HWN is a very interesting encounter....

Wanted to discuss a few things with those who have attempted this boss. Our best attempts were sub 80s with a pug, and was due to a few things.

1: Water Shield seems to be on a minute cooldown, often happens more around 55 seconds. We attempt to force raid healing at around 45 seconds, and anyone not topped off by 53 seconds is told to top off by using a potion. At this point his Water Shield forms, and a member holding a spike will immediately use the spike. For us, 8500+HP was necessary to avoid dying from the explosion. Rogues can cloak this ability, but it is usually not back up by the second bubble. We also tried out-ranging it during our first attempt or two. Even past 40-45 yards, we were still hit by the explosion. So the question is: is there a better strategy then attempting to keep everyone topped off by means of raid healing/VE, and meet the 8500+ HP requirement?

2: Crashing Waves are lessened by spreading out to avoid splashing the damage. Once again, this is not a melee-friendly fight. We assigned what rogues/warriors we had dpsing to spread out around the boss in a circle, because the hitbox is relatively large. We tried not to isolate anyone away from the group, because of the possibility of a Needle Spine on a far away player...

3: Needle Spines were the most confusing for myself, at first it seemed to target the person with the lowest current HP, but it didn't seem to play out. I believe at this time that it is a randomly targeted ability. The only issue we had with the Needle Spines was healing through the quickly building damage, and picking the spine up off of the player quick enough to cause a small amount of damage to both players. Is there a raid placement layout that would prove to be more effective in terms of being close enough to pick up Spines quickly?

Any discussion is appreciated.

Never tried the fight but about your 1st point, doomwalker pretty much requires everyone to have 8k hp so it would not surprise me that a black temple boss, 2 or 3 tiers above dw, requires 8k5 hp on everyone.

More trials tonight led to a bit more information. Earth Water shield is about one minute interval. But the Needle spines are not always constant. It is one or two spines in between each water shield at a semi staggered interval. On top of that there is a semi enrage that can not be purged. He will emote "My patience has run out, die die die" and it appears to increase his attack speed and maybe his damage. This enrage appeared to happen every two bubbles or so. We cant get through enough water shields to see how consistent the enrage is.

Frost may help in resisting the water shield. It seems to be binary resist. Paladins and Shamans will help in each group for aura and totem. Very mana intensive fight. Big raid heal check. Damage on the main tank is not extreme, but constant aoe damage with the 8.5k spike makes for a semi-frenzied encounter.

This is slightly off topic from Nej'entus but I was just wondering something about the naga pull before him. All the PuGs I've been in have spent a long time wiping to them again and again. I think the best we've done was killing one of the generals before a wipe.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this trash pack? Any info would be greatly appreciated. The double Lord fight seems easier than this one heh. Thanks!

Also, is there anything that is helpful for the double Lord pull after the naga pack? Any information on either of those pulls would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

You can't use mage/warlock CC on the pack because the generals break it. I was in a group last night that finally got it down. Have the raid stand around the left corner of the room to avoid initial AoE dmg. Rogues go in and sap the 2 mobs (I was healing and really couldnt see which they were sapping) that need to be controlled. We pulled the elemental all the way down the ramp with a warrior and 2 healers keeping the 3 of them alive, that way the raid didn't take the AoE volley. Start burning down one of the mobs. When the sap is about to end the rogues need to be ready to do a blind rotation on the mobs.

One of the witches does an AoE holy nova, the other does a chain lightning that can hit upwards of 10 people. The lightning witch just needs to be turned away from the raid and then only the tank eats it.

That pack is really insane for a trash pull before the first boss, they probably need to reduce the AoE dmg a bit and put the generals shout on a cooldown so that you could CC some of the mobs in an emergency, or at least allow one mob to be CC'd and have the generals break any additional CC'd mob. Right now its crazy having to deal with 6 or 7 mobs that can barely be controlled.

Another way of taking that pull is to pull the Generals down the ramp to avoid the breaking of CC.

Ahh, I had suggested this but the group I was with had said they'd already tried it and had no luck with it.

It's a very wierd pull that depends a lot on the roll you get with it. Last night the pack was 2 generals, 2 harpooners, 2 dragon turtles. Sapped the two harpooners, Misdirected the two generals to opposite corners, but we had a hard time with both turtles and they were picking healers off. Altho we wiped a couple times, we were getting progressively better at it, and it being late and being down a couple, we called it and are going back to try tonight (same raid as kaushikk). All the trash before this was very reasonable.

Only problem I really see with the pull is the damage output. The generals do some sick dps even on a teir5 geared warrior and they can cleave so you have to keep them seperate to avoid your melee dps getting trucked (blizz: melee dps, lol).

Edit: Perhaps on a roll like this a 3rd tank could pick up and hold the turtles until they can be hibernated. After that they are kitable by a hunter and/or shaman. The number one priority is getting the generals out of LOS as quickly as possibly and dpsing them hard. I believe someone said they have ~425k hp.

Yeah.... Sapping two, immediately misdirecting the generals down, and double sleeping the turtles works wonders. Also have your mages resheep after sap breaks, and they start to head towards the generals.

I was in the same raid last night. The patrols on half hour timer plays a big part in keeping downtime to a minimum with the longer respawns in the area when pulling down the ramp. Trying to keep everyone from going into slow mode or disappearing is a lesson in patience on Test.

What I was wondering is if the next area off to the left (which was not cleared past the Leviathan +2 pull) would be a possible easier spot for the General tanking. It appears that area is another ramp upwards and the walls near the door allow for more line of sight cover into the main boss room. An area like that is usually easier for healers to work with when healing someone moving into an area than it is with an upward slope with a huge rock you need to stay close by for.

It means more clearing but the zone is meant for cohesive guilds which is how the testing team needs to become. So if a large majority of the same people attend it should be less of an issue sorting stuff out and moving along better.

Hoping to be there tonight again but I got almost no sleep since last night and have a raid on Live server I might attend.

Necrosanct (Test Server)
Paladin
-- Dreading the sorting out of healing assignments.

On a related note, does anyone know whats up with raidids for Black Temple... I know theres a bug with raids getting split, but a couple times now I have gotten the "You are not saved to this groups instance, teleport to XX in 1 minute" message and nothing I've done has been able to reset me. I thought you didn't get saved to BT until you downed a boss, and /raidinfo shows nothing, but it seems a hidden raidID is being created after all.

We get different people leading the raids some nights and its been causing havok on just getting 25 people zoned in.

Back on topic, anyone with discussion on Naj'entus himself? Second attempts were last night, and we got him down to around 70 with a bit more success after changing positioning.

This has happened to us in Karazhan several times, although it's possible there is just some lockout mechanic of which I'm ignorant. Basically, someone goes into a friend's cleared instance to complete one of the little quests like Keanna's Log. They then go exploring, aggro a trash mob and die. At no point do they even see a boss, let alone kill one.

Later in the week, we are short a player, and invite that person. When they try to zone in, they are in a different instance id and can't see us. Alternatively, we've seen the person get a "the instance is full" message, which seems even weirder.

Has anyone else seen this? Is it working as intended, or some bizarre bug?

</derail>

Edit: Thank you Rogar.

For any lockout instance where a boss is already dead, you're saved to it as soon as you zone in.

Any more on High Warlord naj'entus and less on being saved to an instance would be appreciated.

I don't think you'll see much of any serious progression on HWL Naj until the weekend since most of the forward thinking guilds are busy staring at Vashj and Al'ar. Hopefully people can get things tested out on Saturday/Sunday though - I smell an upcoming kill.