aznxk3vi17

With the released hold on Twins discussion, I thought I might start this off.

The different positioning and kill orders has been well known and discussed thoroughly on the WoW R&D forums, so I thought I might focus on the lesser known mechanics of the fight (to our guild, at least). As everybody knows, the Shadow Images despawn after a certain amount of time, which is why most positions have the two twins tanked at the top of the room and down below. However, we haven't been able to completely take them out of the equation as of yet (one or two will almost always reach the raid), and even moreover, we cannot figure out their targeting mechanics.

Some have theorized that it's line of sight, which is a possibility, but we have not been able to reliably position the shadow twin properly out of sight while keeping the tanks in sight for heals. Because of this, we have several of the tank healers close to the shadow twin wearing some shadow resist. However, as I've said before, due to the fickle positioning, we are never sure if the images reaching the raid are due to the fact that they are in line of sight, or that the mechanic simply does not work that way at all.

 

• Snowy

It's much more likely that the Shadow Images cast a Fixate periodically on a random person who is in LoS. That's why, if you tank Sacrolash up top with your tanks on the ledges, they'll bang on your tanks at first. In the process, the Images get on the ledge. They are now in LoS of everybody basically, and are free to pick another target to Fixate on. However, the few seconds they banged on the tank up top is generally enough time that they despawn just before reaching the raid. (The LR video clearly shows this)

Benefactors' Bar, where you get free English lessons:

 

aznxk3vi17

So it seems if the images target our shadow resist healers, they have a chance of then reaching the raid for a few seconds? Granted, the damage they end up doing in that short amount of time is easily healable, but the Shadowfury usually ends up wiping us. We can't figure out a way to reliably prevent this from happening (barring candle exploits, but we'd like to try to do this the right way). There's just so many positioning possibilities for the tanks, healers, and the raid, that if this periodic fixate is true, would lead to a chain reaction of targets that would eventually end up in that above-described situation.

edit: I suppose if there was a way to easily tell who the images are targeting, that target could move out from the raid to prevent Shadowfury deaths, but due to their nature, there just simply isn't a way of telling who the images are chasing. Then again, BigWigs has somehow managed to find a way to figure out who the beam in phase 2 is following despite Felmyst never actually targeting anybody for the duration of the beam. Perhaps there IS a way.

 

◊ Praetorian

They shouldn't -- if you're using Vodka-style positioning, then it's possible an image might happen to coordinate the perfect series of target switches to get on your main ranged clump right away, but more likely if they whack your SR healers a couple of times, that "wasted" time will mean they can't quite reach the rest of the raid. I'll let someone who's used that strat comment at greater length, however.

(And no, you can't tell who they target. BigWigs works because in the combat log there's a "summon beam" spell that's cast on the target and it can pick that up.)

 

pinchet

We tank Lady Sac at the top, with SR healers on the ramp. Shadow images never ever ever Shadowfury the raid unless something is wrong with positioning her. Like Gurgthock said, they fuck around hitting the tank healers and then by the time they're running to the raid they despawn. 3/4 of the time they despawn still on the healers.

 

Malazaar

It is definately not LoS-based. I don't know for sure but if you DPS Sacrolash first, they never attack your Melee DPS and Tanks - which are in LoS from the very beginning.

My guess it's aggro based similar to the way Conflag/Nova behave.

 

Azamoth

We're still working on getting a Twins kill but have put in a fair amount of time on the encounter. We've spent alot of time looking over our WWS reports for the different positioning strategies we've used. Here's what we've observed so far:

Last Resort positioning (Sacrolash up top, tanks on ledge, raid out of LoS):
Images attack tanks initially and sometimes come down to attack the raid after beating on the tanks. Very little image damage on raid.

Vodka positioning (Sacrolash up top with tanks, mt healers on ramp, raid out of LoS):
Images attack mt healers almost exclusively. A few will agro on the raid after attacking healers. Very little image damage on the raid or the main tanks.

Vanquish positioning (Sacrolash on the ramp in LoS of raid):
Images attack raid almost exclusively. Very little images damage on main tanks. Lots of image damage on the raid.

Fusion positioning (Sacrolash down below, raid on ledge up top, dps Sacrolash first):
Images almost always go for the raid up top. If positioned correctly most despawn before reaching raid. Those that do reach the raid usually only have time to melee once or twice, but occasionally will get off a shadowfury. Images very rarely attack melee or Sacrolash tanks, but do attack the warlock tank.

From our observations I'd like to propose the following targeting rules for the images:

- Targets must be in LoS when the images spawn
- Images will occasionally fixate on a new target that is in LoS
- Images prefer to attack ranged over melee (at least on the initial spawn)

 

james

Not much to say here but... we killed shadow first and our melee were all in LoS of her.

But see WWS of the kill - Wow Web Stats - not a single shadowfury. We found that if our ranged moved slightly, or if she moved slightly, we would get those shadowfurys.

I've seen people swear blindly that it's LoS'able, however.

 

KamPa

While R&D thread did offer some input, it was fairly limited, and filled with typical Blizz WoW forum posts. So, I'd like to ask something bit more basic here.

Currently doing them using "Last Resort" positioning, which works all good and well for keeping raid damage controlled. Lock tank leaves couple Blazes on the stairs, meaning tanks only have to strafe a bit to clean it. Still, clearing debuffs remain main problem with this, Images stacking DT on all 3 tanks so fast, that waiting for Blow becomes dangerous. BOPs help, but her rapid target changes screw our healers. Seemed that using trees for healing OTs was best, due to extended LOS duration at times - how many people do you have healing tanks there? In the end, we had 1 pally, 2 full time trees and backup priest, throwing mending and CoH in LOS situations and GH if debuffs were >10.

However, randomness of tank damage really annoys me. Can't fully debuff Sacrolash, since she slaughters pets with Shadow Blades and using healer just to keep owl up seems a waste - though maybe not? Do pets actually get Dark Touched? Can't Scorpid, since it means another target in LOS - or would FD make images go back? Unless I'm wrong, SR doesn't work either, since we didn't notice any full resists of Dark Strikes and debuff stacks anyway. Do Images follow standard avoidance rules - didn't really use totems/scrolls for them, but would extra agi help out with avoiding DS? I realize that this entire strategy puts most pressure on tanks, but is it really that bad? In the end, we'll switch to something else after a kill, since it doesn't look especially repetitive.

We also made few tries with what I see is considered "Vodka positioning" - but keeping MT healers alive seems to be a real pain. Wasn't really sure if using full SR is needed, as DT stacked anyway. I'm more interested in knowing, who is responsible for keeping them up? Additional healer in the back had quite a problem with his gimped healing output in SR combined with high stacks of DT on people. Do raid healers help out? Are there 2 tank-healer healers? At times it seemed that clearing DT through Blaze would barely help, as images would instantly stack it to double digits on same person - I guess that's normal?

 

pinchet

We set it up like this:

Two tanks at the top of the ramp tanking Sacrolash are being healed by a druid and 2 paladins scattered around the ramp. A priest at the bottom of the ramp is responsible for keeping those 3 healers alive, as well as himself. He is in line of sight of the rest of the raid though, so he can still get hit by others if he dips too low. We found a priest to be most effective for this because of Prayer of Mending being able to bounce around perfectly.

Even with shadow resist you'll still be stunned from Shadowfury, and you'll still take stacks of Dark Touched. All four healers are responsible for taking a dip into the Warlock tanks blaze to clear their shadow debuffs (generally they'll clear them anywhere from 6-10, depending on a number of things).

I am the priest who does the healing at the bottom of the ramp in our strategy. It's pretty intense and with shadow resist & PVP trinket on I need to use my shadowfiend and a mana pot. I generally don't do much healing in phase 2 due to mana but I have shadow resist on and theres a bunch of other healers who don't.

 

AriasImmortal

We use a modified LR strat with 3 paladins up top in SR spread out by the entrance to the room (2 healing the tanks, one healing the other two), with a shadowpriest and a holy priest in their group standing below for VE/PoH. If DT stacks too much on the paladins up top, they can just bubble.

 

epiphenom

It isn't a matter of it being a binary state. It isn't that either the targeting is all LoS or LoS is irrelevant.

Shadow image targeting is the weirdest and, for us, the most frustrating thing about this fight. My guild must have tried about eight different positionings to minimize images and even after the kill, we're not sure exactly how they work. We know that although it's not entirely LoS based, LoS is a factor. You can easily confirm this by separating your Sacrolash and Alythess groups and parking Sacrolash somewhere (like in an upper corner) with her group out of LoS of the Alythess group. Images won't even try to go for for the Alythess group.

So far our working theory is that they go for random players in line of sight, preferentially (but not exclusively) outside of 10 yards, much in the same manner that Illidan chooses targets for Agonizing Flames. If all Sacrolash can see is targets <10 yards in LoS, she will hurl images at them. Images don't appear to change targets unless they are on a target less than 10 yards away and come to see another target which obeys the "rather be >10 yards away than not" rule, or if their original target dies.

Intuitively this theory has way too many parts for it to be the likely actual mechanic behind their targeting, but it's the only thing we've found that accords with our experimental data.

 

Charsi

I investigated this pretty thoroughly. What I did was to import wowcombatlog.txt into Access and look at actor guid's, not WWS.

• Shadow images spawn in threes.
• They come in one of two forms: Shadowfury or Dark Strike. You can get unlucky and get 3x SF, lucky 3x DS, or a mix.
• Dark Strike images can change targets but it's rare (they appear to do a vanish animation first).
• Shadowfury images die after casting once. They take 0.5 seconds to cast Shadowfury.
• Shadow Images have an approx. 10 yard deadzone on target acquisition.
  They ignore this deadzone if they can't find a valid target outside of it.
• Shadow Images acquire targets based on a random selection within LOS of Sacrolash.
  I believe no two images can pick the same target, though. (edit: refuted below, ignore)
• Shadow Images survive approx. 10 seconds.

We spent two weeks trying to copy videos until we sat down, figured this out, and eventually adopted a strat that kills Sacrolash first. Having tried and failed horribly at the alternative, i'm absolutely convinced that killing Sacrolash first is far easier.

One of our attempts involved stacking the entire raid on top of Sacrolash and putting three people in SR on the balcony. They reliably pulled every image until they died (which admittedly was pretty fast).


Edit: I just noticed i'm posting directly after my own guildmate who basically says the same thing.

 

Ravenfire

I'll address this part since I can actually do so.

We kill Lady Sacrolash first.

Pets should only be taking damage from AoE abilities and should never be the main target of the AoE abilities. In over 100+ pulls my pet has NEVER been the target of Flame Sear or Shadow Spawns. In fact the only damage my pet takes on this fight is from Shadow Nova (when he is near the targeted person), Conflag (again has to be near the targeted person), and Shadow Blades (when near Lady Sacrolash). Pet should be trained in avoidence: reducing damage from these AoE abilities by 50%. A quick glance at our last Twins kill wws shows that Pet's are immune to the Dark Touched and Flame Touched Debuffs (i.e. they do not get them), greatly reducing issues with healing them.

As for keeping them alive... My guild is fortunate in that we average 5 shaman a raid (4 resto, 1 ench for this fight) so pet heals tend to come from bounced Chain Heals among the melee. Mend pet can also keep a pet alive between Shadow Blades as 3 ticks @ 475 approximately equals the damage taken by the pet from SB.

 

◊ Vectivus

I'm having a very hard time believing this. What evidence do base this claim off of?

 

Charsi

We stood the entire raid except for three people on top of Sacrolash and tried it out. I don't mean that they wont ever pick anyone < 10 yards. They just won't pick them unless they can't pick anything else. We had Sacrolash on the balcony for our early attempts and couldn't figure out why the tanks were basically taking all the Shadow Images and dying early whenever Sacrolash wandered off the balcony railing.

Hey, I could be wrong, would love to see evidence to the contrary.

Edit: Ravenfire - that part about same targets was just a hunch. We've had people get ganked too, but I was thinking back to my combat logs and didn't remember seeing them gang up on one person there. We exposed a lot of people to the Shadow Images though, so it could simply be luck of the draw.

 

Ravenfire

I'd agree with one small exception... IF there are no targets in LOS and outside of the 10 yard deadzone then they ignore the 10 yard rule and just pick a target within LOS of Sacrolash. This would explain how the tanks get beat on by the images when they are the only ones on the ledge in LOS of Sacrolash despite being in the 10 yard deadzone.

I disagree strongly with the idea that they can not pick the same target. Several of our learning wipes was due to one of our tank healers (in SR) getting all two or three images on them despite having 2 or 3 other healers also in LOS of Sacrolash and outside of the 10 yrd deadzone.

 

Ravenfire

Anyone want to throw out some ideas on how Flame Sear works?

 

Jumoor

Targets certainly doesn't need LoS or range. I was flame seared in Brutallus' room during a mispull.

 

Ravenfire

LOS has never been an issue with Flame Sear. While I don't doubt that there is not a range cap on Flame Sear (LOL at that mispull), there still might be a minimum range under which it will not target someone over another (very much like the images appear to do). The only other way I see flame sears as being "Controllable" is if it was threat based but I have some very serious doubts as to that being the case.

 

◊ Vectivus

 

Zugstab

My guild has spent a couple of nights learning the fight, still working to get a kill. We were mainly using the Vodka strat. Almost all of the images' targets would be the healers on the ramp healing Sacrolash's tanks. The warlock tank was also getting hit by them also. I will cite this as anecdotal support of the LOS+fixate+>10 yard targeting mechanism of the images.

Our biggest issue was the stuns of the shadowfury images. They stun the MT healers, MT dies, raid wipes.

Has anyone had any good success keeping the MTs up through stuns on the healers? We tried going to 5 healers to try to decrease the effect. We were doing 3*druid,1*pally,1*shaman, and then 2*druid,2*pally,1*shaman. HOTs just weren't enough to keep the MT up if more then 1 or so healer got stunned.

 

Zugstab

From my analysis of my guild's WWS the flame sear hits 5 random targets at once. I was melee on the warlock and I got flame seared so it does not appear to have a minimum range.

 

◊ manly