Hello, we are currently doing progress on Illidan and are somewhat stuck on Phase 2. Anytime we got the first flame below 50% it will charge someone in the raid (often the tank who got the other flame). Then it will enrage and start onehitting the tank thus wiping us. We don't have a clue what mechanics are behind this charge, if it's the range between the 2 flames or something else. Someone told us to not cast totems in phase 2, we did so but still had one flame charge a random person.
Can anyone share some information regarding this issue? Thanks.

The flame elementals have a charge with a very large minimum range. If anything exceeds that range (including the tank of the opposite elemental) it will charge and enrage. After Enraging it cannot be tanked and will quickly wipe your raid.

The two tanks for the Flames should stay as close to their warglaive tether as possible, rotating in a small oval to avoid standing in the green fires. If they pull the Flame too far away, they risk getting the opposite tank charged.

Edit: I believe the totem mechanic is something completely unrelated to distance. Even totems in the center of the raid can occasionally be charged. This is a bug that I hope they can fix.

Thanks for the quick reply. That explains why it's always at ~ 50%, because our tanks run a specific pattern and this seems to exceed this range so we should work on this.
I hoped that totems being charged is a bug, thanks for the confirmation.

I think they charge regardless. I'm not sure. If theres no totems they seem to charge people.

As for tanking, there 3 circles. The center circle, the second one, and the outer circle. As long as your adds don't go too far out past the outer circle, you shouldn't have them charging the tank on the other side and enraging.

We've never had an enrage unless we were wiping and people were running away just randomly.

Our rule of thumb is:
Both tanks keep their flame INSIDE the inner circle region (the flat banded area that represents a path where the warglaives rest within) - most of the time the tank himself is inside this region as well. We stressed that they don't pull them far from that outer band.

As for the breath - as long as people aren't standing too close to either flame of azzinoth they will not get breathed on even with new totems. The closer flame for us has always surged totems, and totems haven't been a problem.

The problem is with a bug where the flames surge to a totem, and breath on their way back, hitting and probably killing anyone in that path. For this we have people back behind the flame of azzinoth as it surges, and not get too close.

I think the surge is really insignificant relative to dodging lasers and having a "path" for reducing blaze damage. IMO, once your tanks learn those two tricks, you've won the fight. Unfortunately almost the entirety of the difficulty of this fight is placed on 3 tanks - with all due respect to the healers... by now this isn't that rough for them - it certainly isn't shahraz or even illdari in terms of healing intensity (we bring 8-9 healers since there isn't a single dps race in this fight, and we do phase 4 in usually 2 demons with 1 trap used in total of our last 3 kills - and probably 0 now until they fix these rad bugs I'm hearing about).

Initially we had the flames charging when the other tank got to close to it. We had them starting on one side and then moving around the circle 160 degrees in tandem. Once they both reached the opposite side one of the flames would chain charge the other tank. We altered our strategy so that the tanks moved much slower and the first flame was dead before the tanks had gotten all the way to the other side and we haven't seen any charges since. We also don't use any totems.

I don't see any need to follow Trouble's advice. Our tanks are not in tandem and we have never seen an enrage.

Also, Natural's advice is accurate - the green blazes are what kill you, every time. Stand in 1, you can probably survive - stand in 2, and you will simply die if you get hit hard or get a poor string of resists.
Maybe 2 tree druids changes this.

It wasn't so much the in tandem thing, it was bringing the flames back close together that caused them to charge. It may have been a coincidence, but changing our strat a little caused them to stop charging completely the opposite tank.

Also, two blue fires does the same amount of damage as one green fire. We never had problems with tanks standing in one blue fire, but standing in two caused things to start getting dicey.

This is a very rough diagram (the green circles should be larger and overlap more) I made for safe phase 2 tanking positions. As you can see, the midpoints of the green circles are the blade leashes. As long as nobody stands too far north or south, they won't get charged.

Add a dragon to the bad part, and maybe a troll burning in the flames of hell.
And put a picture of flowers in the green area and you have yourself a winner.

I don't think where the flames are relative to each other matter. I think that picture basically sums it up.

We do not allow our flames to get further out than where the top part of th O in good gets though. The tanks can stand about where the word good is just fine however!

The charges may have been caused by tanks standing just slightly in the bad area on the west end of that diagram. Regardless, that diagram makes everything crystal clear.

No, you pretty much die if you're in 2. We had a flawless p2 this timer and then had our last add tank, with basically all healers on him at the time, go from 100% to 0% in 2.5 seconds despite a paladin landing a 7.5k crit heal during that window and a couple of HoTs ticking. If you're moving through two overlapping Blazes you're literally taking 10000 damage per second before mitigation, and if you get a couple of bad resists, you're fucked. In our case it was 6 Blaze ticks, 2 melee hits, and one breath, all in the span of 2.5 seconds. Fortunately the Flame was at 1% when the tank died so we proceeded normally. Still, Blaze is nasty.

The interesting thing is that it was the opposite flame that did the charge when, in theory, it's because the close flame got too far away from its tether. Can anyone recall which flame charged when someone went too far away? Was it the closer one or the father one?

Yeah if things are going well this is a great phase to use shield wall in, as you likely will not need it again if you exit the phase clean.

The only uncontrollable thing we've seen that can wipe us after cleaning phase 2 is when he puts 2+ of the banishing eyes of beholder demons on the warlock tank. Even with backing up killing 2 of those guys isn't easy - 3 is basically a wipe (which we haven't seen yet fortunately, but I'm sure someone has... the one double warlock banish we got was brutal and not even close). Edgewalker basically lives for those moments though - he pops a haste pot, recklessness, death wish, whatever - and runs in there like a champ to his death. Its a glorious 3 seconds of DPS.

We used to have a huge spread with a lot of people backed up and had a lot of trouble with this, but we recently changed our strat for this phase. We originally thought this was the same proximity range as basically everything else in the game, but the aoe range is really only 5 yards. We pack almost our entire raid in the front. Our positioning is a lot tighter, and we don't back up from the boss almost at all, pretty much everyone is in the front of the room, and demons in general got a lot easier to kill, especially on the lock tank. We also have our lock tank run away when demons are imminent, and just don't dps the boss. Having the warlock at like 50 yards at this point also makes a huge difference. We've survived 2 demons on our lock tank (although it was very close) but we've never seen 3. That would suck.

I agree with Hand. Our first kill was actually the first time we saw phase 3 (and beyond), we did get a bit lucky though with demons, thinking back. (Although I was one of the only deaths and that was due to a double parasite + banish instagib [people were pretty bad at parasite management/control then, and I had to be mostly stationary because I was healing the warlock..])

We had our warlock really, really close to Illidan and if he ever got a demon it probably would have been a wipe, let alone 2. Now we play it safe after having wiped that way once, and after he gets a bit of threat, he moves waaaaaay back, so there's a good 50+ yards between anyone and Illidan.

Well to be fair the one time we saw a double banish was also our 2nd time ever getting to phase 3.

However, you're still going to potentially have all 4 on the warlock tank - obviously the odds of that are slim, but since each guild has seen 2, surely someone has seen 3... and that would probably set us over.

The Blazes actually tick more like two or three times per second, so its 20-30k before mitigation. Death is swift if you get two Blazes on you, one alone hurts pretty bad. The Demon Fire ticks 2-3 times per second too, although it's a lot less lethal than Blaze, you should avoid standing in it unless it's compromising your positioning.

It's pretty scary getting them on me as the warlock tank. Illidan's damage can be really spiky, even if I've only died once to anything other than a Shadow Demon (two 11k 25% resists + Flame Burst in between and one of my healers wasn't healing me - 8k + 8k + 3.5k so 19.5k in less than two seconds, it was the first three attacks upon his entering Demon Form too). I'm still pretty paranoid about it, and whenever I get a Shadow Demon on me I get all antsy because I can't hit my health stones and pots :x

Unless the other two demons are on people very close, usually we can get double demons down. Warlock tank turns and runs about ~1 second before the demon cast. We try to make sure there's at least one rogue who still has all his timers up who sprints there, shivs both demons with crippling poison, pops AR and BF and goes to town. I did this once with our warlock tank, eating 3 shadow bolts (one partial resist, one full resist with CoS up, one full hit that would have killed me if not for a timely vanish) and getting out alive.

And they say Illidan isn't epic. :P

Having problems in there on p2 now. Everything else seems to be sorted apart from the tanks getting Eye Beamed. We can say 'X the beam is on your side', but they're still getting nuked far too often. Not sure if there's anything else we can really say to help them.

It is frustrating but you simply need to keep pushing through it until your offtanks learn. Once those two players get it down as well as possible, you'll see Illidan fall over in an hour or so.

When a laser is on a tank's side he/she needs to realize it is the ONLY thing that matters.

There are three really simple ways to deal with laser (and really only 3 unless you count shield wall):

1. Do nothing because it isn't going to hit you... keep your rotation going.
2. Backup - you can always backup just enough to avoid by simply moving back.
3. Run across to the safe side.

Always yell on vent the name of the tank whose side it is on - and maybe add "coming right for you" if it is.

Also - have your tanks use the command:
/console CameraDistanceMaxFactor 4

This will let you zoom far enough back that you can easily see lasers coming. Plus the ground shakes, plus everyone is yelling laser.
Keep in mind that the further you zoom out, the lower your framerate will be.

Finally: Avoiding lasers and doing the tanking is IMO relatively simple, but not everyone is going to do well on this task. It is stressful to have the fate of the raid placed on you - and often times offtanks aren't immediately acclimated to this very real stress. Take it easy on them when they wipe you - because they will. Be constructive I guess.