I have a small question, that may prove unnecessary but I'd like to know.
According to RaidGuru and WoWWiki (those perennial sources of potential misinformation), Air Burst gives afflicted players an invisible debuff that stops Archie using Fear while an Air Bursted player is in the air. My question is: is this correct?
In the event that it is so, I'd be very interested to know if the debuff lasts for a fixed amount of time or if it is removed only when the player lands. If it's only removed on landing, then it's perhaps possible to almost entirely remove Fear from the fight by having a Priest use Levitate at the apex of their burst.
We'll be trying this tonight anyway, so I'll report my findings, but if anyone with more experience has better info it would be helpful to have.
I can tell you from personal experience that he won't Fear "during Air Burst"(I can always count on about 5 seconds of no fears immediately after he casts air burst), but I don't know if that's timer or landing.
Even if it's landing he might not Air Burst during Air Burst so he might fear right after you land, since his cooldown is up and nobody else is in the air.
I have a small question, that may prove unnecessary but I'd like to know.
According to RaidGuru and WoWWiki (those perennial sources of potential misinformation), Air Burst gives afflicted players an invisible debuff that stops Archie using Fear while an Air Bursted player is in the air. My question is: is this correct?
Yes and no.
I would actually say that there isn't one, despite conventional wisdom. The fear is out-rangable (55 yards), but to out-range it would practically take you out of the fight. I think the air-burst takes you a distance far enough away that you cannot get feared. Archimonde also won't cast fears immediately after Air Bursts.
However, the curse thing cannot be denied. The curse has no minimum range, but won't hit air-bursted people. This would suggest that you've got the invisible buff making you immune.
I highly doubt that the invisible debuff is anything but time related.
My guild is learning this fight. We got him sub 30% on our first night, with sub 50% on most of the later attempts (4 hours straight). A lot of the last little bit I think will come as people get a little better with avoiding doomfire and not doing dumb things like clicking their tears too late. One thing I have noticed that happened more than once is the following: Once in awhile (I can specifically remember this happening on two attempts), a melee player gets cursed/air bursted and dies while in the air. Both of these things seem to happen at almost the same time (Although I will admit I am taking the word of the decursers since as I can't decurse I'm not exactly starting at who is cursed). Are the decursers just not acting fast enough or is a situation like this possible? I think both times it was an enhancement shaman. He potted and healthstoned and died before he landed/could get heals. I think maybe that decursing might have just been slower on the melee than the rest of the raid since most of us are in/out dodging doomfire, but I was wondering if the curse+airburst combo was something that can be countered in a way I'm not thinking of (Have heard of Purification potions but they will most likely fail).
It can happen where a curse is quickly followed by an airburst, but there should always be enough time to decurse. It may be a really short amount of time, but your decursers need to be on the ball. Their top priority is decursing ASAP.
Just give everyone a purification potion, though. It *can* fail but it works more often than not. We've had people not die due to a purification pot use. The issue is it may be on cooldown if people are constantly eating doomfires and popping a major fire potion.
Anyways, the answer to your question is, the decursers should be able to cleanse it before the air burst if they're on the ball. Otherwise, purifcation pots make up for slow decursing.
What mods are your decursers using to help them? If they don't use Grid or the new Decursive or something, that might explain their slow reaction time.
Sounds like you guys are doing fine, though. Once people start avoiding doomfires you'll kill him.
"Are the decursers just not acting fast enough or is a situation like this possible?"
It's a speed problem of your decursers, who are prioritizing dps or something else over decursing. Or as Dejime says, they lack mods. We have never used Purification potions in our guild. They actually have a terribly high failure rate. Yes, once in a blue moon someone gets a grip --> airburst --> dead moment. Because, yes, every once in a while a decurser is a bit slow. But this is so rare for us that it's not a meaningful encounter mechanic and it shouldn't be for you either. Get your decursers focused on what matters. This is not a dps rare. This is not a hard fight to heal. This is a fight where you need to keep your tank up and the other 25 people need to be decursed and stay out of the fires and not crater and you win. It's that hard... and really, that easy.
One tip: If there is a fire near a group, have them all move a good distance away from the fire before the fear cooldown is up. A good distance.
Another tip: Have the melee stay bunched up together and get them to move to the optimal spot away from the fires (there usually is sort of a best place).
A third tip: Heal the one guy who gets on fire. Fire != the end of the fight. Not healing the guy who gets on fire = the end of the fight.
Decursers simply would have to be faster if someone's getting grip+air-burst. The worst case scenario is that someone gets gripped and then Archimonde immediately starts casting air burst (1.5 second cast). Your decursers have about 3 seconds then to decurse them before they've been air-bursted out of range.
One more tip I've got though is that you CAN survive deaths. It took us 13 Archimonde kills before we finally got that "perfect 0-deaths" kill. If someone dies, focus on recovery, because it is very possible to do.
Thanks for the advice, I figured it was just decursers being slow or not having their priorities in line. We are putting in our second solid night of attempts on Thursday so I'll let you know how things go. People definately got better at avoiding doomfire/decursing/pretty much everything as the night goes on, and healers adapted very well in the later attempts. We lived through the errant death + soul charge during a few attempts, but in the best attempts someone would do something stupid like click their tears too late or a doomfire would spawn on top of the entire melee group, but I'm confident that tomorrow evening we will be seeing his demise.
Thanks for the advice, I figured it was just decursers being slow or not having their priorities in line. We are putting in our second solid night of attempts on Thursday so I'll let you know how things go. People definately got better at avoiding doomfire/decursing/pretty much everything as the night goes on, and healers adapted very well in the later attempts. We lived through the errant death + soul charge during a few attempts, but in the best attempts someone would do something stupid like click their tears too late or a doomfire would spawn on top of the entire melee group, but I'm confident that tomorrow evening we will be seeing his demise.
The melee can stand closer so that doomfires don't spawn on them.
If you stand just outside his targeting circle you can have a doomfire spawn on you, which is a real pain for melee (even for rogues with CLoS).
You can stand just inside the doomfire spawn area, without being too close to airburst the tank (and if you do get airburst on you, you can back out a bit as it casts). That way if it spawns behind you, the melee can move.
Now, I'm not a melee, so I don't know how easy or hard it is to judge that position, but I do know it exists (when the targeting circle was briefly tiny the melee were always inside the doomfire spawn area but outside airburst range on the MT)
Melee still need to move to avoid them, but at least they won't spawn ON them.
Remind your decursers that if they have a nuke casting and see a curse, cancel the nuke! If your non-decurse dps are doing even an average job, the enrage timer will be a non-problem. Mages will have low DPS on Archimonde if the RNG decides they will; don't sweat it.
The Decursive mod lags. It can lag quite a bit. The better decursers will watch Archimonde's target, and when it changes, their mouse is already on the way. (It might be a grip, or just airburst.) But even so, if they're at least cancelling nukes to decurse, they should have no problem removing a curse after 1 tick, or 2 in really bad cases. A couple ticks is not the end of the world. More than that, though, implies an attention or positioning problem.
The melee can stand closer so that doomfires don't spawn on them.
If you stand just outside his targeting circle you can have a doomfire spawn on you, which is a real pain for melee (even for rogues with CLoS).
You can stand just inside the doomfire spawn area, without being too close to airburst the tank (and if you do get airburst on you, you can back out a bit as it casts). That way if it spawns behind you, the melee can move.
Now, I'm not a melee, so I don't know how easy or hard it is to judge that position, but I do know it exists (when the targeting circle was briefly tiny the melee were always inside the doomfire spawn area but outside airburst range on the MT)
Melee still need to move to avoid them, but at least they won't spawn ON them.
So I'd have to double-check this next week because I'll likely miss Archimonde this week, but I believe actually melee is right around the edge of the current targeting circle. And there is no chance that when melee is correctly positioned a Doomfire will spawn on them.
It's true that occasionally a Doomfire comes running across the middle on us, but it's also a certainty that it's from someone who is where they shouldn't be. And this is very, very rare for us at this point.
Second thing, we haven't Airburst-ed the tank once. If the melee is opposite the tank at all it's not happening. In fact, our melee shifts around the hitbox a lot because we like to be away from where the active Doomfires are. But since we are on the back of the hitbox and the tank is on the back of the hitbox, and we are always attacking from behind, there hasn't been a single tank airbursting incident. We're not very good on the melee targeted for airburst getting away from other people -- you can probably do better than us.
Third thing, and let me be clear here so the above I wrote doesn't confuse people. Normal Doomfires don't require any action on melee's part. We >>do<< shift. Why? Because we are human and there is a big burning fire nearby and the tank might shift Archimonde and, well, who the hell knows. And eventually fear is coming and you need to be a good ways away from any active fire several seconds before the fear cooldown is up. (Remember it's a fear cooldown, not a fear timer.) But those fires are spawning behind the melee and then radiating out at a group. They aren't targeting anyone in melee range.
Now, if your melee was >>not<< in melee range when a fire spawned, it's effectively a ranged person and so it should run the hell away. And I suspect that's what causes Doomfires to spawn "on melee". Someone in melee creeps just enough away that they get "targeted" for Doomfire and it makes the dreaded bee-line across melee. Maybe this is worse since 2.4, maybe it isn't. Just tell your melee to be in melee range and not dance off a few yards unless they are explicitly targeted for airburst, or obviously, running from a Doomfire that has spawned.
By the way, our guild is very average. And we kill Archimonde in 1-3 attempts generally.
It took us a while to learn some positioning, and preparing to deal with issues that can and will pop up.
Think of the Area Around him having fours sides.
Melee is directly on the opposite side of the tank. We place all the Melee together, along with our Healing Tree Druid (Usually our main one, but, he has been on vacation, so, it has been me--I am usually Feral.
That Druid can LB stack+Decurse. I am in the MT group obviously with a Resto Shaman.
--For me, I never really healed in TBC as a Druid. I just keep 3 LBs, Renew, and cast Regrowth 5s-10s before a Fear.
In the Melee Group, is an Enh Shaman.
On either side of this Box is a Priest to one side, and a Paladin/Resto Shaman mentioned before to the other side.
We are careful not to AB each other or the tank.
If DPS is AB'ed, then the MT has 3 healers.
If One side is AB'ed, the tank has 3 healers.
If the two healer side is AB'ed, the tank still has 2 healers who do need to work hard. (Keep in mind, there is usually one ranged healer able to help out from the outside.
All this does, is to allow the MT to receive heals when some healers might be blocked out, AB'ed, etc.
Positioning for the Melee+1 Healer is not hard. If you can Hit Archi, then yu are close enough to not get DF's spawning on you.
I have seen some DF'ers spawn behind us, and turn directly for the melee (no fun...lol)
As long as ranged players are doing their Jobs in staying alive, kiting DF'ers and warning of Possible DF'ers though Melee, then all should be well. The only hard part now, is getting the DPS/Tank healers back into action w/o training DF'ers. That comes with experience.
General Tip:
Communication, communication, communication. People have to call out for what they need. A player with DF'ers, Curse, or needs healing needs to be on the ball, and ask for it. being embarrassed that you are a Healer, got knocked into the Water with a Curse, and are silenced helps no one.
We mark all decursers with Lucky Charms. Outside groups MUST stay with them. If you are cursed, and something happened that your healer/decurser is not near you, Pick a Lucky Charm, and get to it ASAP announcing your need before you get there.
Suffer first problem you're obviously having is clear from your post. "The person it's chasing" implies your groups are spread far enough apart that you can actually detect this and makes me wonder why your groups are so spread. There is no advantage to that, but there is a good deal of disadvantage.
Second thing, everyone should go together >>away<< from Archimonde. "Scatter", whatever that was looking like, sounds like an awful idea that puts the group potentially out of range of its decurser and of its healer and means people can die from grip, let alone doomfire. A group together has no reason for anyone to die. A group all over the place has a bunch of people who might die.
Third thing, Doomfire damage is healable. Going to write it again. Doomfire damage is healable. That doesn't mean people should run through Doomfires. It does mean, however, that people should consider the fight in context of them.
I'm not sure this is useful, but here's our WWS Archimess
My guild seems to be having the same problems as Suffer's guild and I would like to clarify a few points:
1. If anyone in a group gets targeted with doomfire the entire group runs out of range, at least 50 yards from Archimonde.
2. The group waits out of combat until the doomfire goes away before re-entering combat.
3. The main tank healers should be split between the 4 groups so that there is always someone available to heal the main tank.
4. There need to be enough healers in the raid for 2 groups to have enough healers to keep the main tank and melee up.
5. If someone in a group does not exit combat, the doomfire could turn towards them, and perhaps turn towards melee.
6. The real role of ranged attackers is to divert the doomfires away from Melee. Melee are the ones that really kill the boss; ranged do some damage but that is a secondary role for them.
Positioning for the Melee+1 Healer is not hard. If you can Hit Archi, then yu are close enough to not get DF's spawning on you.
This isn't true, speaking as a human warrior, when tanking him, I've had multiple cases where I'm able to use my specials on him and hit him with autoattack but when a doomfire spawns at me, it hits me (with a minor step towards him this can be avoided of course.)
It is definately possible to be in range to use all of your abilities on him while still getting hit by doomfire, at least for some races.
Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone has a blank map of archimonde's positioning, i could edit for my guilds positioning? Or if I could talk to someone about helping me make one? If anyone could help me, that would be amazing. Thanks guys.
This isn't true, speaking as a human warrior, when tanking him, I've had multiple cases where I'm able to use my specials on him and hit him with autoattack but when a doomfire spawns at me, it hits me (with a minor step towards him this can be avoided of course.)
It is definately possible to be in range to use all of your abilities on him while still getting hit by doomfire, at least for some races.
Depends on where you all standing I think. Sometimes I've had doomfires spawning one me(as a tank), think it's mostly when you stand on a hill('longer' range I guess).
Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone has a blank map of archimonde's positioning, i could edit for my guilds positioning? Or if I could talk to someone about helping me make one? If anyone could help me, that would be amazing. Thanks guys.
The easiest way to do it is use WowModelViewer/WowMapViewer (google), but here's the screenshot I took from it. The bottom of the picture is East and archi's starting position is somewhere in the top-left.
It looks like Archimonde is next on the chopping block for our guild and I am going to be tanking him (Feral Druid).
I was curious if anyone knew of a good addon for our priests to get for setting up fearward rotations. I would say BigWigs common auras, but some of our healers use DBM.
Also, for any other druids that have tanked him did you use your pvp trinket, or is that sacrificing too much armor (Badge) or stam/dodge (Commendation/Pocketwatch)?
While we've only had our feral druids tank Archimonde twice, it was actually pretty straightforward for things such as fear-ward. We stuck our feral druid with our enhancement-shaman for tremor totem and grace-of-air as a "just in case" sort of deal. At most, Archimonde's going to get 2 attacks at you while you're feared. Assuming you have HoT's rolling, it should be easy to live through.
In terms of fear-ward rotation, it'd probably just be best to call it out on vent. You're tanking, after every fear just call out the next fear-ward. We actually didn't bother much with a fear-ward rotation as tank death was rarely an issue. You'll find that it's true almost 100% of the time - tank death simply isn't a problem in the Archimonde fight. He doesn't hit too hard, and you'll have plenty of avoidance. I'd go so far as to say that 1-2 healers can keep you up without a problem, especially if you're getting HoT's.
Our feral does not use PvP trinket in this fight. The damage that your PvP trinket is going to "mitigate" is significantly less than the avoided/mitigated damage from a Commendation and Pocketwatch.
As a feral druid who tanks Archimonde every time for my guild, I find fear wards are certainly helpful, even with tremor totems down for the rest of the group and as backup. It is certainly good to be in the group with the Enhancement Shaman for GOA, to boost your dodge.
The main problem with being feared there is not the damage you take, but the movement of Archimonde himself, because if he shifts it can cause issues with everyone spread out around him. Being feared into a fire is always dangerous as well, of course; other than running through fire, the damage you take is relatively low and predictable. Since there are almost always fires somewhere around the melee, you usually can't reposition him much once you do get feared; everybody just has to shift with him.
If you only have 2 Priests in the raid, while learning the fight you may want to use your PVP trinket. Because the fear cooldown usually gives some extra time before the next fear, 2 Priests are almost enough to keep Fear Ward up on you the entire time; just make sure the first one applies it about 1 minute before you start the fight, and they should be able to rotate it. With 3 or more Priests, you should always have a Fear Ward on you, and you won't need the trinket. It should be fairly easy for them to rotate, since everyone in the raid knows when fear happens -- you have over a minute for it to be applied before the next fear comes up.
We never attempt Archimonde with less than 3 shamans. It is 100% vital to bring at least 3 shamans and one of them covering melee DPS.
We have our enh shaman cover melee DPS with tremor totems, and mixed decursor / healing parties for the other shamans. Hunters and misc DPS have no shaman.
This completely trivializes MT healing and raid healing. All you need to do from that point is replace people who die from airburst (there's no excuse, sorry).
We usually 1 or 2 shot him but only with 3 shamans. If we have 2 we call it. I can't recall ever having done Archimonde with less than 3 shamans keeping healers and melee stable.
We never attempt Archimonde with less than 3 shamans. It is 100% vital to bring at least 3 shamans and one of them covering melee DPS.
This may be true for you, but I'm sure there are dozens of guilds who have killed Archimonde in all incarnations with 0 Shaman.
You simply need to be more careful of getting distance from doom fire before fears and keeping the MT fully HOT ed.
If you can gain control over the fight why wouldn't you? Any guild lacking shamans won't get far end game. Seriously, why be pendatic? get shamans and solve the Archimonde problem for once and for all.
If you can gain control over the fight why wouldn't you? Any guild lacking shamans won't get far end game. Seriously, why be pendatic? get shamans and solve the Archimonde problem for once and for all.
Originally Posted by Lilyana
We usually 1 or 2 shot him but only with 3 shamans. If we have 2 we call it. I can't recall ever having done Archimonde with less than 3 shamans keeping healers and melee stable.
I believe you're the one being pedantic if you call your raid because you're not skilled enough to kill Archimonde with less than 3 shammies. This fight does not require shammies. End of story. Play right, do what Joy said, and you'll still win. If your guild isn't able to kill Archimonde with 0 shammies, you won't get far end game.
If your guild isn't able to kill Archimonde with 0 shammies, you won't get far end game.
If your guild can't field 3 shamans to every single raid, you won't get far end game...
That being said, when we first tried and killed archimonde, we didn't have many shamans in the guild. Melee never had a shaman for example, but warriors have berserker rage and rogues have CloS. It's perfecly possible to kill him with 0-2 shamans, just play it a bit safer with distances to fires and make sure to call out all doomfires so healers can keep them topped.
07/08/08, 11:51 AM
