4.03 Raid Mechanics and testing - Page 2

TrlstanC · 01/12/11, 11:06 AM

Wondering if anyone has a good strategy to deal with Magmaw whacking a random melee range player when he comes out of the impale. As far as we can tell there's a threat wipe during the impale and he whacks a random player in range when he gets up before there's time to taunt, which does about 90-95% damage to any non-tank. The only idea we had for dealing with it is:

Have everyone back out of melee range right before the end of impale, and then run back in. This isn't ideal because it introduces a chance of a lava pillar on the raid, which is pretty much the worst case scenario.

So, instead we just kept everyone where they were, let one person get whacked and healed them up quick, not a great solution, but at least less chance of everyone puking up parasites 10 seconds later.

For Omnitron, the tuning on Arcane Anhilator seems a little funky. It's cast every 4 seconds, a fast cast, and does a lot of damage (but not a 1-shot). So, we should be interupting every cast, but it's not 100% necessary to get every one, and we were having problems coming up with a reliable rotation. Has anyone found a reliable way to lock this down, or is it just something that you're supposed to heal through the 25% of hits that get off?

Silverwind · 01/12/11, 11:54 AM

Has someone figured out the mechanic when Cimaeron does an "early" feud, e.g. 30 seconds after the last one instead of 60 seconds? At first it seems random, but some people think it's percentage threshold based (like if the boss drops below 80/60/40% he feuds at the next massacre). At least for 25m Heroic, I *think* it could be 85/70/55/40% but I'm not 100% certain.

Exemplar · 01/12/11, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by TrlstanC

Wondering if anyone has a good strategy to deal with Magmaw whacking a random melee range player when he comes out of the impale.
For Omnitron, the tuning on Arcane Anhilator seems a little funky. It's cast every 4 seconds, a fast cast, and does a lot of damage (but not a 1-shot). So, we should be interupting every cast, but it's not 100% necessary to get every one, and we were having problems coming up with a reliable rotation. Has anyone found a reliable way to lock this down, or is it just something that you're supposed to heal through the 25% of hits that get off?

When your MT is picked up for Mangle they disappear from threat list.

10man: eat it and survive seems to be better than 2 tanks (for us, 2 tanks may work for others with 25man tactic below). MT taunts once available and threat can be iffy for a bit.

25man: Tested the following last night - 2 tanks. Approx 10 seconds prior to Mangle (well between pillar timers), 2nd tank walks out of melee range and taunts. 2nd tank is top of list, but Magmaw continues to hit MT (as highest threat in melee range). MT taunts back (after taunt debuff drops). 2nd tank moves into melee range. Mangle picks up MT, and 2nd tank takes any incidental melee attacks both before and after Impale.

You may want to warn your healers if you do this - the 2nd tank will get aggro from the taunt and raid frames would show them with aggro, even though 1st tank is still taking the beating. They need to know not to swap during the taunt "false aggro" window or your MT can die.

Omnotron - interrupts depend on raid composition. Two shaman can alternate Wind Shears for every AA. 2 melee and one shaman can rotate (melee1, shaman, melee2, shaman, repeat). 3 melee could rotate. 25man more likely to have composition allowing 100% interrupts. 10man do the best you can and make sure that any sneak through do not occur while he's in a Power Generator (40k is bad enough, 80k is awful).

PsiVen · 01/12/11, 5:51 PM

Wondering if anyone has a good strategy to deal with Magmaw whacking a random melee range player when he comes out of the impale.

The answer is pretty simple: don't have anyone stand in melee range when he comes out of the impale. They shouldn't be anyway, unless they're deliberately running in right away. This is when the natural tank transition occurs, with melee standing away from the boss while the new tank steps in and taunts.

Anduryondon · 01/12/11, 11:26 PM

Originally Posted by Silverwind

Has someone figured out the mechanic when Cimaeron does an "early" feud, e.g. 30 seconds after the last one instead of 60 seconds? At first it seems random, but some people think it's percentage threshold based (like if the boss drops below 80/60/40% he feuds at the next massacre). At least for 25m Heroic, I *think* it could be 85/70/55/40% but I'm not 100% certain.

I think too that it's treshhold based, however, I examined some videos and I can definitely say that Chimaeron can go Feud while at 86% HP.

fr0d0b0ls0n · 01/13/11, 2:44 AM

I think is totally random. A shame as the fight increases heavily in difficulty if all feuds are at 1 min/30secs/30secs/30secs (instead of the easy 1:30min/1min/1min). I have seen fights with only 3 feuds, and fights with 6 feuds...

MatsT · 01/13/11, 7:39 AM

Originally Posted by Exemplar

Omnotron - interrupts depend on raid composition. Two shaman can alternate Wind Shears for every AA. 2 melee and one shaman can rotate (melee1, shaman, melee2, shaman, repeat). 3 melee could rotate. 25man more likely to have composition allowing 100% interrupts. 10man do the best you can and make sure that any sneak through do not occur while he's in a Power Generator (40k is bad enough, 80k is awful).

On heroic it's not really an option to let any through. Even without Power Generator they will still hit for above 100k which will lead to a death in combination with any other damage. What we do is have a shaman in each group keep grounding totem down to absorb bolts in case there was no interrupt available or the tank missed his interrupt.

sp00n · 01/13/11, 9:48 AM

Originally Posted by TrlstanC

For Omnitron, the tuning on Arcane Anhilator seems a little funky. It's cast every 4 seconds

Are you sure that's not just due to a lower than 5 second spell school lockout from certain interrupting spells (Pummel has 4s, Wind Shear only 2s, etc)? Granted, we've only spent one night on Omnitron heroic yet, but in general it didn't seem like an overwhelming problem to interrupt AA with just two rogues alternating (who have a 5s lockout with a 10s cooldown).
Problems arise when somebody else with a lower lockout interrupts the cast and/or other boss abilites come into play (sucked into poison cloud, fixate, lightning conductor), although there are ways to play around this - which simply is a part of the encounter.

sollaires · 01/14/11, 1:37 PM

Haven't seen this anywhere else, but cardboard assassin is pretty useful for soaking hits on Chimaeron. It can even parry his melees. Pretty useful if you're out of cooldowns.

You can see the taunt and the parry from our kill last night:

YouTube - Chimaeron Heroic 25 - Roll Initiative - Feral Bear POV

Iluminati · 01/15/11, 1:58 PM

For Omnitron, the tuning on Arcane Anhilator seems a little funky. It's cast every 4 seconds, a fast cast, and does a lot of damage (but not a 1-shot). So, we should be interupting every cast, but it's not 100% necessary to get every one, and we were having problems coming up with a reliable rotation. Has anyone found a reliable way to lock this down, or is it just something that you're supposed to heal through the 25% of hits that get off?

Arcane Annihilator is Arcanotron's main attacking ability. Meaning, he will not melee unless he cannot cast Arcane Annihilator due to school lockout.

A few things could be causing you to miss interrupts:
1. Skill
2. "Lag" (aka skill)
3. Your interrupter combo is bad / you aren't using the right interrupting pair.

To address #3 - it is best to use two interrupters that have the same lockout duration.

Shield bash - 6 second lockout / 12 second cooldown
Pummel, Mind Freeze - 4 second lockout / 10 second cooldown
Kick - 5 second lockout / 10 second cooldown
Wind Shear - 2 second lockout / 6 second cooldown (5 second talented)

It is best to have two like abilities interrupting. This way you can consistently time the casts. Unfortunately, if you use anything other than Shield bash x2 or Kick x2, you will have a "gap" where it is possible that Arcanotron will cast Arcane Annihilator but NEITHER interrupter will be off cooldown. You can get around this by having your tank help interrupt, but that can get confusing.

It is important that no one else is interrupting except for the designated interrupters. They will introduce a different lockout duration and throw off your interrupters. It also makes it harder to tell if your assigner interrupters are good/bad/paying attention.

Obviously, your interrupters need to know that they cannot do anything except interrupt. Your shamans/priests/mages need to be purge/dispel/spellstealing.

If you had trouble interrupting General Vezax in Ulduar...you will have trouble with this ability.

Gulvak · 01/16/11, 5:11 PM

Originally Posted by TrlstanC

A thread to test and document boss mechanics, that are either not well described elsewhere or not completely understood, from the first four raids in Cataclysm.

Please focus on tested mechanics as opposed to theories of how they may work, and note any areas that aren't fully understood. From my experience so far it seems that some boss mechanics are more complicated than have been described, and some strats may be working for un-intended (or at least, poorly understood/described) reasons. For example, Magmaw’s Magma Spit ability (10-man):

Hits for approximately 36k damage
Cast at 3 targets each time
Prioritizes targets out of melee range, but will target melee if there’s no one at range. (we found that either having 1 player at range, or lots of players at range works best, having only 2 or 3 was difficult on our healers).
Cast anywhere from every 5 seconds to every 20 seconds (ignoring impale phases). This appears to be a random time between casts, and can be a problem before the first impale if you get some bad luck as this can easily be the #1 source of damage for the raid if it's cast as often as possible. Subsequent impales come much more often, and so the DTPS from all abilities, including this, drops significantly in the 2nd half of the encounter.

A Warrior tank can spell reflect this ability and it will count as a deflect. I imagine a hunter as well could use deterrence to prevent some damage from this. You do have to completely guess, but if you have the excess rage or are running very low on health as a hunter this is definitely something to think about.

I'm sorry if this is a new aspect of Spell Reflection and I'm saying something everyone already knows.

TrlstanC · 01/16/11, 6:42 PM

After the first two encounters in BWD there are a lot of options for where to go next, especially depending on your groups combination of gear and co-ordination skills. From what I've seen I would rate the next 3 BWD encounters in this order: Maloriak, Atramedes, Chimaerion, with Halfus falling somewhere in that range depending on drakes are up, and the Counclave of Wind being pretty much a co-ordination test that seems to be much more tightly tuned in 10man than 25.

For Maloriak, pretty much the only mechanic that needs to be talked about is what amount of Aberrations to kill, and when. We tried the fairly obvious releasing and killing 9 for 2 green phases, which was doable, but right at the limit of how much damage the off tank could deal with, so it never felt like it was going smoothly (and often it wouldn't). Has anyone tried other strats that worked more consistently? I've heard interrupt everything and deal with 18 at the end, and use 2 off tanks in the first phase to split 12.

For Halfus, I'd say that any combo that doesn't include the green whelp is going to be harder than one that doesn't, and any that includes slate will be harder than the rest. We have Storm, Time, Slate up this week, and decided on a release and kill Storm+Slate, than release Storm and burn Halfus strat. We had the DPS to down him before the enrage, but had a lot of trouble getting past the 2 minutes consistently due to the combo of high aoe, tank debuff and having 2 drakes up.

sp00n · 01/16/11, 8:15 PM

Are you talking about 10man or 25man?

For Maloriak on 10man, the standard tactics we use on 25man to just tank 9 adds didn't quite work for us (it was an alt/friend run, so only pre-raid gear).
Instead, we had one plate wearer (my DK alt) taunt 2 adds of the first wave one by one, which was then nuked down by the ranged. The add tank thus only had to deal with 6 adds to take into the green phase, which was manageable for our setup.
Also note that Maloriak has a 6min enrage timer on 10man, which he doesn't have in 25 (if he has one, it's considerable longer, I haven't seen it yet).

krilz · 01/17/11, 6:28 AM

Two things we've noticed during raids. I hardly think these mechanics are intended and will probably be fixed in the future but here goes:

Valiona & Theralion

Blackout can be ignored if you use Grounding Totems. Yes, it absorbs the effect and it makes Valiona even easier then she already is. Remember though that in order for this to work, you need to have a totem for every group.

Cho'gall

100 Corruption results in transforming into a Faceless One: increasing damage, everything is instant cast but you cannot be healed. However, if you play Demonology and use Metamorphosis to turn into a demon (i.e. you are in demon form) when you reach 100, you won't be transformed. Instead, after Metamorphosis has run out, you'll return to normal form, still having 100 corruption, but you still will not be transformed, meaning you can still be healed (casts are not instants also, I didn't notice any difference in increased damage so I assume that's not applied as well).

EDIT: Avoiding Blackout with Grounding Totem has now been fixed.

Doktre · 01/24/11, 2:06 PM

Nefarian 10s:

We are having some real difficulty controlling adds in P1 due to Ony's tail swipe stunning the mage-kiter. What I'm wondering is whether anyone has had any success using the Line-of-Sight mechanics (source) on Ony's Lightning Discharge? Would Ony need to be positioned with her Lightning Orb humping the pillar or her head, or is it just not possible to position her so that the raid is out of LOS?