Does no-one else use a druid healer with swiftmend on the MT in this encounter? We use one and it seems to help immensely with MT damage spikes - at least we haven't wiped since the first kill to the MT dying to "normal" damage (i.e. punt->lash instagib is the only thing) even with OT's being ported occaisionally due to Lash avoidance. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but we just never seem to experience continuous occurances of "lolyouwipe" for more than 2 attempts, even with FA ports on the raid. If it weren't for the fact that we've now had 4 repeat kills with it dying on the third go or quicker every time, I would say that it's just luck and that there's nothing different with our strategy compared to others, but it seems we're doing something right.
The things we generally wipe (or decide to reset) to are:
- Back to back FA ports on the raid (only ever seen this once I think, we've had it more than once but with shadow pot/healthstone/bandage and capped shadow res on everyone it's survivable by the majority)
- MT healers slowly dying off due to being crap at FA or having someone who can immune the damage being crap (paladin bubble running with them or mage blinking in a bad position, happens occaisionally)
- Instagib on the MT (lash in the air - generally one of the two wipes each week is due to this)
- Wicked beams for 60 seconds straight ending up with everyone slowly dying because of lack of heals because of mana issues (one-off, so far but could happen again).
And then theres always the MT charging the boss and getting instagibbed because he's a tool (happened once)
I'm also pretty sure that the beam has 20+ yard range on it - at least we had just as many problems (if not more) with people getting beamed with 3 camps before we changed strat.
Does anyone else get regular occurances of one or two people getting ported instead of three? I assume it's to do with pets/totems - we normally have 3-4 shamans and 3-4 pets in the raid, which stacks up for quite a lot of additional targets that are (I assume) immune to FA. This week we actually had someone ported on the MT only to find he was the only one ported, and had to quickly jump out of the way to avoid saber lash.
Yeah, we use a druid keeping rolling HoTs + paladins healing the MT, and it works just fine. As noted, no MT deaths really.
Back-to-back ports on the raid has happened to us many times. Or sometimes a single port on the raid when we're all desperately low on mana late in the fight. We had a ~20% wipe to this last week with everyone alive, but after a lot of Wicked Beams late in the fight we were all totally desperate for mana. Just as I'm saying, "Come on, bandage, HS, pot, anything... just do whatever you can to stay alive until healers can pot again," we get a port directly into the center of the raid, followed by a Sinful Beam. No chance.
Ports onto the raid in general are a major culprit. They hurt a lot, and even if no one dies, it's almost impossible to top everyone off from that much damage in the time alotted, particularly with Shahraz continuing to pile on extra beam damage. This is both a huge huge mana drain, and also poses the risk of someone not yet topped off being ported with only 50-60% health, which will almost surely kill them if it's a 3-man port in anything less than a perfect location.
Other reasons to leash the fight include a couple of terrible FA port locations -- into a corner, inside a bench, inside a tree, etc. -- that kill crucial people early on. We'll try to work through it if it happens late, but if the second port kills two MT healers at 85%, why bother, just leash and start over.
I also know that bitching about consumables is a bit silly these days, but still, the fact that I absolutely have to chain-chug super manas on every single pot cooldown, starting from 90%, as a healer, is painful. I've gone through 40 mana pots in ~3 hours on Shahraz before, and we've had to take breaks just to let healers go get more from the AH/bank/mailbox.
Yeah that's one of the things that I do still say sucks about Shahraz, and it's probably the worst fight for it, healers 100% chain chugging mana pots, tank 100% chain chugging ironshields, and you can't even try it without em. There's no other fight in the game that burns potions as fast as Shahraz, I've blown 40-50 pots in a night before on it and it's kind of upsetting.
1) You are wearing SR.
2) There is a periodic 1k mana burn that hits up to 10 casters; you can resist the damage from the burn, but not the mana loss.
3) Every 15sec she gains a new set of resistances, ranging from -10% to -90% damage taken, to each element, based on how much damage she took from that element during the prior 15sec.
On the other hand, physical DPS faces no impediments whatsoever, besides SR gear.
This is a pretty typical WWS parse as a result: Wow Web Stats
I see in this WWS parse that you still used 3 shadow priests even with all the mana burning and prismatic shields.
Are shadow priests still that good here because of the heavy mana burden on the healers or did you just not have any extra melee to stack the raid with?
2 shadow priests actually. Ignore Zyrr as he is holy, WWS assigns a pet named Zyrr to his damage instead. Anyhow I think it's more for the extra mana for the healers than anything else, and a little bit of help with VE as well.
To #71 (dukes) -- we've had 2 or even 1 person ported before. I believe that's when she selects a target that's debuffed with Saber Lash, hence ineligible for being ported.
To #71 (dukes) -- we've had 2 or even 1 person ported before. I believe that's when she selects a target that's debuffed with Saber Lash, hence ineligible for being ported.
We've been trying to piece this together aswell, not that i'm complaining that i'm the only one ported for a FA but we came to the conclusion it was targetting totems aswell, as more and more bosses seem to have been doing lately
Started looking into this fight a little more as we get closer to her in progression. From the Nihilum video I noticed that dots continue to tick for full value during prismatic shield as long as they were cast while it was down. On the kill in gurg's WWS, Siawyn's average VT tick was 325 damage; that appears to be far lower than what I would expect, since you could refresh dots right as prismatic expired, and again right before it was refreshed and all dots would tick for full value. Casting anything during a 90% shield, unless it's the final burn and you have mana to blow, seems like a total waste.
It appears that the cast cycle you would aim for would include 4/5 imp MB and be Precast VT to land right as shield expires -> SW:P -> Mind Blast -> Flay -> Flay -> Mind Blast -> VT -> SW:P -> Flay. The final flay would begin right before prismatic went up and continue to tick for full damage past the prismatic application. One shadow priest would then cast 1 rank1 flay during the prismatic shield to maintain shadow weaving (and a darkmoon: crusade buff if applicable), and only refresh VE during prismatic shield (also refreshes darkmoon: crusade). This cycle also ensures that misery remains on the boss at all times.
My only question is: does running a dot cycle like that screw yourself for the next prismatic shield? If I understand correctly, the number of stacks of the debuff depends on how much school damage Shahraz took during the previous 15 seconds, so would having your dots tick for full damage during a 9-stack cause her to have a 1-3 stack during your "nuke phase"?
I don't have exact numbers on what triggers a particular stack level, but I would think having dots up from multiple people would certainly trigger a 2 or 3 stack at the minimum. Then the question is, is having that dot damage worth only doing 80% damage during the nuke phase? We always assumed it wasn't, hence we always made sure our dots were dropping off before you got far into the anti-shadow phase.
Ignore my VT average in that kill, I was actually testing a few things - it led to quite a few VT ticks at greatly reduced damage. I'm glad you mentioned the Nihilum video because I think we misunderstood how the shield worked as a result -- which meshes with what I was testing. I still don't think it's a good idea to refresh dots just before the 90% shield goes up though.
I've gone through 40 mana pots in ~3 hours on Shahraz before, and we've had to take breaks just to let healers go get more from the AH/bank/mailbox.
I don't think I've used 40 mana pots in total over all of our Shahraz attempts, it sounds like having only one ranged group isn't exactly the optimal strategy. Although I will agree there are still elements to the fight which should be fixed, namely the midair lash, the annoying objects with collision around the room, and maybe simply removing the mana drain.
It's not even really the mana burn. Chain-casting chain heal in SR gear is simply not something a shaman can sustain for 6-8 minutes without potting. I lose ~75 mp5 putting on SR gear. That's 1800 less mana every 2 minutes, even assuming I never get hit with Wicked at all. That missing mana has to come from somewhere, and the answer is lots of mana pots. Maybe it's different for paladins who are getting mana from spiritual attunement whenever they get beamed or FA'd?
Is it definitely triggered by damage taken rather than number of spells in that school that land? If it hasn't been tested already, I imagine it would be easy to find out by having everyone dot the shit out of her at the end of a nuke phase and making sure nobody casts any shadow spells during the shield phase. If it was based on number of spells, at least the fight would be slightly less brutal on shadow priests (and warlocks). Hard numbers on what triggers it will certainly be something I try to glean from combat logs when we start working on her (assuming someone here hasn't done it for me by then).
It's definitely damage taken and not a Viscidus-like counter. We tested this during our early pulls by having everyone use rank 1 spells. With rank 1 nukes you will get no shields at all.
I was trying to make the point that we don't spend nearly as much time throwing ourselves at Shahraz hoping for a little luck, the fight is still obviously mana intensive, wearing SR gear and taking a 1k mana burn every so often isn't exactly easy on anyone's mana pool.
It's a shame this fight is so horrible currently, because Fatal Attraction is one of the more original and fun mechanics of a boss fight in TBC, but people, including myself, mainly look at the other spells this boss has that makes the fight so unfun, damn you mana burn, why are you here?
I was under the impression that FA damage was based on proximity, ala Gruul shatter, therefore my reasoning. So apparently it was something I had to experience for myself.
That's pretty effing gay then. However that still doesn't answer my beam question!
Shahraz's beams don't chain like C'thun's eye beams, or even player chain lightning/chain heal/etc. They have a chain length of roughly 15 to 20 yards, making spreading out impractical at best. Spreading out also highly increases the chances that FA will land on somebody.
I was trying to make the point that we don't spend nearly as much time throwing ourselves at Shahraz hoping for a little luck, the fight is still obviously mana intensive, wearing SR gear and taking a 1k mana burn every so often isn't exactly easy on anyone's mana pool.
Are you reliably killing her in 3 attempts or less? If so, WWS? And what exactly is your point with the mana pot thing? Even if I'm not getting mana burned, I have to pot every single cooldown or run OOM. Bluster all you like about it, that's the reality for a Shaman.
It's the reality of a Paladin as well, I use Super Mana Pot's on every cooldown regardless if I feel I need too, because at any point in the fight you will likely need to burst heal with max rank or you will take a mana burn or two, then you'll be wishing you took that mana pot earlier :p
Originally Posted by LiteSabre
Shahraz's beams don't chain like C'thun's eye beams, or even player chain lightning/chain heal/etc. They have a chain length of roughly 15 to 20 yards, making spreading out impractical at best. Spreading out also highly increases the chances that FA will land on somebody.
There are advantages and disadvantages to spreading out or standing in one big group, neither way is better and both work, it's just what is better for your guild, try both methods and see what works for you.
Are you reliably killing her in 3 attempts or less? If so, WWS? And what exactly is your point with the mana pot thing? Even if I'm not getting mana burned, I have to pot every single cooldown or run OOM. Bluster all you like about it, that's the reality for a Shaman.
I was making the point that burning 40 mana pots in a span of 3 hours seems rather ridiculous as I have probably used a few less than that total on all of our attempts, especially when it sounds as if these are on subsequent kills to the first. Shahraz is random, sure, but I don't think randomness is the sole culprit of burning through 40 mana pots in 3 hours. We have 4 kills on Shahraz, two of them were within 5 attempts spanning maybe a half hour, and the other, apart from our first, was in just under 2 hours of attempts. But judging by some of the complaints in this thread, that sounds incredibly reliable, so I am not sure why you are tying reliable with 3 attempts or less, or how my comment turned into a "Shamans have to pot every 2 minutes but Paladins don't" debate. What I wasn't commenting on was the fact that a Shaman had to burn through 40 mana pots.
I was making the point that burning 40 mana pots in a span of 3 hours seems rather ridiculous as I have probably used a few less than that total on all of our attempts, especially when it sounds as if these are on subsequent kills to the first. Shahraz is random, sure, but I don't think randomness is the sole culprit of burning through 40 mana pots in 3 hours. We have 4 kills on Shahraz, two of them were within 5 attempts spanning maybe a half hour, and the other, apart from our first, was in just under 2 hours of attempts. But judging by some of the complaints in this thread, that sounds incredibly reliable, so I am not sure why you are tying reliable with 3 attempts or less, or how my comment turned into a "Shamans have to pot every 2 minutes but Paladins don't" debate. What I wasn't commenting on was the fact that a Shaman had to burn through 40 mana pots.
My 40-in-3-hours remark referenced our first night learning her, with a bunch of low-% wipes including one at 1%. We've only killed her twice so far -- I probably used ~20 pots in just under two hours for our second kill.
1) You are wearing SR.
2) There is a periodic 1k mana burn that hits up to 10 casters; you can resist the damage from the burn, but not the mana loss.
3) Every 15sec she gains a new set of resistances, ranging from -10% to -90% damage taken, to each element, based on how much damage she took from that element during the prior 15sec.
On the other hand, physical DPS faces no impediments whatsoever, besides SR gear.
This is a pretty typical WWS parse as a result: Wow Web Stats
I noticed that your only mage in the fight was not specced for Magic Absorption.
The only real resist fight pre TBC and post the introduction of Magic Absorption
was Sapphiron where full resists were not possible. If you ever did Firemaw
post the 2.0 patch as a mage specced with 5/5 absorption, you had
unlimited mana, even spamming arcane missles with the limited pool of mana
FR gave you.
While its certainly clear that this fight favors melee, why not make the most of
maximizing your whatever caster spots you need to pad rather ( vs. locks/shadow priests and the comments about the shadow priests getting bandages).
The only mage you brought in specced deep frost for the fight - I would have thought that being deep arcane would have fared better given that the arcane
talents let you boost damage to multiple trees and gives you a larger mana pool
that scales the effect of magic absorption.
I believe he was spec'd for that in anticipation of Illidan later in the week, not to mention tanking the Arcane lady in Council as ice is helpful as well.
I noticed that your only mage in the fight was not specced for Magic Absorption.
The only real resist fight pre TBC and post the introduction of Magic Absorption
was Sapphiron where full resists were not possible. If you ever did Firemaw
post the 2.0 patch as a mage specced with 5/5 absorption, you had
unlimited mana, even spamming arcane missles with the limited pool of mana
FR gave you.
While its certainly clear that this fight favors melee, why not make the most of
maximizing your whatever caster spots you need to pad rather ( vs. locks/shadow priests and the comments about the shadow priests getting bandages).
The only mage you brought in specced deep frost for the fight - I would have thought that being deep arcane would have fared better given that the arcane
talents let you boost damage to multiple trees and gives you a larger mana pool
that scales the effect of magic absorption.
Unfortunately, you continue to spread this false rumor. No matter how much SR you wear, you will not get an increased rate of FULL RESISTS on non-binary spells. There is a thread on this very subject in the mage threads in the class mechanics forum. Magic absorption will only realistically have a use on binary spells, which you won't see during Mother Shahraz.
I believe that for the fight, assuming you run the least amount of casters, youre probably better off making sure you keep imp scorch up, so that this way you can increase your warlock dps. And assuming you run at least 2 warlocks so that you can have cos/cor, you should definately value keeping scorch up more than adding to your personal mage dps.
Manly, I respecced Magic Absorbtion for the Mother Shahraz fight and was terribly disappointed. Even with cap resist, rarely do you get a complete resist that allows for Magic Absorption to proc. I think in 5 hours of attempts it procced something like 6 times and this was with 365 Shadow Resist. [...]
Originally Posted by Roywyn
http://elitistjerks.com/368325-post24.html
It seems that resist gear doesn't increase your chance to fully resist non-binary spells, it just increases the amount of partial resists.
It only seems to increase the amount of full resists on binary spells.
That would at least be a good explanation of it.
Last edited by manly : 07/30/07 at 5:00 PM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
An observation last night was that when any of our Mages got FA'd it was honestly a free FA cooldown, as we just blink out of it. (I specced 10 / 0 / 51 for the fight, did 700 DPS and didn't die a single time for over 4 hours of attempts)
07/30/07, 9:48 AM
Similar Threads
