Oh cmon, you dont break fear before the MT did it, how ridiculous is this, get some brain!!!!

This is our new GMOTD. Thanks.

There are a lot of things that can be said about this fight and how unfair it is and someone can be killed while everyone play good but to be honest i dont think so or at least at about95% of the time. When someone died than either he or some other member in the raid made mistake. Quite a lot people complain about grip+air burst (in this order not air burst + grip) and i cant understand how is this possible because in most of the cases when someone is air bursted i have time to land 1,5 sec heal before said person is out of range. How can be imposible to decurse him than?

Yesterday for all 4 attempts before we killed him we had one dead because of the doomfire that can be count as unavoidable and that was me when i was air bursted then feared in doomfire while i was far away from tremor totem and had pvp trinket on cd (to be honest if i had pvp trinket with 2 min cd i would be able to use it but i am too much of a pve tard ) and with next fear i ran i another doomfire and ofcourse i died. All other deads were because someone made mistake or for example a priest died because he tried to go between two doomfires and he didn't take in account a bit larger area that they cover.

About the people that hit enrage timer you need to find why you have so low dps. Is it because you have aggro problems or because you dont have enough dps? Because with 9 healers (8 healers and a moonkin on decurse+heal job) and 4 deads (one at 39% and other 3 in about 15-20%) we hit 10% 7 min into the fight.

We've kill him in 6 minutes, and hit the berserk with the same group on back to back attempts - if doomfires hover in front of the melee for 75% of the fight, or they get chain airbursted, you're going to hit the enrage. That is part of the random, and it happens.

I basically see a bunch of "we've killed him, we're great, this fight is flawless posts... learn to play." I just shake my head at the egos here sometimes. Were you guys happy with the original gruul too? There is nothing random or dumb about that fight!

I've already said it before - a lot of the problems with this fight are avoidable - but you're going to wipe anyway, because human beings are playing this game. And you're going to get air bursted into doomfires - you're going to get air burst plus grip combos at inopportune moments almost EVERY pull.

News flash: If everyone played like the messiah, guess what, every guild, tomorrow, would clear through Illidan with 1 shots; please forgive the scrubs who haven't yet and still make mistakes. Archimonde is basically unfair and unforgiving in many ways, and often execution isn't enough to compensate. We one shot everything we've done so far in BT, everything in Hyjal, everything in TK25 - and wipe countlessly on a farm boss: its dumb. I just can't for the life of me understand how people are giving this fight a thumbs up unless its just meant to be a post saying "we rule."

Change the overlapping mechanics and truly remove the unfairness, and leave the rest as is - that is fair right? That makes sense? People really want unavoidable deaths, or to pop level 40 potions and gamble that it might save you half the time? When did "we can kill it, its fine" overcome common sense. Instagibs on shahraz should be fixed also right?

I think the only way people hit the enrage timer is when fire is really bad. At least that is what happened to us the one time we hit it. When the melee has to stay out half the fight and ranged is getting chased all over, it can really extend the fight.

We had no idea the enrage timer was even in. Weren't really trying to do max dps, just survive. Even knowing the enrage timer is there, it isn't worth risking dying to do max dps. Both of our kills have been around 7 min in at 10%. This is without consumables mostly and not risking death for dps.

First of all i agree that there is some luck in Archimonde fight but is this part of the fight more important than the luck part in fights with Bloodboil, Mother Shahraz even Teron Gorefiend? At Bloodboil fight you can have 3 mages in a row as targets in p2 and fast stacking debuff on them (hell its not needed to be mages even just fast stacking debuff) and you will wipe period. On Moter Shahraz you can be teleported right into melee or right on MT even and you will wipe. On Teron you can have only healers as spirits and you will lack healing and you will wipe.

What is the difference from those fight and Archimonde? Its that Archimonde is one of the f*****g ultimate bad guys and he can be very nasty (yea i know that mixing lore and pve balance is not good but sometimes we play this game for fun and we can do our little lore related notes ).

This fight can be fixed and i think it will but to be honest i think its not the only thing that needs to be fixed in Hijal. For me first thing that needs to be fixed is Azgalor fight and Thrall dieing from rain of fire for example. Its easy to pull boss in a way to not aggro Thrall and you can kill it easy but in this case why is Thrall there? To help you with trash? Or to fight with his big enemies? All in all i dont like whole Hijal instance because its too boring and have too easy bosses that will die from first few pulls for every guild that reach them. Trash is part of the boss fight but at the moment its the bigger part and this is not wath most of us want (or at least i think so).

For final i just want to apologize to anyone that feel ofended from my posts. Everything i write here is just my personal view how Archimonde encounter works and how you can make it at least a bit more controlable and easy to do.

If I'm not mistaken the max range required to decurse someone is 30 yard so the decursers wont have 1,5 seconds to decurse, I usually have like 1.3 seconds so decurses should have like 1 sec

This.

Countered by this.

If we, and by we I mean the high-end raiding community, had not blown through Hyjal, we would not be complaining as much about the difficulty of this encounter. If Archimonde was at the end of Naxxrammas, we would not be complaining as much. I believe that the stark difference in difficulty has brought about much more disdain for this encounter than the mechanics of the encounter itself.

However, don't get me wrong. I very much feel that Archimonde is entirely too random. Unfortunately this is what makes it hard, and really the only way that blizzard can make encounters more difficult. What do you consider a difficult encounter? And why? I consider Archimonde difficult because it greatly tests both your snap judgement making ability and reaction time. A one second fear is undoubtedly more "difficult" to catch than a two second fear. The definition of difficult is what I'm trying to put in question.

I think the only way to reasonably nerf Archimonde would be, to harp on what many are saying, create a global cooldown of 5 seconds (or whatever) between his abilities. However I do hope that people realize how MUCH of a nerf this would be. Single abilities in this fight do not kill -anyone-. Combinations do. Take out the combinations and you take out the deaths.

This is a different situation though Seth, but it is a decent analogy.

If bloodboil also soul charged the raid, then yeah, it would be like archimonde - where you have unavoidable deaths followed by a punishing mechanic that causes more deaths and basically a wipe. Bloodboil deaths can be unavoidable (a mage with nonstop crushing blows will die, not common but its happened to us a few times) - but because there isn't that mechanism in place, he is a very repeatable kill.

And to the previous poster: difficulty really isn't the issue as much as reproducibility. Difficult encounters are what we need for sure, but with extremely solid execution that should result in a kill.

Honestly, Hyjal as a zone could be much better with many tweaks.
You could make archimonde more difficult while removing the unfair deaths with cooldowns, yet increasing the penalty for doomfire.
You could make all of the trash slightly harder, and make the first four bosses not a joke with checkpoints. I think that would better the overall design.

Not entirely true, but I get your point. RoS is about the same difficulty as Archimonde but they are very different types of fights, the "randomness" is what makes Archimonde tricky, whereas RoS has zero randomness and is all about execution. Illidan is harder than both and also has zero randomness. Although I like all three fights, I really like the Archimonde fight even though others don't seem to.

All randomness seems to do is make you wipe more on content that is supposed to be on farm, I think that's where the annoyance people are showing is coming from personally.

I agree with this for sure. We'll be on RoS soon so I await the chance to compare. Thus far I would still consider Archimonde the most difficult encounter for me to date. (I've done all minus Kel'Thuzad, maybe thats why )

You know, I was just hoping for someone to explain this, or at least show a combatlog that absolutely disproves it (keep in mind i play with 150-180ms latency):

I got a few more of these. A lot of lines are cut, but none of these are significant (no further actions from me etc). Maybe I should just attribute it to reaction times.

It seems likely to me considering he has no target until well after the fear, so if you're basically not CC'ed after he comes out of it, I'm sure he looks at you first, but maybe not... was just a theory. It always feels to me that when I hit defensive stance he remembers me, but that should be no aggro. However, if he's out of melee range of me I have to either hit him, or shout for him to remember me. Nightbane seemed to behave precisely the same way - proximity and timing likely govern the snap-back. Mostly tanks focus governs everything there.

Looks like it is nearly 3 seconds before you're back in defensive stance, generally taking 1 hit. Its reasonable - if you have a good plan for your healers its not a big deal. The worst parts for a tank are definitely if you parry your first hit after a fear; and I wonder what happens if you parry an attack DURING the fear.

I'm still a fan of being off the global - as only Edgewalker can really press me on aggro (his dps stats/haste/AP are probably the best anyone has). But sometimes I press for globals like IDS, Commanding, ITC, Deva for sunder - and get caught (a lot). The key is if you can get into berserker stance before the fear things will be OK almost always; but if you miss it due to being distracted you're hosed. However, we've still lost someone when I made the switch to berserker on time. I think there might be a chance you get feared out of melee in even 1 second and he reacquires a broken-fear melee target. I also (very rarely) have went to berserker stance and had it say 2 seconds left from the prior rage which was not done late - in those situations I yell for a paladin to bubble/dispel, but its fairly harrowing.

I'm actually curious what casting bar mods other tanks have found and liked. I use NECB and it is OK.

The thing is, you won't wipe 100%

On Gorefiend, if you are worried about healers, save your soulstones/combat rezzes and even if your first 3 are healers, you can probably get them all up, on Shahraz, I've seen it with people ported right on melee or right on MT (or like 2 steps away or whatever) that doesn't make it a wipe, you move, people heal, keep going. On Bloodboil, you can have targets die and not wipe. We had the same warlock die twice on bloodboil this week, both times it went back to me as a tank, last standed one and they healed me through it, shield walled the second and he died. If it was a huge problem and he was coming back a third time, and I had a big stack, we could have bopped me and let the other tank take it.

That said, I can't say that you'd wipe 100% on some of the Archimonde deaths either, I haven't been in for all of our kills, but usually when someone dies, shortly after someone else dies, then we all do. On pretty much any other fight in the game, if someone else dies, we call them a retard and keep going (or call their healers a retard and keep going)

Combine the very low forgiveness for deaths with the possibility for random deaths that are unpreventable and you've got a problem. Personally, if there's an issue with this fight I think it comes down to a very small fix. People are talking about a 5 second cooldown, I think that's overdoing it (from my understanding of the fight as a tank) give a 1 second cooldown and make people who are currently in the air untargetable with grips and you're done. This prevents a grip air burst instant combo, so instead of having the time it takes for someone to go out of range moving instantly to decurse them, you've got an extra second, that should be handleable if you're doing it right (I'd think) And you don't get people flung into the air, and just before they go out of range get gripped so that you have to hope they survive until they come back into range. That leaves you with a fight that would still be very difficult, still very unforgiving of deaths, still minimal to no room for error (you have a decurse window now instead of someone who Archimonde put out of range getting cursed and dieing) but you have the window. Anything else could be worked around (from my understanding) if you do it right. Even a bad doomfire, get the guy some heals, have someone assigned to it and communicate, if it's just terrible for melee, move him. I know we all hate that, but it's not the same as the "lol dead" combos, which should be the big problem.

edit: Dots, you're right pretty much consistantly with every mob that does fear. Just thinking back to Nefarian I've been slow on the swap on that when I was horde, walked a step in fear before breaking it, and he's still on me. All fearing mobs detarget completely for probably about a second after casting, and if you've broken it by then you're still going to have aggro, and I'm pretty sure without doing anything.

Well, the combat log always lags a little compared to what you see in game. The first log is also one of the slowest fear breaks I could find. I just wanted to show 2 logs where you might expect him to attack someone else, but he actually didn't.
Melee range might have to do with it, but it's hard to tell. You never really know how the server 'sees' the situation.

I hardly ever look at the cast bar (on PitBull). Instead, I turned off all BigWigs alerts except for the fear warning. The only time that I might glance over it is when the fear cooldown is about to expire, because it has a sound as well.

Something I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is how helpful the extra Camera Zooming command is when trying to notice/avoid doomfires.

/console cameraDistanceMaxFactor 4

Thats not a overly bad suggestion at all, would allow for a raid to "brace" for the incoming onslaught.

I am semi excited to go back to archimonde this week, probably tonight. Hopefully we'll get him this week, only had one night of attempts last week. Overall a fun fight. It is possible to recover from a soulcharge, we've done it a few times depending on when the fear is or how silly our raid members act around fire.

I think we'll do much better this week with a fresh start and with a little more preperation. The failure rate on purifications seemed low to me as well, I used about 12 and only had 1 fail, really small sample size though. I didn't really trust my decursers.

I don't quite know how to reply to this one..

Are you serious? Are you really going to sit there and say Archimonde is ok, but that Thrall needs fixing? Azgalor is a joke. Last night we cleared first 4 bosses in Hyjal (skipping Archimonde on purpose for now).

Our Azgalor fight was flawless, and our previous Azgalor kills were also very close to being flawless in the sense that at no time was Thrall anywhere near death. The crazy thing is, we engage thrall in the fight at 99%. Yes, thats right. He's in the full duration of the fight. Want to hear something else crazy? We had 4 melee in on azgalor. Oh, I forgot to mention, The Tauren warriors also engaged at 95%.

Now doing some basic math... Thrall + 4 melee + Tauren warriors = shitload of melee on Azgalor.

Last night, We finished the fight with Thrall at 80% health. Our secret is that apparently our DPS is so out of control, that Azgalor just insta gibs.

WWS: in case you want to see specifics: Wow Web Stats


Anyway, I'm sorry to derail this thread, but comparing Azgalor/Thrall to Archimonde is rediculous. Thrall is not the glass cannon that people make him out to be. However, to continue beating a dead horse, Archimonde has a plethora of abilities that can conspire against your raid to cause wipes that make baby jesus want to cry.

The way we do az'galor I feel is completely, 100% repeatable, regardless of who gets doomed.

We keep the MT and his healer 100 yards away near thrall (they cannot be doomed this far out), with Az'galor at the tauren camp. The doomed player's mob is picked up by a feral druid who drags the mob to the tank. The doomed player is battle rezzed or soulstoned, leaving basically no one dead until the 5th or so doom. Even the feral has a backup.

I would guess the only way to wipe here would be a windfury+parry death streak, but that goes for any boss.

To me that truly seems like ingenuity overcoming the obstacles - not this lotto nonsense on archimonde. We've tried literally half a dozen strats on archimonde, and they're all bollocks - they result in roughly the same results. Personal execution is huge, but luck is as well. Even if you're not that great at archimonde, you can win if things go well - even if you're great at archimonde, you can wipe if things do not go well.
Two pulls back to back on this fight are consistent in being inconsistent (although not nearly as much as pre-patch). Its basically annoying.

Fights are supposed to be fun, not something you dread. Many of you know what I'm talking about - there are those fights that you dread even logging in for, because you know it is going to be a royal pain to get done.

I also saw your post about "why would I not use deathwish on a fight w/ an enrage timer" that you edited. While the "get some brain" comment may be seen as a bit harsh, I believe you must remember that this is a survivability fight before a omgdps fight.

This also doesn't mean that you shouldn't use deathwish, what I found works best is I break the first fear with deathwish (after the MT breaks his) and then dps until the fear cooldown is up. Usually there are a few seconds left on deathwish, at that point and i back up 10yds or so, just incase the fear comes immediately and the MT has short GCD issues. Once deathwish drops I return to melee range and zerker out of the fear after the MT. You still get ~25/30 seconds from your deathwish and there is less chance for getting melee'd if you've got some distance.

Creating less chances for a wipe > extra swings with dw up

Or you could just click off death wish when the fear casts, either way.