I'm intrigued by the affliction warlocks/hunters on elementals but I'm concerned about an affliction warlock having the burst to take the tainteds down and get it looted before despawn. Has this been an issue, and if so, how do you deal with it?
I'm 41/0/20 so hopefully I can give a bit of insight into this. I'm usually in the SE (in the 4 sides picture I cover yellow) but as you pointed out, I was worried i wouldn't have the dps to kill before despawn so I told the hunter who was covering green i'd call his name when one spawned in my area and he would run over and throw out his specials to finish him off. The paladin who was supporting our side of the arena would also come over and get out his hammer to help, we just basically threw the book at them. To get them down personally I would save my deathcoil and shadowburns to get them and then spam SB. I got 2 in my area on our kill last week and had no big issues, if anything this was probably overkill as I usually had them down to <30% by the time the hunter was over but that extra bit of security is always nice.
It's worth noting this method will mean you're slightly over swarmed with blue adds after killing the tainted so to make sure we got this down the paladin would always be ready to receive the core at the top of the ramp and I would be able to get instantly back to dotting everything and clearing out of the excess adds.
I'm an affliction warlock as well, 44/6/11, and usually handle the west portion of the Vashj steps solo, with a pally at the top who tosses me a heal or two if I eat too many lightnings.
Usually if I see the tainted timer getting close, I'll try to toss as many Corruptions on my elementals and mobs at the top of the platform as I can, and hope for a nightfall proc to use in case the tainted spawns in my section. Even without a nightfall, it's still doable if I trinket, open up with Immolate, Shadow Bolt twice, and Shadowburn. I also call for help on Vent though, so other people can at least kill the normal elementals while I run down to loot the core.
Using Siphon on so many targets, and usually having a shadow priest in my group also, I'm starting to think the pally healer is kind of a waste, and I'd be better off with just a resto shaman or maybe a priest to just toss me some light heals if I eat like 3 lightning bolts in a row, or get a Tainted DOT on me. They'd also be able to help burn the tainted a bit.
How many DPS are usually allocated for Elemental spawns during Phase 2? We've been using 4 ranged, with a 5th to assist when a Tainted spawns (basically to clean up the extra normal ones since a Tainted spawn puts that guy behind). This is okay at first, but we're hitting a wall around 2 generators down...at that point tons of elementals are getting through to Vashj even without any DPS dead. We can consistently get 3 generators down, but we're wiping at that point because her Forked Lightning is hitting for 4k and sucking healer mana dry.
It seems like our DPS are capable of clearing a quadrant by themselves, but any mistakes or inefficiencies they make get magnified later in Phase 2 and they just can't keep up. From accounts in this thread it doesn't seem like the expectations put on our DPS are unreasonable, but it seems like they just can't keep up. We've put in 4 full nights on her and just aren't making any progress, so obviously I'm trying to figure out serious changes we can make...but even with only 5 DPS on the Elementals and ALL the other ranged on Striders, the Striders are BARELY dying in time.
I'm 42/0/19 currently, and on our last Vashj kill I covered the southern section of steps for one attempt. On that attempt, I got 3 tainted spawns. My normal routine is to put UA, Corruption, and CoA on the enchanted elementals because that's enough to kill them before they get to Vashj. I got all 3 tainted spawns solo, because I constantly had nightfall procs to blow, and I also have a Mystical Skyfire Diamond. All those chances for procs make the tainted spawns relatively easy. It feels like I can count on at least one of them to be up, and that's just enough as long as I'm quick to catch the spawn. I was in a different spot for the actual kill attempt that night, covering a wider area, and it still wasn't too difficult getting the tainted spawns down when they appeared in my area.
As for the above poster, we use 5 ranged DPS on elementals. Ideally 3 of those are Warlocks. Warlocks can easily spare time to toss dots and curses on striders, which can increase DPS significantly without actually changing anyone's duties. Also even if Warlocks are late to get to their spawns for whatever reason, dots only take 4.5 seconds of actual casting time to basically ensure elemental death. If they only get two dots off, the elemental can easily be killed by one round of attacks by a rogue when the elemental gets near Vashj.
With our classic raid lineup, we have 2 warlocks + 2 hunters on elementals, 3/4 mages and 2 shadow priests on striders (kited by the third warlock), 3/4 rogues on nagas, and everything dies in time. If you fail, you just need to practice more. It takes time for everyone to get used to where and when everything spawns, to gain seconds of dps.
Elementals must never be allowed to reach Vashj. It's better to have your center DPS turn off their targets for a few seconds and nuke down any elementals that make it through before they reach the middle. You can "catch up" on Elites/Striders. You can't "catch up" on elementals because once they're absorbed, they're absorbed, and you're in trouble for the rest of the fight.
Shadow Priests in particular are very well suited to mopping up a stray Elemental that gets through. A MB/SWD combo will likely finish off even ones at half life. Having good "awareness" of the whole platform is encouraged. Basically, always knowing where the Naga is, where the Strider is, and noting out of the corner of your eye Elementals that are cresting over the top of the steps.
I believe we used 2 hunters, 3 warlocks, 1 mage on elemental duty. They could keep up without the mage but we were running into the problem of tainteds not always getting killed because we didn't have enough coverage. We have 2 shadow priests, 2 mages, 1 warlock, and 1 elemental shaman on the strider. Warlock is primary kiter and shaman is backup kiter. Our dps is always very close on the striders and if we loser a single person we can't keep up. For melee on the elites, I think we had 2-3 rogues and 1 fury warrior. They usually killed it with time to spare and helped on elementals when they had nothing to do.
This is another "wipe before you wipe" fight in that if you lose dps it becomes hard to recover quickly. If we lost one dps in phase 1 I'd be very tempted to wipe it, and if we lost more than one dps before 2 generators go down I'd be surprised to be see us get into phase 3 cleanly. Fortunately it's not TOO HARD to keep everyone alive, unlike some other fights. There's a lot of potential "bad luck" but most of it can be mitigated by individuals being responsible for their own health with potions and health stones.
I did elemental duty as 0/21/40 and it was pretty rough. Probably going to end up respecing to afflic for a kill or two.
Curious, does anyone know how long it takes the water elementals from spawn to walk to Vashj? Also is the 7600 hp accurate for them as well?
It's approximately 30 seconds for them to reach the middle. From examining one of our videos it takes exactly 15 seconds from when an elemental spawns to when it reaches the top of the stairs. Also I saw an elemental die 10 seconds from when it reached the top of the stairs and it still had maybe 15 or so yards to go. I've seen HP mods from a couple people report the elementals at almost exactly 7k, it's somewhere within 500 or so of 7k.
Thanks a bunch. I was hoping to guestimate the top of the stairs mark but your observation is even better
If ~7k is the hp then I might be alright with my spec. I was unsure if my limited dots could kill it before reaching vash and didn't really feel like risking it if they couldn't. Will have to do some math.
Last night we downed her after numerous of bugged attempts, even the one where we did down her she bugged to P1 and we had to start over, wasn't this supposed to be fixed?
When she bugged out for us, before we killed her, it was because an elemental spawned somewhere where it evaded. Blizzard supposedly fixed this for the striders and naga, but there seem to be the same issue still with elementals.
Quick Question:
Are you trying to tank/stun (HoJ,intercept,Conucssion Blow) the Striders or do you kite them from the start? With the need to stand still sometimes to recast a few searing pains it feels like the raid loses dps that way, because even if casters stand in the middle they have to take care of their aggro management and the kiter has to control his path perfectly to avoid that other players are getting affected by the strider fear.
We generally have a paladin stun the strider when he spawns, which let the warlock cast some searing pains to build initial aggro. He recasts searing pain when the strider gets stunned by some shadow priest proc or whatever, no aggro problem.
Quick Question:
Are you trying to tank/stun (HoJ,intercept,Conucssion Blow) the Striders or do you kite them from the start? With the need to stand still sometimes to recast a few searing pains it feels like the raid loses dps that way, because even if casters stand in the middle they have to take care of their aggro management and the kiter has to control his path perfectly to avoid that other players are getting affected by the strider fear.
If you're having problem with aggro on striders, I hearthily recommend spending a few seconds dpsing a naga. It's this simple.
One issue we seem to be having is the fact that melee dps can only realistically be doing two jobs on this fight, and the two jobs are mutually exclusive, whereas ranged dps can be doing three jobs on this fight and only 1 of them exlcudes the other two. Allow me to elaborate:
Due to the staggering spawns of the Naga and Striders, the ranged dps allocated to the striders will almost always be able to do a good bit of damage to the naga before focusing on the strider. Even if the naga and strider spawn at similar times, they can put up some damage on the naga while the strider's kiter builds threat. Melee DPS does not have this flexibility on this fight. Clearly, their dps is optimized focusing them on the Naga, but they also become limited in comparison to having ranged DPS on the naga.
We have tried both strats of having melee dps on the stairs and having melee dps on the striders, and we're seeing limitations to both. With melee on the stairs, the dps up top is more flexible, and the ranged dpsers can switch easily between dpsing naga and striders. Our main problem here is that with 7 melee dps in the raid (which is what we had the night we were attempting this strat), killing the tainted often posed a problem. I know that if it spawned far away from me, and I popped sprint, bloodlust brooch and adrenaline rush, I could still get unlucky with a string of no crits and not kill it before it despawned. This strat would have worked for us that night, but we had 3 or so tainted's despawn on us and we were eventually overrun. Last night, we put in a little time (not even close to a full night) on Vashj trying ranged on the stairs, melee on the Naga and the rest of the ranged on the striders. Melee dps was nearly perfect on the Naga (2 rogues, 1 enhance sham, 1 fury war), killing it only slightly before the next one would spawn, dps on the stairs was also good (6 total dpsers, 2 hunters, 3 mages, 1 destro warlock), and we did not have any tainteds despawn, but DPS on the strider was terribly slow (2 spriest, 1 elly shaman, 2 affliction warlocks). This might have been improved in later attempts, but it seems that the inflexibility of having melee on the naga bit us in the bum.
Of all of the things to fall behind on dps, it seems that the naga is most acceptable, which makes the inflexibility of melee dps on the Naga a problem. That said, if we're able to allocate our ranged dps in such a way that we do not underallocate at any job, melee on the naga seems optimal. We were using mages/destro locks on the elementals over affliction locks due to concerns with the affliction locks' ability to burst down tainteds (this has been covered a bit here) and also their synergy with shadow priests on the striders.
Perhaps it's just practice we need, but it seems there are pitfalls to both methods here, and I'm unsure how to overcome them at this point.
Definitely put Destruction warlocks on striders -- affliction do much, much better controlling large swaths of the stairs since two quick DoTs on a newly-spawned elemental will kill it before it reaches Vashj.
Also it's worth noting that DPS warriors actually can DPS striders in between naga spawns using berserker rage (or Death Wish where applicable), assuming of course that they're not freshly spawned and the kiter has decent aggro.
One issue we seem to be having is the fact that melee dps can only realistically be doing two jobs on this fight, and the two jobs are mutually exclusive, whereas ranged dps can be doing three jobs on this fight and only 1 of them exlcudes the other two. Allow me to elaborate:
Due to the staggering spawns of the Naga and Striders, the ranged dps allocated to the striders will almost always be able to do a good bit of damage to the naga before focusing on the strider. Even if the naga and strider spawn at similar times, they can put up some damage on the naga while the strider's kiter builds threat. Melee DPS does not have this flexibility on this fight. Clearly, their dps is optimized focusing them on the Naga, but they also become limited in comparison to having ranged DPS on the naga.
We have tried both strats of having melee dps on the stairs and having melee dps on the striders, and we're seeing limitations to both. With melee on the stairs, the dps up top is more flexible, and the ranged dpsers can switch easily between dpsing naga and striders. Our main problem here is that with 7 melee dps in the raid (which is what we had the night we were attempting this strat), killing the tainted often posed a problem. I know that if it spawned far away from me, and I popped sprint, bloodlust brooch and adrenaline rush, I could still get unlucky with a string of no crits and not kill it before it despawned. This strat would have worked for us that night, but we had 3 or so tainted's despawn on us and we were eventually overrun. Last night, we put in a little time (not even close to a full night) on Vashj trying ranged on the stairs, melee on the Naga and the rest of the ranged on the striders. Melee dps was nearly perfect on the Naga (2 rogues, 1 enhance sham, 1 fury war), killing it only slightly before the next one would spawn, dps on the stairs was also good (6 total dpsers, 2 hunters, 3 mages, 1 destro warlock), and we did not have any tainteds despawn, but DPS on the strider was terribly slow (2 spriest, 1 elly shaman, 2 affliction warlocks). This might have been improved in later attempts, but it seems that the inflexibility of having melee on the naga bit us in the bum.
Of all of the things to fall behind on dps, it seems that the naga is most acceptable, which makes the inflexibility of melee dps on the Naga a problem. That said, if we're able to allocate our ranged dps in such a way that we do not underallocate at any job, melee on the naga seems optimal. We were using mages/destro locks on the elementals over affliction locks due to concerns with the affliction locks' ability to burst down tainteds (this has been covered a bit here) and also their synergy with shadow priests on the striders.
Perhaps it's just practice we need, but it seems there are pitfalls to both methods here, and I'm unsure how to overcome them at this point.
We had a very melee heavy raid last night on our kill and did fine.
One rogue at the north and south stairs can keep it locked down just fine because there isn't much space between the spawns. The west/east stairs really need a warlock or other ranged class to keep them under control. The ms warrior basically played goalie splitting his time between elementals, killing naga, and dunking cores, while the feral druid picked up naga, helped clean up elementals, and kill naga. The two enhancement shaman spent the whole time killing naga.
By putting the rogues on the N/S stairs, we basically freed up 2 extra range to kill the striders. This helped tremendously.
Definitely put Destruction warlocks on striders -- affliction do much, much better controlling large swaths of the stairs since two quick DoTs on a newly-spawned elemental will kill it before it reaches Vashj.
Also it's worth noting that DPS warriors actually can DPS striders in between naga spawns using berserker rage (or Death Wish where applicable), assuming of course that they're not freshly spawned and the kiter has decent aggro.
If you use nets to immobilize the strider, be mindful if you are sending melee in. They will swing at them if they are stuck in a net. They hit fairly hard if I remember correctly.
If you use nets to immobilize the strider, be mindful if you are sending melee in. They will swing at them if they are stuck in a net. They hit fairly hard if I remember correctly.
Indeed they do hit hard. Significantly harder than the naga, I believe.
Indeed they do hit hard. Significantly harder than the naga, I believe.
Last time i got hit by a strider (w/ 6700 armor on) it hit me for 11k I think? That translates to about 8k on a tank most likely and around 14k for a rogue. In short, if it hits you, you're probably dead.
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Raiding music that gets things done.
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Indeed they do hit hard. Significantly harder than the naga, I believe.
Correct, they hit in the 7-8k range on plate. We stopped using nets for the most part, because people were getting gibbed by striders. They'd pulse fear, fear the person through their hitbox, and then crit them for 15k. Stuns are a great way to avoid this problem.
06/08/07, 6:25 AM
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