Why can't we kill Magtheridon? - Page 3

Quigon · 04/29/07, 3:09 AM

Its always been allowed (,yes).
It was allowed programmatically before 2.0 - we used to programmatically change our nefarian and Kel'thuzad raids almost completely (as in almost everyone changed spots), with 1 click.

After 2.0 you could still change raid members positions, just manually.

The problem was CT Raidassist was uh... bad after 2.0, and stopped you from doing this while in combat just after 2.0 came out (CTRA was so bad for so long after 2.0, this is when most guilds switched to oRA2). Even to this day you can change players manually in raids (and is how I've personally done it outside of a few moments when our raidrestore worked). We change raids around on FLK for instance every week.

Renew · 04/29/07, 5:48 AM

Magtheridon is easily the first fun 25 person encounter.

This is what we basically do when taking on Magtheridon and what goes through my head as the raid leader.

1. I need 1 MT obviously and 4 Off tanks for a total of five capable tanks. Feral druids or Prot warriors for the back half of the add kill order.
2. Do we have 2 or more warlocks on? If we only have one, we will wait till we have two or more on at the same time. You say you are running with up to four? I don't know if that is a good or bad thing and to be honest, three is the max I would like in any raid encounter.
3. I prefer to bring 8 Healers. 2 Shaman (Heroism, Earth Shock support in phase 1 and Totems for DPS), 2 Paladins (Two Blessings really makes things go smoother, though we have been dealing with 1 Blessing on some raid nights), the rest doesn't matter much, but usually it is 1-2 Holy priests and 2-3 druids.
4. I like having 3 Rogues and 3 Mages, but those slots can be subbed here and there for solid hunters, feral druids, or Shadow Priests.
5. The rest of the slots, if extra do not matter, fill them with solid players so he dies and you can move on with the raid night.

Phase 1:
- Melee Dominate this fight, so I do not assign them to cube duty. The Rogue Group for us is in charge of making Phase 1 go as smooth as possible. They bring top dps as well as interrupts on a short cooldown.

Our rogues usually come prepared with DPS pots and sometimes for SWStats epeen, a flask. DPS pots do help and should be used for this fight even if it is easy after you get it down. No need to stress yourselves out on a boss that should be on farm. Since you have 0 kills under your belt, id say to flask up the raid as it will make the phase 1 to 2 transition alot easier as far as how many adds are left up.

- During the last add, this is make or break if you have solid raid members. There is no need to panic when the quake happens. If she heals, oh well, stay focused and down her. The Shaman on DPS healing duty usually are able to help prevent that stuff, but if it happens, like I said, don't panic. At this same time, our ranged dps group usually heads into position a little bit early and those few in range can help a bit with dps.

- Mag breaking loose means that you want no one close to him besides the tank. Healers healing the last off tank (or two) especially. He has like a weird 1-2 second immunity where you do not want your Warrior wasting his big aggro generating abilities (nor do you want your hunter to waste their misdirects), thus putting them on cooldown while Magtheridon smacks down the Druid Healing Touching the final off tank.

- Healing on the tank at the start is huge. Usually it is me and a paladin who help get Mag into position while the tank is backing it up. Depending on the gear of your tank, Ironshields may help out here. We have been rotating our prot tanks a bit on him and experience and gear from what I have observed has made a difference. If two healers is not enough, most likely the second Paladin can also come and help out.

Phase 2:
- The Off tanks and an extra smart raid member fill up group 2 for the second box click group. DPS not assigned to boxes should be familiar with where the five box locations are (we number them 1-5 and also call them out by compass direction) in case someone dies for some reason.

++

That should be it. The Phase 1 to 2 transition always has been the make or break of the fight. It was just worse before in that you needed to have full pots in order to even get to the transition with few enough channelers up.

From your post it seems like a shaman or two watching for heals and bolts during quakes might help out a bit. Extra Warriors/Priests/SPriests can also help the locks out a bit at the end with their instant cast fears.

vrak · 04/29/07, 6:21 AM

Originally Posted by Quigon

Its always been allowed (,yes).
It was allowed programmatically before 2.0 - we used to programmatically change our nefarian and Kel'thuzad raids almost completely (as in almost everyone changed spots), with 1 click.

After 2.0 you could still change raid members positions, just manually.

The problem was CT Raidassist was uh... bad after 2.0, and stopped you from doing this while in combat just after 2.0 came out (CTRA was so bad for so long after 2.0, this is when most guilds switched to oRA2). Even to this day you can change players manually in raids (and is how I've personally done it outside of a few moments when our raidrestore worked). We change raids around on FLK for instance every week.

Currently, click-dragging a player name in the Blizz raid frame during combat will create a floating raid bar with that player in, or swap that player's group if done out of combat, so what's your secret?

Quigon · 04/29/07, 6:24 AM

I'm honestly amazed by that post... I don't even know what to say really?

Basically, click dragging their level or class does what you said. Clicking on their name moves them around. If that doesn't work something is wrong with your gui - try disabling your mods - seriously.

I think you're clicking on the wrong part of the screen. And this works always, regardless of combat.

♦ Praetorian · 04/29/07, 8:35 AM

It's a UI thing. Several common mods tainted the raid frame in early TBC. I still don't know for sure which the culprits were. But I do know that after a month or so of updating, my issues with being unable to move players around in combat vanished entirely.

bodicea · 04/29/07, 12:59 PM

One thing I've noticed is that just before he starts casting his fire nova he de-targets the MT for a split second, and then starts casting. If someone pays attention and calls a click at the de-target you'll get little more leeway in reaction/click time.

drats · 04/29/07, 1:20 PM

Also, the infernals do AOE damage when they spawn sometimes, so if you still have one channeler up before the blast wave be sure to move it away from the cube.

cheebamonkey · 04/29/07, 1:22 PM

Originally Posted by bodicea

One thing I've noticed is that just before he starts casting his fire nova he de-targets the MT for a split second, and then starts casting. If someone pays attention and calls a click at the de-target you'll get little more leeway in reaction/click time.

Yeah he does stop targeting the tank for about a second or two before he casts blast wave but if everyone manages to click early you'll be screwed since he has to actually start casting blast wave in order for the cooldown to activate. The clicking in this fight is really easy so long as your raid stays calm and focused, you really don't need any tricks.

srljstr · 04/29/07, 2:44 PM

A year from now when everyone's gear is so far ahead of Mag there will still be issues clicking the cubes, synchronized actions are always the hardest to train people to perform.

We kill the channelers in this order:

2oMo1
o3..5o
...o4

We use Bloodlust on the 2nd channeler, which lasts until at least the 3rd one dies, if not cutting a good chunk of hp from the 4th. I think this is key because while the fight is a dps fight, the primary phase to worry about is p1 since you have so much environmental damage and randomness from both channelers and infernals.

When channeler 3 dies, you can have whoever is tanking the 4th drag it over by the podium where number 3 was, this cuts down on volleys from either of them getting the people on the opposite side of the room. Tanks that are not currently tanking the primary kill target interrupt the volleys, with shamans assigned to heal them helping out as well. With a solid melee group you can basically guarantee that whatever channeler is being killed will not cast a heal or volley.

Once you get through p1 it becomes alot easier, your designated clickers should always be near their cube with backup people incase they die. We have our spare OT's who aren't doing much in phase 2 and 3 and a few random healers mixed into the teams so we can keep max dps on him.

If you have people dying before they can click the cubes, your raid needs to work on interrupts and maybe check the hp of people chronically dying and bump it up a bit. The fight is definitely doable without heavy buffs, we used no flasks last week/light consumables the week before and hopefully with a week or two of solid drops from SSC we can go with just class buffs.

• Hamlet · 04/29/07, 6:54 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

It's a UI thing. Several common mods tainted the raid frame in early TBC. I still don't know for sure which the culprits were. But I do know that after a month or so of updating, my issues with being unable to move players around in combat vanished entirely.

I hot-swap groups a lot as well, due to being an Alliance raid leader having fun with all the new Shaman tricks. Other who do this--do you something have the raid pane "hang" when you try to swap (you let go of the person you're dragging, their "box" just hovers where you left it, and you have re-close and open the window to do the same swap again)?

stauros · 04/29/07, 9:20 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

I hot-swap groups a lot as well, due to being an Alliance raid leader having fun with all the new Shaman tricks. Other who do this--do you something have the raid pane "hang" when you try to swap (you let go of the person you're dragging, their "box" just hovers where you left it, and you have re-close and open the window to do the same swap again)?

I always get this thing happening to me. I'm using grid, which I really would prefer to not stop using. It's my only raid frame. Any thoughts?

Hate Monkey · 04/29/07, 10:45 PM

Originally Posted by bodicea

One thing I've noticed is that just before he starts casting his fire nova he de-targets the MT for a split second, and then starts casting. If someone pays attention and calls a click at the de-target you'll get little more leeway in reaction/click time.

He also has a few other random detargetting ways, so just watching for the detarget can cause a few wipes if you aren't careful.

♦ Praetorian · 04/29/07, 10:57 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

I hot-swap groups a lot as well, due to being an Alliance raid leader having fun with all the new Shaman tricks. Other who do this--do you something have the raid pane "hang" when you try to swap (you let go of the person you're dragging, their "box" just hovers where you left it, and you have re-close and open the window to do the same swap again)?

I used to have this happen, but this also stopped a month ago or so, just via continually updating my mods. I can now swap people around mid-fight just as I could pre-2.0.

Falk · 04/30/07, 4:00 AM

Originally Posted by Hate Monkey

He also has a few other random detargetting ways, so just watching for the detarget can cause a few wipes if you aren't careful.

It's probably personal preference, but I feel it's safer if every single cube clicker targets Magtheridon and watches for his Fire Nova cast bar. Prettyboy mods like eCastingBar's target cast bar, set to be a huge block across the middle of the screen, is awesome for so many encounters.

Any decent bossmod which doesn't already have a default plugin for Magtheridon can easily be configured to both time the Fire Novas roughly and spam a raid warning on the emote.

Tankz · 04/30/07, 4:46 AM

not sure if this has been mentioned before, but we always stick a healing in the middle of the room to just heal Clickers/free roam helps a lot and means you get to top people off before they click meaning you dont get people coming from cubes half dead.

Also we always use DPS and never healers for the cubes just fo the safty of not letting the Tank die.

p1 was always our pain point, once we killed them, and got the 1st set of cubes done with no deaths, we killed him, p2 and 3 are uber easy.