I know this was brought up in another thread, but I wasn't able to find any concrete information there. I've been looking on other forums too, but I can't find any reliable information on how Nightbane's landing works.
We've been killing Nightbane for six weeks or so, but a couple of times we've had a team that simply could not control Nightbane when he lands after the three aerial phases, even though every person present had killed Nightbane successfully with a different mix of people. As far as I can tell, we've never had a 100% sure thing on controlling Nightbane, but it's nothing the occasional battle rez, soulstone, or ankh can't take care of. This week however, the team I'm leading is absolutely at a loss for what to do. Every single time Nightbane lands, he will make one direct melee attack on a healer, generally killing them, before he gets picked up by the tank. The tank for our group has been OT/fear breaker for several successful kills but has never MT'd nightbane before, but I'm not sure if the problem is something he's doing or something the healers are doing. (All the healers have successfully killed Nightbane, but not this particular mix of healers.)
I've had our tank and our hunter read off their combat logs to verify that they're building threat before Nightbane gets to a healer (they are - shield slam, heroic strike, and misdirected shots are all landing). I've brought in other tanks to ask them if they're doing anything different (if they are, they can't figure out what it is). I've had the healers minimize healing 10 seconds before the landing. I've had the tank change his position three different times. Nothing works. Nightbane attacks a healer with 100% reliability. Considering we generally kill Nightbane without any problem, this is making me absolutely crazy.
So my questions are:
1) At what point during Nightbane's aerial phase/landing does he reset aggro? I've heard 10 seconds before he lands (right after the last smoking blast), I've heard 5 seconds, I've heard just as he touches down, I've heard a couple seconds after he touches down, but I haven't found any reliable information to back up any of them.
2) Is there any period of time shortly after nightbane lands when he simply doesn't respond to threat? I've read numerous posts by tanks saying it "feels like" that's happening, but I can't find anything more concrete than that. I'm concerned that if that period of time does exist, we may have the tank and the hunter hitting Nightbane during that time.
3) Threat issues aside, we've also seen Nightbane land, then take off again, fly to his current aggro target and land directly on top of them. That's not happening every time, but it's not helping matters. I've seen a lot of people confirm that it happens, but no one seems to understand why. Any idea what causes that?
This could probably be moved to the end of the previous Nightbane thread, but logistics aside...
I have also noticed that Nightbane's landing aggro seems more sporadic than some previous patch incarnations. I'm not sure exactly when or what change, but I can make a recommendation.
-Clear the skeletons on the far side of the platform away from where Nightbane will land.
-MT builds up rage against the skeletons.
-MT positions himself at MAX range from Nightbane as he lands, between Nightbane and the rest of the group
-Have the tank (obviously) open up spamming full attacks
In my experience, this gives the tank at least enough time for 1-2 heroics and 2 instant abilities before he can walk past the MT to reach the other group members. He should be ready to move, and, if necessary, ready to stance switch for the fear.
Thanks. I actually read that post two months ago when we first attempted Nightbane, and it was helpful then.
I haven't tried repositioning the entire raid to his new landing spot, but other than that you're saying exactly what our regular tanks said, and I can't figure out what's different. The best I can figure out is that there's something intuitive that you or your group does, and that our kara raids usually do, that our current group is not doing. That's why I'm trying to get such specific information about the landing and the aggro reset. If we're not getting it intuitively, we'll get it by micromanagement.
As far as the bug with him taking off immediately after landing, what we're seeing is different from what you described. He's not landing, then taking off and making another pass over the terrace, and I haven't seen him do that in over a month. What we're seeing him do is land, then move along the terrace as if he were pathing along the ground, only he's flying a character's height above it. I'm not sure if that's mechanically different from him just walking - it could just be just a graphical glitch.
He's not flying, he's walking. Its a graphical bug that shows him above the ground by 2-3 yards. He moves that fast also.
And trust me, having a tank under him where he lands, and not having a tank under him when he lands is a world of difference.
In the first case he doesn't move an inch, in the 2nd case, he is virtually guaranteed to run toward someone other than the MT. Compensated by bandaging, luck on passing SS, and MD.
Snapping him onto you as soon as his reticule hits the tarmack = win. That requires positioning, and its night and day in terms of control. Shift the raid and link the loots here when its over.
Edit: oh, and perhaps have the raid on the north side of the MT in the first phase 1, and then only the MT has to move (I know almost everyone has the raid on the south side of the tank, requiring a rather large raid shift).
As far as I can tell, he wipes threat when he gives the "initiate landing sequence" yell, 14 seconds before landing. We have the tank bandage someone, which works quite well.
The "go around" bug doesn't happen anymore. I suspect it had something to do with BoP'ing Rain of Bones.
We get the mysterious floating Nightbane after a landing as well, no idea why.
I aint got any real ideas about when the aggro-reset really happens, but we're having the same problems for 2 weeks now.
Nightbane was down 9 or 10 times before, mostly 1st/2nd try and without any deaths, but in the last 2 weeks we werent able to control him anymore when he was landing. We managed to kill the adds 5 seconds before Nightbane hit the ground, we didnt use any HoTs to be sure and nobody even moved.
MT confirmed, that his SS/HS hit 100%, still Nighbane came over, oneshotted a healer and went back to the MT every single try.
Later we brought a hunter who used his shot ~2 seconds before the landing and got Nightbane to stay with the MT, but still: We didn't have any hunter before, so that can't be the one and only solution.
I've read quite a lot from people having the same issue since maybe 3 or 4 weeks ago.
Maybe they really messed up the aggro reset with any stealth hotfix or something. *shrugs*
Another strange thing that occures atm:
While we had the "safe" kills we used to stop damage at 76%/51%/26% and wait for the fear before sending him up. It seemed like he stopped his "fear-timer" while he was in the air back then so we never had a fear right after the landing (getting aggro and stancedancing in under 1,5 seconds isn't much fun at all). Now this simply doesn't work anymore wich kind of makes him even more nasty with the "lets oneshot a healer before we eat the tank" issue.
I'm confused (and maybe a bit frustrated too)
-Karoshi
PS
Oh and as he just decided to evade after we wiped we'll leave him there for today... unattackably flying around, keeping his door closed and laughing at us.
In my experience (and this is purely based on intuitive feel, not analysis), his aggro reset happens on the emote for his landing sequence, just as Arawethion suggests.
If you run Bigwigs, there's a nice big fat message ***LANDING*** in the middle of the screen - I use that notification to tell me when to hit the KTM reset (although that may be automatic now) and also when to run to his landing spot and start bandaging myself + bloodrage, rage pot, get a misdirect, etc.
I'm usually right under him when his targetting circle shows on the ground (red selection circle) before he even lands. I queue HS and hit shield slam and he's on me pretty fast.
The floating thing is simply Nightbane's hitbox is bigger than the balcony width, so he's wall-hacking up the dome.
all i do is queue a sheild slam for when he lands, and make sure everyone is to my left, not once had an issue with landing, unless he dodges/parrys or it misses, but a HS or devistate usualy snaps it back. just use the slam before he lands as soon as you can and tis all good.
If you have a hunter in your group, their Misdirection should be up for each landing. Its nice to cast on the MT, just incase they miss their first attack. You can normally get a shot off just before he hits the ground, which should snap the agro right to the MT.
The crap about him taking off again is fixed afaik. Making the fight significantly easier in terms of aggro.
I thought it was too until he plopped down, swipped at me once and went back up again just last week. It wasn't a problem for us, though it was quite confusing/annoying.
Nightbane's aggro on landing is definitely more squirrely than it was when we learned the encounter. I'm tempted to get a Hunter for my group every week just for this reason...though with 1-2 Hunters and 3 groups farming Nightbane each week, it doesn't always happen.
Karoshi, that's exactly what's driving me crazy. It seems he's responding to threat from some time during the aerial phase (he's always going after healers, after all) but I've watched Nightbane ignore the tank and go straight for a paladin or shaman who was standing there doing nothing for 10 seconds before the landing. We're talking about classes without HoTs, which rules out the obvious explanation. If they weren't healing (and I watched, I can verify that they weren't healing), I can't think of any way they could have out-aggroed the tank.
EDIT: Also, I've started resetting KTM at 10 seconds before landing, and I have pretty sound evidence that the threat values we get for that are wrong. After doing this on one attempt, our warlock and I both pulled aggro off the tank, despite KTM showing the tank above both of us on threat (~7k over me, not sure on the warlock). This wasn't during a fear or anything, we just straight-up pulled aggro because we were both going by KTM and KTM was several thousand threat off. That would seem to imply Nightbane is resetting aggro sometime after the landing, thereby nullifying some of the early threat generated by the tank.
I'm really sure that something about the aggro reset has changed in the past weeks. When we had our first kills we often didnt have enough dps to kill all the adds in phase 2, so the MT still had 2-3 adds on him when nightbane landed. No stopped healing, no stopped nuking, no misdirection and still the MT didnt loose Nightbane. It was just chaos, but still he never ignored the tank like he's doing now.
I'm thinking it might have to do with some sort of bug. I've witnessed him retake off several times recently. We had a Shade of Aran summon two sets of elementals. Gruul running off after shatter then stopping and turning around. Bosses are just doing very weird things as of late.
Well our Gruul sometimes has 3.4 mio hp, sometimes 4.1 mio. Sometimes he does no Hurtful Strikes, sometimes forgets to shatter or enter phase 2 at all. Aran respawning, Moroes respawning, Netherspite respawning, Prince despawning in the middle of the fight, Prince beeing unattackable, Nightbane evading without despawning after a wipe.....
Nasty bugs, especially Gruul changing his hitpoints, but thats far off the topic.
It sounds like people are healing during the landing and getting far above the threat you can generate in your first few moves while he lands. You could probably see this on KLH Threatmeter if everyone had it installed.
Anyway as probably already mentioned after the landing yell healers should stop casting, the tank should be right under where he lands and a hunter should be misdirecting to the tank and going nuts as soon as he can.
Alternatively you could have a paladin heal with righteous fury up during the landing and just stand right next to the warrior and bubble when needed. You could even have the paladin bubble + taunt which should give the warrior enough time to build threat while nightbane will be going no where other than attacking the immune paladin.
The most important thing is what are the healers doing during the landing (after the landing yell) they should not be casting anything. If you have a lock this is where people should be popping healthstones or hp pot's if they are dangerously low. If they are dangerously low why weren't they healed before the landing yell?
Last edited by Ragnor : 04/19/07 at 11:24 PM.
The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.
-Bandage, bandage, bandage .... and bandage. This generates enormous threat. Have one or two injured players run to you and get bandaged.
-Honestly, we don't even use Misdirect, but it is a great thing to do.
What shouldn't be happening:
-ANYTHING ELSE! No heals especially. As a healer I know that I want to get everyone topped off. You will die if you do this. Right click any hots. The only thing that should be casted is a Prayer of Mending on the MT, and maybe a lifebloom.
To help everyone I would reset KTM when you control him.
This might sound silly, but it's what screwed up our very first landing: make sure no one is casting HOTs during flight phase. Healers tend to fire-and-forget those purely on autopilot, regardless of how long left to landing. Even when people stop healing in time, a ticking hot is a sure recipy for a botched landing.
We've always auto-reset KTM on the yells (I even think the newest (or beta) KTM does this now). It's been fairly true to that mark. If heals are critical between the yell and landing, have a Paladin do it with bubble ready.
Got him again tonight. Tried positioning the tank far away from the raid with the raid closer to the west door, and firing the misdirected shots a few seconds earlier, and never saw him land on anyone but the tank. No stopped heals or anything.
That pretty much shoots down the theory that he's resetting aggro after the landing, but our KTM is still off with us resetting at the shout so I can't tell when exactly he resets aggro. I'm also still at a loss to explain what exactly makes the difference, and I'm still not sure how his threat works during the landing.
In my experience Nightbane has always landed on the same spot regardless of whom has aggro. He has always landed ~20 yards further north on the balcony from his starting spot (the little skull). Having a warrior there and bandaging other people has always worked for us.
I've got to say, if you have access to Fear Ward, it absolutely trivializes the landing to have a Paladin or Druid tank him. Just fire off some heals during the landing sequence, use a few threat generating moves while he's still hovering, and you're golden.
In my experience Nightbane has always landed on the same spot regardless of whom has aggro. He has always landed ~20 yards further north on the balcony from his starting spot (the little skull). Having a warrior there and bandaging other people has always worked for us.
Correct. Handy tip for the tanks: during his landing sequence, he hovers about 2 seconds above his landing spot before he touches the ground. You can hit him at that point. So make sure your ragebar is full, you raid is nowhere near the landingspot and just go nuts on the threatmoves (SS + HS + Sunder, etc).
We had the same problem after a small patch 3 weeks ago. When landing .. he always just 1shot a healer.. and most of the time he did his breath in the group which was insane to heal trough. Misdirection helps a bit, but was not the solution.
Took us some time to figure out that he resets his agro at the point the landing emote comes, as he is still in the air. This however was the case with "pre nerf" Nightbane.
So what we do is. After the emote comes all healers stop healing (dont let people die, heal as much as to keep them alive). If you have a druid tank let him hot the wounded, heal himself. If you have a warrior, pop a heal pot, bandage himself. Note that overehealing does not produce agro.
This worked fine for us and Nightbane headed always first for the tank instead of oneshotting healers when landing.
04/19/07, 6:51 PM
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