I looked at a combat log to see how it works. The following is from a wipe edited for multiple hits on the melee group and should pretty accurately reflect individual abyssal spawns. First set of 4 dropped about 24 seconds after the fight started. Then a set of 3 dropped 26-32 seconds later. Then a set of 4 dropped 39-41 seconds later. And a final set of 4 21-29 seconds after that. So ~30 seconds does seem right but with substantial variability (+/- 10 seconds). Also interesting is that sometimes the spawns are staggered and sometimes they are simultaneous and even if they become staggered for one spawn cycle, they can get back in synch for the next.
67149: 4/15 22:45:33.359 #### gains Misdirection.
67817: 4/15 22:45:57.734 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal was resisted by ####.
67818: 4/15 22:45:57.734 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal was resisted by ####.
67819: 4/15 22:45:57.734 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal was resisted by ####.
67825: 4/15 22:45:57.812 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2629 Fire damage.
69182: 4/15 22:46:23.125 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2889 Fire damage.
69517: 4/15 22:46:28.703 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 3176 Fire damage.
69581: 4/15 22:46:29.906 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2795 Fire damage.
70834: 4/15 22:47:02.046 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2623 Fire damage.
70835: 4/15 22:47:02.046 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2840 Fire damage.
71162: 4/15 22:47:10.484 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 3024 Fire damage.
71163: 4/15 22:47:10.484 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2912 Fire damage.
71777: 4/15 22:47:30.171 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 3221 Fire damage.
71779: 4/15 22:47:30.171 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2726 Fire damage.
71812: 4/15 22:47:31.328 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal was resisted by ####.
71815: 4/15 22:47:31.343 Hellfire Channeler's Burning Abyssal hits #### for 2762 Fire damage.
Our raid leader coded a small, but simple addon that lets you set 2 cube teams, and announce when to click. Works like a charm. You can see it in action from my fraps of the fight if you wish:
You can also change the names manually during fight if you dont want to bring the UI up again:
/ta1 <name> - sets team a member 1 to name
/ta2 <name> - sets team a member 2 to name
.
.
./tb1 <name> - sets team b member 1 to name
and so on...
anyways, its fully automated when the fights starts. it calls the teams 40 sec before next clicking and puts icons over their heads and then will call the moment that everyone gotta click the cubes.
from my experience it kinda makes p2 trivial as long as people can click properly when they see the click warning.
note: you gotta be raid leader or promoted to assistant to use this properly. Also make sure you are close enough to magtheridon to see the emotes (so best if a full melee or MT runs this).
note2: You need to run the english version for this to work, or need to change the lua files to match the magtheridon emotes in your client language.
Well, to address the initial post, we banged our heads a bit on Mag last night and we're seeing progress. We were able to get past the first cube rotation a couple of times - I think the biggest change was twofold: first, the people assigned to the first cube rotation were changed more to hunters than warlocks/mages, and second, we did a lot better job on the burning abyssals.
One thing I noticed was that we're really healer-light. For our first couple attempts we only had 6 healers (and only 1 priest). Later on we swapped in a copule more healers and things went a lot better.
Burning Abyssals are still an issue though, and I'm not sure what we're dong wrong on that - for instance, I had one spawn on top of my head and then hit me for around 4K, which was game over. One pull we must have had 8 of them, whereas on the next pull there were only 2 (perhaps related to how fast we kill the channelers?).
We accidentally pulled a channeler once (one Warlock had a Voidwalker out which was set on aggressive from a battleground - no idea why the blueberry was out though), but somehow we got the gate open and only five or so died. And then there was the time when we pulled the channelers and the trash mobs respawned about 10 seconds into the fight (I thought they didn't respawn when you were fighting?).
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for all the advice in the thread - at this point I think it's just a matter of execution and practice to get it done.
anyways, its fully automated when the fights starts. it calls the teams 40 sec before next clicking and puts icons over their heads and then will call the moment that everyone gotta click the cubes.
What would be great is if this had support for a backup team. Looks really nice as is though and I look forward to testing it. Thanks!!
What would be great is if this had support for a backup team. Looks really nice as is though and I look forward to testing it. Thanks!!
You can always change the names on fly via the commands that I posted above (incase someone dies etc.) so i thought back up team isn't really necessary beside complicating the strategy.
The notes above are very important though btw. It will not work on non-english clients unless you modify the lua (emote string constants).
If I could make one recommendation on cubes. If someone screws up once, just replace them - no second chances (on the clicking task, not from the raid). You've got 15 others to replace them with. Having to single click a damn cube when a huge emote covers the middle of your screen and failing at it is imo inexcusable.
I once dabbled with the idea of letting people who -aren't- on cube duty randomly click them well between banishes for 'practice' and to get used with the delay between clicking and channeling the purple beam, so that they don't erroneously double click.
Of course, with the average WoW raider, that's going to lead to even more confusion... so that idea never saw light. "What, I thought he was clicking?" "Oh god, run back fast and rebuff"
I do still wonder if the cubes are clickable in feral forms though. Maybe I should try clicking one the moment Mag breaks loose. :P
One thing I noticed was that we're really healer-light. For our first couple attempts we only had 6 healers (and only 1 priest). Later on we swapped in a copule more healers and things went a lot better.
For what it's worth, our very first kill was with 6 healers as well. We just put 5 priests in the same group (2 shadow, 3 holy) and they never ran out of mana. Granted the healers were chain casting the entire fight, but it worked well. The optimal number of tanks and healers seems to be "as few as you can get away with", since stacking even one more DPS pays great dividends in the total amount of healing required. If that DPS class can interrupt, so much for the better. And of course that means 4 tanks are much better than 5, if you can handle one of them tanking two adds and the need for simultaneous interrupts on both.
For what it's worth, our very first kill was with 6 healers as well. We just put 5 priests in the same group (2 shadow, 3 holy) and they never ran out of mana. Granted the healers were chain casting the entire fight, but it worked well. The optimal number of tanks and healers seems to be "as few as you can get away with", since stacking even one more DPS pays great dividends in the total amount of healing required. If that DPS class can interrupt, so much for the better. And of course that means 4 tanks are much better than 5, if you can handle one of them tanking two adds and the need for simultaneous interrupts on both.
3 4
2 5
1
What we did was have #5 tank two mobs, then when #1's mob is dead (which is the first to die) then #1 runs over to #5 and taunts the add off him while the raid kills #2's mob. This early on it's no problem at all to keep the tank alive and you should do it this way, the extra dps is extremely valuable.
I looked at a combat log to see how it works. The following is from a wipe edited for multiple hits on the melee group and should pretty accurately reflect individual abyssal spawns. First set of 4 dropped about 24 seconds after the fight started. Then a set of 3 dropped 26-32 seconds later. Then a set of 4 dropped 39-41 seconds later. And a final set of 4 21-29 seconds after that. So ~30 seconds does seem right but with substantial variability (+/- 10 seconds). Also interesting is that sometimes the spawns are staggered and sometimes they are simultaneous and even if they become staggered for one spawn cycle, they can get back in synch for the next.
**Snip**
Is it possible that the summoning of the Abyssal is tied to a specific magic school? So if, say, a shadow volley is interrupted, it delays the spawning of an infernal until the "prevents casting of that school for x seconds" is over? I searched thottbot, but could not find the spell related to the summon. Other summons however, were of varying schools, from fire to shadow, even physical. This would explain any staggering of spawn times.
Has anyone had Mag's knockaround get out of sync and happen at the same time as the blast wave? Is this intentional, or a bug? When this happens it's damn near impossible to get to the cube and click before taking at least one round of blast wave damage.
Has anyone had Mag's knockaround get out of sync and happen at the same time as the blast wave? Is this intentional, or a bug? When this happens it's damn near impossible to get to the cube and click before taking at least one round of blast wave damage.
This happened once, halfway through our first kill. I warned people that they looked like they were going to line up, and I wasn't really sure what would happen. We wound up squeaking by with two ticks of Blast Nova going off.
It was hard to tell in the confusion, but I think the beginning of the Blast Nova cast interrupted the quake. So people were knocked a few feet away from their cubes, but could run over and click.
Has anyone had Mag's knockaround get out of sync and happen at the same time as the blast wave? Is this intentional, or a bug? When this happens it's damn near impossible to get to the cube and click before taking at least one round of blast wave damage.
I think the quake is supposed to end as soon as he emotes, regardless how long you've been bouncing around. I've had it last only a second or two one time because it started just before he emoted for Blast Wave. Everyone was already at their cube, so the single bounce didn't really stop anyone from getting back on the platform and clicking.
My guild has had a "knock around" straight into blastwave every kill we've had. We've only wiped to it once. We just know that if a knock around is cast when the cooldown for blastwave is up or near up that as soon as knock around ceases you get to your cube ASAP and get ready to click or click if its already cast. I'm certain the 2 spells are mutually exclusive. They can happen back to back, but never both at the same time.
Our guild had been at the point where we were just banging our heads at magtheridon, wondering what we were doing wrong and after a little discussion in our officer chat and Rogue class channel we decided to put more effort into interrupting all shadowbolt casts and we pushed our warlocks to keep up CoT on all adds at all times. We had 4 Rogues and 3 Warlocks. I assigned 3 rogues to kick shadowbolts and myself on Dark Mending
Our final tries tonight we polished the tactic some more with keeping most (if not all) healers in the middle of the room with shamans popping EB to help warlocks out on infernal spawns.
It worked like a charm, we had at most 1-2 sbolt volleys total through the fight and 1 add left when he was released. Phase 2-3 were was learned in 1 wipe together.
We finally got past the 'hard' stage today (after 3 previous days of attempts) and reached 24% our second time past the first nova. Had bad timing with the 30% unfortunately.
What pretty much fixed it for us was having our best players actually all be there for once. We used 7 healers, and had 4 adds down pretty much the second Magtheridon releases. Previous days where we've been forced to bring along some bad/undergeared dps we didnt even get the third add down in time.
My guild has had a "knock around" straight into blastwave every kill we've had. We've only wiped to it once. We just know that if a knock around is cast when the cooldown for blastwave is up or near up that as soon as knock around ceases you get to your cube ASAP and get ready to click or click if its already cast. I'm certain the 2 spells are mutually exclusive. They can happen back to back, but never both at the same time.
This is correct, you won't get a blast wave while you are still being bounced around. However, he can and will interrupt the bouncing to start casting blast wave. The bouncing seems to be on a slightly longer cooldown than blastwave so once you have survived the bounce->blastwave combo once or maybe twice if you're unlucky every subsequent bounce will be after the blastwave rather than before it.
We got the kill tonight on our second full night of attempts, key changes as follows;
- Moving the first two Channellers together to maximise on BF/Multi/Cleave/SS/etc
- Taking 4 Warlocks, 2 Hunters, 7 healers, 2/5 tanks as prot and plenty of melee.
- Using the macro from this thread to announce and mark the five people in each cube rotation with the relevant symbol - KEY POINT
- Some Flasks/Elixirs on key Channeller DPS (Rogues, Mages)
- Stopping at 32%, going through a banish phase then Sheild Wall on MT and burn through cave in.
Think that was about it, for reference we where just starting on the fifth Channeller when Mag released and had it down before the first knock back.
Additionally, it was the first time we stabilized phase 2, it really was trivial from there on.
I am still on raid-leader-post-first-kill-adrenaline-comedown™ so apologies for bullet points instead of nicely constructed paragraphs.
We got the kill tonight on our second full night of attempts, key changes as follows;
- Moving the first two Channellers together to maximise on BF/Multi/Cleave/SS/etc
- Taking 4 Warlocks, 2 Hunters, 7 healers, 2/5 tanks as prot and plenty of melee.
- Using the macro from this thread to announce and mark the five people in each cube rotation with the relevant symbol - KEY POINT
- Some Flasks/Elixirs on key Channeller DPS (Rogues, Mages)
- Stopping at 32%, going through a banish phase then Sheild Wall on MT and burn through cave in.
Think that was about it, for reference we where just starting on the fifth Channeller when Mag released and had it down before the first knock back.
Additionally, it was the first time we stabilized phase 2, it really was trivial from there on.
I am still on raid-leader-post-first-kill-adrenaline-comedown™ so apologies for bullet points instead of nicely constructed paragraphs.
We had our first night of "attempts" (about an hour of playing around, after our Gruul kill) on Friday night.
Infernals were a pain, mainly because we hadn't setup a concerted system for dealing with them. We normally raid with 3-4 warlocks and 2-3 hunters, so it shouldn't be a problem, once we actually assign positions and banish/fear/traps.
My question is on the 5 channelers: what sort of gear do you think should be used by your tanks on them, and what level of healing is required?
We had the following tanks:
#1: full prot paladin, tanks Nightbane, was taking 3k melee hits (usual stats, 14k AC, 35% dodge+parry)
#2: full prot warrior, undergeared, was taking similar damage
#3: feral druid, fully geared, was solo healed by a paladin
#4: full prot warrior, fully geared, our Gruul tank, solo healed by a priest (at least for the first 30 seconds)
#5: full prot warrior, similarly geared, can tank Gruul/Maulgar, solo healed by a paladin (again, 30 seconds)
Basically, though, we found that with only one healer on each of those tanks, there would be random spike damage that would rip through them. Obviously you aren't intended to leave a solo healer on them throughout the first two minutes, so I was wondering what sort of healing assignments and transitions other people use.
We run with 2 holy priests, 3-4 holy paladins, and 1-2 druids (one resto, one balance). On Friday, we had 2 priests, 4 paladins, 1 druid. 7 total healers.
Assigned one priest and three paladins to tanks 2 - 5, and then the druid and remaining paladin to covering Tank #1 (and moving with the kill). I was cross-healing the raid to try to cover infernal damage, and by standing on Mag, I was able to reach the tanks (mostly) to help with some spike damage.
As soon as the first add died, things went nuts. I'm curious how everyone has the healing assignments move as the adds die. Something like:
0:00 -> 0:29 (first add dies)
One healer per tank
Two healers spot healing the raid (for a total of 7)
0:30 -> 0:59 (second add dies)
<whatever you do here>
etc, etc.
Any help would be appreciated - the interrupts seemed to be going well, and the infernals is just a matter of practice, but some of our healers are 'special' and I'm going to need to coach them through their jobs. :s
We used 2 prot warriors and three druids to tank, the first three tanks had one healer each while the last two tanks had two healers each. The first one was tanked by the MT, second to fourth by the druids and the last by the second prot warrior.
Healers on the first two were me and another Shaman. Which really don't require any healing, just an Earth Shield and one or two heals tops, using Heroism as soon as the first add goes down helps a lot aswell. As soon as the first one dies I went on to heal everyone in the raid (using chain heal aswell as helping out on the third tank, on which we used a tree druid who healed people in the raid aswell, the fourth and fifth had one paladin each plus a druid/priest). As soon as the third channeler is dead and the forth was on it's way down the three healers that were healing the first three tanks just went to the middle, healing the raid and waiting to get ready to spam heal the tank until the fourth add went down and Magtheridon released.
The first two channelers shouldn't really require any heals if you're using your MT on one of them. Druids are nice as off-tanks aswell due to the fact that they can go DPS after their adds die, which warriors and paladins can't.
Are you assuming any stuns or debuffs on the mobs? We were finding even on our MT (who is competently geared -- http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...n=Honeychopper) that the mobs were hitting for 2k+ every second or so. I didn't try healing it myself, but HC was commenting they seemed to be hitting harder than a solo healer should be able to handle. I'll try to take a closer look on Wednesday when we go back.
We have 1 healer each until there are 3 adds, then we have 2 each. When Magtheridon releases we only have 2 healers on the last add, with some added HoTs from me.
I'm not sure as to if the mobs are stunable and if they are that our rogues did so, but I barely had to use any heals on the one tanking the first add.
The channelers can't be stunned, but disarm works.
Although, what is their exact baheviour after one dies? I've read that after each channeler's death the remaining gain 30% more damage (damage or attack speed?) and 30% more cast speed, and also I've read that the remaining two gain that buff after the first 3 have died.
Which one is true?
And is it 30% faster attack speed (sustained damage) or 30% more damage (damage spikes)?
05/02/07, 2:48 AM
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