We got our first kill last night using 8 healers and from a raid healing point of view it was probably the most challanging encounter I have faced yet. BB is hard to heal from a sheer spam heal point of view and chance of people getting gibbed, but Council involved quick reactions and anticipating raid damage. Healers need to be really aware of the possible damage.
We had 2 people on raid healing (myself and another shaman) with a raid that was fairly melee heavy. 7 maybe 8 melee dps if I recall correctly. The 2 parts to raid healing this encounter as has been mentioned earlier are keeping people topped up and reacting quickly to poisen + divine wrath. Mana management is also really important due to the length of the fight and the amount of raid damage taken. This was the first fight in which I have felt the need to try and drop outside 5s rule as a resto shaman as even 7-8 seconds without casting gives a decent amount of regen.
Having a 9th healer would have made the kill easier but 1 of our druids was DCing and couldn't raid. That being said people generally only die if someone has done something wrong. If someone doesn't react to Blizzard quick enough they are at risk of a death from flamestrike, a large group of people all taking aoe damage at the same time as someone envenomed, etc
10k+ HP is a must for the raid, any less is putting yourself at risk. I have decided to purchase a Battlemaster's Perseverance trinket to replace my Scarab of the Infinite Cycle for this fight. Self survival is a big issue.
Illidari Council is vastly underrated It's kinda Maulgar and Twin Emperors put together. If such fights never existed, IC would have been considered a great encounter and a perfect pre-Illidan boss fight in the first place instead of being dubbed as "Loot Council". The mechanics are old; doesn't take more than a night or two for any 7/9 guild to kill. The hard parts of the fight are its length and the deadly AoE effects / Poison / Divine Favor. Again, nothing new ...but still a very good fight where slight loss of concentration will be probably lethal.
Illidari Council is vastly underrated It's kinda Maulgar and Twin Emperors put together. If such fights never existed, IC would have been considered a great encounter and a perfect pre-Illidan boss fight in the first place instead of being dubbed as "Loot Council". The mechanics are old; doesn't take more than a night or two for any 7/9 guild to kill. The hard parts of the fight are its length and the deadly AoE effects / Poison / Divine Favor. Again, nothing new ...but still a very good fight where slight loss of concentration will be probably lethal.
No, the fight is under-rated because at start people considered it a pushover and one of the easiest in the zone. It really isn't and due its length and the damage taken it is a difficult fight especially for healers. It also involves a significant amount of situational awareness. I'd rate it just below Illidan. The fight's bad side is that for most it's a 15 min chore. Nothing new in it and most of all you can recover if mistakes happen and the 15 min enrage timer is long enough to accept mistakes like missed heals and some deaths.
If the timer was 10 minutes it would be one intense fight...
Definetely the length of the encounter is what makes this fight 'hard', depending on your definition. All your raiders by this stage (if youve cleared hyjal and up to council) know well how to dodge aoe, but asking them to do it for so long... in addition to the chance bad-luck situations with overlapping aoe can kill people lightning fast in that 15 min timeframe... - well its a fun fight to kill after you have it on farm. But im glad theres not too many in the game like it :S
A small question I haven't seen asked yet - how do people position the Priest? We were making good progress on our first couple of hours (all we had left today after previous bosses), but getting her to the bottom of the stairs away from the Mage was proving problematic. Can you outrange and force her to move or do you have to interrupt all her casts and force her to melee?
Last edited by Daboran : 01/13/08 at 2:36 PM.
Reason: Typos
We usually stick her at the bottom of the stairs (where the red circle is). It's not a big deal to have a shaman or two shock some smites, or a rogue kick her at the start to get her moving, there should be more than enough other interrupters around to catch the first wrath and have their cooldowns up again when she tries her first heal.
A small question I haven't seen asked yet - how do people position the Priest? We were making good progress on our first couple of hours (all we had left today after previous bosses), but getting her to the bottom of the stairs away from the Mage was proving problematic. Can you outrange and force her to move or do you have to interrupt all her casts and force her to melee?
Probably because if you tank her right next to Zerevor you risk your tank and possibly a rogue if you use one for interrupting eating his Arcane Explosions which I've never personally experienced but I believe hit for somewhere in the region of 8k. So, given how often everyone has to shift their positions in this fight, being anywhere near Zerevor is generally a bad idea.
In regards to moving Malande, we typically have a rogue stealth in pretty close before the pull then run in and kick her first cast right after the pull, forcing her to melee for a few seconds while we position her. Either that or having a few mages/shaman interrupt her first few casts as was suggested above will both work fine.
Probably because if you tank her right next to Zerevor you risk your tank and possibly a rogue if you use one for interrupting eating his Arcane Explosions which I've never personally experienced but I believe hit for somewhere in the region of 8k. So, given how often everyone has to shift their positions in this fight, being anywhere near Zerevor is generally a bad idea.
In regards to moving Malande, we typically have a rogue stealth in pretty close before the pull then run in and kick her first cast right after the pull, forcing her to melee for a few seconds while we position her. Either that or having a few mages/shaman interrupt her first few casts as was suggested above will both work fine.
Why concentrate on moving the hardest of the four when Zerevor can be positioned like any DPS caster class ingame, namely move in range to cast spells on his target. You also limit how much room you have to play with if you bring Malande down the steps, are people that masochistic?
Illidari Council is vastly underrated It's kinda Maulgar and Twin Emperors put together. If such fights never existed, IC would have been considered a great encounter and a perfect pre-Illidan boss fight in the first place instead of being dubbed as "Loot Council". The mechanics are old; doesn't take more than a night or two for any 7/9 guild to kill. The hard parts of the fight are its length and the deadly AoE effects / Poison / Divine Favor. Again, nothing new ...but still a very good fight where slight loss of concentration will be probably lethal.
There are fights in muds from the early 90's that involve 4 mobs with more abilities than this. I recall doing the 4 chromatic dragons on RoTT muds, and having far more strategy discussion.
There is nothing exciting or innovative about the Illdari council.
Basically if your healers can click, you win. Grats.
Why concentrate on moving the hardest of the four when Zerevor can be positioned like any DPS caster class ingame, namely move in range to cast spells on his target. You also limit how much room you have to play with if you bring Malande down the steps, are people that masochistic?
If you leave Malande up by Zerevor immediately you are making life hard for the Malande tank and melee interrupters - they cant go anywhere to the left (facing the stairs) as they risk the arcane explosion. Seeing as Malande tends to get a LOT of the Blizzard/Flamestrikes on top of her it seems stupid to me to cut down on the manoeuvring room available to 3 of the most important members of the raid (interrupters) - not to mention line of sight issues meaning that you have to have a healer on top of the stairs with them.
True, we could move Zerevor, but then I wouldnt really want an mob with a 9k arcane explosion in the middle of the raid either - I think we'll just stick to the slightly unreliable way of trying to interrupt everything and forcing her to go melee mode.
Last edited by Daboran : 01/14/08 at 3:48 AM.
Reason: sp
If you leave Malande up by Zerevor immediately you are making life hard for the Malande tank and melee interrupters - they cant go anywhere to the left (facing the stairs) as they risk the arcane explosion. Seeing as Malande tends to get a LOT of the Blizzard/Flamestrikes on top of her it seems stupid to me to cut down on the manoeuvring room available to 3 of the most important members of the raid (interrupters) - not to mention line of sight issues meaning that you have to have a healer on top of the stairs with them.
True, we could move Zerevor, but then I wouldnt really want an mob with a 9k arcane explosion in the middle of the raid either - I think we'll just stick to the slightly unreliable way of trying to interrupt everything and forcing her to go melee mode.
Your making life harder by bothering to expend energy/ time into thinking of ways to move her when she is the "hardest" of the four to move. Simplify, it's super easy. Have your mage tank pull and move Zerevor off to the left of the room and position him/ herself so their backs are against the wall (swivel camera if unable to play with extreme close up). When the pull is made the Malande tank waits a few seconds before charging in....what's the worse she can do until he picks up aggro? smite? wrath? a heal?.....
Is Zerevor's bolt affected by Amp magic?
Is Zerevor affected by Slow (long shot I know)?
// The stolen dampen magic will override any amplify/dampen on you.
Edit: Amplify does not get overwritten. Our old tank always told me that, checked it tonight, buff stayed.
About Slow - he's immune to curse of tongues. So that should make him unaffected to the cast slowing part of Slow too. Not sure though. No one in our raid ever had Slow.
Edit: Asked warlocks to test, and he's immune to CoT. That usually means that the spellcasting part of slow does not affect him either. So, even if you cast slow on him, you can't be sure what parts of slow work. The movement speed part doesn't, for example.
The stolen dampen magic will override any amplify/dampen on you.
About Slow - he's immune to curse of tongues I think. So that should make him immune to the cast slowing part of Slow too. Not sure though. No one in our raid ever had Slow.
Tested both last night, Slow does work, and I believe curse of tongues does too. Using both as much as possible seems advisable since that means less blizzards and flamestrikes overall, not to mention less damage on the tanking mage. Also I had amplify on myself, and the buff icon did not disappear when I stole the dampen buff. Whether or not it was still working I don't know, but one would assume yes, as the icon didn't go away. I also confirmed that the arcane bolts aren't affected by amplify.
Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!
Just killed IC in our 5th or 6th pull ever. It was waaaaay easier than expected. We had 10 healers altogether (one was a retri) and had >3min to enrage. So we won't probably use less in future kills (maybe after a couple of kills). Why stress yourself, the damage to the raid can sometimes be imense.
Interupting was handled by the tanking warrior, a mage, myself (love the arena gloves) and a resto shami who tossed some ES1 when neccessary.
The thread really helped in setting up our healers, tanks and damage. Feral tanking the rogue + paladin for stuns is perfect, for example.
Also setting the credo, like archi: "Keep yourself alive, then do damage!", was the right motivation, which prevented sure death from envenom+flamestrike combination.
After killing Mother Shahraz our first time, we went ahead to get a couple of pulls on Council before the raid broke. It seemed fairly straightforward, but there was one big issue that I saw and that I can't find an answer to in this thread:
How do you interrupt Malande's heals when she has both Reflective Shield (melee cannot interrupt) and Blessing of Spell Warding (casters can't interrupt) at the same time? Also, when she heals, is there a certain target that she heals more than others? Since they all have shared health, I would expect her to be able to heal everything randomly, so keeping healing debuffs up on all four targets would be pretty difficult and I don't see this mentioned anywhere.
Has anyone else run into this issue? Can reflective shield be purged to prevent this scenario?
How do you interrupt Malande's heals when she has both Reflective Shield (melee cannot interrupt) and Blessing of Spell Warding (casters can't interrupt) at the same time?
You could I suppose burn through the reflective shield (~25k) if you had to - but situations like this should be rare. Burning the shield also has other risks (adding more raid spike damage to a already high-spikey fight)
Remember - a heal or two slipping through in the fight is OK - if it happens due to something very unlucky like this or multiple resists. Most guilds will kill the council with a few minutes to spare when they cleanly execute the fight, so dont panic - just keep on doing what you were prior to when the reflective+blessing went up.
Reflective Shield doesn't prevent melee interrupts from pummel/kick/etc I don't believe. The ability says that on wowhead but I believe that's because it was CP'd from the priest ability.
We just put two warriors on Malande and had them make macros that would take off their weapons so they could pummel during reflective shield without killing themselves. I didn't notice pummels being stopped by reflective shield, but I was busy dodging blizzards so I wasn't watching closely. No divine wraths got out at all that I recall though.
Our kill last night had one heal get through when spell warding was up and there was a blizzard on her, IIRC.
So while it is possible to have Blessing of Spell Warding (spell interrupt immunity) and Reflective shield (melee interrupt immunity) up simultaneously as the poster mentioned - its quite rare and nothing to worry about. If it happens once every few weeks and a heal slips through - just keep going.
edit - or is it? wasnt aware the tooltip is either wrong or misleading?
No, reflective shield does not prevent Kicks / Pummel. I'm the ladykicker on a weekly basis, and I've always interrupted her through the shield (we've only reached Council in November, but it's been that way since our first attempt).
We have a full team on her: 2 mages with focus macros, a resto shaman, rogue, and warrior tank. The rogue interrupts CoH and I interrupt Divine Wrath during spell immunity. Kills the rogue's dps, but it's nice to not worry about wrath.
01/06/08, 7:28 PM
It's kinda Maulgar and Twin Emperors put together. If such fights never existed, IC would have been considered a great encounter and a perfect pre-Illidan boss fight in the first place instead of being dubbed as "Loot Council". The mechanics are old; doesn't take more than a night or two for any 7/9 guild to kill. The hard parts of the fight are its length and the deadly AoE effects / Poison / Divine Favor. Again, nothing new ...but still a very good fight where slight loss of concentration will be probably lethal.
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