Grungo

Another helpful tip for doing this with fewer shamans is utilizing mass dispel. A fear warded priest who starts casting mass dispel as soon as Archi starts casting fear can clear 1/3 of the raid's fears (this is assuming the group was properly clustered already, and the priest is quick enough). Shadow priests tend to better for this as they've already got Archi targeted, so they're more likely to be able to react as the fear starts casting.

Not as good as having a tremor totem for that group, of course (this only works once every 3 minutes per priest), but it's helpful for those running low on shamans.

 

djgc

Hi all thanks I've spent the pass hour reading this whole thread almost and I managed to find some useful tips.

My guild only raid 2 nights per week so we usually clear first 4 bosses in first night and get few attempts on archi the same night and full night on archi the next night.

We've been doing this for 2 weeks and so far I don't see much progress and I'm beginning to lose some hope.

Or does Archi just do that to you? .. make you feel sad : p ..

We trying the 4 camp strategy at the moment and we never last til 70%. The main problem we find out were the melees taking doomfire. Although it doesnt spawn on top I remember asking them and 1 of the melee said fire kept crossing into Archi under his feet. Does that even happen that occasionally? Is he lying to me? Or is someone doing something wrong? Our outside group seems to be okay surviving themselves but sometimes during a fear or airburst combo the MT dies. Already full hot him or at least tried our best coz sometimes our druids get cut off my doomfire so they cant get back in and then fear happens.

We also experimented the semi circle strategy. Fire was more chaotic and I just felt like it wasnt really a good strategy for long term. With semi circle we had one attempt where we got him to 65% i dunno if that was just a fluke / or lucky with fires.

I was wondering if anyone out there ever experienced my problems and managed to solve them easily?..

I have 2 healers 1 decurser 2 dps in each group, 4 groups have shamans which i should be benefiting and melees get a shammy for tremor too but I dont really have a healer standing in the middle with the melees. I read here and a lot of ppl put like a druid with them is that even good? Will the druid eat doomfire himself?


I also read about the 3 CAMP .. hmm Whats the difference between the 3 camp / 4 camp?

How would u arrange groups for the 3 camp strategy?

I watched a video using 3 camp strategy where MT is in the middle, melee behind as usual and another group more behind the melee, 1 group right of archi and 1 group left of archi so it kinda forms a triangle. I saw 4 healers in 1 group tho and they get airburst and run together. With 4 healers being airbursted together in 1 group wouldnt that be risky for the MT?

I would really hope to see some progression soon cuz its really frustrating. We have no ppl dying to airburst and rangers only eat maybe 1-2 doomfire which is completely healable by its group healer. It was more of the melee that kinda made our attempts short it seems. They are a big distraction to our healers which shouldnt be that way.

Are there any extra addons I can get to assist this encounter better except for boss mods? : )

Please help : ) I'd love to look into the 3 camp strat too if someone can explain how it works and how ppl and groups r setup. I'd do anything to find out wuts best for the guild to get the kill!!


Sorry for my dreadful long typing ! I find this forum really good coz I posted few times in blizzard raid&dungeon forum and smart asses always reply the real strat is dodge fire or no shitties. I mean yea.. but thats not really helpful.

 

dragon12

From personal experience, the melee are your biggest liability on this fight. I know when we were learning him I regularly felt like I should just get rid of the melee group for this fight and go with all ranged.

The melee have a big advantage and a big disadvantage by being in melee range (assuming they're close enough to the boss to not have DF spawn directly on them).
Advantage: They should have less DF to deal with than the ranged groups, so should have to move less
Disadvantage: If they do have to flee from a doomfire, it's very easy for them to run out of room depending on DF positions.

The most important thing to emphasise is actually to your ranged groups - if a DF spawns and starts moving towards them, they must run directly away from the boss. A lot of the reason DF ends up circling back to the melee is because ranged groups try to play fancy with it and don't deal with it properly. If you emphasise and enforce the policy of running directly away from it, the DFs on the melee will reduce by loads.

Apart from that, some things we did to help DFs on the melee:

• Shaman in the melee group (we had enh) with a CoH priest standing in melee range with primary focus on the melee
• Resto shaman in the tank group along with a couple of tank healers - this shaman also stayed in melee range and helped out on healing the melee when needed.
• We did a 4-group strat - a melee group and three ranged groups. The ranged groups positioned west, south and east of the boss, with the melee to the north. By having no ranged group on the same side as the melee we found that the two doomfires spawning on the north side of the boss mostly just wandered straight out and never bothered anyone.

 

djgc

Thanks Dragon12 for the advice : )

This is the position we are practicing at the moment
http://www.siubeen.com/~gc/images/hrarchi.jpg

'gay leo' = our MT hahaha ...

When u say a resto shaman and coh priest in melee range what sort of position would they be in my diagram?

Do they stack with melee?. How would airburst affect them?


I was trying to setup the MT healers to the groups behind the MT so they would be able to reach him much easier.


If you put most of the MT healers in 1 group if they get Airbursted all at once what would u do? : ) coz i currently have 2 healers per group except melee group and 1 healer is group healer and the other is MT heal so the MT heal will be spread across each group. Oh I have 2 Mt heal in 1 of the groups together and the rest are spread in each group.

 

dragon12

The resto shaman and CoH priest both stand with the melee in our positioning, and the should (and want to be!) airburst with the melee - their job is to keep the melee alive, so they want to stick with them at all times.
We use three ranged groups instead of your four - each of the ranged groups have a decurser and a group healer. Some of the tank healers are in group 1 and some of them are spread around the ranged groups, but none of the tank healers actually stick with their group - they're "free-er", and are supposed to try to stay in range of the MT at all times as much as they can. Paladins and Druids are good for this - Paladins can bubble DF, Druids can just HoT themselves up and keep going. One thing to be careful of with free healers is that they can cause doomfires to loop around if they dodge, so as best they can they should lead DFs away if it's coming straight for them.

 

djgc

Thanks : ) so would ur strat actually be called 3 camp? coz I always take 4 camp as 4 range group around.

If 3 range group around Archi how do you position them if u dont mind showing? and for those freestyle MT healers do decursers just also free for all decurse them? wut if they get airbursted and how about fear since their spread out by themselves? : )

Thanks!!

 

Mideci

So yeah, melee typically kill Archimonde. Let's not start calling them a liability. They get gigantic amounts of dps time in a fight where ranged doesn't. Doomfire never initially targets them when they are actually in melee range (i.e. they haven't just been airbursted or something else odd hasn't happened). Rogues can CloS Doomfire. Shamans can keep a Tremor down to minimize fear. DPS warriors can LOL at at the fear.

Now, let's talk about Doomfire crossing back through Archimonde / melee. It's safe to say there are really only two ways this happens, even though actually witnessing it is nigh impossible.

(1) Someone in melee gets out of melee range and gets initially targeted for a Doomfire. And, yes, Doomfires target people. That's why you don't want to "deke" them, sidestep them, whatever. You want to turn around and run. Period.

(2) Someone in no man's land gets targeted when a Doomfire switches and that Doomfire, heretofore going about its merry business toward a "camp", comes back and cuts through melee/Archimonde/tank.

You want an unscientifically verified opinion? (2) is always someone's fault because on the majority of Archimonde attempts / kills, we don't see a fire run through melee or the tank zone. That said, it's very hard to actually detect where someone needs to be to cause this mess to happen and I do believe 4 camps probably make it worse than 3. The reason? Doomfire has a greater chance to radically switch directions if the ranged groups are closer to one another. So if you have just 3 camps, your ranged groups are farther apart and are less likely to have a Doomfire go racing across the map and -- in the process -- cut through melee.

We set up our ranged camps as follows: We start out looking at Archimonde where he stands... We have one group ride toward him and stop at max range away. We have another group ride through and stop at max range on the other "arm". We have the third group hang out by the big tree stump. If we have spare folk, we have them float around either with melee or where they see fit. We make those people smart people.

You seriously need your ranged groups to adopt three critical precepts if you want to kill this guy not just once but weekly:

(A) I will stand at maximum range so I have time to get away from the fires.
(B) When my group is bursted or feared or has fire, I will return to its original location ASAP to rejoin my healer and decurser.
(C) When fire comes, I will not finish casting, I will not pass GO, I will not collect $200. I will turn around 180 degrees and run. I will not stop until I am sure the fire is no longer coming towards us or moving. Then and only then, I will evaluate if I have safe path back.

 

dragon12

I do realise this, but nevertheless when learning Archi (for at least my guild and for djgc's) they tend to be the start of an awful lot of wipes. Note I didn't say "cause", because a lot of the time it's not their fault - doomfire gets looped into them etc. For early tries, they are a liability - when not everyone is really sure what they're supposed to be doing, it's much easier to survive (and so prolong tries) as ranged than melee, just in terms of the space you have to escape to when doomfires come calling.

"Stop thinking with your nuts and start thinking with the black and bitter ball of hatred buried in your chest"

 

Mideci

And in my guild -- which is a casual guild with a lot of mediocre players -- the melee was the start of virtually no wipes from the beginning. So I'd submit either your melee is doing something wrong or -- and this is much more likely -- your ranged is doing something fundamentally wrong.

Re-read what I wrote. Fire is simply not supposed to cross through Archimonde and melee. If this is happening with >>any<< frequency, people are simply screwing up. And those people are ranged people or incredibly stupid melee dpsers. Figure out which and train them or get rid of them. Archimonde is easily killed with 20 people who are not stupid. It's much harder to move to 25 when you add back in the 5 people who are.

We see a Doomfire run through melee/tank/Archimonde now and again. If people are looping it back as a matter of course, that's because the same people who (and this is noted like 20 pages ago) could mysteriously never sidestep something in their WoW tenure suddenly decide that sidestepping Doomfire makes them a good player. Turn --> run. Period.

It's just not even logical to back off calling them the cause and say they are the "start". The start of the wiping is the "genius" who torqued the Doomfire back across the middle. Because self-same genius also could've warned melee to get the hell out of there and apparently didn't. There are a good 18 people who can see a Doomfire coming back to the middle when it does happen before the melee does.

As for escape, I have no real idea what you are saying about ranged having some advantage. If Doomfire does come to melee and we do know about it, we have gigantic amounts of real estate to run out into and wait it out. "Melee cut off" is pretty common after an air burst and, yes, for the occasional Doomfire that's run through the melee area. Even if it hits all of your melee -- unlikely but ok let's say it does -- rogues have simply to CloS, warriors and shaman eat a healthstone, take a health pot immediately, shaman start healing themselves, and there should not be wipes to these melee-area Doomfires period.

And, no, fear is not relevant because if fear is incoming, i.e. the cooldown is up, everyone should be girding themselves for fear, positioning away from the fires, being ready with trinkets, berserker rage, etc.

 

Pharmacon

My question is in regards to fires. Does anyone know how they actually work? I'm melee so I miss a lot of the fire stuff and rely on guild members (competent ones) to fill me in. I've read and heard people mentioning fires randomly turning. Can't be that random or it would end up going through melee all the freaking time (under the assumption blizz still hates melee - last I checked, that's a yes). So does anyone know, or can point me somewhere to read, how the fires work. Some people have said they've seen a mage blink from a fire and immediately the fire turns...true? Also mentioned towards shaman ghost wolf and druid travel form.

We're learning the fight so imo we shouldn't be doing it just in case. However, some people are stubborn and want to do whatever they want.

Our guild is casual, raiding 3 days a week, so we don't get a lot of time on Archi a week (2 and a half raid days if we ignore BT).

 

taybul

Sometimes they go off on their own, and other times they'll try to follow someone in range. If this were the case, then strafing will tend to make it curl, so it's best to try kiting them directly away from Archimonde if you're "targeted".

 

Pharmacon

So to answer my question. No, you don't know how it works. I'm curious about actual mechanics.

 

Pheroz

Read the thread, it's been discussed to death with no confirmation in any way. Basically, if fire comes towards you, run away from it. If fire is looping around in melee, it's highly probable that someone is just trying to sidestep the fire and that is resulting in the fire looping back in.

Avoid fire, with the general practice of fire coming in your general direction, run away from Archimonde untill it cant reach melee if it loops back.

There's no real breakdown of mechanics, and theres nothing in game that anyone found that gives definitive verifiable proof of the mechanics - which is what you'd know if you read the thread.

Fire coming - run away. Directly away from the boss is better for fire control. Mathematical degree not necessary.

 

Mideci

And for the umpteen billionth time, what the fires will never do is simply decide to turn to >>not<< follow / target someone. They don't just say "hmm, I think I'll go zigzag my flaming self that way so I can make this encounter impossible to win." If they did, you'd see an awful lot less tier 6 helms running around and mid-level guilds like mine wouldn't have 6 Cat's Edges.

You really need to read Taybul's post again because although it's short, it's right on point...

Sometimes, they go off on their own.... The fires just head away from Archimonde, eventually stopping.

Other times, they'll try to follow someone in range.... The fires "chase" someone as they run away from them. It's when said person is running anywhere other than directly away from Archimonde that you have problems. Because that's when the fire can now pick a new nearby target and strafe across the groups in very, very bad ways.

Once you remove that from the equation as a regular occurrence, you bring Doomfire back to the way it's intended: a small annoyance that is designed to take portions of your raid out of the encounter repeatedly and usually briefly. It also must be minded when fear is incoming, an entirely predictable event thanks to boss mods.

Mages should generally not be blinking by the way, unless they are turning perfectly around and blinking. And even then they shouldn't be blinking. Why? Because you want your group to stay together. Your mage is a decurser. People can still get cursed. If your mage decides to go solo 20 yards away from the group and then the group gets cut off from the mage due to an airburst or whatever else, this is not good. This "me first" crap is what gets people killed.

Put a symbol on the head of someone in each camp who is competent. When the fire comes, they will turn and run. Have everyone run with them. It's a good thing.

 

Hirgux

Greetings,

at the moment we use a four point strat (Click here) for archi and killed him 3 times.
The problem is, that we sometimes really suck and we wipe several hours.

The main problem, beside stupidity, as far as I can see, is that doomfires go through the maintank or through the meeles. So I know, that when meeles get too far away they count as ranged an df can target them. Now everybody says, that when df goes to a group, the whole group has to move; but what happens when df e.g. spawns at the north but targets someone that is in the south - so it would run through meele? Can this happen?


Perhaps I want to try a three group strategy. Do you use a strat, where the groups stand like this:
Option 1
Or like this: Option 2
So all on one side of the boss (meele side; or mt side?) or all spread around in a triangle? What are the benefits of three points in contrast to four points?

Thank you =)

 

TimWischmeier

In my experience, you group your people around your decurser/healer. So if you just have 3 decurser, a four point strategie would not be that useful .

As far as I remember the doomfires spawn just outside of melee range. I am not 100% sure about this as I have mostly tanken him (was just 2 times there as a mage). And I just remember doomfires gong through melee if they are going in circles, which we were always able to avoid if people just run straight away from him.

We had times when we spent about 3 hours of wiping on him, even if we already had illidan down for some time. And all deaths we officers have seen / doomfires through melee range were able to put down to personal failure.


Beside your positioning question:

Doomfires themselves are not the problem. Even if it goes through melee range: there should be no problem for your melees to run away from it. And if they should complain they would not be able to do dps in such a case (while those cases should not occur often) - dps on archimonde is far away from being critical! If everyones just survives until the end and does some damage in between, you won't have any issues with the enrage timer.

They are some key-things you need to make sure every(!) in your raid understands:

- The tear does not fail magically sometimes, lags do not occur always if you're bursted.
- Doomfire: run straight away from archmonde
- Ranged: stay close to your healer(decurser
- Melee: run away from doomfire if it comes near
- Anounce 8 seconds left on Fear cooldown and make sure EVERYONE brings himself in a safe distance to all fires
- If everyone survives, Archminonde will die!

 

cs-cam

My guild initially had a lot of problems on Archi as well with people getting cut off by fire etc using a diamond layout. We did get a couple of kills with this method but they were flukes. We have since swapped to this positioning and are now finding things far, far easier.

Positioning
Red = Archimonde
Brown = Tank
Green = Tank healers
Blue = Ranged
Melee stand behind him, I forgot to include them as I am ranged DPS and tend to forget they exist

Each ranged group has its own healer, decurser and shaman for Tremor Totem. The reason we find this strat works is it assumed someone will be a retard and fuck up fire, so we decided to have all the ranged groups stand within range so cross healing can save the day. When we were spreading the groups out more, we found that people could get cut off far more easily. Now, for instance if my decurser gets air burst and I don't then I won't run out with him, I'll just slide over to the next ranged group and make use of their decurser and healer until mine gets back. We have marks on all decursers so they're easily identified in an emergency.

 

Airraid

Notwithstanding the mechanics of doomfire which I doubt anyone understands completely, I've found in our progression that using 4 groups (1 melee group and 3 ranged groups) is much easier to manage than using 4 ranged groups and 1 melee group. Decursing/healing seems to be more smooth and, as mentioned, occasionally you get doomfires that just wander in random directions without targeting anyone and remain completely harmless.

 

Malleus

We were using four ranged groups in the diamond formation last night, and the random DFs happened anyway. One spawned, headed straight out between groups 3 and 4 without deviating towards either, then disappeared off into the sunset. It was very odd.

 

Kayella

cs-cam, I'm quite taken by that idea.

One of the problems we've been having (okay, so we're having a lot of problems) is that having tank healers in each of the three / four ranged groups (and in melee too) means that the guys behind Archi end up getting a bit too close to him to be able to reach past his hitbox and heal the MT. They eat a lot of fire. Some of that is a 'learn to react fast and run out of fire' issue admittedly, but I'm trying to minimise the number of silly mistakes we can make.

How do you deal with the tank healers (who stand together) getting doomfire in your positioning?

 

Malleus

Can't speak for cs-cam, but we tried that a few times. We spread the tank healers more widely than you normally would - about 10 yards between each - with Paladins on each end of the line, the Shaman in the middle and Druids spaced between for decursing. In that way, MT healers would be Air Bursted one by one and DFs would also take only one of them out of commission. This all but ensured that two healers would be on the MT at all times, more usually three or four.

In the end we discarded the strategy, as it made it difficult for the Paladin healers to cope with Fear. Unless we instantly broke off our heals to collapse on the Shaman when Fear began casting, it was very possible for us to be feared out of range of the Tremor totem before it pulsed. If at that time the other healers were running from DF or back from an Air Burst, it would leave only one healer on the MT and he'd go down. Also, if a DF came in from the side as sometimes happens then we all had to flee.

 

kalbear

Has anyone tried an all-melee group? In other words, everyone go into melee range on each side of Archimonde. Airbursts would suck, admittedly, but shouldn't hit more than half a party at any time. Fears could be mass dispelled easily, and doomfires would be completely trivialized.

 

pope master

(Emphasis mine)

Doomfires would cause massive problems as soon as they curl back towards the melee.