Why can't offtanks attack with the patch? They are disabling the parry mechanic for Mother Shahraz are they not?
That is planned for "a later patch", not 2.2. Daelo clearly distinguishes between what's coming in 2.2 and what's coming later than 2.2 in his post here.
Your theory doesn't hold water in practice, I think you're seeing patterns where there are none. I can disprove it with a single instance that doesn't match. Here's our positioning, this is where people are from the pull onwards.
R M
T
P
R = Ranged and healers
M = Melee and Mother Shahraz
T = Tank
P = the port location that disproves your theory. We have gotten plenty of ports in that spot and no one is standing there, or even at that angle, ever, until someone actually gets ported there.
Either way I'll watch a few ports, it's easy enough to disprove if there's one port that doesn't show it, and I'll watch positioning more closely on our next kill.
It's an interesting theory, and while I think I've seen ports that don't follow that rule, I'm not 100% sure.
I also don't think outside of preventing furniture ports I'd see much use in it, but it could explain why we've had less couch ports since switching to a 1 group strat.
Your theory doesn't hold water in practice, I think you're seeing patterns where there are none. I can disprove it with a single instance that doesn't match. Here's our positioning, this is where people are from the pull onwards.
R M
T
P
R = Ranged and healers
M = Melee and Mother Shahraz
T = Tank
P = the port location that disproves your theory. We have gotten plenty of ports in that spot and no one is standing there, or even at that angle, ever, until someone actually gets ported there.
Your theory just really does not make sense.
Trouble.. draw a line from R to T and keep it going, it crosses where P is right? thats a portal path.
It's not just that clumping reduces the chance of extra FA damage. Clumping is also desirable because it ensures everyone will be in healing range of everyone else 100% of the time, and most importantly clumping really lets Chain Heal work its magic. In my mind that's a convincing argument for the 1-camp strategy in itself, but obviously your mileage may vary and plenty of people have success with more camps.
I couldn't disagree with this more. 1 ranged camp provides 0 benefit over 2 ranged camps while adding several degrees of difficulty to the encounter. One group simply increases the impact of mana drain, and makes an FA port onto the group a more difficult thing to deal with, while adding 0 tangible benefit. A port on the group may be less frequent, but the fact that one single port has the potential to cause serious damage in a 1 group setup negates this as being any kind of an advantage.
2 ranged camps makes FA ports essentially trivial (they probably are with the 1 camp strategy as well, I just can't imagine it being as easy to survive a bad luck scenario) , still ensures everyone will be in healing range (assuming you have proper positioning with all groups), makes mana burn less of an issue, and actually makes chain heal MORE effective, as the targets aren't spread so thin (assuming you have 2 resto shaman, you go from 20 ranged targets it can bounce to to 10). It does all of this, mind you, while allowing people who are ported more freedom to run with FA, because no matter where they go in the entire room now, they will have healers in range, something that isn't possible with a 1 camp strategy.
Trouble.. draw a line from R to T and keep it going, it crosses where P is right? thats a portal path.
R and T would be ranged and tank, thus not fitting your theory, since it would have to go through Shahraz, not the tank.
I'll watch it myself either way but I'm pretty sure most people here have seen ports that wouldn't follow the theory, but since we won't be fighting Shahraz til wednesday I can't give 100% since I don't memorize where our ports go.
Either way, there's clearly more than one way to peel this onion. We have gone with one ranged camp (including healers) the entire time and never really had any issues other than ports by the tank/melee. Other people spread and it works for them. I could probably count on one hand the number of times we have had couch ports.
I couldn't disagree with this more. 1 ranged camp provides 0 benefit over 2 ranged camps while adding several degrees of difficulty to the encounter. One group simply increases the impact of mana drain, and makes an FA port onto the group a more difficult thing to deal with, while adding 0 tangible benefit. A port on the group may be less frequent, but the fact that one single port has the potential to cause serious damage in a 1 group setup negates this as being any kind of an advantage.
2 ranged camps makes FA ports essentially trivial (they probably are with the 1 camp strategy as well, I just can't imagine it being as easy to survive a bad luck scenario) , still ensures everyone will be in healing range (assuming you have proper positioning with all groups), makes mana burn less of an issue, and actually makes chain heal MORE effective, as the targets aren't spread so thin (assuming you have 2 resto shaman, you go from 20 ranged targets it can bounce to to 10). It does all of this, mind you, while allowing people who are ported more freedom to run with FA, because no matter where they go in the entire room now, they will have healers in range, something that isn't possible with a 1 camp strategy.
First off, chain heal hops intelligently. Having an extra guy in your stack sitting at 98% health isn't going to cause him to steal a chain heal hop that could've saved someone.
Second, I think with one ranged camp you want single healers off to the sides to handle FA. Our setup basically looks like a square, with our entire ranged camp and Shahraz/melee/tanks diagonally opposite from each other, and then a single healer at each of the other two corners of the square to handle FA ports on those sides. It works well.
First off, chain heal hops intelligently. Having an extra guy in your stack sitting at 98% health isn't going to cause him to steal a chain heal hop that could've saved someone.
Second, I think with one ranged camp you want single healers off to the sides to handle FA. Our setup basically looks like a square, with our entire ranged camp and Shahraz/melee/tanks diagonally opposite from each other, and then a single healer at each of the other two corners of the square to handle FA ports on those sides. It works well.
The benefit isn't having less people to hop to, it's having less people to handle casting it on in the first place. I've yet to find the healer that tells me they are better at handling 20 healing targets than they are 10.
Also, I still fail to see a single benefit of setting it up with a single stack, even as you describe it. You simply gain nothing. Setting healers off to the side and spreading them out some only makes this sound significantly worse to me- now, not only have you negated the only possible benefit of a single stack (limiting the chances of an FA port on top of people), but you've done nothing to negate the main negative aspect of it (an FA port landing directly on top of essentially the entire raid).
The question in my mind is why bother with doing it this way when 2 ranged camps gives you everything you get out of 1 camp, while taking the possibility of random bad luck out of the equation? Simply saying that you've done it that way before doesn't answer the question of what benefit it brings (we've still only experienced 1 knock up/insta-gib ever, so I fail to see this is a viable defense for it, unless our luck is simply off the charts).
To be fair, most guilds find there setup and stick with it once the kinks are worked out. People are stubborn to change something that has worked in the past, and that is understandable. However, throughout this entire thread, I struggle to find instances of people complaining that the multiple ranged camp setup is screwing them, and have found numerous instances of people complaining about the RNG wiping them with the 1 camp approach. This is all beyond moot come Tuesday, but it's still peculiar none the less.
You say it works well, but finding what works well is rarely the point. Finding what works BEST is generally the goal. In this case, what works best, to me, is the strategy that relies on skill, and not the RNG (as a disclaimer, we've never thought the 1 stack strategy was reliable or sound and thus never tried it on any of our kills, so my comments are based strictly on my own knowledge of the fight based on our setup and what I have read from other guilds in this thread).
We've been working on Mother for a few days now, and the sheer randomness and stupidity of the fight just astounds me. It makes me want to cry, claw my eyes out with an ice pick, and watch paint dry all at the same time, for that would probably make me want to end my life less than the Mother encounter. Sorry for the personal rant.
My question though is (and this may, hopefully, change in 2.2), do guilds that have Mother on complete farm (EJ, Titan are guild tags I see on here often) even tend to wipe on her several times a clear due to stupid random elements, e.g. 3 tank healers being ported right on top of the MT (was my favorite random wipe of the past few nights)? Or once you get it down, does it seem to come easier the following weeks like most, if not all, boss encounters do?
Yeah, we had a lot of what seemed like random wipes the past few nights. But, I was just wondering if it really was randomness, or people not playing well. I tend to lean toward the prior, and hope to chalk the 30% and less wipes to just dumb luck. Is the randomness avoidable to a certain extent, once you get the fight more mastered?
It feels easier each week off course, but we never one shoted her though (but many guilds do). Usually, we kill her in the 3-5 first attempts, so it's ok for us. We aren't probably using the best strat (in terms of positionning) but well, aslong as she dies before trash respawn, it's good enough for me, especially since massive nerf is incoming. And well, when you only have content for 2 raids nights per week, wasting 1 hour on a boss isn't so bad..
It feels easier each week off course, but we never one shoted her though (but many guilds do). Usually, we kill her in the 3-5 first attempts, so it's ok for us. We aren't probably using the best strat (in terms of positionning) but well, aslong as she dies before trash respawn, it's good enough for me, especially since massive nerf is incoming. And well, when you only have content for 2 raids nights per week, wasting 1 hour on a boss isn't so bad..
For a while we were using the 3 ranged camp positioning, but we have since moved to the ranged camp> melee camp > tank all in a line, with 2-3 healers out to the sides healing FA. It seemed like it worked a lot better, and residual damage from FA was basically down to 0. That is of course until the last few attempts of the night when it seemed every FA spawned in some camp, which I guess is just one of the downfalls of the 'line' strat. It did feel as if she could have died on any attempt, and bad luck just got us, but maybe I am just trying to be optimistic. Let's just hope she dies tonight, eh?
On a side note, thank god she can be leashed. I'm not sure if I could make that run as often as we have wiped on her. Granted, it's no pre-portal C'thun or even post-portal Emp run, but still bad.
Yeah, don't worry you will kill her. We learnt shahraz in 2 nights of attemps. First night was horrible, our best try was like 50% and I felt "omg we will never make it" but 2nd night, things got better and better, less and less people died on FA ports and finally we had a good run and she just died. Shahraz seems horrible (and is horrible) but it's not so bad when your raid finally manages to handle FA correctly.
You say it works well, but finding what works well is rarely the point. Finding what works BEST is generally the goal. In this case, what works best, to me, is the strategy that relies on skill, and not the RNG (as a disclaimer, we've never thought the 1 stack strategy was reliable or sound and thus never tried it on any of our kills, so my comments are based strictly on my own knowledge of the fight based on our setup and what I have read from other guilds in this thread).
The other main benefit is that it frees up much more space for ported people to run. Yes, a port directly onto the raid hurts, and if you get too many of them you'll wipe. But we've had 3 ports onto our ranged stack in one attempt and still one-shotted her (this past week, actually). Now of course if she ported directly onto our stack 3-4 times in a row, I don't think we could recover from that, but that's extraordinarily unlikely. But I think that when people get ported, they're understandably hesitant to run into a large crowd of people, which leads the ported people to tend to clump more and for longer than is healthy or perhaps even survivable. In my experience a port on the melee hurts but isn't that big a deal. But a port into the space between the melee and the closest wall tends to be more likely to result in deaths, because no one wants to run directly into the melee clump while they have FA, so spreading quickly is less likely to happen. With one ranged clump there's much much more totally open space and not only are people less likely to land ON a camp, but they're less likely to land in a position where their movement is restricted by their proximity to a camp.
I know I've bragged about this a few times already, but my evidence that a one-camp strat isn't overly susceptible to the RNG, or that if it is we are extraordinarily lucky (and I don't think we are), is that, looking at our guild WWS page, we have leashed Shahraz once after 2m16s on Aug 11th and once after 1m43s on Aug 18th. Every other time we have aggroed her since July, she has died. That doesn't strike me as a strat that puts your hands in the RNG.
Having 2 camps instead of 1 basically doubles the chance that your camp will get ported onto, so no it doesn't really make the fight any easier.
I'm with Gurg on this one, if it was *THAT* random people wouldn't be doing the 1 camp method and they certainly wouldn't be 1-shot or nearly 1-shotting her weekly. We've had less than 10 wipes in our 6 kills of her.
Either way I'm happy that I'll never have to deal with this buggy piece of shit raid boss again!
It really does get easier, I don't think I can quite put it at as good as Gurgthock is saying for us, but we haven't had more than a couple wipes on her for a long time. With several one shots in the past few months. Personally I feel the biggest difference is having the tank just not be a concern on healing anymore. I've got all the tank loot I want outside of the Akama boots, and I use the SR boots for Shahraz anyway, and tank healing just doesn't feel hectic now, because her burst is not deadly.
When you can have a few MT healers ported and not have to worry that the few seconds between that happening and calling for help on the MT is going to lead to a tank death, a lot of things become less of an issue.
We still wipe sometimes to just RNG screwage, but we haven't stacked ourselves against that (aka tank thrown in the air then lashed, or one tank ported, one thrown in the air, MT on the ground lashed) but far more often if we leash her it's to a new app, or someone who hasn't been raiding for a while coming back and getting a few people killed with FA. just doesn't seem to be a huge concern anymore to kill her quickly and painlessly.
First - First kill inside three hours.
Second - Five hours of wiping.
Third - One shot.
Forth - Kill on forth pull.
Tonight will be our last night of the fight in it's current state and I for one am extremely glad. Sure, Black Temple will be pretty damn easy afterwards but if I want hard fights, I don't want them to feel artificially hard like Shahraz does right now.
The other main benefit is that it frees up much more space for ported people to run. Yes, a port directly onto the raid hurts, and if you get too many of them you'll wipe. But we've had 3 ports onto our ranged stack in one attempt and still one-shotted her (this past week, actually). Now of course if she ported directly onto our stack 3-4 times in a row, I don't think we could recover from that, but that's extraordinarily unlikely. But I think that when people get ported, they're understandably hesitant to run into a large crowd of people, which leads the ported people to tend to clump more and for longer than is healthy or perhaps even survivable. In my experience a port on the melee hurts but isn't that big a deal. But a port into the space between the melee and the closest wall tends to be more likely to result in deaths, because no one wants to run directly into the melee clump while they have FA, so spreading quickly is less likely to happen. With one ranged clump there's much much more totally open space and not only are people less likely to land ON a camp, but they're less likely to land in a position where their movement is restricted by their proximity to a camp.
I know I've bragged about this a few times already, but my evidence that a one-camp strat isn't overly susceptible to the RNG, or that if it is we are extraordinarily lucky (and I don't think we are), is that, looking at our guild WWS page, we have leashed Shahraz once after 2m16s on Aug 11th and once after 1m43s on Aug 18th. Every other time we have aggroed her since July, she has died. That doesn't strike me as a strat that puts your hands in the RNG.
This is the first response I can actually respect in regards to the 1 camp strategy. We haven't been killing her for quite as long, but have experienced similar results and ultra quick kills with a 2 ranged camp strategy, and have had the added benefit of never being subject to the possibility of 3-4 ports onto a single camp in the same fight wiping us.
Thankfully (or perhaps even unfortunately as we somewhat like this encounter), this has 0 real meaning come tomorrow, and probably isn't worth arguing further.
Both strategies may have there merit, and which strategy anyone chooses to argue is most likely based on how there particular guild sets it up.
After endless tries on Mother we decided to use the one clamped group in the middle of the benches. That was yesterday after a 1st insta shot tank wipe we got on with the 2nd proper try of the night. At 60% we lost 2 people in an FA and kept going until she went down and it was our first mother kill.
This fight is a lottery wherever you decide to split your groups for FA ports there is always a chance you will get 10 ports in the raid or 10 ports on the MT. This was happened with our kill lucky FA's and it was a smooth kill.
My question is for the guilds who kill her every reset. Does it feel a lottery every time? You still get unlucky with FA ports?
I hope that 2.2 will make this encounter less depending on luck factors and make it so that with a perfect execution like the archimonde encounter is now
Having tried this 1-ranged-group strategy once with disastrous results (relearning sucks) I guess I'm not really convinced it matters.
Granted if you use 1 ranged group you get ports on people less frequently but you get more people affected by it. Or as Gurgthock put it, it influences the options ported people have where they can run to.
I can come up with reasons for multiple ranged groups as well though.
Yes you get ports on people more often but fewer people get hit by it.
I find people aren't really restricted in where they can move to after getting ported except for melee. If you get ported on other players they just move and you choose some direction relative to the other ported people.
Your entire ranged camp (healers) does not need to move when ported on so more steady healing.
I can even make the same claim as Gurgthock that we have been one-shotting Shahraz quite regularly while using a 3-ranged-groups strategy.
In my opinion she isnt that much lottery. Most of our wipes are caused by peoples bad moving when fa. Sometimes you can get a port on raid but its not always a wipe. With keeping up the mt we never had problems and the sinister/saber combos were rare for us.
Just wondering if I can get some help here. Tonight was my guilds second night of attempts on Mother, 2 clears worth per night. Our first night we had a best attempt of 44%, second best around 60. Tonight we had 3+ attempts sub 30% including a 19% wipe.
We're using a 1-camp strat, see: http://www.insomniaguild.org/raids/BT/mother1.jpg
Melee tend to hug the wall a bit more, casters stand at the VERY EAST of the overhang, but still under it. This way everyone is under the overhang to avoid being burst up in the air. We have 2 healers stand outside of the group on the road to help with FA people. 1 directly south of the melee/tank area, 1 SE of the caster group. FA people are instructed to (attempt) to go so that one person heads to the entrance, one to where Mother starts, one to the waterfall on the south side of the road. Run right through the healer if you can to. Everyone has (or claims to have!) 365 SR.
Here is the link to our 33 attempts tonight: Wow Web Stats
I realize this encounter is getting nerfed a LOT tomorrow, but it would still be nice to have some input on how to improve. I'm sure that we would of had 4-5 kills tonight just with caster dps increased, nevermind countless people dieing to the last 1-2 ticks of FA damage. I really wish we could of killed her before the nerf, but at least I can say we tried.
09/23/07, 6:03 PM
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