Unless you're a healer, you just run away if you remotely suspect that the doomfire is after you. The job of the ranged DPS in this fight is to kite fires away, so it's really not an issue if 3 people head for the hills instead of just one. (Depending on whether MT-survival is proving an issue you may need to have your healers be more aggressive about dodging fires and staying close - when their trinket is up or when the fear is on CD - but ranged DPS should never risk causing a fire to loop.)
Doomfires are unpredictable and cannot be 100% controlled. They are more likely to follow people running in front of them than to wander off randomly however, so attempting to lead them away reduces the problems in melee range. And when they do loop, someone has to call it out and the melee has to move.
Doomfire Management
- ONLY the person who gets doomfire trailing to him runs directly away from archimonde
Since there is no reliable method to tell who the Doomfire will follow, it's much safer to have everyone run away (including healers). They can stop once the head of the fire is a safe distance away.
Here's some more specific information on the Doomfire as requested above.
The people are spread out in 3 pockets around Archimonde. Whenever the doomfire starts making a trail towards one of the pockets, people strafe randomly a bit and pick up who its following. That guy then turns and runs from archimonde like a madman.
If they make a mistake and trail it across they pay a fine to add to the bounty.
In my opinion having all 25 people concentrate is the only way to win this fight - we did it with a punishment (fine if u mess up) reward (split the fines amongst the raid when you down him) method.
If any one of your ranged trails the doomfire across the raid - its pretty much over since u'll cut off the raid into different groups making fear avoidance, healing, decursing impossible.
To add to the above new posts (made while I was writing this) I would like to say that we get mad at people who are even remotely within 20-30 yards of the doomfire trail.
As my guild is progressing into Hyjal at the moment, I thought I would ask those of you who are more experienced as to what seems like a more solid plan for Archimonde: (I like to think ahead a lot.)
1.) Fear ward the MT. Fear ward a resto shaman in a healer group to make sure he's able to drop a tremor totem to keep the healers on the MT.
2.) Fear ward the MT. No fear ward on the shaman and bring extras and spread them around along with healers into seperate groups with tremor down constantly to hopefully have healers brought back into the fray quicker (Assuming there will be some stagger in terms of the tremor pulses of the multiple shaman).
Keeping fear ward on 2 targets at all times max seems feasible since we typically have 5+ priests in the raid; holy and shadow. I'm including shadow since especially next patch having them fear ward targets is a given.
I thought I would ask if there was any merit to using one over the other. As far as I can see the second seems more reliable due to the lack of "Oh god the shadow priest didn't FW in time" or somesuch. But the first option has the possibility of being able to deliver the most immediate and quantitative healing to the MT after a fear. This again is all based upon my impression from people here that Archimonde hits like a freight train and that no heals for a few seconds could well spark MT death.
Don't get me started on doomfire yet, I'm gonna wait until I've actually seen it before I try to figure anything out. It seems like one of those "You'll never get it until you experience it" things. That said I've already started whipping people to get their 2 minute PVP trinket anyway.
Edit: After pondering it for a moment after posting I realise the first option isn't feasible due to the need to spread people around archimonde in groups. Seems I found my own answer.
We fear ward the enhancement shaman in the melee group (and we put a holydin in that group to heal the MT when everyone else is fleeing from fires). Anyone who isn't melee should be far enough from the fire that they can't be feared into it.
Fearwarding a shaman or priest in a healer group would be another good choice, if MT death during fears is proving an issue.
I would say it's a waste to fear ward the MT (unless you're using a bear of course). Your tank should be able to dance every fear, and it's not like this is a threat-sensitive fight (as in, it's about survival not DPS, so DPSers can simply hold back if they're running onto the MT's heels).
It's kinda like when that hot girl is looking your way... And you wonder if she looks at you or the guy next to you/behind you... So you assume she's looking at you and know you'll find out soon enough. Acting like she's not looking at you when she is, though, can be bad
Same for doomfires. If you think it may be coming your way, assume it is. It generally doesn't take more than a few seconds to tell if it's coming to you specifically or not, as people rarely run exactly in the same direction and you'll see if it's following you or not.
Even for healers it seems like this fight isn't healing intensive enough for you not be able to allow yourself to move some when doomfires are anywhere near. Leave the risk to the people that have the termor totem to handle it (hopefully you have at least a healer group with it although healing can be fine even if you don't have a full healer group with termor). Getting hit by doomfire will take out a noticeable amount of a healer's attention anyway so the risk you took in order to heal a little more actually costed a lot of healing, assuming you actually live. Dead healers can't heal others, and healers healing doomfired people aren't healing the tank and/or airbursts...
As my guild is progressing into Hyjal at the moment, I thought I would ask those of you who are more experienced as to what seems like a more solid plan for Archimonde: (I like to think ahead a lot.)
1.) Fear ward the MT. Fear ward a resto shaman in a healer group to make sure he's able to drop a tremor totem to keep the healers on the MT.
2.) Fear ward the MT. No fear ward on the shaman and bring extras and spread them around along with healers into seperate groups with tremor down constantly to hopefully have healers brought back into the fray quicker (Assuming there will be some stagger in terms of the tremor pulses of the multiple shaman).
Keeping fear ward on 2 targets at all times max seems feasible since we typically have 5+ priests in the raid; holy and shadow. I'm including shadow since especially next patch having them fear ward targets is a given.
I thought I would ask if there was any merit to using one over the other. As far as I can see the second seems more reliable due to the lack of "Oh god the shadow priest didn't FW in time" or somesuch. But the first option has the possibility of being able to deliver the most immediate and quantitative healing to the MT after a fear. This again is all based upon my impression from people here that Archimonde hits like a freight train and that no heals for a few seconds could well spark MT death.
Don't get me started on doomfire yet, I'm gonna wait until I've actually seen it before I try to figure anything out. It seems like one of those "You'll never get it until you experience it" things. That said I've already started whipping people to get their 2 minute PVP trinket anyway.
Edit: After pondering it for a moment after posting I realise the first option isn't feasible due to the need to spread people around archimonde in groups. Seems I found my own answer.
Split rnaged/healers in 3 groups in a square formation around Archimonde, MT in middle with melee behind. 1 have 1 dispeller in every ranged/healing group and tell them also decurse MT/Melee if needed, warn them decurse over nuking/healing (whatever their job is). If you have shammys have them drop grounding totem and your group be near enough to it, groups should stand near each other maybe try 2 people in a group stand on each other and 10 yards away have another 2 and the healer/dispeller stand behind them a few yards so only 2-3 people per group actually are bursted. Try not go into other groups unless maybe if the Air Burst sends them that way.
The biggest problem with this fight is the doomfire, tell people to assume its going for them and turn around and run away, 180 degrees, do not left/right or it will break and possibly cause you to be trapped in a circle, it will break off in time but its good to lure it up a mountain etc if possible. Here's a video of our 2nd kill from a resto shammy PoV it may help see how we stand. It's a very clear video and you'll see many aspects of the fight including how to handle air burst, fires etc.
We have 4 teams around her with 2 healers and 3 ranged DD each (team West has 2x ranged DD). The ranged DD include 1 decurser. We use 5 melees and one maintank.
Ok, our problem is that some of our members have problems with this fight and some don't.
We got one mage, one priest and one tree druid that always seem to get the fire and we really tried our best to make things clear how important it is to get as far away as possible. We are no raid that starts flamewar against each other, we try to reach things together no matter what it costs.
There is so much room for failure in this 10min, something will go wrong. Sometimes we can handle a soul charge, sometimes we don't.
I don't know, is there anything that we oversee in this fight? It becomes really frustrating right now
p.s I'm stancedancing the fear so priests have the opportunity to anti-fear someone else.
We downed him again today after 8 tries. This week we had a much larger amount of ranged vs melee (we went down from 9 melee to 5 today + tank)
Further observations on Doomfire to add to my post here: Archimonde
- I confirm that doomfire can never, ever, ever spawn on melee (50+ tries to my name)
- The only time you think its spawned on melee is when melee is either feared out of hitbox or airbursted out of hit box
- When your melee runs back to dps the boss, they wait for a doomfire to pop when tehy are far enough away. If they see the doomfire pop, they should strafe (there is a small fire arrow in front of the doomfire signifitying its direction) to see who has it and should kite it away; at this point the rest of the melee arcs around the doomfire and moves in
I will post again if I get any more helpful fights, but from the data that I have available I can conclude:
1. Melee is top DPS in this fight (6 melee topped the meters vs. very skilled and geared hunters, warlocks, mages, shadow priests)
2. Melee is useful in this fight if they play with care.
I don't see this as an encounter in which I would stack ranged.
Last edited by Timelessrogue : 03/04/08 at 7:06 AM.
Zork:
This is what I have learnt:
1. You have to weed out those people who can't survive. I make people pay gold to a bounty for the boss, i've upped it to 50g per first death (unless it was due to a decurse).
2. I sit out the people who continously die to this encounter
3. The MT MUST stance dance (as you do). If you don't you will move the boss and cause melee to move out of hit box giving them the possibility of getting doomfired. If they say within hitbox, they cannot be doomfired unless someone trails it back after a fear or airburst.
Don't start flame wars, just sit the people who die out. You can do this fight with 22 people (we got him to 18% with 22 people before 3 solid people logged in). Once people sit out because they can't concentrate, you willl notice that the fight becomes easier because i) the rest of the people will concentrate ii) you won't eat soul charges for no reason.
Also I hope your druid is not playing in tree form - if he is, he cannot out run the doomfires or decurse and is a waste of a raid spot.
I haven't been in a fight where 1 person dying can wipe the raid, this is by far the roughest one I've done, yet we downed him second day of tries due to some tough decisions on my part.
Last edited by Timelessrogue : 03/04/08 at 7:07 AM.
There are always "some" people who just never get it with doomfires.
What we do, is assign 4 groups and 4 group leaders ... the group leaders have a raid target icon and they are of the non-retarded variety (ie never die to Doomfire). In each group is at least 1 healer and 1 decurser. The whole group stands DIRECTLY on that person and sticks to them like glue. If one of them gets airbursted, they all get airbusted ... and they have a healer plus a decurser with them when they land.
This takes the "don't fucking die" responsibility away from the people who obviously cannot do it and places the responsibility on those that can do it.
"Being a leader is not a position of power. It is a position of service." ~ Barestomper
Coming from a guild that wiped something like 80 times learning Archi (more than any encounter and more than Vashj and Kael combined easily) and now one-shots it the majority of the time, I'd say this:
Are Doomfires kitable?
Yes. I used to do it and I personally am 100% convinced that it can be done. Really. No, really, really. I've either been the luckiest son of a bitch ever or I attribute far too much random behavior to my own actions. Either way, many dozens of working kites make me think it can work.
Should you kite Doomfires?
Probably not.
We don't do anything anymore for dooms. Everyone sidesteps or slips them or (rarely) runs away/kites them. No one 'kites' them period. We all spread out to silly distances on fears though and that serves the same effect.
Erm, then, what should people do in general?
Not die.
Honestly, it seems like a technical fight but it isn't. Fear timer almost up? Run away. Doomfire within 20 yards? Run away. Do it and you'll win every time. You won't set dps records and you won't have a great fraps but if people don't die, you'll win. The needed dps budget is so low that you can't help but win. Keep in mind, 10% is a win.
Also I hope your druid is not playing in tree form - if he is, he cannot out run the doomfires or decurse and is a waste of a raid spot.
That. As a druid on this fight, you shouldn't be in treeform. You're gonna rely on mana pots if you heal a lot, but definitely not on treeform. I get about 40% of the decurse on this fight. Another 40% is the mage CL, and the rest is either the other druid or other mages. Even though you can cancel treeform when needed, I feel decursing before it ticks is too important to miss up, so you'll end up most of your time casting a decruse, switching to tree, casting a decurse, etc. Waste of mana. Throw hots on the tank when you're going close to him, but maintaining a full stack isn't always the most important thing. Getting away from doomfires and topping everyone off is more important imo, and this is what I do. Since I'm not getting fear wards, I let the healers who do manage the tank healing and only help when I'm in range, the rest of the time I spend it zoomed out trying to find places where there's no decursers, or travel forming to people who get low after an airburst to heal them while they're running back(lifebloom is especially good for that).
As for the others, a mage should be able to mostly manage himself on this fight. He can iceblock a bad doomfire during a fear, he can absorb a big part of the initial ticks with flame ward until he gets some heals(and use his healthstone). He can negate the whole airburst crap. He can decurse himself. Mages should pretty much be the best ranged dps for this class because they have so many tools. Dieing to doomfires as a mage is unexcusable. As a priest, you really shouldn't either though. Outhealing the doomfire with instants is so easy, I hardly see how you can die to it. Shield yourself, then prom, then renew, all these can be done while running around. They also can be done as shadow, there's no reason to stay in shadowform if you're dieing, oom people do more dps than dead people.
If they really suck, sit them out. It's one of these fights where doing it with idiots is harder than doing it without a full raid. Reminds me of Thaddius where we'd have 2people waiting on the side because they couldn't handle going left or right. Worked fine.
The other night we noticed that someone would get an ignited graphic on them, even if they weren't standing in the doom fire. Does this mean that the doomfire is tracking you?
The ignited graphics just appears when you're close to a Doomfire, it's unrelated to it following you, though obviously more likely to show up when it does.
buff /bÊŒf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
- I confirm that doomfire can never, ever, ever spawn on melee (50+ tries to my name)
- The only time you think its spawned on melee is when melee is either feared out of hitbox or airbursted out of hit box
- When your melee runs back to dps the boss, they wait for a doomfire to pop when tehy are far enough away. If they see the doomfire pop, they should strafe (there is a small fire arrow in front of the doomfire signifitying its direction) to see who has it and should kite it away; at this point the rest of the melee arcs around the doomfire and moves in
This is slightly wrong - the hitbox for Archimonde is big enough that at least for some races, it is possible to melee Archimonde far enough back that you will eat a doomfire where you are standing. Obviously the fix is simply to stand closer to Archimonde.
I am an undead rogue and I raid mark myself, the resto of the melee dps stands on top of me. I just move slightly when the doomfires spawn behind me. Its key to do this as being too far in will get your MT airbursted and thats a wipe.
So as an undead rogue, I find my position perfect, teh tauren fury warrior and the tauren enh shaman stand on top of me and we do fine - no airbursts on tank and no doomfires on melee.
We too started to take too long on the 4-camp strategy so we went back to the 180 strat. If you have problems with 4-camp strat, it may be worth trying this instead. Once we switched to this it took us no more than 5 attempts to hit the enrage timer with the whole raid alive - after that it was just a matter of improving dps by playing slightly less "safe"
Basically the only people allowed behind the MT (dark green area) are our best Priest and best Paladin healer who we trust to look after themselves and dodge/kite doomfires coming their way. The Priest carries a bunch of Purification potions in case he runs out of range of a decurser.
Put a raid icon on every decurser
Call out every incoming Fear and tell people to get the heck away from any fire trails.
If anyone sees a Doomfire infront of them they run in the direction of the arrows, NEVER sidestep a Doomfire
Melee are told to stay out after Airburst until they are over 90% HP.
With the 180 strat we put a Shaman and Druid on top of the melee. This means that the melee ALWAYS have a Decurser and a Fear totem with them. On top of this I ensure that all melee groups have a Fear totem on top of Racial/PvP trinket.
It's all about personal survival - the enrage (dps) requirement is not huge.
Probably one of the most important things for people new to this fight to recognize is what is bad luck and what is not bad luck. Bad luck is when you get air burst and land right next to some doomfires just as fear is going off, use your trinket then on the next fear you somehow manage to run cross country, even though you purposefully ran way out of range just before the fear went off, through a doomfire and just as you hit the doom fire you picked up grip. Bad luck is not I got grip right before an air burst or I had doomfire and got air burst or I got trapped between two doomfires just before a fear or whatever. If you can explain it in under 40 words it wasn't bad luck. Most of these things are from a lack of planning ahead of time. In our case if you got gripped and then air burst you should have your decurser right next to you because you are supose to stay with your group, and in the case where you didn't, or couldn't you should still have your healthpot, healthstone, and maybe even a purification potion if you were ballsy and brought one with you to help you get back in range in time. If you get air burst when you have doomfire you need to first figue out why did you get doomfire, odds are you got it because you didn't pay attention, and once again you should still have your healthpot and healthstone to help you get through it, not to mention you should have a healer in range of you because, one again, you should have been with your group. And if you get caught in between two doomfires you didn't run away from the first one like you should have, and if you turned and ran only to find a doomfire already behind you you weren't looking ahead to begin with, and in worse case scenario you still should have your trinket up. I've done this fight over 200 times since we first started learning it and the difference between then and now is that I can go whole fights without ever using my trinket or a health pot or a healthstone, and even if I do I never, ever, have to use any of those three things more than once every two minutes. So they are always up.
Tonight, my guild got our first kill of Archimonde. We had worked for a week or two using the four corners method, and were getting Archimonde sub 70% and slowly getting better. We stopped for a few weeks due to attendance issues and just worked on BT, but tonight, we came back (due to bad group makeup for Gurtogg/RoS), and used the mountain strategy. It took about an hour and a half from first pull to collecting loot, and personally, I felt bad about cheapening the encounter.
Although loot is great, and progression is great, at what cost? Although we did have previous experience with the boss, with a radical tactic change, it is a very different fight. I was wondering how other people felt about using the mountain "strategy" on Archimonde. On one hand, Blizzard has stated multiple times that it is not an exploit. On the other hand, it takes one of the more difficult bosses, and dumbs it down to a 2ish hour learning curve. Even though staying with the 4 corners strategy would have taken longer, and more repair bills, when he finally dropped, I honestly felt like we had just dropped a trash mob. When you can minimize WoW from 24% to go check your dkp, and come back with a dead boss, there is something very wrong.
With this in mind, how many people out there would like to see Archimonde changed? Personally, I feel that he should be changed. The mountain "strategy" cheapens the experience far beyond anything I have ever experienced in this game. Blizzard said that standing behind the spears on Mandokir was not an exploit (although standing between spears and wall was an exploit if I remember correctly), and they eventually removed a few spears and sloped the earth to remove that "strategy". Even though it would be a setback for my guild to have to go back to the 4 corners strategy, it would make Archimonde seem much more like an end boss, instead of a larger, tree draining version of Prince, except without infernals.
On one hand, Blizzard has stated multiple times that it is not an exploit
Links to said statements, please? Id like to see them change it such that you have to tank him in the field, with your choice of positioning in the field (AKA either him in middle and you spread out around him - or him on the side and raid in a big semicircle arc). And remove the bloody logs.
Even if something is stated 'not an exploit' in terms of game mechanics - it could clearly be a highly unintended way of beating an encounter, such as the Mandokir example you described. The encounter designers surely didnt design the Arch encounter in a massive open field, with huge airbusts - for people to huddle in a very specific spot behind a tiny log or on a mountainside.
The thing is.. (speaking for myself) Archimonde is one of the best encounters in wow. It can be relatively easy or incredibly frustrating/difficult - and what dictates that will be your strategy, communication and player skill/awareness. What might seem 'random' or 'totally unavoidable' at first will eventually be much more controllable than you first thought - with just a little practise. Thats the hallmark of good encounter design for me - like Cthun: its skill, communication and coordination that make the fight tangibly transform from difficult to relatively easy over time - not simply outgearing it or getting lucky.
Executing the fight in a certain (unintended) way to change or trivialise any or part of that - could be depriving yourself of a enjoyable and satisfying boss encounter.
I don't have any links to the statements. A number of people said (I don't remember if they attached screenshots) that their conversations with GMs resulted in the statement that it was a clever use of in game mechanics, not an exploit.
This mainly came to mind because as we were clearing Gurtogg trash, I realized that I quite honestly didn't feel anything when we killed Archimonde. My favorite part of raiding has always been the rush of killing a new boss. The last time I really felt that rush was killing Kael (after nerf). Bosses since then have provided small amounts of enjoyment, but Archimonde was something different. For the rest of the raid, I quite honestly felt dirty for using the mountains. Sitting there, throwing my knives at Archimonde, watching doomfires sit in one place at the bottom of hills not moving anywhere, and readjusting my junk and/or scratching it for 10 minutes did not seem like a boss fight.
Using the 4 corners method, Archimonde seemed like a challenging, yet temperamental boss fight. It was not overly challenging, it just required people who only had 2 copies of their 21'st chromosome. The fight hinges on 20 people's (the 4 ranged groups) ability to turn 180 degrees, and run for 15ish seconds, then turn 180 degrees again, and return to their original place. It was not so much fighting a boss as it was fighting yourself and your guild, and working together to overcome yourselves. With your average raiding guild (and even the above average), this provides a hefty challenge. I wholeheartedly agree with you that you should not be able to trivialize an encounter like this simply by standing on a small hill or behind a log.
After tonight, I felt like I had to go to confessional. Seeing how the EJ forums are like the Vatican of raiding, I felt that I should come clean about the dirty feeling i have had here, and hopefully help people reading this thread.
If you are going to be fighting Archimonde, please use the 4 corners strategy. The mountain strategy takes a crucial part out of this counter, and removes any enjoyment from the encounter (in my experience). If you want to preserve your enjoyment of raiding content, please reconsider if your guild is planning on using the mountain strategy. Although the allure of quick, easy epics may be hard to overcome, for your own good, don't do it. This is coming from a member of a guild that just downed Archimonde using this strategy. If you raid strictly for epics, then by all means go ahead, but any of your motivation for raiding comes from the enjoyment of beating challenging content and feeling like you accomplished something, stay far, far away from this so called "strategy".
02/26/08, 3:06 PM
