D3cadent

This question is obviously for those who've found such sudden success on this encounter; whereas my guild has hit a wall of sorts. The question is simple, how many shamans does your guild run on the encounter? Im simply wondering if they're a large part of the difference between success and failure, or if we've just had a few bad days.

To set the scene a little, let me explain. After the trash nerf, as was the case with many guilds, we decided to put some more effort into Hyjal. We learnt and killed every boss the first night of pulls on each; Rage through to Archimonde. In BT, we've gone through bloodboil.

But Archimonde has been a completely different story. What is essentially a very straight-forward encounter is proving otherwise. The multitude of ways we've died is phenomenal. We've had the obligatory cratering. And despite the odd death or two from it now (like 1 in 20 attempts) it has largely been removed as a problem. We've had grip killing people because it was cast a second before fear sends them flying across the landscape away from decursers. We've had the MT die during fears if full HOTs arent up. We've had deaths from a person recieving Grip, and then being punted via Burst... thus OOR of any possible cleanse. Deaths from fear sending people on ridiculous paths through the fire walls. Deaths from the fires pathing so ridiculously that a person literally cannot move; encircled by fire...

We generally run one shaman (resto). There are no other raiding shamans in our guild (none yet attuned anyway), and our healing is generally paladin 'heavy' with 2 priests and a druid filling out the remaining spots.

To combat the above problems, we've tried a number of things:
-Paladins rotating bubbles/fear trinkets to break fear and ensure at least one person is available to heal during fear's duration.
-A mage, druid, shaman, paladin, priest group with tremor totem to heal the random fear/fire combos, cleanse grips and heal the MT.
-A druid out of fear range to save the people who get Grip + Burst, throw HOTs etc.
-Require everyone to bring the pvp trinket to save themselves in the "oh shit" moments where fear literally paths them right at a fire wall.

I announce incoming fears. HOTs go up, people move well clear of any existing fires. The raid is spread to minimise players affected by bursts etc. It doesnt seem to matter.

We've survived something like 8 fears without a single death before something inevitably goes wrong. And as those who've done the encounter will know; the probability of 'chain deaths' is quite high. Sadly, the best % we've seen is 50-odd. (DPS has never been an issue for the guild in the past either. We were a guild that killed Loatheb, never using world buffs, putting out 20k DPS. We killed the original gruul, so on.). I dont even want to state the number of attempts we've put on him the past few days.

So there's our situation. We're trying to deal with nearly 80% of the raid being feared every cooldown and the encounter is lasting way too long before probability kicks in and somebody dies.

Are shamans, and therefore tremor totems by implication, such a big deal on this fight? Or has my guild been having a bad few days and sucking it up? (I cant rule the possibility out, I managed to live through all attempts as a hunter, so maybe people are just not understanding the implications of failing to survive at all costs... or I was just lucky all day)

Any input would be appreciated. Our experience so far is proving Archimonde to be anything but the "Loot bag" that others describe him to be, and that videos show. And frankly, at this point I'm loathe to even bother attempting him next week before we attune another shaman.

 

dukes

We killed archimonde on the second attempt after the 7 wipes the day previously. Everything just clicked and went well. We went back this week and spent an entire day on it before doing it again, as people weren't sticking to the layout we had assigned the week before and dying to things like grip + fire dot -> burst and being out of range of anyone who could've helped them.

How do you spread your raid out? Do you have a full circle, "camps" around him, a semicircle, or something else? Having camps where people try and stick together helps a lot for grips (we use 3 groups in a triangle). People need to stick to these camps too - ranged people should have their priorities as staying alive first, which includes being near their assigned decursers, and making sure they don't get doomfired.

There are a lot of tricks you can use to avoid fire, and if people do hit fire they need to be using EVERYTHING they can to survive. Even a bandage for 3 ticks in between the fire dot helps.

You can control the fire too - it generally locks on to someone who is in front of it, and will follow them if they turn too slowly. Think of it like a heat seeking missile in a film - if you turn slowly it just follows, but if you double back very quickly it loses the lock and carries on straight.

Other things include:
PvP trinket for fears (or glimmering mithril insignia if it works?)
Druids using shapeshifting runspeed mechanics to change direction mid-fear
Fear Ward (noticed you're alliance - always possible you don't have a dwarf priest I suppose) - might be worth putting this on healers/decursers instead of the tank and getting him to stancedance as you're lacking tremors.

As an aside, we've had 3 shamans both times we killed him I think, but tremors are hardly reliable to say the least. I wouldn't be surprised if it's saved melee getting feared into fire a few times though. You should also consider giving your shaman to the melee as they'll do a lot more DPS with totems, and have the bubble/etc rotation on healers for the tank healing (or use fear ward, if you have a couple).

 

D3cadent

We spread the raid out in a semi circle behind Archimonde. The decursers are spaced among the raid so that everyone is covered. We place a raid icon on their heads so that whoever gets grip knows exactly where to move to to ensure they are in range for removal.

Interesting analogy on the fire. Assuming that is the mechanic, it'dl be much more controllable. A line might devide the raid, but we've had that happen and it's generally not a problem. I'll get people trying that.

No luck on the fear ward either. Haven't had one of those since C'thun. We rely on our tank dancing every fear.

 

Tristanian

Our main problem with Archimonde was also positioning, for the most part. It seems that the camp method, standing in a mid circle behind him as to avoid the fire as much as possible (and maybe moving with it), is the way to go. I still believe that grip during the burst phase is absurd and sometimes a death simply cannot be avoided, especially if you are not heavy on decursers. We brought 3 shamans the first time as well (sadly we are missing a dwarf/dranei priest which would simplify things), but I will agree on the fact that you cannot entirely rely on tremor totems.

We intend to revisit him today, hopefully, control will be better.

By the way, question for those that have killed him. Do you find the PvP trinket worth a slot in this fight, considering the fact that is highly situational and can only be used around 3-4 times (considering the fact you even have the level 70 trinket that is) ? Shouldn't you attempt to control the fire better rather than relying on such a solution ?

 

Andersen

It took us basically a full night before we killed him, same issues you're describing. We had 3 shamans, 2 resto and 1 enhance keeping tremor down in the melee group. We had everyone spread out in a semicircle behind him, 3 decursers spread out within that semicircle and a resto druid standing well behind everyone to help decurse/heal those that got airbursted.

Airburst is a 1.5s cast and you have a second or so after the cast before they're out of range, if someone gets hit with that and they still have grip then the decursing really was too slow. If someone gets grip right before a fear and it doesn't get cleansed quickly they probably need to trinket out of it to help the decursers get to them, but once again you've got a gcd or so from when grip is cast to the earliest you can be feared. If someone doesn't have their trinket up, they need to make sure to get much further from the fire than they normally would, even if it means running out of dps range briefly. Almost every death is in some way your own fault.

We had alot more of our wipes from fall damage, or people dying because they got grip right after the airburst and didn't use healthstones/pots to help buy time to get themselves back in range. Even on our kill we had someone die at 22% or so, and the MT died at 12%. Made for quite an exciting final phase with only 14 people left alive

 

Zwink

If you think of it this way what other trinket allows you to DPS 7 extra seconds every 2 minutes? I've used the trinket before just to be able to DPS when everyone else is feared. No other trinket in the game gives you close to this much extra damage.

Tremor totems are required for this fight and the more you bring the greater the chance your tank has for living and the higher your dps will be. Melee dps needs a totem to avoid the fire during fears (correct me if I'm wrong) and a Healer group also needs a totem to keep the MT up.

http://vodka-guild.com

 

Dawme

Well, despite many guilds claiming he's free loot, we wiped many hours on him too, with 1 shaman only in the raid.
I do think the more shamans you have, the better you will perform. We wiped countless times because of stupid things like mt dying during fear for example. Only 1 tremor totem means you give it to the melee grp, which means you have to rely on trinket/invuln chains to manage mt healing, and it's obviously very dangerous.
Things we changed to get a kill :
- We put a druid 40 yard behind the raid. His main job is to decurse the 2 ou 3 people who get grip + air burst. This combo WILL happen and it killed us many times. The druid can at least ns heal + decurse to avoid this.
- We tried to dps very high. Archimonde is a very random fight, there's many things that can go wrong (someone cratered, grip + air burst + fear combos, mt dying to a spike, fear in doomfire... and so on). So, try to kill him as fast as possible.
- Everyone equipped pvp trinket. It will help you, period. Be it to dps more, to avoid a doomfire, to place the heal which will save your mt, it's the best trinket you can use if you don't have 3 or more shamans.
- HS / Pot life or shadow on everyone. Everybody in your raid should be able to heal himself of 5k dmg or so.

We didn't have time to do hyjal again this week, but honnestly, I fear this fight. I'm sure we won't oneshot him. I still find him hard, at least with 1 shaman only.

 

Schneeb

People should never crater.
Have people stand in groups with a decurse (druids including ferals can decurse!) should stop burst + grip from killing people 99% of the time.
You should never use a pvp trinket unless your about to run into a fire, bar 10% it is not a DPS encounter.
Your tank shouldn't be dying during a fear, have a priest shield on the fear (tot castbar) and use HoTs, that should be plenty - if hes dying to doomfire it might be better using firepots instead of ironshield. (reactively)
Obviously not that helpful if your lacking shamans but use bloodlust/heroism before 'phase 2' as you are immune to it then.

 

Hiba

We wiped for over 3 hours with nonstop pulling before got the kill (and 1 and half hours on day before). Our main problem was lack of decursers online, 2 mages and 1 druid was not enough. We had almost 2 full melee groups and 3 shamans, meaning there was not enough tremors for decursers. We swapped 1 melee out and got second druid online and changed the groups so that all the of decursers and half of the MT healers got tremor instead of an UD rogue and some hunters that were previously in melee groups. We also positioned 1 druid way behind the raid for decurses/ranged healing. Suddenly people stopped dying and we got a comfortable kill (1 shaman died though quite early). However, I'm certain we will wipe on him a lot in the future also and he is definetely not free loot for us.

Good thing about Archimonde is that there's no trash at all, you can do try after try without any worries of respawns, and there's no 10 minute p1 like on Kael before the action really starts. I think this is a big factor considering how fast guilds have killed this. We propably wiped on Archimonde in total more times than we normally wipe on hard bosses before first kill, but since you can just corpse run and be ready for next pull in few minutes, wipe early in the fight is not that big deal.

We also took a different approach than Dawme posted earlier, we did not stack DPS, we stacked healers. We had 10 healers in total in the end, 2 druids were focusing on dispelling though. We thought a big amount of healers was needed because our pimped out MT was not able to raid, and our second MT was a lacking some gear upgrades. It turned to be a good decision, usually there was always someone who resisted fear or used trinket/Wotf. We also marked MT healers instead of decursers, so they knew how to avoid stacking up with other MT healers in order to avoid Air Bursts. In general, MT was usually one of the last persons alive when wiping.

I used the 5 min PVP trinket once in the fight, but next time I won't equip it unless I farm the 2 min version. As an undead, WoTF was enough in addition to tremor totem. With WoTF + 2 min PVP trinket you could remove almost every fear, 2 priests doing this would almost guarantee 1 healer always ready to heal MT (unless Air Bursted). Balances Fear Ward quite nicely.

Lightwell object increased in size to make it easier to click.

 

Demi9OD

We just require everyone to bring 5 Purification Potions as a "DKP entrance fee" for Archimonde. They have taken care of most of our curse+punt/fear problems, since mana isn't really an issue on this fight it's not a big deal for healers to use them. We also drop a Fire Cauldron for spike fire damage. Our kills have been with 2 Shaman, but Tremor is not a big factor. We position our raid on the "uphill" side of Archimonde in a 180 to lessen the distance created by punts, and leave a resto druid 70ish yards away to HoT/decurse people in the back. Arch isn't free loot, it can go nasty quick and get get discouraging if you have slow/bad internet raid members.

Here is a link to a video I put together on our first kill. It obviously got messy around 20%, and the MT died at 11% during a fear, but up till then it's pretty clean and allows you to see positioning.

 

vellias

hi

Is anyone doing this fight any different positioning wise since the patch?

We downed him pre patch and spent a few attempts trying him last night, and of course doomfires spawn on the raid much more frequently. Just curious as to whether anyone's doing anything different.

 

Bver

There is 2x as much fire now. The fight is still the same, but it just requires a bit more moving than pre-patch.

oops

 

Gilgamesh

The fight doesn't seem the same really. Fires now appear to spawn about 10 yards away from Archimonde, as opposed to previously when they could spawn right on top of melee. They also only spread outwards away from him now, but still seem to "lock" on to people until you cut at a 90 degree angle. At least this is what I noticed when we did him.

 

Hephaustus

Most of what has been said seems true. The fire spawns in a more controlled pattern then it did pre-patch. However I dont believe that the movement has changed much (if at all). Our last kill fire was following me so I turned right past it but it continued to follow me, forming a small Aran-esque circle of fiery death, which also curiously stopped moving at all when it doubled back on itself (despite being a relatively "fresh" doomfire). Thank god for PVP trinkets.

 

vellias

Yeah, seemed this way to us as well.

Also...I might be crazy, but the doomfire dot doesn't seem to last as long - I ran into a doomfire during a called wipe and it ticked twice and fell off, after the doomfire despawned. I'd say its something that should be tested, but I doubt thats something anyone would want to "test" lol.

 

Mirai

I think the fire is much more predictable now. And the fact that you can cleverly position your whole raid around him and not just behind him, gives your raid a lot more space to move so they do not run immidiatly into other people. Fight feels better now.

 

draxon0012

Restorative Potion - Items - World of Warcraft

Better than purification?

 

vellias

No, because it takes 5 seconds for the first dispel to tick whereas the purification is instant if I recall correctly.

Also, elemental earth are very very annoying to farm and will rarely, if ever be on an auction house.

 

Blooodshot

Regarding the shaman issue, they are key to the encounter. The difference tremor makes is unbelievable, fewer people will be feared into the fire, those feared in it will be healed quicker, and so will the MT. You can decurse faster and do more DPS. While DPS is largely irrelevant in this encounter it does shorten the window in which you can die to his various abilities. If we had 4 shamans online, I would bring 4 shamans. If we only had 2, I would cry tears of sorrow, but probably still attempt it. We've never killed him with 1, and I'm not planning to try.

 

• Snowy

Honestly, stacking shamans is the way to go if you can. We had one for each group. Accept that weird things are going to happen, and everyone has to be prepared for it -- I'm looking at you Burst + Grip. I wouldn't really rely on Purfication Potions, I had them fail both times. I suppose you could get lucky and have it work, but it's better just to pot+healthstone and buy yourself an extra tick or two to get in range of a decurser.

The thing about Doomfire is it's not really a big deal if 2 or 3 people have it. Once you get past the first few ticks, it's pretty simple to heal. The problem is when you get a bad fear, 7 people get Doomfired, then there's an air burst and 5 people get tossed away. You stop that with either shaman stacking or smart positioning. When we went in with only 3 decursers, we just didn't spread out in some random circle around him, we had fairly detailed places to stand so there would be a decurser in range of everyone - and the decurser was marked with a symbol so you were always aware of where all 3 of them were.

Trying Archimonde with 1 or 2 shamans is like trying the old Magtheridon with 1 or 2 warlocks. Yeah, I suppose you could try to do it, but why would you make life so hard on yourself? I realize you only have 1 attuned at the moment, but at least it should make you feel better that it's not necessarily your play that is bad here, it's more about your group composition.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Masq

I was curious, in a number of videos that I've watched I saw some sort of mod that displayed Grip warnings and fear cooldowns.

I was wondering if anyone knew what mod this was? Private? Bigwigs?

http://www.aftermathlb.com

 

◊ Praetorian

BigWigs. Honestly there's really little reason to use anything else in my view, and there hasn't been for a while. Unless you're literally the first guild reaching a new boss worldwide, there's probably a working BW module for it before you get there.

 

kaib

Yeah, I'm still wondering who is coding that stuff. I asked a guy in LR but he said it's no one there. My next best guess would be someone in Forte as every time we reached an encounter, a BW module was ready for it, quite amazing.

 

◊ Kalman

I know one of FtH's rogues hangs out in the Ace IRC channel and gives some assistance when asked, so it may not even be a coder being directly present on the raids; most of those bossmods just need a decent transcript to get something mostly working.

 

koaschten

*whistles innocently and steps back into the shadows*