Firelands Normal Cleared

Well it's been 2 weeks and we have cleared all of Firelands normal mode content and in my opinion we could have cleared it a lot faster. I haven't posted in a bit because I've been very busy grinding my face off on Ragnaros. Well we killed him last night and he surprisingly isn't that hard if you have a good group with raid awareness.
Here are my thoughts on  the bosses we've downed since Ryolith.

Baleroc: We cleared this on 10 man before 25 but it's generally the same concept and requires very high coordination and communication amongst all your raiders. Basically imagine it as a lineup to use the bathroom and you have a strat for this shitty boss. Basically one person stands next to a crystal that spawns calls out the next person and they switch and you repeat that till he's dead. Healers have their own round robin strat that involves healing the sharded people (not SHARTED) to gain a buff and then switch to the tanks when a new crystal spawns. Tanks have their own switching thing to deal with as well.

Alysrazor: I think this boss is kind of fun although quite long and repetitive. Basically from my POV as an Unholy DK I would do the following:

Whole raid stacks up against the front wall close to the boss because there's a safe spot that will stop you from getting knocked back. I AMS the fire damage to get RP, blow CDS on the bird and follow behind it picking up 2 feathers for a speed buff. After that I DPS an add on one half of the room, avoid his brush fire and interrupt his fire cast. He dies and i go to the other side of the room and do the same to another add. This repeats twice for a total of 4 adds although there's kind of a lull between the 2nd and 3rd add where I pick up a third feather and fly up DPSing Alysrazor while getting the ring buffs before coming down and killing adds. Any other time where my add is dead, I'm running to the next or whatever free time I have, I DPS the Tank's Hatchling.

Phase 2 I finish off the Hatchling, start running counterclockwise down the "center track" and when Tornados spawn I hit AMS just in case I get clipped by a spawn. Then I pretty much chase down a tornado, run through hoops and when a tornado is about to catch me I switch to a different lane, turn around and chase one of the tornados going the other direction. Lots of people have trouble here but it's pretty easy as long as your chasing a tornado and not running straight into one. Finally I pop CDS, DPS Alysrazor as much as possible, drop my Anti-Magic Zone on the raid until he takes off and phase one repeats. Easy but fun fight.

Majordomo Staghelm: Once again another easy fight, pretty much a tank n spank fight for melee. The key to this fight is pushing Staghelm's adrenaline stacks as far as your specific raid can handle. There's no key number here, we can handle 10 stacks of his scorpion form although I'm sure other guilds cant.

Scorpion Form: Melee stacks up in front of the boss to soak damage and runs out when you wanna switch him to cat. That's the gist of it. A good tip for melee is you can DPS his arm and not get parries while still being enough in front of him to soak the damage. If you get molten seeds, just run out of the raid when you have 5secs left on your debuff.

Cat form:: DPS boss, DPS cats, Burning orbs not really your problem.

Stay posted cause I'll be writing about my Ragnaros experience next.

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 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/