to go too far into our strategy but it consisted of a lot of practice and it's fortunate that we never really had much a problem with cinders in phase and interrupts in ph2. Our biggest challenge was DC issues and DPS. Getting our rogues and Warlocks to apply 70% slows was clutch in increasing overall raid DPS.

Being an offspec Blood DK, I was the best choice to MT Nefarian and I have to say that was probably the most intense fight I've ever had to Tank. It's not hard by any means but it just took shear stamina and willpower to last to the end in phase 3. The fight slowly builds up but at the end I pretty much had to constantly focus on rotating Nefarian so our Add tanks could keep kiting the bone constructs and I could avoid the shadowflame. Props go out to Liltroll who made the hardest job of add tanking look easy, he was key to downing this fight. Hell props go out to everyone, the healers with their CD rotations and the DPS pushing us a few seconds passed the enrage and downing the boss.

Very Intense Fight. Here is your chance to witness the madness.

Heroic Cho'Gall 25 Second Week

Today we went back to Heroic Cho'gall and did better.... well better than last week in anyways. We changed our strat back to what we were used to on normal mode with the group stacking up in melee range so our boomkins can typhoon MC'd targets. Our warriors and hunters would DPS down the fire and shadow elementals to lower the stacks on Cho'gall and they would also watch each other's backs if they were MCd out of the Boomkin's range. Overall there was a lot less worship stacks on Cho'gall and didn't have much trouble during the stack up phase.

When the corrupted adherents spawned we would spread out a bit to avoid shadow crashes although some ranged would spread out way to far to the right or left and not be able to be broken from a MC. Our raid was plagued by DCs due to storms or whatever so ideally we would use our 2 enhancement shamans to interrupt Depravity, however one was not able to play. To counter this our warriors would pull off the elemental to handle interrupts on the adherents and I would switch off Cho'gall and DPS down the elemental. I noticed a lot of tank and raid deaths were because there wasn't much damage going onto the elemental, it seemed with the addition of the adherents and blood ads, our hunters couldn't focus on slowing adds and DPSing elementals. Finally we would then stack up as soon as the blood spawned and then funnel them down the center to the raid. Well this was the theory, but we found slows weren't slowing enough and they weren't dying fast enough. That's the strategy in a nutshell and I won't even touch on what the mages have to do.

Generally tho, progress was pretty good. We went from 85% wipes to around 65%, with our best attempt at 50%. We seem to be getting through one adherent phase "alright", reaching the second and usually wiping but have gotten to the 3rd a few times. There are a lot of individual awareness problems tho which in theory should resolve themselves once people become more comfortable. The biggest problem being corruption which can get out of hand pretty fast on heroic. People stand in shadow crashes, depravity doesn't get interrupted, The accelerated debuff doesn't get cleansed fast enough and people throw up on each other. I personally don't find it that much more difficult to avoid than normal mode but since it's heroic mode people seem to freak out about it.

We have one week to kill this fight before 4.2. Is it possible? Last week I would have told you not a chance but this week it seemed like it could be doable. Two more raid nights however seems pretty lofty, we'll have to see.

Shannox Strategy

With Firelands coming up my guild is being ultra prepared for it. The following is the strategy we are going to use for Shannox and the original strategy we analyzed.

Wall of strategy text could kill this boss!

Shannox is a tank and spank fight with 2 dogs
-Shannox spawns traps which damages all players and his dogs
-Dodge the traps, DPS the adds down. Then finish Shannox off.

Step 1: Assignments for Shannox

The raid uses the following assignments:

Tank Assignment
-The MT and OT tank Shannox and Riplimb
-Rageface has no aggro-table and will be loose within the raid

DPS Assignments

-2/3rd of your Melee DPS focus on Riplimb
-2/3rd of your Ranged DPS focus on Rageface
-1/3 Melee DPS and 1/3 ranged DPS on Shannox

Kill order

-DPS Shannox down to 35% and all adds to 5%
-After this: Kill the dogs and DPS Shannox down
-This ensures that the dogs will not enrage and destroy the raid when Shannox reaches 30%
-Shannox will enrage at 30% and does a lot more damage

Step 2: Pull and DPS Shannox

-Clear all the trash in the sight to have a large safe area
-The maintank moves in and pulls Shannox
-Riplimb always attacks person with highest thread , which is MT Rageface is loose in the raid, all spread out

Step 3: Abilities of Shannox

Shannox uses the following abilities:

-Shannox uses Jagged Tear on the MT
-MT tanks Shannox for 30 seconds
-OT taunts and takes over Shannox plus Riplimb
-30 seconds is the exact time for the debuff to run out

Hurl Spear:

-Shannox throws a spear to a random player which deals massive damage
-Shannow will indicate the impact zone, move out of this zone
-The MT will die if he stays within the impact zone
-This will leave a large circle of fire, move out of the lines

Arching Slash:

-Shannox occasionally use Arching Slash on the tank
-Nobody except the tank stand in front of him
-This means that the OT stands with the raid!

Step 4: Shannox's Traps

-Shannox cast 2 kind of traps during this fight continiously
-These traps will spawn underneath players
-You have 2 seconds to move out of these traps

Immolation Trap:

-This trap does large fire damage when stepped into

Crystal Prison Trap:

-This trap will put the player into a prison with 140k hp (25man)
-The traps look different and are easy to spot

-Just remember: Traps also work on dogs

However: this is not mandatory but helps on DPSing the adds down faster

Step 5: Final Phase of Shannox

-DPS both dogs down to 5% and Shannox down to 35%
-Kill both dogs down now

Frenzy:

-Shannox goes into a frenzy , he does more DPS and spawns more traps
-He not use hurl spear but instead uses magma rupture .
-Heal through this Shannox keeps using jagged Tear, so keep swapping tanks
-Bloodlust and DPS down Shannox

http://25man.com/firelands/shannox

http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/06/05/shannox-video-strategy-guide-25-normal/