Hang on a sec here - if we interrupt him during those spells why wouldn't he be meleeing the tank? Does his random targeting of spells continue with his melee system?
I have a question for you healers here, what spells do you use on this encounter? Do you spam the fast flash heal/regrowth/LHW, or do you go for gheals/HT(or just rejuv+LB)/HW? Are they "too slow" for you? I'm extremely tempted to respec from enh to resto for this one fight and see if it really is that bad using 2.5 cast spells because I can't believe that it is but who knows, maybe I'm wrong and I have a bit too little healing gear to check it out for myself.
I run as a shadow priest for Aran and provide some nutso mana regen to a party composed of 3 healers and a lock. I allow them to spam their shorter, less efficient heals and it works out fantastically. If the healers had no external mana regen, using flash heals and LHW's, ect I don't think they could make it without potting. With potting, probably could.
hehe, if he is locked out of all spells yes he has an aggro table and will try and melee the highest threat person. If you keep frost/fire locked out, but leave arcane open (let it go through since the mana is spent already up front) he will never melee anyone. His spell casting is random and applies to no aggro table. Therefore, why tank him and just keep 2 of his schools locked out. We have our prot warrior throw on what DPS gear he has, and dps while keeping sunders up. I believe he sits in defensive stance and devistate spams iirc.
hehe, if he is locked out of all spells yes he has an aggro table and will try and melee the highest threat person. If you keep frost/fire locked out, but leave arcane open (let it go through since the mana is spent already up front) he will never melee anyone. His spell casting is random and applies to no aggro table. Therefore, why tank him and just keep 2 of his schools locked out. We have our prot warrior throw on what DPS gear he has, and dps while keeping sunders up. I believe he sits in defensive stance and devistate spams iirc.
Dead on, he has a hate list, he just doesn't use it if he can cast. He melee's quite hard and fast. I'd say 2000/4000ish on leather. More important than the damage is that if a caster has the highest hate melee has to chase him all over the room. If this happens during Flame Wreath or Blizzard you're in for the big hurt.
Exactly. If you have a prot warrior he'll end up tanking him because devastate spam is the highest DPS he can do in the first place, but that's really just a side effect. Works with feral druids (at least in current form) just as well - in bear form and DPS gear he'll just end up tanking him doing decent DPS. If you have something like a paladin tank who does low DPS (better off healing), or non prot warrior tank, don't even try to tank him. Sure he'll get away once in a while, most of the time it's not a big deal. You're freeing up salvation for a more useful buff in the process.
The best group to do this with is max DPS and 2-3 healers. He cannot be tanked, per se, so a prot warrior is basically useless. 3 rogues for kicks, a warrior (or 2 if you have em) for pummel, and 2 locks for CC during the elementals is a good start. A mage is nice as he can CS the boss if the melee interrupters are caught at range in a Flame Wreath or something. As someone mentioned you can have a pally tank the elementals but if one gets loose I have found it can cause some problems, I personally prefer the warlock method.
About the interruption of Arcane Missiles, we do it anyway. While he has already burned the mana for it on his end there is no need to burn a healer's mana accordingly to heal the target. And as for locking all schools of magic, it really shouldn't be a problem if he is melee attacking people, even casters, as he hits for so little.
Your best bet is to have one person calling out on his big attacks (Flame Wreath, Blizz, Arc Explosion) and have everyone react accordingly. Have your interrupters set up a rotation and call out on vent when they have done it. When something like Blizzard happens you should have one person marked that will run away from the cone and have everyone follow that person. During Blizzard there is an initial bolt that rains down and you can tell where the Blizzard will start from there. If the group moves with the marked person in the raid you can keep the entire raid out of the Blizzard and interrupt all his spells, thus allowing him to melee whatever he wants while keeping him outside of the Blizzard range.
We normally have 2 warlocks, so each one banishes a mob and chain fears the other one while keeping DoTs on the boss. The elementals will despawn after (I think) 40 seconds, so just make it through that time and you're fine.
With a DPS heavy group you shouldn't get polymorphed at all and everyone should be alive at the end. It is really not a hard fight once you have everyone on the same page and working as a unit. If you listen to his emotes you have a large advantage, because he basically tells you everything he is going to do well before he does it.
It takes a few tried to get the hang of it, and generally if you get a new person or two in on the fight for the first time it can be tricky cause people don't know exactly what is going on. We have killed him a bunch of times now with various different raid compositions and actually had to live through the polymorph one week. If you have a druid they can pop Tranquility as soon as you are out of polymorph or a Shaman can spam Chain Heal. You should all have health stones and health potions too, so that you can pop them as soon as the polymorph breaks.
Just pay attention to what he says, watch for his emotes, and just go heavy on the DPS. Forget trying to tank him and don't fight the elementals, but wait for them to despawn.
About the interruption of Arcane Missiles, we do it anyway. While he has already burned the mana for it on his end there is no need to burn a healer's mana accordingly to heal the target. And as for locking all schools of magic, it really shouldn't be a problem if he is melee attacking people, even casters, as he hits for so little.
The reasoning for letting arcane missles through is if you lock out all his spells and he runs over to try and melee a ranged dps on the wall, then casts blizzard or flame wreath: The damage your melee is not doing at that time is substantial since they can't waltz over to him at that point. Ranged DPS doesn't care where he is in the room. If you don't ever have all of his spells locked he will never ever move and your melee can DPS him pretty much 100% of the fight (barring the arcane explosion thing).
We lock out all his schools whenever we can. Our trick to keeping him firmly planted in the middle is to have a bear pull in dps gear, and stay top of threat till around 70% then switch to cat. The dps he does in cat form is worth the swap, he stays top threat, and still has plenty of armor to take a couple of Aran's paltry melee hits when he does get locked out.
The idea about not locking out all of his schools is twofold: He wont move, except in some weird situations, and you dont even have to bother "tanking" him in the traditional sense. Ranged can go all-out and not concern themselves with aggro. Arcane Missiles is the easiest to heal, as the damage is more than the other 2, but it's spread out over 5 sec -- giving plenty of time to react. More importantly he's tied up for 5 sec casting and not doing anything else.
But if you locked out fire and frost, and someone locks out arcane by accident, he's going to be moving all over the room. His melee damage is not trivial, but if he moves close to a wall and decides to flame wreath with your melee not there yet, you're losing out on a ton of DPS. It also hurts if he blizzards there.
The reasoning for letting arcane missles through is if you lock out all his spells and he runs over to try and melee a ranged dps on the wall, then casts blizzard or flame wreath: The damage your melee is not doing at that time is substantial since they can't waltz over to him at that point. Ranged DPS doesn't care where he is in the room. If you don't ever have all of his spells locked he will never ever move and your melee can DPS him pretty much 100% of the fight (barring the arcane explosion thing).
I understand the reasoning for not locking out all his schools of magic, however, it has been my experience that if you keep the melee DPS high on the charts and have everyone move as a single unit (as I had previously stated in my original post) that you can keep the entire raid out of Blizzard while negating all his magical attacks. If by some chance ALL the melee interrupters are caught in a Flame Wreath you simply have a mage cast CS on him from range. By moving the raid around, rather than keeping him stationary, you can basically avoid all his magical attacks, keep him completely interrupted, and avoid all his damaging AoE attacks.
It is by no means a perfect method, as freak accidents can occur but we have had great success with it thus far and have no intention of changing the method. We have found that trying to heal through the Arcane Missiles can be a dangerous proposition unless the target was at or near full health to begin with and losing a DPSer or a healer could potentially be worse than losing a bit of DPS while he repositions to a different location around the room. Keeping everyone tight together and moving together to avoid Blizzard and running to the same place during Arcane Explosion will keep him coming back to the raid to melee rather than standing at range to potentially kill healers or casters.
I wasn't saying that the other way is wrong, I was just trying to tell everyone what works for us.
But if you locked out fire and frost, and someone locks out arcane by accident, he's going to be moving all over the room. His melee damage is not trivial, but if he moves close to a wall and decides to flame wreath with your melee not there yet, you're losing out on a ton of DPS. It also hurts if he blizzards there.
This is only a problem if your entire group is spread out all over. Keeping casters outside of silence range with the melee in on him works wonders, but they should all be pretty close. The method that we use requires some coordination on the part of the raid but should result in zero deaths and never having to eat a polymorph.
Another consideration for Aran: make sure everyone has 8k or more hp raid-buffed going into the fight, even if you have to give up a bit of power to do it. It gives the spot healers a much more workable margin for error and greatly decreases the probability of an "unlucky" combination of events that result in a dirt nap.
The key to turning this fight from a wipe-fest to a one-shot was throwing out the idea of trying to "DPS him down". We realized it was more of a control fight/survival fight.
Let him drink around 45% health and then take it slow and control the elementals.
I have never seen this method work, getting him down before he drinks is important. Generally groups that let him drink will also allow him to use up his mana quickly because they are not interrupting his casting. If he uses all his mana and he is only at 45% there is a problem. Either you aren't properly interrupting his casts or you're not DPSing hard enough. Take a look at group comp and interrupt rotations.
We interrupt nearly every fire and frost bolt. Just stand there and eat arcane missiles until he runs out of mana. If you're having trouble lasting this long try adding another healer, or have one of your hybrids switch to healing gear. 4 Healers makes the fight last much longer but it's so much safer.
I have never seen this method work, getting him down before he drinks is important. Generally groups that let him drink will also allow him to use up his mana quickly because they are not interrupting his casting. If he uses all his mana and he is only at 45% there is a problem. Either you aren't properly interrupting his casts or you're not DPSing hard enough. Take a look at group comp and interrupt rotations.
Just because they don't do it your way doesn't mean it isn't an equally viable strategy.
It's not a huge issue to survive the AE Pyroblast, though somebody's bound to get unlucky and die to that + a add hit, our mantra is to have everybody instapop a healthstone and super healing potion afterwards, or pop a greater fire prot. just before he sheeps. We've had him as high as ~160k when he AE sheeps and still gotten him down.
No where in my post does it say that it isn't viable, just that I've PERSONALLY, never seen it work and I was merely pointing out the fact that certain groups do it differently for the aforementioned reasons. Less DPS + No interrupts = Drink Method, More DPS + Interrupts = No Drink Method.
Something to note: This fight is very very easily brute forceable, full dps consumables, arcane, frost and fire protection potions, dps flasks, hell; world buff if you want.
Not that I think thats needed, its just kinda fun, like a level 70 10 man patchwerk for dps e-peen contests
You can't call a planet Bob!
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You were missing the () at the end of Feral Charge (Bear), this is necessary otherwise WoW thinks you're trying to cast Feral Charge Rank Bear.
Dropped him last night, thanks for the advice everyone. We had struggled for a day of attempts with the "let him drink" strategy, changed tonite to a full out DPS race, and got him down to about 8% and through the water elementals before he poly'd/pyro'd.
Group was Prot warrior, feral druid, enhancement shaman, Rogue, Frost Mage, Warlock, Shadow priest, Holy Pally, Resto Shaman, Balance Druid (latter 3 healing).
Couple things that made a difference:
-Drop his armor. Curse of Recklessness, Faerie Fire, 5x Sunder. Its a big time DPS increase.
-This fight was made for feral druids. I DPS'd my heart out till 40%, then shifted to bear and tanked 2 of the water elementals, even in my DPS gear I was at around 13k buffed HP in bear, easy to heal through. (Warlock banished the other two)
-Also made for Enhancement Shaman. Good deal of physical DPS, Heroism, and a spell interrupt every 6 seconds. Also, our shamans had some scheme where they dropped their fire elementals at the poly and it was supposed to prevent him from drinking enough to cast pyro...didn't work, but they claim it was just timing, something to try if your having trouble.
I had a few people (myself included) complain that we could barely see the Blizzard effect. I was only able to see one or two ice chunks hitting the ground which made it almost impossible to see where it was rotating. Only thing I could figure was that I play with my spell effects turned down to low - is that a factor?
He's gonna cast pyro anyway. If you're getting sheeped, let him drink to full mana (so that time won't be an issue) and sheep you to full health.
He is not "gonna cast pyro anyway".
He's died twice now without ever sheeping/pyroing my raid and it is a perfectly viable strategy to burn him through at high mana. It's repeatable and reliable, although it may or may not suit your raid. Don't spread misinformation.
EDIT: As pointed out below, I seem to have mistaken your point. Apologies if so; you are quite correct that interrupting his drinking will not prevent the pyroblast regardless of how you interrupt it. Indeed, if he does sit down you might as well let the raid regen to full.
02/26/07, 3:33 PM
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