Inaiwae

Yes, you are right, multiplicatively.

 

SilentCom

We have had a few problems as of late with people getting gibbed by the green beams when they first spawn. They are preemptively moving, but some just run right into the green beams because it seems that they spawn right in front of them. Is there a specifc location that the green beams spawn relative to the player or are these gibbings based on server lag and such?

 

• Intermission

Beams spawn 3 or 4 yards next to someone (random direction as far as I can tell), and then begin to chase them. Do not pre-emptively move, as you may be moving into a spawning beam. Just have people stand still healing/dpsing and when they see a beam spawn next to them they begin to run. If they take a tick of damage (and therefore get the DoT + spawns debuff) they are too slow.

 

Tyrian

I wouldnt recommend this. In our experience its always people who don't preemptively move, that will die. Might be superstition, but I always seem to notice the beam spawns on the side between me and Felmyst. Thus whenever im moving outwards (from the centre crate) running into the initial spawn point never seems to happen.

 

• Intermission

Well I put it this way:

Moving - large chance to gain extra distance, small chance for beam to land on your head, and disadvantage of not being able to dps or heal.

Standing still - Guaranteed to not have beam spawn on your head, and adequate time for people to move.

People failing and being slow should not alter how non-fail people play.

 

gcbirzan

I would definitely recommend not moving, especially if you're a ranged DPS. You have a lot of time to start moving if the beam is on you and this way you can DPS a bit more. Just be aware of the fact that if someone kites it close to you, you also have to start running or you can get insta gibbed by a couple of friendly skeletons.

 

aadric

One of the problems we had on our first night was Boss Mod failure. Big Wigs did not have a timer for the first Gas Nova. DBM did but then the Gas Nova timers became increasingly out of sync. Is this consistent with everyone else's experience? I updated Big Wigs mid-raid to no effect.

 

Touf

Gas Nova and Encapsulate only have a minimum delay timer, they can go off anytime after that. I find BigWigs works perfectly.

 

SilentCom

We have had people doing this, running out towards the fire, but it has gibbed them from the front before. That may be attributed to lag though. I do too somewhat believe that the beam spawns relative to felmyst and the player. It seems that for many of the people on the far left side away from felmyst, if facing the big tree, the beam spawns on the players right.

In terms of the pre-emptive kiting, after reading the comments, I think that a little mix of both may work best. It is probably not the smartest idea to kite in a certain direction because you may be gibbed by the beam when you are going full bore in one direction. On the other hand, with no movement at all it seems to me that you have a higher chance to get gibbed because you aren't already moving. I am thinking now that a bit of side to side movement or small, tiny circles around your area may be the best option. Opinions?

 

Seela

In two nights of attempts, our healing has been: 4 resto shamans, 1 resto druid, 2 holy paladins, 2 holy priests (1 of them CoH). For Mass Dispels we also have two shadow priests. We would prefer to stack more priests (will try to respec the other from Divine Spirit to CoH to see if it helps) but for right now we're playing the hand we are dealt.

At the moment, the three-MD strategy appears to be working the best with us so far. Priests are dispersed among the three ranged groups, and if that group is targeted with encapsulate, people run to an adjacent group. You should have at least two MD'ing priests in the newly overloaded group, so mass dispels should be covered. With the range mechanics of Encapsulate and healing, we're finding it's a pick-your-poison of either:

• Bunch up each group. All three groups are in heal range of each other, but you will take more Encapsulate ticks as you flee
• Spread each group out. People will take fewer Encapsulate ticks, but you will be out of range of at least one group.
• Bunch up each group and brute heal through Encapsulate. Easiest way to dodge mobility complications, but most likely requires at least three pieces of AR gear and possibly a proactive arcane pot on each phase 1.

To evaluate how well people are adjusting to phase 1 movement (and to see if people are using their health stones and arcane pots), I wrote a quick Perl script to parse the combat log and give you a quick report of each encapsulate. You can always thumb through WWS but if you're specifically looking for just this, I found it faster.

http://www.fredhat.com/wow/encapsulate.pl.txt

It either needs to be run in a linux environment, or in Windows via Cygwin. It might be too complicated if you are not familiar with any of those technologies, but for those with the means to run this may find it helpful. There are a few tweaks that need to be made (filtering pets, totems, etc) but for now it serves it's purpose.

 

Tojara

Our guild simply brute forces the Encapsulates. We typically use two pieces of AR gear (trinket and cape) and an AR potion if your group gets targeted with Encapsulate. Just for reference we typically bring 9 healers, 2 of which are priests and 3 shaman (sometimes we have four shamans).

For positioning we simply have everyone spread out in a star around felmyst standing directly on top of their group members 20 yards away from any other group. Spreading out in this fashion results in only one group and at most 5 people getting hit be Encapsulate at any one time. The arcane protection potion is simply a buffer to give the CoH priests time to start pelting that group with encapsulate while the shamans start casting chain heals. With everyone switching to the Encapsulated group it is rare for anybody to die.

I am fairly certain given the above numbers that we wouldn't even need to use AR (although if you do plan on brute forcing I would recommend using the trinket solely for the stamina boost), and that intelligent use of health stones, AR pots or a battle masters trinket is all you need. I say this because my group has been targeted with Encapsulate several times while I had blood fury going (lol) and they still managed to keep me up (mind you it is very close).

We chose this way because it simplified the possible mobility aspect of phase one. It also had the fortunate side effect of improving our overall DPS on the encounter as there is more overall dps time.

For the air phase we simply spread out to either side (away from the middle section) and have people moving until the first beam spawns, then moving again before the second beam spawns. Although already mentioned we found the best way to deal with the breaths is have people move to the opposite side of where felmyst is breathing. The ability is laid downed in patches so being farther away obviously gives you a lot more wiggle room.

Lastly does anybody else still get random disconnects during the air phase? I think turning off game sound altogether fixed it but I won't confirm as my sample size is rather small ;P

 

Seela

I would love to brute force encapsulates if it were feasible with my typical raid makeup, for it's simplicity alone. It's a tactic that I might employ tonight, but I have a few more detailed questions about your raid, or for anybody who has found success brute healing:

• You mentioned that you bring two priests. Are both priests CoH?
• How many shadow priests do you bring? I'm trying to get a handle on how many healing priests you have that are off MD duty.
• With four groups, how do you handle brute healing through "stragglers" (i.e. those not affected by CoH)? I would imagine making them the focus target for each resto shaman so they are guaranteed heals, but would that be enough?
• Typically the paladins would focus on the encap'ed person, but with everybody in the group taking the same damage, do the paladins simply bounce their heals around the group?

 

Tyrian

Read through the thread and there will be scattered references to DC's. And if you google "felmyst, disconnect" type words you will also find more.

In summary, yes there are most definetely DC issues with Felmyst in phase 2. They appear to sometimes disconnect certain players. There are many rumoured causes and fixes - but nobody knows really whats going on and how to fix it 100%.

In my experience the thing most likely to dc someone is when Felmyst does a breathe in the top and everyone runs downhill towards the firewall. For some reason, running towards the firewall down the btm of the room appears to DC certain people quite consistently (while others never get it). Someone might get disconnected consecutively every attempt whenever they run to this location - then it might not happen for a few attempts after, despite doing the exact same thing - then it can start happening again for an unknown reason. For people that say its computer etc, we actually had someone who had this sporadic DC problem buy a completely new computer.... and it still kept happening to him.

 

Meltface

* Both non-shadow priests we take are CoH.
* We bring 2 shadowpriests, but all our priests are on MD duty, even the CoH priests.
* We set up positions so that only 2 players are not CoH-able. The tank, and 1 melee who is usually taken care of with Chain Heal.
* If I remember correctly, our Paladins heal the Encap'd person since he will be out of CoH range (vertically that is).

 

BFG

I had disconnects every time I turned camera to see a full screen of phase 2 fog. Then I disabled "specular lighting" in video options and never got disconnected since then.

My question: what to do when the prot pally gets 2nd beam? Standing still spawns more skeletons and increases damage, running away leads to lots of stray skellies... any advice?

No, this is not a whine post. It's legal to be a pessimist.

 

Corronach

Your MT has to pick them up and drag to the prot pally.

 

KamPa

You can also have your healers simply run towards tanks. Skellies are bound to agro on them, but with Frost traps or other slowing effects, there's plenty of time to steer them into Consecration, which will be enough to make them change targets.

 

Dollar

Has anyone had any luck with the kite the beam around the prot paladin tactic? I saw it in a video (SK's I think but don't quote me on that) and it seems like it would make our healers getting raped by skeletons in p2 problem nonexistent. It seems kind of risky but a lot more efficient to our usual kite the beams around and hope that the healers they chase after are near the prot paladin strategy.

Lord, beer me strength.

 

Mags

The abilities seem to have a "cooldown" rather than a set timer. Until the first Gas Nova, BigWigs doesn't have a starting point for the cooldown. Based on my experience, the first Gas Nova never occurs before the first Corrosion but frequently occurs a few seconds later.

 

aadric

We have observed a Gas Nova before the first Corrosion but it is rare.

Thanks for confirming the Big Wigs issue.

 

Tsunameh

Has anyone noticed while tanking felmyst that she randomly hits for 3-4k more on a corrosion than she regulary hits during corrosion? I generally take 10k hits during corrosion, but last night I was randomly taking 14k hits during corrosion which lead to a 1 shot effort once. No gear is red and there is no difference in CoR/CoW/demo shout usage.

 

• Maledict

There will be. This was brought up a few times in the BB, and every time it was discovered it was due to Demo shout or Screech or *some* debuff falling off - that's the only way her hits can get up to 14K.

 

Firecrest

We have one player who can, at will, run through the fire that serves as a wall around the area. It's just one player, he can do it at any point along the wall, at any time and he's been able to do it across multiple weeks. We can't find any rhyme or reason for it. One day, while we were setting up, he was walking around back there and when we asked him how the hell he got there his reply was, "I walked, can't you guys?"

Another time, we had a MT death and called a wipe. Most of the people left alive headed for the Mind Control fog to save dura. Shortly thereafter, once everyone had died, we all found ourselves transported, dead, into the back wall of fire - and about 30 feet off the ground. We had an Ankh Res so someone popped up and resed a couple other people before it was discovered that you could only leap down to the back side of the fire - and therefore weren't able to get back into the battle area. We had to summon those people in order to continue the raid.

Sometimes these things just happen. But this encounter seems especially odd.

 

Faldrath

I turned specular lighting off yesterday... and got DC'd in our first attempt as I ran towards the fire barrier to the south (I also had spell effects on low). What I did in subsequent attempts was to switch the camera to top-down during air phases, so that the fire barrier wouldn't even render in my screen as I ran south (all I could see was the ground). I had no more disconnects (but we killed her in 3 attempts, so that's not much evidence of anything).