Azgalor and Rain of Fire - Page 5

Cathela · 12/13/07, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by Sepulture

3) Don't let anyone but the MT get within 36 yards of the boss. Ever.

Okay, so that means dps from 33 yards is expressly forbidden?

Sorry to harp on this one point, but I'd really like to be sure on this.

Zaq · 12/13/07, 12:08 PM

Think of it more as a chain lightning kind of spread. If someone is at the edge of the range normally, they can bridge it onto people who would otherwise be entirely safe. I believe the range is 30 yards, so 33 would be fine, but it's important that no one is at the max RoF distance and getting other people hit with it. We have the MT healers with their own spot 35-40 yards off the boss, and they can heal safely without distractions. However, if say an arcane mage goes and hunkers down at 30 yards from Az near them and gets targeted by the RoF, then those healers have to scramble to keep themselves and the MT alive while they avoid the fire. No matter how you divvy up tasks what you absolutely want to avoid are people allowing the RoF to hit beyond 30 yards by their positioning. So as long as you ensure that people are either outside that range, or well inside it, it should be much less chaotic.

Orestus · 12/13/07, 1:22 PM

Originally Posted by Tanoh

First a disclaimer, I've not yet killed this boss.

We had our first and only try so far last night after killing Kaz'rogal. We just spread out around his back side and whoever got doomed ran to Thrall where we had an OT pick up the doomguards. We didn't kill him though. We had him at ~54% with minimal deaths and plenty of time on the enrage timer when the MT died during a silence. I'm sure that we would have killed him if we had time for 1 or 2 more pulls (hopefully today).

Sure we get hit by rain of fire sometimes, but it's not really hard to move away from it and get a hot or use a bandage. And spreading out means that only 1 to 3 players will ever get hit by one rain of fire. To me, clumping up and not using melee(?) seems like an over complicated way of doing it.

I've now killed him once with a "standard" strat (took us 3 pulls) and twice w/ the "max range" strat (2 pulls, 2 kills), and there is just no way to argue that "max range" isn't the simpler strat. The "standard" strat is unquestionably more complicated...it provides more targets to heal, more chance for random deaths, less room for error on doomguard control/handling, less focused healing on the main tank, etc.

The "max range" strat on Azgalor provides a fight that, to me, is almost refreshingly simple in a nostalgic way. There aren't alot of fights in TBC where I know, in the normal course of the fight, the majority of my raid will take absolutely zero damage...there aren't alot of fights where our ranged can plant themselves and just burn a boss, or our healers can just plant themselves (especially the druids!) and heal one target. Is it boring? I guess a little, but when a wipe means 30 more minutes of trash waves, I'll take it.

Is it a "better" strat? That can be argued either way; the standard strat will bring him down quicker, but it complicates the fight for a number of classes that otherwise can make it very very simple.

Valjean · 12/13/07, 1:33 PM

We've downed him twice now. First time we did the spread out in a circle, tank him near thrall, doomguards on taurens, all dps on Azgalor.

It worked but it was sloppy.

Next time we tried an alternative strat where all ranged + heals clump up in one spot. The idea is this pretty much eliminates the chance of RoF. Problem is when one or two people ran in to toss up a debuff or something, they'd get RoF on everyone else.

So we did a variation of the first strategy. Everyone's still spread out, but we have classes clumped up together, the buddy system. Mages stand in one spot, hunters, etc. MT healers in one area, raid healers spread out. All melee on Azgalor. We also brough in the shamans.e

This was much easier to control. And I don't think anyone got RoF.

EDIT: Also with this setup, I think we could safely bring 7 healers (we brought 8 for now) because the ranged DPS almost never got hit by RoF. So one raid healer should be able to keep them up.

Vaxen · 12/13/07, 3:00 PM

Originally Posted by Orestus

I've now killed him once with a "standard" strat (took us 3 pulls) and twice w/ the "max range" strat (2 pulls, 2 kills), and there is just no way to argue that "max range" isn't the simpler strat.

We started with the "max range" stat (no melee on Azgalor), but had issues beating the enrage timer.

We switched to the "standard" strat, but found that while it worked, it was prone to breakdown at several points: melee healers getting doomed and/or silenced; doomguard healer getting doomed, getting overrun by doomguards. We even had the occasional MT death since we could only afford 4 healers on the MT (lose 2 to doom and it's gg).

We now use the "max range" stat and find it to be far easier to get reliable results. We usually beat the enrage by 1.5-2 minutes. This is probably because we tune our raid a bit to bring less melee, and everyone has at least a bit of SR gear to help the ranged DPS avoid the silences. We also get NPCs on Azgalor himself (Tauren, and sometimes Thrall), and let the remaining melee and shadow priests handle the doomguards.

Modhne · 12/13/07, 3:17 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Yes, I'm aware of all this. What I want is an answer to the question I asked:

Is 35 yards the precise range limit on RoF targeting?

Rain of Fire - Spells - World of Warcraft - It says 40 but I've never seen it go above 35.

More specifically, we had a range cluster standing at 36 yards, a healer cluster standing at 40 yards and our spriest just dodging RoFs around Azgalor's backside. At 15%ish we had a bad silence and my mana pot just came off CD so I decided to run in and Lay on Hands our tank and got the healer cluster RoF'd. (We lived and I now realize the range on LoH is 40 yards)

Crepe · 12/13/07, 4:13 PM

Originally Posted by Valjean

So we did a variation of the first strategy. Everyone's still spread out, but we have classes clumped up together, the buddy system. Mages stand in one spot, hunters, etc. MT healers in one area, raid healers spread out. All melee on Azgalor. We also brough in the shamans.e

This was much easier to control. And I don't think anyone got RoF.

How do you have melee on Azgalor and NOT get them RoF'ed?

Xerophyte · 12/13/07, 8:12 PM

Originally Posted by Modhne

Rain of Fire - Spells - World of Warcraft - It says 40 but I've never seen it go above 35.

Hrm. A bit OT perhaps but it's possible that discrepancy is due to WoW's occasionally inconsistent hitbox mojo. A player's center can presumably be 36 yards from the edge of Azgalor's hitbox while Azgalor's center is more than 40 yards from the edge of the player's hitbox. Which may or may not be how spell ranges are actually determined 'course, I'm speculating without hard data here. It seems plausible, but it's contrary to how things work for regular melee were having a large hitbox definitely increases your melee range. On the other hand you can only whirlwind very large mobs - Ony being the typical example - by standing much closer than max melee range to their center whereas on small targets you can whirlwind them outside of regular melee range, so it's clear that hitbox size influences different ability types in different ways.

At risk of further derailment: does anyone know with certainty how the size of the caster and target influence range calculations?

♦ pewsey · 12/13/07, 9:03 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Okay, so that means dps from 33 yards is expressly forbidden?

Sorry to harp on this one point, but I'd really like to be sure on this.

Some more input.

We started with "max range spells only". Which simplified the kill, and we got used to healing/silence/dooms.

Now, we've started optimising, and we have a rule that you can use shorter range spells (30 yards), but only if you're by yourself, and if you die to RoF, you're benched.

One of our mages spent a lot of the fight in AB range, and didn't get RoF'd. Luck ? Will provide more input when I know.

Our strat involves tanking Azgalor on top of Thrall, so that Thrall can only attack his ass due to his saberlash. All the ranged are clumped together between Azgalor and the Doomtank who's on the Taurens with the melee.

When somebody is doomed, a warlock runs over, soulstones them, they then run to the Doomtank, /dance (very important) and die. Doomtank picks up the Doomguard.

Rinse/repeat.

This gives people who want to experiment an absolute ton of room to do it safely, and we've had little to no issues with the enrage timer, even recently when we had more melee than usual.

Tyrian · 12/14/07, 1:50 AM

1) Tank the boss where Thrall stands
2) Tank the Doomguards by the Tauren Warriors
3) Don't let anyone but the MT get within 36 yards of the boss. Ever.
4) Put melee, and anyone who can't dps from 36 yards on the Doomguards

The MT is the only one to take any real damage. It simplifies the fight, the healers have only one real target to heal, and Thrall dps's the boss for the entire encounter.

We tried this last night, and it is hands down a better strategy than getting chunks of your raid set on fire.

Sorry but I find this strat quite silly. Can it work? Absolutely. Is it good strat to use? No.

Why..? because there is nothing difficult about having DPS on Azgalor and simply requiring them to move fast when ROF hits them with good healer positioning setup around your raid. You cant play fancy tricks like outranging aoe/boss abilities on Illidari Council, Bloodboil, EoS, Archimonde, Illidan - so its time raid members learnt on Azgalor the basics of moving fast when required and not try to nurture them and hold their hands with this sort of strat. If people die to ROF because they are too slow to move, yell at them and tell them its not good enough - or question their assigned healer and tell them to heal faster. On Illidari Council aoe you must move FAST or die. It might sound mean, but your dps/healers need to learn to be fast by the time they get deep into BT fights - so its good experience.

The idea of taking all melee and everyone else without 36 yard spells off the boss and onto doomguards - because of ROF which can be managed anyway with a solid strat - doesnt really make sense. Its like saying, lets take off all melee from Vashj to eliminate spore clouds+roots as a problem. Sure you can do it to achieve just that, but with some smart preparation (free action, blessing of freedom, cloak of shadows) its manageable anyway.

Tanoh · 12/14/07, 5:15 AM

Possibly a bit useless post, but I agree with all Tyrian said above, fights stack onto each in some aspects. A "skill" you've learned early on will come back in later fights, some say it's sloppy boss design, others that it's a deliberate strategy from blizzard.

I left my old guild (and server) in the end of the summer, going from a Vashj training guild to a "We just killed Gruul twice and still wipe quite a lot on him" but the new guild were much nicer people and I couldn't stand the old. Anyway, the new guild had (and still has, though we don't do Gruul anymore) a very odd strategy on Gruul. I've always seen Gruul as one of the good fights to learn how to spread properly. We micromanage where everyone stands, assigns people to stones littered around the cave. Setting up a Gruul can take 15-20 minutes (I'm not joking) of telling everyone where they should stand.

This really hurt us (in my oppinion) when we started doing Void Reaver. People weren't used to looking at their screen and seeing "hmm.. two people here very close to me, I better start moving!" they were used to thinking "This is MY spot, I'm not moving!" Which meant a lot of silly wipes on Void Reaver because people got orbed or other silly things ("Ranged ran into the healers!".)

To me Azgalor seems the same, it's a simple fight really, but it gives you the chance to further train your raid to dodge AoE effects. Sure you can avoid it on THIS fight, but it won't always be like that and starting training earlier is always better.

Vaccine · 12/14/07, 5:34 AM

Have to agree with Tyrian. Melee and shorter range casters can easily run in and out to DPS whilst dodging RoF. Save pots and HS for when you're low with the dot ticking and bandage after if your healers are really struggling.

We tank the Doomguards at Thrall, him and his posse take them out swiftly enough and usually before the next one spawns (10-0%), it would be a waste to shove all the melee on them. Fire res gear can help a little but if I'm DPS I don't tend to use any and do just fine though I guess it helps being able to heal myself.

Meterslayer · 12/14/07, 5:41 AM

Well.. I'd like to say thank you to all the members of this forum for heavily helping me and my guild down Azgalor tonight. This thread in particular gave some amazing ideas and insight. I wrote out a little guide for my guild, did some simple illustrations.. but it really seemed to get the job done. After trying this strat (compiled from bits and peices of this thread almost specifically), we one shot Azgalor as our first kill on him. (after wiping repeatedly using a different strategy)

I figured it might be beneficial to repost the "guide" I made in here, as it adresses a lot of the questions I had when looking for information, and gives a rough outline of one of the ways this fight can be done.

Please excuse the unchanged repost, poor grammar, and references to information that do not apply.

"I regularly browse the Elitist Jerks forum, and they had a rather large discussion thread on how various guilds do Azgalor.

The default strategy we have been trying (All melee on boss, no FR, ranged on boss, tank at tauren camp, doomguards at thrall)
Seems to be one a lot of guilds use, but reading through it, pretty much everyone using this strategy maintains that is is based a GREAT deal on luck.

Important Information: Rain of Fire can target any npcs who are actively fighting the boss, this makes the likelihood of melee getting RoF'd exponentially higher when the npcs are alive.
That being said, the strategy that most guilds seem to have switched to is one emphasizing control over dps.
They tank Azgalor at Thralls camp, agroing him and all his adds onto the boss. The MT turns him away from the boss to avoid thrall getting cleaved. According to some peoples damage logs, thralls camp does about 700k~ damage to the boss over the duration of the fight.

Here is a quote from one of the posts.
"After trying a control based strategy, I can't stress enough how easy this fight became when we started just putting ranged on Azgalor, w/ everyone outranging the rain of fire. We tanked Azgalor at Thrall, with a bear. The Doomguards were tanked at the Tauren Warrior camp. Our melee DPS (~5), 2 tanks and 2 healers dealt w/ the Doomguards. All the ranged were on Azgalor, all outranging the rain of fire....the only damage taken during the fight was on the Main Tank, the Doomguard tanks, and whatever the doomguards warstomp did to (small incidental amount).

The ranged DPS and the healers literally took zero damage during this fight...I can't remember a fight since Molten Core where healing was this focused and easy. We mitigated the first 5 dooms via 3 soulstones and 2 battle Rez's, and killed him around the 7:30 mark. Thrall was at about 40% health at that point from RoF. The main tank takes hefty damage, but when you can tell 6 healers they can solely focus on the main tank it shouldn't be an issue. Ranged can really focus on their DPS when they only stand in one spot and just have to worry about occasional silences.

After our first kill of Azgalor the week before ("standard" strat, off-tanked Doomguards and let Taurens kill them while everyone focused Azgalor), I was quite worried about going up against him this week, I expected several wipes and alot of luck being necessary to kill him. Changing our strat made the fight ridiculously straightforward and easy."

In this strategy, everything sounds.. .. .. much more controlled. I really like the idea of keeping the melee out of the fight until only Thrall remains dpsing the boss, or the tauren are dead (if we tank at warrior camp). This will GREATLY reduce the amount of RoF's melee will receive. and the npc's make up for the lost dps on the boss. Melee can of course be assisting the doomguard kills.

I also liked the idea about tanking the guards at the warrior camp. Those warriors would easily dps down the guards, and their stuns would also greatly help keeping it under control.
I also believe the RoF can be outranged by ranged dps, making the only things taking RoF damage being Thrall and his buddies, and the MT.
The range of Rain of Fire is 40 yards, with Azgalors hitbox, ranged dps should be able to easily outrange the RoF, this would prevent ranged from EVER being hit with RoF.

Here is what I was thinking would be the general layout of the tank and ranged dps/healers

Pink dots = ranged dps
Yellow dot = MT
Blue = Azgalor
Black = Thrall and company

I could MD Azgalor onto the MT (strats suggest druid MT, a parried attack would reset his attack timer and could easily kill the MT during a silence). Once the boss is positioned up there, and the NPCs agro'd. The MT could turn the boss away from the NPC's so they don't get cleaved, or pull him back a bit more so they bunch up behind him.
The ranged dps sits way out to the side, at max range so none of them take any RoF's. This allows for us to not only dps properly, but focus more on Dooms. Thrall and npcs would eat lots of RoF's and the npcs would eventually die (not thrall)
Notice I have not included melee in this picture.

Since melee would be RoF'd to an extreme degree while the npcs are fighting the boss, all melee position themselves here

The doomguards would be tanked in the back by the warrior camp. The tank(green) positions the doomguard in agro range of the warriors, and the melee (brown) dps down the guards as they spawn. The healer(purple) or healers should be able to easily keep the offtank alive, especially with the warriors stuns helping lower the dps on the tank.

This positioning also make the run for people who have been doomed about.. 6-7 seconds. This gives WAY the hell more time to prepare for a doomguard.

Once all the adds that are with Thrall have died , all the melee would then switch over to DPS'ing Azgalor. The people who get doomed would simply run back to the offtank to die, and the tank would pick them up as they come. The warriors do a hefty amount of dps, and stun the crap out of the guards, at this point it should be easy to bring Azgalor down before the offtank becomes overwhelmed with guards.

The melee will now be taking a very hefty amount of RoF's (as usual). This can be mitigated slightly by FR.. but the best way other people seem to handle it is by having the melee spread out around the back of him, and when a RoF hits, stacking up out of the RoF. then a shaman would chain heal the entire group of melee, and after the RoF, they could spread back out again.

About thralls health, most people seem to say he gets to around 35-45% hp depending on how long the fight goes.

This is all just a suggestion, but I figured it warranted a decent explanation because it differs greatly from what we are currently doing."

Dustwhisper · 12/14/07, 5:42 AM

There is a difference between can and should. Sure the feeling of having sex without a condom is much better than with, but with is much safer and you don't risk screwing up.

I realise it's not the most mature way to put it, but it's a dumb analogy that illustrates and holds it point. Anything that can trivialise something is good.

Anedris · 12/14/07, 7:02 AM

Things go wrong. As a raid leader I try to minimize the number of things that can go wrong. The "AoE on you, move fast" mechanic started at Gruul with cave-ins, was replayed at Al'ar, surfaced again at Kael'thas, Supremus, Rage, and now Azgalor... as well as some kind of trash pull in just about every instance it seems. Kudos to guilds who can trust their members to avoid these things but in our guild someone always stands in it, so it made sense to take that point of failure out of the equation. We'll deal with Illidari Council when we get to them.

I told people to treat him like Capernian and no one move closer than 30 yards (as in, not one hair of a step inside 30 yards). Our shadow priest just maintained DoTs and used MB and SW

in between and so on. We only had two rain of fires land on the raid the entire fight (one on the ranged DPS when some mage's elemental ran forward and one on the healers when the MT repositioned Az slightly). We killed him in about 9:30 without there ever seeming to be a risk of failure.

So I can anecdotally confirm that a 30 yard range seems to be enough to avoid the rain of fire.

Tyrian · 12/14/07, 9:12 AM

Kudos to guilds who can trust their members to avoid these things but in our guild someone always stands in it, so it made sense to take that point of failure out of the equation. We'll deal with Illidari Council when we get to them.

I dont see how 'trust' has anything to do with the most basic survival mechanic. When your in danger with a fire on your head - run immediately. There is no trust involved - its common sense and should be expected from your raid members at that point in progression.

If you have people that can't do this, Id suggest you you find out who they are before get to Archimonde (doomfires) and Illidari Council (Blizzard / Flamestrike) - then tell them to shape up or be replaced. Your post makes it sound like you take a perfectly-workable strategy and dumb it down so a retard with no skills in reaction/survivability can do it. That might sound nice - but the thing is.. on other fights (even archimonde immediately after) you cant dumb down the strat like that to eliminate the need for smart/quick thinking - you need to replace the dumb player instead (or suffer with wipes/deaths from them). Im not saying guilds should be doing the strat a certain way, but they should realise that if you want to 'dumb down' your strat and hold your players hands - be prepared for a nasty surprise on upcoming fights where suddenly they need to be able to think fast and for themself.

Those players who cant move from Rain of Fire on Azgalor? Just wait until they try Archimonde and discover what a doomfire is. The results.. will be to die for.

Orestus · 12/14/07, 10:34 AM

Tyrian, I can certainly see your point. If a guild isn't capable of killing Azgalor with a "standard" strat, dealing with Rain of Fire, etc, they are probably not capable of killing Archimonde (or Council, no experience w/ that fight though). What I would argue though, is that most of the guilds posting here that they've used the "max range" strat, could kill him with the standard strat (my guild has). It might be sloppier, it might take 2 or 3 more tries the first couple times, but they could do it. After all, we've been learning to get out of imminent danger for a long time; we learned it at Twin Emperoros, then at Gruul, then at Magtheridon, Void Reaver, Al'ar, Kael, Rage, etc. Our guilds have demonstrated plenty of times that they can kill bosses that require avoiding AOE's or targeted attacks, or we wouldn't be in Hyjal.

However, as a raid leader of a 4 night, 4 hour a week raiding guild, I have to evaluate each fight and approach it in the way that best allows my guild to make progress in the time frame we've set for ourselves. And Azgalor is not like normal bosses, where a wipe just means some rebuff time. A wipe on Azgalor means at least another 30-40 minutes on him, between trash, rebuffing, running back etc. That's time that I could be spending pulling Archimonde, and while Azgalor certainly helps you learn to avoid doomfires, 3-4 Archimonde pulls will certainly help you learn that more. I can't justify to myself or my guild intentionally approaching a fight in a more difficult manner, and exposing my raid to a greater risk of wiping, solely to give them more practice on a skill that they've already proven to me repeatedly they have.

Of course I expect them to be able to avoid Rain of Fire. I expect our guild's raiders to do alot of things but that doesn't mean I force them to take risks that could lead to wipes unneccessarily. On Gorefiend, for instance, I expect everyone to be able to handle their 4 constructs w/ no outside assistance, and if you fail to do that you get switched out. However, when the first ghost finishes his, I tell them their primary job is to help the next guy who gets ghosted. Do I expect that person to do it alone? Absolutely. But I take out alot of uncertainty and make our kills much more steady by eliminating the need for him to do it alone. The damage to our time and morale of rigidly insisting everyone perform their roll perfectly to ensure a kill is not a worthwhile tradeoff for the small training benefit it provides, in my analysis.

Dralmoo · 12/14/07, 2:29 PM

Even if you're only in the Rain of Fire for a brief period of time you get the dot ticking on you, right? Which means a lot of raid healing, especially on the melee, even in a retard free environment. Especially for guilds who may be undergeared for this fight, they may find the max range strategy to be easier and more consistent. (I did)

The point is to kill the boss as often and easily possible. If it turns out by doing this we're able to kill Azgalor but then wipe on Archimonde because of bad players, well, we've still got X extra sets of Tier 6 gloves in the meantime...

Tyrian · 12/15/07, 2:13 AM

Which means a lot of raid healing, especially on the melee, even in a retard free environment.

The way I see it..

The average player will take 2 direct ticks of Rain Of fire to move out safely, approximately 3400 damage from those ticks combined(Thottbot World of Warcraft: Rain of Fire) and ~6000 damage from the 5 unquenchable flames ticks after(Unquenchable Flames - Spells - World of Warcraft) for a total of about 9400 damage. This damage shouldnt kill them - players should be wearing ~10 000 health for this very reason - to allow for 2 direct ticks+5 dots. If your clothies are wearing 8-9k hp and can't outrange ROF but you want them to DPS the boss - ask them to stack on a little more sta (close to 10k preferred). People who take three direct ticks will take ~11-12k damage and have a higher chance of dying as they likely dont have that much HP and will need a heal fast - but these people fall into the im-too-slow-to-move category.

Depending on your strategy there isnt necessarily much raid healing with this in mind. In our strat (picture further up the page) only 2 ranged at a time can ever get hit by rof. Yes, more healing is required on melee but thats why lifebloom druids are so perfect for them. 5 melee. Since the damage people take with 2 ticks+dot isnt enough to kill them/very borderline, a single lifebloom druid with rolling 3 stacks on 4 of your melee can solo keep them up with no risk of danger at all. For this reason if we have 5 melee on Azgalor, I assign 4 of them to run to the lifebloom druid when in danger and the 5th melee runs to another healer to ensure the druid never has to break up his 4-lifebloom rotation. They will never die while the druids hot are on them, unless they literally stand in the ROF for many ticks, blissfully unaware of their hp.

So, every few seconds two people (or your 4-5 melee, but since they have a dedicated healer its different) might take about 80-90% of their hp in damage and require topping up. Not really a lot of raid healing - its very manageable depending on what way you wish to go about handling it (or eradicate it completely if you choose to outrange it and take no melee). Compare this to say a fight like Najentus/Essence of Anger/Illidari Council/Illidan phase 2 - thats where raid healing gets tougher (unavoidable abilities/auras on entire raid or multiple people hit simultanteously etc)

Summary: If you want dps on the boss who can't outrange ROF, tell all those players to wear close to 10 000 hp. If they achieve this, ROF will not kill them - providing they can move out within 2 ticks (which is easy). Players with under ~9.5k hp or who are slow and eat 3+ROF ticks WILL need a fast heal to prevent them dying - they either need to be faster or wear more sta to stop that happening. If people like this die, dont blame the healers first - question the players sta/reaction speed , its not the healers fault dps isnt doing everything they can to make their job easier.

Edit - Out of curiousity I had a look at our WWS of damage in to the raid for Azgalor to better answer the question 'Is there much raid damage on azgalor?'. Heres the link: Wow Web Stats

On damage in you can see the raid (excluding the MT+2 Doomguard tanks) took in about 600 000 damage. This is approximately 1/3 of the total damage received to the entire raid. Some fun facts about damage received on other fights (using our BT clear this week as a reference Wow Web Stats ). This is just for raid damage (exluding damage any/all tanks in the encounter take):

- Azgalor (8 minute kill) = 600 000 raid damage
- Najentus (6 minute kill) = 2.4 million raid damage
- Teron (~5 min kill) = 1.4 million raid damage
- Bloodboil (10 minute kill) = 3.3 million raid damage
- Essence of Anger (-2 minute kill) = 880 000 raid damage
- Illidari Council (14 minute kill, excluding 4 tanks) = 1.4 million raid damage

So there isnt really much raid healing on Azgalor (depending on your position/setup) compared to other fights - even if you wish to have your dps on the boss who can't outrange his abilities. Perhaps 4 or 5 times less than a similar length Black temple fight may have.

I guess by looking at this, you could make the obvious observation that Najentus and Essence of Anger are the highest raw raid-damage-per-minute intensive encounters in the game. However most guilds will take more total raid damage on Bloodboil over the course of a kill (as its upwards of 7-10 minutes.) This however doesnt take into account the type of raid damage. For example on bloodboil its very controllable damage (managed through rotations) that isnt likely to kill you, however on Illidari Council its raid damage that comes in fast, unpredictable spikes and can easily kill you if your slow or unlucky.

On a tangent perhaps, but interesting nevertheless

jozga · 12/15/07, 2:46 AM

I would say the best bet is to put as much dps on the boss as you can keep alive safely at your level of gear or competence. Although dodging RoF may not be that hard, and it may be a skill you need to learn for later, it still adds a degree of difficulty to the fight that can be taken out otherwise; because having no melee on the boss really does seem to trivialise the fight.

So, for our first kill we used no melee until 25%, but I think when we get more practiced and geared up we will start adding the melee in earlier and earlier. Or possibly some melee will get fire resist gear - stranger things have happened.

Cathela · 12/15/07, 3:07 AM

Originally Posted by Tanoh

I left my old guild (and server) in the end of the summer, going from a Vashj training guild to a "We just killed Gruul twice and still wipe quite a lot on him" but the new guild were much nicer people and I couldn't stand the old. Anyway, the new guild had (and still has, though we don't do Gruul anymore) a very odd strategy on Gruul. I've always seen Gruul as one of the good fights to learn how to spread properly. We micromanage where everyone stands, assigns people to stones littered around the cave. Setting up a Gruul can take 15-20 minutes (I'm not joking) of telling everyone where they should stand.

This really hurt us (in my oppinion) when we started doing Void Reaver. People weren't used to looking at their screen and seeing "hmm.. two people here very close to me, I better start moving!" they were used to thinking "This is MY spot, I'm not moving!" Which meant a lot of silly wipes on Void Reaver because people got orbed or other silly things ("Ranged ran into the healers!".)

To me Azgalor seems the same, it's a simple fight really, but it gives you the chance to further train your raid to dodge AoE effects. Sure you can avoid it on THIS fight, but it won't always be like that and starting training earlier is always better.

Well, yes... except that a guild working on Azgalor has already killed Voidreaver and Gruul... and Magtheridon, Al'ar, Vashj, Kael, and Winterchill, so it's not as though people see Azgalor for the first time and say "Oh my god, we have to dodge those AoEs?"

Is the post-Azgalor stuff different in some way that punishes you severely if you haven't learned to deal with Azgalor's specific AoE? Maybe it is -- I wouldn't know -- but I'm pretty skeptical, and I tend to doubt we're doing ourselves any harm by skipping the eighth 25-man fight with a dodge-the-AoE component.

In the event that we do wind up slapping our foreheads later on and saying "Doh! Wish we hadn't done that outranging strat on Azgalor!" we can always just go back to Azgalor on the next reset and get the experience doing it the hard way.

Tyrian · 12/15/07, 3:21 AM

Is the post-Azgalor stuff different in some way that punishes you severely if you haven't learned to deal with Azgalor's specific AoE?

Depends on your viewpoint. Theres no reason you have to change your current strat, but the poster you quoted was referring to times later where you might see the lack-of-experience come back to haunt you. Illlidari Council is one: The aoe Blizzard ticks for 5k every 2 sec , flamestrikes 5k initial + 3k dots every 2 sec and of course envenom for an instant 5k after the deadly poison dot. None of this is outrangeable/los'able/dispellable etc. Its in the raid and all your players have to deal with it. Spreading out (like Azgalor) to minimise the effects is obviously preferred, but it does come down to your players and whether they can react fast when in danger. . Azgalor and his seemingly puny "2.5k rof + 1.25 k ticks" will seem easy by comparison for your raid by then.

On Archimonde, people discover that its easy to say 'avoid the doomfires' but for various reasons (including, but not limited to, player stupidity).. its somewhat easier said than done.

Anedris · 12/15/07, 4:35 AM

Eh, as mentioned above I would much rather wipe on Archimonde than wipe on Azgalor. I could ask my raid not to kill Al'ar until 30 seconds before his enrage timer so we get additional practice avoiding flame patches - it's a dumb example of course - you kill the boss and you move on.

Archimonde's doomfires are very different from a rain of fire effect anyways, considering that they spawn in front of you and then move around, as opposed to spawning on top of you and then remaining stationary. Council's AoEs (which I have not seen yet) are probably much more similar, but again, no trash, and we'll have a much greater loot income if we wipe learning death-from-above AoEs on Council as opposed to wiping while learning it on Azgalor (not that, as mentioned, these are new mechanics).

I simply consider it prudent to minimize points of potential failure wherever the opportunity to minimize them exists.

However, we're bickering now. Both strategies work. Use the glove that fits.

Cathela · 12/15/07, 5:26 AM

Originally Posted by Tyrian

Depends on your viewpoint. Theres no reason you have to change your current strat, but the poster you quoted was referring to times later where you might see the lack-of-experience come back to haunt you.

Right, so my question again is: Is there some AoE mechanic in an upcoming encounter that dodging the Azgalor RoF uniquely prepares you for? Meaning: Is there some specific lesson taught by Azgalor that is not taught by Winterchill, Kael, Vashj, Al'ar, etc, etc?

I mean yeah, we all understand the basic concepts that you have to move out of AoE and healers have to heal people who take damage from it. Beyond that, I don't see what Azgalor specifically teaches that the other fights don't.

EDIT: And as Anedris points out above me, if you do have to teach people to dodge and heal AoE, doing it on a fight with 20 minutes of trash before each attempt probably isn't the most efficient way to go about it.

Vihermaali · 12/15/07, 2:14 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Is there some AoE mechanic in an upcoming encounter that dodging the Azgalor RoF uniquely prepares you for? Meaning: Is there some specific lesson taught by Azgalor that is not taught by Winterchill, Kael, Vashj, Al'ar, etc, etc?

No.

It's just that, for some people (including me) it is strange that for someone its easier to make "gimmick tactics" like "no-one but tank is allowed inside 36 yard range at any time" than to simply say "spread around" and let common sense do the rest. Bam, RoF avoided. As a healer (even back when I was with full t4 level gear in hyjal healing) I have no problem healing RoF's. It makes one feel that reason why you use such tactic to avoid RoF's is because you don't trust members to take care of themselves.

There is absolutely no need to change a tactic you one-shot boss with week after week. HOWEVER, what Tyrian is saying here is that you better watch out if you use "out-of-range-of-RoF" -tactics because it is safer like this than trusting your members to dodge RoF. Very, very soon there will be room for exacly zero (0) raid members who can't do things without people holding their hands. Not that this applies to you specifically, just a friendly warning