Holy crap. These guys wipe us like mad. Got our first Hydross kill last night, then cleared trash up to Leo and tried to sneak past to Tidewalker. Big mistake. Took forever to kill trash and when we got to the Colossii we kept losing half to 3/4 of the raid if not a full wipe from the "Frontal Cone AOE". Any idea on how to keep from getting raped by these guys? Won't be back to him for a while because our raid leader is determined to do ALL of the bosses "in order" without waterwalking/short cutting. But it's nice to know if theres anything we can do when we DO get there to minimize our losses on them. I am happy to say that it only took us one half-wipe to figure out how to deal with the shadow explosion naga's and the mushroom dropping lurkers, but these Colossii are raping us pretty hard.

Edit: 3 epic patterns and 2 epic boots from trash, wtf? lol

Edit2: We spent a good 15 minutes chuckling over the "hole" in the floor of one of the platforms. A few members noticed it and jumped over to the Console and half the raid tried to follow and ended up falling in the water. The funny part was people who were afk or on follow and came back and ran off and joined the other 15 people in the water.

Melee to Colossus and shamans chain healing them, some of the raid to other side of Colossus, so the cone doesn't hit everyone.

They can be of many random abilities.

One is melee AoE which your melee DPS just runs out of.

Another is Acid Guyser (spelling) which targets a random member of your raid and shoots an AoE cone at them - have them run away from the raid group and get healed.

Another is Frenzy/Fury or something of that matter - just heal the tank more.

Then you just have to deal with rampant infection and what random surprise you get when you kill them.

At least they drop a crapload of herbs when you herb them after looting.

It was the green AOE cone thing, in the first few pulls on the way to Hydross we usually just run back out of range and keep on fighting, but this time we were stuck in the tunnel and whoever had it must not have known because he/she was raping everyone. Most of them are easy to down, the one that spawns little lurker dudes was just funny (3 mages and 4 warlocks AOE spam) but we got the Cone one 3-4 in a row and we finally called it for the night because people were getting too tired and frustrated.

generally have detect magic up
fail-safe tactics, takes more time, but no danger to wipe.
1. quake thingy, have your ranged DPS do the job, from max range, no mindflay.
2. tranq-shot the frenzy, melee can have fun
3. green spout, again no melee, ranged DPS at max range, this ability can be outranged, additionally have the tank stand 90° to the raid

What we do is;

Spore Quake = Melee AFK Time
Enrage / Frenzy = Do whatever, they're easy
Poison Geyser = All stand in melee range behind the colossus, whoever it targets on runs through to the other side, person's name is yelled on Vent if they're too stupid to have Target of Target on. Hunter's stand either off to the side, or pray they have fast reactions if they want to DPS still. Found that out ranging this was more trouble than it was worth, especially when the spaces start to get a bit cramped.

Also note that they don't change abilites when you wipe. So if you've wiped to one, you'll know what's coming the second time, which makes it easy.

This.

We use something like a pentagram figure when engaging these. Tank at one corner (1) and ranged to the left (2). If ranged get geysir they run out of their corner to the left corner (3). Melee stand in corner (4) and run to corner (5) when they get geysir. Ranged stands out of spore quake range and melee runs in and out.

We have the full Raid in Melee Range in Front of the Colossus.
When he casts his AE, he changes his target to a random player, who will run 180° to the other side of the Colossus.
If everyone pays Attention, the AE wont be able to do enough Damage to kill someone.

Pretty much, but to elaborate:

The above is the simplest way to deal with geyser. Literaly have your raid within 5 yards of the mob; the person with the debuff just runs forward to the main tanks side. Can take as few as 2 ticks doing it this way. We usualy just "take the hit" from the first geyser when we're still figuring out what ability the mob has. It's much easier to chain heal the whole raid through a single geyser then it is a spore quake.

Spore quake has a limited range; even shadowpriests can DPS from a safe distance. Have the melee run out in a spread pattern each time, chain heal on them and chain heal on those taking infections works pretty well.

Frenzy is by far the best of the three, as it means a lot more rage for your tank which means more threat for the dps to open up. If your tank gets hit by entropic blow, the mob is the frenzy variety.

Want to add one little insight from my own experience to this.
Mindflay does outrange the quake by a few inches. If I carefully move closer to the colossus until i can flay and the tank holds him steady on position i can keep on my happy facemelting even if he shakes and quakes for his life.

Getting out of Line of Sight works against an Acid Geyser ability-using Underbog Colossus. To do this, just tank it at the corners of the roads or where there are some possible-blocking barriers to cut the interact like walls. As an example, one of the Lurker's trash packs' platforms: Tank it at the entrance of a platform and split the raid into 2 as locating right side and left side. DPS ranged, when it starts Acid Geyser just stop the DPS and hide behind the bulges until the spitting ends.

It's definitely the spore quake thats raping us, may not seem like much to you guys :-P but we got High King, Gruul, Mag and Hydross down in one flask (Only guild on the server in SSC, one of two capable of downing Mag) today. Not bad for our server first Hydross being last night. Next is getting people used to Lurker, making everyone watch DnT's Lurker video tonight and tomorrow before we attempt it again to make sure we all have it down.

To stand afoot against the Spore Quake just requires maximized ranged DPS. Nothing else.

PS: As far as i know, killing the Lurker Below causes the water in the greaves at Morogrim to get scald as well which means additional DoT on a player who is already on the edge of survival. Just try Morogrim Tidewalker first.

Mindflay outranges spore-quake easily.

As for the acid gayser...just have the guy who has it to turn away from the raid so he's the only one to take damage.

Small addition:

Spore Quake mob is always also doing the Rampant Infection
Acid Geyser mob is always also doing the Parasites (ppl are green, take 2k dot dmg, parasite leaves them and has 1hp running to another random person)
Frenzy is always a free kill

Acid Geyser resets aggro after the Geyser, they increased the dmg of it for w/e reason, so pray someone with more than 5 fps is the target and he runs through the mob.

We use melees on all 3, if healers arent asleep and melees have more han 8k hp they only die really on the acid ground effect that can happen after a colossus is dead.

Its just not trash where you can have 10 of your group afk.

To add to this: I'm actually the barometer for most of our melee during spore quakes. Just get past Genkar, and you're safe from the Quake. The caveat is, you have to have Shadow Reach, but after speccing out of it briefly in my molten core days, I can't imagine ever not having it when spec'd shadow.

our strat exactly.

Worth emphasizing:
You can start with the whole raid in melee with the Colossus, since Acid Geyser is the ability that requires the quickest reaction. Have healers ready to call out if they see someone with Rampant Infection--that means that Spore Quake is coming, and should give people an early warning to start running out.

If you're clearing through Leotheras to get to Tidewalker... then queue the appropriate "You're doing it wrong" meme. If you go right, instead of left where the boardwalk splits, you'll be at Tidewalker in a fraction of the time.

Start everyone close to the mob.

If you see rampant infection, it's Quake and people should be ready to run.

If you see the little parasite guys debuffing someone, it's Geyser and everyone get behind the mob. Targeted person moves to MT. Pallies keep consecrate going to kill the parasites.

Frenzy is just tank and spank.


Tip: Drop snake traps before a Geyser.

the 'Acid Geyser' debuff seems to appear on a person shortly (1-2 seconds) before the Colossus turns and targets that person. if you move when you get the debuff, instead of waiting until the Colossus targets you, you can prevent an extra tick of damage on the raid.