The Illidan Thread (was "Flames of Azzinoth Question") - Page 11

Whiteknight · 11/01/07, 1:54 PM

What do you do with the melee during the demon phase?

Is the optimal approach to have them hang out behind the ranged dps along with the healers till the demons get about half way out and then go hamstring/dps?

Melee seems to be pretty awkward in this phase.

◊ Praetorian · 11/01/07, 2:02 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

What do you do with the melee during the demon phase?

Is the optimal approach to have them hang out behind the ranged dps along with the healers till the demons get about half way out and then go hamstring/dps?

Melee seems to be pretty awkward in this phase.

Once you have a firm grasp on the Flame Burst timers it really becomes much less of an issue.

When demons are due, everyone makes sure they aren't stupidly close (especially the warlock tank). When demons pop out, everyone stays put for ~5 seconds and nukes whatever is near them. Then he does his second Flame Burst. Now you have 15sec of freedom and the melee can zerg in and finish everything off very quickly. Then spread back out before the third Burst, and then he reverts to humanoid form 5 seconds later.

Whiteknight · 11/01/07, 2:24 PM

Thanks - that makes a lot of sense.

We've only killed him twice so far, so our strategy is far from perfected. I'm pretty interested in optimizing it. Your 13 min kill is pretty impressive - considering ours have been almost 10 minutes longer. Some of that is gear, sure, but the bulk of it has got to be better application of dps, better positioning etc.

I think we get almost zero dps on the boss during the demon phase and most of it is a positioning problem. In an effort to get enough time on the spawns, I had people back up quite a lot - most of the raid is on or behind the circular grate. Also we spread perhaps a lot more than needed for the flame burst. Folk are spread wall to wall. This puts a lot of folk quite far out of range of the boss.
I think paying more attention to packing the raid better - perhaps on the grate or close to it, we'll have everyone closer to the boss and therefore not spend 6-7 seconds moving in order to get into range.

Hand · 11/01/07, 5:53 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Last night we saw something new:

Maiev literally dropped the first trap directly under Illidan. We were panicked for a moment trying to figure out where the hell it was until I realized it was right under his model. It instantly trapped him. Because there was no elapsed time between the trap going down and it being applied, the trap actually wore off him about 5-10 sec before he was due to transform. So he popped up, one-shotted a melee who had overaggroed, and then resumed beating on our tank while enraged for a good while before he finally transformed. Confused the hell out of us.

We had a trap directly under Illidan sometime recently as well, unfortunately he was at 3% and would've died that enrage anyway so it was kind of a waste. Also, I've heard people complain about "unusable" traps that are in the wall or something, but last week we had both traps literally unusable, she placed them outside the room. I didn't even know this was possible. I ran back to the wall to take a screenshot after he died - http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/4313/loltrapslf8.jpg

Also, another epeen question I have is, has anyone killed him in the first trap? If you guys had the very first trap right under him, how low did he go before that first demon phase sub 30%? I think we got him to like 12% with no trap and no heroisms, I'm just curious if its possible to kill him before he even goes demon sub 30%.

Keros · 11/01/07, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by Jagiya

I read through the first 8 pages of this thread, and have to say; I've learned pretty much everything I need to know; except for 2 questions:

1) Since the anti-charge "totem fix", does this also apply to Rebirth targets in Phase 2? Or only totems?
2) Earlier in the thread, it was stated that the Blue flames created by Illidan's Eye Laser can be destroyed via Spell Reflect just like A'lar's Flame Patches. Is this still possible? Or was it fixed? Also, can the flames created by Illidan's Flame Crash also be destroyed by Spell Reflect?

Thanks in advance.

I've Rebirthed people after my flame dies, and before the second flame dies without anyone getting charged and gibbed.

PsiVen · 11/02/07, 12:53 AM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Last night we saw something new:

Maiev literally dropped the first trap directly under Illidan. We were panicked for a moment trying to figure out where the hell it was until I realized it was right under his model. It instantly trapped him. Because there was no elapsed time between the trap going down and it being applied, the trap actually wore off him about 5-10 sec before he was due to transform. So he popped up, one-shotted a melee who had overaggroed, and then resumed beating on our tank while enraged for a good while before he finally transformed. Confused the hell out of us.

On a separate note, pretty much purely for epeen, has anyone been able to do p3 in just one demon phase? We've been getting him to like 32% right before his second transformation the last couple of weeks and then backing off rather than risk having him change phases during or after a transformation. The temporary patch 2.2 "bug" pretty much permanently took like 6 minutes off our kill times and the fight is around 13min total for us now. It's funny how rethinking DPS vs. control can make such a large difference, without changing raid composition at all (we've always brought 8 healers, and continue to do so).

We tank him right against the wall and the traps about 50% of the time come within 10 yd; tonight we happened to get both traps right under him and had two different experiences:

The first time, he went straight to demon phase after trap (switching early, because he was trapped right away) and stayed red for a while after. Scared our warlock tank, but he wasn't actually doing extra damage in that phase.

The second time, exactly what you described: a couple people got one-shot after the trap expired. We've had that a few times actually, so it was more confusing when the first one happened and he seemed to be bugging out.

Ellere · 11/02/07, 2:30 AM

We did Illidan today with 2 tanks total, using a mix of FR and regular tanking gear for tanking him and one flame, and OT in full FR for his flame. It was a comfortable kill, never really dipped much lower than usual considering the gear loss to get enough FR (215 unbuffed), just a thought for anyone struggling on a 3rd tank (of course far from ideal though, but definately possible).

Ramalama · 11/02/07, 5:51 AM

Here's a big tip for anyone having trouble with tank healing in P2: multiple Resto druids really make a huge difference. The past two weeks we've added a second healing druid to our roster and the stacked HoT's (especially Lifebloom at 1s intervals) work to counteract the flame DoT's very effectively.

Naturally, they also bring extra innervates, combat resses and NS (for Dark Barrage) which are both especially effective on a fight like Illidan.

Personally I consider P2 to be the most challenging part of the fight, so it's worth making alterations to raid composition to ensure it goes smoothly.

dukes · 11/02/07, 10:33 AM

Pasted from my WWS reports page:

24 Oct 22:42 13'25'' 11215 BT 
18 Oct 21:28 13'03'' 11171 Rest of BT 
11 Oct 22:37 14'24'' 10810 Rest of BT 
20 Sep 22:49 15'02'' 10517 BT from Teron 
09 Oct 20:09 15'46'' 10169 Illidan 
10 Sep 23:33 15'31'' 10142 End of Hyjal and BT 
02 Oct 20:18 14'58'' 10134 Illidan 
13 Sep 22:19 17'56'' 9038 Hyjal and Illidan 
06 Aug 21:15 20'00'' 8243 Illidan and TK (not kael) 
17 Jul 22:17 19'25'' 8072 Illidan second kill + Some hyjal 
28 Aug 23:29 19'37'' 7980 Teron to Illidan 
20 Aug 20:44 19'59'' 7721 Council and Illidan 
30 Jul 20:14 20'39'' 7544 Illidan and SSC 
23 Jul 21:53 21'05'' 7185 Council+Illidan and Gruul 
10 Jul 23:36 26'01'' 6419 Our first Illidan kill!

As you can see, there's a pretty big variance in kill time. As people get ued to it, it gets a lot shorter, and once you outgear it bigtime it helps a lot too. It's pretty strange to think that we now kill it in half the time of our first kill (and that the timer was 15 minutes (!) in 2.2). I'm not sure if we could get it down to one demon phase - the 13 minute kill was us pushing a bit to see how fast we could get it without being stupid about dying/ripping in p2, but we've never tried an all out "lets just burn" kind of thing (and I'm pretty sure it would fail horribly with people ripping on P2 anyway). We also never DPS during the demon phase - it's just the lock tank and people standing there like lemons making sure they don't die, so it could easily be lower than that.

Amorpheus · 11/02/07, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by dukes

Does anyone else get desyncing of the blast (the conal flame thing the flames do) and the blaze dropping? When we started I was under the assumption they're supposed to be linked, but often theres a 1-2 second swing either way on the blaze dropping before or after the conal attack which stays throughout that whole instance of the fight (i.e. each time you start it, not each time you reset the instance).

I got the impression that they can get apart a little as the fight goes on, similar cooldowns instead of being directly linked together.

Veliya · 11/02/07, 5:14 PM

Originally Posted by Amorpheus

I got the impression that they can get apart a little as the fight goes on, similar cooldowns instead of being directly linked together.

It's really weird actually, to me it just feels like sometimes from start to finish they can be ridiculously out of sync, I'm not sure what causes it, as I've only experienced it a few times here and there, but it doesn't really feel like they get more out of sync as the fight goes on, just they can start out of sync and stay that way.

Junakit · 11/03/07, 11:37 PM

Originally Posted by Keros

I've Rebirthed people after my flame dies, and before the second flame dies without anyone getting charged and gibbed.

Last week I did this and it was fine, so I figured it was fixed, but here's this week's counterexample -- ressed someone after mine was dead and with the second flame on something like 5%, and it goes and charges him

So I'd say this isn't fixed yet.

Junpei · 11/04/07, 12:49 AM

I think it's as fixed as it can be without breaking so there's no risk to ressing dead people at all.

As far as I can see, the blade pulse their aura every x seconds (I presume 2 for decent even spacing) and the Flames do a charge check every y seconds (I like to say 10 when trying to explain it, because if fits neatly with my 2 second theory), thus leaving a 2s risk period every 10s where any newly ressed people can be charged.

It is certainly a lot better than when you couldn't lay totems in P2 for the bloody charges.

As for Blaze and the Blast being desynced, I find it mildly irritating that it can happen at odd times during your tanking session, it's pretty easy to settle into a rythym if they're consistant in the beginning that results in some very nice Blaze:Melee ratios, and then they desync and suddenly you've taken 4 Blaze ticks because you moved when you expected it and it actually came after.

◊ Quigon · 11/05/07, 10:48 PM

Originally Posted by Hand

We had a trap directly under Illidan sometime recently as well, unfortunately he was at 3% and would've died that enrage anyway so it was kind of a waste. Also, I've heard people complain about "unusable" traps that are in the wall or something, but last week we had both traps literally unusable, she placed them outside the room. I didn't even know this was possible. I ran back to the wall to take a screenshot after he died - http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/4313/loltrapslf8.jpg

Also, another epeen question I have is, has anyone killed him in the first trap? If you guys had the very first trap right under him, how low did he go before that first demon phase sub 30%? I think we got him to like 12% with no trap and no heroisms, I'm just curious if its possible to kill him before he even goes demon sub 30%.

That screenshot is amazing. I doubt they'll ever fix her traps - I think you just have to plan to blow SW/LS/etc on subsequent enrages.

We get a LOT of traps along the wall, where essentially you'd have to antikite illidan into the trap, meaning he'd feed on the raid doing so.

12% is about right - usually its 1 demon phase and dead... a trap I suppose could make it instant.

Tojara · 11/06/07, 2:11 AM

When do agonizing flames happen? We spread out once we got to phase 3 expecting them to happen and not one person reported getting them.

Edit: It's probably more along the lines of nobody noticing it, or the fact that half the raid was dead and spreading wasn't a problem. Or that the person that got the agonizing flames instantly died.

Besides consistency we pretty much know what to do in Phase 2 and should be able to consistently get this down with a few tank adjustments in the next hour of raid attempts (next reset). So to expand on my initial question what should we really expect in phase 3? Im under the impression from this thread that it's fairly similiar to phase 1 with the agonizing flames and a recurring demon phase every ~1 minute.

How exactly do the agonizing flames work? There have been mentions of it in the thread but not a full explanation. Does it target one person and cause damage to people around the afflicted person (like a conflag) until said person moves? Or upon impact does it splash to multiple targets making it so multiple people are taking the debuff? If so, i'll be upset with yet another thing that melee has to be generally careful about (blaze trails, eye beams, demon fire) or absent for (demon phase, for the most part anyways).

Any information would be greatly appreciated as the thread seems to have deviated into multiple phases of the fight anyway. Sorry if in fact this has been answered somewhere in the thread.

Zindel · 11/06/07, 8:01 AM

It chooses a random target, everyone within 5 yards of the target will receive the debuff "agonizing flames".

The debuff itself does damage over time to the target, it doesn't do any splash damage.

Roywyn · 11/06/07, 8:06 AM

Originally Posted by Tojara

When do agonizing flames happen? We spread out once we got to phase 3 expecting them to happen and not one person reported getting them.

How exactly do the agonizing flames work?

He casts a blue Flamestrike on one person, I've never seen it cast on people in melee.
It has a 5 yard radius diameter, fairly small.

On impact, it deals 4k firedamage and leaves a DoT on the affected person(s), dealing 36k fire damage over 60 seconds, ticking every 5 seconds (according to wowhead - Agonizing Flames - Spells - World of Warcraft). I remember the damage ticks being small in the beginning and becoming larger towards the end, around ~4.5k I think.
Running out of the fire will not stop the DoT from ticking, healers have to keep you up for the whole minute.

So - spread out to make sure that only one person gets hit by it every time. Run out the burning ground if you get hit, and make sure that healers keep you covered.
The flames on the ground will disappear, but the flame DoT on you will usually last into the demon phase.
Having agonising flames when he casts flame burst can be a large burst potential - make sure your healers know that, and save potions/stones for flame bursts there.

woo-haa · 11/06/07, 8:12 AM

Somehow Agonizing Flames don't target melee behind Illidan. Our MT has gotten hit but never our melee.

Yilona · 11/06/07, 1:17 PM

Agonizing Flames and Parasite almost always happen at the same time, so you don't have to be spread out right at the beginning of p3 and after every demon phase. There are a few moments there where you can worry about the tank first and then spread out. Don't wait too long, though!

◊ Praetorian · 11/06/07, 1:31 PM

I'm not sure what you mean by moving out of the "burning ground" on Agonizing. Are you confusing it with Flame Crash, which he drops on the tank? Agonizing is just a targeted damage+debuff with a 5yd AoE radius. There's no persistent ground effect nor any reason to move if targeted.

As best I can tell with Agonizing, it has a minimum range but also can target the MT as an exception to this behavior. I have never seen him target any melee DPS (if he could use it on melee DPS, melee DPS would basically be useless for the entire fight), nor has anyone, I think.

Tojara · 11/06/07, 1:39 PM

Alright that pretty much sums it up and it's good to know that nobody experienced times where the melee got the debuff. I wasn't looking forward to what may have been a very unfriendly phase 3, 4, and 5. That clears up a lot of things, thanks.

◊ Praetorian · 11/06/07, 2:24 PM

As a separate note, has anyone noticed that Illidan sometimes will pick a corpse (if you have any dead players) for Agonizing, such that it does nothing at all? Agonizing clearly has some unique targeting mechanics that are unlike any other spell in the game.

xkmonkey · 11/06/07, 2:39 PM

Yes, I was once targeted by Illidan during the 3rd phase while being dead. I got the aggro warning and it seemed quite strange. At first I believed it was parasites, but he later cast it on someone else, so agonizing flames is probably what he cast on me.

• Karakas · 11/06/07, 2:41 PM

Anecdotaly speaking (since I can't figure out how to see which debuffs get applied to which individuals in our guild's WWS history), I very rarely get agonizing flames, since I position myself relatively close to Illidan himself in order to stay in range of the tank when they move / Judge Wisdom when possible, etc.

While not sufficient evidence by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly lends some credence to the theory that Agonizing Flames has a minimum range, and in particular, the minimum range is significantly larger than just melee range, since I usually stand out at 10 yards.

Buiden · 11/06/07, 4:17 PM

Originally Posted by Karakas

Anecdotaly speaking (since I can't figure out how to see which debuffs get applied to which individuals in our guild's WWS history), I very rarely get agonizing flames, since I position myself relatively close to Illidan himself in order to stay in range of the tank when they move / Judge Wisdom when possible, etc.

While not sufficient evidence by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly lends some credence to the theory that Agonizing Flames has a minimum range, and in particular, the minimum range is significantly larger than just melee range, since I usually stand out at 10 yards.

We pretty much noticed this too. It is worth mentioning that you actually WANT your paladins/frost mages to get this so they can just iceblock/shield it off.

Also him targetting corpses with parasites and agonizing applies to pet corpses as well. Can be comical at times, but certainly a bug.