The Illidan Thread (was "Flames of Azzinoth Question") - Page 5

Natural · 09/17/07, 1:40 PM

I looked through our previous WWS to come up with a point of reference for Flame of Azzinoth vs. Blaze damage.

I'd propose that tanks are doing a good job if they take 1/3 as much Blaze damage as they do Flame of Azzinoth damage. If they're taking 1/2 as much, it is managable but performance could be improved. If it's more than 1/2 additional damage then you have a problem.

Renew · 09/17/07, 1:50 PM

Originally Posted by Yilona

This may be obvious for some and non-obvious for others, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

I found that BigWigs alone was not fast enough for me to target the Barrage target and heal them quickly. In other words, as someone already mentioned, since you don't get an aggro warning on the person who's going to get Dark Barrage before he casts it, I'd have to look on BigWigs to see who was getting it, then find that person in Grid and try to target them quickly and start heals. If I just waited to see who was getting damage, most times it was already too late.

What we did that made a world of difference was had all the healers add "Dark Barrage" to Grid to see who's getting the debuff. It's under Status->Auras->Add new Debuff or something like that. That way you see immediately who has the debuff and toss heals. If you get on top of it immediately, it's absolutely no problem to heal through with just one or two healers.

For us, we have 2 pallies on one tank and 1 pally 1 priest on the other tank. The 2 druids are always keeping HoTs up, and then the rest of the healers (usually 8-9 total, and the rest are shaman) heal the raid (+ shadow priests to keep everyone topped off). On Dark Barrage, the pallies will toss a Holy Shock before returning to their target, and shamans will take care of the healing.

As a side note, adding Parasites (Parasitic Shadowfiend) and Agonizing Flames to Grid helped a ton for P3/P4, too.

As I said, it may be obvious for some, but when we finally did it (after an hour or two of attempts), it made such a difference in the ease of healing.

I can't think of many other bosses that have a debuff like that where it's not immediately obvious who's getting it (from aggro warning or someone taking damage when they shouldn't be) without having the debuff show in Grid.

This is something I do for every fight because of what you said, it is a night and day difference in being able to heal that person asap. I also use the aggro alert feature Grid has once I am comfortable with the fight because I know what the aggro alert is telling me ("Hey he is going to get the parasitic shadowfiend" etc). It let's you be proactive rather than reactive.

++

We just spread out dynamically for the most part. I try and bring the same people every week with 1-2 new people so they can experience the fight. So people already have a general idea of where they like to stand.

Healingwise it is usually 2 Paladins on our Feral OT and myself and a Tree on our second tank (Warrior). That leaves 5 healers for the raid as I bring 9 healers from Mother -> Illidan.

I think I am going to have our shams Earthshield me as I am the aura bitch and do get knockbacked quite a bit. I haven't let a tank die yet because of it, but I cheat and have 4 pc tier 5. Once I break it I can see it possibly hurting us one night.

We had an app OT the flames this Thursday and he was a gnome. If you have a gnome make sure that they have a deviate because he los'd me due to his size and the shape of the middle ring. That wasn't the only issue I had healing him (mainly player errors as far as going too far out etc), but it might save some people a wipe.

Buiden · 09/17/07, 3:12 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

I don't like when hunters do this (unless they're going to die otherwise or something) because I like the time spent Barraging and don't want it shortened. The only dangerous part of a Barrage is the first 3 seconds. If someone hasn't died by then, they aren't going to die after that, and that's 7 seconds of much lower raid DPS than when he's fireballing.

I guess we've just never found the fireball damage to be overwhelming at that point (after the first elemental is down). That seems strange people with more shaman would find the fireball damage difficult to keep up with. We only have 1 resto shaman in the guild and always bring 8 healers to Illidan. Perhaps people aren't utilizing the extra spread out area after the first flame dies? You really get a LOT of extra room back behind the first blade after you down the first elemental so overall damage to the raid has already decreased a ton. Sure I guess people standing in the back area need to be careful for eye beam but as long as the smarter people utilize that area it should be ok.

I agree though, barrage is less overall healing. In our experiences, however, we just had a lot bigger issue with people dying to barrage than fireball so we'd rather he goes back to fireballing us.

Shelendil · 09/17/07, 6:46 PM

One other thing I didn't think of earlier on using shamans to heal that fight is the effect of pushback. The paladins are likely going to be running fire aura for the tanks rather than concentration, so using a 2.5 sec cast (chain heal) to raid heal is going to see a lot of pushback, depending on where your earth shields are. I even notice it a bit on tank healing. CoH and hots don't suffer from that.

And I'd like to second that grid is simply the best raid frame addon for healers. Compact and customizable to give you the information you need immediately, even on new fights. I have random debuffs added in from Vashj and up.

• Xaviera · 09/17/07, 7:21 PM

We use 1 paladin giving FR to both tanks. I stand in the dead center of the grates and my FR aura hits both tanks, anywhere they go on their paths. That frees up the 2 other paladins for groups for concentration aura. You could do that!

Also, I use sRaidFrames for healing and have it set to show ALL debuff icons, not just dispellable ones, and then I specifically filter out those that I DON'T want to see (like Aura of Suffering, Desire, Prismatic shields, etc). Saves tons of time

Shelendil · 09/17/07, 7:47 PM

Originally Posted by Xaviera

We use 1 paladin giving FR to both tanks. I stand in the dead center of the grates and my FR aura hits both tanks, anywhere they go on their paths. That frees up the 2 other paladins for groups for concentration aura. You could do that!

Tried it, didn't work. Our tanks' paths are too wide, and I'd rather have them using the extra range to avoid more damage.

Renew · 09/17/07, 8:05 PM

Originally Posted by Xaviera

Also, I use sRaidFrames for healing and have it set to show ALL debuff icons, not just dispellable ones, and then I specifically filter out those that I DON'T want to see (like Aura of Suffering, Desire, Prismatic shields, etc). Saves tons of time

That doesn't save time at all :P having to remove debuffs you don't care about? Wow stabface, just wow.

Originally Posted by Shelendil

Tried it, didn't work. Our tanks' paths are too wide, and I'd rather have them using the extra range to avoid more damage.

I am the solo FR aura Paladin and it works just fine. Our tanks kite path is wide enough where I don't notice any extreme damage being taken by our flame tanks. I can spam rank 7 HL on the second OT (no spriest because I am the aura bitch btw) and exit the phase with 50% mana.

◊ Quigon · 09/17/07, 9:07 PM

We use 1 paladin as well - 40 yard range on the FR aura is fairly extreme - have you actually tested the distance that gives your tanks? It should be trivial to deal with.

Zenedra · 09/17/07, 11:03 PM

I conjured up this drawing for our first kill

The 2 tanks follow the red arrow route in a parallel way to prevent charge and enrage from the Flames. Raid splits up into 5 groups with each 3-4 ppl in. Green lines shows the the direction the group should collapse towards if Eye Blasts were coming their way. In the start we followed this to the exact point but now we just use it more as a guideline and have healers in the middle. 2 healers on each tank (some would advise 3 on each) and rest on raid. We take 8-9 healers with us for this fight.

We have a druid rotation ready to use a tranquility just a couple of secs before a possible Barrage each time.

And adding Dark Barrage to your Grid is an awesome idea as someone has already posted

The thing about totems in phase 2 is just ridiculous and I hope Blizzard will fix this. Also crap with not being able to res/ankh (even a pet) in p2 or a Flame will charge and enrage is stupid.

Shelendil · 09/18/07, 12:06 AM

Originally Posted by Quigon

We use 1 paladin as well - 40 yard range on the FR aura is fairly extreme - have you actually tested the distance that gives your tanks? It should be trivial to deal with.

I had trouble keeping my tank in healing range unless I stood within 5-10 yards of the blade in the ground. Center wouldn't cut it for us. Yes, I've actually tested it.

◊ Praetorian · 09/18/07, 12:58 AM

Hmm, that diagram makes me wonder if we aren't clumping more than we need to. We all stand on the actual grating, and the tanks are close enough together that one paladin easily provides aura to both.

Clandestine · 09/18/07, 1:17 AM

All of the groups except the middle one are in locations in the path of the eye beams. I don't think it's worth it to spread out a little more and risk lazer deaths. They're also in locations that our P2 tanks take the elementals, so they'd probably get hit by blazes. I guess your mileage my vary by spreading outside the grate that much.

Lodekim · 09/18/07, 1:51 AM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Hmm, that diagram makes me wonder if we aren't clumping more than we need to. We all stand on the actual grating, and the tanks are close enough together that one paladin easily provides aura to both.

We do the same and it's never seemed to be an issue with healing, our deaths in that phase are either if one of the tanks messes up moving and we get an enrage, or sometimes one or two people die to stepping in blaze or eye beam, or someone gimps up healing once in a while, or somebody decides to be an asshat and pulls aggro (happened on our kill this week, had like 4 dead after the flames died, though we crezzed 3) I think spreading out so you can heal through the phase is all that really matters.

Though I never would have tried spreading the groups out that far, I'm pretty sure someone would space out and get killed by the eye beam, and while it probably wouldn't happen to people a lot, i'm sure at least one person would die every week.

◊ Quigon · 09/18/07, 4:07 AM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Hmm, that diagram makes me wonder if we aren't clumping more than we need to. We all stand on the actual grating, and the tanks are close enough together that one paladin easily provides aura to both.

We do too, but we've never seen an enrage. I figure we're not going to break what works. Edgewalker tanked one side once and was WAY further back than we normally tank the adds. I suppose we could spread out more, but we preposition anyway so it cuts damage down to something quite manageable. The lasers really dictate your position a lot of time anyway - and even inside the grating you have to adjust to them... I wouldn't want more people ran over.

Plus if you're off by a little bit, you get that potential enrage surge (unless this was hotfixed for tank to tank).

What I don't get is you mentioning you have to stand near the warglaive just to heal your own tank. That is incredibly far out - the lasers don't even get remotely close to the position you're talking about your tank being at. Healing range covers the entire circle diameter - much less from the center going outwards.

Shelendil · 09/18/07, 5:59 AM

I guess we just do it differently. Never really thought about it until it was mentioned how intense the raid healing on phase two was. More difficult on the tank healing; easier on the raid healing?

We haven't seen enrages from the elementals since we learned the fight. It seems the tanks can go nearly as far directly out from the blade as they can to the left and right of it, which would be the more normal path.

◊ Quigon · 09/18/07, 6:12 AM

I don't see how it is more difficult on tank healing - there is plenty of room on the inner circle for a tank to have a proper rotation. Plus then the melee can stay in 100% of the time if a laser is on that tank's side because of proximity.

Renew · 09/18/07, 6:39 AM

The only time we have ever seen an enrage was when a player DC'd just before a phase change. I seriously do not see the issue with 1 Paladin Aura for two tanks, spreading out too much means people will almost always have to worry about where the beam is. As we do it now, it is usually only the tanks and possibly a ranged dps player parked outside.

vex · 09/18/07, 7:51 AM

We are stuck in P2. If everything goes well, we reach P3, but it its too random for my taste.

I just don't understand how those Flames of Azzinoth exactly work.

Things we (mostly involuntarily) tested:
*Flames enrage, if they are too far away from their Warglaive (they lose the green ray)
*They charge everything, that "comes to life" - Totems, Pet & Battlerezzes
*The charge won't cause their enrage. But mostly they charge too far away from their warglaive and therefore they enrage

But i just won't get, why they charge some players. We did read the 40y distance thing, but this just doesn't seem right.
I could swear, sometimes our Tank moves more than 40y away and nothing happens.
One try later both tanks are about 20y away from each other and one of them gets charged...

Zenedra · 09/18/07, 8:51 AM

Originally Posted by Clandestine

All of the groups except the middle one are in locations in the path of the eye beams. I don't think it's worth it to spread out a little more and risk lazer deaths. They're also in locations that our P2 tanks take the elementals, so they'd probably get hit by blazes. I guess your mileage my vary by spreading outside the grate that much.

We always have 1 or 2 groups moving towards middle because of the beams. This is normal. But it's not like the fire on the ground lasts forever.

Teez · 09/18/07, 10:03 AM

Originally Posted by vex

But i just won't get, why they charge some players. We did read the 40y distance thing, but this just doesn't seem right.
I could swear, sometimes our Tank moves more than 40y away and nothing happens.
One try later both tanks are about 20y away from each other and one of them gets charged...

Originally Posted by Ren

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/714/illidanhg0.jpg

(from page 1 - that seems to be where you are guaranteed to get charged, and almost guaranteed not to get charged provided you don't do something stupid - like drop a totem.)

vex · 09/18/07, 1:38 PM

I know this picture and those deadzones. I even edited it for our strategy thread, the blue zones are the tanking areas.
But moving to the red zone wasn't the problem. Both tanks moved about 10y to the south and then one of them got charged. Both corpses were in the blue area.

Llewelyn · 09/18/07, 1:46 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Hmm, that diagram makes me wonder if we aren't clumping more than we need to. We all stand on the actual grating, and the tanks are close enough together that one paladin easily provides aura to both.

We stand in three ranged groups so that only one group will get hit at a time with melee on one of the Flames. I stand in the middle (as much as possible) of the two tanks in order to provide them both with an aura. There is always a chance that at one point one tank will be missing the aura, but that rarely is the cause of a tank death. Our biggest problem is still dealing with barrage and people dying; I think this past week we had two people die to barrage but they were battle-rezzed at the start of the next phase.

Shelendil · 09/18/07, 4:10 PM

Originally Posted by Renew

The only time we have ever seen an enrage was when a player DC'd just before a phase change. I seriously do not see the issue with 1 Paladin Aura for two tanks, spreading out too much means people will almost always have to worry about where the beam is. As we do it now, it is usually only the tanks and possibly a ranged dps player parked outside.

Spreading out reduces damage to the raid, which can matter depending on how much raid healing you have available. The beams always go in the same four paths, and if people can't pan their cameras around to see which it is when there are plenty of warnings, well, I don't know what to say. Which positioning will be better for a raid depends on what the most likely cause of death is.