. Question: How much damage does Scalding Water on Lurker tick for on a prot tank with 3/3 IDS?
I'm pretty sure that's because you do and receive the damage at the same time, if you get what I mean.
My combatlog shows it as "Your Scalding Water hits you for 500." at least. So that would mean it gets double reduction from defensive stance, no? One for dealing the damage, one for receiving it.
I could be wrong, but that's what I thought at least.
Thanks Praet, 22k is pretty easy with consumables like that then! Anyways we were thinking of something unorthodox for the weapons too....
Was gonna try melees on the staff > dagger, ranged on the bow, mages loot up the staff and melees loot up the dagger and split up to stack the debuff on everything but the axe, then aoe them all down with single target ranged on the mace. Axe last?
That +25% spell damage on most of the weapons seems huge for boosting up the aoe.
... Scalding Water, come to think of it I don't remember what it hits me for exactly but now that you mention it, it doesn't seem like its only -16%. I recall it for hitting me for under 400 a tick...
I think if you're going with phase 2 strategies you should clearly distinguish then between AE and single target. For AE you're going to have to somehow deal with the potentials for instagib and aggro loss... and thus your kill order may change from what is ideal for dps, to what is ideal for control and initial pickup. And obviously, the AE compensates for those initial decisions. AE should be significantly more dps than single target, but our experience was that we needed to add a fourth tank, or just practice it too much over what we already "knew."
For single target - I still don't see the point at all in splitting DPS... it may be fancy, but you lose dps in not having weapons die as quickly, and there is really only 1 mob that can't be melee'ed.
It ticks for 385 I believe,
But our MT reported pyroblasts at basically 22.9k. Now whether he was right or not, I can't personally verify.
Hrm, I had math typed out but then actually looked at a combat log.
6/7 01:03:39.281 Kael'thas Sunstrider's Pyroblast hits Paches for 19274 Fire damage. (3867 absorbed)
Ok yeah, that'd be 23141. Anyway, it's all easily survivable with PW:S and one consumable of choice.
So my new hypothesis is that IDS applies differently to damage from DoTs like Scalding Water (otherwise how else can you explain it doing 77% of the normal damage?).
Edit:
I'm pretty sure that's because you do and receive the damage at the same time, if you get what I mean.
Yup, that'd do it. Alright, ignore my idiotic ramblings. Back to Kael.
Well that was off the top of my head, so I could be wrong for scalding.
As for Kael: our order of absorption just minimizes cost, as we got our tank to something like 22k HP raid buffed (actually wasn't all that hard once we had him go engineer). Again he isn't a tauren. Basically my philosophy was to remove human error from it - or at least split it between the shadow priest and himself (our holy priest is busy with astro).
Maybe I'm overkilling the DPS by trying to get the aoes so massive.
Well, the bow is impossible to aoe so that needs single target, and it is also worthless for melees right? Maybe just do Bow and Dagger or Bow and Mace or Bow and Staff (Staff doesn't seem like a huge dps upgrade, as mentioned the time lost to looting it seems bad too) then collapse into aoes?
Seems like the two weapons going down to single target DPS is worthwhile due to the time to get aggro. My question would be, which would help kill the weapons faster, the dagger debuff on the weapons; or removing the mace from being able to heal the other weapons at all.
We're notorious for being awful at interrupts unless we stack people on stuff :/. I'm leaning towards doing the Bow and Dagger though still. If we're gonna be focusing on aoe heavy damage, it seems very worthwhile to get some of those +25%s up, even if it just lets the tanks loot the dagger while tanking and stack the debuffs. If a prot warrior can really stack it up that fast, the freed tank alone can easily handle stacking it on two weapons rather then doing prot DPS in tank gear.
I believe we have a rogue both on the staff and the mace for interrupts. I also make sure to toss a silence on Disintigration as well. The shield usually is dead just before Kael becomes active, and the only thing that is left is the axe being OT'ed in the back. Ranged mops that up while aggro is established on Telonicus, then we go to town on him. Getting him killed first gives the raid a wide area to kite Thaladred in, and the rest flows naturally from that.
The thing I like about the Kael fight however, is much like the trend in a lot of TBC fights, there are a multitude of strategys that work. We have extremely high raid DPS, so we cater to that strength.
The aim of Kael is to be controlled, not necessarily do insane DPS. Do whatever works - this thread quite obviously shows that there are different kill orders (and even completely different strategies) for it. If you're stacking casters, obviously Staff and Dagger will give you the highest returns, and an AoE period is good. If you're stacking melee, the Bow and Sword are good. If you've got a balanced raid, you might be best just single targetting and prioritising the weapons that give debuffs first.
Tailor it towards your own raid rather than trying to follow someone elses strategy. We tried following other strategies first (such as the AoE one) and ended up horribly uncontrolled with worse DPS than single targetting things.
Tailor it towards your own raid rather than trying to follow someone elses strategy. We tried following other strategies first (such as the AoE one) and ended up horribly uncontrolled with worse DPS than single targetting things.
Right, this is really what it boils down to. By the time you make it to Kael, you should know what works well for your guild. Look at p2 as a cross between Hydross and Magtheridon and figure out how to translate your past successes into this new setting.
As to the "tailor it to your guild." Yeah, but I wouldn't go in there set on only one method. We assumed AE would be better (we run 4 to 6 warlocks all the time), but since we went light on tanks and really have some absurd AE dps'ers, we couldn't come close to controlling it as well as I would like. When we went back and forth it was clear to us that single target worked way better (For us?)... basically have everything dead and the bulwark to 75% as the adds pop up. The bulwark is absolutely meaningless to our success or failure in phase 3 other than it has to be dps'ed at some point.
It shouldn't matter though anyway - you could have 2 adds up when phase 3 starts, all that matters is how you make your transitions, and that you do well on thaladred. I think there is a video where astromancer doesn't die for one guild until around 55% on kael. There is no rule saying everything has to die - we treat most things from a control standpoint, and I'll admit, we lost a day or two trying to overthink phase 2 and 3 and upping our dps to absurd levels with theorycrafting.
That being said, you're still going to get the most bang for your buck killing infinity blades (dagger) and the bow first - if you can control it, due to their debuffs. In an AE sense, as praetorian's guild does, it would make sense to single the bow first, as it blinks, and as it multishots when not tanked. A multishot with a holy nova, with a frostbolt will kill anyone but a tank. And even with proper setups and interrupts, sometimes that shit just happens - and even without the frostbolt, the multishot-ae is probably going to end some melee's life.
Phases 2 & 3 are done in various ways. Some AoE the weapons, some don't. Some kill Capernian first, some kill Thaladred first and Capernian last. There is no clearcut *optimal* way to do it, as long as you have no more than 1.5 mobs when phase 4 is beginning. Although videos often lay out the strategy for all of us non-Nihilum/Curse nublets and make things easy, this is one fight where I would recommend watching the videos, but trying to develop your *own* method for *your* guild and find what works best for you.
Things to consider:
-The Infinity Blades proc is used to remove Mind Control. It has nothing to do with Kael's Shield. This misconception costed my guild two attempts. =(
-If the DPS has its hands full (ie. an Advisor is still up) and can't focus their attention on KT, the Force Shield + Triple Pyroblast can be survived by the Warrior. The first Pyroblast can be stopped by the Bulwark. The third Pyroblast can be kicked. The safest way is to PW:S the tank (obviously) and otherwise stagger cooldowns. Fire Protection Potion, then Last Stand, then Fire Protection Potion, then Shield Wall (if necessary), then Fire Protection Potion (if necessary).
-By the time the adds are dead, the DPS should be able to easily blow through the shield. The shield got nerfed to 80k damage from 100k. Assuming you have 14-15 DPS, you'll need to average about 5.5-6k damage to take out the Shield in time. That's about 800 DPS per player, which is easy especially with the Infinity Blades debuff.
-There is an enrage timer. It is 15 minutes from the time you loot the weapons. How? It's because the weapons disappear after 15 minutes. If your weapons disappear, you'll have no staff to stop disorients. Arcane Disruption will rape you.
The nature of the Kael encounter (nearly infinite options) is the great thing, and why I wanted to get some discussion going about how various guilds take care of it.
To flesh out some of our tactics, we focus on the axe while the tanks build aggro, AoE the hell out of everything else while a hunter tanks the bow facing away from the rest of the raid. Multishot seems to have about a 90 degree arc of fire, so our hunter can usually keep it from massacreing (sp?) the raid. After the main AoE is over, melee burns the shield while ranged burns the bow, managing to get all the weapons down just as the advisors are rezzed (~3 to 5 seconds after the yell). While the casters are AoEing things down, melee burns the mace, then the daggers, then the sword.
As for pyroblast, I'm pretty sure the max damage is 23265, so with a PW:S that absorbs 1500 damage (extremely reserved estimate of ~1400 +healing and no Imp PW:S) a tank would need only 21765 HP fully buffed to make it through a pyro.
If you're going with a consumable rotation, it's worthy to note that nightmare seed has a 3 minute CD, not 2. So you need to stick something like Last Stand or Shield Wall in there to make it through.
There are definitely a multitude of strategies. But I think you can definitely optimize things to some degree. There are choices between control and dps on basically every phase.
To go along with Bokchoy's post - some more things to consider:
Phase 2:
-AE DPS should be king, if you can control it.
-The bow and the infinity blades provide the biggest boost to your dps individually. (And seriously, these are HUGE boosts... thaladred dead 25% sooner? Yeah that can make or break your kill). Sunder also seems to apply the debuff 50% of the time or faster, so it is up incredibly quick.
-The shield [almost] must be killed before kael pyroblasts - so basically before phase 4.
-The daggers should die before phase 4 as well for the MC (as Bokchoy mentioned).
-Devastation should probably die before phase 3 as it puts out a lot of dps.
-Killing the cosmic infuser and disintegration early cuts down almost all of the meaningful damage output of phase 2.
So if you want max dps, you can kill the bow and daggers - but the reality is the cosmic and disint might have torn you apart by then (for us, in a practical sense we couldn't do bow second). So you generally see the cosmic and disintegration dying relatively early for most guilds.
For phase 3:
-Melee DPS on the engineer is simply going to be higher due to the lack of fears.
-Astromancer can be offtanked indefinitely by 2 players.
-You can offtank the engineer almost indefinitely with 1 Hunter if you choose to go that route...
-For us, over 90% of our phase 3 deaths were from thaladred. Thaladred in phase 3 seems to be the crux of the fight. Do everything well, and thaladred poorly, and you'll probably wipe. Do half-assed at everything else, and destroy thaladred in under 2 minutes? You're probably clean through phase 3.
Also, can anyone tell me what Chaotic Temperament does? Is this also part of the pseudo 15 minute despawn enrage? It appears to be a silence on anyone who heals the target afflicted by it - but we've never seen it cast afaik. Bigwigs seems convinced that it is part of this fight.
Maybe I'm overkilling the DPS by trying to get the aoes so massive.
Originally Posted by LiteSabre
His MC has a max range? *insert choice expletive* I knew there was a reason why we shouldn't have tanked him in the middle!
I'd recommend people watch "For The Horde" video of this fight.
They don't even kill astromancer until kael is at maybe, 60%? They have maybe 2 weapons up in phase 3, and 2-3 advisors on the phase 3-4 shift.
Our guild lost a lot of time overthinking and overkilling the DPS when you really can control all of the moving parts at once if your DPS isn't up to the task.
I know some guilds for instance, do vashj with a lot of adds still leftover from phase 2, and finish them in phase 3.
Oh yeah. One tip about something that very nearly wiped us on our first kill. If Kael's pyroblast timer runs out while he's running to the platform for his final post 50% phase, he'll stop before levatating and cast all 3 pyroblasts. If our MT hadn't had shield wall ready we would've wiped right there because nobody was expecting it. :P
Oh yeah. One tip about something that very nearly wiped us on our first kill. If Kael's pyroblast timer runs out while he's running to the platform for his final post 50% phase, he'll stop before levatating and cast all 3 pyroblasts. If our MT hadn't had shield wall ready we would've wiped right there because nobody was expecting it. :P
We actually had that happen to us on our kill. We didn't really know what was going on and the MT never used his shield, so ended up getting 1-shotted. Fortunately we only lost 4-5 people before an OT managed to pick him up.
As for the weapons:
I don't recommend AE'ing at all. The goal is not to kill all the weapons before phase 3 really. I put significant time into theorycrafting this fight and basically came to the conclusion that most of the strategies out there use a pretty poor order of killing the weapons.
The ideal kill order is actually infinity blades, bow. But killing the bow second is unrealistic since it teleports and screws your dps. Killing infinity blades first shaves nearly 18 full seconds off of phase 2. Killing disintegration first doesn't even buy you 6 seconds (it actually hurts your dps due to the loot time). There is also no reason to split melee and casters in phase 2 except perhaps on the bow, OR if you're killing everything as a melee and standing around. We have cosmic die as the emote sounds, and devastation dies as the melee get to the engineer.
Disagreeing a lot with this. The goal should be to have maximum dps. A perfect kill is to have weapons dead before advisors spawn and advisors dead before kael spawns. And that is definitely achievable, at least if you go down to six healers in your raid setup. And the fight can arguably do with five, so that's not a big problem.
If your dps is not good enough, have your dps guys sort out finding their targets. Killing the dagger first to increase ranged dps is one way to look at it. However I don't think it's the right view.
Next to the dagger the other big dps increase is the bow. 25% more phsyixal dmg rocks. Now there are two weapons that can do massive dmg on your raid, the bow and the staff. So as long as your dps doesn't suck, you should kill those two first.
We split our ranged dps fairly even on those 2 with affliction warlocks dotting up both. Both die about 1 min to 55s before Kael enters the fight. Hunters immediatly pick up the bow and assist the melee dps. We got a full melee group with enh shami, so the 25% is huge. Also the bow only teleports when someone is in melee range. Tank him with a hunter who stands on the other side of the raid so he won't multishot anyone but that hunter and make sure hunter pets don't fuck around. If you only ranged dps him, he will NOT teleport. Also let paladins use HoJ on staff + bow, stuns are good. A spriest on each procs Blackout and helps as well.
Ranged then goes on to kill shield and 2h axe. Make them create macros for /tar phaseshift bulwark and /tar devastation. Finding and clicking on targets = too much time lost.
The shield needs to die before advisors res so warriors can pick it up. If others, especially healers, got time, they should pick it up as well in case a warrior misses it as those items are tradeable.
We usually have only warp slicers up when advisors res up. Everyone finishes those off and melee moves on to sanguinar while ranged kills the gazer, with the hunters assisting the melees. We thought about having a melee proc up the 25% spelldmg, but it seems not worth it. He sometimes switches his target really, really fast and I'm not up for any dead people. If your ranged dps is good, it's np anyway.
Our melee switches from fear guy to engineer and moves to kael about 15-10s before he pops up. Casters kill astromancer and then finish off the engineer. He should be fairly low when Kael enters the fight.
Generally we dps the targets that can do us the most harm first. So bow/staff and gazer die asap. Our dps is still very good. Off tanking the shield through adv phase or having an adv up when kael is on 60% sounds like a lot can be improved to me.
I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with... It sounds as if you recognize the best DPS order and reflect exactly what I said in my post,, and it sounds as if you're not AE'ing because that is what works for your guild. Your first line says "goal should be to have maximum dps." Your next line says "as long as your dps doesn't suck, you should kill these two first." (and then list the two control kill elements first).
The point here is that you should go with what works for you.
As to the jab about how people can improve with bulwarks and advisors up deep into later phases - that is incidentally me discussing part of a strategy from a guild that beat Kael a day before your own. The POINT of that post, is that DPS is not king on Kael'thas, control is. And yet, you even agree with this point in your own post - hell you even wrap the post up with it. That is how we arrived at our kill - we gave up most of the theorycrafting and worked on holding it together... he dropped very quickly after. We could go infinity->bow-rest, but we don't because getting cosmic and disint down sooner leads to less melee gibs (so we go dagger, cosmic, disint) - which is basically why you do it as well.
Being completely objective about your strategy. Why NOT debuff thaladred and make him die 25% sooner? You can easily do this with a single protection warrior. You're only tanking 2 things in phase 3 at most, and surely you used more than 2 tanks in phase 2? Anyway, just looking at your strat, it seems like you end up where almost everyone else does with focus fire - that is 1 weapon up on the p3 transit, and basically 1 advisor or so up. There is obviously variance between each pull - plus or minus a bit on each phase.
Anyway, talking about "perfect kills" is pretty stupid honestly.
06/08/07, 8:39 PM
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