We had a would-be first kill turn into "Sweet, 6%, this is easy... one more AOE wave and we've got this... wait, wtf is that?" Since then, we kill that Karathress-side naga pack before engaging.
Same for us, except 8%. I saw that pack coming, I remember taking a deep breath before saying on Vent, "So... I've got some bad news...."
Anyway, I'm 0/49/12 and I tank all the murlocs. Basically I just spam HL on as many people as I can right after the earthquake -- non-priest healers have to take it easy until the murlocs arrive. Priests fade, and the instant the murlocs enter my consecration they're *glued* to me. That said, a 41/20/0 paladin should have no problem doing the same, I'm just particularly well-suited for the job as full prot.
One tip: "/cancelaura Divine Shield" is a very useful macro, since you'll occasionally have to bubble out of a Watery Grave, and you might have too many buffs to click DS off. Learned that one the hard way...
Once you've got someone who can reliably pick up all the murlocs, it's just an endurance fight. I actually find it incredibly boring, because I'm basically doing the same thing again and again for 10+ minutes.
Got a phobia about posting a new thread but I'm kind of confused about AOE on these. Using a paladin to pull initial aggro, with all healers standing on him. All the murlocs are then frost nova'd on top of him and the AOE onslaught commences.
It's mostly going fine but we had a comment on Vent last night about "wtf is going on? They were dead by the time Seed of Corruption went off last time and now they're at 70%" - now previous attempts (they were frost nova'd near the healers in 2 packs) had probably half arsed the clustering and I was wondering about the rules of AOE'ing on large numbers of mobs.
I vaguely remember (but am unable to find patch notes to the effect) that AOE got changed in TBC so that you deal less dmg vs larger numbers of mobs. If memory serves, you deal half dmg from your AOE if it effects more than 10 mobs. And 1/4 damage if it effects more than 20 mobs.
It was also rumoured that it wasn't actually linked to the number of mobs, but instead the amount of damage it caused. It was unconfirmed but I saw mages complaining that they could deal half dmg on their AOEs on less than 10 mobs if they deal more than 10x the base amount of dmg. This meant as as their +dmg increased, they needed less mobs to trigger the penalty. I wonder where crits would come in here.
So, if the Seed of Corruption explosion does 1290 max dmg (base), the limit would be 12900 before it deals half dmg. Apparently, with decent +dmg and talents, Seed does 1700 on explosion, meaning if it hits more than 7 mobs, it will deal half dmg.
So a few questions,
1) Is it definitely 12 murlocs that spawn (as Gurg indicated) - didn't get a chance to count but I'd guess it's about right.
2) Which AOE scaling penalty rule is correct, if any? i.e. if none of the above, we'd just AOE the lot of them, if it's 10, it'd probably make sense to tank 3 murlocs away from the pack so that 9 murlocs + Morogrim are AOE'd without any penalty; or if it's the "damage done" penalty, you'd probably not lose out on any DPS either way because they're dealing 50% dmg whatever (although pushing it quite close to 25%, especially with crits).
The AoE nerf is on 10+ mobs, but its not that noticeable on this fight. They key is getting them together and keeping them together.
We also use the Paladin RF to gather them all together ... but they are not prot specd, they are holy spec.
We always have 3 Mages, so we have a Frost Nova rotation - this takes precedance over any other form of AoE ... basically we frost nova immediately after eachother so they DO NOT MOVE for 5ish seconds. Once we cast our Nova then we are free to Blast Wave+DB then IAE spam. All this time Locks are seeding their ass off.
We also have 3 OT's that are doing their best to help with demo+TC - but with adds coming 10ish times during the fight, you can spread your AoE Taunts around and do them every 2-3 spawns ... or use them in the event both RF Paladins or 2 Mages get graved.
The hardest part of the fight is adapting to who gets graved - if its one of the important classes for taking care of the adds (or the person healing the graved people) then you need to adjust on the fly.
"Being a leader is not a position of power. It is a position of service." ~ Barestomper
Apparently it's you can't do more than 10x your max AOE dmg. So if your Arcane Explosion hits 10 mobs for 7000 (700 each), it would hit 12 mobs for 7000 (583 each). Guess that makes more sense.
The hardest part of the fight is adapting to who gets graved - if its one of the important classes for taking care of the adds (or the person healing the graved people) then you need to adjust on the fly.
Our strategy wasn't quite as elegant, but basically just involved the entire non-MT raid clumping together on murlocs, so no matter who they aggroed they'd all come to the same place. We then Frost Nova them into place and everyone just burns them down. The biggest advantage by far is that we don't have to worry about who gets a watery grave.
We finally got the fight down after a number of heart-breaking <20% wipes due to ... well, the most ridiculous crap - server lag instagibbing me (the MT) @ 8%, trash respawns at 22%, that naga pack adding at 15%, me D/C'ing at 45% and tanking until 25% while D/C'd, followed by my toon despawning before I could log back in ... yeah, anyway.
We tried pretty much all of the "standard" strats. Pally tank actually tanking adds ... no. Straight up warrior tanking the adds - couldn't pick all of them up. Just kiting them around - not enough dps. Positioning the raid right behind the boss and just aoe bombing everything .. yeah, that was really, really ugly.
What ended up working for us is the following: we made *all* of our pallies pop Righteous Fury and do most of the topping off post-earthquake - just to control where the Murlocs are headed after they spawn. Our raid is split behind Tidewalker, healers, shadowpriests etc. (non aoe related classes) on the right, AoE'ers on the left. Hunter slowing traps between the two "camps." As the Murlocs come in, we have 2-3 OT's pick them up with cleaves and thunderclaps, if some of them get through, no biggie. Warlocks spam seed of corruption on them, and eventually get aggro - so the murlocs run toward them through the trap. At that point mage AoE goes all out, Dragon's Breath, Blast Wave ... the whole deal, with our token Destro 'lock dropping a Shadowfury if the Murlocs get too close to the AoE classes.
This way, barely anyone actually takes any damage from Murlocs. AoE is still efficient even if 2-3 people were recently Watery Graved, and our AoE doesn't die if it's an unlucky healer grave combo.
As an aside, we initially learned this with 2 hunters laying traps, but we managed to pull it off with one hunter (with 2pc Beast Lord on, lol) basically dropping the same amount of traps on our final kill. Not too stacked either with only 3 mages and 3 warlocks.
I have a few questions about Morogrim as I am stuck coming up with the right healing numbers and assignments.
Currently we are using 8 healers. (Wish it was 9, but not entirely sure if its needed)
1-Shaman Graves
2-Pallies Murloc / Raid Healers
4-Full time MT Healers
1- Helps with raid but mostly on MT
Here are the problems we are having.
If we have 2 paladins with RF, trying to top off the raid, we end up short and an unlucky watery grave sends someone to their death. Obviously the raid needs to be topped off faster after earthquake.
If we spread out the healing, it seems that the paladin doesn't get the aggro needed for AoE to begin shortly after arriving. But, if we wait for him to get that aggro it seems that the 1 pally healing himself along with assist of another, he seems to drop too quickly.
Mana is another issue. Sadly only 1 shadow priest in the raid and both our healers and Mages tend to run short on mana quickly with this set up.
Questions:
1- Is there a more optimal way to set up healing so that the paladin gets aggro and to not have the AoE pull threat instantaneously?
2-Where in this fight is a shadow priest best served? Obviously both need mana for the fight to continue without ending in disater.
3-I read about Blessing of Sacrafice, and thought that it would be a great idea for the second paladin to toss on the tanking one. Yet what type of dmg will this result in him taking and how many heals will he need? Same dmg output but spread around. Are 2 palains simply not enough to keep both alive with Blessing of Sac and tanking murlocs?
I don't know if this is an option for you, but one of the things we found effective was to have one of our priests dust off 6pc Faith and make good use of fade and be the primary post-earthquake healer besides the paladin who's trying to get aggro.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
The paladin strat is something you can do or not, after a few wipes trying this we quickly dispatched the idea, since it was going no where.
What worked, however was using a shadowpriest/paladin/shaman (chainheal) combo to grab aggro, away from the raid.
They would stand in a spot so that the murlocs would converge into one pile on them, but they would be intercepted by a few mages with frostnova rotations. Once the mages had the murlocs locked down, our warlocks went absolutely mental with Seed of Corruption on both sides. At this point, hunter placed a slowing trap and as soon as the SoCs went off, the warlocks had solid aggro from the Murlocs. At this point it's save to go nuts with AoE and the murlocs were little to no threat.
You can see this in action from one of our mage's pov here:
You need at least two assigned healers for watery grave. Since Earthquake->Watery grave is a real possibility, you will have four people take 11~k damage very quickly. Assigned healers need to immediately max rank heal all targets in the grave before grave explodes. Earthquake and grave will sync several times in the fight because of their independent and differing cooldowns.
How long does an average Tidewalker kill take? Last night my guild was working on him and we seemed on pace for about 14-15 minute kill, this seemed quiet slow to me compared to videos I have seen. We had 7 healers in the raid so I certainly don't think we were to heavy in that department.
Our previous kill was 14:30 unflasked with 9 healers. The time isn't really important though, we've done it anywhere from 10-14 other times, it just depends how much potting you do and whether or not you go oom. Once you have the aoe mastered its just a matter of going through the motions as many times as necessary until he dies or you oom.(obviously if you oom there are various things you can do to fix that) Our AOE is done away from tidewalker however, so that definitely adds time to the fight. We also tend to split the murlocs a bit more than some do since we found it minimizes deaths. If your flasking, i'd say 10-11 is a reasonable time frame, otherwise 12-14.
How long does an average Tidewalker kill take? Last night my guild was working on him and we seemed on pace for about 14-15 minute kill, this seemed quiet slow to me compared to videos I have seen. We had 7 healers in the raid so I certainly don't think we were to heavy in that department.
A 15 minute kill seems fairly slow, more than could be justified by a lack of gear. The issue could have to do with your AoE strategy. If your AoE requires rogues, hunters, and shadow priests to change targets, you're implicitly losing a lot of boss DPS time. And if it requires your Mages and Warlocks to use spells with lower DPS, they have less boss time as well. Or were those attempts you did without using consumables?
It really depends on how many people you have static dpsing on Morogrim himself, how often they get graved, etc. I know our early kills were in the 12-13 minute region, so you shouldn't expect much quicker for a first kill I suppose. Current timers are more like 9 minutes with no significant buffs.
A 15 minute kill seems fairly slow, more than could be justified by a lack of gear. The issue could have to do with your AoE strategy. If your AoE requires rogues, hunters, and shadow priests to change targets, you're implicitly losing a lot of boss DPS time. And if it requires your Mages and Warlocks to use spells with lower DPS, they have less boss time as well. Or were those attempts you did without using consumables?
Only Mages and Locks are doing the AOE, everyone else is on the boss. I can't see our issue being gear, for example this week we killed the 5 summoner on Magtheridon about 15 seconds after he released unpotted. We haven't been going all out with flasks, I guess we should go that route. It's quiet disappointing to have to do that as we are all pretty drained from the amount of gold we had to spend to get Hydross down.
Only Mages and Locks are doing the AOE, everyone else is on the boss. I can't see our issue being gear, for example this week we killed the 5 summoner on Magtheridon about 15 seconds after he released unpotted. We haven't been going all out with flasks, I guess we should go that route. It's quiet disappointing to have to do that as we are all pretty drained from the amount of gold we had to spend to get Hydross down.
Flasking should not be necessary. More DPS is helpful only because it reduces the chance of getting a bad grave. If you kill the murlocs quickly, your mages and warlocks can get some DPS time on Morogrim, though they need to keep their mana up for AOE, and be careful about not getting hit by earthquake.
Flasking should not be necessary. More DPS is helpful only because it reduces the chance of getting a bad grave. If you kill the murlocs quickly, your mages and warlocks can get some DPS time on Morogrim, though they need to keep their mana up for AOE, and be careful about not getting hit by earthquake.
quoted for truth. The dps on this fight is a lot like the dps on prince, where more dps only decreases the chance of getting hosed by a bad infernal or 2. Mages and locks can dps as long as they maintain plenty of mana for the murlocs.
The paladin strat is something you can do or not, after a few wipes trying this we quickly dispatched the idea, since it was going no where.
What worked, however was using a shadowpriest/paladin/shaman (chainheal) combo to grab aggro, away from the raid.
They would stand in a spot so that the murlocs would converge into one pile on them, but they would be intercepted by a few mages with frostnova rotations. Once the mages had the murlocs locked down, our warlocks went absolutely mental with Seed of Corruption on both sides. At this point, hunter placed a slowing trap and as soon as the SoCs went off, the warlocks had solid aggro from the Murlocs. At this point it's save to go nuts with AoE and the murlocs were little to no threat.
You can see this in action from one of our mage's pov here:
Errr, it seems to me that you replaced one single paladin with a shadow priest, a shaman and a paladin but yet you are doing the rest of the things exactly like you would if you were just using the single paladin.
And that makes it seem like your paladin had problems getting aggro from the murlocs in which is just ... O_o
Flasking should not be necessary. More DPS is helpful only because it reduces the chance of getting a bad grave. If you kill the murlocs quickly, your mages and warlocks can get some DPS time on Morogrim, though they need to keep their mana up for AOE, and be careful about not getting hit by earthquake.
I think it depends on your AoE strat. We just have the whole raid stand right behind Morogrim, a paladin in some tank gear grabs heal aggro on the whole pack and actively tanks them (no Frost Nova, etc.), we seed them as they come in, and then just AoE everything down, which takes about 5 seconds from once the mages start. Morogrim gets hit by all the AoE damage. The whole raid gets hit by Earthquake, except for the two Grave healers and anyone who just got Graved. Morogrim typically dies in 8 minutes for us (zero consumables usually) -- we've never had a kill take longer than 9, even on some sloppier ones.
Flasking definitely should not be necessary for the fight -- you need to have your AoE strat be repeatable, and if you can do six waves you can also do eight. Tank consumables are the most important ones -- Morogrim can do some stupid spike damage.
Errr, it seems to me that you replaced one single paladin with a shadow priest, a shaman and a paladin but yet you are doing the rest of the things exactly like you would if you were just using the single paladin.
And that makes it seem like your paladin had problems getting aggro from the murlocs in which is just ... O_o
Actually, most guilds use the paladin to actually tank the murlocs, as in, stand there and take the beating..
Actually, most guilds use the paladin to actually tank the murlocs, as in, stand there and take the beating..
It's certainly a more simple approach, we use frost novas though to keep the north pack from getting to the paladin early, then when they get to him we set off the AH and the warlocks quickly get aggro anyways.
Then you do agree that it seems kind of stupid to use 3 people for the same trick that 1 paladin can do? I can't figure out why you are doing it, doesn't make sense.
The prot pally with healing aggro worked well for us on Saturday (we just need to deal with graves better). The only trick is to make sure he's spamming heals such that he isn't overhealing (cause that doesn't seem to cause threat or else doesn't cause as much threat). As for the AoE, frost nova helped a lot when we had a positioning with the pally away from the healers; I'll try out a formal rotation this Saturday. Usually we gave the tank a fair bit of time (maybe 3-5s after Murlocs arrived) and just kept dpsing Morogrim until then. The AoE varied a lot. When it was done well, it seemed like I'd take 0-1 melee hits and they died as fast as Maexxna's bugs at lvl60 (maybe 5s?). When it wasn't done as well, it seemed more like 15s of aoe. Dragon's Breath was incredibly useful here also, though a part of me misses Imp. Blizzard + Permafrost + Frostbite.
It's certainly a more simple approach, we use frost novas though to keep the north pack from getting to the paladin early, then when they get to him we set off the AH and the warlocks quickly get aggro anyways.
Then you do agree that it seems kind of stupid to use 3 people for the same trick that 1 paladin can do? I can't figure out why you are doing it, doesn't make sense.
a) The Paladin gets watery grave
b) The Shadowpriest gets watery grave
c) The Shaman gets watery grave
d) 2 out of 3 get watery grave
It doesn't change much but it erases stuff like this happening. It's a counter to bad luck. :/
And thats why we use a paladin to tank them AWAY from the raid, and mages/warrs running with the murlocs ready to Frostnova them if the pally gets graved, or to start the FN rotation as soon as they're in place.
Once they're on top of the paladin, even if he gets graved it doesnt matter, you can just speed up the frost novas, maybe even get an aoe taunt or two in there, and you're golden.
04/25/07, 12:30 AM
