We always used the feral druid on Veras. The charging was really helpfull for picking him up again. But i guess the pala can use his ranged taunt as well.
The warrior should most defonately go on Gathis since he can spellreflect his judgement. And generally the warrior is the MT and should be better geared
We went to the "complicated" pull after reading tons of posts about spellsteal and lag, such that the spellsteal would go off apparently in time and the mage would still die to the bolt. Since our mage doesn't have the HP to survive an un-dampened bolt we have to 100% make sure he doesn't eat one.
I've never had that problem though I'm usually not lagging. It's not a big window you have to steal it between being in range and being out of LoS but it's perfectly doable and I do it each week without any problems. I've stopped swapping out gear for the fight even, I'm running around in my normal gear which is around 10-11k raid buffed, when we started doing it I would bring stamina gear for it which severely gimps my hit and damage (hey, not like I have anything else to do than nuke :>). A bolt without the buff is a wipe, but once you got the pull there's nothing except your healer(s) dying that can kill you.
I think you're all doing it way too overcomplicated pulls.
The method you describe is more or less how I did it. Since 2.4.2 Zerevor runs away to the back of the dais as soon as you body pull. Which means he is by definition out of LOS unless you are the top of the steps. That's why people are now talking about a new idea: blink halfway up the steps, run forward spamming spellsteal, then fireblast.
Spamming spellsteal can get you killed, as I've seen, and I believe has been stated in this thread several times. :[
As to Zerevor running away-- Since 2.4.2, I've seen Zerevor move in all sorts of directions. Last week he ran to the left several times, tonight he pretty much stayed where he was, save for the one odd pull where he LoSed me, then decided he wanted to run up next to me after he had bolted me (cue readjustment.).
Sadly, I'm not entirely certain whether him running back forward was due to some odd change, or due to the fact that my healer just got a crit heal off, and pulled aggro (He LoSed before fireblast went off.) Has anyone else ever seen him do that, or should I chalk it up to bad luck on my healer's part?
Last night I tried with blinking up the stairs. I got blessing of protection, ran forward, there's a kind of shield shaped block on the floor, blinked from that halfway up the stairs. Zerevor ran back from me so I followed him and hit spellsteal when the GCD from blink came off. Bit nervy compared to starting with a spellsteal, but worked fine.
For what it's worth, a Feral Druid can interrupt Malande's spells every 15 seconds with Feral Charge. She's typically not dps'd much, if at all, so it's quite easy to build a significant threat lead at the start and then again while Feral Charge is on cooldown. You tend to spend a large portion of the time not attacking her at all due to the reflective shield. So you can just back up, eat her spells and wait for an appropriate interrupt opportunity. Since we have a Rogue doing the Shiv/Deadly Throw/Kick thing, I mostly just stop Divine Wrath on key people (e.g. the Gathios tank, people on low hp, squishy healers, the Rogue interrupter). And while Ferals don't have any passive magic mitigation, it's not too hard building a stam heavy set for Malande, and we can pretty much pop Barkskin on every cooldown without fear.
On the other hand, if you've got a 2nd Protection Warrior, it's a no brainer putting them on Malande.
Both Feral Charge and Righteous Defense have their merits on Veras, this one is more a question of raid make up. If you have 3 Protection specced players in the raid, let them tank and the Feral can dps (or if you're desperately short on healing, the Paladin or Feral can switch to healing).
Last night I tried with blinking up the stairs. I got blessing of protection, ran forward, there's a kind of shield shaped block on the floor, blinked from that halfway up the stairs. Zerevor ran back from me so I followed him and hit spellsteal when the GCD from blink came off. Bit nervy compared to starting with a spellsteal, but worked fine.
Yeah, this is what I'm having to do now as well, since 5/6 pulls (we did some experimental ones) have had him run backwards.
We tried to solve the Zerevor running away problem by having a pally run in ahead of the mage and bubble in the last second, which means that by the time our mage is in position, Zerevor will already be running back towards the stairs at which point aggroing him becomes easy.
Why are your melee on the priest in the first place? I've never seen strats where the priest was genuinely DPSed by anyone. Just the rogue doing the kicks, and the tank holding her.
One rogue can do both. Just have him equip PVP gloves and a throwing weapon, and use deadly throw as an interrupt. There is no cooldown on deadly throw so the only limitation is how much time it takes to move in, shiv to get a CP, and move back out.
Echoing this, as it really simplifies the job. This is the mini-guide I wrote for the rogues in my guild on interrupting. Deadly throw gloves really make interrupting a breeze. As long as blessing of protection is down, you can more or less interrupt everything, even empowered smites. We still ask the tank to bash the heal as a failsafe.
- Equip arena gloves and a thrown weapon, enough hit to never miss and the rest in stam (so yea, probably your arena gear)
- Shiv mind numbing poison, then back out to 5 yards
- Deadly throw
- Move back in to shiv
- Repeat until blessing of protection lands
Sometimes energy can be tricky, it's OK to miss smites. If you have lowish energy after interrupting a divine wrath, stay in melee range in case the next cast is a heal (in which case kick). Once energy ticks back up, shiv and back out. You should aim to keep 1 combo point on her at all times. That way even if a blizzard is on her you can interrupt safely. Be prepared to move around, don't bother trying to DPS. When blessing of protection is up, just spam shiv until you get a combo point (indicating shield is down) then back out again.
The reason all the melee were on interupting is quite simple
The rogues that were interupting got themselves killed, we pulled in our DPS warriors who got themselves killed, then we grabbed our shamans, who got themselves killed.
Yeah it went like that :-(
They've assured us that they will not let that happen again.
We have a druid tanking the priest since we only have 1 protection warrior.
The method you describe is more or less how I did it. Since 2.4.2 Zerevor runs away to the back of the dais as soon as you body pull. Which means he is by definition out of LOS unless you are the top of the steps. That's why people are now talking about a new idea: blink halfway up the steps, run forward spamming spellsteal, then fireblast.
I've never had him run away out of LoS when bodypulling. It does require some timing and pressing spellsteal at the right moment, too soon and you'll get out of range and too late you'll be, well a wet puddle on the floor. It only took a few tries for me to get the timing right back in the autumn when we were training on them, and now I make it each week with no problems. As the pull is such a big part of the fight you could potentially practice it with most of the raid sitting outside the door (I'm assuming they reset once they reach the door, never actually tried it but it would make sense. :> )
I've never had him run away out of LoS when bodypulling. It does require some timing and pressing spellsteal at the right moment, too soon and you'll get out of range and too late you'll be, well a wet puddle on the floor. It only took a few tries for me to get the timing right back in the autumn when we were training on them, and now I make it each week with no problems. As the pull is such a big part of the fight you could potentially practice it with most of the raid sitting outside the door (I'm assuming they reset once they reach the door, never actually tried it but it would make sense. :> )
Our last kill was interesting in that Zerevor actually hit me with his 14k blast immediately after the pull. It was fine because I can easily survive a 14k hit, especially with the rogue stunned to start off, but definitely took both my healer and I by surprise. I wish I knew what I did though, because I wouldn't mind taking that first hit every time if it meant the mage tank never ended up insta-gibbed to start the fight.
Our last kill was interesting in that Zerevor actually hit me with his 14k blast immediately after the pull. It was fine because I can easily survive a 14k hit, especially with the rogue stunned to start off, but definitely took both my healer and I by surprise. I wish I knew what I did though, because I wouldn't mind taking that first hit every time if it meant the mage tank never ended up insta-gibbed to start the fight.
Were you on BoP duty for the mage? If you didn't cast until after entering combat, this could happen.
Were you on BoP duty for the mage? If you didn't cast until after entering combat, this could happen.
This time I actually wasn't. Had like 5 paladins, so I was giving the mages sanctuary, and usually the pally that blesses salv also does the BoP. I do pull with [The Decapitator], so maybe it hit the rogue before the mage's Pyro hit Zerevor. I'll have to try next week, and see if I can't duplicate it.
The pull really gets us into trouble right now. We tried alot and got the best result with paladin walking up to the NPC and bubbling when the NPC-mage starts casting.
Biggest problem: In nearly every try the NPC-mage reacts differently. Sometimes he runs away and comes back right again, sometimes he runs far to the back. This makes it even harder for our tanking-mage to spellsteal and build threat.
In one of our tries the NPC-mage runs back a bit, so our tanking mage had to blink up to get the spellsteal of in time. What happened was that the NPC-mage run cross the room to the position where the paladin should be tanked (our mage still had aggro). This happened twice for us yesterday evening. I think it has something to do with the range on the mage.
Something is really wierd with the NPC-mage right now and that makes the fight really annoying.
Would pulling with pyroblast be an option? I mean what happens after pyro if the NPC-mage runs to the back? The mage will never get into spellsteal-range in time. Spell resists are an issue too.
The rogue on Malande should wear PvP gloves, so he can use deadly throw from range to interrupt the cast.
We use rogue, enhancer, resto shaman, defensive tank and mages for interrupting on Malande. Mages + rogue for the heal, enhancer and the tank for wrath. Resto shaman is backup. You can move Malande easily if you kick all of her 3 spells. Remember that there is no heal at the start, so feel free to interrupt the smite and kite her whereever you want.
I didn't read the whole thread but wanted to add something we tried out on our first kill.
Me a rogue was doing interupts on the priest since alot of other people seemed to fail at it. Since kick has a 10 sec cooldown and I could not get all the heals and then also all the dmg spells interupted I concentrated solely on the circle of healings.
After a few whipes we were talking in officer chat about the interupting and one of the officers doing arena atthat time on an alt rogue suggested we tried out pvp gloves and deadly throw for interupting. And guess what? It worked like a charm. So by using those gloves you are basicly getting an interupt with no cooldown ( except global cooldown ofc ).
First try after using the pvp gloves for interupting ALL spells (except the oens casted with melee immune shield on ofc) we downed the Council. Added bonus for using deadly throw to interupt is when the mage starts aoeing right on top of the priest or the palla throws a concecration there and makes it tricky to interupt you just get out of the way and interupt from a distance.
This was 2 weeks ago btw and yesterdaynight we got our first Illidan kill woot woot
EDIT: Sigh beaten to the punch by above poster I solo interupt the melee part of the interupts though and 1 shammy solos the magic part.
I was having the exact same issues with Illidari Council two nights ago. It seems since the last patch his movements have been sporadic at best.
Each pull seemed like a completely different reaction on the part of the mage. Even if you managed to get the spell steal off, he would start running across the stage and back down 3 or 4 times before getting positioned in one spot.
This really adds an uncontrollable element to the fight, that makes it more frustrating than it needs to be. Other than that, the fight is mostly execution with very few elements that are uncontrollable.
We got them down for the first time last night after about 20 tries (although the mage-tank had about 5 practice tries on his own at the start).
Once we got the idea of the pull, about 80% of the pulls were successful - the other 20% ended up with a dead mage-tank due to Zerevor doing weird stuff. Still though, 80% successful pulls is something we can live with.
We tried a few different things with the pull, but in the end we went with the following:
Mage runs in with BoP
Blinks as soon as they aggro, ends up mid-way up the stairs
Spellsteals
Nothing too complex, and it works most of the time even if Zerevor goes a bit weird - even if he goes to the back of the platform he is still usually in range of a spellsteal in time.
One trick I found that worked quite well was to cast pyro then move backwards towards the door - means he has to move towards you to start casting, and immediatly seperates him from malande who isn't as easy to move. You end up with the mage tanked at the bottom of the stairs, so theres never any danger of LoS issues. It's possibly not the ideal position for him, but it's never caused us any problems.
I'd recommend the strategy we use if you're having problems with the pull. Killed them twice since the change that makes the mage run randomly, and this has worked perfectly for all of our pulls except one, in which I messed it up(and we've pulled them far more than should be neccesary this week). The only other pull wipes are when the hunters misdirect before the pyro hits, so zerevor's initial target is the MD target.
Completely random thought...has anybody tried kiting the mage back to the ramps that lead up to Illidan? I'm not sure if his AoE abilities have range and/or line-of-sight restrictions, but if they did, putting him back on the ramp would take Flamestrike/Blizzard out of the equation and trivialize the encounter. I'm doubtful that this would work, but I just thought it might be an interesting experiment.
Completely random thought...has anybody tried kiting the mage back to the ramps that lead up to Illidan? I'm not sure if his AoE abilities have range and/or line-of-sight restrictions, but if they did, putting him back on the ramp would take Flamestrike/Blizzard out of the equation and trivialize the encounter. I'm doubtful that this would work, but I just thought it might be an interesting experiment.
One of our early wipes had the Council going through the door to kill people (accidental pull with 1/2 people outside the door). So I'm curious, what happens if you have a hunter Misdirect the Council to your raid that's standing in the big open area outside their room ?
One of our early wipes had the Council going through the door to kill people (accidental pull with 1/2 people outside the door). So I'm curious, what happens if you have a hunter Misdirect the Council to your raid that's standing in the big open area outside their room ?
It worts a try tho I'm fairly certain that Blizzard has thought of this. ( a leash maybe at some distance) The relative benefit of a bigger space would be negated by the healers range and the bosses abilities tho. Plus you have to consider the risk of a borked pickup by the tanks due to increased range.
05/21/08, 8:15 PM
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