I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the mountaneering strategy for archimonde is perhaps the cleanest solution I've seen put forth to the fight.
I've done the fight in the currently accepted manner, and not in the mountaineering method. That said - the mountaineering method looks like it has a harder pull, a harder dps requirement and trades doomfire fuckery for airburst fuckery which I view as about neutral. It also seems far more repeatable, still requires you not to be terribad, and is more forgiving of odd compositions. (Think decurser/tremor counts)
I'd say that this is a better fight than "everyone run around and dodge fire" simply because I think it's more elegant. It adapts easily to partial compositions, and it reminds me of (for instance) firemaw. As far as I can tell you're still going to have some people down in the fire unless you really think a 12 person airburst is ok.
I doubt it's what blizzard envisioned, but I wouldn't call it fully exploitastic. As far as I can tell you're trading 10 dps/healers running around and associated doomfire related shenanigans for tank standing in doomfire and noticably harder to handle airbursts (5+ hits on airburst are basicly guaranteed compared to SC's usual 1-2).
I'm reserving judgement until I have a chance to run into hyjal and look at the hills to think about it, but at first glance it doesn't look like out and out ridiculousness to me.
Edit to add: Upon further examination this looks identical to deciding to tank prince malch against a wall and stand against a wall to minimize the impact of infernals. There's at least one point where the doomfire comes up the hill towards one of the camps where a fear would put them into the fire so it's clearly possible but unlikely to hit that area.
Last edited by Anias : 02/08/08 at 4:41 PM.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
I tank prince malch on the wall because it removes half of the available 30 yard circle around our tank/melee from being a valid target for infernals as well. You might not realize this is happening, but I promise you are much less likely to be infernal hit at the edge of that area than the center.
Mitigating the infernals by hugging the walls is acceptable, I'm unclear on why mitigating doomfire in a similiar way wouldn't be. Please note I haven't had the chance to go home and look at the hills, but I have looked at the video and mentioned some of the added difficulty factors I identified with this method. I'm reserving judgement until I actually verify that the hills are pathable for archimonde and co.
This isn't free loot mode as far as I can tell from the video. 5+ person airbursts are fairly disruptive. Doomfire always on the tank is fairly strenuous healing. It looks like you trade some doomfire running for more flying, and potentially more dangerous routes back to the boss.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
You tank Malchezzar on a wall because of knockback, but I think Anias is talking about putting the ranged on the wall as well?
At any rate, the "mountaineer" strat isn't akin to putting yourself on a wall on the Malch balcony, this is more like positioning your ranged on some magical floating platform outside his balcony where an infernal could never possibly land. It's definitely not "free loot mode"; you're taking huge Air Bursts (what is the range on this anyway? 13 yards?), but removing Doomfire from ranged priority allows you to play so much more offensively it seems comical. Honestly, I'd expect a hotfix for Archimonde to start DTing people who climb the mountains if more people started to do this.
It really depends on how the doomfire/archimonde themselves path in relation to the wall. There's some indication that the doomfire can come up there - presumably it's just less likely to actually path in a straight line for that long and if it does it will be near the end of it's pathing instead of the beginning because it follows the dips and curves to get to them. (See the video, there's a portion where the recorder checks the doomfire to his left and adjusts away - there's some fear breaks used to avoid running into it)
If it cannot get to them at all, then I'd imagine they'd change it. If instead they found a position where the pathing on doomfire makes it take longer to get to them than if they'd been on flat terrain, I imagine nothing will change. There's not some magical rule that requires you to tank lucifron in the lava in mc, or stand in an infernal on prince malch. Assuming the mob and his associated spawns can actually path into the hills, fighting him there is fine. If the mob cannot path up to them, then yes that's exploitation.
As I mentioned - I'm going to go run around in hyjal before I make up my mind on which this feels like. I think it's more on the side of "better encounter strategy" than "lol we found a pixel in heigans room" but I could be wrong.
Edit:
Doomfire will quite happily burn up the hill. Admittedly it takes longer to reach you (because it travels the long diagonal along the ground instead of the short side of the triangle from your position to his forehead) but that seems neatly balanced by additional grip/burst difficulty.
Last edited by Anias : 02/08/08 at 6:56 PM.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
Normally I wouldnt post on places like this (my typing is rly shit ask my guildies).
Anyway weve been pulling Archimonde for 2.5 nites about 8hours total, best percent was 51%. We cant seem to stop the random fear/doomfire/airburst combos for the most part curses have not been an issue. We have been using the 4 corner strat, (decurse heal dps in mini grps traveling together reverting back to original spot when cleared)
I was trolling this forum and caught the mountainer strat, and this got me personally conflicted for a bit, so i brought it to the attention of some of my guildies and we were all torn, some say not an exploit some said it was so we talked to a GM
A dude in my guild talked with a GM and they couldn't get into deep specifics because it could be construed as giving boss advice to a guild, and they are not allowed to discuss strats. However, after talking with him, standing on the hills is NOT considered an exploit so long as the following criteria is met:
A) Everyone is able to hit by an Airburst (not an issue w/ this strat)
B) Those that are dps'ing the boss or healing the tank are in range of fears. (again, not an issue w/ this strat)
C) Anyone standing on the hill is CAPABLE of being hit by the fires. So long as they are able to path up the hill, it is "not an exploit, it is a use of terrain to ease the mechanics of the fight." to quote the GM
So we did some testing took a cpl heals our main tank some rouges and a lonely lock into archimonde had the dps strip we healed the tank for as long as possible with a few ppl in each camp spot.
This is wut we found outta 6-7 pulls fires pathed direclty to 1 camp once and 1 pathed next to a camp.
So this Proves that fire can path into the mountains its just a variable u hope doesnt heappen much like tanking the first real boss in mech on the corner of the stairs
Now personally i like the dude who said he used melee in the middle to help ctrl the fires. I plan to try to utilize this with 2-3 bad ass melee and bad ass decurser and healer prob an extra drood if i have one around.
So id say mountaineer is not an exploit but it wouldnt surprise me if someday guilds who got use to this method went in for there wkly farm and find that the terain has been changed. I plan on ninjaing a kill this way since it is NOT AN EXPLOIT according to the 3 standards we were given, and still wiping to get the normal way still
*edit we used this strat with a melee grp infield playing with fires, with 1 decurse and 1 heal out there 2, and we 1 shoted on him that nite, gr8 addition to the strat market think everyone hsould do i tthis way itll save sooo much time and does mae him truely ez lewt
To each his or her own. My guild's at about the same spot (51%, 8 hours) and I'll /gdisband before I succumb to weak cheese.
Back on the topic of the 4-corner strat:
we have a pretty well-geared tank, but we're seeing some pretty crazy random events which end up causing him to die. On one pull last night, he was immediately hit for 8000, then about 1.5 seconds later 9000, then finished 1.5 seconds after that with another 9000 -- before the healers could get a shot off. Even if they had NS healed and gotten the lucky wipe-saving crit, they would have pulled aggro.
We're also seeing the tank die to doomfire + grip + big hits + healer-fear + healers-running-from-doomfire + healers-being-airbursted. That combo happened all within 5-6 seconds of each other several times last night.
On the last pull of the night, two doomfires converged on one rogue in melee range who had just blown cloak to get doomfire + grip off him just before he got airbursted into another doomfire (where he blew the FR pot). He took 9000 damage in 2 seconds.
We're all pretty well geared and fairly clued in at this point -- occasional craters due to lag spikes or disconnects notwithstanding -- but this fight is testing our patience with being random like Prince squared. Good looking pulls and clean rips down to 60%, then suddenly some crazy situation ensues where survivability is almost impossible.
Seeing that problem, we started calling the healers in to try and stay close even when their group ran from the doomfire to try to kite it, so there'd always be healing near the MT and melee group. The result appeared to be that doomfire curled in more, attracted to the scent of healers perhaps.
Can someone confirm my suspicion, which is that even with perfectly executed 4 corner strat, this fight can be double digit wipe territory even in 'farm status'?
Can someone confirm my suspicion, which is that even with perfectly executed 4 corner strat, this fight can be double digit wipe territory even in 'farm status'?
You're intentionally making the fight more random by assigning 4 corners. I suspect you tank prince malch against the wall, with all of your casters/healers spread haphazardly around the room? 3 corners is less random than 4. Tanking him where your players can stand uphill (to artificially lengthen the path doomfire takes to them) is less random. You can choose to emphasize airbursts or doomfire as the "more difficult" in your strategy. If you're wiping to doomfire all the time, consider changing to "airburst hurts more".
This fight looks and feels dramaticly repeatable to me. I don't think there's been a single death I haven't been able to identify as "this player made a bad decision", and I know there has been no point at which I felt "this is a luck based encounter". For reference SC's kills to date have involved fighting him in the field, running away from doomfire, and not accepting excuses about "why player x died to factors outside his control". The sooner you start telling your raid "the only person who has an unavoidable death excuse is the MT, and then only if he burned his cooldowns and was blocking" the faster your raid will improve.
You can consistently keep total doomfire damage to the raid below 100k even when you're running around in the field. You can also just brute force doomfire via more healers. There's several different ways to handle it, depending on your raid's gear/etc you'll need to find what works best for you.
Saying "it's random and we get unlucky" shows a profound unwillingness to understand the mechanics involved.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
Can someone confirm my suspicion, which is that even with perfectly executed 4 corner strat, this fight can be double digit wipe territory even in 'farm status'?
Even with what Anias is saying it still takes a lot of practice and attempts for Archimonde to become a smooth kill. Think my guild took around 60 attempts for the first kill, 35 attempts for the 2nd kill, 10ish attempts for the 3rd kill with the 4th and now 5th have basically been one shots. This seems to be the norm at least for most guilds from what I can tell.
I think on our 3rd kill I had made up my mind this was the worst encounter of my WOW career but after one shots on back to back weeks I've been a bit less critical. Though if we ever get an influx of new players I'm sure there will be pain if we are still doing Archi.
The fight is "big" so it's not immediately obvious to everyone in the raid on the first pull exactly what they need to do. Guilds that communicate when they screw up and emphasize how they made those mistakes so that the group learns from someone else's mistake are going to do better here than groups that require everyone to see it themselves. That said, it's not particularly random. Unforgiving of poor judgement, certainly, but the randomization is essentially limitted to who gets air bursted, and the cooldown on that is long enough that it shouldn't make a huge difference.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
We've killed him twice now. We use three groups (south, northeast, and northwest) with 3 healers per group (one of whom is usually a feral/shadowpriest/DPS shaman in healing gear) and at least one decurser per group (usually 2 in the south group to cover for the possibility of a decurser getting burst into the well). We put a holydin in the melee group and the enhancement shaman in that group gets fearwarded. The holydin in the center dispels any melee not in the main melee group and provides constant healing on the tank. All three "corner" groups dodge doomfires and keep the MT alive (with the north groups doing most of the MT-healing and the south groups doing most of the melee healing). Corner groups must call out on vent whenever they see a doomfire loop back towards the melee.
As has been mentioned over and over, prioritize survival over everything. We go in with 10 healers (but usually 6-7 melee DPS) and the enrage has never been an issue.
We actually abandonded the 4 corner strat in the end - improvement rate was just too slow. We have all the raid in a 180 deg arc behind him and two main healers (Priest/Pali) in the area behind the MT.
The melee group sit behind him with a Resto Druid and Shaman there too. Resto stacks HoTs on MT and dispels Grip, Shaman acts as totem/chain heal bitch.
By putting your two best healers out on their own in that area you can more or less guarantee heals on your MT - an Undead Priest should never get feared into a doomfire, and if he has to kite one away or gets airbursted, the Pali is on hand to heal the MT.
As mentioned so many times in this thread - it's all about survival.
(1) If anyone dies to Doomfire it is THEIR fault. It's not unlucky, it's not a healer's fault for not healing them. Their fault.
(2) If your trinket/racial is on cooldown and a Fear is incoming, get the heck away from fire trails.
(3) If a fire is chasing you, DONT sidestep it, keep running in a direct line away from Archimonde until it cannot possibly turn back and enter the raid again.
Once we drilled these rules into the raid Archimonde went down in 3 tries, the first of which was due to us missing enrage timer by 30secs, the second by 10secs. It's far better to train your raid to survive the full distance than for people to die trying to do too much dps. DPS will improve rapidly as you get better at the fight, but people not dying tends to improve only slowly by comparison.
To each his or her own. My guild's at about the same spot (51%, 8 hours) and I'll /gdisband before I succumb to weak cheese.
Back on the topic of the 4-corner strat:
we have a pretty well-geared tank, but we're seeing some pretty crazy random events which end up causing him to die. On one pull last night, he was immediately hit for 8000, then about 1.5 seconds later 9000, then finished 1.5 seconds after that with another 9000 -- before the healers could get a shot off. Even if they had NS healed and gotten the lucky wipe-saving crit, they would have pulled aggro.
We're also seeing the tank die to doomfire + grip + big hits + healer-fear + healers-running-from-doomfire + healers-being-airbursted. That combo happened all within 5-6 seconds of each other several times last night.
On the last pull of the night, two doomfires converged on one rogue in melee range who had just blown cloak to get doomfire + grip off him just before he got airbursted into another doomfire (where he blew the FR pot). He took 9000 damage in 2 seconds.
We're all pretty well geared and fairly clued in at this point -- occasional craters due to lag spikes or disconnects notwithstanding -- but this fight is testing our patience with being random like Prince squared. Good looking pulls and clean rips down to 60%, then suddenly some crazy situation ensues where survivability is almost impossible.
Seeing that problem, we started calling the healers in to try and stay close even when their group ran from the doomfire to try to kite it, so there'd always be healing near the MT and melee group. The result appeared to be that doomfire curled in more, attracted to the scent of healers perhaps.
Can someone confirm my suspicion, which is that even with perfectly executed 4 corner strat, this fight can be double digit wipe territory even in 'farm status'?
As far as your tank deaths due to lack of healing for whatever reasons, there are a couple of things that can help. First, having a tree druid in the tank group is huge because his HoTs can be solely responsible for keeping a tank up while healers are running from doomfire/being airbursted. Also, your healers that are MT healing need to communicate so when something happens and they can't heal the tank for whatever reason either a paladin can bubble and eat a doomfire to keep healing him or one of the healers in a DPS group that isn't doomfired can toss the tank some heals.
Also, we have a healer/decurser (our feral OT in healing gear) that stands with the melee to make sure there is always at least one healer/decurser in range of the melee/MT. He used to respec when we were learning the fight, but now he just throws on healing gear and it works fine. A general tip is we have one of the melee with the maxcameradistance command (I can't remember exactly what it is) that watches doomfires and calls out whenever one turns and has even a chance at reaching the melee since doomfires raping the whole melee group is what would wipe us most times when we were still learning it.
For the severe burst damage on pull problems, our resto druid usually gets full HoTs rolling and is OK threat wise as long as the tank is getting a MD.
It may seem like the fight will always be random and easy to wipe to, but really once you get it down its not that bad at all because A) he will be dying faster due to better gear/familiarity with the fight and B) even with the random unavoidable death due to someone D/Cing or whatever you will be able to heal through the soul charge most times because the rest of the fight is going a lot smoother than when you are first learning it. We have only wiped to it once in the past month, and our first Archi kill was in late december.
i've only briefly done the fight so far, no 'proper attempts' so far, fight is pretty simple for me since i'm a warrior and can avoid every fear, i'm jus worried about people getting feared into the fire
Healers (7)
4 Resto Shamans
2 Resto Druids
1 Holy Priest
1 Paladin
Gear
This was our third week in Hyjal/BT
- We are reasonably well geared, the majority of the guild has 4/5 T5
- We asked all healers to wear a 2 min PVP trinket
- We asked all people to wear items with good stam, inclusive of PVP gear to ensure survival
MT Observations
- Our tank has about 30% dodge 15.8k unbuff hp, 27% block, 18% parry and is an undead.
- No fears were missed
- It was noted that avoidance gear outperformed all out HP gear (slightly more spike damage outperformed all out HP buffer), we were able to keep him up much better with little or no mana issues
- We tanked him in the middle - about 30 yards away from where he was
- MT has capped hit and is 0.5% off capped expertise
- MT used ironshield pots on cooldown on all good attempts as well as nightmare seeds
- Dodge/avoidance trinkets were used whenever he was dangerously low hp
MT Group
Holy Paladin with devotion Aura
Druid for +heal buff
Warlock with imp
Shaman with agility totem
Melee Observations
As you can see from above we are very very melee and physical dps heavy. We used COR on this boss and negated it with improved demo shout
- In ALL our attempts we noticed that melee got doomfired only once and that too when they were out of melee range due to a fear
- MT got doomfired once, he didn't move and was healed through it
- All rogues were undead and they did a WOTF followed by CLOS if they were going into doomfire
- All warriors broke fear as required
- No melee used the pvp trinket except for the feral druid
Positioning
- 3 Healers at 12 o clock (behind MT): Shaman/Paladin/Druid (assigned to decursing MT & melee group)
- 1 Ranged group with shaman and decurser @ 4 o clock
- 1 Healing group with shaman and decurser @ 8 o clock
- 2 melee groups behind boss with a shaman in each
Healing
- We asked the druids to keep HOTs on MT, HOT uptime was @ 80%
- We didn't really need a fear break rotation due to a shaman in every single group and HOTs on MT. The paladin did confirm that he needed to break fear with trinket or bubble a few times to emergency heal the MT.
Decursing
- No curse was up for more than 1 or 2 ticks
- The mage as well as the druids were assigned groups to decurse, positions had been assigned previously
- The whole raid had purification potions in case they were out of decurse range after an airburst range, yet only 2 purification pots were used
The Shaman OP WIN
- The fear break totem was dropped right at the warning for all melee groups including MT group, this in combination with the PVP trinket and orders to move 30 yards away from doomfires at all times caused only 1 death from doomfire
- We assigned 1 shaman to solely heal MT to keep the armor buff on him
Air Burst
- Everyone was asked to practice falling off a cliff with the tears of the goddess
- No one died due to an air burst
DPS Charts
- DPS charts were banned during this fight, we believe its purely a survival fight and don't care much for DPS
The Pull
- The survival Hunter does a trinketed misdirect to MT who goes in with shield block up and full hots
- 3 healers are in range of MT already and ready to heal if required
- Melee cuts a HUGE arc and joins the battle 15 seconds later from behind the boss
Doomfire Management
- ONLY the person who gets doomfire trailing to him runs directly away from archimonde
- All other people strafe to 25-30 yards to ensure that tehy stay in healing/dps/decurse range
- Under no circumstances should anyone circle or strafe if they have a doomfire following them
- I play rogue myself, and I noticed that I could postion myself away from trails so that I would never get feared into them - all other melee followed suite and in the last 10 or so attempts on him NO MELEE DIED to doomfire
The Bounty Method
The biggest issue for us in this fight was survival. Hence we came up with the bounty method
- First to die due to any reason except a decurse paid a fine of 20g (members), 30g (officers), 50g (guild leaders)
- Bounty was at 370g before we got him down, this was distributed equally to the whole raid after the kill shot
- We told people to turn back and run like madmen if the saw a doomfire coming to them, this ensured that there weren't trails of fire to mess up the healers and ranged. People who did not follow this method were asked to pay the 20g fine
- Getting the MT airbursted caused us to wipe 3 times and we made the guilty party pay the fine for the bounty
We came to the conclusion that this bounty caused people to concentrate 100% during the fight and not come up with excuses like "No one healed me" or "my pot was on CD" - we run recount so we had them take an SS if they died due to a curse and teh decurser was in range.
After 4-5 fines the raid started getting extremely focused and people stopped dying because they understood that survival > charts
I am not sure but I think that this is one of the few times that such a melee heavy guild has downed this boss in 2 days of practice. I do believe that so few doomfires on melee in all our attempts is a significant mechanic and should be noted (as it is contrary to the belief of having a lot of ranged dps).
I would be glad to answer any questions anyone may have on this kill, obviously we are about 6 months late on killing him but its with a melee heavy group with shaman power so I do believe its different.
Timeless
Last edited by Timelessrogue : 02/25/08 at 7:12 AM.
For those who have problems with their MT taking big hits: Devotion aura is a must have, ironshield potions on every cooldown and use a mitigation gear with expertise, high armor and high avoidance values. Tank HP will be arond 20k anyway, no use stacking pure stamina items like a dark moon or netherwing trinket. and have at least one shaman or priest heal your MT, the armor bonus on their crit heals is awesome for the non-crushing big-hitters in T6 content. With such precautions, no MT should be getting hits in the 9000 range.
Anias, you're so right above - we read this whole thread in detail and decided that player deaths are not excusable - the have fire pots, purification pots, should be moving away from the fire before fear, should be in range of decursers and haelers and so on.
Check out the bounty method we came up with as above - it made everyone focus and suddenly all the 'luck' element was gone.
This fight looks and feels dramaticly repeatable to me. I don't think there's been a single death I haven't been able to identify as "this player made a bad decision", and I know there has been no point at which I felt "this is a luck based encounter".
Saying "it's random and we get unlucky" shows a profound unwillingness to understand the mechanics involved.
Yeah, getting this across is really paramount. I think that aside from very rare, very badly timed connection issues, I was always able to identify some play or preparation error that led to my death. It might not be quite the same for healers using their trinkets and other cooldowns proactively to save others, but as dps, if i died, i did something wrong at some point during the fight. It was not necessarily in the moments right before the death though. I suspect that's where a lot of people trick themselves.
"My x was on cooldown and i got feared into doomfire" well why did you get that close to a doomfire without a panic button, and what forced you to use it earlier?
"I was trapped in by doomfires" They didn't all spawn at once. Why were close enough to the first one that you couldn't get to the other side of the second close one when it spawned instead of being sandwiched in?
"I got cursed and i was cut off from the decursers by fire/airburst" Did you try using a purification pot? Why weren't you standing on your decurser? etc.
Try to be firm with people that die, but avoid being antagonistic, and do not to humiliate them in public. It's really easy for the encounter to make you feel like you're fighting your other members instead of the boss if you let it. Almost everyone in your raid is going to wipe you on arch sooner or later. As long as they're not repeating the same mistakes or copping out by claiming "randomness" you should get there.
To each his or her own. My guild's at about the same spot (51%, 8 hours) and I'll /gdisband before I succumb to weak cheese.
Back on the topic of the 4-corner strat:
we have a pretty well-geared tank, but we're seeing some pretty crazy random events which end up causing him to die. On one pull last night, he was immediately hit for 8000, then about 1.5 seconds later 9000, then finished 1.5 seconds after that with another 9000 -- before the healers could get a shot off. Even if they had NS healed and gotten the lucky wipe-saving crit, they would have pulled aggro.
We're also seeing the tank die to doomfire + grip + big hits + healer-fear + healers-running-from-doomfire + healers-being-airbursted. That combo happened all within 5-6 seconds of each other several times last night.
On the last pull of the night, two doomfires converged on one rogue in melee range who had just blown cloak to get doomfire + grip off him just before he got airbursted into another doomfire (where he blew the FR pot). He took 9000 damage in 2 seconds.
We're all pretty well geared and fairly clued in at this point -- occasional craters due to lag spikes or disconnects notwithstanding -- but this fight is testing our patience with being random like Prince squared. Good looking pulls and clean rips down to 60%, then suddenly some crazy situation ensues where survivability is almost impossible.
Seeing that problem, we started calling the healers in to try and stay close even when their group ran from the doomfire to try to kite it, so there'd always be healing near the MT and melee group. The result appeared to be that doomfire curled in more, attracted to the scent of healers perhaps.
Can someone confirm my suspicion, which is that even with perfectly executed 4 corner strat, this fight can be double digit wipe territory even in 'farm status'?
What you said about the tank dying on the pull sounds.. completely normal, that's just what happens if the tank doesn't avoid anything and your healers aren't casting. Try getting priests/shamans to spam the tank with r1 heals to proc their +armour buffs before the pull, and get him to chain Ironshield pots, they make a huge difference. Grip should never tick on the tank (or really, anyone) since it should be decursed so fast. Have your healers make a rotation to break fear and keep healing the tank, etc. There are a lot of random things that can happen in any given fight, but a kill doesn't require luck. It's all about foresight and control. Healers are running from doomfire while others are getting feared and airbursted? Have your healers move well away from doomfire with plenty of time to spare before the fear. Have them spread so only one can get airbursted at a time. Communicate with your tank so he can blow a cooldown, etc.
Can someone confirm my suspicion, which is that even with perfectly executed 4 corner strat, this fight can be double digit wipe territory even in 'farm status'?
My guild has been killing Archimonde for around 3 months now and we can still go through a fair number of wipes and we employ the 4 corner strategy. Honestly though as has been pointed out countless times in this thread, deaths in this fight amount to lack of focus on the part of the raid member who dies. The difficulty with this fight after multiple goes is that the people who were focused to start, become frustrated and then all of a sudden their unfocused play becomes the source of the problem as the previously poor playing raid members start to step up their level of concentration.
Basically methods like the bounty method discussed above or pretty much anything you can do to focus your raid before you start attempts whether it be incentive or punishment is a good thing. Having everyone completely tuned to what you're about to do is the biggest advantage you can take with you going into this fight. Lack of focus from any given member can be a huge problem, even when you've seen and completed the encounter numerous times.
We just tell people to spread out evenly, and only assign set positions for decursers and areas for healers to heal using the clock(f.ex healer x you keep the guys at 8 o'clock alive). The benefit of this is that it teaches your guild how to be more aware of their surroundings, and you avoid having wipes due to "well that wasn't my job/position last time". You also don't have to explain people new to the fight/guild your tactic in detail, and in general spend a lot less time explaining tactics. Although we have been killing him since July, I feel this "tactic" is a good approach for even new guilds learning it, since you force people to think on their feet and not limit themselves to their assigned task
We finally put Archimonde down; thanks to all for the suggestions; the 'spam rank 1 healing wave to get the proc' idea was clever. The thing that got us over the top was that although the raid is friendly & casual, I replaced a few players who, although generally excellent, were consistently dying to doomfire. I think that instilled the necessary level of seriousness and shocked people into being more cautious.
Doomfire Management - ONLY the person who gets doomfire trailing to him runs directly away from archimonde
- All other people strafe to 25-30 yards to ensure that tehy stay in healing/dps/decurse range
- Under no circumstances should anyone circle or strafe if they have a doomfire following them
- I play rogue myself, and I noticed that I could postion myself away from trails so that I would never get feared into them - all other melee followed suite and in the last 10 or so attempts on him NO MELEE DIED to doomfire
Timeless
How do you manage to identify this person? Often times, if you're standing in a group for decursing it's difficult to identify who the doomfire is following.
Nevertheless, the fight doesn't require very high dps, it's much safer to spend a few extra seconds running away.
Doomfire Management
- ONLY the person who gets doomfire trailing to him runs directly away from archimonde
- All other people strafe to 25-30 yards to ensure that tehy stay in healing/dps/decurse range
- Under no circumstances should anyone circle or strafe if they have a doomfire following them
- I play rogue myself, and I noticed that I could postion myself away from trails so that I would never get feared into them - all other melee followed suite and in the last 10 or so attempts on him NO MELEE DIED to doomfire
I'm also wondering how you can tell which person the doomfire is going to follow.
I'm also wondering how you can tell which person the doomfire is going to follow.
You pretty much get lucky I guess.
Short of everyone running away on a slightly different vector there is no other way to tell who the fire is following. I think what he's saying is that people should be aware and notice that after a moment of running that if the fire isn't on them to turn around and stop running. Otherwise he apparently has a raid of superheroes.
02/08/08, 3:06 PM
in 
