◊ Quigon

Not sure what the bosskillers strategy was but putting him against a mountain I'm pretty sure would be a bad thing. The doomfire afaik didn't snake up the steeper hillsides. Even though thottbot said it was random, it clearly isn't - and behaved under a few particular rules when it came to turning, collisions, and spawn points.

Now we haven't seen it yet in the latest patch, but pre-patch, doomfires could travel away from the raid quite often, as they spawned facing the MT usually (he spawns them basically "on" people in melee range +10 yards). Some attempts you'd have 4 in the raid though, and even with excellent execution you're probably going to wipe. Further - if you watch most kill videos, maybe 1 doomfire ever even approaches the raid, and it is no coincidence that these are therefore "kill" videos.
You could have 5 attempts, and one would be most of the doomfires traveling off into the middle of nowhere. This attempt would be completely trivial, and the boss would die.

As it sounds now, there are more doomfires that despawn quicker, increasing the chance of players having to react to the doomfires and dodge them.

I suppose you could do a full circle strategy - but you're then going to have other issues with grip. Again though, this is mostly about what doomfires used to do.

It is amazing that I enjoy such a ridiculous fight. Doomfires aren't even the most random part of the fight.
Random air bursts, random grips, FEAR!!, random doomfires, random parries for 21k bursts at bad times? Its all pretty much controllable, but if the doomfires want to wipe you, they're going to do it. I'm also curious if any alliance use a feral druid on him with fear ward. Seems a rather unfair combination considering he doesn't crush. The mechanic of fear on this fight ensures that when fear is imminent I cannot, as a MT, be on any global CD - so I just sit there hitting HS/SB and waiting for fear (sometimes for up to 1 full minute). Yeah its a sad story.

 

Elendril

Well, the behavior of Doomfire we experienced (and we never saw the pre-change version outside of videos) was that it followed a player, which means that people definitely have to react to it. Basically our plan has been for anyone who notices a Doomfire trailing them to run pretty much straight away from the raid to avoid snaking the Doomfire toward other people. The problem we've had with this on occasion is that person getting Gripped and OOR of decursing, or getting Doomfires on the mountain side of the raid that had to snake all the way around and created a huge barrier on that side. It seems like maximizing your mobility (like giving an entire side the ability to just rotate if Doomfire spawns near them) is the best option with the current version, but I could certainly be very wrong.

How does his Well leashing work, btw? We actually considered trying to tank him with his back to the well so our rogues could just sit in the water and melee him (or right on the bank so they could jump in if they got doomfired) - it seems like using the well to cleanse doomfire is worth it even for casters, since the fight is just about survival, not damage. Of course, getting your decursers silenced for 30s would likely cause a wipe anyway....

 

◊ Praetorian

Wait, are you saying dipping in the water removes the doomfire debuff?

 

◊ Quigon

I have visions of a strategy with a bucket brigade of healers and decursers.

 

Dawme

Yep, it does (at least, did before the patch, didn't try archimonde this week).

 

Elendril

Yes. That was actually the first thing I did when I got doomfired. :-P Seemed like a big body of water positioned near a boss who puts an undispellable fire debuff on you would have to do something.

You're silenced while in the water, and for 30 seconds afterward, but it removes Doomfire.

 

HaklePrime

Even if what you're saying about the well cleansing the debuff is true, it doesn't make it any less retarded when a ranged class gets the Doomfire debuff. Every ranged class has an immense amount of time to prepare and react to the possibility of being feared into one, which is the only real scenario, aside from someone intentionally trailing it onto others.

 

Elendril

I've definitely been feared and had a Doomfire spawn immediately in front of me while I was running in fear and had my trinket on cooldown. It's simply not correct that you can always avoid it, and having the option to remove it in the water is pretty significant.

 

HaklePrime

Was this before, or after the recent patch? Because before, there was simply no way, at max casting/firing range, you could be feared into the Doomfire, barring being afk, blind, or a simple lack of intelligent positioning.

We've yet to start Hyjal this week, so I suppose my opinion on it may change tonight/tomorrow :P

 

Elendril

This was last night. I got feared with trinket on cooldown, and during the fear a new Doomfire spawned directly in my run path.

 

HaklePrime

Ah well, I suppose Sebudai will have to find something else to yell at ranged for then.

Thanks for the Well info though. I can't believe how logical that is, yet it doesn't appear that many people thought of it!

 

Lodekim

I really feel bad for horde tanks on this fight, cause it really is a joke with fear ward. I tanked it for the first time last night since we had our other tanks tanking it previous nights, and I'd heard horror stories about how hard he hits and all that, but I basically got to sit still and just build threat. I actually had an AIM window going during the fight and said a few things to a friend of mine while tanking because it just didn't matter. Hell I DC'd on a pull and the only reason that wiped us is cause it took me too long to get back on and my character dissapeared and wiped his threat.

TBH outside of balancing fear, I think it would be really nice if blizzard made it so that mobs didn't wait so randomly long to fear, so that you don't sit there without being able to touch GCD's for a whole minute. That was one of the things that pissed me off to no end tanking Nefarian when I was horde.

 

Natural

I really hate to bring up the fear ward discussion, but it is sadly relevant for this fight.

If you have it available, wouldn't it be more useful to keep fear ward on a healer and let the warrior use his innate abilities? In our experience, tank deaths are usually caused by healers being feared out of range. Even with trinkets and tremor totems, we've still had a few good attempts that we lost due to the tank dying.

 

◊ Praetorian

I'd think the best use of fear ward would be to put it on one or more shamans who instantly drop tremor the second fear hits. That way you're guaranteed to have 5 people (likely healers) who basically never spend more than a fraction of a second feared.

 

Lodekim

I'm sure we had ward on other people as well, we happened to have I think 3 FW's in the raid for this past kill, which really not only helped, but like I said, trivialized the tanking aspect of it. I also don't think I even dropped sub 50% more than like once on our kill, I completely agree that FW is a huge difference in a fight like this, and getting more of them in the raid only makes it bigger.

 

Pachwa

Another thing that is helpful when putting a Fear Ward on the tank is, you don't have to save your global cooldown for a stance switch, you can keep building great aggro allowing the fight to end sooner, thus less opportunities for bad luck.

I can remember a few times during our kills where I sat there only queueing up HS and Shield Block for about 15 seconds and my TPS dropped like a rock.

 

Igniter

I posted the same thing on the R&D earlier. Instant tremor totems is the real benefit of the FW. It also allows those groups to use a real trinket. This is especially important for melee now that doomfires can spawn on them (and often do).

 

Elendril

Yeah, we have one fear ward, and it goes on the shaman in our healer group. Seems like by far the best use of it, and I'd give any more fear wards we had to other shaman to tremor their groups as well.

 

Whiteknight

You can stance switch during a GCD. It's the zerk rage that can't be hit on the GCD. So if you macro fear break you're screwed, but if you manually stance switch to zerker, you can do it 0.5sec after landing a shield slam.

The risk is that a 1.5sec fear cast will prevent you from hitting zerker rage before the fear is cast, but you'll be in the right stance at least, meaning your fear break will come a fraction of a second after being feared at worst.

 

◊ Praetorian

Pretty sure he knows that.

Archimonde's fear is 1.0sec cast. Being feared even for a split second is not acceptable for positioning reasons and it can get people killed if a tremor broke their fear immediately.

You cannot use anything that puts you on the GCD when Archimonde could be fearing.

 

Whiteknight

That'd be enough to make it frustrating.

 

Lodekim

Yeah that's probably the biggest thing about it. Yeah any halfway decent tank can break fears, it's not hard, but TPS goes to hell while waiting. It's worse on things like Quigon was talking about where you sit there for 30 seconds to a minute while the boss decides he doesn't need to fear. I have enough fun trying to stay ahead of our fury warrior without having to sit there only HSing for 15 seconds out of a minute.

 

Saabik

The doomfire pathing seems to obey the exact same mechanics of a feared player: It will not path off slopes that cannot be walked up. This includes simple obstacles like tables, chairs, stumps, etc. These certain areas turn the doomfire into a glob of fire posing very little threat to the raid.

During theory crafting I brought up the idea of tanking him across the creek (as fire might not path through water) but we never got a chance to test it. I'm not clear on his leash range as well so I don't know if this is even possible. Also, given the analogy to the fear mechanic, I believe you will still go swimming if you are feared on land and close to a body of water. This would destroy the water theory unless another limitation was specifically added to the doomfire spell.

I didn't experience Archimonde prior to the first doomfire nerf (where it didn't have diminishing damage on the DoT portion) but there seems to be a nagging thought that the Well has a debuff for a reason and would be included in the fight.

I hope to get some more information tonight.

 

Dots

That's not true, I do it all the time. Sure he might run off and bounce back for a split second, but there really is no reason to just stand there like a tree. The tank should occasionally adjust his position for Doomfire anyways.
We have also killed him with Doomfire all over the place, surrounding melee, cutting right through the raid, etc (prepatch). Sure it is harder, but still possible.

By the way, one thing about the water: while learning the encounter, someone insisted on trying to pull him into the water. As soon as he sees his main aggro target in the well, you don't just get Finger of Death, but instead the entire Hand of Death. At least we had a good laugh.

 

◊ Praetorian

Haha, nice.

My main concern with fear breaking isn't that he might move a little, but rather that a melee DPS might get fear broken by tremor or WotF/trinket out of it because of a nearby Doomfire, and then get splattered.