• Bazazu

Just a random observation for those of you on Illidari Council

Last night when we killed them, our mage tank went LD 30 seconds into the fight. The mage tanked for anohter 20 seconds while it took him to drop from the world. Luckily our other mage was quick enough to use that time to get agro and start spell stealing to pick it up.

Obviously if this happens later in the fight, you will probably run into agro issues. You might be able to save it withi a couple good misdirects to pass Healer agro, but it would be close.

Just wanted to put it out there that even if shit goes wrong, it is possible to improvise and get stuff back under control.

 

Ghando

It makes sense to have an extra Mage (if you have one) "offtanking" the mage mob (whose name escapes me). Damage is damage in that fight no matter where you put it, so he can DPS the mage and switch to the priest when the magic-immunity shield gets put on the former. He can also contribute a backup counterspell on the priest when she gets BOP'd.

 

Clandestine

Yeah, we have all our mages DPSing the Nethermancer in order to clear out the area around Gathios. They help CS the priest when she goes physical immune.

 

Sathik

If you hearthstone/take a portal while having mark, you will still spawn constructs.



Question regarding Illidan:
Does any1 have any issues with the traps? I mean, on our "almost-1st kill", we had him in a trap, burned to 9%, he was not faced to the raid when dragged into the trap, main tank didnt change his position (so he would be still not facing raid), and suddenly, after the trap went of, he cast Draw Soul, straight into the raid, regenerated to 24%, and then started hitting main tank again, like nothing happened. It was really annoying, as we didnt know what was that supposed to mean, as if it was overagro - he would go for someone.. but he just sticked to the main tank. Managed to take him down to 9% again on that try, but that was it Is there any special mechanic regarding the trap?

 

LiteSabre

We did have an issue once where the trap failed to encase him and he enraged, wiping us, but once he was caught, he pretty much stayed put until his demon phase. We chalked up that one time to someone clicking the trap early. No special mechanics as far as I know.

Regarding Illidan: is there any rhyme or reason to the flame elemental's charging? We do get a fair amount of charges that are non fatal, but I can't help but wonder if it's intended that they can charge and then breathe while facing the raid.

Also, what's up with totems? Another guild reported little to no problems using totems that were cast 'inside' the small circle. We ran into repeated trouble with elementals charging (and then enraging) to totems and eventually just plowed through P2 without them, but I can't help but think that P2 (which gave us the most problems) would be a whole lot easier with windfury, the caster DPS totem and FR across the whole raid. I'm going to suggest casting all totems in the middle for next week's kill, but I wanted to see how other guilds have fared first.

 

Edgewalker

On our kill and all of our almost kills all of the traps were unusable. If the healers are aware, the enrage shouldn't be a wipe.

 

Clandestine

They charge anything that enters combat after they spawn - if our shamans put totems down before the elementals spawn, in the grate, then they're generally OK, but if they get put down late, then they get charged. The same goes for getting battle ressed or ankhed during P2 I believe, or ressing / summoning a new pet. Using FR is useless, the Fireballs Illidan throws on the raid are not resistable.

The elementals can still charge things just randomly during P2 which is annoying, but the majority of the time it seemed to be traceable to a shaman putting a new totem down.

edit: Someone else from my guild just informed me that I'm wrong and the Fireballs are in fact resistable, however, they're binary, and are probably a higher level spell than 73, as in our kill last week, only 6 of them were resisted throughout all of P2.

 

Iskaral

Happened to us as well once. It's probably just bad luck with the timing of the draw soul ability that it happens just at that time.

We also had him go demon form one try when he was supposed to be in the normal form. He then went around meleeing people with the demon aura still there.

 

exog

My guild is getting the hang of Kael'Thas and have started touching phase5, we expect to kill him in this lockout.

The encounter is the hardest we have ever faced and we have needed a LOT of time on it, could you enlighten me on the difficulty on BT/MH bosses? Is a similar amount of practice necessary for all following bosses?

 

◊ Quigon

Kael'Thas - in my opinion, is the hardest boss in the game. He is also probably the best boss in the game.

Another way to put it: if you can kill Kael'thas, your guild is capable of killing Illidan.

We spent 4 days on Kael, 3 on shahraz and Illidan, and 2 or less on the rest of BC.

You're in phase 5 - keep it up, and good luck. Congrats on at least making it to the "easy" phase (although I'm sure that sounds shitty at this point).

 

Roywyn

I think Kael'thas took us around 5 wipe nights and a kill night, we had two 2% wipes because our weapons despawned, and had about three P5 bugs, where he floats in the air and stops doing anything and can't be targeted/damage (have everyone run to the back of the room, alt-F4, and log back after a minute or two to reset him). Vashj took us 3-4 days as well.

After that, if took us four progress nights to kill 3 Hyjal and 4 BT bosses (Akama bugged on our 4th pull, but he should have died that pull or the next anyway).

Kael'thas requires full awareness, focus and execution and is very unforgiving until a few seconds into P4. The first four Hyjal demons and and the first half of BT bosses are much easier to learn and execute from what I've experienced.

 

Illundai

Archimonde has given us waaaaaay more trouble than Kael'thas =/. 3 nights of wiping last reset, no kill. 2x 18% wipes, but never got any closer.

One human error = game over. At least if you're a Priest, Paladin or Mage... They really should do something about that Soul Charge. We had a Holy Priest die at 19%. 1% later our faces all hit the floor. But we survived a warrior death at 95%. Either they're all equally lethal, or they just remove the stupid thing, imo -.-.

 

Mondragon

I would guess 6 nights in total for us on Archi, over 100 wipes. Gotta love it ^^ To be fair we killed him when the stars aligned, and 4 shamans were online !

http://hosted.filefront.com/mrpboy/ - My WoW PVE Movies. SSC/TK/BT

 

thelastrace

There was talk about gems a few pages ago and haven't found any evidence on whether the Rigid Lionseye (+10 hit rating) gem is in fact in game or truly was left out. Since Epic gems don't show up in armory yet I can't tell what end game gems are being used instead. So I ask, Has any guild actually seen the +10 hit pattern drop? I would imagine like some of the other recipe drops it is some what rare, but we have been in Hyjal for a while now and yet see this one drop.

 

Buiden

I am leaning towards that it doesn't drop, otherwise it would have appeared on wowhead by now as dropping from X-Mob and I haven't heard of anyone getting one despite asking around a lot.

 

cladnin

Terrible ping sounds like a very good excuse. Unless said person is playing on satellite, I'd have to say they could probably do their ghosts just fine, especially if they're not the first person to get it.

 

Crazytrucker

-Mod Delete Please

 

Thezilch

Quigon doesn't touch on this, but ultimately, Archimonde is "easier" because of attrition rate. When he talks about Kael'Thas being the "hardest," you have to consider the attrition placed on your raid.

1) You have to sit through Phase 1, every wipe.
2) Two hour trash respawn. Clearing trash takes the biggest toll on our raids, and trash was the only limiting factor to performance on pre-Archimonde Hyjal encounters. Trash sucks.
3) The weapons -> advisers phase(s) are a number crunch and can be very overwhelming to coordinate.

Come Archimonde, if you wipe, you re-engage 5 minutes later at the same "point" in the encounter. You know every ability of Archimonde's within minutes of engaging and a good idea of how to counter. Kael'Thas can be much more involved, and you have to wait upwards of 20 minutes to test a strategy against a particular ability.

In the end, we probably wiped more to defeat Archimonde, but he was no where near the mental drain Kael'Thas induces.

 

Clandestine

Blizzard fucked up again, and it's not in the game at all ATM. I'm curious why Blizzard keeps saying they've included gem patterns without actually including them.

 

Ghando

The pure number of attempts you get on the boss are important as well as the "engaging Archimonde at the same point" factor Thezilch mentions. Shahraz is a huge pain in the ass to learn, but imagine that fight if it weren't so easily leashable. We were able to pack in 25-30 attempts per night and on those 30-attempt nights I didn't even have to repair until after the raid. The trash is on the normal 2-hour timer, but it's a quick and easy 20-minute clear. How much longer would she take, and how much more horrible would she feel if you couldn't effortlessly leash her every time you lost 5 people at 90%? I shudder to imagine.

 

Thezilch

A lot of Black Temple is great, due to trash being very forgiving.

Naj'entus, Supremus, and Akama - We killed these within their two hour trash timer, so it's hard to speak for them.

Teron - Quickly repeatable, if you pull to his doorway. Only two two-pack pulls for a reclear.

Gurtogg - Recoverable in his room for as long as you intend to make attempts -- no trash reclear.

RoS - Simple, two minute gauntlet clear.

Shahraz - Leash and minimal reclear of her room.

Illidari Council - Recoverable in their room -- no reclear.

Illidan - No trash.

=====

Black Temple may have a few too many trash pulls, but it's not so bad. We have a lot of fun on vent. And we often get more / better loot from trash than their proceeding bosses. There are no lava packs or 10x 1mill HP mob explosions, so I can't complain.

Then again, the original Hyjal (and current) trash has probably made me numb to Tigole's sick dream for trash.

 

◊ Quigon

Last night when we were doing trash in BT I kept thinking about if only all of the packs on the way to bloodboil would have double their current HP, have retarded abilities, and split into packs of 15 150k hp mobs, it would almost be like we're back in the "fun" version of SSC!

Trash is well done in BT - it is like Naxx in a lot of ways. Some clears are longer, but it is rewarding, quick, and provides rep for the most part.

Archimonde and Shahraz take more time than Kael'thas, but Kael'thas will often take longer to kill with less attempts for the reasons stated above. That IS part of what makes him hard though!

 

Illundai

I'd say the hard part of Kael'Thas is having to listen to his annoying speech every time you pull him. Bad memories flash back about Gothik... how I hated that speech...

In all fairness, maybe it's because we have the fight so under control now that I forgot how hard Kael is, I guess it's just the same deal. One fuckup or death and you're pretty much a goner. Although you can just combat res on Kael and keep going... On Archimonde depending on the class who gets killed it's good game and you can wipe at 99%. And combat ressing is a bit dangerous on Archimonde, since the person who gets ressed has no buffs and is just likely to die again.
And Kael'Thas is just a lot more complex, I suppose.

 

◊ Praetorian

Ugh, on our Archimonde kill last night we had a shaman die, far out of range, at like 65%, and we survived the soul charge. He waited for what seemed to be an opportune time and ankhed up at around 30%, only to get Gripped instantly. What are the odds? (Yes, 4%, I know.) Still managed to kill him, and I couldn't help but laugh at the whole thing.

 

Illundai

That's what I really hate about Archimonde, the RNG can just screw you up so badly on ridiculous things like the one you mentioned.

On one of our best attempts on him last week, we had a Priest get Air Bursted after a Fear (he got seperated from his decurser/group) and flew straight into the water, which cleansed his Doomfire. Just to get gripped instantly he touched the water. Silenced, good game - brace yourself for Soul Charge.

And yes, he did have Spirit of Redemption.

And yes, our tank didn't dodge anything and died. Not that it mattered, a few people had Doomfires and would've died anyway.

That's just... so frustrating.