Lansky

In a couple of the runs I have done we lacked an OT that could sufficiently tank the Dragonhawk's enrage. I'm not sure why he couldn't, but he was scared shitless over the thought of doing it despite tanking Bear phase earlier in the run. As such I was on the boss and we used zero tanks on the dragonhawk adds. We had a lock, a mage essentially solo the adds. The mage "tanked the first few until there were about 10 hatched. The lock then started to seed and after a short delay the mage nova'd and stepped back. After 3 seeds were up the mage began nuking while the lock continued to seed. I would not call this entirely ideal but with the proper execution they take very minimal damage and the adds die very quickly with no tank class doing anything.

 

xyruul

You might consider removing the "group composition" segment of the original post as well since it apparently has no relevance to speed runs.

We don't use a tank at all on the adds. A dps warrior probably picks up most of them however and everyone focuses that side. The second side always breaks all at once since the boss is sub 35% by that point. A paladin pulls them with RF who stands behind me and away from the birds so they cross my path bubbling before they get to him. Then he bops the warlock before he dies. Half the time I can aoe taunt while tanking, the other half I blew it on trash but it doesn't seem to matter much unless the paladin misses the bop. That's with only 1 warlock, and two fire elementals. Making sure they are slowed is key

 

Amonra

Our biggest problem seems to be the dragonhawk eggs - we don't usually have a paladin on our runs and the eggs are the point where our mage and/or warlock are fairly likely to die. Especially when the boss summons everyone and starts throwing out his bombs while we are still trying to kill the adds. We probably need to try some of these other strategies because our current one is pretty high risk.

One thing that has been very helpful for us is having a mostly stable group of people coming to the instance, whereas when we first started we seemed to have a different group every week. Having the same group means getting to know exactly how particular people do their jobs which helps in knowing when adds are likely to get lose, when to use healthstones, when to drink, etc.

The biggest tip I have is that people watch the videos of timed runs - the one from Gurgthock in particular is superb because he has taken the time to explain in detail how his group is tackling the zone. Plus it shows that even without a flawless run, the timer can be comfortably beaten.

I tried to avoid references to particular classes in my original post, because I don't think it really matters which class does a job. I edited it slightly to make this clearer.

 

Hegen

One question of mine got clobbered during the - necessary - thread cleanup:

To those groups using mind control for the flame casters during the speed run: how do you handle the combination of short range and need to make sure the controller doesn't get any damage? Is this really avoidable with good execution?

 

Starfire

We run with two priests. One holy, one shadow. At most the pulls have two flamecasters and as far as I know flamecasters are the only mobs that will do aoe damage.

1 flame caster, shadow priest MC's.
2 flame casters, shadow priest MC's first, holy priest MC's second.

 

◊ Penguin

Yes. We MC a flamecaster every pull, and just make sure that tanks/rogues/shamans/etc rotate interrupts on the other flamecaster. If the only flamecaster is MC'd, there's no worry about other damage breaking it, everything should be tanked.

 

Jebraltar

Same idea, we MC'ed one and CC'ed the other. Make sure to have the mind-controlling Priest buff the Flamecaster so the Mage can spellsteal it after.

 

xyruul

I initiate every pull by charging into the mobs, they don't move and the priests mces from a safe distance. If you use a paladin I have no idea.

 

◊ Cylyna

I have a question for anyone who is in T4/T5 and can clear three chests without much problems.

Our typical 3 chest run is Bear to Eagle to Lynx. We are not geared enough to go for 4 chests, and this method works best for the group composition we can generally field. But that is neither here nor there.

We cleared all 3 bosses with 2 minutes left to spare and free'd the gnome hoping to get a really awesome ring. Well, she ran around the room and busted open all the vases, each vase contained gold but no vase had any kind of bag or chest within it. She ran up to the exit and said, "Here, take this bag and enjoy what is inside." Well, no bag spawned.

Has anyone else seen this? Does anyone know if the kill order HAS to include the Lynx dying last?

 

Jebraltar

Supposedly, the lynx bag will despawn when the prisoners all die - perhaps this is related.

 

Valerys

On our latest successful dragonhawk kill (on first try), we let *both* hatchers break 6 eggs on their side (actually on one side we got 10 eggs on first spawn because I was too late killing the hatcher). All our dps switched to dragonhawks as soon as they appeared, singletarget killing them as they came (3 dps on each side), without much tanking required (a single dps can dps-tank one dragonhawk without problems). Mage and warlock still did the aoe to mop up the last dragonhawks. This resulted in all eggs broken well before the 35% mark, making for an easy kill.

 

Inaiwae

This strategy is without doubts good to beat the boss, but it is not fast enough for the timed run which is the subject of this thread.

 

Vhad

We've always done what you quoted to be not fast enough, and made the timer both times we tried it so far.

What!?

 

• Rerox

We actually had the same problem for quite some time. We used AoE and the Mage or Warlock died easily when we tried to open up one whole side. When I first saw the ZA-speedrun-video from EJ I immediately noticed the completely different tactic they used on the dragonhawk and we tried to adapt it to our grup and it worked perfectly.

Have an off-tank (feral in our case) tank the adds in semi-tank- & semi-fireresist-gear and focusfire the adds (no AoE!). When the eggs hatch, every DD does the dragonhawks, no dps on the boss then. When he starts throwing bombs, make sure the hatcher is killed when one side is finished and stay safe from the bombs. Since the tank in FR-gear can stand more punching than your ordinary clothie, the bomb-phase should be survivable without a problem. Since tey reduced the number of bombs in the last patch its even easier to kill the hawks while the bombs fly.

We tried doing both sides completely in one hatcher-phase (kill one hatcher, let the other open one side first, then the other side) but that aspect of the strategy is still "work in progress" but doing one side on each hatcher-phase works great and is still an enormous time improvement over our earlier "AoE strategy".

 

• Chicken

As I note there's little specific advice to tanking the Hatchlings on the Dragonhawk boss for a Paladin, I'd figure I'd chime in with the way I use my abilities to ensure I aggro all of them.

- On the first hatchling that spawns, use a Judgement. I typically use Judgement of Blood due to it's 100% hit rate, but Judgement of Righteousness should work perfectly for Alliance Paladins.
- On the next two hatchlings that spawn, I typically use Avenger's Shield. If you're not a Protection Paladin, I'd guess you'd Holy Shock one and use another Judgement on the other.
- On the next four hatchlings that spawn, I use a Judgement on one, and get the other three on me using Righteous Defense.
- After this point Consecration by itself should generally be enough to grab any other hatchlings that spawn.
- If you're going to hatch both sides in a single hatcher spawn, you'll generally be fine moving to the other platform after the bomb phase. You might need to refresh a consecration near the path to the first platform during the bomb phase though. Having a Frost Trap active in that area around this time is quite helpful.

 

Inaiwae

The hatchers come in 90 seconds interval. I havent done it myself yet but earlier someone mentioned that they break 35% before 2nd hatchers come. That means they are at 35% within 3 minutes, while the above mentioned strategy brings you to 35% no sooner than at 4 minutes 30 seconds (3 waves of hatchers, 12 eggs each wave). I dont know whether you are so skilled or so well equipped that this difference does not matter to you, but i am sure most groups attempting the event will not have so much time to waste.

 

Vhad

No?

We let them hatch twice then take him to 35%.

First is 10 or 15 seconds into the fight, next would be 100 or 105 seconds, then he is usually around 39% or so, we kill those from 2nd hatcher and kill the zerg @ 35% then nuke him in usually just over 2 minutes.

What!?

 

Mideci

It is a common misconception, but the dragonhawk spawn rate is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 on a given side, It is not, 1, 2, 4, 8, 5.

 

Inaiwae

2 Vhad: What you describe may be fast enough, however the initial poster described that they hatch 6 hawks on each side and that they have all eggs hatched before 35%. This require hatchers to come 3 times (you will have 4 eggs left after that). I was wrong about the time when 1st hatchers come, but the difference remains the same - about 1 and half minute.

 

Mancer

The Eagle, Bear, Dragon Hawk, Lynx order should get you 3 chests pretty easily if you are doing Bear, Eagle, Lynx within the timer. My group has found the Lynx trash to take the longest, we can usually power through DragonHawk trash without much trouble, but the Lynx packs and patrols seem to take ages to get through.

The group I run with is T5 / early T6 geared and last run we got within 3 minutes of 4 chests, I'd say a T4/T5 raid should be able to make 3 chests pretty easily if you use the Eagle, Bear, Dragon Hawk order. We always get our ring from the Dragon Hawk chest, so you definitely don't have to do Lynx last.

 

Krazen

It's a known bug. I've seen the same thing happen to us and read about several similar cases on the R&D forums. GMs will tell you that you're out of luck.

 

• Snowy

I will say for my group.. having a hunter put a frost trap right at the entrance to the narrow corridors to the eggs makes it so I only need to use consecrate to grab them. Even when I get ported for the fire bombs, I have time to scoot back over and drop another consecrate before they can get out of the frost trap area. As long as the hunter drops it before the hatchlings start to come, the cooldown will be up again for the hunter to drop another one between the swarming hatchlings and the AOE in question.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Xinc

Any suggestions as to how to best do the eagle gauntlet without a prot pally or feral druid? Assume 2 prot warriors in the group makeup geared with T4 & T5-level gear (usually alts).

I think our main problem with this setup is when we move up and let too many packs of eagles spawn. How many packs should you let spawn in general with this sort of tank setup? We usually go through let 3-4 eagle packs, but it almost seems like it would be far easier to let no more than 2 packs spawn.

 

Zindel

If you get a 4th pack of eagles, or a 3rd wave of Warriors, I'd say you're moving too slow. Your goal should be 2 packs of Eagles and one pack of warriors, an extra pack of each is not too bad, but anything past that and you're either doing it wrong or your dps is slow.

 

Machia

I have a guildy who swears that there is a time cap (he says it's 21 minutes or around there) and that doing Eagle first will cause a minute or so to be lost as you'll hit the "time cap". I've searched a few places and haven't seen any mention of this nor could think of a reasoning why Blizzard would put a time cap in.. anyone able to debunk this?