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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.