Well either way, I suppose this is an important warning. Since apparently any wipe-kill (which are very common actually), is going to net zero loot.

Just to reiterate - any guilds reading this:
http://elitistjerks.com/449267-post770.html
Post 770 - don't get your first kill of the end boss of the game if you are wiping and want loot. Yech.

I am 99% sure that Aurora got their loot reimbursed when this happened to them ~3 weeks ago. Maybe one of their members can confirm.

We dropped Illidan for the first time last night, but I still have some questions about phase 2.

Someone had read and suggested that the Flames will only charge totems that are created after they spawn. We made it a point to only drop totems as Illidan was flying into the air, but it seems like the Flames were still randomly charging someone in the group and causing chaos.

We ended up completely giving up and dealing with phase 2 without any totems. As a result we had 3 or 4 clean phase 2's in a row which led to our kill. Has anyone else shared the same experience? It seems like a fairly annoying bug.

Correct, it took us about 6-7 hours of talking to various GMs and what it boiled down to (I believe) was a combat log showing that I did indeed get the last hit on Illidan and forced the cinematic before I died.

We don't use totems at all on phase 2.

The intended behavior, as far as I can tell, is that the Flames have a charge with a large minimum range, such that if a player is more than X distance (ballpark guess is 60 yards) from a Flame, the Flame will charge him and usually break its tether in the process, and you lose. This is to prevent you from spreading out all around the terrace and not having to deal with beams/fireballs.

However, something about totems make them go nuts and charge regardless of range. It's not a surefire thing, and I don't think it has to do with when they're dropped. I've seen people drop Tide mid-phase and get away with it. And I've seen WF totem down before the Flames spawned and get charged immediately.

Windfury is always a weird totem though - it's always the one to get targetted by random effects like the scarabs from the Hyjal crypt fiends or the shadow bolt from Teron's clouds. It's not the only one in that category of agro totems though, doesn't Searing also seem to get a lot of agro? (speaking from Leotheras/Noth experience)

We also don't use totems at all. It's just not worth the risk when it's perfectly doable without them - P2 is almost entirely a position/tank "skill" thing, rather than totems making it easier (although there's always the argument of more DPS = less time to screw up in which is semi-valid).

I was still dropping fire resist for tanks and it was never charged. Windfury and SoE were being charged regularly so we discontinued them.

In the end this does not seem to matter too much unless they add some really annoying and unnecessary rage timer that actually presses the raid for dps.

We had problems with it also, but the solution was simple.
5-7 seconds before beholders spawned, warlock stepped 10 yards back. Standing on 40-45 yards, was enough time for us to kill his beholder. We also prioritised it over everything else.
When warlock was just standing on max range, we had beholders reaching him with <10% hp, those additional yards changed everything

Windfury totem is quite an interesting totem. One attempt way back a flame of azzinoth chain charged a windfury totem for a good 30 seconds to 1 minute (and I do mean chain charged) in the center of the grate.

Yeah there are weird things with totems. Searing totem is still almost always the first to aggro any npcs after a threat wipe, despite multiple dots and all. Very strange thing, but very helpfull too.

Demo/Ironshield/Tclap were all up. I think it was just a random high hit. 6-7k hits are average. 7300 and a 6400 hit in between. I guess it could be possible demo fell off and was reapplied in that 1 second window, but not likely. I wasn't topped so I probably could have survived this with 100ish HP. Unless I got 14k worth of healing after it would have still killed me.

I wasn't doing demo/tclap myself so I can't be 100% sure, but I don't remember either debuff dropping off much if at all the whole night. I'll see if I can get a WWS parse of what I get hit for. I remember it being low 6k with mid 7k being the max hits I was taking, but this is all just out of memory and no evidence. That 8700 hit was just a random high hit I took in that parse. It's the only time I died on P1 other than the time the healers went to sleep and let me die in the first 8 seconds of the fight.

Either way, the parries on casting a different ability is bullshit really. I can deal with my own parries killing me, but I still can't believe it would be working as intended on something like that. Makes it fun when he can do reckoning bombs on you. We'll see what happens.

*edit* There is a good chance curse of reck was up. I'll have to see if we are using it on him later this week.

The difference was that the Vashj kill by Method was like a top 10 kill, and there was a 15page post on the RnD boards; I am sure Tigole intervened. You have to remember that GMs are worthless, minimum wage, macro-spamming retards who aren't authorized to do much, even if they knew what was going on in a raid environment.

On the Vashj kill by Method, they had loot rights and the clear killing blow in the logs, but the enraged bats didn't despawn properly and so they couldn't reach the corpse.

Here, the raid actually wiped and lost the tap.

I think if you use totems in P2, you're just setting yourself up to be Quigoned. (you've made it bigtime now) No totems makes the phase go a little bit longer but as long as your tanks are on the ball about eye beams, everything else is still sustainable.

It took me about 3 weeks to get a definitive answer from blizzard on this matter for our guild. In our case the last hit was from Maiev while dots where still on the boss and our raid dead.

The final answer was that they cant reimburse, because they cant confirm the kill and it boiled down to "we are unable to help you".

So either they are totally random in their decisions or the line is in between dead+last hit from a PC and dead+last hit from a NPC for their technical capabilities.

A) We killed him and get the loot, with or without help of the NPC shouldnt matter as hes still dead and "our side" not, or
B) We didnt kill him and the respawn bugged in which case it shouldnt make much trouble of respawning it (in that week or after a valid kill in another).

This logical approach none of the GMs could or wanted to follow. Sad for that much money spent on customer service that is too restricted or not capable to do their job in my opinion.

A pretty frustrating experience to get so close and loose even the respawn on top of the loot with time invested in the full clear of BT. I can only add to the advice of not pushing for a kill on the last % if theres a NPC involved. If it gets close, call a wipe on 2-3% rather.

This isn't entirely accurate. I drop totems on P2 once the first add dies, and I drop them as close as I can to the remaining add. NEVER have those totems been charged or killed, though every single week somebody yells "OMG no totems!" in vent when I do it. So, totems are fine as long as you drop them under those constraints. It really helps to be able to get a Mana Tide down in Phase 2, particularly because Gurgthock hogs all the VT loving.

edit: Shabadu, that's odd and doesn't match up at all with my experience. Maybe it's Windfury Totem? I tend to be in the Hunter group and dropping Grace of Air, so I have never used Windfury in that situation.

I always drop a 'full set' of totems just before the adds spawn, and have never seen them be charged (I do drop windfury). I have also seen a lone add (other was dead) chain charge a wrath of air / totem of wrath, (can't remember which) that was dropped after the first add died.

However, fire resist totems placed after the mobs have spawned have also never been charged, and I am fairly sure we have never had a charge to a mana spring/tide either.

Its easier to see on Teron or Hyjal trash that windfury and searing get destroyed by any rsts (oh how I love that wf totem imbue stays active for a few secs when the totem is gone, if I had to redrop the second it died I would have no gcds for anything else on Teron).

Anyway, to get to a point, it seems to me atleast certain totems are 'safe' (fire res for example) and can be dropped at any time in the raid area and not get charged, some are 'unsafe' (wf) and will be charged if they 'do something', hence why a redrop gets destroyed while a predrop lives.

Does that sound sensible? Would a rogue clicking off the wf buff, that was granted from a predrop be enough to get the totem charged? (assuming here that since wf totem refreshes the imbue before it fades it would normally not generate a noticed action except when dropped, in the same way you don't 'gain' an effect like flurry if it refreshes while active).

I can try testing the wf click off idea on out next kill, place the totem somewhere it can't get the raid wiped if charged (not sure they would approve though).


And to the other topic of loot gain, quite a while back on Teron we managed to wipe at 1%, he reset and cleared all debuffs, but before he regained any health he was hit by a ghost (the first option on the pet bar) and died. We were told as no player caused his death, and infact no player was even on his aggro list we could not be awarded any loot. They refused to respawn him (as he was dead, they could confirm that) we were able to go to mother (who we were learning at the time) which required his death, but we couldn't get loot. It just seems to be a feature of the system that if the cause of death can't be proved to be your raid (which in aurora's case it was) then you will not get loot.

We had a similar thing happen, where we wiped at 1% and the remaining ghosts tanked Teron for about 5 seconds before he died and instantly despawned. The first 2 "specialists" we talked to said the same thing, that they couldn't confirm the kill. The 3rd however awarded us the loot. I guess in situations like this, the best strategy is to just keep making tickets until you luck out and get a decent GM.

Btw can you use Jaina on Winterchill, is she immune to death&decay?

Jaina/Thrall are no longer a problem, you can safely engage them.

We've never had problems with totems in phase 2. You have to react to surges and get behind the flame of azzinoth before he breaths, cause he can surge + breath and kill 3-4 people with <9kish health.