I feel a bit silly posting this when the general consensus seems to be that Hyjal = Weaksauce, but the trash there is giving us a lot of problems. We only gave it a couple of hours worth of trying, but I still feel that there might be something we're missing, because it's definitely not as pathetically easy as people make it out to be - at least, not for us.

We keep getting overrun at the twelfth wave before Rage Winterchill, which was a pretty discouraging event for us considering we were feeling pretty good about our clean Kael kill less than an hour before. We tried using assist trains, sheeping/shackling everything that wasn't being focus-fired, but the NPCs keep on breaking the sheep, which means an awful lot of skeletons get added into the mix.

We were running with 2 warrior tanks and a feral druid, 6 healers, the rest DPS.

To outline our basic strategy for each wave:

Rogues assist a DPS warrior from mob to mob, keeping stuns on cannibalizing ghouls and necromancers. Mages sheep necromancers if they can, then assist-train along with the warlocks. Priests shackle what they can, heal/DPS as necessary. One tank takes a mob and drags it back deep into the camp to get more NPCs into the fight. Dead people run in from the graveyard.

Is there some key element we're missing or do we just need more practice? Like I said before, it's pretty discouraging considering that the trash will only get harder in the next two bases, and I'd really appreciate any help that you all might be willing to offer.

Assist training DPS on waves with necros and CCing the others until you can get to them is a pretty good way to start those waves. Shackle abominations until you have the tanks available to get pick them up, that stuff seems under control for you guys.

The thing that you may be missing is once the necros are down or a bit into the wave once aggro is firm across the board, is Seed of Corruption spam and mage AoE. This speeds the kill of waves immensely. Doing this correctly was gotten us to be able to leave combat post waves 11 and 12.

Edit-Our hunters mark one incoming ghoul and train it to Jaina to get her involved and the other NPCs, no use in taking a tank out of the fight at the start where he could be picking up multiple mobs instead.

If you're in Hyjal you're probably already aware, but in the next patch the trash is getting a hefty nerf. So if you can hold out for another week or so, you should be in much better shape...

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...06676024&sid=1

We thought about the AoE tactic, but thought that it'd be kind of counter-productive with all the ghouls cannibalizing at pretty much the same time. I assume that we were wrong and the AoE damage + melee focus-fire makes it a moot point?

Thanks for the tip about the hunter training mobs, we hadn't thought about that.

Yes, but it seems like too much of a waste to just take a raid day off - we really have nowhere else to go but Hyjal now, and calling it quits just to wait for a nerf patch seems silly.

Also this may be something you already do, but save all your cooldowns for wave 12. Blow them all -- it's not like you really need Bloodlust/Heroism for Rage for example.

Your warriors can swap over to ghouls approaching low health and Concussion Blow them once they reach 10-15% and that should last long enough to finish them off, but yeah, once melee dps is going through the targets that are being AoE'd we really have not had a problem with ghouls cannibalizing and if we do, who ever is targeting one that is will let us know so we can get a war stomp/quick stun off on it.

Status report: Thanks to the tips on this thread, we managed to get to (and take down) Winterchill with little difficulty tonight, as well as getting some tries in on Anetheron (which were ruined due to our tankers having little to no understanding of the encounter, but that's another story).

We used a melee assist train to take down the casters (banshees/necros) without any tanks, a rogue running with mind-numbing on his OH was enough to make them easily soloable. Casters burned one or two before opening up a can of AoE.

Having done the trash several times, I find myself concurring with the general opinion that Hyjal trash is (regardless of difficulty) tedious and utterly unrewarding. I can understand why everybody chooses to go to BT instead. :P

But anyway, much thanks to the Elitist Jerks and other members who contributed to this thread.

Hyjal is just one big supression room with a named elite in the end. The fact that you can corpserun in when you die in the middle of the encounter makes it even more of a joke.

Fixed.

You can run in during trash in any other instance, why not hyjal ? They have clearly made this distinction as when the boss Yells you can no longer enter.

Then again there's no need to run in when you're fighting boss. Trash is harder.

Never used an AoE strat on a successful run. Assist trains work best I think, considering ghouls cannibalize.

I'm curious what is the time between waves and total number of HP on some of these waves? We've never bothered to break it down - but I was under the impression you couldn't kill everything in the later waves without at least a LITTLE AE.

We also use an assist train and we drop OOC on every wave unless we really screw something up. We stack the raid very heavily with dps though (since healing is light except on the bosses). If you're tanking multiple mobs, then warlocks can just go balls out with dot stacking, provided they don't dot CC'd mobs.

Also, it's really good to keep Abominations shackled, because their aoe just destroys npcs. Usually we keep about 90%+ of the NPC's up, and it makes a world of difference. NPC's still contribute a huge chunk of damage if you can keep them alive to wave 12 (they also absorb the lol-caster-assist-train that occasionally people like me die to).

On a side note, FOR CHRISTS SAKE JAINA, STOP PYROBLASTING THE GOD DAMNED SHACKLES.

We also went in expecting the trash to be a cakewalk. After realizing, hey, you need pretty high DPS to keep the waves controlled, and using assist trains + light AOE (only two warlocks and two mages in the raid).

Key is definitely keeping up as many NPCs as possible. They add a really big chunk of DPS.

You can burn heroism twice easily during the trash. We used it on waves 6 and 11.

Has anyone else had problems with Jaina agroing during a boss and dying? We did Winterchill and Anetheron first week with no problems (except for wiping once to Anetheron as we weren't entirely sure what was going on), then last week we did 2 goes on Anetheron, and the second one a carrion swarm happened to agro Jaina. This wasn't really a problem (she has a fair amount of health, probably enough to survive even getting swarmed a few times during the boss) until an Infernal spawned on someone and Jaina managed to get hit once by the immolation aura. From that point she decided to STAFF it, getting constantly hit by immolation. Unfortunately she doesn't seem to cast much once shes started meleeing, and died before we could do anything about it (as she's not healable). This despawned the boss, and suddenly our time on the waves was for (seemingly) nothing. We ended up not going back as we had BT planned for the next day, and we're now just not even bothering with more than Rage until the patch for "nerfed" waves.

It seems pretty ridiculous that there's a mechanic like this - I assume you can get round it by tanking Anetheron on the entrance hill instead of in the middle of the camp (carrion swarm has ~60 yard range iirc) but it does seem like a bit of a bugged encounter if something stupid like an infernal can do that and the Jaina isn't even healable. Certainly something worth thinking about if you're going for Anetheron (technically he's not that hard - you just need very good healing adjustment on the tanks because of the wave - probably about on par with the first 3 BT bosses).


You can also use Bloodlust 3-4 times (we spent ~35 minutes on waves for Anetheron each time I think). Certainly helps catch up with DPS.

What are the orc encampment waves like? Same stuff? We spent some time in Hyjal last night because we didn't have the healers on for Gurtogg (6 healers = no), and it left me solidly in the "yeah, not going back until 2.1.2" camp.

Some tips for Hyjal trash: turn down your terrain draw distance to almost 0 (under video settings)... the general framerate in this zone is REALLY bad once mobs spawn... and disconnects are fairly common.

Assist trains work extremely well - and basically the crux of it is dealing with the caster mobs gibbing people - assuming your tanks can control and tank everything. We basically found that phase 9 is the crux of the fight. If not too many npcs die in phase 8 (the abom phase), then you have a good shot at phase 9 (heavy on casters, with aboms). Clean phase 9 and phase 10 is really simple. Phase 11 leads to 12 which gives you ample time to hit rage. Anyway, that's how we saw it.


One other thing about Hyjal trash to think about between the 30-40 minute pulls:
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Pretty sure if you are wiping to trash your tanks aren't tanking. Period. If there is a mob that is getting tanked by a footman or a knight, that needs to be addressed immedaitely. You should have every single NPC alive by wave 12 and if you don't then I can't honestly imagine what your tanks are doing other than sitting there trying to dps. If you are tanking the trash properly you should have no problem AoEing down the waves of adds.

How many tanks do you bring? We brought 3 (2 warriors 1 feral, since thats what we bring to kael) and definately had trouble with alot of npcs dying on the more difficult waves, I don't possibly see how you could tank every single mob.

DPS warriors can be "tanks" here. I'd actually think a paladin could do a really good job do if he has the gear, particularly given that it's all undead stuff.

Its similar at the start then you start getting attacked on both sides, including air mobs

Question...

When you defeat a boss in Hyjal do the previous waves of mobs respawn if you fail at the next boss (aka like Black Morass)? or does each downed boss equal a saved point from which you then start?